by Colum McCann
Eleanor gets an afternoon shift in a defense plant. Sometimes she brings home a couple of bullets for Walker’s favorite trick. He tells the children the history of the trick, and the history of it exaggerates itself. But, when Walker demonstrates, he is too slim and the bullets keep falling out of his navel, delighting the kids.
Three years older than the century—too old to fight—Walker collects rubber tires and scrap steel for the war effort. He goes around the neighborhood and roars, “Victory scrap! Victory scrap!” He hangs a homemade flag for the 369th Regiment out his window and tells stories to his son about the first Colored pilots to wing their way over the beachheads in Anzio. His hands, though bitten by rheumatism, make great sweeping motions in the air as he talks of the airmen and their fabulous planes. When the 369th returns there is a party in Harlem, and bunting flaps with bravado over the streets. Trumpets are blown. Ticker tape whitens the pavements and shouts ring loud. Walker leans out of his window and sees his son dance through the collected tires, feet stepping quickly, pure motion. He remains at the window for much of the evening, watching his son, all love, all pride, all fatherly envy for his youth.
chapter 7
we have all been here before
He thinks about inviting Angela up to his place, but a couple of years ago, in his second summer underground, he brought a girl to his nest and she froze with vertigo. A leg either side of the narrow catwalk, she sat and wept. Runnels through her makeup. He had to wrap his arms around her and then guide her down the catwalk like a stubborn mule. She wore tight black jeans and a pink tank top shorn off at the rib cage showing a silver earring protruding from her belly button. Halfway along the beam she froze again, glanced down at the tracks, and screamed.
Treefrog looked at her and was reminded of the idea of wild animals caught in traps; he wondered if she would bite her own heart out and limp away lopsided.
After an hour of coaxing he lifted her to the ground. She leaned against him, trembling. A run of blood appeared at her teeth where she had chewed her upper lip. He didn’t want to touch her after that, though he’d paid twenty-five dollars up front and he’d been waiting for months for a girl, saved up all his extra money. He hadn’t had a woman since Dancesca, back in the good days, the best of days. When the girl was gone—when she left the tunnel and was far away, back on the streets—he crawled along and put his nose close to the beam and sniffed the catwalk and breathed her in and she smelled good.
* * *
The warmth of the library on 42nd Street and the vast staircases and the many-bulbed chandeliers and the strangeness of electric light and the pleasure of a shit over porcelain in the second-floor bathroom, though the toilet paper is cheap and a little rough to the touch. At the basin, Treefrog lets the hot water cleanse his hands and face. He feels good walking through the corridors, past the showcases of books and into the study rooms, sometimes closing his eyes just for practice, never bumping into people. Books everywhere, fabulous books, even engineering journals, which he sometimes steals, but it’s too cold today to think of acquisitions.
Instead, Treefrog makes his way to the third floor, where he fills in a slip for a tunnel-building book—he knows the author and call number by heart. He waits in the long pew until the number flashes on the screen above his head.
“Thank you, friend,” he says to the young man who hands him the book.
The third floor is always warmest. He takes a seat in the center of the giant reading room, opens the book, but doesn’t read it, just leans back in his chair, warms his hands under the table lamp, and stares up at the fabulous universe of the ceiling, the faded clouds, the cherubs, the flowers, the vines, the rosettes, the acanthus leaves. He takes off his blue wool cap, lets his hair fall around him, counts the panels in the ceiling, their perfect symmetry. Great men must have put together the ceiling once, carving the intricacies, using tiny scalpels to add the twists to the cornices, chiseling form out of wood with slow and brutal patience, using the mathematic skill in their hands to animate their work. He tells himself that he would like to make a map of the ceiling, re-create it on graph paper.
An Asian girl, too polite to move away from the opposite side of the desk, looks up when he takes off his coat. He knows that he smells and he wants to tell the girl, I have my pride, Sister Asia.
He shuffles in the puddle of melt at his feet, looking furtively at her from under his hair.
