The Last Days of Dogtown Page 18

  Mr. Saville copied the names into his ledger. “The judge will determine whether there is a case. I will have word sent to you.”

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  The moment Tammy realized that she would get no

  satisfaction then and there, she spit on the floor and hobbled out, with Allen shuffling after.

  A few hours later, Oliver stood in the very same spot facing Mr. Saville. In his clean white shirt and neatly trimmed beard, he was the picture of a serious young man as he handed over the will with a polite bow. Mr. Saville took Oliver’s testimony and said, “I must ask how you came by this document, Mr. Younger.”

  Polly had been standing a few steps behind Oliver, her eyes on the floor. But at that, she said, “Oh, Your Honor, Oliver just had to get that paper for us. Tammy never showed it to him and we were afraid she’d burn it. We’re to be married, you see.” She blushed. “And I’m afraid she means to make trouble for us.”

  “Don’t worry yourself, my dear,” said Saville, who liked being called “Your Honor” and thought her perfectly charming. “If Mr. Allen affirms his signature, the document will stand. And as for the special circumstances of its, uh, retrieval, I believe the parties can be made to come to an agreement.”

  Polly smiled and Judge Philpot never heard a word of the case. Mr. Saville despised the Honorable Matthew R.

  Philpot, who made no secret of his disdain for Gloucester, which he saw as a miserable backwater filled with criminals and fools. Rather than provide another excuse for him to dine out on the foibles of Cape Ann’s “characters,”

  the clerk dismissed the charge against Oliver, accepted the will in probate, and made his decision known with a posting on the town hall door.

  The name of Oliver Younger was published again a few

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  days later, when the banns announcing his marriage to Polly Wharf went up on the door of Second Parish.

  Judy Rhines spent the days leading up to the wedding helping Polly sew her simple trousseau. She also brought gifts of fresh eggs and canned peaches and whatever else she could put her hands on, trying to make amends for what she hadn’t done for Oliver in the past.

  One evening, sitting with the couple after an early dinner, she cleared her breath and said, “I wish to talk to you both about something. It isn’t my place, but I can’t hold my tongue, so forgive an old maid’s meddling.”

  She brushed off their protests and continued. “I think you should let Tammy stay in the house. It’s yours to do with as you choose; no one disputes that. But if you take it, Tammy will live in one of those Dogtown cellars and she’ll be dead by winter. I know you got no reason to show her any mercy, but I say let the devil take care of his own.

  “Besides,” Judy said, “it’s an unhappy house and Tammy’s not long for this world. And if you ask me, Dogtown is too far away from town for a confinement.”

  Oliver and Polly smiled at each other. “We’d more or less decided that for ourselves,” Polly said.

  “I want nothing to do with the place,” Oliver added, softly. “I’ll sell it the day she dies.”

  The wedding took place on a sunny June morning. Judy stood beside Oliver as one of Polly’s uncles walked her down the aisle. Easter Carter wore a loud green silk dress no one had ever seen before. Everett Mansfield attended, with his

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  wife and daughters, who carried baskets of wildflowers and giggled at the new minister’s unfortunate lisp. All of Polly’s cousins attended, and although not one of them cracked a smile during the service, Aunt Hannah Goff turned out to be a brick, standing everyone to a respectable punch. She also moved them into a little cottage owned by Mr. Goff on the far upper reach of Washington Street on the edge of town; although it was hardly a fashionable neighborhood, at least it removed her niece from the shadowy associations of a Dogtown address.

  Oliver took a job filleting mackerel, though the smell made Polly queasier as the weeks of her confinement passed. Otherwise she felt healthy enough to keep on sewing fancywork right up to the day the baby was born.

  They named him Nathaniel, and he was a rosy, sweet-tempered boy. No new father ever doted on his son more than Oliver Younger, who spent every spare moment with the child, holding him, counting his fingers and toes, kissing his petal-soft cheeks, whispering endearments, and bestowing a thousand heartfelt promises and blessings that were fully and miraculously his to give.

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  f fter the baby was born, Judy Rhines moved in with Polly and Oliver for a month to help with the cooking and washing. Judy’s presence made it a

  little easier for Oliver to tear himself away from his little family and go to work. After he left in the mornings, while Polly napped, Judy would take the boy in her arms, rock him and hum to him, and delight in his resolute yawns and sneezes. To her great surprise, Judy fell in love with him, and shared his besotted parents’ belief that he was the best baby in creation. Oliver and Polly started calling her

  “Auntie Judy,” a name that gave her more pleasure than they knew.

  After Judy returned to her own house, the Youngers made a place for her in their home, leaving out her cot and the old rug for Greyling so she could stop over on her near-daily travels to and from Dogtown. By then, Judy had been retained by Judge Joshua Cook as a companion for his wife, Martha, who suffered from rashes, fever, and various other ailments and discomforts that kept her at home and in need of constant attention and distraction.

  Judy was more than pleased about this new position.

