Suttree(70)
Who’s that? he said, craning his neck and looking up.
Suttree.
Ah, said the ragpicker.
Suttree smiled. A warm odor of filth hung in the room cut through with a reek of urine.
What are you doing?
Mildewing. You?
I’m freezing.
This is just the commence of it. I look for the river to freeze over. You better draw your lines. The ice’ll cut em. You never will find em. I’ve seen it to happen. Bet me.
Suttree squatted and held his hands to the fire. A man with a mauve face like the faces of the dead was looking down at him.
How long have you been up here? said Suttree.
Since two days ago.
Suttree looked around. Mauve man was looking at a hole in the floor. A quivering string of drool hung from his lower lip halfway to his shoe.
How long do you plan on staying?
The ragpicker shrugged up his buzzard’s shoulders. For however long it stays cold. I dont care. I just wisht I could die and I’d be better off.
Suttree ignored this. He’d heard it all before. How many do they have staying here? he said.
The ragpicker waved his hand. I dont know. What all’s here, I reckon. Aint no other place in the house warm that I know of.
Where are the rooms, upstairs?
Yeah, upstairs. The beds is all took.
Mauve man had been listening. Cecil’s aint took, he said.
Well. Cecil’s aint took.
Who’s Cecil?
Just old Cecil. He died.
Oh.
He never died in the bed though.
Where’d he die?
Uptown. He got too drunk to come in and I reckon he passed out. He was froze, they said. I dont know.
He froze, said Mauve man. Old Cecil did.
Cecil froze.
Old Cecil froze from head to toes
And stiffer than a tortoise
In spite of drinking strained canned heat
And dilute Aqua Fortis
Suttree waved away these things from his ears. Cecil was being discussed by the company. All agreed that the day of his death was a cold one. Today even colder. It’s colder than a welldigger’s ass said one, another said A witch’s tit. A nun’s cunt said a third. On Good Friday.
Suttree leaned and touched the old man’s arm. His coat with the eaten elbows. The ragpicker jerked awake and turned a baleful red eye on him.
Who do you see about a room here?
He aint here.
It’s fifty cents isnt it?
By the night it is. You can rent by the week and beat them rates. Two fifty. If you’ve got it. What’s wrong with your place? You’ve not got thowed out have ye?
It’s for somebody else.
Well you better tell him to come on. With this weather. You caint look for somebody to die just ever day.
When is whatsit due back?
I caint say.
Can I look upstairs?
You can look anyplace you take a notion because he aint here.
Do you need anything?
I need everthing.
Suttree rose.
Bring something for the pot, said the ragman, and you can sit in. He gestured upward with a gray hand webbed in part of a sock. A lardpail simmered on the one eye of the iron stove and a pieplate with a rock in it lifted along one edge like a thin frogjaw and belched forth a gout of steam and clapped shut again.
I’ll see what I can do, said Suttree. He eased his way around the edge of these half addled aged and rumsoaked dotards and ascended the stairs.
Muted light fell through a window at the end of the hall The doors had all been unpinned from their hinges and taken away. Suttree peered into an old boudoir with mattresses along the walls. Tattered gray army blankets. A thin little man was squatting by the window masturbating. He did not take his eyes from Suttree nor did he cease pulling at his limp and wattled cock. It was deadly cold in the room, Suttree turned and went back and down the stairs.
Mrs Rufus opened the door.
Cold enough for you? said Suttree.
She motioned him in.
Harrogate was sitting by the stove with a parcel of blacks all of whom were drunk or working at it. When Harrogate turned and raised his head Suttree saw that the city rat himself was reeling.
How the hell did you manage to get drunk this quick? he said.
Drinkin whiskey is how. Have a goddamn drink Sut. Give him a drink Cleo.
An angular black with splayed teeth held forth a quart picklejar half full of splo. Suttree waved it away.
Where’s Rufus?
He aint here.
I can see that.
I told that fool not to give him none of that whiskey, said Mrs Rufus from behind him in a muted shriek.
I never poured it down his thoat, said a dark dwarf by the stove-door.
Suttree looked around. Well fuck it, he said.
Who is this cat? said a tawny freckled halfbreed. Small skull covered with snips of copper wire.
He’s cool man, he’s cool, said Harrogate, having fallen easily into the way of things.
Suttree turned and went out. He pulled the door to behind him and went on along the little cinder path past the hoglot, a pair of snouts working in the fence mesh to get the wind of him. Long ears tilting, pale eyes watching from their purlieu of frozen mire. He went out to the road and across the viaduct toward town. The lightest rain of soot was falling and a handful of small birds flared suddenly about him, moving through the bitter air with a faint rasping sound. Suttree looked down at the blackwater creek swirling below, the gray panes of scalloped ice. He went on toward the town, a colorless world this winter afternoon where all things bear that grainy look of old films and the buildings rise into an obscurity prophetic and profound.