Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin (11 page)

Everything they did centered around their machines, he said. They divided, linked, nested, chained, deleted. Rerouted switches. Cracked passwords. Changed memory boards. It was a sort of black magic. They knew the inner mysteries of each and every computer. They stayed inside all day. Working with hunches, failures, intangibles. If they needed sleep they just slid in under the desk, too tired to dream.

The Death Hack was his core project. He had to go through the files, key all the names in, add the men up as numbers. Group them, stamp them, file them, code them, write them. The problem was not even so much the dying as the overlap in the deaths. The ones who had the same names—the Smiths and the Rodriguezes and the Sullivans and the Johnsons. Fathers with the same names as their sons. The dead uncles with the exact initials as the dead nephews. The ones who went AWOL. The split missions. The misreported. The mistakes. The secret squadrons, the flotillas, the task forces, the reconnaissance crews. The ones who got married in little rural villages. The ones who stayed deep in the jungle. Who could account for them? But he fit them into his program as best he could. Created a space for them so that they became a sort of alive. He put his head down, worked it, asked no questions. It was, he said, the patriotic thing to do. What he liked most was the moment of creation, when he solved what nobody else could solve, when the solution was clean and elegant.

It was easy enough to write a program that would collate the dead, he said, but what he really wanted was to write a program that could make sense of the dying. That was the deep future. One day the computers would bring all the great minds together. Thirty, forty, a hundred years from now. If we don’t blow one another asunder first.

We’re at the cusp of human knowledge here, Mama, he said. He wrote about the dream of widely separated facilities sharing special resources. Of messages that were able to go back and forth. Of remote systems that could be manipulated through the telephone lines. Of computers that were capable of repairing their own malfunctions. Of protocols and bulk erasers and teletype printouts and memory and RAM and maxing out the Honeywell and fooling around on the prototype Alto that had been sent across. He described circuit boards like some people described icicles. He said that the Eskimos had sixty- four words for snow but that didn’t surprise him; he thought they should have more—why not? It was about the deepest sort of beauty, the product of the human mind being stamped onto a piece of silicon that you might one day cart around in your briefcase. A poem in a rock. A theorem in a slice of stone. The programmers were the artisans of the future. Human knowledge is power, Mama. The only limits are in our minds. He said there was nothing that a computer couldn’t do, even the most complicated problems, find the value of pi, the root of all language, the most distant star. It was crazy how small the world truly was. It was a matter of opening up to it. What you want is your machine to speak back to you, Mama. It almost has to be human. You have to think of it that way. It’s like a Walt Whitman poem: you can put in it everything you want.

She sat by the fridge and read his letters and smoothed his hair and told him it was time to go to sleep, that he should eat something, he should change his clothes, that he really needed to look after himself. She wanted to make sure he wasn’t fading away. Once, during a blackout, she sat against the kitchen cabinets and wept: she couldn’t get through to him. She stuck a lead pencil into the wall socket and waited. When the electricity came on the pencil jumped in her fingers. She was aware of how it might look—a woman at a fridge, opening and closing the door—but it was a solace, and not something Solomon would suspect. She could pretend that she was cooking, or getting a glass of milk, or waiting for meat to thaw.

Solomon didn’t talk about the war. Silence was his way out. He chatted instead about his court cases, the insane litany of the city, the murders, the rapes, the cons, the hustles, the stabbings, the robberies. But not the war. Only the protesters came in his range—he thought them weak, guileless, cowardly. Gave them the stiffest sentences he could. Six months for pouring blood on the draft board files. Eight months for smashing the windows of the Times Square recruiting office. She wanted to march and protest, to meet all the hippies and yippies and skippies in Union Square, Tompkins Square Park, to carry a banner for the Catonsville Nine. But she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. We must support our boy, said Solomon. Our sweet little tow- headed one. Who slept between us not so many years ago, curled against us. Who played train sets on the Oriental rug. Who outgrew his blue blazer. Who knew fish fork, salad fork, dinner fork, the broad tines of life.

