The Last Days of Dogtown Read online

  Surely a murdered mother needed more consolation than

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  most. Ruth knew that Mimba would have approved her plan, even though it meant her own grave would be lonely.

  She took a little comfort knowing that Mimba had Cato right next to her.

  On a moonless May night, Ruth put Cato’s extra clothes into an old burlap sack, along with Prescott’s best stone chisels, wedges, and his good mallet. She left one of the four silver dollars she’d found sewed into the corners of Cato’s mattress by way of payment and never looked back.

  She walked until dawn, when an old African man in a buggy stopped and offered her a ride. There was a paper pinned to his shirt; he pointed to it. “Says I own myself and this wagon and no one can take me.” Ruth slept in hayricks by day and traveled by night, eating whatever she could find, wearing out her shoes on the way to Cape Ann.

  From a chilly granite perch on Halibut Point, Ruth held her head in her hands and measured her days since that long trek fourteen years ago, from Narragansett to her meeting with Henry Brimfield. In all that time, she had found neither comfort nor satisfaction. Even her freedom had provided her little more ease or consolation than the moon above warmed her tired bones. Ruth had come so far and lived so lonely only to learn that she was the daughter of a rapist and a murderer. She was half-sister to a smug fool who would probably have used Phoebe as ill as his father, had he been given the chance. And even though she finally knew where her mother’s blood had been spilled, Ruth still did not know where her bones were buried.

  The sound of barking startled Ruth out of her reverie.

  A wet, hoarse bawl rose from the rocks not a hundred yards from her, where a dozen otters lay, their sleek pelts

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  gleaming in the moonlight. One of them had rolled onto one of his fellows, who had made the loud, doggish complaint. The animals shook themselves and settled, much like the pack she knew so well. Ruth realized that there had been no sea monster in Gloucester Harbor, just flashes of these glossy backs in the water, tricking the eye into imagining one big creature that did not exist.

  There had been no portent of Brimfield’s arrival, or of anything menacing. Otters were uncommon visitors in those waters, but nothing unnatural or ill-omened and they would disappear back into the sea, without explanation or consequence. The way of the world, she thought. Whales breach and vanish. One slave girl is killed and another is born, and both are forgotten.

  The wind cut through Ruth’s spray-soaked shirt. With numb feet and aching knees, she suffered the last miles back to where she’d started out the day before.

  The boulder seemed insignificant in the dawning light.

  It was just a large rock, flat as a table, but nothing as grand as the natural monuments considered odd enough to be christened. “Peter’s Pulpit” and “Whale’s Jaw” lured the tourists who speculated about visits by ancient Viking travelers or some other nonsense.

  The rocky altar where her mother died was nothing but one more of the countless stones that gave rise to the hoary joke that Cape Ann was the last place that God created, since it was where He dumped all the rocks that were of no use elsewhere.

  Ruth lay her cheek on that granite table and shivered. She was ashamed of herself for letting Brimfield go.

  He might have been lying about the murder, but even if

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  he’d been telling the truth, what difference did that make? Father or son, an act of vengeance might have provided a fitting end to her mother’s tale and her own. But it was out of her hands now. She’d lost the chance to make him tell her what Phoebe looked like, what her voice sounded like, what she cared for. She would never unlock the riddle of the lock of hair, the ring, and the scrap of yellow cloth.

  She would wait for death, whenever it came for her.

  She would live day to day. She would not wonder anymore.

  Ruth closed her eyes and slept.

  When Ruth had rushed out of her house in pursuit of Brimfield, Easter sat down by the door to wait. She’d kept her vigil there long after dark, feeding scraps to Brindle so she wouldn’t have to sit alone.

  “She should be here by now,” Easter said as the moon started to set. The dog pricked up his ears. “She likes that room upstairs. She’s walked miles in the snow rather than sleep somewheres else. Even if there was a dry barn or a warm kitchen floor, she’d make it back.” Brindle snorted and put his head on his paws.

  The following evening, Oliver Younger had stopped by to tell Easter about Henry Brimfield’s visit. One of the old-timers in town had recognized him getting back on the Boston-bound coach, and within hours the taverns were buzzing as though the slave girl’s blood was still fresh. It didn’t take long for word to filter up to the parlors on High Street. “Guilty as sin,” “bold as brass,” and phrases less

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  genteel were passed from mouth to ear as news of “young”

  Brimfield’s visit made the rounds.

  Easter didn’t let on. “The rogue,” she said. After Oliver left, she patted Brindle and muttered, “Good riddance and thank goodness.”

  Ruth returned midmorning the next day, wet and

  limping. She did not even nod at Easter, still sitting by the door, and made straight for the attic without a word. For the first time in all the years they had shared a roof, Easter followed her up the stairs.

  Ruth was on the bed, her face to the wall.

  “It’s good that you let him go,” Easter said gently. “Not that he don’t deserve a horse-whipping,” she added. “The Brimfields were a rotten lot. The men, I mean. The women were just ninnies.”

  Ruth lifted her head and stared.