Treefrog has seen men in the library take out their penises and flail them beneath the table—not homeless men, either—fumbling first with their flies and then delicately letting their members flop out. They look down as if they’re about to speak into a microphone and then they change their gaze, stare intently into books as they begin to stroke themselves, so adept that the rest of their bodies hardly even quake. Once he saw a businessman licking semen off his hand—he caught Treefrog’s eye as he licked and grinned. Treefrog had a pair of scissors in his pocket. He fingered it gently, held it up, and the businessman scurried out of the library.
He clamps his arms down and closes tight on his armpits to trap the scent of his body, puts his hands between his knees. Sister Asia is so lovely: her blue blouse is buttoned high and her spectacles are gold and her eyes are brown and she has a full red mouth with a glisten of Vaseline over dry lips. He lifts his head and smiles at her, but she stares into her book, adjusts her eyeglasses on her nose. Perhaps she caught a whiff of him when he leaned across.
Maybe he should pay a visit to the welfare hotel off Riverside, just breeze his way up the stairs to the bathroom. Scrub himself down to nothing, maybe even shave his long beard, then slash at his reflection in the mirror: black man white man red man brown man American.
* * *
His laces open, his feet unswelling in the shoes, the gloves relaxing around his fingers, his hat not quite so tight around his head.
* * *
Down the stairs and out through the revolving door, opening his overcoat to show the security guard that he has no books. He feels the weight of a spud wrench in his pocket.
It’s dark now and Treefrog huddles under the portico, counting out his money. Eighteen dollars forty-seven cents, and he drops one of the pennies to the snow to make the total an even forty-six. He walks down the steps and sticks out his gloved hands to capture a few snowflakes. One of these days the snow will stop and he will be able to sell some of his books up on Broadway, make a few dollars, perhaps enough for a little more ganja from Faraday to see himself through.
Past the statues of the lions, hooded with white, along Fifth Avenue onto 42nd Street, into Bryant Park.
Some poor bum is lying under a green bench, not even shivering; maybe he’s dead. The moon up above him like the face of a bloated drunk. Treefrog hunkers down beside the man. “Heyyo,” he whispers loudly. Not a stir. “Heyyo.” He lifts up the end of the blanket and begins to unlace the man’s shoes. Leather, and no holes either. Pity they aren’t a size nine. The shoe comes off easily, and the man just rolls a little on his side. All the topside bums are stupid enough to keep their money under the insoles of their shoes. Treefrog lifts up the sweaty flap. Goddamn, just five dollars. He puts it to his nose and smells. Enough for another small bottle. Robin Treefrog Hood. Steal from the poor to give to the poor to give to the liver.
He leaves the shoe half dangling on the bum’s foot. At the edge of the park he throws three pebbles at the man, hits him with the third, wakes him. The man jumps up and looks around, but Treefrog disappears behind the bushes and hops over the wall. Just wake the poor fool so that he doesn’t get his feet frostbitten. Sorry, brother. Won’t do it again. That’s a promise. But there was probably twenty dollars in the other shoe anyway.
Out of Bryant Park. Along toward the Times Square subway. Down the iced piss-slick steps of the station. He vaults the turnstile. Why pay to enter the corridors of your own house?
* * *
Lifting the edge of his wool cap and folding it an inch above his ears, he shuffles on the
platform among the commuters; they are swollen with shopping bags. Treefrog watches as an old woman sniffs at the air and tightens her grip on her handbag. She has gray hair, dark skin, muck-brown eyes. The bones in her face look like they could rattle. Her coat is thin at the elbows. Clutching the handbag, her fingers are long and slender and worked. She sniffs the air again, her lips trembling slightly, and her hand tightens its hold on her purse. He has seen this happen often enough to let it slide by. But there is something about her: the coat, the eyes, the fingers. And all at once he would like to reach out to her. He would like to say, Please. He would like to tell her something very ordinary. Treefrog reaches into his pocket, and his fingers crumple the stolen five-dollar bill. The old lady flicks another quick look at him, and then she puts the sleeve of her coat to her nose. She flips the handbag around to the other side of her body. He breathes hard. Begins to rock, ever so minutely. His knees bend, buckle, unbuckle. She looks again. She takes one step. He wants to say, No. She takes another step. He stops his rocking, watches her. She tries to be nonchalant as she steps away, but her movement is flagrant. He says aloud, “Please.” She pretends she doesn’t hear him. He says again, “Please.” She moves out of sight, is swallowed behind pillars. He closes his eyes. When the train is gone, Treefrog remains alone on the platform. He opens his eyes, tightens his fist on the five-dollar bill, and then walks up the stairs in the solitary abandonment of rush hour. From warmth to cold, he thinks, cold to warmth.
