Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,68
myself standing with a box of the late John A. Corrigan’s possessions. They consisted of a pair of black trousers that had been slit up the side with hospital scissors, a black shirt, a stained white undershirt, underwear, and socks in a plastic bag, a religious medal, a pair of dark sneakers with the soles worn through, his driver’s license, a ticket for parking illegally on John Street at 7:44 A.M. on Wednesday, August 7, a packet of rolling tobacco, some papers, a few dollars, and, oddly, a key chain with a picture of two young black children on it. There was also a baby-pink lighter, which seemed at odds with all the other things. I didn’t want the box. I had taken it out of embarrassment, out of a sense of duty to my lie, an obligation to save face, and perhaps even to save my hide. I had begun to think that perhaps leaving the scene of the crime was manslaughter, or at least some sort of felony, and now there was a second crime, hardly momentous, but it sickened me. I wanted to leave the box on the steps of the hospital and run away from myself. I had set all these events in motion and all they got for me was a handful of a dead man’s things. I was clearly out of my depth. Now it was time to go home, but I had taken on this man’s bloodstained baggage. I stared at the license. He looked younger than my freeze-frame memory had made him. A pair of oddly frightened eyes, looking way beyond the camera.
—And the girl?
—She was D.O.A., said the woman like it was a traffic signal.
She looked up at me and adjusted her glasses on her nose.
—Anything else?
—No thanks, I stammered.
The only things I could really jigsaw together was that John A. Corrigan—born January 15, 1943, five foot ten, 156 pounds, blue eyes—was probably the father of two young black children in the Bronx. Perhaps he had been married to the girl who was thrown through the windshield. Maybe the girls in the key chain were his daughters, grown now. Or perhaps it was something clandestine, as Blaine had said, he could’ve been having an affair with the dead woman.
A photocopy of some medical information was folded at the bottom of the box: his sign-out chart. The scrawl was almost indecipherable. Cardiac tamponade. Clindamycin, 300 mg. I was for a moment out on the highway again. The fender touched the back of his van and I was spinning now in his big brown van. Walls, water, guardrails.
The scent of his shirt rose up as I walked out into the fresh air. I had the odd desire to distribute his tobacco to the smokers hanging around outside.
A crowd of Puerto Rican kids were hanging around in front of the Pontiac. They wore colored sneakers and wide flares and had cigarette packets shoved under their T-shirt sleeves. They could smell my nerves as I sidled through. A tall, thin boy reached over my shoulder and pulled out the plastic bag of Corrigan’s underwear, gave a fake shriek, dropped them to the ground. The others laughed a pack laugh. I bent down to pick up the bag but felt a brush of a hand against my breast.
I drew myself as tall as I possibly could and stared in the boy’s eyes.
—Don’t you dare.
I felt so much older than my twenty-eight years, as if I’d taken on decades in the last few days. He backed off two paces.
—Only looking.
—Well, don’t.
—Gimme a ride.
—Pontiac! shouted one boy. Poor Old Nigger Thinks It’s A Cadillac!
—Gimme one, lady.
More giggles.
Over his shoulder I could see a hospital security guard making his way toward us. He wore a kufi and loped as he came across, talking into a radio. The kids scattered and ran down the street, whooping.
—You all right, ma’am? said the security guard.
I was fumbling with the keys at the door of the car. I kept thinking the guard was going to walk around the front and see the smashed headlight and put two and two together, but he just guided me out into the traffic. In the rearview mirror I saw him picking up the plastic bag of underwear I’d left on the pavement. He held them in the air a moment and then shrugged, threw them in the garbage can at the side of the road.
I turned the corner toward Second Avenue, weeping.