And then, from nowhere, blackout, all blackout, ever blackout. Johsua became code.
Written into his own numbers.
She lay two months in bed. Hardly moving. Solomon wanted to hire a nurse, but she refused. She said she would snap out of it. But the word was not
snap,
more like
slide.
A word Joshua had liked. I will slide out. She began to walk around the house, through the dining room, around the living room, past the breakfast nook, toward the fridge again. She put Joshua’s photo front and center. She leaned against it and talked to him. And the fridge collected things that he might have liked. Simple things. She cut them out and pasted them on. Computer articles. Photos of circuit boards. A picture of a new building at PARC. A newspaper article about a graphics hack. The menu from Ray’s Famous. An ad from
The Village Voice.

It struck her that her fridge was beginning to look hairy. The phrase almost made her smile. My hairy fridge.
And then one evening, the little clips fluttered to the floor and she

VETS
.
P
.
O
.
BOX
667. She had never really thought of him as a veteran, or having been in Vietnam—he was a computer operator, had gone to Asia. But the ad made her fingers tingle. She brought it to the kitchen counter, sat down, quickly wrote a reply in pencil, then went over it with ink, stole quietly out the door, slunk into the elevator. She could have mailed it right downstairs in the lobby, but she didn’t want to; she ran outside to Park Avenue, middle of the night, in a snowstorm, the doorman stunned to see her going out the door in her nightdress, slippers on:
Mrs. Soderberg, are you okay?

Can’t stop now. Letter in hand. Mother seeks bones of son. Found in blown- up café in foreign land.
She ran down to Lexington to the mailbox on Seventy- fourth. The white breath leaving her for the air. Toes wet with snow. She knew that if she didn’t send it right then, she never would. The doorman nodded shyly when she came back in, cast a quick flick of his eyes to her breasts.
’Night, Mrs. Soderberg,
he said. Oh, she wanted to kiss him right then and there. On the forehead. A thanks for peeping. It made her feel good. Thrilled her, to be honest. The cloth stretched tight across her chest, the outline of everything showing, the benefit of cold, a single snowflake melting down along the very front of her throat. Any other time she would have thought it crass. But there, in her nightdress, in the warmth of the elevator, she was thankful. There was a lightness about her that night. She cleaned the front of the fridge of everything but his photograph. Made it simple again. Gave it a haircut of sorts. Thought of her letter winding its way through the postal system, eventually to find another like her. Who would it be, and what would they look like, and would they be tender, and would they be kind? That’s all she wanted: for them to be kind.
That night she climbed in and snuggled against the soft warmth of Solomon. Touched him on the low of the back.
Sol. Solly. Solhoney. Wake up.
He turned to say that her feet were cold.
Warm me up then, Solly.
He propped himself on his elbow and leaned across.
And afterward she went to sleep. For the first time in ages. She had almost forgotten what it meant to wake. She opened her eyes beside him in the morning and nudged him again, ran her fingers on the curve of his shoulder.
Geez,
he said with a grin,
what is it, honey, my birthday?

in they come. Cautiously dressed, all except Jacqueline, who has a deep plunge to her Laura Ashley print. Marcia just behind her, all flushed and feathery. Like she’s just flown through a window and needs to bash at the walls. Not even a glance at the mezuzah on the door. Thank heavens for that. No explanations. Janet, with her head down. A touch from Gloria on the wrist and a deep wide smile. They rush along the corridor with Marcia at the front now, a bakery box in her hand. Past Joshua’s door. Past her own bedroom. Past the painting of Solomon on the wall, eighteen years younger and a good deal more hair. Into the living room. Straight to the couch.

Marcia places the box on the coffee table, sits back against the deep white cushions and fans herself. Maybe it’s just hot flashes, or perhaps she got caught up in the subway. But, no, she’s all aflutter, and the others know something is up.

At least, she thinks, they didn’t meet beforehand. Didn’t come up with a Park Avenue strategy.
Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred.
She pulls up the ottoman and circles the chairs, guides Gloria onto the sofa by the arm. Gloria, with flowers in her hand, still clutching them. It would be rude to take them, but they’ll need some water soon.

—Oh, God, says Marcia.
—Are you all right?
—What is it?