* * *
Burma Road. Sheets of steam from the underground pipes. Treefrog moves through the metropolis of cloud. The face of the woman in the subway station follows him. The pipes are thick and gray and hot to the touch. Sodium lights on the wall emit blueness, giving the steam the color of a new bruise. He pushes his hands through the air, and even the air is hot. He has only been down here once before, in this weedlot of steel, four floors beneath Grand Central, the heart of the heart of the city. The ceilings are low, the corridors narrow, the floor dripworn from the steam pipes. It is called Burma Road because of the heat—the words are scrawled in graffiti at the rictus of the steam tunnels. He knows full well that men and women live down here and he must be careful. He is a pinchbeck arrival among them, a man who still lives in some modicum of light. He has seen them, the truly damned. They live crouched under platforms strewn with clothes, or high on steel girders, or in hidden cubbyholes, or buried underneath broken pipes. Wounded men and women living in their lazaret of hopelessness. There are seven floors of tunnels altogether—and he has heard of murders and stabbings down here. But Treefrog is comfortable now in his shame, and he walks with small broken strides.
He opens his overcoats as he goes. Reaching up to touch his beard, he feels the droplets of water that have settled themselves upon it.
The corridor of Burma Road widens where the pipes meet—thin tubes in the air and thicker larger ones low to the ground—all of them hissing and moaning like some aberrant hospital.
A huge wide emptiness seeps into Treefrog’s stomach, and he feels the eyes of that old woman still following him, carving their way through him. His footsteps are loud and echoing. He swipes at sounds in the air. Rapping his knuckles on a pipe, he can hear the vibration, the movement of the noise through water, through steam, through air, maybe all the way up into the city. He comes to the end of the corridor and scales down a metal ladder beyond the CAUTION: OFFICIAL PERSONNEL ONLY sign. The ladder is slippy with wetness but he takes it easily, jumps the final three rungs. He stands in a larger room twelve feet below, where dozens of pipes meet and flow. The steam billows out and forms great clouds that hang and then disperse and drip down toward the ground.
The first time he came here he was with Elijah, who was stealing copper from the tunnel wires. Elijah had stood under the pipes, with steam around his feet, and then he disappeared and left Treefrog alone. It was as if he had vanished into the steam. It took Treefrog half a day to make his way out through the labyrinth, and the domed ceiling of Grand Central had greeted him like a sunrise.
Now Treefrog stands and stares at the room. Water falls down from the filthy pipes like fabulous rain suddenly gracious. Machinery groans. Electric light leaks in and is then arrested so that it paints the outside of the steam.
He takes off his clothes, boots first, then his coats, his jeans, his shirts, his underwear, and moves naked into the sodium-blue clouds. Water drips hot on his skin. He wishes he had soap and shampoo. It is only when he reaches up to his hair that he realizes he has left his blue hat on. He tosses it out of the steam. It is the first time he has been fully naked in ages. The water welts his skin, and he throws his head back and lets the drips wedge themselves down around his closed eyelids, the lovely viciousness of the way the drops thump their heat into him. “Fuck!” he shouts. “Fuck!” He rubs at himself with ferociousness, cleaning his toes, the back of his heel, his shins, bringing his hands upward along his calves and thighs. His penis and testicles are already raw from the heat of the water but he keeps on going, ferreting away in his navel, his ass, his armpits, rubbing the burning water over his chest, the heat pounding down on him, ecstasy, hypnosis, swiping his hands through the steam until he sees her. At first she looks like a shop-window dummy, but then she moves minutely and peers in, still holding her handbag. She allows herself a little embarrassed chuckle as she wipes the vapor away from her wrinkled face. She looks at him and steps forward, fully clothed, into the torrid mist. She sniffs at the air and nods now with approval. Treefrog cups his hands over himself and hangs his head down to his chest, the carnival shape moving around him. There is sudden laughter and Treefrog joins in. His forehead creases and his mouth opens so wide that he can feel the steam burning at his throat and he keeps on laughing. He reaches out to take the hand of the vision and she comes forward until he notices that—right at the edge of the clouds—something real, something human, is staring at him, no movement except for the flickering whites of the eyes.
