Suttree(145)

I was up on the French Broad for a while. What’s become of Daddy Watson?

I dont know. I aint seen him.

Well he’s not living up here anymore. Dont you know anything about him?

The ragman shook his head. Here today and gone tomorrow, he said. He pointed vaguely toward the ground as if perhaps it were responsible.

Is he dead?

I dont know. I think they come and got him.

Who come and got him?

I dont know.

Shit, said Suttree.

Shit may be, said the ragman. I never took him to raise.

Was it the police?

It might of been any of em. I reckon I’ll be next. You aint safe.

I’ll agree with that.

What happened to your boatshanty?

It sprang a leak.

I seen it go down some ever day. I looked for it to go plumb in under.

Did he have any kin?

Did who have any kin.

Daddy.

I dont know. Who’d claim it if they was? I might have some myself but you wont see em runnin up and down hollerin it out.

No.

Nor yourn neither maybe.

Suttree smiled.

Aint that right?

That’s right.

The ragman nodded.

You’re always right.

I been wrong.

What about Harvey. Is he still alive?

You couldnt kill him with a stick.

Harvey’s right too.

Drunk son of a bitch.

You’re not the only one that’s right.

The ragman looked up warily.

We’re all right, said Suttree.

We’re all fucked, said the ragman.


On a wild night he went through the dark of the apple orchards downriver while a storm swept in and lightning marked him out with his empty sack. The trees reared like horses all about him in the wind and the fruit fell hard to the ground like the disordered clop of hooves.

Suttree stood among the screaming leaves and called the lightning down. It cracked and boomed about and he pointed out the darkened heart within him and cried for light. If there be any art in the weathers of this earth. Or char these bones to coal. If you can, if you can. A blackened rag in the rain.

He sat with his back to a tree and watched the storm move on over the city. Am I a monster, are there monsters in me?


He took to wandering aimlessly in the city. He ate at Comer’s hot plates of roast beef or pork with vegetables and gravy and rounds of fried cornbread, Stud jotting down each day the new account and never asking for a dime.

On the streets one day he accosted a ragged gentleman going by in an air of preoccupation. Streets filled with early winter sunshine. Suttree had smiled to see him and he tipped an imaginary cap. Morning, Dr Neal, he said.

The old tattered barrister halted in his tracks and peered at Suttree from under his arched brows. Who’d been chief counsel for Scopes, a friend of Darrow and Mencken and a lifelong friend of doomed defendants, causes lost, alone and friendless in a hundred courts. He pulled at his shapeless nose and waggled one finger. Suttree, he said.

Cornelius. You know my father.

For many years, quite honorably. And his father before him. How is he?

He’s well. I see him seldom.

Of course. And what line of work are you yourself in now?

I’m a fisherman.

Into it commercially, is that it?

Yessir.

Now that is interesting. Yes indeed. I’d say a lad with your head on his shoulders should be able to put a wrinkle into it that would make it pay.

It does all right, said Suttree. He was swinging subtly about to recover the wind of the reeking figure he confronted. Studying the patterns of gravy and food on the old lawyer’s shirt and tie, his belt of balingtwine. Which had broken one day in the line at the S&W cafeteria leaving him standing there with his tray in his hands, his feet hobbled in his old trousers, his thin old man’s shanks the same dirty white as his shirt and as wrinkled.

Always had a warm heart for the outdoor life myself, he said. All sedentaries I suppose. Often wished I’d gone to sea. Have a brother in the navy, lives in the Philippines. He scratched at his unshaven cheek and looked up at Suttree. You stick to your guns, he said. Follow the trade that you favor and you’ll have no regrets in your old age.

Suttree wondered what regrets the old lawyer had but he didnt ask.

He took a turn down through the trainyard. He’d a mind to see the station with the fireplaces and the inscriptions from Burns on the mantels, remembering his grandfather stepping down to the platform among the wheeltrucks and the steam and the smiling black porter with the red cap. The old man’s cheeks new shaven and the fine red veins like the lines in banknote paper. His hat. His stogie. But when Suttree reached the station it was closed, had long been so. In the fine waiting rooms boxes and cartons piled, great crates in storage. A few abandoned coaches and one pullman stood on a siding and old handbills hung bleached and all but wordless on the notice board. The yard beyond was rafted up with reefers and flatcars, tared hoppers, the romantic stencils broken over the slatted sides of cattlecars, Lackawanna, Lehigh Valley, Baltimore and Ohio, the Route of the Chiefs. He turned on down the tracks toward McAnally.