Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

“I don’t know who these people are,” he said. “They’re my brothers, but I don’t really know who they are. I’ve failed them.”

“You should leave this hole, Corr.”

“Why would I leave? My life’s here.”

“Find somewhere with a bit of sunshine. You and me together. I’ve been thinking about California or somewhere like that.”

“I’m called here.”

“You could be called anywhere.”

“This is where I am.”

“How did you get his passport back?”

“Oh, I just asked around.”

“He was robbed at gunpoint, Corr.”

“I know.”

“You’re going to get hurt.”

“Oh, give me a break.”

I went to the chair by the window and watched the large tractor-trailers pulling up under the highway. The girls jostled to get at them. A single neon sign blinked in the distance: an advertisement for oatmeal.

“The edge of the world here,” said Corrigan.

“You could do something back home. In Ireland. Up north. Belfast. Something for us. Your own people.”

“I could, yeah.”

“Or shake up some campesinos in Brazil or something.”

“Yeah.”

“So why stay here?”

He smiled. Something had gone wild in his eyes. I couldn’t tell what it was. He put his hands up close to the ceiling fan, as if he were about to thrust them in there, right up into the whirling blades, leave his hands there, watch them get mangled.

IN THE RAW OF mornings the girls stretched in a line along the block, though daylight thinned them out. After his morning matins, Corrigan went down to the corner deli to buy The Catholic Worker. Through the underpass, across the road, under the awning. Old men in their undershirts sat at the door, pigeons working bread crumbs at their feet. Corrigan came out carrying the paper tucked under his arm. I could see him as he crossed back, framed through the concrete eye of the underpass. Out of the shadows, he passed the hookers and they called to him in their singsong. It hit the scale on about three different notes. Corr — i-gan. Cor — rig-gan. Caw-rig-gun.

He passed through the gauntlet. Jazzlyn stood chatting with him, her thumb hooked under the strap of her swimsuit. She looked like an old-time cop in the wrong body, snapping the thin, lime-colored straps against her breasts. She leaned close to him again, her bare skin almost touching his lapel. He did not recoil. She was getting a charge from it all, I could tell. The lean of her young body. The hard snap of the strap. Her nipple against the fabric. Her head tilting closer and closer to him.

As cars passed, she turned to watch them, and her morning shadow lengthened. It was like she wanted to be everywhere, all at once. She leaned closer still and whispered in my brother’s ear. He nodded, turned, and went back towards the deli, came out carrying a can of Coke. Jazzlyn clapped her hands in delight, took it from him, pulled the ring off, sauntered away. A row of eighteen-wheelers was parked along the expressway. She propped her leg on the silver grille and sipped from the can, then suddenly threw the drink on the ground and climbed up into the truck.

Halfway in the door, she was already removing her swimsuit. Corrigan turned away. The cola lay in a black puddle in the gutter beneath her.

It happened times in a row, Jazzlyn asking him for a can of Coke, then throwing it to the ground when she found a mark.

I thought I should go down to her, negotiate a price, and treat myself to whatever trick it was she was able for, grab the back of her hair, bring her face close to mine, that sweet breath, curse her, spit on her, for wringing out my brother’s charity.

“Hey, leave the door open for them, will ya?” he said to me after he came home. I had taken to closing the locks in the afternoon, even though they pounded on the door.

“Why don’t they piss in their own houses, Corrigan?”

“Because they don’t have houses. They have apartments.”

“Why don’t they piss in their own apartments then?”

“Because they’ve got families. Mothers and fathers and brothers and sons and daughters. They don’t want their families to see them dressed like that.”

“They’ve got kids?”

“Sure.”

“Jazz, she got kids?”

“Two,” he said.

“Oh, man.”

“Tillie’s her mother.”

I turned on him. I knew how it sounded. Step into that river, you don’t step out — no return. It came out in a torrent, how disgusting they were, sucking on his blood, all of them, leaving him thin, dry, helpless, taking the life out of him, leeches, worse than leeches, bedbugs that crawled from the wallpaper; he was a fool — all his religiosity, all his pious horse-shit, it came down to nothing, the world is vicious and that’s what it amounts to, and hope is nothing more or less than what you can see with your own bare eyes.

He pulled at a small thread on the sleeve of his shirt, but I caught his elbow.

“Don’t give me your shit about the Lord upholding all that fall and raising up all that be bowed down. The Lord’s too big to fit in their miniskirts. Guess what, brother? Look at them. Look out the window. No amount of sympathy is ever going to change it. Why don’t you cop on? You’re just placating your conscience, that’s all. God comes along and sanctifies your guilt.”

His lips broke open a little. I waited but still he did not speak. We were so close together I could see his tongue move behind his teeth, flicking up and down like something nervous. His eyes were fixed and intent.

“Grow up, brother. Pack your bags, go somewhere you matter. They deserve nothing. They’re not Magdalenes. You’re just a bum among them. You’re looking for the poor man within? Why don’t you humble yourself at the feet of the rich for once? Or does your God just love useless people?”

I could see the small, oblong reflection of the white door in his pupils, and I kept thinking that one of his hookers, one of his holy failures, was going to walk in and I’d see her reflection in the flicker.

“Why don’t you embarrass the rich with some of your charity? Go sit on a rich woman’s step and bring her to God? Tell me this — if the poor really are the living image of Jesus, why are they so fucking miserable? Tell me that, Corrigan. Why are they standing out there, displaying their misery to the rest of the world? I want to know. It’s just vanity, isn’t it? Love thy neighbor as thyself. It’s rubbish. You listening? Why don’t you take all those hookers of yours and have them go sing in the choir? The Church of the High Vision. Why don’t you have them sit in the front pews? I mean, there you go on your knees to all the tramps and the lepers and the cripples and dopeheads. Why don’t they do something? Because they want nothing but to suck you dry, that’s why.”

Exhausted, I laid my head against the windowsill.

I kept waiting for him to give me some sort of bitter benediction — something about being weak towards the strengthless, strong against the powerful, there is no peace save in Jesus, freedom is given, not received, some catch-all to soothe me, but instead he let it all wash over him. His face did not betray a thing. He scratched the inside of his arm and nodded.

“Just leave the door open,” he said.

He went down the stairwell, footsteps echoing, around the edge of the courtyard, disappeared into the grayness.

I ran down the slick steps of the apartment building. Huge swirls of fat graffiti on the walls. The drift of hash smoke. Broken glass on the bottom steps. Smells of piss and puke. Through the courtyard. A man held a pit bull on a training rope. He was teaching it to bite. The dog snapped at his arm: there were huge metal bracelets strapped across the man’s wrists. The snarls rolled across the yard. Corrigan was backing up his brown van, which he’d parked on the side of the road. I slapped the windows. He didn’t turn. I suppose I thought I might knock some sense into him, but after a moment the van was out of sight.