Chapter One
The Death of Abraham Wharf
Judy Rhines decided to take the footpath through
the pasture. It was half the distance of walking
all the way down the Commons Road and back up
Dogtown Road and she wanted to get there early
enough to be of help. But the going was slow.
The winter of 1814 had buckled the field with
frost and there was black ice in every hollow.
If she didn’t consider every step, she might end
up as bad off as Abraham Wharf, who certainly
had no need of her hurry.
The cold seemed to add hours and miles to even
the shortest journey through Dogtown.
Gloucester, which was barely an hour’s walk for
a healthy man in good weather, could seem as
remote as Salem in February. It was a gloomy
landscape even on a fine day, with its rutted
thoroughfares and ruined houses and the odd
collection of souls who had washed up into the
rocky hills of Cape Ann. At least it isn’t
windy, Judy consoled herself.
She was the first to arrive at Easter Carter’s
house. “My right-hand friend,” said Easter,
holding out a shawl for her. “Come by the fire.”
Judy smiled at the tiny woman, hung up her
cold-stiffened cloak, and took shelter in the
warm wrap. After the feeling had returned to her
fingertips and cheeks, she squared her shoulders
and went over to take a look at the body of
Abraham Wharf, which lay on the floor in the far
corner of the room.
Judy lifted the faded scrap of yellow gingham
that covered his face and chest. It was a shame
and a sorrow. Nobody spoke of suicide much, but
Judy wondered if it might be a far more common
escape than anyone suspected. Then it occurred
to her that there was a curious lack of blood on
Wharf: if a man cuts his own throat, shouldn’t
his collar be soaked through? Shouldn’t his
hands be stained, his sleeves caked? Perhaps the
cold had frozen it, she reasoned. Or maybe
Easter had cleaned him up.
Before she could ask any questions, the door
opened and Ruth walked in, her arms full of
firewood. Judy marveled at the sight of eight
real logs: the nearby hills had been stripped of
trees years ago. Dogtowners burned mostly peat
and dung.
Then again, she thought, Ruth brought mystery
wherever she went. A stranger would be
hard-pressed to see that the coffeecolored
African wearing trousers and a cap was a “she”
at all. Ruth had never been seen in a dress and
preferred the name “John Woodman,” though
everyone knew her as Black Ruth. A stonemason,
of all things, she lodged in Easter’s attic.
Judy still hoped that Easter would one day tell
her more of Ruth’s story. She was fascinated by
everything having to do with Cape Ann’s few
Africans.
“Hello, Ruth,” said Judy. “What a great treat
you bring us.” Ruth nodded, placed the logs by
the fire, and retreated upstairs before the
others started to trickle in.
Easter Carter’s was the biggest house fit for
habitation in the Commons Settlement, which was
Dogtown’s real name. With an eight-foot ceiling
and a twenty-foot-long parlor, its fireplace was
large enough for a side of beef, though it had
been many years since anything so rich had
sizzled there. The place was large only by
comparison with everything else still standing
for miles around, and it served as a tavern in
everything but name and taxes. Young people and
sailors tramped up the old road seeking a good
time, and Easter let them have it. She loved
having company, and even a corpse was welcome if
it fetched in a crop of the living.
That day, the first visitors included a few
ancient ladies who arrived, one by one, braving
the cold to pay their respects to the deceased
and hoping for a glass of ale in his honor, and
perhaps even a bite to eat.
Among the early arrivals, there was but one
unlined face, which also belonged to the only
breathing male in the room. Taking his turn
beside the body, Oliver Younger removed his hat
and coughed, trying to distract attention while
he nudged at the cloth with his foot to get a
better look at his first corpse. But Tammy
Younger saw what he was up to and smacked the
back of her nephew’s head with the flat of her
hand.
“What in hell is wrong with you?” she said. All
eyes in the dim room turned toward them. “What
the hell did I ever do to be plagued with such a
nit of a boy? I ask you, Judy Rhines. What
merits me the village idiot here as my
punishment?”
