Suttree (9 page)

The guard returned with Leithal and Callahan and when he unlocked the door Callahan started through it.

Hold it Callahan, said the guard.

Callahan held it.

The guard shut the door behind Leithal and locked it and motioned Callahan down the hall. The prisoners could hear him protesting. Hell fire, what for? I aint done a goddamned thing. Hell fire.

Suttree went back to his bunk, touching his swollen ear with his fingertips. Harrogate was still crouching in the top of his bunk with the spoon in his hand.

Where are they goin with Mr Callahan? he said.

To the hole. Blackburn's wise to his bullshit.

How long will they keep him in there?

I dont know. A week maybe.

Goddamn, said Harrogate. We sure stirred up some shit, didnt we?

Suttree looked at him. Gene, he said.

What.

Nothing. Just Gene.

Yeah. Well ...

You better hope they keep Slusser in the box.

What about you?

He's already punched me.

Well. As long as they let Mr Callahan out before they do him.

Suttree looked at him. He was not lovable. This adenoidal leptosome that crouched above his bed like a wizened bird, his razorous shoulderblades jutting in the thin cloth of his striped shirt. Sly, rat-faced, a convicted pervert of a botanical bent. Who would do worse when in the world again. Bet on it. But something in him so transparent, something vulnerable. As he looked back at Suttree with his almost witless equanimity his naked face was suddenly taken away in darkness.

Some of the prisoners called out complaining. The hall guard told them to knock it off.

Hell fire, it aint but eight oclock.

Knock it off in there.

Bodies undressing in the dark. The hall light made a puppet show of them. Suttree sat on his bunk and eased off his clothes and laid them across the foot of the bed and crawled under the blanket in his underwear. Voices died in the room. Rustlings. The light from the yardlamps falling through the windows like a cold blue winter moon that never waned. He was drifting. He could hear a truck's tires on the pike a half mile away. He heard the chair leg squeak in the hall where the guard shifted. He could hear ... He leaned out of the bunk. I will be goddamned, he said. Harrogate?

Yeah. Hoarse whisper in the dark.

Will you knock off that goddamned clicking?

There was a brief pause. Okay, said Harrogate.

When they came in from work the next evening Harrogate had a couple of small jars he'd found in the roadside. Suttree saw him descend from his bunk after lights out. He seemed to disappear somewhere in the vicinity of the floor. When he reappeared he camped on the floor at the head of Suttree's bed and Suttree could hear a tin set down on the concrete and the clink of glass.

What the fuck are you doing? he whispered.

Shhh, said Harrogate.

He heard liquid pouring.

Whew, said a voice in the dark.

A whiff of rank ferment crossed Suttree's nostrils.

Harrogate.

Yeah.

What are you up to?

Shhh. Here.

A hand came toward him from the gloom offering a jar. Suttree sat up and took it and sniffed and tasted. A thick and sourish wine of unknown origins. Where'd you get this? he said.

Shhh. It's Mr Callahan's julep he had workin. You reckon it's ready?

If it'd been ready he'd of drunk it.

That's what I thought.

Why dont you put it up and let it work some more and we'll drink it Saturday night.

You reckon it'll tear your head up?

Suttree reckoned it would tear your head up.

They lay there in the dark.

Hey Sut?

What.

What you aim to do when you get out?

I dont know.

What was you doin fore you got in?

Nothing. Laying drunk.

A deep wheezing of sleepers rose and fell about them.

Hey Sut?

Go to sleep Gene.

By morning a heavy rain had set in and they did not go out. They sat in small groups in the dimly lit cell and played cards. It was cold in the room and some wore their blankets shawled about their shoulders. They looked like detained refugees.

At noon a gimplegged prisoner brought up sandwiches from the kitchen. Thin slices of rat cheese on thin slices of white bread. The prisoners bought matchboxes of coffee from the hallboy for a nickel and he poured hot water in their cups. Harrogate came awake from a deep nap and hopped to the floor to get his lunch. He drank plain water with his sandwich, crouched up there in his bunk, his cheeks jammed. Outside the cold gray winter rain fell across the county. By nightfall it would turn to snow.

He'd finished his sandwiches and was back to tapping at his ring when a new thought changed his face. He put aside his work and climbed down to the floor and crawled under Suttree's bunk. Then he crawled out and back up topside where he fell to work again. In a little while he crawled down again.

Toward dusk a few prisoners looked his way to see what went, the smallest prisoner sitting in the top of his bunk suddenly going whooo whoo like a chimpanzee and lapsing silent again.

When the triangle rang for dinner all fell out save he. Suttree came by from his cardgame and shook him by the shoulder. Hey hotshot. Let's go.

Harrogate raised up with one eye shut, his face matted where it had lain crushed in the blanket. Aaangh? he said.

Let's go to supper.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and pitched out onto the floor face down.

Suttree had turned to go when he heard the crash. He looked and saw Harrogate struggling in the floor and came back and helped him up. What the fuck's wrong with you?

Yeeegh yeegh, said Harrogate.

Shit, said Suttree. You better stay here. Can you get back in the bunk?

Harrogate fended him away and focused one eye toward the cell door. Sup sup, he said.

You crazy fucker. You cant even walk.

Harrogate started across the tilted floor listing badly. The other prisoners were jammed at the door, filing out by twos and down the stairs. Some looked back.

Look comin here.

What's happened to him?

Looks like one leg's grown longer'n the other one.

Harrogate crashed into the end of a set of bunks and reeled away.

