William Kennedy - Very Old Bones

“There he goes again,” Billy said.

Molly smiled. “Why am I not surprised?”

Peter was nodding his head at the completion of something, the beginning of something else. It seemed facile to think of the remarriage as a beginning when it was merely the supercharging of an old steam engine that might or might not make it over the next rise. The new name, the child, the remarriage as confirmation that the first marriage was a bust, which it was, these thoughts also saddened me: the sadness of the completion of anything, a book, a marriage, a life. Or a sad painting.

“There’s one more painting,” Peter said. “It’s upstairs, and it’s not a pretty picture. I warn you against it, but Orson will show it to anybody who wants to see it.”

“Have I seen it?” Molly asked.

“No,” Peter said. “Only Orson.”

And so we all, including Giselle, who had photographed it two months ago when it was embryonic, went up to Peter’s studio to see The Burial, his major unfinished work. If he lived on, it would very probably not be his last in the Malachi Suite. He’d already made several sketches of Malachi and Crip in hell, and was trying to assign a fitting punishment for them; but as of today, The Burial was as far as he’d gone with his great graphic leaps through those abominable events.

It is raining in the painting, and Colm Dorgan, with the point of a spade, and Malachi McIlhenny, with his muddy right brogan, are pushing the half-folded corpse of Lizzie into her muddy grave, which is too short for her. The grave’s borders are a sea of mud and Malachi and Colm are drenched. Lizzie is naked except for her black stockings and a burlap bag over her head. Colm is pushing her feet into the grave. Malachi is stepping on her right breast with his foot. The left side of her chest is a broad, raw crevasse of flesh, her charred rib cage and parts of her internal organs protruding, the flesh burned off two fingers of her left hand, leaving the burned bones visible.

A small cottage, Malachi’s, wherein the other witnesses to Lizzie’s burning are locked and awaiting the return of Malachi, is visible in the distant background, as are a sky and a landscape full of demonic figures, including the lithe form of Lizzie dancing on a hill with a web-footed creature with the head of a goat.

Piles of dirt beside the grave will be heaped on Lizzie and on the secluded grave, which is at the side of a ditch, with a high fence on one side and trees on the other. When the grave is covered with dirt it will be hidden by leaves and twigs, and Lizzie will lie scrunched in it for five days before searchers find her corrupted body, tortured even in death.

Upon his return from the grave to the cottage, Malachi will, with a long knife in his hand, swear all present to secrecy, and will invent the story to be circulated: that Lizzie ran away from the house in a crazed condition the previous night. Malachi will be especially threatening to his sister, Kathryn, whose throat he swears he will cut if she peeps a word of what happened. When Kathryn swears this out of fear, Malachi will then scrape his trouser leg with the blade of his knife and say, “Oh Kate, that’s the juice and substance of poor Lizzie I’m scraping.”

And Kathryn will say, “Malachi, even if you scrape off your skin, God will not let the stain be off you. You’re damned, my brother, and I hope the devils in hell never let you draw a painless breath.”

Upon public revelation of this story, neighbors will sack and burn Malachi’s house, and Malachi and Crip Devlin will be tried and convicted of murder and sentenced to twenty years in jail. Colm Dorgan will be sentenced to ten years, will serve all ten, and emerge toothless, hairless, mindless, and without a family. Ned Cronin will be given, and will serve, one year in prison, and live six more months before dying of public shame. Minnie Dorgan, though guilty of conspiracy to murder, will be set free because of her advanced age, and will sell all that she owns to move away from Albany.

In the first six months of his incarceration Crip Devlin will sicken from the pox, develop intolerable headaches and lightning pains to the legs. He will vomit and become incontinent, will develop ulcers of the heels, soles, toes, and buttocks, blockage of the penis, and rubbery tumors in the testicles. At the moment when his memory vanishes and he can no longer remember who he is or what he did to Lizzie, he will die of suppressed urine and an exploded brain.

In 1890, during the third year of his sentence, Malachi, with leather thongs he created in the shoe shop of the Albany penitentiary, will hang himself in his cell, swearing to the moment of his death that it was not Lizzie but a demon that he burned, and he will be buried in a potter’s field. On the day after his burial his grave will be violated and his corpse stabbed through the heart with a wooden dagger in the shape of a cross, a suitable implement for destroying the soul of a heretic.

Kathryn Phelan will be the chief witness against Malachi. Already the mother of Francis, Sarah, and Charles, she will give birth to Peter within two weeks of Lizzie’s death. She will also have three subsequent children, in this order: Julia, Mary (Molly), and Thomas.

Mab Devlin will become a charge of the city, but will escape confinement and become a vanished child.

The family’s mood, after viewing the painting and listening to my recounting of the details, was so bleak that Giselle suggested putting on some music, and she then unwrapped the gift she’d found in a second-hand store and bought for the house: three player-piano scrolls of the songs “They Always, Always Pick on Me,” “After the Ball,” and “Won’t You Be My Little Girl.” I put on the first one under the hopeful gaze of Julia, whom Peter had etherealized in the sketch of her at the seashore, about age twenty-one, a year away from death, abounding in her virginal glory; although I noted Peter had emphasized the ample bust line that was common to all the Phelan girls. But even with Julia as a prod, I could not bring myself to pump the piano’s pedals, could not so easily turn my mind from Lizzie to music.

George Quinn called to tell Peg he had asked Patsy McCall for work, something he had never done before; for city and county jobs paid only pittances, and George always believed that the ban on gambling was temporary that the okay would come down from on high one sunny day and all the gamblers in town would go back to work. But he could afford this fantasy no longer, and so he finally popped the question, and Patsy told him to go down to Democratic-party headquarters in the morning and talk to Tanner Smith, and they’d probably put him to work canvassing the Ninth Ward for the next election Peg said the prospect of a political job so excited George that when she told him about her bequest from Peter and her plan to buy the house he said only, “That’s great, I gotta go. Patsy’s giving me a ride to my car.”

Peter finally relaxed, took off his neckerchief and his coat, and sat alone at the table, smiling. I leaned across and asked him, “After all these years, what do I call you? Papa?”

He considered that, then shook his head no. “Sounds like an alias,” he said.

Billy stood up from the table and, with cane and gimp leg, hobbled into the front parlor.

“Shall we adjourn?” I said to Peter.

“You go ahead. I’ll sit here a minute with the chocolates.”

So I joined Billy, and when I did he said, “I ain’t even gonna collect my elephant bet if they take that bum’s leg off.”

“You were pretty sure they weren’t elephants.”

“One of the workers was up there came by Brady’s saloon. All them guys knew the bones was owned by a mastodon, whatever the hell that is. It’s big like an elephant, but it ain’t an elephant.”