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.
Hell yes.
What makes you think they wont find you in Knoxville?
Hell fire Sut. Big a place as Knoxville is? They never would find ye there. Why you wouldnt even know where to start huntin somebody.
Suttree looked at Harrogate and shook his head.
How far you reckon it is to town? said Harrogate.
It’s six or eight miles. Listen. If you’ve got to run off why dont you wait and slip off from the county garage some evening?
What for?
Hell, you’re practically in town. Besides it would be dark or damn near it.
Harrogate paused from his chewing, his eyes fixed on his shoe. Then he commenced chewing again. You might be right, he said.
Suttree was unwrapping his other sandwich. It dont make all that much difference actually, he said.
Why’s that?
Cause they’ll catch your skinny ass anyway.
They aint no way.
What do you aim to do about clothes? What do you think people are going to say when they see you wandering around in that outfit?
I’ll get me some clothes first thing.
Suttree shook his head.
Hell Sut. I can slip around.
Gene.
Yeah.
You look wrong. You will always look wrong.
Harrogate looked at the floor. He had stopped chewing. No I wont, he said.
The weather turned colder and they did not go out. Wilson put Harrogate to work painting the black borders along the lower hallway walls that served for baseboards. The workhouse smelled of paint and so did the country mouse when he came up in the evening with the smears of black on his face like a guerrilla fighter.
One night Suttree said to him: Dont you have any family?
The lights were out. A few bodies shifted in the dark. Dont you? said the small voice overhead.
Christmas came and some of the married prisoners were furloughed home to holiday with their families. A few were released. Slusser came from solitary, the pick still on his leg. He entered with his blanket and went down the aisle without speaking to anyone.
There was a lighted tree in the recreation room downstairs and on Christmas day they had turkey with all the trimmings. Callahan in the kitchen drunk making pumpkin pies out of old sweet potatoes and carrots. Sots loose from the drunk tank wandering about crazed with thirst. An air of wary joy, like Christmas in some arctic outpost.
The following day was Sunday. Suttree was playing poker when his name was called. He played on.
That’s you, Suttree.
He folded his cards. He glanced toward the door and rose heavily, handing the cards down to Harrogate. Dont lose all my money, he said.
The hall guard opened the door and he went out and down the stairs.
The messhall was filled with families. Enormous baskets of fruit. Country people, some bewildered, some in tears. Old men who had been here themselves perhaps.
Over yonder, said Blackburn.
She was sitting at the table at the far end of the hall. Quietly in her good clothes. He turned to go back but Blackburn gripped him by his sleeve and pulled him around. You get your ass over there, he said.
He made his way along the edge of the table. She had her purse in her lap and she was looking down. She was still wearing her hat from church. He sat down on the bench across the table from her and she looked up at him. She looked old, he could not remember her looking so. Her slack and pleated throat, the flesh beneath her jaws. Her eyes paler.
Hello Mother, he said.
Her lower chin began to dimple and quiver. Buddy, she said. Buddy …
But the son she addressed was hardly there at all. Numbly he watched himself fold his hands on the table. He heard his voice, remote, adrift. Please dont start crying, he said.
See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child’s heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of’s come to pass.
Suttree began to cry nor could he stop it. People were looking. He rose. The room swam.
Buddy, she said. Buddy.
I cant, he said. Hot salt strangled him. He wheeled away. Blackburn would have stopped him at the door but when he saw his face he let him go. Suttree jerked his arm away and went through the gate and up the stairs.
He was released a few days later on order from Judge Kelly. The country mouse had run off from a work detail the morning before and as Suttree came from the supply room dressed in the clothes he’d worn through the slam seven months earlier Harrogate was being led clumping along the hall with a pick on his leg. They exchanged glances as they passed but you couldnt say it in words. Suttree was taken back to town in the same car that had brought him out. It was snowing but the roads were clear.
4
He woke in the logy heat of full summer noon with the sun beating on the tin roof above him and raising a sour smell out of the old wood of the cabin. He could hear the howl of the saws in the lumbermill across the river and he could hear the intermittent scream of swine come under the knacker’s hand at the packing company. He turned his face to the wall and opened one eye. Watched through a split in the sunriven boards the slow brown neap of the passing river. After a while he struggled up, blinking in the dusty slats of sunlight that sliced through the hot murk. He tottered erect onto the floor in the trousers he’d slept in and made his way to the door and stepped out, scratching his naked belly, watching the boards for stray fish hooks as he went barefoot toward the rail. He leaned on his elbows and looked out over the river. The skiff had sunk to the gunwales and lay quietly awash in the current. He propped up one foot and studied his toes. He could hear everywhere in the hot summer air the drone of machinery, the lonely industry of the city. He blinked and stretched. A graveldredger was moving upriver, her pipes and tackle slung up in the trucks. He watched it pass. A figure on the pilot deck waved and he waved back.