  She had never spent time with anyone as well read or as thoughtful as Martha Cook, who seemed a paragon of

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  integrity and kindness. Martha, for her part, found a natural intelligence and curiosity in Judy that flattered the teacher in her. While Judy sewed, or tended to the flowers, or poured tea, Martha would read aloud from the Boston newspapers or from the books in the judge’s leather-bound library. She tried to engage her attendant in conversation about the stories or style of her selections, but Judy was too aware of her deficiencies to do anything but defer to her mistress on every point.

  When the days grew milder and the evenings longer, Martha declared it was the season for novels, and Judy was soon enchanted by the tales of English gentlewomen in straitened circumstances, most of whom were redeemed by noble friends and gallant lovers in the last chapter. Judy and Martha spent hours discussing the characters as though they were flesh-and-blood neighbors rather than figures in a book. After several months of encouragement, Martha managed to coax Judy into voicing an opinion of her own.

  She also insisted on providing Judy with several well-made dresses that no longer fit her own dwindling frame and bought her a new pair of stylish shoes, which Judy wore indoors but left, wrapped in paper, in the Cooks’ kitchen whenever she returned to Dogtown. Grateful as she was for the luxuries of her life in town, Judy would not agree to move into the Cooks’ house. No matter how often Martha pressed, and regardless of the fact that the bedroom beside the kitchen was always warm, and the bed was far better than her own, she resisted “living in.” Day work seemed more dignified and besides, Greyling didn’t get along with the house cat, and the dog was never far from Judy’s side, wherever she went.

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  As their first summer together ended, Martha began to read from a well-known series of books written by a distant kinswoman of hers, Sarah Maria Hastings.
Mrs. Hastings’s volumes contained all manner of writing: poems, letters, essays, and heartrending stories about the outrages and difficulties of women’s lives. One particular tale of a wife in a loveless and childless marriage set Martha to such a fit of weeping that Judy began to cast a wondering eye at the judge. Martha never spoke ill of her husband and Judy had no other reason to think him anything but an exemplary man. He was mostly unknown to her since he traveled a good deal, and when he was in town he never took his midday meal at home. But now, these facts fed her growing suspicion that there was something amiss, and Martha’s conjugal situation was often in her mind as she followed the roads in and out of Dogtown.

  On the Saturdays when Judy remained up-country, she would take long walks to clear her mind. Following overgrown trails and shortcuts that she knew as well as the inside of her own house, she reveled in the solitude and peace of the woods. But in truth, nearly every path was strewn with memories, some trivial, some momentous. There was the fallen tree where she’d once seen a she-skunk leading a litter of seven tiny babies, their striped tails bobbing in a merry row. A hollow tree marked the spot where Sammy Stanley had stopped her once, to ask if she’d had a dollar to change for ten dimes. Such a strange child, she remembered.

  “How is your grandmother’s health?” she’d asked, unable to think of any other question for a boy who lived in a brothel.

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  He’d stared like she had grown an extra eye, and bolted from her.

  There were changes in Dogtown’s landscape from

  season to season, and from year to year: trees downed, mush-rooms plentiful, or squirrels scarce. And yet, the forest was always the same. Perhaps that was why Judy could never fix the sequence of her out-of-doors memories: Had she met Sammy before or after the day she’d spotted the two poor doxies who lived at the Stanley house, too? She recalled that they were sitting on the big cracked grindstone beside one of the old abandoned houses. Easter had told her a few things about them she’d just as soon never have heard, so she’d pretended not to see Molly and Sally. But the picture of the tall dark head and the pale little blonde whispering together in the sunlight was still vivid in her mind’s eye.

  As was the day she came across Oliver and Polly kissing beside the natural edifice called Peter’s Pulpit, among the tallest of the famous Dogtown boulders. When the young people saw her, they had let go of each other with a quick flutter, like a pair of birds flushed out of the brush.

  “Hello, Judy,” Oliver said, a little too loudly.

  Polly put her hands behind her and dropped a silent curtsy.

  Judy felt tongue-tied but managed to say, “Good

  afternoon, Oliver. Hello, Polly.” She’d wanted to reassure Polly that her reputation was in no danger from her, but said only, “I’d best be going,” and hurried away, confused by a sudden burst of anguish and longing. Why on earth should their happiness upset her?

  Judy considered herself a reconciled old maid, but in

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  her bed that night, she realized that she was still smarting from the image of the young lovers. Judy pulled the dog up from her usual place behind her knees and pressed her nose into the musty warmth. “Woe is me,” she said, mocking her own moodiness. “Woe is me.”

  When Judy next saw Easter Carter, she said, “I think Oliver Younger may be keeping company with Polly.”

  Easter grinned. “Yes, dearie. John Wharf used to come up here to give them a chance at each other. He was counting on the boy taking care of her once he passed away.

  I used to tell him there wasn’t a safer wager on land or sea.”

  “You knew that?” Judy said. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I figured you’d find out soon enough. Besides, I’m not that sort of a gossip.”

