Colum McCann - This Side of Brightness

He opens his eyes and looks at Angela as she sleeps.

Tenderly, Treefrog touches the side of her eye where blood still oozes from the cut. He cleans it once more and then retreats back into his own pungent darkness. He blows on the fire to rekindle it. Only a small amount of rice and some cat food in the Gulag. He takes out the rice, apportions it in a cup, washes out the saucepan, and wipes it with the flap of his second shirt, the cleanest one. He stirs the rice with his finger, waits for it to cook, and then wakes Angela with a kiss to her cheek. She eats hungrily and, when finished, says, “What’re we gonna do, Treefy?”

Treefrog looks at her and shrugs.

She reaches down into her coat pocket and unfolds the piece of graph paper he has drawn of her face, and she looks at it, touches her cheek, and says, “I bet them mountains is even bigger now.”

“I could make a map of you without any bruises,” he says.

“Why d’ya make maps, man?” she asks.

“I make maps of everywhere. I even make maps of my nest.”

“Why?”

“In case God comes calling.”

“What?”

“So He can follow the contours all the way back here.”

“You a Jesus jumper or something?”

“No. It’s just so He can find me.”

She turns in the sleeping bag and sighs. “You’re weird.” Touching her loose tooth, she bites the top of a long thumbnail off with the other front tooth. She uses the slice of nail to pick out the remaining plaque in her lower teeth. “I used to have the nicest teeth,” she says. “Everyone said I had the nicest teeth.”

“You still got nice teeth.”

“Don’t lie.”

“I ain’t lying.”

He watches her through the candlelight as she spits the slice of thumbnail away. “Treefy?” she says. “I’m thirsty. I wanna get some candy.”

And all at once Treefrog knows that this will not last, that soon she will be gone, that she will not remain in his nest, that there is nothing he can do about it; she will leave as quickly as she came. Knees to his chest, he pulls the blankets tight, feels the dull thump of his heart along his kneecap. His liver gives out gentle jabs of pain. He asks her for a cigarette and she rumbles in her handbag, comes up empty-handed.

“Shit,” she says. “I’m gonna go see Elijah.”

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Blue washcloth,” he says.

They remain in silence for almost an hour, and he wonders if perhaps they will remain like this forever. Maybe someone will come down and find their bones, bleached high in his nest. If he had a clock he could put a value on all this silence. One cent for every twenty minutes. Three cents an hour. Seventy-two cents for a day. He could be a millionaire by the end of his life. He rocks the chair from side to side and flicks a long hair out of his eyes.

But suddenly he sits up and claps his hands together, reaches down into his pocket, and takes out his Swiss Army knife.

“Watch this,” he says to her.

Treefrog touches his beard, runs his fingers along it. He slips open the scissors, sits on the edge of the bed, and begins. He is surprised at the way the cold chews at his chin when he takes off the first chunk of beard.

Angela says, “Man, you look younger.”

He smiles and from the middle of his chin he works his way up to the left sideburn, continues on the opposite side. The hair falls down into his lap, and he looks down at the strands and says, “I remember you.” The scissors are dull; he can feel his cheeks tearing and stretching. Even so, he continues to cut the beard tight to his skin. If he had a razor he could shave even closer, get down to the very element of himself, maybe even cut all the way to the bone. As he works, he tells Angela that he sometimes carves his real name in the snow, topside, so he doesn’t forget: Clarence Nathan Walker.

His thumb and forefinger work the tiny scissors, and he doesn’t even have to switch the red-cased knife from hand to hand. When his beard is gone, he removes his wool hat and touches his hair.

“Aw, man, not your hair, I like your hair.”

“Just a minute.”

To save the blade he hacks with a different knife, a sharp kitchen knife, and throws the long tangles of hair into the fire, smells it burning. He goes at it again with the scissors, until the top of his scalp feels tight and shorn.

“Come here,” says Angela.

“Meet me,” he replies.

He goes across to the bed and nestles in beside Angela, pulls the blankets over them both. He keeps his clothes and overcoat on. She flips around to face him and her hair touches his head and he reaches his tongue out and he can taste it, all the subterranean filth, but he doesn’t mind, just keeps his tongue at her hair, and she smiles and touches the stubble on his face.

“You’re cute, Treefy, you’re really cute.”

She puts her arms around him, and he nudges up against the closed sleeping bag. Treefrog breathes in deep and makes an X of his arms across his chest and pushes his body in further. She rolls in the sleeping bag and moans. He leans down to untwist the bottom of the bag where her feet have tangled and — when her breathing eases — he moves so that the whole length of his body is against her. The tunnel is lit with the headlights of a train and his nest is flooded with the blaze of oncoming lights and he moves in cadence with the clack clack clack of carriages against the rail.

The light from the passing carriages splays out moving shadows, a webbed pulse against the wall of his nest. He coughs quietly as he hauls the scent of her down. Lifting up the flap ends of the blankets, he removes his gloves and holds the zip of the sleeping bag. She turns a little, and a dryness settles in his throat as he inches the zip down, tooth by tooth.

Opening the bag down to the high part of her stomach, he reaches, feels the warmth of Angela’s fur coat.

“Treefy,” she says.

The coat is cheap; he knows from the imitation plastic around the buttons where his hands roam. With the top three buttons open, he fingers the fourth, and then he relaxes. He opens her three blouses, spreads them out. His hand touches the thermal shirt and he is aware of the soft, beautiful roundness of her flesh underneath. He hears Angela’s hand rising — it swishes against the sleeping bag — and her hand is clasped against his and she guides his hand in under the thermal shirt and there is the shock of his hand on skin and she says, “Your hand’s cold, man.” He pulls away, warms his hand by rubbing it on his own skin, and works his way under the thermal once more. The fabric of the shirt is tight, not much room to maneuver. Angela guides his hand, and the thermal shirt rides way up her belly. She drags the shirt up over her breasts. His fingers hover close to her nipples and his hand moves as if to cup her, but he keeps it hovering above her breast, then lets it retreat to touch her belly button, and he can hear the slightest wheezing into the dirty pillow as he caresses her.

“Treefy,” she whispers again.

“Clarence Nathan,” he says.

And then she says, “Ouch” when his hands touch her ribs.

Angela keeps her hand pasted over his, high on her stomach, fingers meandering, and he can feel the pounding of her heart — she is the first woman he has touched like this in years — the zip of adrenaline through him, the lightness of thought, the levity of blood, the lavish erection. His hand makes circles to the side of her breast but he doesn’t touch it — he can’t touch it — and he leaves his hand to hover above the bumped landscape of her nipple. “Hold on, Treefy,” she whispers. She fumbles as she removes her sweatpants and underwear and lies back in the sleeping bag. Her head touches the pillow and she smiles up at him and he moves his body slightly — take it easy, don’t crash — and she clasps his hand against her breast, and for a moment Treefrog feels no need even for balance, and she doesn’t say a word, not a single word, nothing, she just takes hold of his shoulders and pulls him closer and he squeezes her breast — he has forgotten all — and then he is closer and she has unzipped him and she is warm and he moves within her and she moans in all the vast agonies of a woman on the border of both boredom and some ferocious human passion.