The Last Days of Dogtown Read online

  Granite seemed a safer bet, with businessmen as thick as seagulls in Folly Cove, ruining their shoes on the shore ledge. He might even work in a quarry for a while, if the wages stayed high.

  But the truth was, Sammy disliked the company of men.

  Life in the brothel had made Sammy contemptuous

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  of them all. The old ones had been desperate, the sailors loud and vulgar, the quarrymen filthy and rough. Sammy had been befriended by the wives of the farmers and fishermen he’d seen follow Sally or Molly through the curtain. Worst of all were the boys barely older than he, who’d showed up at Mrs. Stanley’s in pairs or threesomes, the money jingling in their pockets, teasing each other in booming voices and strutting like roosters. They left in silence, carrying their heads lower, and regained their voices only after they reached Gloucester, where they lied about the wild times they’d had in Dogtown.

  Sammy was most comfortable among old women, and it was they who gave him the idea about how the summer trade might be a safe ticket to a wealthy future. Mrs.

  Linner’s friends all rented rooms to Boston lawyers and bankers, charging them a few dollars more every season.

  “The city folks spend all this time oohing and ahhing over the sunsets and the fresh air,” said Mrs. Linner, while Sammy poured their tea. “As if the sun don’t set every blessed day.” With more and more cottages and ocean-facing rooms being let from one summer to the next, Sammy decided if he ever got the chance, he’d buy property with a view to the water.

  The hope of an inheritance and a future as a landowner buoyed Sammy’s spirits through Mrs. Linner’s long, miserable decline. For the better part of a year, he spoon-fed her, washed her soiled sheets, tended her little garden, and kept her accounts. But when she finally died, the house, its contents, and all her savings went to the negligent nephews who did not visit once during her last illness, even after she sent Sammy to fetch them. No one expressed surprise or

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  sympathized about the fact that he’d gotten nothing. Blood was thicker than water, and that’s all there was to it.

  Three days after Mrs. Linner’s funeral—which Sammy catered and cleaned up after—he made himself a money belt out of the old lady’s best tea towel and walked to the barbershop in Gloucester, where he got two silver dollars for his long, yellow braid. He carried Mrs. Linner’s silver service—a secret treasure she’d kept under lock and key—

  to Ipswich and sold that for a good price, too.

  With a new nest egg strapped around his waist, Sammy found a room with another widow and pursued every odd job he could find: carting, running errands, even doing laundry. He returned to stealing, too; just a little bit and with great caution. In Sandy Bay he was known as “the little businessman,” a term of endearment among the ladies who followed his progress. “He’ll own the whole town someday,” one would cluck to another whenever Sammy Stanley’s name came up.

  To which the usual rejoinder was, “He’ll make his mark, or I’m the Queen of England.”

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  The Lost Girls

  With Sammy’s departure, life grew colder,

  hungrier, and dirtier for Molly and Sally. But

  even though they missed his cooking and

  hated having to haul water for themselves, neither of them missed having the boy in the house.

  Sally had treated him as she might a cat, petting him and even calling him “puss” when the mood took her, then ignoring him for weeks at a time. Molly kept her distance from him; he looked a bit like one of her nephews and she disliked any reminders of the family she’d left. There was no knowing what Mrs. Stanley thought about Sammy, even though she’d been in charge of him and was the only one who required that the house be kept clean. By the time Sammy left, her interests and attentions had narrowed to keeping a reliable stock of rum in her house, and for that, all she needed was John Stanwood. “Such a nourishing beverage,” she said every time he brought her a bottle. “You know that molasses is excellent for the digestion.”

  That the house was known by Mrs. Stanley’s name

  testified to her expansive sense of herself, and to the effect she had on men. Few people remembered that Molly and Sally had been doing business under the same roof for several months before she even appeared. But

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  then, neither of them was in any way as memorable as Mrs. Stanley.

  Molly and Sally were certainly nowhere near as pretty, nor had they been, even as girls. Molly Jacobs had once owned a beautiful head of raven hair, which helped soften the downward turn of her thin lips and the birdlike effect of close-set eyes arranged beside her long, narrow nose. She was thin in every aspect, with arms that seemed oddly short for the rest of her.

  The fifth of six daughters born to a hardscrabble Plymouth farmer, she understood early that she was unmarriageable and doomed to serve as a permanent nursemaid to her sisters’ children. Once they grew up, she’d be the kind of maiden aunt that no one needed or wanted underfoot.

  After her second sister bore her third son, Molly realized she didn’t like children, so at fourteen, she ran away to Boston and got her living the only way she could. She walked the streets near the waterfront and made a little name for herself as mistress of the French trick, which she learned from an older member of the sisterhood, as a sure way to keep from getting the clap or, just as bad, a baby.

  Molly had been at it for a few years when she crossed paths with Sally Phipps. The barman, who kept an eye out for his regular girls, motioned her over and said, “Watch out for that ginger-haired bantam over there.” He nodded at a potbellied fellow who was drunk as a fiddler. “He’s under-selling you something terrible, trading his poor little niece for the price of a rum punch.” Adding, “Niece, my arse.”