  “But Easter, it’s me. It’s Judy.”

  “I never told tales on you, neither,” said Easter, softly but firmly.

  The two women, usually so companionable, fell into an awkward silence that lasted until Judy suddenly remembered a pot left on the fire and departed, wasting a freshly poured cup of tea.

  They had reconciled the very next day, as neither woman would permit anything to damage the bond

  between them, not even their secrets.

  Wherever she walked, Judy was careful to steer her thoughts away from Cornelius. She never took the path where she’d first laid eyes on him, crouched over a squirrel trap. Their eyes had met just as he snapped the animal’s neck.

  Judy smiled at him. She was no hypocrite: she ate squirrels and knew how they died. “Enjoy your dinner,” she had said and walked off. When she arrived home, the animal

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  was laying on her doorstep, gutted and skinned, the first of many gifts.

  One night, alone in her Dogtown bed, Judy finally admitted to herself that she had been in love with Cornelius. “In love”

  precisely as it was described in the novels and poems she had read with Martha; love as a kind of sweet madness that colored everything. Judy had been shocked that strangers across the ocean could describe the workings of her Yankee heart: the preoccupation and yearning, the soaring happiness and keen appreciation of a man’s hidden qualities, the sub-lime meeting of souls. And yet, there was never a mention of the sort of union she’d shared with Cornelius, the longing and fulfillment of the flesh that could transform two bodies into one.

  In the books, love was expressed in sidelong glances and witty banter. Judy could recall only a few conversations with Cornelius. For them, love had been expressed in the interplay of tongues and fingers, the absolute conviction that their bodies belonged to each other, waking and sleeping. And if he never gave her testimonials, Judy remembered a thousand physical proofs of his tenderness and affection.

  Judy wondered whether the literary silence about such matters might have had something to do with Cornelius’s race, or with the British pedigree of the authoresses. Or perhaps there was something unnatural about her, to have welcomed him into her bed, and to have responded to his touch so freely.

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  With the years, her body had become drier and cooler and the memory of Cornelius’s great legs astride her, his flesh pressed into hers, became strange and even repellent.

  Finally, Judy did not long for him anymore, and with the benefit of time came to believe that his disappearance had been for the best. He had proven himself untrustworthy and cruel, leaving her feeling cheapened and cheated. Since then, she had attached her heart to gentler and more constant subjects: Oliver and Polly, and their Natty. Easter.

  And poor Martha Cook.

  After nearly two years as Martha’s companion, Judy had come to feel like a member of her family. Martha encouraged her to borrow freely from the library and to bring treats from the kitchen whenever she visited with Oliver, Polly, and Natty. Martha had not only told Judy to consider the house her own, she had made it so by dismissing a housemaid who’d muttered something about

  “that Dogtown witch and that cursed animal of hers.” She even gave away the cat so that Greyling could come indoors freely, hoping to sway Judy to move into town.

  “I don’t like to think of you all alone in that wilderness,” fretted Martha.

  “I’m not alone,” said Judy. “Easter’s nearby, and Greyling watches over me. If I lived here, I fear you would discover just how simple I am and grow tired of me.”

  But the two of them became more and more like sisters, and when Martha’s complaints took a turn for the worse, Judy nursed her as tenderly as any blood relation.

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  Chest pains kept Martha in bed for a week, and then what had been vague aches in her legs turned into hot daggers. Dr. Beech became a daily visitor, prescribing various potions, but to little effect. One sleeping draught gave Martha a headache that left her whimpering and begging for death.

  After she recovered from that medicine, Dr. Beech said,

  “I have avoided this for as long as I dared, but there is no other course.” He set out a vial of calomel. “We must treat the poisonous phlegm, which may be the cause of all your afflictions.”

  Judy knew about the dreadful effects of the purge, which was prescribed for all kinds of ailments. Martha would suffer mouth sores, loosened teeth, and racking heaves. Before the doctor left, she stopped him and said,

  “Mrs. Cook is already so weak, I fear this cure will be worse than the disease.”

  “Is that your medical opinion?” Dr. Beech said, his hand on the doorknob.

  But Judy did not back down. “I will bring the matter up with Judge Cook. He should know of the danger, at least.”

  To her surprise, Dr. Beech removed his hat and said,

  “I want a word with you.” He led her to the library and stood by the window, facing away from her as he spoke.

  “I had no intention of mentioning this to you,” he said.

  “But since you insist on pushing your way into the matter, and as you are to be Mrs. Cook’s nurse, I am going to confide a terrible secret to you. Mrs. Cook is suffering from the French pox, for which only mercury has any effect.

  “God protect all women against respectable husbands,”

  Dr. Beech added, bitterly. He glanced at her and added,

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  “I assume that you will do nothing to damage this unfortunate lady’s reputation?”

  “You have nothing to fear from me,” Judy said, insulted at the suggestion.

  “You may not tell Mrs. Cook the nature of her illness,”