Gathered around her as if at a campfire, all of them, leaning in, eager for outrage.
—You won’t believe it.
Marcia’s face is flushed red, with little beads of sweat at her brow. She breathes as if all the oxygen is gone, as if they are at some great height. Ropes and helmets and carabiners indeed.
—What? says Janet.
—Did someone hurt you?
Marcia’s chest yammering up and down, a gold- plated bear falling against her chestbone.
—Man in the air!
—What?
—A man in the air, walking.
—Mercy, says Gloria.
Claire considers a moment the notion that Marcia might be a tad drunk, or even high—who knows these days; she might have munched on some mushrooms for breakfast, or downed a little vodka—but she looks perfectly sober, if a little flushed, no redness to the eyes, no slurring.
—Downtown.
Drunk or not, she is thankful for Marcia and this little blip of hysteria. It has guided them all so quickly into the apartment. A minimum of fuss. No need for all those niceties, the oohs and the ahhs, the embarrassments, what fabulous curtains, and isn’t that a nice fireplace, and yes, I’ll have two sugars with mine, and oh, it’s very cozy, really, Claire, very cozy, what a lovely vase, and, Lord above, is that your husband on the wall? All the planning in the world could not have ushered them in so smoothly, without a single hiccup.
She should do something, she knows, to let them know they’re welcome. Hand Marcia a handkerchief. Get her a tall, cool glass of water. Take the flowers from Gloria’s hands. Open up the bakery boxes and spread them out. Compliment the bagels. Something, anything. But they are stuck on the swell of Marcia now, watching the rise and fall of her chest.
—Glass of water, Marcia?
—Yes, please. Oh, yes.
—A man where?
The voices fading. Silly of me. Into the kitchen, quickquick. She doesn’t want to miss a word. The soft murmur of conversation from the living room. To the freezer. The ice tray. Should have put in fresh trays this morning. Never thought of it. She bangs them on the marble counter. Three, four cubes. A few shards spread out across the counter. Old ice. Hazy at the center. One cube slips across the counter as if to release itself, falls on the floor. Should I? She glances toward the living room and picks the cube off the floor. In one smooth motion she’s across to the sink. Allows the tap to run a second, washes the cube, fills the glass. She should slice some lemon and would in normal circumstances, but instead she’s out of the kitchen and into the living room and across the carpet, with the water.
—Here you go.
—Oh, lovely. Thanks.
And a smile from Janet, of all people.
—But the ferry boat was full, you see, says Marcia.
She’s a little hurt that Marcia didn’t wait for her to begin, but no matter. The ferry from Staten Island, no doubt.
—And I was standing right at the very front.
Claire dries her hand on the hip of her dress and wonders now where it is she should sit. Should she go right to the heart of the matter, onto the sofa? But that might be a bit much, a bit forward, right beside Marcia, who has all the eye- gaze. And yet to stand on the outside might be noticed too, as if she’s not part of them, trying to be separate. Then again, she needs to be mobile, not hem herself in with the coffee table, she has to be able to get up and make refreshments, spread the breakfast out, take orders, make everyone feel at home. Instant or ground? Sugar or not?
She smiles at Gloria and edges across toward her, lifts the belted ashtray off the arm of the chair, places it on the table with a soft rattle, and sits down, feels the thick of Gloria’s hand on her back, a reassurance.
—Go on, please, go on. Sorry.
—And I was a little too late to watch the sunrise, but I thought I’d stand up there anyway. It’s pretty. The city. At that hour. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it but it’s pretty. And I was just daydreaming, really, when I looked up and I saw a helicopter in the air and, well, you all know me and helicopters.
They know indeed, and it makes the air somber a moment but Marcia doesn’t seem to notice, and she coughs for a pause, a fraction of silence, respect, really.
—So I’m watching this helicopter and it’s hanging in the air, almost like it’s doing a double take. Up there, but not very well. Suspended, like. But rocking back and forth.
—Landsakes.
—And I’m thinking about how Mike Junior would hang a much better turn than that, how he’d handle the craft so much better, I mean he was the Evel Knievel of helicopters, his sergeant said so. And I thought maybe there’s something wrong with it, you know? I had that dread. You know, hanging there.
—Oh, no, says Jacqueline.
—I couldn’t hear the engine so I didn’t really know. And then, suddenly, behind the helicopter, I saw this little flyspeck. No bigger than an insect, I swear to you. But it’s a man.