  A moment later, a sailor slammed the door wide and said, “Set the fellow up.”

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  A slip of a girl crept in and stood in a corner, where she could lean up against one wall and stare at the other. Her white-blonde hair was wet from the rain, slicked down to her skull. Her chest rose and fell quickly, as though she’d been running, and Molly noticed the unmistakable swelling at her waist. When the red-haired “uncle” went outside for a piss, Molly hurried over to the pale, soaked girl and said,

  “Follow me.”

  Sally looked into Molly’s sad face and considered the invitation. Ned had taken to slapping her for just about anything, including talking to strangers without his say-so.

  But he was out of the room, and she sure as hell didn’t want to lie down for anyone else that evening.

  “Aw-right,” Sally drawled, and turned on a smile full of milky teeth and blind trust.

  Molly led her out the back door, down the alley, and up a flight of stairs into her room, which was bare except for a plank bed, a stool, a couple of pegs, and a chamber pot. Sally headed straight for the cot and within a minute, a soft whistling sound came from her upturned nose. Sleep was by far the best time of the day for a streetwalker.

  Poor thing, Molly thought and sat beside her, trying to decide on a next step. The barman wouldn’t tell the pimp where she lived, but there were others who might. Once that Ned sobered up, they might want to be somewhere else. Maybe this was the sign that she ought to leave Boston.

  When she first left the farm, Molly had loved being on her own. Her sisters had made her feel invisible and un-important. Being a woman alone—even a bad woman—

  meant that she could claim her own time, as well as her price. She’d chosen a
new name, too—switching from Mary

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  to Molly—and had picked out “Jacobs” as a surname, from the store where she had her first taste of pineapple.

  But she’d turned against Boston, which now seemed nothing but dirty and dangerous. She’d heard it was quieter up in Portsmouth and the prospect of a traveling companion made the journey suddenly seem more like a holiday than a retreat.

  Of course, she didn’t even know this girl’s name or where she came from. Molly wondered if her slow way of talking meant she was bottle-headed. Or maybe it was because she came from Georgia or Virginia or someplace where everyone talked like that. She’d find out in the morning, she decided, blew out the candle, and squeezed herself into the narrow space on the bed beside Sally.

  At dawn, Molly tiptoed out to see about the next coach to Portsmouth and returned to find Sally sitting up, watching the door.

  “I put in some sugar for you,” said Molly, offering her a mug of tea.

  “Ain’t you a sweetheart.”

  “I’m Molly Jacobs.”

  Sally nodded, and then turned her attention to the tea.

  “Mmmmm.”

  “Well, what’s your name?” Molly asked.

  “Sally Phipps.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Bal’mer.”

  “Is that south?” Molly asked.

  Sally shrugged and beamed.

  Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Molly decided.

  “How far along are you?”

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  “Eh?”

  She pointed to Sally’s belly. “You’re carrying, ain’t you?

  You got a baby coming.”

  Sally looked blank.

  “Oh, no. You can’t be that simple. How long since you had your courses?”

  Sally dropped her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said at last.

  “A while now.”

  “First time you get caught?” Molly asked.

  Without her smile, the light went out, and Sally was plain as a box, with no chin to speak of and blue eyes so light they seemed almost blank.

  “Well, given the size of you, it might be six months, might be less.”

  “Less?” Sally said, hopefully.

  “You want to leave town with me?”

  “I suppose. I sure don’t want to see Ned no more.”

  “We’ll have to, well, work for a living when we get there, you know.”

  Sally’s face fell again. At least she wasn’t that stupid, thought Molly. “Or maybe we can hire out at a dairy, or maids for some rich lady in a big house?”

  Sally’s expression didn’t change much at those

  suggestions.

  “Well, never mind that now,” said Molly, and set to stuff-ing her extra shift and stockings into a sack. “Fold up the blanket. We got to get moving. The first coach is going to Gloucester, which is as far as I can afford to get us right now.”

  Sally slept through the whole bone-rattling journey, her head on Molly’s shoulder. Molly, who had trouble falling asleep in a feather bed, could have pinched her for spite. But

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  the last leg of the trip perked her up. The North Shore was nothing like the coastal lands of her childhood: the boulders seemed to lift the whole landscape up into the sky, and a honeyed brightness in the air put a keen edge on every hummock. The April trees were budding in red and gold, and the marsh grasses seemed to be waving at her. She had a good feeling about making a fresh start here. Maybe she and Sally could hire out as housemaids after all. Maybe she could stay clean in this tangy air.

  The coach finally stopped at the battered public house on the green. The publican’s wife stepped out of the tavern to greet the travelers and eyed the two girls warily. “Who might you be?”

  “Molly Jacobs, ma’am.”

  “I’m Sally Jacobs.”

  “You two sure don’t look like any sisters.”

