Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,14

just like their wheelchairs. Corrigan drove at a snail’s pace so as not to bounce them around. “You drive like a pussy,” said Albee from the backseat. Corrigan laid his head against the steering wheel and laughed, but kept his foot on the brake.

Cars behind us beeped. A hellish ruckus of horns. The air was stifled with ruin. “Move it, man, move it!” Albee shouted. “Move the goddamn van!”

Corrigan took his foot off the brake and slowly guided the van around to the playground at St. Mary’s, where he wheeled the old folk out into whatever bits of shade he could find. “Fresh air,” he said. The men sat rooted like Larkin poems. The old women looked shaken, heads nodding in the breeze, watching the playground. It was mostly black or Hispanic kids, zooming down the slides or swinging on the monkey bars.

Albee managed to wheel himself into the corner, where he took out sheets of paper. He bent over them and said not another word, scratching on the paper with a pencil. I hunkered down beside him.

“What you doing there, friend?”

“None of your goddamn business.”

“Chess, is it?”

“You play?”

“Right on.”

“You rated?”

“Rated?”

“Oh, get the fuck outta here—you’re a pussy too.”

Corrigan winked at me from the edge of the playground. This was his world and he plainly loved it.

Lunch had been made for them in the old folks’ home, but Corrigan went across the road to the local bodega to buy them extra potato crisps, cigarettes, a cold beer for Albee. A yellow awning. A bubblegum machine sat triple-chained to the shutters. A dustbin was overturned at the corner. There had been a garbage strike earlier that spring and still it wasn’t all cleaned up. Rats ran along the street gutters. Young men in sleeveless tops stood malevolently in the doorways. They knew Corrigan, it seemed, and as he disappeared inside he gave them a series of elaborate handshakes. He spent a long time inside and came out clutching large brown paper bags. One of the hoodlums back-slapped him, grabbed his hand, drew him close.

“How d’you do that?” I asked. “How d’you get them to talk to you?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“It just seems, I don’t know, they’re tough, y’know”

“Far as they’re concerned, I’m just a square.”

“You’re not worried? You know, a gun, or something, a switchblade?”

“Why would I be?”

Together we loaded the old folk up in the van. He revved the engine and drove to the church. There had been a vote among the old folk, the church as opposed to the synagogue. It was daubed in graffiti—whites, yellows, reds, silvers. TAGS 173. GRACO 76. The stained-glass windows had been broken with small stones. Even the cross on top was tagged. “The living temple,” said Corrigan. The elderly Jewish man refused to get out. He sat, head down, saying nothing, skipping through the notes in his book. Corrigan opened the back of the van and slipped him an extra beer over the seat.

“He’s all right, our Albee,” said Corrigan as he strolled away from the back of the van. “All he does is work on those chess problems all day long. Used to be a grandmaster or something. Came from Hungary, found himself in the Bronx. He sends his games off in the post somewhere. Does about twenty games all at once. He can play blindfolded. It’s the only thing that keeps him going.”

He helped the others out of the van and we wheeled them one by one towards the entrance. “Let’s walk the plank.” There were a series of broken steps at the front but Corrigan had stashed two long pieces of wood around the side, near the sacristy. He laid the planks parallel to each other and guided the chairs up. The wood lifted in the air with the weight of the wheelchairs, and for a moment they looked like they were bound for the sky. Corrigan pushed them forward and the planks slapped back down. He had the look of a man at ease. A shine in the corners of his eyes. You could see the gone boy in him, the nine-year-old back in Sandy-mount.

He left the old folk waiting by the holy-water font, until they were all lined up, ready to go.

“My favorite moment of the day, this,” he said. He crossed over into the cool dark of the church, rolled them to whatever spot they wanted, some in the rear pews, some to the sides.

An old Irish woman was brought up to the very front, where she wrapped