The Last Days of Dogtown (17 page)

“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, emerging from behind the house, buttoning his pants.

“My,” Molly fumbled, “sister?”

“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.

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.”

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.”

“A girl has to live,” she said seriously, her finger pointed up in the air like she was quoting scripture.

“Who taught you to say that?”

“My mamma, I think.”

“Your mamma? Was your mamma a…was she like us?”

Sally turned away and picked up a shard of plate from the floor. “This had a pretty border on it.”

“Listen,” said Molly, taking her by the elbow. “That weasel is going to be back in a tick, and I need us to agree about what we’re going to do and what we won’t be doing. And we ain’t going to be spreading our legs for anyone.”

“What do you mean?” said Sally. “You want to kill Johnny? Is that it?”

“Christ almighty, I wasn’t talking about killing anyone. I just want us to be clear about what we won’t do for these johns. I ain’t given up my cunny but two times.” She grimaced. “Almost made me go back to my sister’s. But then I seen how you can make a living without. All you got to do is play the pipe, if you know what I mean.”

Sally’s face was a perfect blank.

“Playing the pipe?” Molly said, lowering her voice. “You take ’em in your mouth. Get ’em off that way. That way you don’t get a baby, and you don’t get the pox.”

Sally clapped her hands over her mouth and squealed. “Ooooh. That’s horrible. I don’t think I could ever…Do the men like that?”

“They think they died and went to heaven. I make ’em wash it first, but mostly they don’t mind, and if you wash it for ’em, it’s part of the fun. There were some fellows down in Boston who swore they’d never have it off any other way,” Molly said. “When Johnny gets back, I’ll go with him, and you can watch how I manage it. Some of the johns, they like being watched, but that’s extra. I’m telling him it’s the only trick we do, and if he don’t like it, then we’re off.”

“And if he ain’t fair with our money, then we kill him,” Sally said.

“Are you teasing me?”

Sally smiled and went on with the sweeping.

Stanwood returned carrying a bucket, a mop, and some boiled eggs from Easter. Molly took him outside to talk business. He agreed to supplying johns for half the take and when Molly explained their services, he said, “I got no problem with it,” and tried not to appear too eager. There wasn’t any of that sort of thing to be had elsewhere on Cape Ann, and he was just the one to sell it. “But I gotta make sure that you two know what you’re doing first.”

“Nothing’s free,” Molly said.

“Free?” he bellowed. “You bag of bones. Here I been carrying and carting like some kind of mule. You owe me for that, and for what it’s going to cost me to get you some kind of beds in there.”

“I’ll do you twice for it,” she said.

“The other one, too.”

“Sally will go you once.”

“Twice.”

“Once.”

Stanwood shrugged. He was aroused and ready to go, and he followed Molly into the woods like a dog trailing a plate of meat. Sally snuck up to watch as Stanwood leaned up against a tree and unbuttoned his trousers. Molly knelt before him and, using one of the flannels she’d brought from Boston, started rubbing his skinny stalk with the cool, damp cloth.

“Goddamn,” he roared, but in a moment he was moaning a different tune.

Sally couldn’t really see the mechanics of the act, only the back of Molly’s head, pumping in and out. It was over fast. Stanwood whinnied and leaned against the tree as Molly bent over, spat, wiped her mouth, and started back for the house. When he returned to the house, he looked at Sally up and down and said, “You as good as your sister?”

He spent the rest of the day sitting and watching as they cleaned the shack and hung paper over the empty windowpanes. Molly felt his eyes on her, like a wet wool coat. When he finally left, she sat on the floor and put her head in her hands.

Sally sat beside her and pulled her close, stroking her hair until she calmed down. As the sun started to set, she said, “Let’s go to sleep.”

Silently, they made a nest of blankets and cloaks, and burrowed into each other’s arms. As she drifted off, Molly remembered the perfect safety she’d felt as a little girl in her mother’s lap, and hugged Sally tight.

Stanwood woke them up midmorning with the tip of his boot. A red-faced youngster in a dirty uniform stood at the door.

“My turn,” Sally whispered. “Outside,” she ordered the cabin boy, found a flannel, and was gone before Molly was fully awake.

