Suttree (6 page)

Finally it rained. It rained all one afternoon and at dusk the burnt grass stood in water and it rained on into the night. By the time he left the house it had quit and the sky was clearing but he would not turn back.

He waited and waited at the field's edge watching the house and listening. From the dark of the corn they saw him pass, lean and angular, a slavering nightshade among the moonsprung vines, over the shadowed blue and furrowed summer land. They gripped each other's arm.

It's him.

I hope it is. I'd hate to think of there bein two of em.

Before them in the field there appeared sudden and apparitional a starkly pale set of legs galvanized out of the night like a pair of white flannel drawers.

Thow the light to him.

He aint mounted.

Thow it to him.

He was standing in the middle of the patch facing them, blinking, his overalls about his ankles.

Hold it right there, old buddy. Dont move.

But he did. He caught up the bib of his overalls in both hands and turned to run. The voice called out again. He had the straps clenched in his fist, making for the field's edge. The train bawled twice out there in the darkness. Now beg God's mercy, lecher. Unnatural. Finger coiled, blind sight, a shadow. Smooth choked oiled pipe pointing judgment and guilt. Done in a burst of flame. Could I call back that skeltering lead.

He was lying on the ground with his legs trapped in his overalls and he was screaming Oh God, Oh God. The man still holding the smoking gun stood about him like a harried bird. The blood oozing from that tender puckered skin in the gray moonlight undid him. Shit, he said. Aw shit. He knelt, flinging the gun away from him. The other man picked it up and stood by. Hush now, he said. Goddamn. Hush.

Lights from the house limn them and their sorry tableau. The boy is rolling in the rich damp earth screaming and the man keeps saying for him to hush, kneeling there, not touching him.

The deputy held the car door and he climbed out and they entered a building of solid concrete. The first deputy handed Harrogate's papers to a man at a small window. The man looked through the papers and signed them. Harrogate stood in the hall.

Harrogate, the man said.

Yessir.

He looked him over. Goddamn if you aint a sadsack, he said. Walk on down to that door.

Harrogate walked down the corridor to an iron barred door. The other deputy had emerged from a side door with a cup of coffee. He had his thumb stuck in his belt and he blew on the coffee and sipped at it. He did not look at Harrogate.

After a while the man came down the hall with a big brass ring of keys. He opened the gate and pointed for Harrogate to enter. He shut the gate behind them and locked it and turned and went up a flight of concrete stairs. There were two men in striped pants and jumpers sitting there smoking. They scooted against the wall to let the man pass. Harrogate had started up the stairs when one of them spoke to him.

You better not go up there if he aint said to.

He came back down again.

When the man reappeared he had a young black with him. The black wore stripes too. The man opened the door to a large cell and they entered. The black looked at Harrogate and shook his head and went on through to a door at the rear. There was a little window in the wall and Harrogate could see him in there thumbing through stacks of clothing on a shelf.

Strip out of them clothes and take a shower yonder, said the man.

Harrogate looked around. In the center of the room was a stained porcelain trough with a row of dripping taps hung from a pipe. In each corner at the front of the cell was a concrete wall about as high as Harrogate. Behind one wall there were three toilets and behind the other there were two showers. While he was looking at the showers a dry towel hit him in the back of the head and fell to the floor.

You better get on some kind of time, the man said. Harrogate picked up the towel and put it around his neck and undid his shirt and peeled out of it and laid it on a bench by the wall Then he unbuttoned his trousers and stepped out of them and laid them across the shirt. He looked like a dressed chicken, his skin puckered with the shotwounds still red and fresh looking. He raised his shoes each and slid them from his feet without untying the laces. The concrete floor was cold. He crossed to the showers and peered at them, their valves and spouts.

I aint goin to tell you again, said the man.

I dont know how, said Harrogate.

The black boy at the window turned his face away.

The man looked up at this news with what seemed to be real interest. You dont know how to what? he said.

How to run a shower.

What are you, a fuckin smart-ass?

No sir.

You mean to tell me you aint never took a shower?

I aint never even seen one.

The man turned and looked back down the hall. Hey, George?

Yeah.

Come in here a minute.

A second man looked in. What is it? he said.

Tell him what you just told me.

I aint never even seen one? said Harrogate.

Seen what?

A shower. He dont know how to take a shower.

The second man looked him over. Does he know where he shit last? he said.

I doubt it.

It was down at the county jail, said Harrogate.

I think you got a smart-ass on your hands.

I think I got a dumb-ass is what I got. You see them there handles?

These here?

Them there. You turn em and water comes out of that there pipe.

Harrogate stepped into the shower stall and turned the taps. He picked a slab of used soap from a niche in the wall and soaped himself and adjusted the taps, stepping under the shower carefully so as not to wet his hair. When he was done he turned off the shower and took the towel down from where he'd hung it over the top of the partition and dried himself and crossed the floor to where he'd left his clothes. He had one leg in his trousers when the black spoke to him.

Hold it, little buddy.

He paused on one leg.

Bring them over here.

Harrogate collected his clothes and carried them to the window. The black took them and hung them on a hanger gingerly with two fingers. The man was sorting about behind him.

It's hangin on the nail yonder, the black said.

Harrogate was sitting naked on the bench. The man came out with a longhandled spraygun. He stood up.

Raise your arms.

He did. The man pumped the sprayer and squirted his armpit.

