Suttree(60)

She came down the steps slowly, madonna bereaved, so grief-stunned and wooden pieta of perpetual dawn, the birds were hushed in the presence of this gravity and the derelict that she had taken for the son of light himself was consumed in shame like a torch. She touched him as a blind person might. Deep in the floor of her welling eyes dead leaves scudding. Please go away, she said.

When is the funeral?

Three oclock. Please Buddy.

I wont …

Dont say anything please I cant bear it.

By now the mother had come from the porch. She was dressed in black and closed upon them soundless as a plague, her bitter twisted face looming, axemark for a mouth and eyes crazed with hatred. She tried to speak but only a half strangled scream came out. The girl was thrown aside and this demented harridan was at him clawing, kicking, gurgling with rage.

The girl tried to pull her away. Mother, she wailed, Mother …

The old lady had gotten Suttree’s finger in her mouth and was gnawing on it like a famished ghoul. He seized her by the throat. The three of them went to the ground. Suttree could feel something thudding at the base of his skull. The old man had come from the porch and was hitting him with his shoe. He tried to get to his feet. The girl was screaming. Stop it you all! Oh God, stop it!

Get the police, Leon, screamed the old lady. I’ll hold him.

Suttree staggered erect in the midst of this sorry spectacle groaning like a bear. The old man had fallen back. The girl was pulling at the old lady but she was hanging onto his leg with a maniac’s strength and gibbering the while. You ghastly bitch, he said, and fetched her a kick in the side of the head which stretched her out. With this the girl fell upon him in much the same manner. He flung her back and tottered away a few steps to get his breath. The old man was coming from the house loading a shotgun as he ran. Suttree vaulted through the hedge. He crossed a lawn and went through another hedge and down a small lane past some chickens in a foulsmelling pen, the birds flaring and squawking, Suttree crossing through another yard and coming out alongside a house where a man in a lawnchair looked up from the nothing he was contemplating and smiled curiously. Suttree nodded to him and went on down the drive into the road. He looked back but no one was coming. He walked on out to the highway and squatted by the side of the road to rest and when a car came down the pike he rose to flag it with his thumb.

In a few minutes another car came along and this one stopped. Suttree climbed in and said hello. The man looked at him once or twice with alarm. Suttree looked down at himself. The front of his shirt was ripped open and his left hand was covered with blood. He zipped up his jacket and they rode on in silence.

A small town in the flatlands. He had been here once but remembered it little. A fresh breeze was herding leaves along the walkways and little shopsigns swung and creaked in the smoky air. He pointed toward the curb and the man pulled over to let him out. Much obliged. The man nodding. Suttree could see him looking over the seat for bloodstains as he pulled away.

He went to the poolhall and washed up and looked at his hand. Four bright slashes on his jaw. He plucked small bits of harrowed flesh from the edges of the wounds and daubed at them with a wet paper towel. The face in the mirror that watched was gray and the eyes sunken. He put on his jacket and went to the front counter and asked to use the telephone. The man nodded toward it. There was a directory hanging from a chain. He opened to the back and found two listings under Funeral Parlors, dialed the first and spoke with a soft-voiced girl.

Are you people in charge of the Suttree funeral?

Yessir. That’s at three oclock this afternoon.

Suttree didnt hear. The words Suttree funeral had caused him to let the receiver fall away from his ear.

Hello, said the girl.

Yes, said Suttree. Where is the burial to be?

At McAmon Cemetery.

Where is that?

The girl didnt answer for a moment. Then she said: The cortege will be going directly to the cemetery after the services. If you cared to join, or if you …

Thank you, Suttree said, but if you could just give me directions.


He walked about in the town. Peaceful and sunny in the mid Americas on an autumn day. The dread in his heart was a thing he’d not felt since he feared his father in the aftermath of some child’s transgression.

He ate a sandwich in the drugstore and in the afternoon he started out toward the cemetery. Along a little country road where leaves lay in yellow windrows through the woods or tumbled over the dark macadam. It was an hour’s walk and few cars passed.

Two stonework columns marked the entrance, the chain down and heaped in the grass. He went down the little gravel road among the stones until he saw on a hill a green canopy. Two men were sitting in the grass eating their lunch. Suttree nodded to them as he passed. Beneath the canopy were folding chairs in rows, a green canvas mound with flowers arranged.