Colum McCann - This Side of Brightness

No, I ain’t sad.

I ain’t crying.

I said I ain’t.

And see here, see this — see — this is when I first done this. See, I’m thinking about murdering my hands and everything I touch — shit — I touch everything twice like this. Or this. Still do it sometimes, but not that much. Just habit now. But — back then — if I can’t touch it twice I go crazy, like someone’s gone hollowed out half my body. I went back to the ’scrapers but I weren’t doing much good, took me a long time to climb, my head’s going thump thump and I know they’re thinking about firing me. So, one night, I stayed up there on the top of the ’scraper — we were up to forty-seven floors then — with this friend of mine, Cricket. He gave the guards a few bucks so they’d leave us alone. It was cold, the stars were out. I was feeling terrible; my head was going thump thump thump thump. The steel was treacherous ’cause it had rained earlier and froze a little. The city was all lit up, like it is sometimes.

You see, to me it was like one of those photos where all the lights are blurry ’cause the shutter’s left on, know what I’m saying?

We went up the ladder, we was buzzing a little, we drank a couple of beers. Cricket kept saying, You must be out of your mind. But I was thinking about my grandfather and nothing was gonna stop me. We got to the decking and I went up one of the beams that goes like an X. No problem, but Cricket he’s a bit jittery on account of being a little buzzing. Eventually he came on up too, I never seen him climb so slow. I took the cigarettes outa my pocket.

Anyways, I lit one of them and tossed it in the air to the other end of the beam where Cricket was, but he kept missing them mostly. I didn’t have any candles, but you shoulda seen those little red ends going through the air. Once or twice Cricket caught one and he’d cup his hands around it, but most of them cigarettes fell right over the side of the building, caught by the nets down below, I suppose. But you shoulda seen those little red ends. Like this. I musta lit two packs. Flinging them through the air. And I sat on that beam all night long, and I ain’t ashamed to tell you that I cried like a baby. I just sat there and kept trying to throw those cigarettes all night long, ’cause it was the only thing I could think of.

And that was when I stamped a cigarette down. That was the first time, I s’pose.

Shit, yeah, it hurt but I didn’t feel it.

Burnt a little hole on the back of this hand, like a crater. Then this hand, before Cricket could stop me. He took ahold of me and he said, I’m sorry, man. Put his arms around me and said, It’s gonna be all right. Before morning we went home and Dancesca, she’s all frantic, she’s going crazy, sits me down, she’s all loving me and all, she put some of her poultice on my hand. She had this family poultice recipe.

Yeah, it’s like yellow healing stuff.

Oh, she got brown eyes and beautiful, looks a lot like you.

Nice teeth, yeah.

I told you we’ll get the candy.

Three in the morning maybe.

But Angie. Angela.

You shoulda seen those little red ends going through the air.

* * *

He watches the patterns the paper clips make. He straightens the bends fully out, holds the elongated metal over the flame from the gas stove.

The metal heats and reddens and he uses tiny pliers to bend the metal around. It curves very slightly, and he blows on it to let it cool and harden. Clarence Nathan swipes a hair back from his eyes. He must be careful; it is easy to break the paper clip. He uses the pliers to hold the clip over the gas flame, makes patient curves in the metal. When he is finished the clip looks like the body of a slinking snake. There are other patterns too: the shape of a boat, a tiny eye, a pyramid, a shovel.

Clarence Nathan moves away from the stove to the kitchen table — bare feet feeling the cold nailheads in the wooden floor — where he sits and smokes, watching the spirals of blue air above him. In the corner, a television sizzles with gray snow. All else is fabulously quiet. He lays the paper clips on the kitchen counter to cool, and when they are ready he heats them individually until they are red hot and glowing. He puts the clips to his arms and presses down on them with his fist until the pain shoots itself through him.

Closing his eyes, he clenches his teeth and the tendons in his neck pop and a massive roar comes from his throat. Dancesca has heard it often enough that she doesn’t even stir from the bedroom anymore.

His heart doesn’t feel in any way involved, only his body. The sensation of it. The deliciousness. He welcomes it, greets it: the body as his form, the pain as its content. His skin looks like a desert scape of these imprinted patterns, equally scorched on both sides of his body, burnt on with the curiosity of an onlooker.

He has even melted them into his feet, so that, at night, when he walks barefoot along the floor it looks as if these patterns are moving all over him. He tries to remember how many months it has been since Walker’s death — and if it is three, he decides that it’s four; and if it is five, he decides that it’s six; and if it is September, an odd month, he decides that it has become October.

Outside, when he walks on sidewalks, he always makes sure that his feet don’t touch the cracks. He counts as he walks; his footsteps end on even numbers. Occasionally he even retraces his steps just to get the number correct. Then he must go back and forth to make sure there is even pressure on his left and right foot. At the entrance to a grocery store, he steps up and steps down. The clerks watch him closely. After buying cigarettes, he says to them, “Thank you thank you.” He returns home to his paper clips. Continues to scrimshaw his torso.

Dancesca creates big dinners to punctuate the evening hush. He sits at the table and taps his forks against empty plates. Lenora asks him why he eats with two forks. He tells her that it’s a special game and she too begins it, until her mother whispers in her ear.

Later his daughter says, “Daddy, are you crazy?”

“Go to the bedroom, girl, right now,” says Dancesca.

She looks at Clarence Nathan and says, “She just gets these notions.”

At work the foremen have noticed something curious: he must touch everything with both hands. On his thirty-first birthday, in 1986, he insists that he is thirty. They have heard about the cigarettes. It has become a ritual now. They fire him and, in the unemployment office, he fills out the forms twice.

At home, he turns off the television set. He needs to turn the knob with his left hand for balance. But the knob won’t turn any more, so he switches the set on. Then turns it off again. Realizes that his right hand has been neglected. He reaches out for the knob once more. The screen flares to life.

On off on off on off.

On.

Off.

Until he can’t remember which was first. Was it on? Was it off? He grabs at his hair. He lies on the floor, puts on his boots, laces them equally tight, and then smashes the television with both feet. The glass splays. He reaches inside the set and is delighted to count an even number of shattered pieces. Taping them back together, he smashes his feet through the glass once more.

Clarence Nathan sits on the floor, rocking back and forth, his head in his hands.

In the morning he must prepare two cups of coffee. Drink them alternately. Paste butter on four slices of bread. Make sure the strawberry jam has an even number of seeds.

There is a gentle throbbing in his brain if he doesn’t portion himself out equally. Return and collection, return and collection.

In the room, there is something about the couch that makes him uncomfortable. He sees a ghost there and he avoids it.