Judy placed herself between Tammy’s squat form
and the skinny twelve-year-old. She looked down
at Abraham’s body, and Oliver Younger saw the
sadness in her eyes and wished he had the
gumption to say something kind to her. But Tammy
would shame him in front of God and the devil
for showing any feeling toward Judy Rhines. He
gritted his teeth and walked back toward the
fire, even though that took him close to the
creaking ladies gathered there, the eldest being
Mary Lurvey, Abraham Wharf’s bereaved sister,
who stank of death herself.
Mary’s red nose dripped a steady stream as she
rocked herself back and forth on Easter Carter’s
best chair, blubbering about how he’d burn in
hell for taking his own life.
“My poor, poor brother,” she moaned. “I won’t be
seein’ him in heaven, that’s sure. He’s going to
burn, and it’s on my head. It is, for I should
have warned him off.” She repeated this refrain
every time the door opened upon another face,
chapped and curious to learn if it was true that
Wharf had done himself in.
Each new arrival clucked in sympathy as she
settled in, thankful for the warmth and
companionship in what had once been the
community’s great showplace. It was the only
house ever to have a second story, even back in
the days when the settlement was full of proud
men. That was long before it had turned into a
collection of broken huts and hovels inhabited
mostly by spinsters and widows without children,
and few with so much as an extra spoon in their
cupboards. Marooned by poverty, or peculiarity,
or plain mulishness, they foraged a thin
livelihood selling berries and brews made of
roots and twigs. For their pains, they were
branded “trash-eaters” and mocked all over Cape
Ann.
“No one left up there but witches and whores,”
said the wastrels in the taverns. “They dally
with their dogs up there,” said the farmers and
the fishermen. And all of them traded lies about
having it off with Judy or any other skirt that
didn’t have one foot in the grave. With a wink
and a grin, they’d say, “A dog can have his day
up there.”
It was doubtless a barroom wit who first called
the fading village a dogtown. That the slander
had stuck with the force of a christening had
been a bleeding thorn in Abraham Wharf’s heart,
and he’d never let the term pass his lips.
Defending the Commons Settlement had been his
mission, and anyone who’d let him talk for more
than a minute got an earful of how it used to be
the finest address on the North Shore, indeed,
in all the Commonwealth. According to him, the
most respected families had lived there and
raised the finest livestock – cattle, sheep,
and oxen. Wharf had been their leader – or at
least, that’s how he told it. His Anne was the
prettiest wife. His sheep gave the best wool.
His sons had been most likely to take charge of
the whole damned Cape. But that was “once’t,” as
he put it.
“He was bitter,” said Easter Carter, and she
recalled Wharf’s much-repeated claim that the
war for independence had killed off the best of
his neighbors. The ones who returned with all
four limbs attached decided against the
thankless work of harvesting rocks when
Gloucester Harbor delivered an easier living.
Buying and selling became the way to making a
fortune.
“Remember how he’d say the word ‘shopkeeper’?”
said Judy. “Like he was speaking the worst sort
of blasphemy.”
“My brother didn’t set a foot into church for
forty years,” Mary said. “Forty years he went
without hearing a word of scripture.” Abraham
had come to sit by her fire just two nights
earlier and asked if she thought that killing
yourself meant sure damnation. Mary had
dismissed his question with a sour warning to
stop talking rubbish, and she spent the rest of
their last evening together complaining about
her dyspepsia and her ungrateful children.
The memory of that last conversation was a
terrible shame to Mary, whose shrill sobs
reminded Judy of nothing so much as a stuck pig.
The unkindness of that notion caused her to
hurry over to the bereaved woman with another
cup of comfort. The smell of boiling cabbage,
wet woolens, and cheap tobacco seemed even
stronger in that corner of the room, and Judy
welcomed the clean, icy blast when the door
swung open again.
“Well, if it ain’t Granny Day,” said Easter,
greeting a lady nearly as wrinkled and bald as
one of last year’s crab apples.
“Didn’t know if I’d make it in this cold,”
apologized the newcomer. “But then I thought I
owed it to him.”
