Free Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann Page B

along the strand there. Up past the tower. Run along the wall. I wanted that sort of joy. Make it simple again. I was trying, really trying, to pray, get rid of my lust, return to the good, rediscover that innocence. Circles of circles. And when you go around in circles, brother, the world is very big, but if you plow straight ahead it’s small enough. I wanted to fall along the spokes to the center of the circle, where there was no movement. I can’t explain it, man. It was like I was staring at the ceiling, waiting for the sky. All this banging was still going on outside the door. Then hours of silence.
“At one time I heard Jazzlyn, you know, that voice of hers, like she just swallowed the Bronx, man, leaning in against the keyhole and screaming: ‘Okay! To hell with you, you dumbass cracker!’ It’s the only time I laughed. If only she knew. ‘To hell with you, you dumbass cracker, I’ll piss somewheres else!’
“Then they actually got the Guards in to bash down the door. And they come rushing in, flashing badges, guns drawn. They stop and stare. Looking at me, lying on the couch, the Bible over my face. And one cop is saying, ‘What’s going on here, man? What the hell is this? He’s not dead. He smells bad, but he’s not dead.’ I’m just lying there and I swipe the Book off my face and cover my eyes with my forearm. And Jazz comes charging in behind them, saying, ‘I gotta go, I gotta go.’ Then comes Tillie with her pink parasol. Then both of them came out and started shouting. ‘How come you keep the door locked, Corrie? Asshole! That’s mean and unusual punishment. That’s the honkypox, man!’ The Guards were standing there, open- mouthed. They couldn’t believe what was going on. One of them was wrapping a piece of gum tight around his finger. He kept winding it, like he wanted to strangle me. I’m sure they were thinking that they’d done this for nothing, for a bunch of working girls who just wanted to pee. They were not happy at all. Not at all. They wanted to give me a citation for wasting their time, but they couldn’t dream up anything. I said maybe they should give me one for losing my faith and then they thought I was really off my rocker. One of them said to me, ‘Look at this shithole—get a life, man!’ And it was just so simple, the way he said it, the young Guard, right in my face: ‘Get a life, man!’ He kicked over the flowerpot as he went out the door.
“Tillie and Angie and Jazzlyn and the girls threw a ‘not- dead’ party for me. They even bought me a cake. One candle. I had to blow it out. I was going to take it as a sign. But there were no signs. I went back down the nursing home and that night I asked Adelita if she’d mind just moving the blood around a little—that’s the way I said it, ‘Move the blood around a little, would you?’ She gave me that big cheerful smile and said that she was busy on her rounds, maybe she’d get to it later. I sat there, trembling with God, all my sorrows, bound up inside. And sure enough she came back a short while later. It was all very simple. I just stared at the dark of her hair. Couldn’t look in her eyes. She was rubbing my shoulder and the small of my back and even my calf muscles. I kept hoping maybe somebody would come in the door and find us, make a big stink, but nobody did. And I kissed her. And she kissed me back. I mean, how many men can say they’d rather be nowhere else in the world? That’s how I felt. That moment. That I wanted nothing but the here and now, and nowhere else. On earth as it is in heaven. That one moment. And then after a few days I started going to her house.”
“She’s got three kids, you said.”
“Two. And a husband who got killed down in Guatemala. Fighting. For, I don’t know, Carlos Arana Osorio or someone. A fascist of some sort. She hated him, the husband—she got caught up in this marriage young—and still she’s got his picture on the bookcase. For the kids to know