Slick aint it? said Harrogate.
Can you swim?
This time tomorrow you will be talkin to a wealthy man.
Or a drowned one. Where the hell did you get that thing?
Made it. Me and old drunk Harvey.
Good God, said Suttree.
What do you think of it?
I think you’re fucking crazy.
You want to go for a ride?
No.
Come on, I’ll ride ye.
Gene, I wouldnt get in that thing and it on dry land.
Well, I got to get on.
Harrogate pushed off and took up his trailing oars. I got a lot to do, he said.
Suttree watched him go on up the river, the little keelless contraption skittering and jerking along. It went pretty good.
Harrogate turned up First Creek and rowed beneath the railway trestle and continued on until he came to a narrows composed of abandoned machinery and high tiered tailings of garbage. He wired his boat to a small tree and went backwards up the bank admiring it.
He tried to nap but lying there in the heat beneath the viaduct with the traffic overhead he had such fantasies of plenitude that his feet made little involuntary trotting motions. By late afternoon he was up and about, flexing his sling with its new red rubbers and firing a few flat stones through the lightwires where they caromed and sang enormous lyrenotes in the budding tranquillity of evening. An addled cock crowed from the black hillside. He looked to his appurtenances and set forth.
He emerged from the creek mouth past the curious dark fishermen, oaring slowly and studying the sky. He stroked his way upstream, past the last of the shacks and as far as the marble company. Coming about on the placid evening calm and easing back the oars alongside and taking up his sling. Pinching up the leather in his fingers. Pouring the pellets. One flew. And there. A goatsucker wheeled and croaked. He hove back on the sling bands nearly to the floor and let go. And again. Random among the summer trees houselights came on along the southern shore. The neon nightshapes of the city bloomed, their replicas in the water like discolored sores. Across the watered sky the bats crossed and checked and flared. Dark fell but that was all. He was drifting beneath the bridge. He laid down the sling and took up the oars and came back.
It was a hot night for heavy thinking. He lay with his hands composed upon his chest. Beyond the bridge’s arching brow drifting fireflies guttered against the night and the wind bore a heady jscent of honeysuckle.
It was a grayhaired and avuncular apothecary who leaned not unkindly down from his high pulpit. Enormous fans stirred overhead, shifting the reek of nostrums and purgatives. Beyond the counter ranged carboys and galleypots and stainedglass jars of chemic and cottonmouthed bottles cold and replete with their particolored pills. Harrogate’s chin rested just at the cool stone trestle and his eyes took in this alchemical scene with a twinge of old familiarity for which he could not account.
May I help you? said the scientist, his hands holding each other.
I need me some strychnine, said Harrogate.
You need some what?
Strychnine. You know what it is dont ye?
Yes, said the chemist.
I need me about a good cupful I reckon.
Are you going to drink it here or take it with you?
Shit fire I aint goin to drink it. It’s poisoner’n hell.
It’s for your grandmother.
No, said Harrogate, craning his neck suspectly. She’s done dead.
The chemist tore off a piece of paper from a pad and poised with his pen. Just let me have the name of the person or persons you intend to poison, he said. We’re required to keep records.
Suspecting japery, Harrogate grinned an uneasy grin. Listen, he said. You know about these here bats?
Oh yes indeed.
Well, that’s what it’s for. I dont care to tell you because they aint nobody else but me could figure out the rest of it.
I’m sure that’s true, the chemist said.
I didnt bring nothin to fetch it in. You got a jar of some kind?
How old are you? said the chemist.
I’m twenty-one.
No you’re not.
What’d you ast me for then?
The chemist removed his glasses and closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He donned the spectacles again and looked down at Harrogate. He was still there. I can’t sell strychnine to minors, he said. Nor to folk of other than right mind. It’s against the law.
Well, said Harrogate. That’s up to you.
Yes, said the chemist.
Harrogate backed sidling down the pale medicinal corridor, past ordered rows of canisters and jars. The rotors overhead sliced through the antiseptic air slow and constant. He pushed back the door with one hand. Bell ching. A slender rod came sucking out of a little piston. The chemist had not moved.
You’re just a old fart, called Harrogate, and ran.
Suttree just shook his head. He was sitting with his trousers rolled and his bare feet hanging in the river.