Colum McCann - This Side of Brightness

The ball zooms in and out from the wall.

Treefrog warms up, and there is nothing else on his mind except keeping the ball in the air, hitting underhand, overhand, from his chest, at his thigh, above his head, all simplicity, all precision, all control, in the tunnel, in the shaft of light, in the snow.

He maintains the rhythm perfectly, feeling the warmth slide through his body, its looseness, its generosity. A bead of sweat negotiates his underarm. He hits the ball too hard against a crack in the wall and it spins out of control, flies behind him, and lands on the second set of tracks. In the distance he hears a train, the 69 to Montreal, a rush of lights and metal. It comes loud loud louder and it is good night to the ball because the train is upon it and he doesn’t even turn around to watch; the ball will probably be carried way up the tunnel in the underdraft of a carriage or get squashed to nothing. The sound of the train fades away as it moves toward Harlem and beyond to Canada. He slaps his fist into the palm of his hand and hears a shout from behind him.

“Yo.”

Peering into the shafts of light that spill through the grates, he sees Elijah stepping out of the shadows at the far side of the tracks, a blanket pulled up over his hooded sweatshirt.

“Gimme a lighter.”

“Kiss my ass,” says Treefrog.

“Come on, man, gimme a lighter.”

“What for?”

“I’m freezing, gimme a lighter.”

“Your heater not working again?”

“Of course my heater’s working. I want to smoke a goddamn cigarette.”

Elijah pulls the hood away from his face, revealing a long red cut on his jawbone.

“What happened you?” asks Treefrog.

“Nothing.”

“Someone slice you?”

“What’s it to you, motherfucker?”

Treefrog shrugs. “Only asking.”

“Don’t ask. Nothing happened. Okay? Nothing. Gimme a lighter.”

Treefrog reaches for the second ball in his pocket and slices it sideways, making it spin off the wall at an angle. As he stretches out his arm to hit it, he chuckles. “What you gonna give me?”

“I’ll give you a smoke.”

“Three,” says Treefrog, and the ball is guided gently against the wall with the other hand.

“Two.”

“Four.”

“Okay, three, goddammit!”

“Show tell the barter man,” says Treefrog.

Elijah drops the blanket to the ground, delves down into his sweatshirt pocket, and takes out a softpack of menthols. He taps the pack and three cigarettes emerge.

Treefrog lets the ball go jittering through the gravel at strange angles, way down toward the six-foot-high mural of Martin Luther King. He takes out six plastic lighters from his coat pocket, arranges them on both his palms, and says, “Choose your poison, man.”

It’s all one swift motion and the orange neon lighter is grabbed from Treefrog and three cigarettes are gone from the pack and already Elijah is on his way back down toward his cubicle in the southern part of the tunnel.

Treefrog puts the cigarette in his mouth, flicks his lighter. He feels a clump of snow land on his cheek, and he says aloud for a second time, for symmetry, for equilibrium, “Underground snow.”

* * *

The first winter he came down it was so cold that his harmonica froze to his lips. He was sitting on the catwalk and hadn’t warmed the Hohner. It stuck to his mouth, and skin peeled away when he yanked the harmonica off.

Later, topside, he was caught stealing Chapstick from the pharmacy on Broadway. He tucked the small thin tube under his tongue to hide it, but a clerk saw and stood in front of him, pushed him backward. Treefrog tried to step around the man, but the clerk grabbed him by his long hair and yanked him into a display of cold medicine, the bottles of pills clattering to the ground. Treefrog stood up and broke the clerk’s nose with a single blow of his fist, but an off-duty officer came up behind him and put a gun to his temple and said, “Sonofabitch, don’t move.”

The gun felt cold against Treefrog’s head. He thought of how a bullet might sound to a dying man as it ricocheted through his skull, and he asked the cop to put the gun on the other side of his temple. But the cop just told him to kneel on the ground and put his hands in the air.

As he knelt, Treefrog spat the tube of Chapstick out on the floor. A small crowd had gathered to watch. The clerk picked up the tube with a piece of tissue paper. All the time Treefrog had the harmonica warming in his armpit.

When the uniformed cops came he couldn’t remember his real name and they shoved their nightsticks into his ribs, jabbed hard, searched him for weapons, and handcuffed him. The harmonica fell down his sleeve to the floor. They stamped down, and their black shoes crushed the Hohner. It was almost ruined; the metal was bowed down into the row of reeds, it made a sad silver lip. They asked him his name over and over again, and, with his arms stretched above his head, he kept shouting, “Treefrog, Treefrog, Treefrog, Treefrog!” Later, when he got the harmonica back — after two nights in the holding cell — it still smelled of his armpit. Not wanting to lick at his own body, he didn’t play the Hohner for a week.

* * *

Warm from playing handball, he takes off his coat and drops it on the gravel, then stretches out his arms like a man crucified. He looks up to the grate and lets the flakes fall into the cups of his filthy hands, where they melt. He rubs his fingers, freeing them of tunnel dust, brings his hands together, and washes his face with the snow water, letting some of it drip to his tongue. Then he scrubs the back of his neck and feels a cool droplet meander down the collars of his shirts and soak into the back of his thermal undershirt. It has been weeks since he had a wash. He rubs the cold water on his Adam’s apple and opens each of the shirts in succession. In one move he pulls the tight gray thermal over his head, throws it onto the heap of clothes near the tracks. His chest is scrimshawed with stab wounds and burns and scars.

So many mutilations of his body.

Hot paper clips, blunt scissors, pliers, cigarettes, matches, blades — they have all left their marks, the most prominent one on the right side of his belly. Treefrog once stuffed a man with a knife and it slid through the gap in his ribs; it was like puncturing a balloon, it slid in and slid out, the man let out a sad slow sigh, but it didn’t kill him — the man had stolen one of Treefrog’s cigarettes. That was way back in the bad days, the worst days, when Treefrog felt that he had to stab himself on the opposite side of the rib cage. On a New York City bus he punctured himself half an inch with his knife just to get the balance. He had to knock the end of the knife in with both fists. A peculiar warmth spilled over his belly, and blood ran all down the back of the bus. The driver called for assistance over the radio but Treefrog stumbled out the door, walked along Broadway, and lost himself in the neon of Times Square. Later, back in the tunnel, there was the terror of wondering whether he should balance the wound — should he stab himself on the left-hand side? — but he didn’t; he just pressed his thumb into his side and dreamed of the metal shaft entering his flesh.

He rubs the water over his upper torso, though it’s cold cold cold cold. His skin tingles and tightens and his nipples stand hard. He brings the snow to his veined forearms and underarms, thinks for a moment about venturing down to his crotch, decides against it.

Grabbing his clothes, he crosses the tracks. The tunnel, in width and height, is the size of an airplane hangar.

Treefrog jumps up a pillar and grabs a handhold that he has fashioned with a chisel, puts his foot between the pillar and the wall, heaves himself up with both hands, and he is on the first catwalk. With a lithe movement he is on the second, placing one foot carefully in front of the other, flicking one of his lighters as he goes, first with the right hand and then with the left, a huge cheap flame around him. His hair falls across his eyes so he can hardly see.