The Last Days of Dogtown Read online

  “What are you going on about?” Oliver said.

  Elizabeth grew uneasy. “I never know what Mrs.

  Pulcifer means,” she whined. “Mamma says Mrs. Pulcifer likes to hear herself talk, but Mamma likes to hear her talk, too. They talk all the time, my ma and her. Pa says that Mrs. Pulcifer . . .”

  “I gotta go,” said Oliver.

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  “I’m telling Mamma about the biscuit,” she called after him.

  Oliver stood in the middle of the road and tried to decide what to do next. He did not want to go back and face Tammy without some kind of cure for her pain. Maybe the time had come for him to go down to the harbor and sign up for a berth on the next ship out. On his way, he could go past Mrs. Pulcifer’s house, though he’d never had any luck cadging food from that tightfisted lady. As he stood and considered his poor choices, he noticed the big yellow cat lying in the morning sun, stretched out on the neatly swept pathway between the house and the carpenter’s shed.

  Hodgkins’s spread was not even half a mile from

  Tammy’s place, and yet it seemed like a different world.

  There were no cats where Oliver lived. Cats belonged to a world with barns and garden plots laid out in rows, where lilac bushes got trimmed back beside stone walls that weren’t tumbling into piles. Suddenly, the carpenter’s garden seemed the prettiest place on earth. Nothing like his house or the rest of Dogtown, which was a graveyard by comparison. What Hodgkins had was modest in every detail and more than a little worn for wear, but it belonged to the world where people had carpets on the floor and meals were served at the same time every day. That was where his future lay. He was as sure of that as he was sure he could have eaten every last one of those biscuits and still had room for more.

  But he wouldn’t be going after his future that day.

  There were holes in both knees of his too-short trousers, his shirt barely covered his belly, and one of his shoes was ripped at the seam. That day belonged to Dogtown and to

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  Tammy’s damn teeth. Oliver picked up a rock and chucked it at a sapling, missing it three times before he hit the slender trunk.

  Then it came to him: Stanwood had tools.

  There was a shed out behind his house, a little bit of a lean-to where Stanwood had once cobbled shoes and mended the odd barrel. Surely he’d have pliers. Oliver hadn’t noticed much skill in Hodgkins’s surgeries: the carpenter yanked till Tammy yelled, then yanked some more until Tammy screamed, and out came the tooth, bloody root and all. Surely Stanwood, who was a far cleverer man, could do that.

  Oliver set out at a brisk pace and reached the back road in no time, his step quickened by the thought that he might also get a look at Hannah Stanwood, the last unmarried daughter, though he’d overheard Tammy say she’d been seen sitting on the knee of a certain sea captain’s son, and it was only a matter of time.

  He left the road in favor of a shortcut that led past the Muzzy house, another Dogtown ruin, where nothing remained but a broken grindstone and a sinkhole. The sun, high overhead, warmed the brushy landscape that Oliver knew from years of berrying.

  Oliver pushed his shirtsleeves up over his elbows and congratulated himself on his new plan, which not only solved his problem with Tammy but also gave him the chance to spend some time with Stanwood. He imagined them

  tramping back to the Younger place together, man to man.

  Stanwood would tell him tales of his adventures in the navy, and they would share a laugh. He might even offer some fatherly advice about Oliver’s next step. Had there been

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  anyone around to see Oliver’s smile and rushing steps, he might have imagined him on his way to see his sweetheart.

  The sight of the Stanwood homestead pulled him up short. The house was about the same size as the carpenter’s, but that was the only comparison. The path to the door was littered with leaves and fallen branches. Clapboards hung loose, and an old brown rug was stuffed into a broken window. Off to the side of the main house, a sorry-looking pile of weathered boards leaned up against a six-foot outcrop of granite. And beside it sat John Stanwood, tipped up on two legs of a three-legged stool, eyes closed in the springtime sun like the yellow cat down the road.

  Stanwood was unshaven and his greasy hair hung

  down his neck, though his boots were polished to a high sheen and his breeches, worn as they were, looked clean.

  Oliver remembered hearing something about Stanwood’s undeserved good fortune in his wife.

  He peered into the dim booth, which was certainly not in Mrs. Stanwood’s care. The workbench clutter was covered with a layer of thick dust. Only the empty bottles, scattered about the bench and floor, looked like they’d seen any recent use. He could smell the liquor on Stanwood, even from five feet away.

  Finally Oliver could wait no longer, and said, “Good morning, Captain.”

  “I was wondering when you’d get around to saying something.” Stanwood opened his eyes to a slit and looked the boy over.

  “You admiring my little boo’?” He glanced back at the dim wreck behind him. “My refuge from the hens.” He winked and the effort nearly knocked him off his seat.

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  Oliver began to doubt his plan in asking Stanwood for help, but before he realized it, the man was on his feet with the front of Oliver’s shirt bunched in his fist. “What’s your business?” he said. “Or is it the old bitch?”

  “You got any pliers?” Oliver blurted.

  “What for?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Damnation. You come all this way, ask me if I have pliers, and say never mind?” He took Oliver’s arm in his other hand and squeezed hard.

  “Tammy needs a tooth yanked.”

