What’ll you have, Sut.
A beer.
The man leaning against the refrigerator moves slightly to one side. What say Bud, he says.
Hey Junior.
Jimmy Smith has opened a can of beer and holds it toward Suttree. He pays and the owner deals up change out of his loathsome breeks and counts the coins into Suttree’s palm and shuffles away.
Who’s back in the back?
Bunch of drunks. Brother’s back there.
Suttree tipped a swallow of the beer against the back of his throat. It was cold and good. Well, he said. Let me go back there and see him.
He nodded to the two men at the table and went past and down the corridor and entered an enormous old drawing room with high sliding doors long painted fast in their tracks. Five men sat at a card table, none looked up. The room was otherwise barren, a white marble fireplace masked with a sheet of tin, old varnished wainscoting and a high stamped rococo ceiling with parget scrolls and beaded drops of brazing about the gasjet where a lightbulb now burned.
Surrounded as they were in this crazed austerity by the remnants of a former grandeur the poker players seemed themselves like shades of older times or rude imposters on a stage set. They drank and bet and muttered in an air of electric transiency, old men in gaitered sleeves galvanized from some stained sepia, posting time at cards prevenient of their dimly augured doom. Suttree passed on through.
In the front room was a broken sofa propped on bricks, nothing more. One wonky spring reared from the back with a beercan seized in its coils and deeply couched in the mousecolored and napless upholstery sat a row of drunks.
Hey Suttree, they called.
Goddamn, said J-Bone, surging from the bowels of the couch. He threw an arm around Suttree’s shoulders. Here’s my old buddy, he said. Where’s the whiskey? Give him a drink of that old crazy shit.
How you doing, Jim?
I’m doin everybody I can, where you been? Where’s the whiskey? Here ye go. Get ye a drink, Bud.
What is it?
Early Times. Best little old drink in the world. Get ye a drink, Sut.
Suttree held it to the light. Small twigs, debris, matter, coiled in the oily liquid. He shook it. Smoke rose from the yellow floor of the bottle. Shit almighty, he said.
Best little old drink in the world, sang out J-Bone. Have a drink, Bud.
He unthreaded the cap, sniffed, shivered, drank.
J-Bone hugged the drinking figure. Watch old Suttree take a drink, he called out.
Suttree’s eyes were squeezed shut and he was holding the bottle out to whoever would take it. Goddamn. What is that shit?
Early Times, called J-Bone. Best little old drink they is. Drink that and you wont feel a thing the next mornin.
Or any morning.
Whoo lord, give it here. Hello Early, come to your old daddy.
Here, pour some of it in this cup and let me cut it with Coca-Cola.
Cant do it, Bud.
Why not?
We done tried it. It eats the bottom out.
Watch it Suttree. Dont spill none on your shoes.
Hey Bobbyjohn.
When’s old Callahan gettin out? said Bobbyjohn.
I dont know. Sometime this month. When have you seen Bucket?
He’s moved to Burlington, the Bucket has. He dont come round no more.
Come set with us, Sut.
J-Bone steered him by the arm. Set down, Bud. Set down.
Suttree eased himself down on the arm of the sofa and sipped his beer. He patted J-Bone on the back. The voices seemed to fade. He waved away the whiskeybottle with a smile. In this tall room, the cracked plaster sootstreaked with the shapes of laths beneath, this barrenness, this fellowship of the doomed. Where life pulsed obscenely fecund. In the drift of voices and the laughter and the reek of stale beer the Sunday loneliness seeped away.
Aint that right Suttree?
What’s that?
About there bein caves all in under the city.
That’s right.
What all’s down there in em?
Blind slime. As above, so it is below. Suttree shrugged. Nothing that I know of, he said. They’re just some caves.
They say there’s one that runs plumb underneath the river.
That’s the one that comes out over in Chilhowee Park. They was supposed to of used it in the Civil War to hide stuff down there.
Wonder what all’s down in there now.
Shit if I know. Ast Suttree.
You reckon you can still get down in them Civil War caves, Sut?
I dont know. I always heard there was one ran under the river but I never heard of anybody that was ever in it.
There might be them Civil War relics down there.
Here comes one of them now, said J-Bone. What say, Nigger.
Suttree looked toward the door. A gray looking man in glasses was watching them. I caint say, he said. How you boys? What are ye drinkin?
Early Times, Jim says it is.
Get ye a drink, Nig.
He shuffled toward the bottle, nodding to all, small eyes moving rapidly behind the glasses. He seized the whiskey and drank, his slack gullet jerking. When he lowered it his eyes were closed and his face a twisted mask. Pooh! He blew a volatile mist toward the smiling watchers. Lord God what is that?
Early Times, Nig, cried J-Bone.
Early tombs is more like it.
Lord honey I know they make that old splo in the bathtub but this here is made in the toilet. He was looking at the bottle, shaking it. Bubbles the size of gooseshot veered greasily up through the smoky fuel it held.
It’ll make ye drunk, said J-Bone.
Nig shook his head and blew and took another drink and handed over the bottle with his face averted in agony. When he could speak he said: Boys, I’ve fought some bad whiskey but I’m a dirty nigger if that there aint almost too sorry to drink.
J-Bone waved the bottle toward the door where Junior stood grinning. Brother, dont you want a drink?
Junior shook his head.
Boys, scoot over and let the old Nigger set down.
Here Nig, set here. Scoot over some, Bearhunter.
Lord boys if I aint plumb give out. He took off his glasses and wiped his weepy eyes.
What you been up to, Nig?
I been tryin to raise some money about Bobby. He turned and looked up at Suttree. Dont I know you? he said.
We drank a few beers together.
I thought I remembered ye. Did you not know Bobby?
I saw him a time or two.
Nigger shook his head reflectively, I raised four boys and damned if they aint all in the penitentiary cept Ralph. Of course we all went to Jordonia. And they did have me up here in the workhouse one time but I slipped off. Old Blackburn was guard up there knowed me but he never would say nothin. Was you in Jordonia? Clarence says they aint nothin to it now. Boys, when I was in there it was rougher’n a old cob. Course they didnt send ye there for singin in a choir. I done three year for stealin. Tried to get sent to T S I where they learn ye a trade but you had to be tardy to get in down there and they said I wasnt tardy. I was eighteen when I come out of Jordonia and that was in nineteen and sixteen. I wisht I could understand them boys of mine. They have costed me. I spent eighteen thousand dollars gettin them boys out. Their grandaddy was never in the least trouble that you could think of and he lived to be eighty-seven year old. Now he’d take a drink. Which I do myself. But he was never in no trouble with the law.