The Last Days of Dogtown (32 page)

Tan was outside. Easter caught sight of her lurking in the alley beside the workhouse and called, “Here, girl.” But the dog ran down the lane and disappeared. Judy Rhines brought a meaty bone and hid it under a rotten barrel, but a city mongrel took it. After a week of watching, Tan was starved and listless. But when she caught Cornelius’s scent, her ears pricked up and she crept out of her hole.

He arrived after midnight and went in to stare at what was left of Ruth. She was wasted, diminished to what looked like half the size of her healthy self. It seemed impossible that this frail woman — for there was no mistaking this fine-boned creature for a man anymore — had once been as strong as him. Knotted mats of white hair escaped from the too-small cap on her head. She was so still, he wondered if she was dead.

Just then, her eyes flew open and searched the ceiling, as though she was expecting a visitor from on high. She looked frantic and afraid until she saw him and moaned.

“What is it?” he whispered.

She flailed her head from side to side and he saw tears glitter at the corners of her eyes. Her suffering overwhelmed him. She was alone and terrified, in pain, despairing.

He could deliver her from this misery with the blanket or even with his bare hands, he thought. It would be a mercy, like putting down a horse with a broken leg. But he had never killed a horse, much less a woman. It was not in him. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Ruth closed her eyes and grew still again. Perhaps she had understood his apology. Perhaps she had just been dreaming. Whatever her thoughts, Cornelius felt that he’d been dismissed. He set down the pile of kindling he’d brought and fled.

When he reached the Dogtown cottage that he would always think of as Judy’s house, he held the door open for Tan, who had followed him. She hesitated for a moment but then ran to a corner, watching him. He lit the fire and stared at the flames, haunted by the image of Ruth alone and forgotten in a cold room on a hard bed. Cornelius looked at Ruth’s dog, who had made her way to the hearth and was curled at his feet. He wished her mistress an easy death. Then he wished the same for himself.

Sometimes, when Easter was there, Ruth tried to speak. But all she could muster was a croak.

“Does it hurt?” Easter asked, alarmed. “Would you like a dram?”

Ruth closed her eyes wishing she could say, “I need nothing.” She would have taken Easter’s hand and finally said her thank-yous.

Though speech was lost to her, Ruth’s hearing seemed sharper than ever. In the night, she heard the halyards clang in the harbor and thought about how different winter sounded in Dogtown — a dark hum in the pines, a slow hiss in the leaves.

Through the thin panes of glass, she heard the splash of waves and remembered how the ocean had made itself heard all the way up in the hills; the surf on distant boulders like a muffled knock on an enormous door.

Ruth heard snow against the workhouse window, and recalled a storm that had coated the bare trees with salt spray, which disappeared in the morning sunlight with a brittle clatter of falling ice.

During the day, Ruth listened to the sounds from the street: horses clopping, wagons rumbling, the mismatched chorus of voices: greeting, laughing, swearing, selling, urging. There were gulls, too, barking and shrieking, like gulls everywhere.

Days passed over, around, and through Ruth. One morning during Easter’s visit, the doomed sailor woke up, shouting and cursing. Easter ran over to see what had happened and rushed back to give Ruth the full report. “No one can talk French, but he was pointing to his mouth and to his stomach clear enough,” she said. “Poor feller was half-starved, of course. When Matron brought him the thin stuff she passes off as gruel, he threw it at her. They sold everything he had, down to the boots, don’t you know,” Easter confided, as though she and Ruth had always shared these kinds of stories. “They counted on him dying, so now they got to scramble up some clothes and shoes for him. You should have seen the fellow’s face! Mad as a wet hen.”

The sailor’s departure seemed like a good omen to Easter, who’d always thought the workhouse a stepping-stone to the grave. But within the day, the angel of death did take up residence, as the old lady’s cough grew deeper and louder, wearing her out so that every breath became a gasp. It was Judy Rhines who noticed the solid silence under her blanket.

After the brief, hushed commotion of removing the body, Ruth listened to the steady
tap-tap
of Judy’s knitting needles and the sound settled her to sleep.

In the morning, Ruth’s eyes were gummy and unfocused. She did not blink or glance about, and by midday her face was hot to the touch. She slept all afternoon and Judy could not rouse her for supper. She’d brought a camphor rub, and applied it to her chest thinking that Ruth was sleeping just like Polly’s babies: as though she was working at it. As though it was her calling.

In Ruth’s dream, she was in the high meadow with Tan and Bear and others from the old pack. It was summer, and mice skittered in the brush. There was a swarming of bees, screaming cicadas, and a great symphony of birdcalls: robin, jay, mockingbird, pigeon, pheasant, woodpecker, duck, and goose. She sank into the thicket of wild music, to the beat of her own heart.

Suddenly, a racket of gulls drowned out all the other sounds. Ruth was amazed by the variety of their calls: one was just like a crow’s
caw-caw,
another sounded like the creaking of a broken tree limb. There was wild laughter, braying, screaming, keening. One of the birds sounded exactly like a weeping woman. “Oh, oh, oh,” it sobbed, nearly human.

“There, there,” Ruth said in her dream. She opened her lips and nearly summoned the words, but not quite. No matter, she thought. It’s only a gull.

Easter decided she wanted a proper burial for the African and got a couple of gravediggers, two of her loyal customers, to help her buy a spot inside the cemetery, not outside the wall, where vagrants and paupers were usually buried. Easter was ready to pay for a coffin, too, but Judy told her that Africans had a horror of being buried in a box. Instead, she volunteered a winding sheet: a fine damask tablecloth from Martha Cook’s trousseau, which had never been used and would never be missed.

