Hey, said Slusser.
Harrogate looked down benignly. Hidy, he said.
Knock off that fuckin tappin.
He fixed Harrogate with a fearful look and rolled back over.
Harrogate sat with the coin in one hand and the spoon in the other. He looked down at the man. He took a tentative click at the coinrim. Click. He pulled up the blanket from the edge of the bunk and folded it over his hands, muffling the work between his knees. Click click click. He looked down at the man. The man lay as before. Click click click.
Slusser rose from the bunk slowly like a man bored. He came around the end of the bunk and reached his hand up to Harrogate. Give me that, he said.
Harrogate clutched the blanket to his chest.
You little fistfucker you better hand me that goddamned spoon before I jerk you out of there.
Suttree who’d been half asleep below had a failing sensation in the pit of his stomach. He said: Leave him alone, Byrd.
The boy’s tormentor lost interest in him instantly and his eyes swung toward Suttree with a schizoid’s alacrity. Well now, he said. I didnt know he was yours.
He’s not anybody’s.
He’s a punk.
I dont believe he is.
Maybe you’re one yourself.
Maybe — said Suttree, on whose forehead small beads of sweat had begun to glisten — you’ve been pulling your pud too much.
Slusser reached and seized him by the front of his jumper and dragged him upright. Suttree gripped his arm, coming out onto the floor. Turn loose of my shirt, Byrd, he said.
Byrd twisted the cloth in his fist. There was no sound in the cell. Suttree could see himself twinned in the cool brown eyes and he didnt like what he saw. He swung at Slusser’s face. Immediately a fist crashed against the side of his head. He heard the sea roll. He swung again. His shirt came loose with a loud rip but he did not hear it. He pushed himself forward, his head ducked, and caromed off the side of the bunk. When he looked up he could not see Slusser. Some prisoners were standing between him and the hall and he heard grunts and the meaty sound of fists. Callahan’s face went past smiling, beyond the shoulders of the watching men.
Suttree elbowed his way through the spectators. The fight crashed into the bunks and went to the wall and back down the cell, Slusser standing flatfooted because of the pick on his ankle, cursing. Callahan smiling. He was backing Slusser down along the wall in the narrow space behind the bunks. In turning between the bunks Slusser’s pick got hung. Callahan stepped forward and slammed him broadside in the head. Slusser lashed out blindly, then kicked out with the pick. It stung a starshaped pock in the concrete and Slusser’s eyes rolled with pain. He was still trying to kick Callahan with the pick when the iron door swung and two guards rushed in with slapsticks.
The first person to get clobbered was a country boy from Brown’s Mountain named Leithal King. He sat down in the floor holding his head with both hands. Goddamn, he said.
Callahan had leaped back, holding up his hands. He’s gone crazy, he said.
Slusser turned. He looked crazy. Eyes wild, a blue swelling at his temple giving his face an asymmetrical twist. The prisoners had fallen away. Slusser turned toward the guards in a half crouch and they fell upon him with slapsticks flailing. Callahan lowered his hands and leaned forward to see better. The slapsticks were going whop whop whop, Slusser on the floor with just the pick sticking out, the guards hammering away from kneeling positions like carpenters on a roof.
When they raised him up he was limp and bleeding from the mouth and ears and his face was his face seen through bad glass. Leithal had risen from the floor and Blackburn pointed his cudgel at him and said: You. Get this man. Callahan you son of a bitch. You get his other side.
I aint done nothin, said Leithal, coming forward uncertainly.
Callahan already had Slusser’s arm draped around his neck and was bearing him up. He wiped a thin trickle of blood from his own mouth with a freckled fist and turned and gave the prisoners a pinched grimace of idiotic triumph which sent such a plague of grins among them that the other guard turned at the door. What the hell are you doing, Callahan?
Just holdin this man up. Where you want him?
They followed the guards out the door and Blackburn slammed the gate and locked it and they followed them down the hall and down the stairs, Slusser’s pick dragging along behind until the other guard fell back and raised it up and they went on like that, bearing Slusser on toward the box with his hindleg aloft like a wounded iceskater.
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.