It is little more than dawn when the general comes down Front Street slumped on the box of his coalwagon, the horse named Golgotha hung between the trees and stumbling along in the cold with his doublejointed knees and his feet clopping and the bright worn quoits winking feebly among the clattering spokes. In the whipsocket rides a bent cane. There is a gap in the iron of one tire and above the meaningless grumbling of the wagon it clicks, clicks, with a clocklike persistence that tolls progress, purpose, the passage of time. When they stop it is in a violent shudder, as if something has given way. The general climbs and climbs down from his seat and goes to the rear and takes up his blackened basket and sets it in the street. He levers up the lantern glass and blows out the tiny flame. He hands down coal lump by lump until the basket is filled and with pain he hefts and carries it toward the dim house, through the chill fog bent and muttering, returning lightened but with no better speed or humor to where the horse stands sleeping in the traces.
They come trundling and slowly aclatter up the empty street, pass under the bridge and take the bitter and frozen fields toward the river. In the hoarcolored dawn they seem to be drifting, closed away in the cold smoke until just the general’s shoulders and the slouched back of him with his hat perched on the shoulders of his clothes and the hat the horse wore float over the cold gray void like transient artifacts from a polar dream.
Ooh coal, kindlin wood
Would if I could
Hep me get sold
Coal now.
It was six degrees above zero. Suttree crawled from his bed, pulled on his coat and got his trousers and climbed up onto the bed to don them so cold the floor was. He squatted and fished his socks out from beneath the cot and shook out the dust and pulled them on and stepped into his shoes and went to the door. Mist swirled about him. The old black coalpedlar sat his cart, the horse sidled and stamped.
Couldnt you just leave a basket and go on?
I see you aint froze, said the general, climbing down.
Suttree got the basket from beside the door and came down the walk. The river was frozen between the houseboat and the bank, a thin skim of wrinkled ice through which fell chunks of frozen mud from the underside of the flexing plank. He threw the empty basket up on the wagon and took the full one from the old man.
I gots to have me some money today, the general said.
How much?
You owes me eighty-five cents.
How do you know?
The old man patted his gloved hands together. His head was wrapped in rags. I keeps it all in my counts, he said. You keep you own if’n you dont like mine.
Where do you keep them?
That’s all right where I keeps em.
How much will you take?
What all I can get, I reckon.
Suttree set the basket on the frozen ground and reached in his trouser pocket. He had thirty-five cents. He gave it to the old man and the old man looked at it a minute and nodded and pulled a cord that went down into his clothing. A long gray sock appeared. The top of it had been fitted with an old brass pursecatch and he unsnapped it and dropped in the coins and lowered it back where it had come from and climbed up onto the wagon box.
Hump sleepyhead, he said.
The horse lurched forward. Suttree watched them cross the field, fording the pale vapors, the dead lamp hung by its bail from the tailboard, the cart tilting up at the tracks and tilting back again and descending from sight. Upriver he could see a hazy swatch of cold blue light where the sun was rising through the river fog but it was no light much and no warmth at all. He took the basket of coal and toted it back up the plank and went in. He didnt even bother to shut the door. He put the basket by the stove and took up the coalscuttle and shook it. Jacking open the cold stove door with his foot he tipped the scuttle, the coal clunking in, dry ash stirring upward. Suttree peered down the iron gullet, prying at the slag in the stove’s belly with the poker. He crumpled a newspaper and dropped it down alight and held his hands to the fleeting warmth. The newspaper curled up in a tortured ash that rose in the stove’s mouth, a charred gravure whereon lay gray news, gray faces. Suttree hugged himself and swore. An icy wind was singing in the cracks. He fetched the lamp from the table, removed the chimney and unscrewed the brass wickpiece and emptied the lamp oil into the stove. A white smoke rose. He struck a match and dropped it in but nothing occurred. He snatched up a piece of newspaper and lit it and poked it in. A ball of flame belched up. He did a few stiff dancesteps and went out to relieve himself.
Ice lay along the shore, frangible plates skewed up and broken on the mud and small icegardens whitely all down the drained and frozen flats where delicate crystal columns sprouted from the mire. He hauled forth his shriveled giblet and pissed a long and smoking piss into the river and spat and buttoned and went in again. He kicked the door shut and stood before the stove in a gesture of enormous exhortation. A frozen hermit. His lower jaw in a seizure. He cast about and got his cup and looked into it. He turned it up and tapped it and an amber lens of frozen coffee slid forth and went rocking and clattering around the basin. He took down the frying pan and set it on the stove and spooned the stiff gray grease. From his packingcrate pantry he selected two eggs and tapped one smartly on the rim of the pan. It rang like stone. He threw it against the wall and it dropped to the floor and rolled oblong and woodenly beneath the bunk. He hung the pan back on the wall and stared out the window. Frost ferns arched from the sashcorners over the glass and the river slouched past like some drear drainage from the earth’s bowels. Suttree buttoned his coat and went out.