Suttree(53)

I wont melt, he said.

He got out the door. Clayton was looking past the top of her head.

Take care Bud.

Buddy you come see us, you hear?

He went on down the path into the road. He turned and raised one hand. The old lady waved timidly with just her fingers and Clayton saluted with his glass. It was much cooler and the wind was rising. Coils of dust rose in the road and spun off like smoke and the sky to the west lay banked in a discolored mass of thunderheads.

When he reached the highway large drops of rain were falling. They made hot slapping sounds on the macadam. He could see the rain coming across the fields where the darkly overtaken blooms buckled and dipped. He pocketed his hands and slumped and countrylooking he went down the edge of the black highway in the advancing downpour.

Before he had gone far an old Hudson pulled alongside him and sat there rocking and smoking and chattering while a man leaned across and lowered the glass just enough to let his voice out.

Hop in, old buddy.

I hate to get in your car wet as I am.

Caint hurt this old car.

Suttree climbed in and they pulled away. He watched the steamy green landscape fade beyond the dance of water on the hood.

Boy it’s come a clodbuster aint it, the man said.

It is that.

The man was leaning over the wheel to see. He nodded toward the dashboard where the radio was glowing. Listen at that there, he said.

Suttree inclined one ear. A dim voice in the dashboard had a story to tell.

Well he come down from there and he said: See ary raincloud up there? and he said: Nary one. And he said: Better go on up there and look again, and he went on up there neighbors and he come back down again and he ast him again, said did he see ary sign of a raincloud and he told em no, said he’d not saw sign one, and he said: Well, better go on up there one more time, and he done it, went up there, and directly he come down again and he ast him, said: Is they ary raincloud up there now? and he said yes, said: They’s one up there about the size of ye hat, and he said: Well boy you better get off the mountain cause it’s a fixin to rain.

The driver smiled. He can lay it down, caint he.

Suttree nodded.

I like to hear old J Basil. He’s all the time sayin: Aint that right Mrs Mull. Old deep voice. And she’ll say: That’s right Mr Mull. You like to hear him?

He’s all right, Suttree said.

Small birds were crossing the road in the windy sheets of rain. Going up a grade the wipers died and the glass peened over with rainwater. Suttree could not see out. Beyond radio and exhaust and valvechatter he could hear thunder rumbling away over the bewept hills.

They topped the hill and the glass cleared in a slow arc. Around a curve and Suttree pointed. I get out here, he said.

The man looked. Where? he said.

Here. Anywhere along here.

You not goin to town?

No. Just right here.

The driver looked about and he looked at Suttree. They aint nothin here, he said.

Just anywhere along here, Suttree said. This is where I get out.

The driver pulled up along the graveled shoulder and stopped. He watched Suttree. Suttree climbed out into the downpour.

I sure thank you, Suttree said.

You welcome, the man said.

Suttree banged the door shut and stood back. The car moved out onto the highway. Through the runneled glass he could see the man’s face turn again, as if to fix him there.

Suttree crossed the road in the rain and blue motor smoke and descended an embankment into the fields. He went crosscountry among easy hills and sometime pastureland, through a copse of dark cedars where the ground was almost dry, down a long and narrow limestone draw where small flat cactus clung to the south walls and the rain swept grayly across the ledges and swirled away before him.

He came out on the bluff and went on up the hill toward the house. Came through the weeds upon a walkway of herringboned brick all but overgrown. Past cracked urns bedight with concrete flora, broad steps, tall fluted columns with their shattered paint. The immense and stark facade seemed to recoil before his footfalls.

As he entered the foyer three young boys dropped like stricken bats from a balcony above the main reception room to his right and lit soundless on the dusty floor and passed out through a window in the opposite wall.

A chandelier lay burst in the floor. He stepped around it and ascended the lefthand stairway, slowly curving into the dusky upper chambers, keeping to the wall because save random jagged spindles the balustrade was gone. At the top of the stairs stood newel and finial intact and solitary like a rococo hitchingpost.

He wandered dripping through the high rooms with their ruined plaster, the buckled wainscot, the wallpaper hanging in great deciduous fronds. Small mounds of human stool with stained shreds of newsprint. From an upper window he watched the three boys go along the brow of the hill in the rain. Wedges of dry cracked glazing lay among the broken panes of glass in the floor. Below the window a mossy courtyard where old concrete dolphins rusted in a dry fountain and the dark handkilned bricks of the walkways lay grown with moss and lichens. Black ivy crept the garden walls and small mute birds peeped out. Across the river, the rainy hodden landscape, he could see traffic going along the boulevard, locked in another age of which some dread vision had afforded him this lonely cognizance.