When are you going to bring me some of them little channel cats?
Suttree had slid the folded dollar into his pocket and was rewrapping the remaining fish. He shrugged. I dont know, he said. When I get a chance.
Turner watched him. Windchimes belled thinly, a flutter of glass above them stirred by the fans, I get people askin all the time, he said.
Well. Maybe later on this week. I have to go up on the French Broad for them. This hot weather is bad.
Well, you bring me some quick as you get a chance.
All right.
He slid the other fish under one arm and nodded.
Mr Turner wiped his hands again. Come back, he said.
Suttree went on through the markethouse and out the double doors to Wall Avenue. A blind black man was fretting a dobro with a broken bottleneck and picking out an old blues run. Suttree let the four pennies into the tin cup taped to the box. Get em, Walter, he said.
Hey Sut, said the player.
He crossed the street toward Moser’s to admire the boots in the window. A graylooking cripple sat on the walk with a hatful of pencils trapped in his wasted kneecrooks. His head lay sunken on his chest. As if he were trying to read the sign hung from his neck. I AM A POOR BOY. His grizzled wool tiaraed with smoked glasses worn gogglewise. Suttree went on. He crossed Gay Street with the shoppers and went up the long cool tunnel of the bus station arcade and through the doors.
A nasal voice called out through a megaphone the names of southern cities in this cavern of stale smoke and boredom. Suttree adjusted his fish and went through the doors at the far side of the waiting room and down the concrete steps, along the platform past idling buses and into State Street. He went past the firehouse where the inmates sat tilted in cane chairs along a shaded wall and he went down the hill past dolorous small taverns and cafes and down Vine Avenue by secondhand furniture stores among throngs of blacks and along Central where loud and shoddy commerce erupted out of the dim shops into the streets and packs of scarred dogs wandered. Shouldering his way through dark shoppers in a market ripe with sweat and the incendiary breath of splo drinkers, wide white teeth and laughter and cupshot eyeballs. Beyond the grocery cases a long trestle of beerdrinkers. An old woman thickly mantled in rags mumbled something incoherent at his ear in passing. He leaned on the meatcase and waited.
A pocked black face peered at him over the top of the counter through racks of packaged sausage and porkskins.
I’ve got four fresh buglemouth, Suttree said.
Lessee.
He handed up the limp package. The dark butcher unrolled it and looked the fish over and placed them in his bloodstained balance. Foteen pound, he said.
All right.
How come you aint never got no catfish?
I’ll try and get you some.
Folks astin all the time: Where yo catfish at? Aint none, that’s all.
I’ll see if I can get you some.
Dollar twelve.
Suttree held out his hand for the money.
Out in the baking street with the bills wadded together in the toe of his pocket he swung along whistling. He went up Vine to Gay Street and along the walk by pawnshop windows. Wares to find a thousand trades. Consulting with his image in the glass he studied a display of knives. Come in, come in. A round and shirtsleeved merchant from the doorway. Suttree moved along. Late noon traffic pushed sluggishly through the heat and trolleys clicked past dimly dragging sparks from the wires overhead.
He cruised the cool wooden dimestore aisles, eyeing the salesgirls. He revolved into the perfumed and airconditioned sanctuary of Miller’s. A cool opulence available to the most pauperized. Up the escalator to the second floor. Holt was standing with his hands clasped in the small of his back like an usher at a funeral. He wore a shoehorn in his waistband and a small grin.
He didnt make it today.
Thanks, said Suttree.
He went down the escalator and into the street again.
Jake the rack stood with his hands in the change of his apron, tilling the coins. He spat enormously and dark brown toward a steel spittoon and stepped to a table where the balls were being shucked up from the pockets and a player was pounding the floor with his cue. He called back over his shoulder: He just left, him and Boneyard. I think they went to eat. Jim’s drunk.
He saw them in the rear of the Sanitary Lunch, J-Bone and Boneyard and Hoghead all three, bleary figures gesturing beyond the fogged glass. He went in.
Jimmy the Greek speared up meat from his gasping trypots and forked the slabs onto thick white plates. He adjusted salads with his thumb and wiped away drips of gravy with his apronskirt. Suttree waited at the counter. The fans that hung from the stamped tin ceiling labored in a backwash of smoke and steam.
The Greek was blinking at him.
Two hamburgers and a chocolate milk, Suttree said.
He nodded and scratched the order on a pad and Suttree went on to the back of the cafe.