Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,19
When he stretched, he touched the wooden crucifix on the wall. It swung back and forth on its nail. There was a light patch where the paint was not discolored. The faint imprint of the cross. He reached up to steady it, muttered something about God being ready to move sideways.
“Leaving today?” he asked.
The rucksack was packed on the floor.
“I was thinking I’d stay a couple more days.”
“No problem, brother.”
He combed his hair in the fragment of broken mirror, sprayed on some deodorant. At least he was keeping up pretenses. We took the lift instead of the stairs.
“A miracle,” said Corrigan as the door sighed open, and the little moons of light shone on the inside panel. “It’s working.”
Outside, we crossed the small patch of grass in front of the projects, among the broken bottles. All of a sudden, being around him felt right for the first time in years. That old dream of purpose. I knew what I had to do—bring him on the long walk back towards a sensible life.
Among the early-morning hookers I felt strangely charmed. Corr-gan. Corr-i-gun. Corry—gan. It was, after all, my last name too. It was a strange taking of ease. Their bodies did not embarrass me as much as when I’d watched them from afar. Coyly, they covered their breasts with their arms. One had dyed her hair a bright red. Another wore sparkling silver eyeliner. Jazzlyn, in her neon swimsuit, positioned the strap over her nipples. She took a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled smoke in expert streams from nose and mouth. Her skin shone. In another life she could have been aristocratic. Her eyes went to the ground as if she was looking to find something she had dropped. I felt a softening for her, a desire.
They kept up a wavery pitch of banter. My brother gazed across at me and grinned. It was like Corrigan whispering in my ear to give his approval to all I couldn’t understand.
A few cars cruised past. “Get outta here,” said Tillie. “We got business to accomplish.” She said it like it was a stock exchange transaction. She nodded to Jazzlyn. Corrigan pulled me into the shadows.
“They all use smack?” I said.
“Some of them, yeah.”
“Nasty stuff.”
“The world tries them, then shows them a little joy.”
“Who gets it for them? The smack?”
“No idea,” he said as he took a small silver pocket watch out from his carpenter pants. “Why?”
“Just wondering.”
The cars rumbled above us. He slapped my shoulder. We drove to the nursing home. A young nurse was waiting on the steps. She stood up and waved brightly as the van pulled in. She looked South American— small and beautiful with a clout of black hair and dark eyes. Something fierce shot in the air between them. He loosened around her, his body more pliable. He put his hand on the small of her back, and they both disappeared inside the electronic door.
In the glove box of the van I looked for evidence: needles, packets, drug paraphernalia, anything. It was empty except for a well-worn Bible. In the inside flap Corrigan had written scattered notes to himself: The wish to make desire null. To be idle in the face of nature. Pursue them and beg for forgiveness. Resistance is at the heart of peace. When he was a boy he had seldom even folded down the pages of his Bible—he had always kept it pristine. Now the days were stacked up against him. The writing was spidery and he had underlined passages in deep-black ink. I recalled the myth that I had once heard as a university student—thirty-six hidden saints in the world, all of them doing the work of humble men, carpenters, cobblers, shepherds. They bore the sorrows of the earth and they had a line of communication with God, all except one, the hidden saint, who was forgotten. The forgotten one was left to struggle on his own, with no line of communication to that which he so hugely needed. Corrigan had lost his line with God: he bore the sorrows on his own, the story of stories.
I watched as the short nurse negotiated the ramp with the wheelchairs. She had a tattoo at the base of her ankle. It crossed my mind that she might be the one supplying him heroin, but she looked so cheerful in the hot slanting sun.
“Adelita,” she said, extending her hand out to me through the van window. “Corrigan’s told me all about you.”