Colum McCann - This Side of Brightness

Treefrog makes his way soundlessly down the metal stairs. All quiet on the western front. He stops outside Angela and Elijah’s cubicle and puts his ear to the door, hears them sucking their way down into a crack pipe, the slow pull and the ecstatic exhalation and then a few giggles as they move together under their mangy blankets.

He thinks of Elijah’s hand unbuttoning Angela’s shirt, moving slowly along her dark skin, the slow rise of nipple between Elijah’s fingers, then the slide of his hand under her breast, down along her stomach, a meander of finger around her belly button, tracing her bony hip, massaging it, caressing it, belonging to it, the slow draw across her hipbone, feeling her moistness even in the freezing cold, his fingernails sliding into the warm layers of her body, Angela lying back in the blankets, blissful, moaning, her eyelids shut tight, Elijah suspended on the scent of her, leaning down and breathing into her ear, Angela’s fingernails dragging along his back, making rivulets in his skin, and the movement of their breathing, fast fast fast fast, a wild thrust from each of them, until it is all crushed into long segments of breathing, slow slow slow slow, and then the two of them might lie there in anticipation of more.

Treefrog stands by the door until he hears the pipe sucked on again and — bending over at the hip a few times to calm his erection — he goes carefully along with the bag, past the row of cubicles and the giant communal area and the shacks.

Only Dean is out, his campfire burning, yellow hair up in spikes and his hunting jacket tight around him. He stares at nothing, not even looking at the fire like any normal man would do. Dean once bit out a man’s tongue in a lovers’ quarrel. Ever since then he’s been going around with the other man’s life in his mouth. Sometimes he roars about a lawn not being cut in Connecticut, the edges of flowerbeds being way too grassy, needing to be clipped. Or the china dishes having spaghetti stains on them. Or the credit card bills not being paid.

As he goes past, Treefrog gives a quick wave, but Dean just looks into the distance. A young boy lumbers out of Dean’s lean-to, beside the pile of garbage. The boy and Dean sit beside each other. Dean runs a finger along the inside of the boy’s thigh, and then suddenly they are standing and meshed together beside the fire — the boy is so small that his head only reaches Dean’s chest — and they are locked together in embrace by the light of the fire. Treefrog can see the boy nibbling at Dean’s neck and the slide of Dean’s hand to the small of the boy’s back.

Treefrog shivers.

Another hundred yards and he’s home. Before he climbs he imitates the turning of a key in the door, shouting upward to his nest, “Honey, I’m home!”

Treefrog slips the shopping back under his coat, ties the handles of the bag to his belt loop, and climbs the catwalk, careful with the bottle. He lights some candles and places the bag on the bed beside Castor, who is curled up by the pillow. Reaching to the shelf by the Gulag, he takes down a can opener and sighs. “I’ll dance at your wedding, I’ll dance at your wedding.”

* * *

In the morning he practices a loop shot against the wall, and the pink handball goes high in the air, rebounds down off the stalactite, and lands perfectly for his right hand, then left. He feels good, energized, almost clean after yesterday’s shower. He closes his fist for an underhand shot, and the ball barrels out from the Melting Clock. The ritual continues until warmth floods through him. Along one part of the tunnel wall he sees a fat sheet of ice insinuating itself into existence, the drops of water coming from an overflow pipe topside as if to say, We have all been here before.

* * *

“Heyyo.”

“Shit.”

“Hey, Angela. Up here. Turn.”

“Where?”

“Heyyo.”

“Goddamn. It’s you.”

“It’s me. Where you goin’?”

“Nowhere,” she says. “What you doin’ up there?”

“The presidential suite. I’m putting mints on my pillows.”

“You got any more blankets? Our goddamn electric’s still out. Heaters ain’t working. Elijah’s gone looking for that guy Edison.”

“Faraday.”

“Same difference.”

“You wanna come up?” asks Treefrog. “I got a fire going.”

“No way. If Elijah saw me up there, he’d rip your head off and shit down your throat. He says that to me all the time. He says he’ll rip my—”

“Elijah won’t see us. He’s left the wilderness and been fed by ravens and gone off in a whirlwind.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” says Treefrog. “You kill those rats yet?”

“No. I…” She hesitates and scratches at the side of her face. “I like the fat one,” she says. “She’s cute. She wouldn’t hurt nobody. She’s pregnant.”

Angela stands by the tracks, wrapped in a blanket, caught in a stream of topside light with her face tilted up, sad and beautiful.

Treefrog says to her, “You should get Papa Love to make a painting of you.”

“Who?”

“The guy in the shack down by the cubicles. With all the drawings on it. He never comes out except sometimes when he wants to. You should get him to make a painting of you.”

“I don’t want no painting,” she says, but then her face brightens. “Say, has he got a heater?”

“Yeah, but he don’t answer the door.”

“Shit. Where the goddamn hell is Edison?”

“Taking a dirt nap.”

“Huh?”

“Edison’s dead. He’s the man made the first phonograph. He’s the man gave us music. He’s the man gave us light. Edison kicked it sixty years ago. Faraday’s his name.”

“He’s a motherfucker.”

Treefrog laughs.

“I had a warm house once,” says Angela, stamping her feet on the tunnel gravel, looking up at Treefrog, perched twenty feet up on his catwalk.

“It had a wraparound porch and a feeder for birds,” she says, “and it was bright as all get out. There was trees outside, and sometimes we went climbing in the branches. I hate New York. It’s cold. Ain’t you cold?”

“You’re high, ain’t you?”

She ignores him. “It was cold in Iowa but we had a stovepipe, and my father, he broke it off and smashed it in my momma’s face. Left a big dent in her cheekbone. That’s what happened to the stovepipe. Big dent in the stovepipe too, after he smashed it in the wall ’cause he was sorry. Then he did it again. I hate him. He always said he’d take me to see the sea, but he never did. He just did the stovepipe thing. The doctor gave her an eyepatch. She dropped it in a well. Ever been married?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s her name?”

“Dancesca.”

“Did you hit her?”

“No.”

“You’re a liar. I know you’re a liar.”

“No I ain’t.”

“Ever been beaten?” asks Angela after a moment. “You get used to it; it’s like breathing. It’s like breathing underwater.”

And for some reason he thinks she’s smiling, though her back is turned now and all he can see is her hunched figure wrapped in the blanket.

“Angela,” he says. “Turn around. Let me see you.”

“I bet you beat her until she couldn’t even walk no more.”

“No I didn’t.”

“I bet you got a blue washcloth and wrapped it on your fist so the bruises wouldn’t show.”

“Shut up.”

“I bet you took a yellow pencil and stuck it in her ear and turned it around and around till the lead snapped and went into her brain.”

“Shut up.”

“I know you did.”

He shifts on the catwalk. “I had a wife and child,” he says. “I never hit them.”

“Sure sure sure.”

“She left me.”

“Sure she did.”