Suttree(138)

The girl woke him, shaking him by the shoulder. He’d heard his name called and he rose up wondering. The boy was coming up out of the darkness downriver with a load of pale and misshapen driftwood like scoured bones from a saint’s barrow. At the fire the woman bent and stooped and placed the blackened pots about and the old man squatted on his haunches and rolled one of his limp wet cigarettes and lit it deftly with a coal and watched. All this with a quality of dark ceremony. Suttree walked with the girl to the fire. One of the younger girls came up from the river with the coffeepot dripping riverwater and set it on the stones. She gave him a slow look sideways and arranged the pot with a studied domesticity which in this outlandish setting caused Suttree to smile.

They ate almost in silence, a light smacking of chops, eyes furtive in the light of the lantern. The meal consisted of the whitebeans and cornbread and the boiled chicory coffee. There was about them something subdued beyond their normal reticence. As if order had been forced upon them from without. From time to time the woman awarded to the round dark a look of grim apprehension like a fugitive. When Suttree had finished he thanked her and rose from the table and she nodded and he went off toward the river.

He woke once in the night to the sound of voices, a faint lamentation that might have been hounds beyond the wind but which to him as he lay watching the slow procession of lights on a highway far across the river like the candles of acolytes seemed more the thin clamor of some company transgressed from a dream or children who had died going along a road in the dark with lanterns and crying on their way from the world.


It was the boy came down with poison ivy. First between his fingers, then up his arms and on his face. He’d rub himself with mud, with anything. I seen dogs like that, said the old man. Couldnt get no relief.

His eyes is swoll shut, the woman said at breakfast next morning. The boy came to the fire like a sleepwalker. His arms puffed like adders. He tilted his head a bit to one side to favor the eye he could still see from. The skin of his upper arms had cracked in little fissures from which a clear yellow liquid seeped.

The old man shook his head in disgust. I aint never seen a feller swell up thataway with poison ivy. What all do you reckon’s the matter with him?

Just keep him away from me, said Suttree.

I thought you didnt take it, Sut.

I think he’s found a new kind.

Shoo, said Wanda. You’re a mess.

He came toward her, arms flailing stiffly in a fiend’s mime, and she ran screaming.

Well, the old man said. You wont get it just bein in the same boat with him.

I aint goin in no boat, the boy said.

You aint, aint ye?

I caint bend my arms.

Reese had a knife and spoon up in his hands, holding them like candles, waiting for the food. The boy was standing rigidly at the end of the table. You what? Said Reese.

Caint bend my arms, said the boy loftily.

The old man laid down his silver quietly. Well hell’s bells, he said. He looked at Suttree. I reckon you and Wanda will have to take it today.

I’ve got a better idea, Suttree said.

What’s that?

You and Wanda.

Well, I thought I’d make the downstream run by myself. I thought I’d let you take the upstream with Wanda on account of she knows it.

The woman swung a bucketful of oatmeal onto the table and the old man seized the ladle and loaded his bowl. Suttree looked downtable at the boy. He was still standing with his arms out at his sides. Wanda was sitting at the table across from him. She did not look up. She seemed to be at grace. Suttree took the ladle and dolloped out the oatmeal. Reese was blowing on his, holding the bowl in both hands and watching Suttree across the rim. Pass the milk, said Suttree.

She sat with her knees together in the stern facing him as he rowed, her hands in her lap, the brail drops swinging behind her from the poles. Suttree seeing new country and asking about things along the shore, which side of an island to take. Her pointing, her young breasts swinging in the light cloth of her dress, turning in the boat, caught up in a childlike enthusiasm, a long flash of white thighs appearing and hiding again. Her bare feet on the silty boards of the skiffs floor crossed one over the top of the other.

She said: Holler when you get tired and I’ll spell ye.

That’s all right.

I row for Daddy all the time. I can row good.

Okay.

You like to work with Willard?

He’s all right.

I dont. I worked with him last summer some. He’s a smart aleck.

I guess you got to practice up on your rowing with him.

Shoot. That thing wont do nothin. You know he tried to get me to hide out what pearls we found cleanin shells and we’d slip off and sell em and keep the money?

Suttree grinned. Well, he said. I’d guess old Willard probably doesnt have much luck finding pearls. I’d say that everybody else would find about five to his one.