Suttree(44)
Hey, said Suttree.
They pushed through the door together. Atop the drink cooler squatted a black and ageless androgyne in fool’s silks. A purple shirt with bloused sleeves, striped fuchsia trousers and matching homedyed tennis shoes. A gold leather motorcycle belt about a vespine waist. A hat from the hand of a coked milliner. Hi sweetie, he said.
Hello John.
Trippin Through The Dew, said Oceanfrog.
Hey baby.
Hey Frog, called a black from the rear of the store.
What you want?
Come here baby. I got to talk to you.
I aint got time to mess with you.
Suttree poked among the loaves of bread.
Oceanfrog lifted a carton of milk from the cooler and opened it and drank.
Hey Gatemouth.
Yeah baby.
You hear about B L’s old lady catchin him?
No man, what happened?
She come in over there Sunday caught him in bed with this old gal and started warpin him in the head with a shoe. This old gal raised straight up in the bed buck naked and hollered at her, said: Lay it to him honey, said: I was married to a son of a bitch just like him.
A high whinny escaped the painted gaud perched at Oceanfrog’s elbow. The mascaraed eyes sidled, the black and languid hands made draping motions about the elbows. Oceanfrog you is a mess, she said.
Old B L’s crazy, said Gatemouth.
Suttree smiled among the rusting canisters of food at the back wall. He passed behind the hoglike bulk of Gatemouth in his chair. Hey baby, said Gatemouth. What’s the haps?
Hey, said Suttree, moving toward the meatcase.
A discussion on the mating habits of possums ensued. A young black named Jabbo entered the store.
Hey baby, called Gatemouth.
Gate City, said Jabbo. Aint no town and it aint no city. He glared at Trippin Through The Dew. How about gettin your nelly ass off the dopebox.
Ooh, said the invert, sliding to the floor like a neon eel.
Gatemouth says a possum dont have a forked peter, Oceanfrog told the store.
I never, said Gatemouth. I said he dont screw her in the nose.
What’s his peter forked for then?
Cause he’s a marsuperal, motherfucker.
Oceanfrog laughed deep in the back of his throat. Shiny tombstone teeth, gums coral pink. Shit man, he said. You completely eat up with the dumb-ass.
Ask Suttree.
I dont know, said Suttree.
He dont want the whole river to know what a fuckin dumb-ass you is, said Oceanfrog. He tipped the carton of milk and rifled a long drink down his dark throat.
Who is that crazy motherfucker up in that house hollers at everbody? said Jabbo.
Where at honey? The queen of Front Street was solicitous. Jabbo ignored her. Up here, he said, pointing. Crazy motherfucker hollers the craziest shit I ever heard.
That’s just the old crazy reverend up there, said Gatemouth. Hollers all the time: Are you warshed in the blood.
He can talk some shit.
I goin to slap his head sideways he dont get off of me.
He hollers at everbody.
I aint everbody.
He’s a cripple.
He’ll be crippled.
They has to carry out his slops and everthing.
He trimmed hisself, said Trippin Through The Dew.
Done what?
Trimmed hisself. With a razor. Just sliced em on off honey, what they tell me.
That wouldnt cripple you.
It would smart some, said Oceanfrog.
He was done crippled fore he done it.
I goin to trim his fuckin wig he dont quit that hollerin at me, said Jabbo.
Suttree ducked the yardlong coil of dead flies that hung from the ceiling and came to the counter with his purchases.
What else? said Howard.
That’s it.
He totted with pencil on a scrap of paper.
Forty-two cents.
Suttree dredged up coins from his jeans.
Where you goin, Sut?
Home.
Sure you is. Tell me. Slip off up here somewheres and dip your wick in somethin.
Suttree grinned.
Old Suttree, said Oceanfrog. He caint fade nothin.
Why dont you put me on something?
Shit. You got it all locked now.
He aint interested in them nigger gals. Is you Suttree?
Suttree looked at Jabbo but he didnt answer.
Howard dropped the last of the groceries into the sack and slid it toward Suttree, He took it under his arm and nodded toward the dark idlers. See you, he said.
Hang loose, said Oceanfrog.
The screendoor clapped shut.
Ooh that’s a pretty thing, said Trippin Through The Dew.
After he’d eaten his supper he snuffed the lamp and sat in the dark and watched the lights on the far shore standing long and wandlike in the trembling river. Down from Ab Jones’s sounds of laughter carried over the black water like ghost voices, old dead revelers reminiscing in the night. After a while he rose and went out and up the river path to the door.
He sat in the corner and sipped a beer. Oceanfrog was sitting in for the house in a light poker game and Ab lay sleeping in the back room. Suttree heard him breathing in the dark when he went past his bedroom, going on to the cubicle behind the torn and stained plastic showercurtain, standing there half holding his breath, the boards in the reeking gloom splotched with a greenish phosphorescence, a sinister mold that glowed faintly. A section of galvanized gutterpipe sluiced the urine down to a rathole in the corner and out into the passing river. There was a small lizard of some kind wet and pale that clung to a naked stud and Suttree pissed on it and it wriggled out through a crack in the wall. He buttoned his trousers and spat into the trough. Reassessing the agility of germs in a sequence of them climbing falling water like salmon he wiped his mouth and selected a clean place on the wall and spat again.