And you’d be wrong.
* * *
? ? ?
Thirty minutes later, they were all in the Cadillac—the professor included—driving down Ninth Avenue to the West Side Elevated, another place of which Woolly had never heard.
—You take that next right, said Billy.
As instructed, Duchess took the right onto a cobblestone street lined with trucks and meatpacking facilities. Woolly could tell they were meatpacking facilities because on one loading dock, two men in long white coats were carrying sides of beef off a truck while over another was a large neon sign in the shape of a steer.
A moment later, Billy told Duchess to take another right and then a left and then he pointed to some wire caging rising from the street.
—There, he said.
When Duchess pulled over, he didn’t turn off the engine. On this little stretch, there were no more meatpackers and no more neon signs. Instead, there was an empty lot in which was parked a car without its wheels. At the end of the block, a lone silhouette, stocky and short, passed under a streetlamp, then disappeared into the shadows.
—Are you sure this is it? Duchess asked.
—I’m sure this is it, said Billy while slipping on his backpack.
Then just like that, he was out of the car and walking toward the caging.
Woolly turned to Professor Abernathe in order to raise his eyebrows in surprise, but Professor Abernathe was already on his way to catch up with Billy. So Woolly leapt from the car in order to catch up with the professor, leaving Duchess to catch up with him.
Inside the caging was a staircase of steel that disappeared overhead. Now it was the professor who looked to Woolly with his eyebrows raised, though more in excitement than surprise.
Reaching out, Billy took hold of a patch of the fencing and began pulling it back.
—Here, said Woolly. Allow me, allow me.
Extending his fingers through the mesh, Woolly pulled so that everyone could slip through. Then up the stairs they went, going round and round, their eight feet clanging on the old metal treads. When they reached the top, Woolly pulled back another bit of fencing so that everyone could slip out.
Oh, what amazement did Woolly feel when he emerged from the caging into the open air. To the south, you could see the towers of Wall Street, while to the north, the towers of Midtown. And if you looked very carefully to the south-southwest, you could just make out the Statue of Liberty—another New York City landmark that surely belonged on the List and to which Woolly had never been.
—Never been, yet! Woolly pronounced in defiance to no one but himself.
But what was amazing about the elevated tracks wasn’t the view of Wall Street or Midtown or even the great big summer sun that was setting over the Hudson. What was amazing was the flora.
While they had been in Professor Abernathe’s office, Billy had explained that they would be going to a segment of elevated railroad that had stopped being used three years before. But to Woolly’s eye, it looked like it had been abandoned for decades. Everywhere you turned there were wildflowers and shrubs, and the grass between the railroad ties had grown almost as high as their knees.
In just three years, thought Woolly. Why, that’s less time than it takes to go to boarding school, or to get a college degree. It’s less time than a presidential term, or the span between Olympics.
Only two days before, Woolly had remarked to himself how terribly permanent Manhattan remained, despite being marched upon by millions of people every day. But apparently, it wasn’t the marching of the millions that was going to bring the city to its end. It was their absence. For here was a glimpse of a New York left to itself. Here was a patch of the city upon which people had turned their backs for just a moment and up through the gravel had come the shrubs and ivy and grass. And if this is what it was like after just a few years of disuse, thought Woolly, imagine what it will be like after a few decades.
As Woolly looked up from the flora in order to share his observation with his friends, he realized that they had pressed ahead without him, working their way toward a campfire in the distance.
—Wait up, he called. Wait up!
As Woolly rejoined his party, Billy was introducing the professor to a tall black man, the one named Ulysses. Though the two men had never met, both had learned something of the other from Billy, and when they shook hands, it struck Woolly that they did so with solemnity, a great and enviable solemnity.
—Please, said Ulysses, as he gestured to the railroad ties around the fire much as the professor had gestured to the couch and chair in his office.
When they had taken their seats, everyone was silent for a moment as the fire crackled and sparked, and it seemed to Woolly that he and Billy and Duchess were young warriors who had been given the privilege of witnessing the meeting between two tribal chiefs. But in the end, it was Billy who spoke first, encouraging Ulysses to tell his tale.