Read Very Old Bones for Free Online

he decided the cast should stay in place another three weeks at least,
and so Billy had to carry his right shoe around in a paper bag the rest of the day. We were in my car, Danny Quinn’s old 1952 Chev that I’d bought from Peg. Billy mentioned an
eye-opener at Sport Schindler’s, but it was only ten-fifteen, and that’s a little early for my eye.
    “You been to the filtration plant since they started that dig?” I asked Billy.
    “I ain’t been there in years. My grandfather used to run that joint.”
    “I know, and Tommy was the sweeper. You see in the paper about the bones they found?”
    “Yeah, you think they’re still there?”
    “It’s worth a look.”
    The old plant, which had changed the health of Albany in 1899, was being torn down. The chronic “Albany sore throat” of the nineteenth century had been attributed to inadequate
filtering of Hudson River water. But after the North Albany plant opened, the sore throats faded. Still, river water was a periodic liability until the late 1920s, when the politicians dammed up
two creeks in the Helderberg Mountains and solved all city water troubles forever. The filtration plant relaxed into a standby item, then a useless relic. Now it stood in the way of a
superhighway’s course and so it was time to knock it down.
    Construction workers had found bones in their dig, near the mouth of the Staatskill, the creek that ran eastward from Albany’s western plateau and had long ago been buried in a pipe under
North Pearl Street and Broadway. When the dig reached the glacial ledge where the creek made its last leap into the Hudson River, half a dozen huge bones were found. Workers didn’t inform the
public until they also found two tusks, after which a geologist and biologist were summoned. No conclusions had been reported in the morning paper but everybody in town was saying elephants.
    I drove down the hill from the doctor’s office and into North Albany. When I reached Pearl Street Billy said, “Go down Main Street. I want to see what it looks like.”
    Billy’s grandfather Joe Farrell (they called him Iron Joe because two men broke their knuckles on his jaw) had lived at the bottom of Main Street, and also had run a saloon, The
Wheelbarrow, next to his home. The house was gone but the saloon building still stood, a sign on it noting the headquarters of a truckers’ union. Trucking companies had replaced the lumber
yards as the commerce along Erie Boulevard, the filled-in bed of the old canal.
    “I wouldn’t know the place,” Billy said. “I never get down here anymore.” He’d been born and raised on Main Street.
    “Lot of memories here for you,” I said.
    “I knew how many trees grew in those lots over there. I knew how many steps it took to get from Broadway to the bottom of the hill. The lock house on the canal was right there.” And
he pointed toward open space. “Iron Joe carried me on his shoulder over the bridge to the other side of the lock.”
    Implicit but unspoken in Billy’s memory was that this was the street his father fled after dropping his infant son and causing his death. I was close to Billy, but I’d never heard
him mention that. He and I are first cousins, sons of most peculiar brothers, I the unacknowledged bastard of Peter Phelan, Billy the abandoned son of Francis Phelan, both fathers flawed to the
soul, both in their errant ways worth as much as most martyrs.
    Billy was still looking at where his house had been when I turned onto the road that led to the filtration plant. It was busy with heavy equipment for the dig; also a police car was parked
crossways in the road. A policeman got out of the car and raised his hand to stop us. Billy knew him, Doggie Murphy.
    “Hey, Dog,” Billy said. “We came to see the elephants.”
    “Can’t go through, Billy.”
    “What’s goin’ on?”
    “They found bones.”
    “I know they found bones. I read the paper.”
    “No, other bones. Human bones.”
    “Oh