The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead Read Free Book Online

compass. Who among them can complain, unanimous weather sparks the same phrases downtown and up: Nice out, isn’t it. Borough to borough. So he walks. He will ask no questions this day. The street will not scheme this day. Let it happen. These are the terms of the truce he has made with Broadway.
    WALK. Hands in pockets or hands rowing through this surf. It will not matter. No outsmarting. Only suckers try to double-cross Broadway and it always ends up in one-way tickets out of town. Atop poles, street signs name distance. The names of men of substance haunt street signs until they are exorcised by numbers. When they run out of names intersections opt for mathematics, but what kind of equations emerge from such uneven terms, Broadway times Eleventh Street equals what. Must have left my abacus in my other pants. Signs go, Last Chance and Everything Must Go. For a limited time only you can have my heart on layaway. Around him they all have payment plans, arrangements to pay for what they want. And what is he after. He walks.
    NICE OUT, isn’t it. Children avoid fissures in the sidewalk for fear it will give their mothers a spinal injury. Like a child walking in a straight line no matter who what gets in the way. A vow against swerves. See how long you can do it. Obstacles obstruct, the ones on the street and the ones he carries with him. Look down at all that stuff in the cracks in the sidewalk. Let us organize a salute to all the plucky weeds in this town, all those anonymous flowering strivers, with their intrepid shoots and improbable points of purchase. Such exemplary citizens. Seeds seek grime, no shortage of grime, no lack of cracks for grime. This place is falling apart, after all. If you listen close you can hear it. Day by day you contribute to it. You think this place sucks the life from you but in fact it is the opposite. This bosom.
    WALK AND FALTER in its great rut. It bulldozed across the city, grinding through grid. Diagonal across appalled avenues, scaring parks out of the way, squeezing buildings into flat iron. At night a well-lit scar. In the daylight Everest. All of you, walk. We grunt and moan. As if this road were not more or less level but jungle path. Just hours before, rush hour made a trail. Trampling, taming inclines, making mistakes for them. But the undergrowth has burst up to flail eyes since, shrubbed up to fill footprints, and now all of them are scouts bending back mean branches. Natives and tourists alike bat at assorted mosquitoes. He’s lived here all his life. Sometimes he leaves but he’s never been good with languages and two feet over the state line is a foreign tongue. Tourists discover what he takes for granted. They torture guidebooks and argue, say, We’ve passed this way before, traveling in circles like the best old-timers. In this city you always end up where you began. Settle for extending the radius bit by bit, give up on more. He’s lived here all his life and friends flee and she fled, too, but Broadway is still here. He walks and pushes against. Keep pushing and you just might increase your radius. Savor hard-won inches.
    TRAPPED AT CORNERS, waiting for the light. They catch up to him. Why bother to overtake if they’re all conniving tortoises, ratified by fable. Hey, here comes the league of sexy moms. Pushing carriages, tilting at curbs, steering progeny across pavement. To be safe and unknowing again. Tiny fingers grab air above cribs. People try to make other people’s babies smile as they wait for the light to change. Strangers are always blurry. A brigade of pregnant ladies waddles with dignity. Three months from now they will blossom into sexy moms, but for now they seek the store that sells clothes for unborn citizens. Uniform them quickly in black. Fetuses fret about what zip code they’ll end up in, tapping against membrane in morse code: renting is for suckers. Too young to know that the womb schools the dimensions of a studio apartment. Contemplate