“It’s all right, dear,” said Easter, steering
her over toward Abraham’s body as she retold the
story of how Cornelius Finson had found him
early that morning with a long knife in his own
hand. He’d done the deed in the shadow of the
Whale’s Jaw, two enormous boulders that together
made a perfect replica of a great fish head.
Cornelius, or Black Neal as some called him, had
carried the corpse to Easter, who sent him
straight into town to find some ablebodied
relations to carry Wharf back to Gloucester for
a Christian burial.
When Granny Day opened the door, the biggest of
the settlement dogs had padded in behind her. A
long-haired brute, nearly six hands tall, Bear
ambled directly over to Easter Carter and
nuzzled at her hand. Finding nothing there to
eat, he headed for the chilly lean-to, which had
been tacked onto the house back in the day when
there’d been food enough to require a separate
pantry. A shaggy congregation was already
gathered there, huddled jowl by haunch on a
filthy scrap of carpet: Pinknose, Brindle,
Spots, Big Brown, and Greyling. One by one, the
dogs had slipped into the house behind a
two-legged guest, lured out of secret burrows by
the unusual commotion and the smell of cooking.
When Bear entered, the others rose so he could
take the warmest spot in the center. He lowered
himself in his rightful place with a sigh while
the rest of them circled and scratched and
settled again.
Judy Rhines smiled at the pack, watching as
steam rose off the breathing heap of fur. Let
them call us Dogtowners, she thought, I’m
satisfied to be thought of as one of them. She
felt less inclined to claim fellowship with the
collection of unhappy creatures in the parlor,
each one wrapped in her own dark shawl. And
poor, broody Oliver, arms crossed over his
narrow chest, slouched against the wall, his
chin on his chest.
With his thick black hair, green eyes, and high
cheekbones, he wouldn’t be a bad-looking boy if
he’d only pick up his head and stop scowling.
Oliver caught her gaze and seemed to glare back,
then took to studying the ceiling. A strange
one, she thought, and wondered if he’d ever make
anything of himself. It was too bad that Oliver
had nowhere else to go. Tammy was his blood-kin,
but he might have been better off bound out as
an apprentice: maybe some honest farmer with a
softhearted wife. Of course, that was a rough
gamble, too, as Judy well knew.
Oliver’s great-aunt was a terror, but there was
no changing Tammy Younger. Her name was often
invoked by mothers wishing to keep their
children from straying into the woods. They
called her a witch and warned that her favorite
tea included the plump fingers and toes of
heedless boys and girls.
Judy thought of Tammy as a force of nature,
unpleasant as a wasp’s nest, but inevitable.
Then again, Judy was known as a soft touch,
having once been heard defending skunks and
mosquitoes as having a rightful place and
purpose. Abraham Wharf used to scold her about
being so tenderhearted. “You take care of
yourself,” he’d said to her, only a month before
he died. “You take good care of Judy Rhines for
once’t.” Remembering his words, Judy Rhines drew
her dark brows together and bowed her head.
Oliver watched and wondered how she could grieve
for such a bad-tempered old windbag.
He’d never seen her look so low. Judy usually
wore a gentle half smile that drew people to
her. There was a sort of natural pleasantness,
an irresistible goodness to her face. Not that
she was a great beauty. Her eyes were a pale
brown, a shade lighter than the brown of her
hair, which she parted in a sharp line over her
right ear. In her homespun dress, unbleached
apron, dust-colored shoes, and bare head, Judy
Rhines put Oliver in mind of a hen. It was not
the most flattering picture, he knew, but it was
comfortable enough to let him imagine her caring
for him in return.
Oliver glanced over at Tammy, making sure she
hadn’t caught him staring at Judy. She was at
least thirty, Oliver guessed, though she could
be forty.
Mary Lurvey’s weeping had turned into a
desperate coughing fit that fixed all attention
upon her. In September, Tammy had warned that
Mary wouldn’t last the winter. Abraham’s death
would hasten that likely guess into a mystic
prediction and strengthen Tammy’s terrifying
effect on the foolish believers who already
feared her reputed powers.
