Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

Yet the plain fact of the matter is that it happened and there was nothing we could do to stop it — Corrigan at the wheel of the van, having spent all day down in the Tombs and the courtrooms of lower Manhattan, driving north up along the FDR, with Jazzlyn beside him in the passenger seat, her yellow high heels and her neon swimsuit, her choker tight around her neck, and Tillie had been locked away on a robbery charge, she had taken the rap, and my brother was giving Jazzlyn a lift back to her kids, who were more than keyrings, more than a flip in the air, and they were going fast along the East River, hemmed in by the buildings and the shadows, when Corrigan went to change lanes, maybe he hit the indicator, maybe he didn’t, maybe he was dizzy or tired or out of sorts, maybe he’d gotten some medicine that slowed him or fogged his vision, maybe he tapped the brake, maybe he cut it too hard, maybe he was gently humming a bit of a tune, who knows, but it was said that he was clipped in the rear by a fancy car, some old antique, nobody saw the driver, a gold vehicle going about its everyday applause of itself, it caught the back end of his van, nudged it slightly, but it sent Corrigan into a spin across all three lanes, like some big brown dancing thing, elegant for a split second, and I think now of Corrigan gripping the steering wheel, frightened, his eyes large and tender, while Jazzlyn beside him screamed, and her body tightened, her neck tensed, it all flashing in front of her — her short vicious life — and the van skidded on the dry roadway, hit a car, hit a newspaper truck, and then smashed headlong into the guardrail at the edge of the highway, and Jazzlyn went head-first through the windshield, no safety belt, a body already on the way to heaven, and Corrigan was smashed back by the steering wheel, which caught his chest and shattered his breastbone, his head rebounding off the spidery glass, bloody, and then he was whipped back into the seat with such force that the metal frame of the seat shattered, a thousand pounds of moving steel, the van still spinning from one side of the road to the other, and Jazzlyn’s body, only barely dressed, made a flying arc through the air, fifty or sixty miles per hour, and she smashed in a crumpled heap by the guardrail, one foot bent in the air as if stepping upwards, or wanting to step upwards, and the only thing of hers they found later in the van was a yellow stiletto, with a Bible sitting canted right beside it, having fallen out of the glove compartment, one on top of the other and both of them littered with glass, and Corrigan, still breathing, was bounced around and smashed sideways so that he finished up with his body twisted down in the dark well by the accelerator and the brake, and the engine whirled as if it still wanted to go fast and be stopped at the same time, all of Corrigan’s weight on both of the pedals.

They were sure he was dead at first, and he was loaded in a meat wagon with Jazzlyn. A cough of blood alerted a paramedic. He was taken to a hospital on the East Side.

Who knows where we were, driving back, in another part of the city, on a ramp, in a traffic jam, at a toll booth — does it matter? There was a little bubble of blood at my brother’s mouth. We drove on, singing quietly, while the kids in the back seats dozed. Albee had solved a problem for himself. He called it a mutual checkmate. My brother was scooped into an ambulance. There was nothing we could have done to save him. No words that would have brought him back. It had been a summer of sirens. His was another. The lights spun. They took him to Metropolitan Hospital, the emergency room. Sprinted him down through the pale-green corridors. Blood on the floor behind them. Two thin tracks from the back trolley wheels. Mayhem all around. I dropped Adelita and her children outside the tiny clapboard house where they lived. She turned and looked over her shoulder at me, waved. She smiled. She was his. She would suit him. She was all right. He would find his God with her. My brother was wheeled into the triage room. Shouts and whispers. An oxygen mask over his face. Chest ripped open. A collapsed lung. One-inch tubes inserted to keep him breathing. A nurse with a manual blood-pressure cuff. I sat at the wheel of the van and watched as the lights went on in Adelita’s house. I saw her shape against the light curtains until heavier ones were drawn across. I started the engine. They held him in traction with counterweights above the bed. A single breathing machine by his bed. The floor so skiddy with blood that the interns had to wipe their feet.

I drove on, oblivious. The Bronx streets were potholed. The orange and gray of arson. Some kids were dancing on the corners. Their bodies in flux. Like they had discovered something entirely new about themselves, shaking it through like a sort of faith. They cleared the room while they took X-rays. I pulled in under the bridge where I had spent most of my summer. A few girls were scattered around that night — the ones who had missed the raid. Some swallows scissored out from underneath the rafters. Seeding the sky. They didn’t call out to me. My brother, in Metropolitan Hospital, still breathing. I was supposed to work in Queens, but I crossed the road instead. I had no idea what was happening. The blood swelling in his lungs. Towards the tiny bar. The jukebox blared. The Four Tops. Intravenous lines. Martha and the Vandellas. Oxygen masks. Jimi Hendrix. The doctors did not wear gloves. They stabilized him. Gave him a shot of morphine. Shot it right into his muscle. Wondered about the bruises on the inside of his arm. Took him for a junkie at first. The word was he’d come in with a dead hooker. They found a religious medal in the pocket of his pants. I left the bar and crossed the late-night boulevard, half drunk.

A woman called out to me. It wasn’t Tillie. I didn’t turn. Darkness. In the courtyard some kids were high and playing basketball without a ball. Everyone working towards repair. The single lights of the heart machine beeping. A nurse leaned into him. He was whispering something. What last words? Make this world dark. Release me. Give me love, Lord, but not just yet. They lifted his mask. I got to the fifth floor of the projects. The stairs exhausted me. Corrigan lay in the hospital room, in the cramped space of his own prayer. I leaned against the apartment door. Someone had tried to pry open the gold lock on the telephone. Some books lay scattered on the floor. There was nothing to take. Perhaps he drifted in and out, in and out, in and out. Tests going to see how much blood he had lost. In and out. In and out. The knock came on the door at two in the morning. Not many knocked. I shouted for them to come in. She pushed the door slowly. My brother’s heart machine at a slow canter. In and out. She held a tube of lipstick. That I recall. Not a girl I knew. Jazzlyn has been in a crash, she said. Maybe her friend. Not a hooker. Almost casually. With half a shrug. The lipstick going across her mouth. A vivid red slash. My brother’s heart machine blipping. The line like water. Not returning to any original place. I burst out through the door. Through the graffiti. The city wore it now, the swirls, the whorls. Fumes of the fresh.

I stopped at Adelita’s house. Oh, Jesus, she said. The shock in her eyes. She pulled a jacket over her nightgown. I’m bringing my kids, she said. She bundled them into my arms. The taxi sped, flashing its lights. At the hospital, her children sat in the waiting room. Drawing with crayons. On newspaper. We ran to find Corrigan. Oh, she said. Oh. Oh, God. Doors swinging open everywhere. Closing again. The lights fluorescent above us. Corrigan lay in a small monkish cell. A doctor closed the door on us. I’m a nurse, said Adelita. Please, please, let me see him, I have to see him. The doctor turned with a shrug. Oh, God. Oh. We pulled two very simple wooden chairs up by his bed. Teach me who I might be. Teach me what I can become. Teach me.