  “I had a feeling when you first showed your face at my door, all those years back,” Easter said, sitting on the floor in a weary heap. “When Henry poked his head in yesterday, I was sure.”

  “Did you know her?” Ruth asked.

  “Brimfield’s Phoebe? No, can’t say that I did. Though I caught sight of her, from time to time. But I never had cause to speak to her. A little twig of a girl. Fourteen she was at the time. Far too young for, well, for . . .”

  “Was it the son?” Ruth asked.

  “No, dearie. You can put your mind at rest on that score. It was the old man, for true. I had the story from Anne Wharf herself. Young Dr. Henry brought the baby to her, all bloody and squalling, poor thing. Anne sent that baby off to her people before anyone tried to sell her. Or

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  drown her, more’n likely. If Abraham found out what she’d done, he’d have, well, I don’t know what. He loved his Anne, but he hated the Africans. Don’t know where that poison came from, but lordy, he had it in for ’em all.” Easter shook her head.

  “Anne never told a soul until it was her last breath, and it was me nursing her at the end. That secret gnawed on her all them years.

  “Did they take care of you all right in Providence?”

  asked Easter. “She sent you there, to some cousins she never met. Anne wondered after you all her days. She never quite trusted that Henry would do what she’d told him.”

  “He did,” Ruth said.

  “Well, that would have given her a measure of

  comfort,” said Easter. “Knowing you grew up with them, free and all.”

  Ruth turned her face to the wall. She was too tired to talk, and besides, there was no point in burdening Easter with that bundle of sorrows.

  Mimba would have told Easter the whole of Ruth’s sto
ry, accompanied by sighs, and tongue-clucking, and tears.

  Easter would have listened, keen and respectful, and then she would have filled Mimba in on what had happened to Ruth since she’d arrived in Massachusetts. Easter would talk about the fine walls that she had built and about her stubborn silence, which was just as hard on the shins as granite.

  They would get a laugh out of that. Indeed, the two of them had the same kind of laugh: a high and girlish hee-hee-hee. Easter would ask Mimba if there really were sea monsters off the coast of Africa. They would look Ruth

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  in the eyes and, with a single voice, tell her that it was time to rest.

  Easter put her hand on the sleeping woman’s back.

  “This is your home, Ruth,” she said. “Long as you want it.

  Long as I’ve got breath, anyway. You got that, at least.”

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  Stanwood Reformed

  Sammy Stanley perched on the branch of a beech

  tree and stared at the sea. The timid child of six who’d trembled at the thought of Abraham Wharf’s corpse had grown into an eleven-year-old who would climb thirty feet up without a moment’s hesitation. Sammy scanned the horizon north to south, wondering if this might be the color

  “sapphire,” a word he knew from the Bible. Under a milky sky, the water looked like a whole summer’s worth of blue had been collected before him. But then, quick as a blink, a gust of wind changed everything, sapphire turned to ink, and a ruffle of white lace foamed across the waves. The air in the forest turned over, too, and fall arrived for good.

  Until then, the day had felt more like April than October, though there was no mistaking the autumn smell.

  A yeasty mulch of oak leaves carpeted the forest floor and quieted the woods to a dry hush.

  Sammy rolled down his sleeves and gathered the white apron over his shoulders for a little extra warmth. He reached for the five new dimes in his pocket, a sensation that soothed him more than anything. The night before, when everyone else was fast asleep, he’d counted seventy-eight dollars in the old strongbox hidden under the floorboards beneath his bed. Some of it he’d earned doing odd jobs for

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  the widows of Sandy Bay, who doted on his good looks and nice manners. But much of it was stolen from the men who passed through the whorehouse that was his home.

  He was an object of fun to many of them, who mocked him for the apron his grandmother made him wear and the long, blond hair she forbid him to cut. But others stared at him and asked Mrs. Stanley if Sammy was “good for a go.”

  The first time she heard that request, she let a full minute tick by with Sammy’s ear pinched between her thumb and finger while he guessed at what the question meant. She’d finally let him go and whispered something into the fellow’s ear, causing him to turn crimson and hang his head till Sally Phipps came over and pulled him into her curtained corner of the room. Sally was the smiling, fair-haired whore that the sailors liked better; the farmers favored Molly, who was taller, dark, and had less to say.

  Ever since his arrival on Cape Ann, barely out of diapers, Sammy’s blond curls, dark blue eyes, pink cheeks, and rosebud mouth had attracted attention and desire. He still turned heads when he walked Gloucester’s streets or the rougher paths through the villages on the northern reaches of Cape Ann. Women would stare and then turn to whisper about the shame of a boy like him trapped in a Dogtown brothel.

  If Sammy was embarrassed or sorry for himself, he never showed it. He carried himself tall and reminded himself that he could climb a tree faster than most boys, was quicker with figures than the merchants’ sons, and knew his Bible better than any preacher’s daughter. It was simply in his nature to master whatever he tried; he even kept house as well as the best local wife. Indeed, Mrs. Stanley’s

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  linens were cleaner than might be expected of such a place, and the floor was swept right to the corners, every day.

