I would too, said Suttree.
I’d drink off of it in a minute.
Suttree grinned.
Course maybe if you was dead you’d think different. I mean, if you’re dead and all why I expect you got to be pretty religious.
We’d drink you a toast. Have a good time.
Richard smiled wanly. Well, he said. I like a good time well as the next feller.
I’ll get us another beer.
But Richard was fumbling in his pockets and he stopped Suttree with his hand. Let me get em Bud, he said. What do they get for a beer down here?
Thirty-five.
Richard frowned. He’s high, aint he? I reckon it’s on account of the gamblin.
He doesnt have a license.
For gamblin?
For anything. For living.
I never see him uptown he dont say hidy, said Richard. They dont make em no whiter.
He doled the change into Suttree’s palm and Suttree went to the box and got two more beers and came back to a new table. He took the blind man by the hand and led him to it. Doll raised her one eye from where she slept in her shapeless chair, her heavy arms folded across her bosom. One of the poker players jacked his chair back and reached for the stove door and opened it and looked in and she rose heavily and made her way across the floor to the coalscuttle. When she came back from tending the stove she wiped the tables that they’d read and eyed them curiously. Richard had his eyes closed and the smoke from his cigarette rose alongside his thin nose. Something had passed out on the river and the shanty lifted and settled in the swells. Richard suddenly placed his hands flat on the table. Then he lifted them off again as if it were hot. He took up his beer in both hands and held it like that. I aint readin no more, he said.
What is it? said Suttree.
The blind man sucked on his cigarette and shook his head. The thin gray webs of flesh in his neck trembled.
What is it? said Suttree.
There was an oil lamp sconced in the wall above the table and the blind man beneath it sat clearly lit. Suttree looked at his dead eyes but there was no way of seeing in. What is it? he said again.
You knowed what it was, didnt ye?
No. I dont know.
You aint done it for meanness?
I swear I dont know what it says. He was running his own hand under the table but he could not read the stone.
Will you keep it to yourself? said Richard.
Yes. What does it say?
Tween you and me?
Yes.
It says William Callahan.
He woke early with the cold and sat in his cot crosslegged swaddled up in his blanket and looking out the small window. The sun kindled the haze into a salmoncolored drop against which the brittle trees stood like burnt lace. Charred looking sparrows japed and chittered on the rail. Suttree parted back the sackcloth curtains to better see downriver and the birds flew. He was still sitting there when someone came aboard and knocked at his door. He leaned and reached his shirt up from the floor. The knocking came again, someone called his name softly as if he ailed.
When he went to the door Reese was standing there. He carried a new cap in his hands and smiled thinly.
Come in, said Suttree.
I aint got but a minute. I come to give ye your shares.
Come in.
He stood in the little room holding his cap, one foot wide to shore himself against the tilted floor. Suttree sought his shoes under the bed and stepped into them sockless and turned and sat on the couch. Sit down, Reese, he said. Sit down.
Reese sat at the little table and took his pocketbook from the bib of his overalls and opened it. He lifted out a sheaf of bills tied with a dirty string and laid them on the table and folded the pocketbook and put it away again.
What’s that? said Suttree.
That’s your shares. We never got sold till last week. We had a awful lot of trouble.
I dont want it, said Suttree. Put it back in your pocket.
Reese set his lips and shook his head. It’s yourn, he said.
Well let me give it to you.
No.
Suttree looked at the money and shook his head. Where are you living now? he said.
We’re back up in Jefferson County. Willard run off.
How are you?
I’m okay. I never did understand that boy. I never would just get to where I could talk to him but what he’d up and do some hatefulness and it not a bit of use in the world in it.
Suttree ran his hand through his hair. The old man seemed small and older yet sitting there.
I never did blame ye for leavin out. Poor luck as we had I reckon ye’d of done better never to of took up with us to start. Did you ever know anybody to be so bad about luck?
Suttree said he had. He said that things would get better.
The old man shook his head doubtfully, paying the band of his cap through his fingers. I’m satisfied they caint get no worse, he said.
But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse, only Suttree didnt say so.
In the afternoon he went uptown. He bought a thick army sweater at Bower’s and he paid Stud twenty dollars on his lunch tab and he went to Regas and ate a steak dinner. When he got home he still had forty dollars left. As he let himself in at his door he thought he heard his name called somewhere like those sourceless voices that address our dreams. He went in and shut the door and lit the lamp and sat on the cot. As he was taking off his shoes he heard it again. Thin and far, somewhere in the night. He sat with a shoe in one hand listening.