Suttree(66)

All the weeds were frozen up in little ice pipettes, dry husks of seedpods, burdock hulls, all sheathed in glass and vanes and shells of ice that webbed old leaves and held in frozen colloid specks of grit or soot or blacking. Wonky sheets of ice spanned the ditches and the ironcolored trees along the wintry desolate and bitter littoral were seized with gray hoarfrost. Suttree crossed the brittle fields to the road and went up Front Street. A parcel of black children came by from the store towing a child’s wagonload of coal, chips and dust scavenged from a railsiding, going along quietly and barely clothed and seemingly dumb to the elements. Suttree’s underjaw chattered till he had thought for his teethfillings. He crossed the street and crossing the store porch read the tin thermometer on the wall at zero or near it. He entered and went directly to the back without answering Howard Clevinger’s courtly matin greeting. An old black widow was crouched by the grocer’s stove on an upturned basket watching the fire through a jagged crack in the hot iron. She seemed to be in tears, so thick dripped the rheum from the red underlips of her eyeholes. She had a club foot and wore boots sewn up from an old carpet, blue balding pile with mongrel flowers, an eastern look about her, mute and shawled. She kneaded her hands each in each in their cropfingered army gloves and mumbled a ceaseless monologue. Suttree standing there inclined his head to hear, wondering what the aged dispossessed discuss, but she spoke some other tongue and the only word he knew was Lord.

Jabbo and Bungalow came in out of the weather in a bathless reek of cold wool and splo whiskey. They stood by the stove and nodded and spread their hands.

Cold enough for ye?

I’m frozen.

You needs you a good drink, Suttree.

Go on and give him one then, big time.

Bungalow looking at Jabbo with question.

Go on. Suttree aint too proud to drink after a nigger. Is you, Suttree?

The old woman vacated her basket and moved away to the wall.

I pass.

Where’s the bottle.

Bungalow, lifting the front of his jersey, drew a pint bottle partly filled with a clear liquid from his waistband. The blacks looked warily toward the storekeeper, Jabbo took the bottle and unscrewed the cap and handed it toward Suttree.

Here go, man.

I cant use it.

Go ahead.

No.

I thought you said old Suttree didnt care to drink after a black man.

Why dont you come off that shit.

Jabbo was weaving very slightly like a krait just faintly disturbed. His sullen lip hung loose. He shook the bottle slowly. It’s good whiskey man. Good enough for me and Bungalow.

I said I didnt want one.

Jabbo pressed the bottle against his chest.

Suttree raised his hand and gently put the bottle from him. The only sound in the store was the rusty creak of the damper swinging in the tin flue with the wind’s suck.

It’s Thanksgiving man. Have a little drink.

The bottle was at his chest again.

You better get that bottle out of my face, Suttree said.

You askin or tellin.

I said get it out of my face.

This aint Gay Street, motherfucker.

I know what street I’m on. Maybe you better get off those red devils. Why dont you offer Howard a drink?

He dont drink, said Bungalow.

Shut up, Bungalow. Come on, Mr Suttree, please suh, take a little drink with us poor old niggers.

Oceanfrog Frazer had entered the store. The members by the stove felt his presence, or perhaps it was the cold draft of air from outside or the way the damper fluttered. The old lady had moved off to a corner where she mumbled among the canned goods. Oceanfrog came from the cold to the stove, palms gesturing benison, an easy smile. He looked at the blacks and he looked at Suttree. Jabbo held the bottle uncertainly.

Friends and neighbors, said Oceanfrog.

Old Suttree wont take a drink, said Bungalow.

Shut up, Bungalow.

Oceanfrog’ll take a drink, said Oceanfrog.

Jabbo looked at the bottle. Oceanfrog took it gently and held it to the light in spite of Howard Clevinger who was now looking toward the rear. The bottle was about two thirds dry. Oceanfrog tilted it. Bubbles shot upward through the liquid and a great boiling and churning occurred within the glass, the liquor scuttling down the neck of the bottle. Frazer’s black cheeks ballooned. He leaned and spewed a long clear pisslike stream through the standing door of the stove and a ball of bluish flame leaped. Bungalow stepped back. Oceanfrog eyed the bottle sadly, his brows scorched up in little owlish tufts over the cold eyes.

That’s awful whiskey, Jabbo, he said.

Are you all drinkin whiskey back there?

Aint nobody got any whiskey, Howard.

I better not hear of no whiskey drinkin in my store.

You all didnt ought to drink that old shit, Jabbo. Here.

What I want with that, motherfucker?

Oceanfrog, shrugging, dropped the bottle in the stove, Bungalow stepped back again. A whooshing disturbance occurred in the stove’s bowels. What say, Suttree, said Oceanfrog.