  Stanwood let go and sat down again. “She’ll pay

  something for that, I expect.”

  Oliver recalled the time Tammy had nothing to give the carpenter for his efforts, but said, “Sure. She’s got some nice honey.”

  “How about rum?” Stanwood said. “Or some of that hard cider?”

  Oliver shrugged. “She don’t tell me everything she’s got.”

  “Time you grew yourself some balls.” He tipped his chair back against the rock. “You go tell Tammy I’ll be there shortly.”

  “You don’t want to come with me now?”

  “I’ll be by shortly.”

  “Today?”

  “Today.”

  “Soon?”

  “I’ll be there!” Stanwood grabbed a long twig from the ground and said, “Get out of here, or I’ll thrash you and then leave that old horror to suffer like she deserves.”

  Oliver rushed back to the path. But as he had no desire

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  to see Tammy before Stanwood showed up, he slowed down, shuffling and kicking at pebbles. He stopped at a pile of rubble that used to be a well, picked up a rock the size of his fist, and dropped it down the hole, listening to the quick, sad click as it landed on other long-dry stones.

  God, he was hungry.

  When Tammy finally died, he thought, and the property came to him, as surely it must, he’d sell it to the first bidder and eat until he could hold no more. Chicken and biscuits and a whole damned cake.

  The next house he passed was still occupied, and only a little better off than Stanwood’s. It belonged to John Wharf, a distant relation of Abraham’s and the last of the line left in Dogtown. The Gloucester Wharfs had never tired of telling John what a born embarrassment he was—a fai
led cooper, a failed fisherman, and a failed farmer. So after his wife died and his daughter married, he’d retreated to the hills, where no one would remind him of his disappointments.

  The door to the cottage was open. Oliver peered in and smiled.

  “Why, hello, Polly,” he said, and ducked his head, remembering that she was Mrs. Boynton now, and that he had no right to be so familiar. Oliver had spent part of one winter in school with her. Four years his senior, she’d helped him with his letters and numbers, and she hadn’t forgotten her manners around him. He’d heard that she married a widower from Riverview last summer. “You back for a visit?” he asked.

  Polly shook her head.

  “No?”

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  “Mr. Boynton died last week,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Oliver, and took off his hat.

  “I’m not.”

  She was much changed from the pretty, well-dressed girl he remembered. This Polly was pale, her eyes swollen, and her blonde hair lay lank and tangled on a dirty collar.

  “You staying here now?” Oliver asked.

  “Nowhere else for me to go.”

  Oliver knew that wasn’t so. There were plenty of Wharfs living near the harbor, even a few rich ones with daughters close to Polly’s age.

  “I’m better off here,” she said.

  “Aw, now.”

  They both studied their shoes for a while.

  Unable to think of anything else to say, Oliver

  shrugged. “I better go.”

  She nodded.

  “Would it be . . . I mean,” he stammered, “could I come by to see you sometime?”

  Polly’s red-rimmed eyes were so full of gratitude, Oliver thought he’d bawl if he didn’t take off.

  “All right then,” he said and hurried off, trying to remember everything he could about Polly. She used to blush crimson whenever the teacher had asked her to recite. And she’d been gentle in correcting Oliver’s mistakes on the slate. Once she’d given him a whole biscuit, cold and hard, but smeared with enough bacon fat to make it eat like a whole meal.

  He’d only learned about her marriage to Caleb Boynton after it happened, as had everyone else: not even Tammy knew about it in advance. She’d bet on December for the

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  baby, Easter chose January, but neither of them turned out to be right. In fact, Polly had grown thinner, and now Boynton was dead. A man of fifty years or more, he was almost old enough to be Polly’s grandfather, but not quite old enough to be dead. Oliver puzzled over Polly all the way home, where everything seemed quiet.

  Tammy was probably asleep, and he was suddenly taken with the idea of sneaking inside, putting the blankets over her face, and pressing down hard enough and long enough for it to be over. He’d empty the larder and eat until he couldn’t swallow another bite. Then he’d take whatever was worth selling—some tools and the knives at least—and head for Riverdale. Steal a rowboat, make his way to Salem and then on to Boston.

  It was an old fantasy, but it had never before seemed so easy. He’d sell the tools and buy a suit of clothes. Sleep in a bed at a real inn. Buy passage for New York or Canada. He could get away with it, too.

  Oliver’s heart raced at the idea, even though he knew he didn’t have it in him. As much as he hated Tammy, he had never been able to kill so much as a chicken; even fishing made him feel wrong with the world. He would never be able to do murder. That’s what those fellows must have meant when they called him a Dogtown pussy. He was weak as a kitten, all right.

  The noise of Stanwood, puffing and muttering, startled him.

  “I get here quick enough for you, little girl?” he asked as he pushed past Oliver and kicked the door open.

  Tammy was sitting in her chair facing the door. Her face was gray, and her eyes narrowed at the sight of him.

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  “What the hell are you doing here?” she said. “Salted-down prick.”

  “Aw, now, Tammy, what harm I ever done you?”

  “What did you bring this horse’s ass here for?” She glared at Oliver. “You fetch this sack of shit here to kill me?”