Damned if the country mouse aint drunker'n hell.

Them eyes look like two pissholes in the snow.

He veered toward them like a misfired android. One caught him up by the sleeve.

You goin to supper, Countrymouse?

You fuckin ay, said Countrymouse.

They covered for him in line, holding him erect, shielding him from the guards. The cook's helper who loaded his plate looked at his face probably because it was the only one in the line passing at that diminished altitude. Shit a brick, he said.

Bet your ass, said Harrogate, winking profoundly.

They went on to the messhall. Harrogate stepped over the bench and misbalanced and stepped back. He raised his foot to try again. One of the prisoners grabbed his leg and pulled it down and caught his tilting plate and jerked him into the bench alongside him.

Hee hee, said Harrogate.

Someone kicked him under the table. He peered about at nearby faces for the culprit. The blacks filing in at the table opposite seemed to have wind of him already and were ogling and grinning.

Harrogate spooned up a load of pinto beans and shoved them toward his jaw. Some fell down the front of him. He looked after them. He began to spoon beans from his lap. Several guards were watching. He was having difficulty sitting on the bench. He was tottering about. The guard at the head of the table, a man named Wilson, walked down to get a better look. Harrogate sensed him standing there above him and turned to see, falling against the prisoner at his side as he did so. Wilson looked down into the thin face, now slightly green. Harrogate turned back to his food, holding onto the edge of the table with one hand.

This man's drunk, said Wilson.

Somewhere down the table someone muttered No shit and a ripple of tittering passed through the messhall. Wilson glared. All right, he said. Knock it off. You. Get up.

Harrogate put down his spoon and took another grip on the table and raised himself up. But since the bench would not push back from the table he remained in a sort of crouched position, finally losing his balance and sitting down again. Now he turned in his seat and tried to get one foot over the bench, lifting his leg up by the cuff of his trousers, one elbow resting in his food.

The clanking and scraping of spoons had ceased altogether. The only sound in the messhall was Harrogate struggling to free himself from the table. Wilson standing over him like a faith healer over a paraplegic. Until he actually raised up astraddle the bench, creamed corn dripping from his sleeve. Ick, he said.

What? said Wilson menacingly.

The country mouse closed his eyes, belched, opened them again. Sick, he said. He was trying to raise his other leg. The prisoner alongside looked up at him and leaned away. Harrogate lurched and his neck gave a sort of chickenlike jerk and he vomited on Wilson's shoes.

The prisoners on either side of Harrogate leaped up. Wilson's slapstick was out. He was looking at his shoes. He couldnt believe it. Harrogate wore a look of terror. He seized hold of the table, looking about wildly, his gorge swollen. He spied his plate. He leaned toward it. He vomited on the table.

You nasty little bastard, screamed Wilson. He was doing little kicks, trying to shake the puke from his shoes. The prisoners who'd been sitting opposite Harrogate had risen from the table and were watching the country mouse in awe. Harrogate looked up at them with weeping eyes and managed just the smallest blacktooth grin before he puked again.

They did not see him for ten days. Then one morning as they filed through the kitchen with their plates there he was, grinning sheepishly, ladling up gravy for their biscuits. Beyond him through the steam, on a can with a cigarette in his mouth, sat Red Callahan. No one asked where Slusser was.

That night when they came in he must have been showering in the kitchen cell because when they went past on their way to their own quarters silently in twos, exuding the aura of cold they'd brought in with them, Harrogate suddenly appeared naked at the bars, his thin face, his hands clutching, like a skinned spidermonkey.

Sut, he called out softly. Hey Sut.

Suttree heard his name. As he came abreast of the smallest prisoner he dropped out of the line. When will the phantom puker strike again, he said. What the fuck are you doing bare assed?

Listen Sut, that fuckin Wilson's got it in for me. I got to get out of here.

Out of where?

Here. The joint.

You mean run off?

Yeah.

Suttree shook his head. That's crazy, Gene, he said.

I need you to help me.

Suttree fell back in at the tail of the line. You're nuts, Gene, he said.

He saw him again a week later on Thursday when he was assigned to the indigent food detail. The needy trooping through in rags, their eyes rheumy, snuffling, showing their papers at the desk and going on to where the prisoners unloaded bags of cornmeal from pallets or scooped dried beans into grocery bags. Suttree sought their eyes but few looked up. They took their dole and passed on. Old shapeless women in thin summer dresses, socks collapsed about their pale and naked ankles, shoes opened at the side with knives to ease their feet. The seams of their lower faces stained with snuff, their drawstrung mouths. To Suttree they seemed hardly real. Like pictureshow paupers costumed for a scene. At the noon dinner break he and Harrogate fell in together. They crouched with others among the palleted beans and unwrapped their sandwiches.

What we got?

Baloney.

Anybody got a cheese?

They aint no cheese.

Sut.

Yeah.

Shhh. Do you know where we're at?

Where we're at?

I mean which way is town?

Harrogate speaking in loud hoarse whispers, spewing bits of bread.

Suttree jerked a thumb over his shoulders. It's thataway, he said.

Harrogate motioned his thumb down and looked about. What I figure to do, he said ...

Gene.

Yeah.

If you run off from here you'll wind up like Slusser.

You mean with a pick on my leg?

I mean you'll be in and out of institutions for the rest of your life.

Save for one thing.

What's that.

They aint goin to catch me.

Where will you go?

Go to Knoxville.

Knoxville.