Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,18
that’s what I thought: Nigger.
This place would ruin me: how did Corrigan stand it?
I wandered the neighborhood, hands down deep in my pockets, not on the pavement, but at the edge of parked cars, an altered perspective. Taxis brushed by, close to my hip. The wind blew the smell of the subways up through the traffic. A hard, musty waft.
I went to the church on St. Ann’s. Up the broken steps, into the vestibule, past the holy-water font, into the dark. I was half expecting to see him there, head bowed, praying, but no.
Small red electric candles could be lit at the back of the church. I dropped a quarter inside and heard the deep rattle against the emptiness. My father’s ancient voice in my ear: If you don’t want the truth, don’t ask for it.
Corrigan came home to the apartment late that night. I left the door unlocked but he came in with a screwdriver anyway, began to take all the screws from the chains and locks. “Job to do.” He was lethargic and his eyes were rolling around in his head and I should have known then, but I didn’t recognize it. He knelt on the floor, eye-level with the doorknob. The underside of his sandals were worn down. The sole had faded away, a little bubble of flat rubber. His carpenter pants were tied around his waist with a length of cord. They wouldn’t have stayed up on his hips otherwise. The long-sleeved shirt he wore was tight to his body and the bones of his ribcage were like some odd musical instrument.
He worked intently but he was using a flathead screwdriver for a Phillips head bolt and he had to prop the screwdriver sideways and angle it into the grooves.
I had already packed my bag and was ready to go, find a room, get a bartending job, anything, just get out of there. I pulled the couch into the center of the room under the ceiling fan, folded my arms, waited. The blades couldn’t cut through the heat. For the first time ever I noticed that Corrigan had a bald spot beginning in the back of his hair. I wanted to make some crack about it being a monkish thing but there was nothing between us anymore, no words or glances. He toiled away at the locks. A couple of screws fell on the floor. I watched the beads of sweat come down the back of his neck.
He rolled up his sleeve absentmindedly, and then I knew.
—
IF YOU THINK YOU know all the secrets, you think you know all the cures. I suppose it wasn’t too much of a surprise to me that Corrigan was scoring heroin: he had always done what the least of them had done. It was the perverse mantra of what he believed. He wanted to hear his own footsteps to prove that he trod the ground. There was no getting away from it. It was what he had done in Dublin too, though a different quarry of recklessness. He was standing on the little ledge of reality he had left, but it seemed to me that he wasn’t getting high, just getting level. He had an affinity with pain. If he couldn’t cure it, he took it on. He was shooting smack because he couldn’t stand the thought of others being left alone with the same terror.
He left his sleeve rolled up for an hour or so while he dealt with the locks. The bruises inside his arm were a deep blue. When he was finished, the door didn’t even click closed, just swung on the hinges.
“There,” he said.
He went into the bathroom, where I was sure I could hear him strapping an elastic band around his arm. He came out, long-sleeved again.
“Now leave the friggin’ door alone,” he said.
He fell soundlessly into bed. I was sure I wouldn’t sleep, but I woke to the usual thrum of the Deegan. The outside world was dependable. Engine noise and tire song. Huge metal sheets had been laid over some potholes. They boomed deeply when a truck ran over them.
It was an easy enough choice to stay: it wasn’t as if Corrigan was ever going to ask me to leave. I was up and shaved early in the morning to accompany him on his rounds. I stirred him from the blankets. He had a faint nosebleed and the blood was dark against his stubble. He turned away. “Put on the tea, will you?”