Suttree(34)

Suttree gave him the number.

All right, he said. Wait here.

Sure, said Suttree. Listen.

What?

Tell them Suttree. But to ask for Johnson.

You can get in a lot of trouble that way.

I can get in a lot the other way.

Okay. What was it again?

Suttree.

The bondsman was shaking his head, writing the new name. You people are really something, he said.

He was back in a few minutes. He aint home, he said.

Did she say when he might be in?

Nope.

What time is it?

Around seven. He flicked his cuff back. Ten after.

Goddamn.

Dont you know nobody else?

No. Look, try it again in an hour, will you? You sure you got the right number?

21505. Right?

That’s it.

What’s the guy’s name anyways?

Jim.

I know that. What’s his full name.

Jim Long.

The bondsman gave him a funny little look. Jim Long? he said.

Yes.

Got a brother named Junior?

That’s him.

The bondsman looked at him sideways.

What is it? said Suttree.

Shit.

What’s the matter?

Why hell fire, the bondsman said. Both of em are right behind you in number eight. They been here since this mornin and cant raise bond neither.

He was looking at Suttree more curiously yet. Suttree’s face began to wrinkle and go peculiar. A horse snigger leapt from his lips and his eyes wandered.

You’re crazy as shit, said the bondsman.

Suttree sat down on the concrete floor and held his stomach. He sat there shaking and holding himself. You’re a real nutwagon, aint ye? said the bondsman.

Later he called through the bars to his friends but they didnt answer. A voice somewhere asked why he didnt shut the fuck up. Later still the lights in the corridor ceiling came on. The man in the corner had not moved and Suttree didnt want to look at him if he were dead. He lay on the floor again and drifted in and out of a poor sleep. He dreamt whole rivers of icewater down his parched throatpipe.

At some hour unknown he woke to sounds of commotion. He had half his hand in his mouth. Looking up he saw a man stoop and swing a bucket of water through the bars over him. Sputtering, he got to his knees.

The bucket clanged to the floor. The man studied him there in his cage. Suttree turned away. In the corner his cellmate was standing. When Suttree looked at him the cellmate said: You dont shut up that hollerin I’m goin to knock your dick in your watchpocket.

He closed his eyes. The gray water that dripped from him was rank with caustic. By the side of a dark dream road he’d seen a hawk nailed to a barn door. But what loomed was a flayed man with his brisket tacked open like a cooling beef and his skull peeled, blue and bulbous and palely luminescent, black grots his eyeholes and bloody mouth gaped tongueless. The traveler had seized his fingers in his jaws, but it was not alone this horror that he cried. Beyond the flayed man dimly adumbrate another figure paled, for his surgeons move about the world even as you and I.





He scouted in the weeds until he found a suitable tin before going out to the road. The kerosene had rendered soft a patch of tar in the roadsurface and he knelt and began to dig it up with an old kitchen knife, stringy viscous gobs of pitch, until he had as much as he needed.

When Daddy Watson came by he had the skiff upturned on the bank and was patiently caulking the seams.

Well, you still alive, the old man said.

Suttree looked up, squinting in the sun. He wiped his nose against his forearm, sitting there holding the tarpot in one hand and the knife in the other. Hello Daddy, he said.

I allowed ye’d gone under.

Not yet. Why?

Didnt see ye. Where ye been?

Suttree daubed the rank black mastic along a seam and pressed it home. Jail, he said.

Hey?

I said I’ve been in jail.

Have? What for?

I fell in with a bad crowd. What brings you over here?

The old man pushed back his striped engineer’s cap and readjusted it. Just on my way to town. Thought long as I was this close I’d check on ye. I allowed ye must of gone under.

I’m still in business. How’s everything on the railroad?

Just by god awful.

Suttree waited for an enlargement upon this but none seemed coming. He looked up. The old man was rocking on his heels, watching.

What’s the problem, Daddy?

Just railroadin is the problem, son. It’s the nature of it, I’m convinced. He hauled forth an enormous railroader’s timepiece and checked it and put it back.

How’s old number seventy-eight?

Lord love her she’s old and wore out about like me but she’s faithful as a dog. Ort to give her a gold watch and chain.

He was leaning forward watching over Suttree’s shoulder as he caulked.

You know, he said. I wish I could get you to come over to my yard with that stuff. I got a leak in my caboose roof needs somethin done about it.

Suttree bent forward and averted his face. Got a what? he shouted, eyes half closed with mirth.