  “Same pap, different mamas,” Sally fibbed so easily that Molly suddenly wondered if “Phipps” was also a lie.

  “Huh,” she said, pegging them as strumpets from the state of their shoes and the color of their skirts. “Well, you two sure as hell ain’t coming in my place. Get yourself down to the harbor or up to Dogtown where you belong. And by the by,” she said to Molly, “your ‘sister’ don’t look so good.”

  Sally’s face was pale green. “My down-belows are in a twist,” she said, and doubled over.

  “I got to get her somewhere to lie down,” said Molly, suddenly panicked at what she’d done in taking a perfect stranger, pregnant at that, to a place where she knew no one.

  “Who needs to lie down?” said John Stanwood, emerg-ing from behind the house, buttoning his pants.

  “My,” Molly fumbled, “sister?”

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  “You my kind of sister?” He winked and Molly

  dropped her eyes. “You come with me. Easter Carter never says no to visitors.” He picked up Molly’s bag.

  “Where’s the wagon?” she asked.

  “No need. We can manage her,” he said, and put his arm around Sally’s waist and hoisted her to her feet. “Get over on the other side.”

  It was slow going as Stanwood and Molly half carried, half dragged Sally up the Dogtown road, stopping every few minutes so she could bend over and retch.

  Easter saw them coming and walked out to greet them wearing her usual smile. But when she got close enough to see the state Sally was in, she turned into a mother hen. “Go fetch some water, Johnny,” she said, and got the ailing girl settled inside.

  The baby came that night, a tiny stillborn boy with a clubfoot. Sally didn’t make a sound through it all, and she slept for three days after. On the fourth day, she sat up, melted Easter with her brightest smile, and asked, “You got any porridge, Missus?”

  Easter made a big pot of corn mush and put the last of her currants in for a treat. She gave the girls a pallet in the back corner of her big drafty parlor while Sally recovered and Molly did everything she could to be of use, weeding the garden and washing up after Easter’s young people stopped by to drink and flirt. She learned a few of the Dogtown paths and was working up to ask Easter about building a second chicken coop so they could sell eggs down in Gloucester. The fact that Easter let the strange black woman live in the attic fed her hope that Easter might take them in, too.

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  But one sweet-smelling evening when the three of them were sitting at the table, Easter said, “It’s been fine having you girls here, but now that Sally is up and around, you got to be thinking about moving on.”

  The look on Molly’s face gave Easter a moment’s pause.

  “I’m sorry, dearie, but your business is, well, I just can’t stand to have that going on under my roof. Not that I judge you for it, but it’s just too sad for me to be anywhere near it.

  Too sad by half.”

  “Couldn’t we do something else for you?” Molly asked, without much conviction. “You know I’m not afraid of hard work, outside or inside. And I’m real good with chickens. Or we could hire out as housemaids, Sally and me.

  We’d give you half of what we earn. More than half.”

  Easter shook her head. “Stanwood already spread the word about you two, and you know, good as me, that there’s only one way a girl’s reputation can turn, and it ain’t from black to white.”

  Sally took her finger out of her mouth. “Johnny told us we could live in one of those empty houses.”

  “Or we
could try to head north,” Molly said. “I was thinking of going all the way to Portsmouth. This was the only coach I could afford.”

  “That’s a thought, dearie,” said Easter, who felt bad about turning them back to whoring. “Let Sally build up her blood and you can try again. Meanwhile, I’ll loan you some things for housekeeping.” Easter made the offer on her way down to the potato cellar, returning with an armload of chipped cups, wooden ladles, ironware, chamber pots, and some forks. “Just some odds and ends I saved over the years.”

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  Sally smiled. “Ain’t you a sweetheart?” She turned to Molly. “Ain’t she?”

  But Molly was barely able to nod.

  Stanwood brought a wheelbarrow for Molly’s few

  possessions and Easter’s rusty gifts. He led them up an even rougher road to what used to be the Pierce house, which was set off in a hollow, on the way to Sandy Bay.

  “Real private,” he said.

  The house was small even by Dogtown standards, with two cramped rooms, front and back, and all of it a mess of pine needles, mouse droppings, and broken glass. Molly groaned, but Sally rolled her sleeves, hitched up her skirt, and started sweeping with the broom they’d borrowed from Easter. “Johnny?” she said, stretching out his name so long, it was like she was sucking on it. “You go ask Easter for a bucket and a mop, won’t you, Johnny?”

  Johnny was leaning up against a wall, trying to figure out which girl he’d have first.

  “You know it will be worth your while.” She winked at him.

  He moved up to her and put his hands on her breasts and said, “It better be, because I don’t fetch for women. Not even my own damn wife!”

  As he left, Molly stared openmouthed at Sally.

  “What the matter, darlin’?” Sally asked.

  “I don’t understand you one bit. Where do you come from?”

  “I told you,” Sally said. “Bal’mer.”

  “I can’t decide if you’re simple or evil, or some of both.”