He sat with the back of his head against the board wall and his mind drifted. Moths crossed the mouth of the lamp in its scroll iron sconce above his head, the shape of the flame steadfast in the pietin reflector. On the ceiling black curds. Where insect shadows war. The reflection of the lamp’s glass chimney like a quaking egg, the zygote dividing. Giant spores addorsed and severing. Yawing toward separate destinies in their blind molecular schism. If a cell can be lefthanded may it not have a will? And a gauche will?
In another part of the room Fred Cash was reciting poetry. Suttree heard the last of the Signifyin Monkey and then the ballad of Jack-Off Jake the poolroom snake who fucked his way north to Duluth. He rose and got another beer. Doll in her slippers collected bottles and shuffled off mutely through the smoke and the gloom. Suttree traced with one hand dim names beneath the table stone. Salvaged from the weathers. Whole families evicted from their graves downriver by the damming of the waters. Hegiras to high ground, carts piled with battered cookware, mattresses, small children. The father drives the cart, the dog runs after. Strapped to the tailboard the rotting boxes stained with earth that hold the bones of the elders. Their names and dates in chalk on the wormscored wood. A dry dust sifts from the seams in the boards as they jostle up the road …
The cards whispered along the table, the bottles clinked. Under the floor the muffled bong of a barrel shifting. Doll rocked and snored in her chair with the cat in her lap and beyond the little window the houseboat shadowed by the city lights ran darkly in the river among the tarnished stars.
His subtle obsession with uniqueness troubled all his dreams. He saw his brother in swaddling, hands outheld, a scent of myrrh and lilies. But it was the voice of Gene Harrogate that called to him where he tossed on his bunk in the murmurous noon. Harrogate’s hand in supplication from the tailgate of a truck, face waffled in the wire mesh, calling.
Suttree sat up groggily. His hair lay matted on his skull and beads of sweat trickled on his face.
Hey Sut.
Just a minute.
He pulled on his trousers and lurched toward the door and flung it open. Harrogate stood there amuck in his clothes, bright thin face, a frail apparition trembling and conceivably unreal in the heat of the day.
How you doin, Sut?
He leaned against the jamb, one hand over his eyes. God, he said.
Was you asleep?
Suttree retreated a step into shadow. He did not take his hand from his face. When did you get out?
Harrogate entered with his country deference, looking about. I been out, he said.
How did you find me?
I ast around. I went to that yan’n first. They’s niggers lives there. She told me where you was at. He looked about the little cabin. They was in bed up yonder too, he said. Boy.
Wait a minute, said Suttree.
What?
He turned him about in the light from the window. What are you wearing? he said.
Harrogate shuffled and flapped his arms. Aw, he said. Just some old clothes.
Did they rig you out in these at the workhouse?
Yeah. They lost my clothes what they give me at the hospital. I dont look funny do I?
No. You look crazy. He pulled at Harrogate. What is this?
Harrogate held his arms aloft. I dont know, he said.
Suttree was turning him around. Good God, he said.
The shirt was fashioned from an enormous pair of striped drawers, his neck stuck through the ripped seam of the crotch, his arms hanging from the capacious legholes like sticks.
What size do you wear?
What size what?
Anything. Shirt to start with.
I take a small.
A small.
Yeah.
Take that damn thing off.
He peeled out of the shirt and stood in a pair of outsize pastrycook’s trousers with cuffs that reverted back nearly to his knees.
Why the hell didnt you cut the legs off those?
He spread his feet and looked down. I might not be done growin, he said.
Take them off.
He dropped them to the floor and stood naked save for his shoes. Suttree collected the trousers and hacked a foot or more from the legs with his fishknife and rummaged through his bureau until he found a shirt.
The shoes is mine, Harrogate said.
Suttree looked down at the enormous sneakers. I guess your feet might grow another four or five inches, he said.
I caint stand a tight shoe, said Harrogate.
Here, try this shirt. And turn these trousers up on the inside where it wont show.
Okay.
When he had dressed again he looked less like a clown and more like a refugee. Suttree shook his head.
I got shot in the bottom of my shoe, Harrogate said. He held up one foot.
Gene, said Suttree, what are your plans?
I dont know. Find me a place here in town I reckon.
Why dont you go back home?
I aint goin back out there. I like it uptown.
You could still come in when you took a notion.
Naw. Hell Sut, I’m a city rat now.