Suttree(87)

With a flipper?

Yessir.

The doctor looked at the ceiling. Ah, he said. I see. What? Did you poison scraps of meat and then shoot them in the air?

Yeah. Them sons of bitches like to never quit fallin.

Very ingenious. Damned ingenious.

I can figure out anything.

Well, I’m sorry your efforts were for nothing.

Maybe a dollar and a quarter aint nothin to you but it is to me.


When Suttree called on him he found a shrunken djinn hulked over an applebox tracing with a chewed pencil stub a route beneath the city on a map of it. A sanguine scene, there by the bloodcolored light of the construction lantern. At Suttree’s approach a bright red cat rose from before the lamp and moved away into the dark. Harrogate looked up, feet tucked and bright smile, a diabolic figure across which the shadow of a moth passed and repassed like a portent.

How did you make out?

Set down Sut. Not worth a shit.

Wouldn’t they pay?

Naw. I got to hand it to em. They’re smart.

Well.

I’m glad you come. Looky here at this map.

Suttree glanced at it.

It shows where all the buildings is and you can measure it on here, see, on this here scale?

Yeah?

Well shit. I mean, what with them caves down there and it all holler and everthing?

So?

Lord, Sut, it’s tailormade. They’re just askin for it.

Suttree rose. Gene, he said, you’re crazy.

Set down Sut. Looky here. The goddamned bank is only …

I dont want to look. I dont want to hear.

Harrogate watched him wane from the gory light toward darkness.

It’s a dead lock, Sut, he called. I need you to help me.

Beyond in the dark of the town late traffic passed.

Sut?

A chained dog yapped from the shackstrewn hillside across the creek.

I need you to help me, he called.





In the early months of that summer a new fisherman appeared on the river. Suttree saw him humped over the oars in a skiff composed of actual driftwood, old boxes and stenciled crateslats and parts of furniture patched up with tin storesigns and rags of canvas and spattered over with daubs of tar. A crazyquilt boat sculled through the loose fog by a sullen oarsman who looked not right nor left.

Standing at Turner’s stall Suttree stared down into the long glass bier. Little beads of water ran on the heavy slant panes in their nickel and porcelain mortises. Inside on a bed of crushed ice dimly lit and lightly garlanded with parsley sprigs lay a catfish with a nine inch dinnerplate in its mouth. Old men kept drifting by to peer in and comment. A little card rested against the broad yellow flank. It said: Caught in the Tennessee River June 9 1952. Wt. 87 lbs.

Mornin Suttree, said the fishmonger.

Where the hell did you get this?

Some Indian brought it in here this mornin. Aint that a fish?

It’s the biggest catfish I ever saw.

Old Bert Vincent was by a little while ago, said it was the biggest he ever seen personally.

I dont guess you’ll be needing any fish this morning.

Not this morning.

Suttree crossed through the markethouse and went on toward niggertown with his fish.

In the evening he watched the Indian set out again on his one line below the railway trestle. And back. He hove to in the blue shadow under the bluff and drifted from sight. Eighty-seven pounds, Suttree muttered.

On his run downriver in the morning he watched for the Indian’s skiff. He saw it swinging loosely below the sheer rock of the south shore. Trash hung in the vines all down the face of the bluff and a thin faultline angled up and switched back until it gained the rim of a cave a hundred feet above the river. Up there watching was the fisherman. Suttree raised his hand. The figure on the cliff gestured back. Suttree eased the oars into the river and went on.

When he came back upriver the Indian was cleaning fish on a rock at the foot of the bluff. When he saw Suttree he stood up and looked up at the cave and wiped his hands on the sides of his jeans.

Suttree eased the skiff alongside the rock and shipped the inside oar. There was a shallow pool among the rocks and from the bottom countless fish heads stared up through the silty water to the streaked sunlight of a world dead to them. Coiled viscera ebbed in the murk and a few tins gave back a baleful light. Howdy, he said.

Hey, said the Indian.

How’s it going?

Okay.

I saw that blue cat down at Turner’s. I dont see how you got it in the boat.

Yeah, said the Indian.

Suttree looked out over the water and he looked up at the Indian again. A tall and ocherskinned stranger in a pair of busted out brogans, the sorry clothes, the stove knees and elbows not patched but simply puckered shut with crude stitching. Pinned to his shirt and joined by their weighted wire he wore a pair of china eyes that had once swung in a doll’s skull.

I live up the river yonder, said Suttree. Just above the bridge in that first houseboat.