Suttree(142)

The first of these days Reese had kept a watcher posted in the skiff to set forth should anything of value come down but soon the waters grew too treacherous for this commerce. They accumulated a strange collection of goods which he sorted and divided among them guided by inscrutable rules of equity. He’d squat for hours and watch the river pass, pointing sadly at valuables hurtling past with the speed of a train. He’d come back dripping and sit by the fire and shake his head.

They spent three days shoveling at the mussels upstream where the river was sucking away at the edge of the pile and taking back the shells. When they hiked downriver to see about things there they found part of the bank washed out and a great crescentshaped bite gone from their stacks.

At night she watched him with eyes full of questions. All were brought into such close and constant communion   by the rain that the configuration of the family seemed to alter. A frailly structured matriarchy showed itself in these latter days, and Suttree reckoned it had always been so. Crouched there under the ledge in the wind’s lee while the flames of the small fire lapped back the dark and all around and ceaseless fell the rain in the forest they could have been some band of stone age folk washed up out of an atavistic dream.

In the office of the old motel on the pike Suttree had found a stack of moldering books and he read through them one by one without regard. Lying with his blanket for a laprobe, propped against the rocks. He read Tom Swift and His Motorcycle and he read The Black Brotherhood and he read Mildred at Home. There were about a dozen titles and when he had finished them all he started over again. She read Mildred at Home and a story about nurses. She said that she would like to be a nurse. He looked at her. She smiled thinly.

When all were asleep in their places she rose with her blanket folded about her and came from the lean-to and went down the bluff toward the woods. Suttree watched. When she was gone he raised up and looked around. Then he pushed back his blanket and followed her.

He caught her up just beyond the edge of the trees. She was all over him. It was raining lightly and they were both wet. She was naked under her blanket. It fell in a dark pool about her feet. In which he knelt, rain dripping from her nipples, runneling thinly on her pale belly. With his ear to the womb of this child he could hear the hiss of meteorites through the blind stellar depths. She moaned and stood tiptoe, her hands holding his head to her.

These lovers lay crumpled in the dripping wood and listened to the fall of the rain heart on heart. Her wet hair lay across his face like black seaweed. She said his name. He moved as if to rise but she held him.

You’ll catch cold, he said.

I dont care.


In their last week on the river two possumhunters came upon their camp. They’d heard hounds coursing on the ridge behind them and the hunters hallooed from the dark before they came up. Two figures shambling in from the night like bad news, bearing a lighted lantern by its long bail, a shotgun held together with tape. They squatted on their haunches side by side like buzzards and smiled around. Suttree looked at them. He looked at one and then he looked at the other. They were alike to the crooks in their stained brown teeth. The creases about their eyes, the quilting of their dry bird necks. They squatted there and bobbed their heads and smiled and spat at the fire and said howdy howdy.

Set and warm, said Reese. Hey old woman. Need some coffee cups over here.

Howdy howdy, said the possumhunters.

We heard ye’ns dogs a while back. Did they not tree?

Naw. Fernon here is got this young bitch keeps a treein flyin squirrels. He’s kicked her till she’s flat on one side but she dont want to give it up.

Quick as I can see one to shoot I’m goin to tie it round her neck and let her wear it till it rots off. That’ll break em ever time. You all got dogs out?

Naw. We just camped up here gettin mussels. Danged if you fellers dont favor one another about as much as anybody I ever saw.

The possumhunters looked at each other and guffawed. Their chins jerked forward as if tied together to a wire and they spat into the fire. We’re twins, one of them said.

I allowed maybe ye was.

Most folks caint tell us apart.

Boy you can pull some capers on folks when you look much alike as me and Vernon does.

Reese took cups from the woman and set them on a flat rock by the fire and took up the old blue enamel coffeepot. He gazed at the possumhunters from one to the other. You all aint got the same name have ye? he said.

The possumhunters guffawed and the one with the shotgun elbowed the other one in the ribs. Naw, he said. I’m Vernon and this here is Fernon.

Reese grinned. Suttree was leaning back against the slate of the bluff watching them. They were thin and longboned and squatting there their knees came almost to their ears and their hands lay palm up on the ground before them in the manner of apes.