  Sammy was also an accomplished thief. He was barely into his first trousers when he found three cents under Molly’s bed. He hid them under his pallet, savoring the feel of the wreath pennies and liberty caps between his fingers.

  Sammy waited for more coins to appear, but men were not so careless with their money and when he realized that happy accidents would be too rare to count on, he took to stealing. He’d wait until the last candle was snuffed and the only sound was snoring. Then, rising from his place against the wall, he slipped beneath the burlap sacks hung to make a separation between the “parlor” and the tiny bedrooms.

  There might be a man lying on the cot with Molly or on the mattress with Sally; sometimes there’d be one with each.

  Sammy was quiet as a shadow, and the slightest rustling from either bed would turn him to stone. He could swallow a cough or kill a sneeze or squeeze off the need to piss for as long as it took for the silence to thicken and settle again.

  Only then would he move toward wherever a coat had been flung. No mouse could tread lighter than his fingers as they slipped in and out of pockets.

  Sammy took only one coin at a time, and while he sometimes stole a half-dime from a full pocket, he usually went for pennies. No man set off a fuss over a lone penny, though he’d never pinch a man’s very last cent as that would be asking for trouble. Sometimes a week would pass when he found nothing at all. Mrs. Stanley’s guests were not a wealthy crew, and some paid for their pleasure with a half-full bottle of gin or a gutted rabbit.

  Mrs. Stanley did not entertain as many guests as Molly

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  or Sally, and when she did, she took her callers to the closet-size room she called her “salon.” It was not much better than the rest of the cramped little house, but it did have a real door on it. Sammy had no interest in trying his luck there, even though those pockets were more likely to yield nickels. He was born more cautious than greedy, and besides, slow-and-steady was working fine.

  From his roost in the golden beech tree, Sammy

  squeezed his dimes tightly. He wanted his own business, and a granite house with a banister and a staircase, and a parlor with a piano in it. He’d be rich enough to pay someone else to do his laundry, too, and his linen would be spotless every day.

  The boy in the tree was so absorbed in these plans that the sudden groan from below nearly cost him his footing in the tree, and his neck. He grabbed at a branch just in time and spied John Stanwood on the ground, only a few feet away. He was on his hands and knees in a pile of leaves, retching a stream of yellow bile, a display that ended in a fit of coughing and panting, which was immediately followed by another long, disgusting puke.

  Sammy’s eyes narrowed. Serves him right, he thought.

  Stanwood liked to make sport of the boy’s hair. The last time Stanwood spent the night, he’d set out his foot to trip Sammy, who’d split his lip in the fall.

  Stanwood moaned and heaved again, though nothing issued forth. He hung his head for a moment and then sprang up, struggled with his trousers and crouched to loosen his bowels in a noisy torrent. It was a sight that would otherwise repulse Sammy, but as it was Stanwood, a smile flickered across his lips. Perhaps the greasy bastard

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  would empty his guts from end to end until there was nothing left but a sack of dry bones. There might be a coin in the scoundrel’s pocket yet, he thought, eyeing the stained waistcoat flung over a bramble.

  The wind kicked up again and hit Sa
mmy full in the face so that before he could catch himself, he sneezed a high-pitched, “Achew,” a sound that alerted Stanwood, who was still crouched like a dog in the bushes.

  He struggled to his feet, pulling up his trousers in front, and turned so that Sammy could see his narrow backside.

  Had Sammy not trained himself to silence, he would have laughed and revealed himself for sure. But the breeze did it for him, blowing dust up his nose and making him sneeze three times in quick succession.

  Stanwood heard a treble voice above calling, “You, you, you!” and glared up into the green boughs of the fir trees.

  Seeing nothing there, he turned and scanned the half-bare oaks until he faced Sammy’s autumn-gilded birch, glowing like a blazing candle in the midmorning sun. Sammy retreated to a branch on the far side from where Stanwood stood and was still as stone. But the wind had loosened his hair and blew it around his face, billowing the apron as well.

  Peering through eyes addled by a long drunken binge as well as the curtain of yellow leaves, Stanwood saw a gauzy shimmer of white and gold. He squinted up, shading his eyes, to figure out what he was seeing. In the past week, he’d swallowed enough brandy, cider, rum, and beer to kill a larger man, and he suspected that his eyes and judgment were not completely trustworthy.

  Much as Sammy tried to stay out of sight, the breeze conspired against him, ruffling the branches and revealing

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  glimpses of his golden hair, his white shirtfront, all through a veil of shifting, sparkling leaves. As Stanwood stared, the image came to look more and more like a snowy robe and a floating halo. He fell to his knees and started blubbering words that Sammy couldn’t make sense of until he heard,

  “Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven . . .”

  Stanwood stopped, unable to summon the rest of the prayer. His eyes bulged in fear and his jaw hung open, making him appear even more an idiot than usual. Which is what set Sammy off: only that much stupidity could make him angry enough to risk his safety.