  Oliver slinked over to the wall and looked at the floor, frightened that Tammy had somehow divined his thoughts.

  “Now, Tammy,” Stanwood soothed, “he came to me

  ’cause Hodgkins is away. Oliver’s just looking after his aunt Tam, ain’tcha, boy?

  “I’ll fix you up better than that clod of a carpenter,”

  Stanwood said, as gently as a mother talking to a baby. “You know he’s dumber than dirt. You and me, Tammy, we’re the only smart ones left up here. You take another sup of that cider for courage. I’ll have a pull too,” he smiled, “if you don’t mind.”

  Tammy’s breathing slowed as Stanwood sweet-talked her. She was barely awake as it was, worn out by pain and dulled by drink. He poured her another and fed it to her, sip by sip, and then took her by the arm and led her, shuffling, to the table. He put his hands on her waist and lifted her, grasped her ankles and brought her legs around and up, tucking the skirt under, proper and respectful. He placed a hand beneath her head and lay her down, softly. She closed her eyes and fell right to snoring.

  “Hodgkins does it on the chair,” Oliver said softly.

  “Well, that’s just wrong,” said Stanwood, who lifted the jug and swallowed, two, three, four times, before setting it down. “This is the way they do it in the navy.” He uncoiled a length of rope and tied her wrists to the table legs.

  “Hodgkins doesn’t use rope.”

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  “Well, I seen it done this way a hundred times,”

  Stanwood snapped, dropping the show of concern. He looped another piece of rope around Tammy’s arms and waist, binding her down.

  “This way, your patient keeps real still. It’s easier to get a grip like this and then I can do it faster. And faster is better, ain’t it, Tammy.”

  She moaned softly.

  “You’ll see if this ain’t the easiest time you ever had.”

  Stanwood reached into the burlap bag he’d brought and withdrew a mallet and a six-inch wooden wedge. “Open up now,” he whispered.

  Tammy dropped her jaw.

  Oliver recalled how Hodgkins would take a good five minutes poking around at the gum before he pulled, loosening the tooth before he tapped or yanked at all. But Stanwood didn’t seem to have time for that and set the wedge right up against the raw-looking line between tooth and flesh. Then, as he raised his mallet, he glanced over at Oliver, winked, moved the wedge to the center of the tooth, tipped it up rather than down, and landed a hard blow that cracked it in two, splitting what was left all the way to the gum.

  Tammy whinnied in pain.

  “Stubborn son-of-a-bitch.” Stanwood moved to the other side of the table and said, “That ’un don’t want to let go just yet. I’ll just try the other.” He put the wedge smack at the center of the left tooth and broke that across, too.

  By then, Tammy’s eyes showed all their whites and she started to struggle against the rope. But Stanwood put his hands on her shoulders, held her down, and started

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  bellowing in her face, “Where’s the gold, you old bag?

  Where’s that money?”

  Tammy thrashed her head from side to side.

  “I know you got it here somewhere. Everyone knows you got it. You give it to me or I’m going to let you bleed to death. So help me God, you tell me where you keep it or . . .”

&
nbsp; Tammy couldn’t speak even if she wanted to; she could hardly breathe for the blood in the back of her throat. But Stanwood took her head between his hands and started banging it on the table. “You give me that money or so help me, I’ll kill you. I’ll do it, you know, you stinking, ugly, hateful old hag. So help me.”

  Oliver backed up against the wall, unable to speak.

  Tammy would kill him for bringing Stanwood. And if Stanwood killed her, God wouldn’t let him off. He had not only wished for this, he had gone and brought it down on her.

  Stanwood was slapping Tammy now, hitting her with an open hand, back and forth, one cheek and the other, a malicious grin on his face. Oliver could see that he was enjoying himself, and it made his stomach turn. He bolted outside: it’s the next ship out for me, he decided. No turning back.

  But his shoe caught on a rock, and he fell face first, cutting his chin and knocking the wind out of him. He lay panting while Stanwood bellowed more threats and curses.

  It took a moment before Oliver made out the other sound coming from the house. As he got to his feet, he recognized the sobbing of a woman, hopeless, in fear for her life.

  He stumbled to the woodpile and grabbed the ax.

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  The house was a mess. Stanwood had knocked the

  kettle and pots out of the fireplace and overturned everything else, hunting for money or, failing that, something more to drink. Tammy had managed to get loose and was crouched below the table, her dress spattered with blackening blood. Her eyes were wild and her mouth leaked bright red spots onto the floor.

  Having found nothing resembling a treasure yet,

  Stanwood turned back to see if he could beat some clue out of Tammy. But she scuttled farther under the table and he stumbled trying to get her. If Stanwood hadn’t been so drunk, Tammy would have been dead for sure.

  “Get out,” Oliver screamed as he lowered the flat of the ax across Stanwood’s back with a blow that brought him to his knees.

  Oliver stood over him, the ax raised high. “Get out or I’ll kill you.”

  Stanwood peered up at him. “Good thing you’re such a little girl.”

  Oliver brought the blade down hard but it caught the edge of the table and stuck there; Stanwood rolled away on the floor and snickered at the miss.