The Last Days of Dogtown (22 page)

Tammy screwed up her face. “Allen is making a loan? That horse’s ass does nothing for nothing.”

“You’re right there,” Judy agreed. “I fixed him up with some spring tonic a little while back, and I’m calling in the favor. I figure I might get some of that famous butter out of you, in exchange for the ride.”

“Why should I give you anything?” said Tammy. “You won’t be going out of your way.”

“I could pass on by without stopping.”

“And what would people think of you when I tell ’em you left me here to starve?”

“How about if I take half a log of butter for doing you that favor?” Judy said.

Tammy thought Judy a ninny for asking so little, but she scowled to hide her satisfaction at the bargain.

Oliver rose early to gather enough reeds to make good on Judy’s lie, and for once he didn’t regret cutting short his morning with Polly. He was skittish about rolling over on her now that she was carrying a baby, though he barely slept for worrying. What if Tammy decided not to go into Gloucester? What if she had destroyed the will? What if he couldn’t find it? What if he did? And what kind of difference would it make, anyway? There was no way to get back what had been taken from him.

The mist was starting to burn off as Judy stopped at Tammy’s place. She was waiting, smoking a pipe and tapping her foot, with three full buckets ready to go. She had churned so much she’d had to wrap some of the butter in strips of yellow gingham instead of white linen, and she’d been rehearsing ways to insult the shopkeepers if they made any complaint about the difference.

As soon as the cart disappeared, Oliver stepped out of the woods and headed straight for the writing table. It was more cluttered and dustier than he remembered, piled with all sorts of rubbish: lengths of string and ribbon, buttons and nails, shells and bent spoons. The drawer was so full, it took him three tugs to get it open.

He sat down at the table with the drawer and set to removing the scraps and wrappers, reading every label and advertisement, and then laying each paper flat to make sure he missed nothing. Beneath the last yellowed slips of tissue, he found a small wooden box that rattled with promise but contained nothing but a dozen pale pebbles. On second look, Oliver realized that they were actually the brittle remains of Tammy’s teeth. A shiver passed through him as he remembered her bleating cries at John Stanwood’s hand.

There was no will. He had been so certain that the desk would yield it up. He was wrong again. Polly would be better off married to anyone else — even Caleb Boynton. Hating himself for thinking such a miserable thing, Oliver returned to the desk and kicked it as hard as he could, breaking one of its legs and toppling the whole thing onto its side. The back split apart, and he saw the piece of parchment stuck between two thin panels.

Oliver held his breath as he teased it, yellow and dried, out of its snug hiding place and unfolded the creases slowly, so the paper would not tear. The whole document was but two lines of writing.

This is to state that all of the Younger lands, including the house on Cherry Street to the stream below and to the road above, as well as the pasture to the north and west as noted in town deed, are the sole property of Oliver Younger, son of Daniel Younger. This to take effect 12 September 1818, sixteen years to the day after his birth, when he shall come into his inheritance.

[Signed] Daniel Younger and William Allen
27 June 1806

Oliver had never let himself wonder what his life might have been like had his parents lived, but there was no way to avoid the thought now. His father seemed to be standing in the room with him. He stared at the handwriting, which slanted to the left. And at his birth date, which he had never known. He was a year older than he’d thought.

Oliver stood up and kicked the desk again, breaking another leg. He grabbed the broom and swept all the papers he’d piled on the table down to the floor. He picked up the little box that contained the dry nubs of Tammy’s teeth, dumped it on the hearthstone, and ground them into dust with his heel.

He surveyed the mess he’d made, nodded once, and closed the door as he left.

When Tammy saw what had been done to her house, she shrieked and cursed so loud that she set her cows to lowing in fear. Judy, who had jumped back into the wagon and taken off at a trot, could hear her a half mile down the road.

The next morning, Tammy managed to limp to the Allen farm. Puffing and sweating, she arrived before dawn, walked into the bedroom, and yanked William Allen out of a sound sleep. “You’re taking me to see the judge, and you’re taking me now.”

At the clerk’s office she demanded, “I want the magistrate. I want to see a judge.”

“Judge Philpot is sitting in Salem,” said Mr. Saville, the elderly official whose back went up at Tammy’s demeanor and the unmistakable smell of cow that attended her.

“I got a case,” Tammy said, slamming her hand flat on the desk.

“Judge Philpot is sitting in Salem all week,” Saville said in a tense monotone. “If you give me the particulars, I will put the matter before him.”

Tammy launched into a long description of the wrongs that had been done to her by Oliver Younger. “My nephew’s son, no less. My own flesh and blood that I raised up by hand, and he bites me like a mad dog. I want my rights. I want him locked up. And that whore, Judy Rhines, too. I blame her for this. He’s too stupid to have thought it up. It was Judy Rhines.”

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

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 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 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.

Departure

A
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 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.