Suttree (34 page)

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.

Come on, Sut.

Gene.

Yeah.

I am not going in no goddamned drugstore and buy strychnine. Not for you. Not for anybody.

Hell Sut, they'd sell it to you. If I tell you what I want with it will you?

No.

They sat there watching Suttree's toes resting on the river.

Listen, Sut ...

Suttree put his forefingers in his ears.

Harrogate leaned more closely. Listen, he said.

He waited down on Stinky Point, one eye for measuring the sun's decline, the other weathered out for his friend's coming. He had a pieplate with a piece of high and wormy hog's liver in it and he was cutting this up in small gobbets with his pocketknife. Suttree came through the weeds hot and perspiring and squatted on the bank and drew a small package from the hippocket of his jeans. Here, you crazy son of a bitch, he said.

Harrogate's black rat's eyes glazed over with joy. He untied the string and lifted a glass vial from the paper and examined it. A pale label with a green skull and bones. Shithouse mouse, he said. Thanks Sut. I sure as shit appreciate it.

You owe me two dollars.

Old buddy, that kind of money aint nothin now. You'll have it in the mornin.

Suttree watched him go on through the weeds to the river where his boat rode tethered to a cinderblock by a length of wire. He turned and smiled back and stepped neatly into the boat, holding the bottle in one hand, the tin of liver in the other. He sat carefully and laid his things out before him and leaned slightly forward and unpocketed the small catapult he'd fashioned from a treefork. Unwiring himself from the land he took up his makeshift oars and feathered gently into the current and away.

From the deck of his houseboat Suttree watched the antics of this half daft adolescent with a mild disgust. Standing amidships in his cocklecraft Harrogate tacked here and there. In the quiet evening the face of the river grew glassy. Suttree muttered to himself. He'd not muttered long before a bat came boring crazily askew out of the sky and fell with a plop onto the surface of the river and fluttered briefly and was still. Suttree sat up in his folding chair. Bats had begun to drop everywhere from the heavens. Little leatherwinged creatures struggling in the river. Harrogate oaring among them. One dropped with a mild and vesperal bong on the tin of Suttree's roof. Another close by in the water. Lying there on the dark current it seemed surprised and pitiful.

Harrogate in his tin coracle was hefting them aboard with a dipnet of his own devising. A bullbat fell bandywinged. A swift, a swallow. Along the dimming shore of broken fence and rubble and over the sparse colonies of jakelike dwellings a new curse falling, a plague of bats, small basilisks pugnosed with epicanthic eyes and upreared dogs' ears filled with hair and bellies filled with agony. In the smoke and burgundy dusk they dimpled the face of the river like lemmings. Two small black boys had packed a halfgallon picklejar with ones they found and screwed down the lid to keep them until needed. In the floor of Harrogate's boat the brown and hairy mound grew, strange cargo, such small replicas of the diabolic with their razorous teeth bared in fiends' grins. By dark he had a half a boatload and by the warehouse lights he struck a landfall just below the creek and tied up. He sat on the bank and drank in the evening calm and the winey honeysuckle air and waited for the last of the crawling pile of bats to die. When they had done so he loaded them in his sack and staggered up the bank and home.

In the morning he set out with them. A light heart and deep rejoicing for the fortune of it made the load less heavy yet he still must rest here and there by the streetside. By such stages he labored out Central Avenue small and bowed and wildlooking.

What you got in the sack son?

He peered from under the load at his inquisitor lounging in the open window of the halted cruiser. He shifted the weight a little higher on his shoulder. Bats, he said.

Bats.

Yessir.

What, ballbats?

No, them little'ns. Flittermouses.

The policeman's face bore a constant look of tolerant interest. Set the sack down son and let's see what all you got there.

Harrogate rolled the sack from his shoulder and lowered it to the paving and spread the drawstrung mouth with his thumbs. A musky smell rose. He tilted it slightly policeward. The officer thumbed his cap back on his head and bent to see. A prefiguration of the pit. Vouchsafed a crokersack vision of hell's floor deep with the hairy damned screaming mute and toothy toward the far and heedless city of God. He raised his head and looked at the waiting Harrogate and he looked at the bright sky above Knoxville and he turned to the driver.

You know what he's got in that sack?