After Mary quieted down, Easter served helpings
of boiled cabbage and potatoes. The ladies
huddled by the fire set their little china pipes
on the floor and exclaimed over the plain fare
like it was a wedding feast. Easter spooned more
onto their plates even before they’d finished,
knowing it would be their only hot meal that day
and possibly the next.
Easter was one of Judy’s favorites. No more than
four and a half feet in her shoes, Easter had a
long, beaky nose flanked by small, squinted
eyes. But the face under her old-fashioned cap
beamed whenever people were under her roof,
especially when it was younger folks holding
court and calling her “Mother.”
It was Easter who’d come up with the name “Judy
Rhines,” and in her mouth it sounded like an
endearment. Most women were called by their
family name, like Granny Day or Widow Lurvey. Up
in the woods, unmarried women like Easter were
sometimes known by their given names, rather
like naughty children. But Easter had taken a
shine to the sound of “Judy Rhines” and it
stuck.
It had been so long since Judy had heard “Judith
Elizabeth Ryan,” that if someone had addressed
her so, she might not remember to answer. Judith
Elizabeth Ryan sounded like a woman who owned a
Sunday dress, a flowered wool carpet, and a
white teapot, not someone who had often made a
supper from berries and roots dug out of the
woods, or who cleaned other people’s houses for
a length of cotton, or who kept a half-wild dog
at her feet to keep from freezing on winter
nights.
Just as Judy was about to take some of Easter’s
stew for herself, the door flew open again,
hitting the wall with a bang that caused the
ladies to jump and then coo at the sight of
little Sammy Stanley, borne in like a scrap of
driftwood on a wave of three wet skirts and a
peal of laughter. Dark Molly Jacobs and fair
Sally Phipps rushed for the fire, reaching their
four red hands to the glow, while Mrs. Stanley
closed the door with a polite flourish and
walked directly to the center of the room. When
she was certain that all eyes were fixed on her,
she pulled a bottle from inside a ragged raccoon
muff.
“What a welcome sight you are,” said Tammy,
addressing herself to the rum.
“In memory of Master Wharf,” said Mrs. Stanley.
“Too bad the poor old fart ain’t here to enjoy
it,” Tammy said.
Oliver laughed at the rude word, a boyish reflex
he tried to swallow when he saw Judy shake her
head. But Mrs. Stanley turned her famous smile
in his direction as she removed her hood. Yellow
curls cascaded out, unbound like a girl’s, and
spread out in pretty ringlets over a shirt so
white it nearly glowed in the dim room.
Mrs. Stanley – no one had ever heard her
Christian name – carried herself like the great
beauty she’d once been. Blue-eyed and blonde,
she triumphed over the wrinkles at her eyes and
the slack line of her chin by batting her
lashes, pursing her lips, and placing a soft
hand upon the forearm of any fellow who drew
near enough to catch her nearsighted gaze.
Tammy leered. “Rum, eh? What sailor got lucky?”
“Oh, goodness,” Mrs. Stanley replied. “Let’s not
tread that path, shall we, lest your own
misplaced steps come into question.”
“You old whore,” Tammy said. “You’ve got more
brass than the whole of Boston sets on its
tables come Election Day.”
Mrs. Stanley shrugged and walked over to see the
body, pulling the reluctant child behind her.
She placed a hand on her bosom and bowed her
head as she pulled off Sammy’s cap, revealing a
matching tumble of blond hair that hung down to
the boy’s shoulders. Oliver started to laugh at
the girlish locks, but stopped when he saw Judy
Rhines frowning in his direction.
Sammy, who was no more than six years old,
blinked in terror and bit his lip till it bled.
He’d never seen a dead man, and the sudden heat
in the room made him swoony. Judy noticed the
child’s distress and took his hand, leading him
away from the corpse and toward the back room.
Sammy pulled away when he spotted the crew of
dogs, who raised their heads in a single gesture
and stared.
(Continues…)
Scribner
Copyright © 2005
Anita Diamant
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-7432-2573-2
Excerpted from The Last Days of Dogtown
by Anita Diamant
Copyright © 2005 by Anita Diamant.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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