Shoo, said Harrogate. What's that for?

Bugs, said the guard. Turn around.

I aint got no bugs.

You aint now, said the man. He sprayed under the other arm and then gave Harrogate a good spraying over his sparse pubic hair. Get them crotch crickets too, he said. When he was done he stepped back. Harrogate stood with his arms aloft like a robbery victim.

Damn if you aint just barely feathered, said the man. How old are you?

Eighteen, said Harrogate.

Eighteen.

Yessir.

You just did get in under the wire, didnt ye?

I reckon.

What's these here?

That's where I's shot.

The man looked from his skinny body to his face again. Shot, eh? he said. He handed the spraygun through the window to the black and the black hung the gun back up behind him and pushed a folded set of stripes through the window at Harrogate.

Harrogate unfolded the suit and looked at it. He held the shirt in his teeth while he flapped the trousers out and started to step into them.

Aint you got no underwear? said the man.

No.

The man shook his head. Harrogate stood on one leg. He took a little hop to capture his balance.

Go on, said the man. If you aint got any you aint got any.

He dressed and stood barefoot. The trousers ran down over his feet and onto the floor and just his fingertips hung from the sleeves of the jumper. He looked at the black in the window.

Dont look at me, said the black. Them's the smallest they come.

Roll them sleeves and pants up. You'll be all right.

Harrogate rolled the sleeves back two turns. The clothes were clean and rough against his skin. Do I wear my own shoes? he said.

You wear your own shoes.

The smallest prisoner crossed the floor and stepped into his shoes and clattered back to the window. The man looked him over sadly and handed him a blanket. Let's go, he said.

Harrogate followed him out and up the stairs, shuffling along, a slight limp. At the top of the stairs they turned down a hall past huge barred cages like the one they'd left. At the end of the hall sat a man at a table reading a magazine. He rose smiling and placed the magazine facedown on the table.

The man was sorting through the keys. I think they ought to've thrown thisn back, Ed, what do you think?

Ed looked at Harrogate and smiled.

The man opened the iron door and Harrogate entered alone. A concrete room painted pea green. He walked past the sink, the taps each tied with little tobaccosacks hanging from their mouths. Pale winter light fell through the welded iron windows. The door clanked shut behind him and the guard's footsteps receded in the corridor.

With his blanket he went down the room past rows of iron beds in blocks of four all painted green, some with sacklike mattresses, some with nothing but the woven bare iron straps that served for springs. He went along the aisle looking left and right. A few figures lay motionless in the cots he passed. He went to the end of the room and stood on tiptoe and peered out the window. Rolling hills. Stark winter trees. He came back up the aisle and nudged a sleeper by the foot. Hey, he said.

The man on the pallet opened one eye and looked at Harrogate. What the fuck do you want? he said.

Where am I supposed to sleep?

The man groaned and closed his eyes. Harrogate waited for him to open them again but he did not. After a while he jostled the foot again. Hey, he said.

The man did not open his eyes. He said: If you dont get the fuck away from me I'm going to kick the shit out of you.

I just wanted to know where I'm supposed to sleep.

Anywhere you like you squirrely son of a bitch now get the hell away from here.

Harrogate wandered on up the aisle. Some of the bunks had pillows as well as blankets. He picked one out that had only a bare tick and climbed up and spread his blanket and sat in the middle of it. He sat there for a while and then he climbed down again and went to the bars and peered out. Someone in a suit like his was coming backward down the hallway towing a bucket on wheels by a mop submerged in the black froth it held. He glanced at Harrogate as he went past, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He didnt look friendly. Across the hall another prisoner was peering from his cage. Harrogate studied him for a minute. Then he gave sort of a crazy little wave at him. Hidy, he said.

Sure, said the other prisoner.

Harrogate turned and went back and climbed into his bunk and lay staring at the ceiling. Concrete beams painted green. A few half blackened lightbulbs screwed into the masonry. It had grown dim within the room, the early winter twilight closing down the day. He slept.

When he woke it was dark out and the bulbs in the ceiling suffused the room with a sulphurous light. Harrogate sat up. Men were filing into the cell with a sort of constrained rowdiness, not quite jostling one another, lighting or rolling cigarettes, speaking only once they were inside. A rising exchange of repartee and shaded insult. One spied Harrogate where he sat up in his cot like a groundsquirrel and pointed him out.

Looky here, new blood.

They filed past. Toward the end came men hobbling with what looked like the heads of pickaxes welded about one ankle. The door clanged, keys rattled. Two men turned in at the bunks beneath Harrogate. One of them lay down and closed his eyes for a minute and then sat up and shucked off his shoes and lay back and closed his eyes again. The other stood with his head bent a few inches from Harrogate's knee and began to unload his pockets of various things. A pencil stub, matchbooks, a beercan opener. A flat black stone. A sack of tobacco. He saw Harrogate watching him and looked up. Hey, he said.

Hey, said Harrogate.

You dont piss in the bed do you?

No sir.

You smoke?

I used to some. Fore I got thowed in the jailhouse and couldnt get nary.

Here.

He pitched the sack of tobacco up onto Harrogate's blanket.

Harrogate immediately opened the sack and took a paper from the little pocket under the label and began to roll a cigarette.

You get one of those every week, the man said.

When do I get mine?

Next week.

You aint got no match have ye?