Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.
Old stone walls unplumbed by weathers, lodged in their striae fossil bones, limestone scarabs rucked in the floor of this once inland sea. Thin dark trees through yon iron palings where the dead keep their own small metropolis. Curious marble architecture, stele and obelisk and cross and little rainworn stones where names grow dim with years. Earth packed with samples of the casketmaker’s trade, the dusty bones and rotted silk, the deathwear stained with carrion. Out there under the blue lamplight the trolleytracks run on to darkness, curved like cockheels in the pinchbeck dust. The steel leaks back the day’s heat, you can feel it through the floors of yours shoes. Past these corrugated warehouse walls down little sandy streets where blownout autos sulk on pedestals of cinderblock.
—
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 doing all around, 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.
Yeah, right? Lyrical isn’t close to being the right word. How do you do that?
There’s an odd, not too interesting and short story of Suttree and me. I bought the book nearly two years ago, read all up to the last 80 pages, then shelved it, for a reason I didn’t understand, not worth a rat turd; really, I had no idea why. Bad book? Oh no, amazing book. It is a bit slow to read, absolutely, but that’s because it’s not hardly even a ‘book.’ The words of the first page tie together and together stop and kick and knock around and in one page there’s some myth and some lost and some found and it is the slowest reading page I’ve read. It feels like he’s more a painter than a writer, pencil his brush. And so now I crack the cover and remember how brilliantly this man uses words.
Edit:
I posted this halfway through the book, then finished it. Whewee. Not sure I like the last quarter. It’s weird, it’s definitely kinda weird; I could only reccomend this book if you’re real good and ready for a weird few final chapters.