“She looks like a lily before it opens up,” Judy whispered as they wrapped her neat and tight.

“I hope this is what she’d have wanted,” said Easter, sadly, for she had no idea.

The day of the burial was sunny and windless and the sea was brilliant in tribute. But only Easter was there to bear witness.

Judy Rhines was sick with the grippe. Oliver would have been there to provide Easter an arm to lean on, but Everett was in Boston that day, which meant he was needed in the store. Polly had a wedding dress to finish and the baby to nurse. No one remembered to send for Cornelius.

Easter met the gravediggers at the workhouse, where they rolled the mummylike corpse onto a plank.

“Wasn’t much left to her, was there,” said one of the men.

“She wasted away that last month,” Easter said.

They carried Ruth, slow and solemn, to the graveside and laid her gently in the hole. Easter watched them fill it in, her nose red as a hothouse poppy. When they finished, the men stood on either side of her, shovels in hand, waiting.

“I don’t know what to say,” Easter said.

“Rest in peace?”

“I hope so,” she sighed. “I should have brought a Bible or a stone, or something.”

“Come on, old gal,” said one of the men, replacing his cap and pulling her arm through his. “We’re going to stand you for a toddy.”

Easter recounted all of this to Judy Rhines, who’d never seen her friend so downcast. “We went back to the tavern and I said, ‘Everyone raise a glass to the memory of — ’ and damn me if I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if I should call her John Woodman or Black Ruth. I just couldn’t stand for anyone to laugh at her.” Easter’s eyes brimmed over and she shook her head. “It wasn’t good, Judy Rhines. I tell you, it was the saddest send-off ever.”

“You were good to her,” Judy insisted.

“I didn’t do much.”

“She wasn’t alone at the end. You were a good friend and Ruth knew it, too. I’m certain of that.”

“Maybe,” said Easter, softly. “I suppose.”

A Last Wish

T
HE MONTHS
following Ruth’s death were dry and gray, a perpetual twilight unbroken by snow or sun, and a great sadness settled in Cornelius. His head ached. He found it difficult to wake and slept the morning away, passing what was left of the short, cold days making brooms and then whittling scraps of wood into blocks like the ones he’d once seen the Younger boys play with. He did not go into town.

His only company was the tan dog. Though she spent most of her day outdoors and out of sight, she returned in the evening to eat what he fed her, and curl up near his feet. Cornelius never spoke to the dog, mortified by the depth of his gratitude for her presence.

After three months without seeing him, Oliver decided he had to find out if Cornelius was dead or alive, and he left the shop early one afternoon to walk into Dogtown.

“I wondered how you were getting on without your tea,” Oliver said, only partly cheered to discover his worst fears unmet. The smell of wet dog and unwashed clothes hung in the air. Wood shavings littered the floor of Judy’s once spotless floor, scattered plates with dried bits of food lay about, and a mound of peat crumbled by the hearth.

Cornelius shrugged and poked at the fire. He was thinner and grayer than the last time Oliver had seen him. There was a decided stoop to his shoulders and something else was amiss, too, though he couldn’t quite put his hand on it. “I worry about you, old man,” he said, gently.

“No need,” Cornelius said, feeling that he’d been scolded.

“Polly sends her good wishes,” he lied, for she had no idea that he’d come. “And the boys, too. Nathaniel is the best student at mathematics. Mrs. Hammond says it’s a wonder the way he adds and figures. I put that to your teaching him. Remember?”

Cornelius said nothing.

“Maybe you don’t recall. While you were laid up, you said the numbers to him, and it seems like he picked ’em up. David has started at the school, too. And I don’t know if you’ve seen Isaac yet, the baby. He’s a redhead, of all things, but Polly says her granddad had that coloring.”

Cornelius did not turn to face Oliver, who chatted on in the manner of an old friend. He carried on for as long as he could but finally stopped. Getting no response or acknowledgment, he gave up. “Well, I’ll be going. You will come down to the shop with some mallows, won’t you? I’ve got ladies clamoring for mallows already,” he said, and picking up one of the blocks piled on the table, added, “I might be able to sell these for you, too.” He ran a finger over the carved images of dogs and birds. “Would it be all right if I take one for Isaac?”

Cornelius nodded.

“I’ll be going then,” said Oliver and put his hand out, but Cornelius was already holding the door for him.

Oliver put his collar up and decided not to tell Polly that he’d been there. She would be hurt if he told her about Cornelius’s rudeness, and indeed, he had to admit to feeling the sting of it, himself. After walking all the way up that miserable road just to pay a call, Cornelius hadn’t even asked him to sit down.

Everett and Polly often teased Oliver of being an easy mark for anyone with a hard-luck story, and where Cornelius was concerned, he knew it was true. The African was a touchstone for Oliver’s Dogtown days, and Oliver had longed to step in and help Cornelius, as no one had helped him. He’d given Cornelius more than a fair bargain in the store, but since those few weeks when he and Polly had cared for him after he’d hurt his leg, Oliver had found no way to do the man a good turn.

As he made his way home, Oliver pulled the wooden block out of his pocket and decided it was as handsome as any he’d ever seen. He’d go back the following week, he decided, and buy the rest of them, certain he could sell them to the summer trade.

And he’d bring a spring tonic, too. What Cornelius needed was a good strong purge. This plan made Oliver feel better about the whole visit. For a moment, he thought of telling Judy Rhines about Cornelius’s sad state, and of his plan to help. But of course he would not speak of it to her. It would embarrass both of them, especially now that she had become such a lady.