Treefrog steps out of the steam. He hears a rustling movement, the slap of shoes. He follows the figure, moving quickly now. He hears the sound of heavy breathing. Treefrog reaches the ladder, scales it. The curious shape is already running down along Burma Road, disappearing, laughing out loud. Treefrog remains on the ladder. “Fuck!” he shouts. He knows that his clothes and boots will be gone, so he doesn’t even check, just watches the fading form. But—when the figure is gone—Treefrog descends to the room, and his clothes are still there, even the money in the pockets of his jeans. He looks back at the ladder and wedges his knuckles into his eye sockets and steps back into the steam once more. The subway woman has vanished, and there’s nothing else to do but wash himself clean.
* * *
When Lenora was a baby he would bathe her in the kitchen sink. He would fold a towel and place it beneath her head. Her feet would kick a little and warm water would splash out. He’d dampen a cloth, soften it with soap, and rub it over her. She would cry out until he took a jug of water and poured it from a height. Dancesca sometimes helped him. When they were finished they would swaddle the child in a towel that had been specially warmed over a radiator. Later, they’d gently rock Lenora in their laps while the television flared in the background.
* * *
The wet hat chills his head as he emerges onto 42nd Street in the night. He decides to walk all the way uptown, searching the garbage for cans and bottles as he goes. The snow has stopped but the streets are bright with whiteness. He wears his sunglasses. Not many people drinking sodas in wintertime, but he collects enough bottles to redeem them for two dollars and forty cents. Combining all his money, he buys himself a couple of cans of ravioli and the largest bottle of gin he can afford.
* * *
He passes the empty playground, the ghosts of mothers and children ranged around it. He tips up his sunglasses. Lenora, girl, how are you and what is it like being alive and would I enjoy it?
He climbs over a railing and down the embankment through the drifts of snow.
Ice on the tunnel gate. Treefrog gets down on his hands and knees, goes headfirst through the gap, and twists his body around, brings his legs through, sits on the metal platform, holding his breath. Always a moment of fear. Maybe somebody waiting for him just inside the gate. A man with only one shoe, missing five dollars. Or a kid waiting to fling a bottle of gasoline with a lit rag in the top. Or a cop with a gun. Everything stands in the purest blackness so that he can hardly even see his palm in front of his face. And then there’s a slow coming together of tunnel and light shafts, and he can see through the shadows. He listens for movement, and the fear sits back down in his belly and rests in his liver.
No one in sight. He sweeps his hair under his hat and reaches for his shopping bag, the bottle clinking against the ravioli cans. He takes off his gloves and places each one between the bottle and the cans to deaden the clinking, so he won’t have to share if anybody hears him.
Treefrog makes his way soundlessly down the metal stairs. All quiet on the western front. He stops outside Angela and Elijah’s cubicle and puts his ear to the door, hears them sucking their way down into a crack pipe, the slow pull and the ecstatic exhalation and then a few giggles as they move together under their mangy blankets.
He thinks of Elijah’s hand unbuttoning Angela’s shirt, moving slowly along her dark skin, the slow rise of nipple between Elijah’s fingers, then the slide of his hand under her breast, down along her stomach, a meander of finger around her belly button, tracing her bony hip, massaging it, caressing it, belonging to it, the slow draw across her hipbone, feeling her moistness even in the freezing cold, his fingernails sliding into the warm layers of her body, Angela lying back in the blankets, blissful, moaning, her eyelids shut tight, Elijah suspended on the scent of her, leaning down and breathing into her ear, Angela’s fingernails dragging along his back, making rivulets in his skin, and the movement of their breathing, fast fast fast fast, a wild thrust from each of them, until it is all crushed into long segments of breathing, slow slow slow slow, and then the two of them might lie there in anticipation of more.