Suttree(82)

I dont know. What do you get for them?

Ten cents.

Well, what about a half dozen?

He came from the wagon with the cards. The fish bowed and shivered in the firelight.

Take these, he said.

Suttree took the cards. The cards were old but the goatman by the fire was not changed from him that posed upon them.

Okay, said Suttree.

Aint no need to rush off.

What makes you think I was rushing off?

I dont know. But you welcome to stay.

I’d better get on.

The goatman watched him. He was trudging out across the field with his chin down so that withdrawing in the firelight he looked like a headless revenant turned away from the warmth of men’s gatherings.

Say, called the goatman.

Suttree turned.

You know if you had you a goat or two down here they’d be good company. You never would be lonely.

What makes you think I’m lonely? said Suttree.

The goatman smiled. I dont know, he said. I aint wrong.





It is told first by Oceanfrog Frazer to idlers at the store. How a madman came down from the town and through the steep and vacant lots above the river. Frazer saw him plunging past in a drunken run, fording a briarbush with no regard and on across the stony yard until he was capsized by a clotheswire.

He’s murdered someone, Oceanfrog said.

The fallen man mauled at the earth like a child, not even putting a hand to his throat where the wire had all but garroted him. He scrabbled off on hands and knees across the dirt and soon he was running again. He ran fulltilt into the barbedwire fence at the lower end of the lot.

He’s crazy, said Oceanfrog. He stepped to the door and called to him.

The man turned. His clothing was ripped and the shreds of his shirtfront lifted about him like confetti in the breeze and he was covered with blood.

What are you doing? called Oceanfrog.

The man screamed. A high parched gurgle like a rutting cat. Then he turned and ran again, following the fence, out of the lot, crashing through the crude pole gate and crossing the road and disappearing in the fields by the river.

A few dead bats or dying appeared in the streets. Roving bands of unclaimed dogs were herded off to the gas chamber. Harrogate kept himself attuned, somehow fearing that he might be next. One day by Suttree’s he said he’d seen a bat.

A dead one?

Just up yander.

You’d better go get it, said Suttree. It’s worth a dollar.

It’s worth what?

A dollar. You have to take it to the Board of Health. It was in the paper.

You’re shittin me.

No, it’s worth a dollar.

Why would anybody want to give a dollar for a old dead bat?

They think they’ve got rabies. It says not to touch them, just scoop them up and put them in a bag.

Harrogate had already started out the door.

Hey Gene.

Yeah.

Do you know where to take it?

No, where do I go?

General Hospital. Out Central.

Yeah. I know where it’s at. That’s where they took me.

It was true. Legal tender for all debts public and private. He had the bill changed at Comer’s, dropping it with a careless flourish onto the glass countertop. He took the change downstairs to Helm’s and got a dollar for it and changed the dollar at the Sanitary Lunch but no one seemed to notice. Already schemes were clambering through his head. He bought a chocolate milk and sat wedged in the row of theatre seats at Comer’s before a twodollar check game and pondered and sipped the milk.

Fucking rat poison, he said, suddenly looking up through the smoke and the din toward a far wall with wide eyes.

People turned to look at him. Cocky paused in midstroke at the table, the cue quivering in his old palsied hands. Harrogate rose and drained the carton of milk and dropped it in a spittoon and went out.

Ratlike himself, quietly in the dimestore aisles. A small box of pellets slid between the lowermost shirtbuttons to lay against his skin. Things to be done. The Ford hood that he portaged on his shoulders up the river path had sheltered chickens. He stopped often to rest. It had rained in the night and his clothes were soaked from the bushes.

Scarlet trumpets of cowitch overhung the little house and wildflowers bloomed up through the twisted shapes of steel by whatever miracle renders grease and cinders arable and the junkman’s lot was a garden more lovely for the phantasm from which it sprang. Harrogate paused at the fence and leaned his hood there. He pushed open the weighted gate, starting a hummingbird from the flowers in the dooryard. Rainwater still dripped from the tarpaper eaves and it lay in bright pools and slashes on the gray and steaming backs of the autos where they reared above the grass and fronds like feeding bovines. He rapped at the open door. The cane at the corner of the shack rattled gently in the wind. Everything lay quiet and sundabbled in this quaint garden by the river.