When she returned, Molly was still in bed, the blanket over her face.

“It’s not so bad,” said Sally. “Salty. He was a baby, that one. I don’t think he’d been with a woman ever, not that he has now, either. It’s the quickest money I ever made.” Sally’s voice was flat, lower than usual. Molly felt her eyes burn with tears.

“Now, don’t you get to feeling bad,” she said, as though she’d heard Molly’s thoughts. “You ain’t the one turned me out. You saved me from Ned, and now I have me a sister and a roof.”

Molly pulled back the covers and stared.

“Don’t be scared if I rattle on about what’s going on in your head,” Sally said. “It’s my gift. I always know when a pot’s about to boil over, and sometimes I can tell when there’s going to be trouble in a room so I clear out first. It don’t work all the time, though. And I’m better on girls than boys.

“I ain’t smart in the other ways,” Sally said. “Can’t sign my name. Can’t read, though I reckon you can.”

“Yes,” said Molly. “I can read.”

“That might come in handy. But this here is going to be all right for us, so don’t fret. I saw some berry bushes outside so come summer we’ll have fruit and there are rose hips for tea and jelly. But right now, we need to see about getting us some tea and cornmeal and such. That Johnny-boy brought nothing with him. We might want to buy a chicken or two, soon as we suck off a few more gents, eh, my dear? I could eat an egg right now, if there was one to hand.”

Molly burst out laughing, and Sally smiled her sunniest, pleased to have lightened her friend’s mood. They walked arm in arm to Easter, whose guilt was still fresh enough to give them three baby chicks as a gift.

By the time the chicks were laying eggs of their own, there was a regular pattern to their lives in Dogtown. Stanwood would bring two or three sailors on Saturday nights, sometimes Friday and midweek too, depending on the dockings and which day the quartermaster paid out. He was an excellent salesman, sidling up to men in the taverns and whispering, “I’ve got some mouth whores up there in Dogtown. Suckstresses. You ain’t lived till you tried it.

“Worth a walk in the woods, I can tell you. And no risk of the pox,” he winked. He’d get the gobs so worked up, some of them would race ahead of him, half-cocked and unbuttoned when they walked in the door.

Most were far too drunk to notice the misery of the place until they came to the morning after. One sailor opened his eyes and declared it the saddest excuse for a whorehouse he’d ever seen, and swore it was enough to put a man off harlots for good. No one stayed for long.

The house was stark as a jail. Stanwood had scavenged a wormy table and a bench with wobbling legs, just so he’d have somewhere to bend his elbow. Molly filled a few of the chinks with mud, but there wasn’t much clay to it, so the stuff crumbled onto the floor. The chickens roamed in and out as they liked.

There were eggs most days, and corn mush and game, which some of the local boys offered instead of money. Sally did the gutting and plucking but wouldn’t cook. With only one pot in the place, Molly boiled everything to a tasteless mess. They rinsed their shifts once in a while, letting them dry in the sun while they waited, naked, under dirt-stiffened dresses. There wasn’t a speck of beauty in their lives, and Molly tried not to think about what would happen to them come winter.

But Mrs. Stanley moved in before the first snow, and everything changed.

Stanwood saw her on her first day in Gloucester, sitting in a tavern where her alabaster throat and corn-silk hair seemed to light up the dim room. When she fixed her eyes on him and smiled, he was a goner. He brought her to the cabin with three crates filled with clothes, bedding, and china.

“These are the girls I told you about,” said Stanwood.

“The dark one is Molly?”

Molly stared at the deep-bosomed woman, wearing kid gloves and a silk skirt.

“Who the hell are you?” said Sally.

Stanwood slapped her face so fast, she barely knew what had happened. “You never talk to Mrs. Stanley like that.”

Mrs. Stanley watched this exchange without comment, and then walked the four steps up and down the front room. Her lips tightened. “The chickens go outside,” she said. “Build a pen, or a coop, or whatever you like. I will not live in a barn.”

She turned to the back room. “I’ll be wanting a real door there,” and pointed to the blanket tacked over the empty frame. “You’ll be wanting a door, too, if you want to see any more of me.”