Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann Read Free Book Online

overturned at the corner. There had been a garbage strike earlier that spring and still it wasn’t all cleaned up. Rats ran along the street gutters. Young men in sleeveless tops stood malevolently in the doorways. They knew Corrigan, it seemed, and as he disappeared inside he gave them a series of elaborate handshakes. He spent a long time inside and came out clutching large brown paper bags. One of the hoodlums back- slapped him, grabbed his hand, drew him close.
    “How d’you do that?” I asked. “How d’you get them to talk to you?” “Why wouldn’t they?”
“It just seems, I don’t know, they’re tough, y’know.”
“Far as they’re concerned, I’m just a square.”
“You’re not worried? You know, a gun, or something, a switchblade?” “Why would I be?”
Together we loaded the old folk up in the van. He revved the engine
    and drove to the church. There had been a vote among the old folk, the church as opposed to the synagogue. It was daubed in graffiti—whites, yellows, reds, silvers. TAGS 173. GRACO 76. The stained- glass windows had been broken with small stones. Even the cross on top was tagged. “The living temple,” said Corrigan. The elderly Jewish man refused to get out. He sat, head down, saying nothing, skipping through the notes in his book. Corrigan opened the back of the van and slipped him an extra beer over the seat.
    “He’s all right, our Albee,” said Corrigan as he strolled away from the back of the van. “All he does is work on those chess problems all day long. Used to be a grandmaster or something. Came from Hungary, found himself in the Bronx. He sends his games off in the post somewhere. Does about twenty games all at once. He can play blindfolded. It’s the only thing that keeps him going.”
    He helped the others out of the van and we wheeled them one by one towards the entrance. “Let’s walk the plank.” There were a series of broken steps at the front but Corrigan had stashed two long pieces of wood around the side, near the sacristy. He laid the planks parallel to each other and guided the chairs up. The wood lifted in the air with the weight of the wheelchairs, and for a moment they looked like they were bound for the sky. Corrigan pushed them forward and the planks slapped back down. He had the look of a man at ease. A shine in the corners of his eyes. You could see the gone boy in him, the nine- year- old back in Sandymount.
He left the old folk waiting by the holy- water font, until they were all lined up, ready to go.
    “My favorite moment of the day, this,” he said. He crossed over into the cool dark of the church, rolled them to whatever spot they wanted, some in the rear pews, some to the sides.
    An old Irish woman was brought up to the very front, where she wrapped and rewrapped her rosary beads. She had a mane of white hair, blood in the corner of her eyes, an otherworldly stare. “Meet Sheila,” said Corrigan. She could hardly speak anymore, barely able to make a sound. A cabaret singer, she had lost most of her voice to throat cancer. She had been born in Galway but emigrated just after the First World War. She was Corrigan’s favorite and he stayed near her, said the formal prayers alongside her: a decade of the Rosary. She had no idea, I’m sure, about his religious ties, but there was an energy about her in that church she didn’t have elsewhere. She and Corrigan, it was like they were praying together for a good rain.
    When we got out into the street again, Albee was dozing in the van, a bit of spittle on his chin. “Goddamn it,” he muttered when the engine rumbled into life. “Pair of pussies, the two of ya.”
    Corrigan pulled into the nursing home in the late afternoon, then dropped me off in front of the housing project. He had another job to do, he said; there was someone he had to see.
    “It’s a little project I’m working on,” he said, over his shoulder. “Nothing to worry about. I’ll see you later.”
He climbed in