What's he got?

Dead bats.

Dead bats.

Right.

Well.

What do you think?

I dont know. Ask him where he's goin with em.

Where you goin with em?

Up here to the hospital.

The officer had his chin resting on his shoulder. His face went blank. Rabies, he said. He turned to the driver and said something and they pulled away. Harrogate shouldered the bats and set forth again.

He climbed the marble stairs and went past the old columns of the portico and down the hall to a desk. Howdy, he said.

A nurse looked up.

I got some more.

What?

Some more. Bats.

I dont know what you're talking about.

Bats. I got a whole damn ... I got a whole sackful.

She stared at him warily.

Looky here, he said, pointing.

She stood up and leaned over and looked down. Harrogate fumbled with the sack, trying to see her tits. She put her hand to her collarbone. He spread the sack open and she leaped back.

It's a mess of em, aint it?

Get those things out of here, she whispered.

Where do I take em?

But she had gone down the hall on her white crepe shoes. She came back with a man in a white tunic. Him? said the man.

Harrogate stood his ground.

Let me see what you've got there.

He held open the mouth of the sack.

The man turned pale. He gestured at the nurse. Call the clinic, he said. Tell them we've got about a bushel of dead bats up here.

She was dialing.

Where did you get them? said the man.

Just here and there, said Harrogate.

A woman was coming down the hall. The man went to her and ushered her back toward the door.

Dr Hauser says to bring them on, said the nurse, holding one hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone.

Tell him we're on our way.

I guess you aint used to gettin this many at a time, said Harrogate.

They sat him in a little white room and gave him a box of vanilla icecream. He watched the sunlight on the walls with dreamy content. After a while a nurse brought him a little metal tray with a hot lunch.

You can just take it out of what all you owe me, Harrogate told her.

The afternoon set in and he grew bored. He went to the door and looked out. An empty corridor. He sat some more. It grew warmer. He lay on the tile floor with his hands cradling his head. His mind roved over storewindows. He saw himself ascending the stairs at Comer's in pressed gabardines and zipper shoes, a slender cigar in his mouth, an Italian switchblade knife silver bound with ebony handles in one pocket, a gold watchchain draped across the pleats of his slacks. Greeted by all. Pulling the roll of bills from his pocket. He went back down the stairs and came up again in different attire, a pullover shirt like Feezel's. Dark blue. With pale gray trousers and blue suede shoes. Belt to match. The door opened. He sat up.

Mr Harrogate.

Yes mam.

Dr Hauser would like to see you.

They went through three doors. The doctor was standing at a bench among bottles and jars. The nurse closed the door behind him. Harrogate stood there with his hands hanging down inside the pockets of his capacious trousers. The doctor turned and looked dourly across the upper rims of his glasses at him.

Mr Harrogate?

Yessir.

Yes. Would you just come with me a minute?

Harrogate followed him into a tiny office. A little white cubicle with glass bricks in the ceiling. Occasional pedestrians walked overhead, muted heels and sunlight. The pipes that hung from the ceiling were painted white. He looked everything over.

That was quite a collection of bats, said the doctor.

They's forty-two of em.

Yes. None rabid at all. We were curious. We couldn't find any marks on them.

Harrogate grinned. I figured you might reckon they'd been shot or somethin. Many of em as they was.

Yes. We examined one.

Mm-hmm.

Strychnine.

Harrogate's face gave a funny little twitch. What? he said.

How did you do it?

Do what?

How did you do it? Poison forty-two bats. They only feed on the wing.

I dont know nothin about it. They was dead. Listen. I brought one down here before and nobody never said nothin. They never said they was a limit on how many you could collect on.

Mr Harrogate, the city is offering a reward for any dead bats found in the streets. We have what could become a critical situation here with rabies. That's the purpose of the reward. We have not authorized the wholesale slaughter of bats.

Do I get the money or not?

You do not.

Shit.

I'm sorry.

Well.

I would like to know how you managed to poison them.

Harrogate sucked at his black foretooth. What will you give me? he said.

The doctor leaned back in his chair and studied him all over again. Well, he said, feeling the spirit of things, what will you take?

I'll take two dollars.

That's too high. I'll give a dollar.

Make it a dollar and a quarter.