He fifty-six year old, she said. You know that?
I knew he was something like that.
He caint carry on like this. They’ll kill him. You caint tell him.
Suttree looked at the floor.
Well, she said. I thank ye for stoppin.
Do you want me to try and get hold of Oceanfrog?
No. I’ll see him.
Well. I’ll come by tomorrow.
She rose from the chair and put both hands on the table. Then she sat down again. Suttree opened the door and went out.
He crossed the cold white tiles of the lobby floor and leaned at the desk. There was no one about. He palmed the little bell. Brass through the nickel plate. After a while Jesse came from the rear and nodded with that expression of constrained contempt with which he beheld all life forms not midnight in color.
He be out in a minute.
The clerk came out and went through the little gate and stood facing Suttree.
You got a room? said Suttree.
He reached and took a card from a slot and slid it across the marble counter and laid a pen across it.
Suttree wrote his name and pushed the card back. The clerk didnt look at it. Is it just you? he said.
Just me.
How long?
I dont know. Couple of weeks.
He laid out a key on its fiberboard fob. Twelve bucks, he said.
For a week?
Right.
I only paid fourteen for a double. Last time I was here.
It’s twelve bucks.
Suttree counted out the money and took the key and crossed the lobby to the stairs and climbed upward into the gloom. He found the room and went to put the key in the door but it was already ajar. He pushed it open. The latch was smashed, broken hardware hung from the screws. The whole door was cracked through and wobbled sickly when he pushed it shut. He went back down the stairs and dinged on the bell.
The clerk gave him another room and he went up again. It looked out over the alley in the rear of the hotel. There were enormous holes caved in the walls and patched over with cardboard and masking tape. A small iron bed. An oak veneer dresser on tall castered legs. He lay hammocked in the soft mattress and stared at the ceiling. After a while he got up and turned off the light and kicked off his shoes and stretched out again. Cars passed in the streets below. Already a faint grfcy light from the day to come lay in the eastward windows. He slept.
It was late afternoon when he woke. He shuffled off down the hall to the bathroom. There seemed to be no one about. He went down and got the paper in the lobby and crossed the street and went up to the drugstore where he sat in a back booth and had coffee and doughnuts. He ransacked the paper for news of the night before but there was no word.
With dark he went down to the end of the street and to the river. There was no light at Doll’s and no one answered when he rapped at the door. Ab’s cat came down from the roof and rubbed against his leg but he had nothing to give it.
It was dark on the river and the only sound was the dripping of the oars and the light rasp of the locks. He foundered among the shore brush with his flashlight and finally located the stake where his trotline was fastened and he hooked the line through the lock in the transom and took the oars again, the flashlight propped on the seat and the line coming up very white from the black water. He stripped the bait from the hooks as they came up and when he reached the farther bank he cut the line. It rifled off into the river with a thin sucking sound and disappeared from sight. Then he rowed down and ran the other line and cut it. By the time he came back upriver with his catch in the floor of the skiff it was past midnight. He lit his lamp and sat on the deck and cleaned the fish, pausing from time to time to warm his stained hands at the lampchimney. He wrapped the fish in newsprint and put them in a box and he went down and drew the skiff ashore and turned it over. Then he went in and got his clothes and the few personal things he owned and blew out the lamp and went across the fields toward the town with these things piled atop the fishbox in front of him.
He went down every night but there was no one home. By day he kept off the streets. There was nothing in the papers. He asked for her at Howard Clevinger’s but no one knew where she was. As he turned to leave he saw Oceanfrog going along the street.
Hey baby, the frog said.
What’s happening, said Suttree. Where’s Ab.
The man’s in the hospital.
Is he bad?
I dont know. I aint been out there.
Where’s Doll?
She out there with him. Frazer turned up his collar and looked off down the street. He turned back to Suttree. You goin out there? he said.
I dont know.
They got a cop on the door.
Ah, said Suttree.
Oceanfrog squinted at him and smiled. He tugged at his collar again and took a step backward preparatory to going on up the street. Thought you ought to know, he said.
Have they been down to my place?