—A man?
—Like an angel? says Gloria.
—A flyman?
—What sort of man?
—Flying?
—Where?
—I just got the heebie- jeebies.
—It’s a guy, says Marcia, on a tightrope. I mean, I didn’t know it right away, I didn’t figure it out just like that, but what it is, there’s a guy on a tightrope.
—Where?
—Shh, shh, says Janet.
—Up there. Between the towers. A million miles up. We could just about see him.
—What’s he doing?
—Tightroping!
—A funambulist.
—What?
—Oh, my God.
—Does he fall?
—Shh.
—Oh, don’t tell me he falls.
—Shh!
—Please don’t tell me he falls.
—Shh already, says Janet to Jacqueline.
—So I tapped the shoulder of this young guy beside me. One of those ponytailed ones. And he’s like, What, lady? Like he’s real annoyed that I disturbed his little standing sleep or dream or whatever it is he’s doing at the front of the boat. And I said, Look. And he said, What?
—Mercy.
—And I pointed it out, the little flyman, and then he said a bad word, you’ll excuse me, Claire, in your house, I’m sorry, but he said, Fuck.
And Claire wants to say: Well, I’d say fuck too, if I were me. I’d say it backward and forward and around the block, fuck this and fuck that and fuck it all once, twice, three times. But all she does is smile at Marcia and give her what she hopes is a nod that understands that it’s absolutely no problem to say fuck, on Park Avenue, on a Wednesday, at a coffee morning, in fact it’s probably the best thing to say, given the circumstances, maybe they should all say it in unison, make a singsong out of it.
—And then, says Marcia, everyone around us started looking up and before I knew it even the captain of the ferry was out and he had binoculars with him and he said, That guy’s on a tightrope.
—For real?
—Now you can only imagine. The whole deck, full of people. Their early commute. Shoulder to shoulder. And someone’s walking a tight rope. Between those new buildings, the World Towery thingymajigs.
—Trade.
—Center.
—Oh, those?
—Listen to me.
—Those monstrosities, says Claire.
—And then this young guy, with the ponytail . . .
—The fuck guy? says Janet with a half- giggle.
—Yes. Well, he starts saying that he’s sure, stocksure, five hundred and fifty percent, that it’s a projection, that someone is projecting it up on the sky, and maybe it’s a giant white sheet, and the image is coming from the helicopter, it’s being beamed across from some sort of camera or other, he had all the technical terms.
—A projection?
—Like a TV thing? says Jacqueline.
—Circus, maybe.
—And I tell him that they can’t do that from a helicopter. And he looks at me, like, Yeah, lady. And I say it to him again: They can’t do that. And he says, And what do you know about helicopters, lady?
—Never!
—And I tell him I know a hell of a lot about ’copters, actually.
And she does. Marcia knows a hell of a hell of a hell of a lot about her helicopters, her hell of helicopters.
She has told them, in her own house, on Staten Island, that Mike Junior had been on his third tour of duty, routine fly mission over the coast at Qui Nhon, bringing cigars to some general or other in a Huey with the 57th Medical Detachment—cigars, can you imagine? and why the hell were the medevacs flying cigars?—and it was a good helicopter, top speed of ninety knots, she said. The figures had trilled off her tongue. It had something wrong with the steering column, she had said, and had gone into detail about the engine and the gearing ratio and the length of the two- bladed metal tail rotor, when what really mattered, all that truly mattered, was that Mike Junior had clipped the top of a goalpost, of all things, a soccer goalpost, only six feet off the ground—and who in the world plays soccer in Vietnam?—which sent the whirligig spinning and he landed awkwardly, sideways, and he smashed his head awkwardly, broke his neck, no flames, even, just a freak fall, the helicopter still intact; she had played it over in her mind a million times, and that was it, and Marcia woke at night dreaming of an army general opening and reopening the cigar boxes, finding bits and pieces of her son inside.
She knows her helicopters, yes she does, and more’s the pity.
—So, anyway, I told him he should mind his own damn business.
—Indeed, says Gloria.
—And sure enough the captain of the ferry, looking through his binoculars, he says to everyone, That’s no projection.
—That’s right.
—And all I could think of, was, Maybe that’s my boy and he’s come to say hello.
—Oh, no.
—Oh.
—Lord.
A deep swell in her heart for Marcia.
—Man in the air.
—Imagine.
—Very brave.
—Exactly. That’s why I thought of Mike Junior.
—Of course.
—And did he fall? says Jacqueline.
—Shh, shh, says Janet. Let her speak.
—I’m just asking.
