Read Online This Side of Brightness by Colum McCann - Free Book Online Page B

forth through Battery Park until she finds him, shy and head-hung, standing behind the billboard.
    â€œIt’s true,” she says.
    â€œOf course it’s true.”
    â€œI knew it was.”
    â€œThen why y’all so surprised?” he asks.
    She shuffles her feet. “That man, he tried to touch me.”
    â€œDid he hurt ya?”
    â€œNo, but you should say something to him.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œHe shouldn’t be allowed to do that. That’s not right. You should say something to him.”
    â€œY’all serious?”
    â€œâ€™Course I’m serious.”
    â€œI’m stupid, girl, but I ain’t that stupid.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œGirl.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œTake one good look at my face.”
    â€œOh,” she says. “Oh.”
    Walker turns away when she leans up to try and kiss him on the cheek, and he mumbles, embarrassed, “Y’all shouldn’t do that. It ain’t right.”
    Although once he saw a famous middleweight boxer emerging from the Theresa Hotel with a French actress. She wore a short skirt, high heels, and perfume and held a long thin cigarette elegantly at the tips of her fingers. At the door of the hotel, she brushed her lips against the black boxer’s cheek. They moved to a waiting car. When the couple was gone, young girls on the street held popsicle sticks in the exact same manner as the Frenchwoman’s cigarette, and her perfume hung on the air like stigmata.
    â€œIt just ain’t right,” says Walker.
    But for years he takes her down to the bank of the East River anyway. The eyes of strangers cause him to hang his chin on his chest. He knows what they think. Sometimes he even gets violent glares from his own people. He walks way behind Eleanor to make it seem like they aren’t together, and he even ignores her if people stare for too long.
    At the water’s edge, Eleanor says, “Tell me that story about my father again.”
    â€œWell,” he says, “it was early morning. We all came down and we was just working, normal like. Digging away like we always done.”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œWe was sweating and loading and loading and sweating.”
    â€œAnd then it happened?”
    â€œYeah. I had my shovel in the air just like this. And Con, he was behind me somewheres. And Rhubarb too. He was the one let the shout. First time he said something full in English. It like to broke my ears. ‘Shit! Air go out. Shit!’”
    Walker points toward the middle of the river.
    â€œWe rose up right out over there.”

chapter 5
    so slowly time passes
    Across from his nest an icicle hangs near the metal grate, held in static, a shaft of ice one foot long exploring its way down toward the tunnel floor. It looks like a stalactite, although he knows stalactites aren’t made of ice, but of mineral deposits. No matter, he will call it that anyway: a stalactite. He wonders how long it might grow. Maybe ten, maybe fifteen feet, maybe all the way down to the ground. He nods to the piece of jagged ice. “Good morning,” he says. “Good morning.” The world, he knows, can still spring its small and wondrous surprises.
    *   *   *
    She arrives on the morning of the third snowfall.
    A black handbag is all she carries. He is amazed to watch her from the safety of his nest. She moves under his catwalk, a huge fur coat wrapped around herself, open at the buttons, so she looks like an animal that has been sliced longways, from neck to belly button. The coat is old and tattered and yet vaguely beautiful. Underneath, she wears a red miniskirt and high heels. Her hair is threaded with multicolored beads. Some of it stands out in obscene shafts as if it hasn’t been washed in years. She walks in the center of the tracks and, when she gets to the grill facing his nest, she stands in the shaft of cold blue light beaming through from