Colum McCann - This Side of Brightness

Treefrog spins away from the baby carriage, moves on, balancing on a rail, left foot right foot left foot right foot. A tremendous urge within him now to speak to someone, anyone, to say anything, to simply let words come from his throat, long and slow and honest. He pauses for a moment by Papa Love’s door and then decides against waking the old artist; he wouldn’t answer the door anyway.

A mumble sounds from Elijah’s cubicle and a small spill of light comes from under the door. Elijah must have reconnected the juice. Treefrog puts his ear to the cubicle and hears Angela crying. There is a sharp thud. The sound strikes Treefrog low in the stomach and rests there, gnawing at him. He takes the spud wrench out from his pocket. His throat is dry, his feet unsteady. He wants to open the door and burst in, but he holds himself back, paralyzed by inaction. The thumping and crying continue, and he hears Angela saying, in long high pathetic gulps, “Why you hurt the ones ya love, why you hurt the ones ya love?”

Treefrog remains at the door and knocks the spud wrench rhythmically into each palm. Then he hears Elijah move.

Slithering away from the cubicle, Treefrog stands beneath the grate at the opposite side of the tunnel. He waits for Elijah to emerge, but nothing happens. And he hears the thuds again, the whimper, the intake of Angela’s breath. Treefrog lets himself slide down along the wall until he is sitting on the tunnel gravel. Slowly, he removes his gloves and takes out his penknife. He presses the blade down against the palm of his hand. All this nothingness, he thinks. This cowardice. This solitary life as an ear — listening, always listening, only listening.

With the knife, he makes a nick in his right palm, then his left, is amazed to flick his lighter and see two thin streams of blood running parallel down his raised wrists. He shoves his overcoat sleeves high on his arms, and a small globule of red collects in the crook of each elbow.

Under the grate, looking upward, watching the irrelevant stars, Treefrog knows that the light hitting his eyes left years ago; there is nothing up there but the movement of the past, things long imploded and forever gone: it was years later, a Friday, and he finished his shift at the skyscraper, descended in the elevator, showered and tucked his hair into a short ponytail, and they were waiting outside in a brand-new rental car, a Ford. Walker had insisted on an American-made car. Dancesca got in the backseat with five-year-old Lenora. Clarence Nathan drove. It took them four days to reach South Dakota. Clarence Nathan had sent on hundreds of dollars for a gravestone, a twenty-dollar bill each week, but there was nothing in the graveyard except a plain wooden cross marked TURIVER. Louisa’s family had moved. Weeds were in bloom in the old shack where she had once lived. They went down to the lakeside together, all four of them. The lake was immense, the only movement that of a speedboat out in the middle of the water. They had brought food for a picnic, and they sat in silence over soggy cucumber sandwiches. The boat threw waves and a skier tumbled. For the first time all day they laughed, watching the skier vaulting through the air. Walker’s body was just about crippled with rheumatism by then, but he took young Lenora down by the lakeside and stretched one arm out and bent a knee and toed his foot out in the air and every movement was imitated by the child, and there wasn’t a stir in the sky or mud prints in the ground. They stayed like that, dancing. Clarence Nathan touched his wife’s arm, the South Dakota sun pouring down generously around them.

Treefrog hears a sudden startling thud and he opens his eyes, gets to his feet, feels for the spud wrench. The top hinge of the cubicle door cracks and the wood splinters.

Electric light slips out from the smashed door.

He wonders for a moment where exactly he is — in a tunnel or a car or by a lake — and then Angela stumbles from the cubicle, pushing at the broken door, her body heaving, her breath rapid.

Elijah follows her.

“No!” she shouts.

The bare lamp in the cubicle swings.

Elijah punches the back of her head and she stumbles again, turns, spins in the light, falls.

Angela crawls to her feet, blood from her mouth and blood from her eye and blood down her cheek. Even in the patch of pendular light, Treefrog can see that her body is a sad broken mess. She limps in the gravel near the edge of the tracks, her fur coat half on, her handbag swinging in the air to keep Elijah at bay. “No!” And then Treefrog comes out from the far darkness with the spud wrench tight in his fist.

Elijah — standing back from the range of Angela’s handbag — looks across the tracks, takes down the hood of his sweatshirt, says, “Look who’s here.” He beckons Treefrog with a curled finger. “Come on, man, come on, motherfucker.”

Angela whimpers by the tracks, the bag clutched to her chest. Treefrog is aware of every step he takes, as if he is floating through the dark.

The cubicle door swings back and forth and light leaks into the tunnel, licking into the dark corners, touching Treefrog’s body, sliding off once more, until the door stops swinging and he stands in a definite circle of light.

No need for balance, the pump of certainty through him. He moves across the tracks and stops.

Elijah grins.

Treefrog grins back.

Elijah puts one foot out in front of the other, holds his fists up.

Treefrog steps closer.

Elijah makes a quick spin.

Treefrog steps back from the arc of Elijah’s kick, moves forward, ducks beneath the second kick.

Elijah’s leg slices above him as if in slow motion.

Treefrog’s body seems set on springs, and he rises from his crouch and the spud wrench swings upward and — with perfect accuracy — catches Elijah in the crotch. Elijah falls back against the cubicle, holding his balls. He cries out in agony and takes four huge gulps of breath.

Putting one hand on the ground, Elijah slowly uncoils, reaching for a knife in his back pocket.

Treefrog steps closer.

Elijah’s eyes grow wide. He prods the knife out, jabs with it.

Treefrog keeps coming.

The whites of Elijah’s eyes look huge.

The knife slices the air.

Treefrog steps aside.

Elijah’s body follows the curve of the knife.

Stepping into the created space, Treefrog grins. The swing of the spud wrench into Elijah’s elbow is swift and graceful, and the crack of bone echoes the splinter of the door, and the knife clatters to the ground.

When the spud wrench swings a second time, it catches Elijah on the shoulder and he lets out an animal howl, his face creased in terror. He totters, puts one hand to his elbow, the other to his testicles, and then the spud wrench swings again.

This time it catches Elijah’s knee, and in one smooth movement Treefrog kicks the knife away.

As Elijah falls, Treefrog plants his boot firmly into Elijah’s teeth and a monumental joy whips through him as Elijah’s head slams back against the broken door. Treefrog’s boot connects with Elijah’s crotch and the man accordions in massive pain and emits a groan that Treefrog thinks might reverberate off the walls and last forever in the tunnel.

He picks Elijah’s knife up, tucks it in his pocket, leans down, and calmly says, “Good morning, asshole.”

Elijah spits up some blood and turns his face away, coughing and moaning. Angela, watching from the tracks, pulls her hand from her ruined mouth and cheers. All the time, it feels to Treefrog that this is the first thing he has ever done in his life.

He slings her handbag up into the nest and climbs to the first catwalk easily. Removing his gloves for a better grip, he leans down to grab her by the wrist.