—So the captain swings the ferry out so we can get a better look and then brings the boat into dock. You know, it bumped against the river wall. I couldn’t see anything from there. The wrong angle. Our view was blocked. The north tower, south tower, I don’t know which, but we couldn’t see what was happening. And I didn’t even say another word to the guy with the ponytail. I just turned on my heels. I was the very first person off. I wanted to run and see my boy.
—Of course, says Janet. There, there.
—Shh, says Jacqueline.
The room tight now. One turn of the screw and the whole thing could explode. Janet stares across at Jacqueline, who flicks her long red hair, as if tossing off a fly, even a flyman, and Claire looks back and forth between them, anticipating an overturned table, a broken vase. And she thinks, I should do something, say something, hit the release valve, the escape button, and she reaches across to Gloria to take the flowers from her, petunias, lovely petunias, gorgeous green stalks, neatly clipped at the bottom.
—I should put these in water.
—Yes, yes, says Marcia, relieved.
—Back in a jiffy.
—Hurry, Claire.
—Be right back.
The correct thing to do. Absolutely, positively. She tiptoes to the kitchen and stops at the louvered door. Too much farther in and she won’t be able to hear. How silly to say I’d put them in water. Should have delayed somehow, bought more time. She leans against the door slats, straining to hear.
— . . . so I’m running in those old mazy side streets. Past the auction houses and cheap electronic joints and fabric stores and tenements. You’d think you’d be able to see the big buildings from there. I mean, they’re huge.
—One hundred stories.
—A hundred ten.
—Shh.
—But they’re not in view. I get glimpses of them but they’re not the right angle. I was trying to take the most direct route. I should have just gone along the water. But I’m running, running. That’s my boy up there and he’s come to say hello.
Everyone silent, even Janet.
—I kept darting around corners, thinking I’d get a better view. Ducking this way and that. Looking up all the time. But I can’t see them, the helicopter or the walker. I haven’t run so fast since junior high. I mean, my boobs were bouncing.
—Marcia!
—Most days I forget I have them anymore.
—Ain’t my dilemma, says Gloria, hitching her chest.
There is a swell of laughter around the room and, at the moment of levity, Claire moves back across the carpet, still holding Gloria’s flowers, but nobody notices. The laughter ripples around, a reconciliation song, circling them all, making a little victory lap, and settles right back down at Marcia’s feet.
—And then I stopped running, says Marcia.
Claire settles on the arm of the sofa again. No matter that she didn’t take care of the flowers. No matter that there’s no water reboiling. No matter that there’s no vase in her hands. She leans forward with the rest of them.
Marcia has a tiny quiver in her lip now, a little tremble of portent.
—I just stopped cold, says Marcia. Dead smack in the middle of the street. I almost got run over by a garbage truck. And I just stood there, hands on my knees, eyes on the ground, breathing heavy. And you know why? I’ll tell you why.
Pausing again.
All of them leaning forward.
—Because I didn’t want to know if the poor boy fell.
— Ah- huh, s ays Gloria.
—I just didn’t want to hear him dead.
—I hear you, ah- huh.
Gloria’s voice, as if she’s at a church service. The rest of them nodding slowly while the clock on the mantelpiece ticks.
—I couldn’t stand the mere thought of it.
—No, ma’am.
—And if he didn’t fall . . .
—If he didn’t, no ...?
—I didn’t want to know.
— Ah- huhn, you got it.
—’Cause somehow, if he stayed up there, or if he came down safe, it didn’t matter. So I stopped and turned around and got on the subway and came up here without even so much as a second glance.
—Say gospel.
—Because if he was alive it couldn’t possibly be Mike Junior.
All of it like a slam in the chest. So immediate. At all of their coffee mornings, it had always been distant, belonging to another day, the talk, the memory, the recall, the stories, a distant land, but this was now and real, and the worst thing was that they didn’t know the walker’s fate, didn’t know if he had jumped or had fallen or had got down safely, or if he was still up there on his little stroll, or if he was there at all, if it was just a story, or a projection, indeed, or if she had made it all up for effect—they had no idea—maybe the man wanted to kill himself, or maybe the helicopter had a hook around him to catch him if he fell, or maybe there was a clip around the wire to catch him, or maybe maybe maybe there was another maybe, maybe.
Claire stands, a little shaky at the knees. Disoriented. The voices around her a blur now. She is aware of her feet on the deep carpet. The clock moving but not sounding anymore.
—I think I’ll put these in water now, she says.