Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin Read Online Free PDF Page A

and pointed to a few spots of blood on my shirt. I fainted. When I woke in hospital they told me I’d lost a little flesh at the lobe of my right ear when I’d been slammed back against the spear of a railing. A fleur- de- lis. Such fine irony. The tip of my ear left behind on the street. The rest of me was intact, even my hearing. At the hospital the police went through my pockets to look for identification. I was arrested for possession and brought to the courthouse, where the judge took pity and said it was a wrongful search, gave me a lecture, and sent me on my way. I went straight to a travel agency on Dawson Street, bought my ticket out.
    I came through John F. Kennedy Airport in a long necklace and an Afghan coat, carrying a torn copy of Howl. The customs men sniggered. The cloth latch on my rucksack snapped when I tried to put it together again.
    I stood looking around for Corrigan—he had promised, in a postcard, that he’d meet me. It was eighty- seven degrees in the shade. The heat hit me with the force of an ax. The waiting area pulsed. Families roamed about, pushing past one another to get at flight information. Taxi drivers had a shiny menace to them. No sign of my brother anywhere. I sat on my rucksack for an hour until a policeman with a billy club prodded me and knocked the book out of my hands.
    I boarded a bus amid the swelter and noise. Later on the subway I loitered beneath the whirling fan. A black woman stood beside me, fanning herself with a magazine. Ovals of sweat at her underarms. I had never seen a black woman so close before, her skin so dark it was almost blue. I wanted to touch it, just press her forearm with my finger. She caught my eye and pulled her blouse tight: “Whatcha lookin’ at?”
“Ireland,” I blurted. “I’m Irish.”
    A moment later she glanced at me again. “No kiddin’,” she said. She got off at 125th Street, where the train screeched to a halt.
It was nightfall by the time I reached the Bronx. I stepped out of the station to the late heat. Gray brick and billboards. A rhythmic sound came from a radio player. A kid in a sleeveless shirt spun on a piece of cardboard, his shoulder somehow a fulcrum for his whole body. A loosening of contour. No limits. Hands to the ground, his feet whipped out a long extended circle. He went low and suddenly spun on his head, then arced backwards, unsprung, and hopped into the air, pureness moving.
Some gypsy cabs idled on the Concourse. Old white men in wide hats. I flung my rucksack into the boot of a giant black car.
“Ants in their pants, man,” said the driver as he leaned over the seat. “You think that kid’s gonna go anywhere? After spinning on his goddamn head?”
I gave him Corrigan’s address on a slip of paper. He grunted something about power steering, said they never had it in ’Nam.
After half an hour we pulled sharply into the curve. We had been driving in elaborate circles. “Twelve bucks, bud.” No point in arguing. I threw the money over the seat, got out, grabbed my rucksack. The driver of the cab pulled off before I got a chance to close the boot. I clutched my copy of Howl to my chest. I saw the best minds of my generation. The lid of the taxi bounced and slammed shut when the driver turned sharply by the traffic lights and away.
On one side was a row of high- rise tenements behind a chain- link fence. Parts of the fence were topped with razor wire. On the other, the expressway: the light- streak of cars zipping above. Below, by the underpass, a long line of women. Cars and trucks were pulling into the shadows. The women struck poses. They wore hotpants and bikini tops and swimsuits, a bizarre city beach. An angled arm, in the shadowlight, reached the top of the expressway. A stiletto climbed to the top of a barbed- wire fence. A leg stretched half the length of a city block.
Nightbirds flew out from under the highway girders, momentarily intent on the sky, but then swooped back into hiding.
A woman