The Last Days of Dogtown (8 page)

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.

“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.”

“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 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…”

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.

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.

“You’re down,” Oliver screamed as he yanked the blade out of the table. “You’re on the floor, you bastard. You’re down and drunk and I’m standing here with an ax.”

Stanwood smiled and slowly put his hands up. “No need to go off on me, boy,” he said in a singsong voice that mocked his own apology. “I was just having some fun. You can’t blame me, can you? She’s got it coming, ain’t she?” As he pulled himself to his feet, Oliver made ready to swing the ax roundhouse if he had to.

Then Stanwood changed his tone. “Why don’t you let me put her out of her misery,” he offered, as though it were the only reasonable course. “You weren’t even here. Why not?”

“I’ll kill you,” Tammy croaked, but her words sent her into a bloody coughing fit.

“She don’t have to kill you,” Oliver said and raised the ax again. “If you don’t get out of here I’ll do it.”

Stanwood, finally seeing that he wasn’t going to get his way, shrugged and staggered out of the dim house into the light of a lovely spring afternoon.

Tammy held her throbbing face between bloody hands while her shoulders shuddered in uncontrollable fits.

“I’m going for Easter,” said Oliver.

She shook her head. “No. You do it. You got to finish it. You.”

Having created this nightmare, Oliver felt he had no choice but to obey. He dragged a chair to the wall and helped Tammy into it, tipping her head back for support as he’d seen Hodgkins do it. He felt like he was moving through water, slow and heavy, as he picked up Stanwood’s bloody wedge and mallet. Both the teeth were shattered, but the left one was hanging loose, so he went for it first. With one careful blow, he got it free.

Tammy yelped, but didn’t move.

The other tooth wasn’t so cooperative. Part of it fell out after a light blow, but the other half stuck. The first tap didn’t budge it, but when he struck a little harder, Tammy screamed.

“I’m going for Easter,” he said.

Tammy spit out a mouthful of blood, shook her head, and pointed at him.

Oliver moved her head back again, tilted Tammy’s chin as high as he could, placed the wedge at a sharper angle, and brought the mallet down as hard as he could. What was left of the tooth fell out in a crimson torrent. Tammy’s eyes rolled back and she slumped over in a dead faint.

The mixed smell of blood, liquor, and sweat became unbearable and Oliver hardly had time to turn his head before his stomach rose up. Heaving and coughing, Oliver lay Tammy on the floor and turned her on her side so that she would not drown in her own blood. He tore strips from his ruined shirt and packed pieces into her mouth. He dragged himself to his feet, feeling suddenly like a very old man. And then he ran.

Tammy woke up two days later, in her own bed, wearing a clean nightdress, with barely a trace of blood beneath her fingernails. The gaping sockets in her mouth had been packed with cobwebs and sealed with wax. Easter Carter sat nearby, smoking a pipe; Oliver had taken his blanket and disappeared into the woods.

The whole place smelled wet. The floor had been washed with scalding water, as had the table and chairs. A chilly rain held the damp inside as Tammy dozed on and off for a solid week. She woke up when Judy arrived with broth and kept her eyes open, watching her and Easter as they chatted, distracting her from the ache and smell of her wounded mouth.

The freshest gossip was about Polly Boynton’s new widowhood. Word was Boynton had drowned falling out of his dinghy while fishing for supper. He’d been drinking, of course, and now Polly was back with her father in Dogtown. The girl was said to be weeping night and day.

“She must have loved him,” said Judy.

“I don’t know about that,” said Easter. “Boynton was a drunk and died a drunk’s death. I don’t know why pretty Polly would be sorrowing over that.”

Tammy turned down Easter’s offer of gin, and she never drank anything stronger than tea for the rest of her life. She never forgave Oliver for bringing Stanwood into her house. Nor was the true story of her toothache ever wholly known, not even to Easter, who nursed Tammy through her recovery.

Stanwood took his version of Tammy’s toothache from tavern to tavern. Leaning his chair back on two legs, he turned it into one of his best yarns ever. Stanwood claimed that he pulled both the teeth neat and clean. “I’m thinking of going into the business,” he said. “Set myself up as a dentist. Make some real money.”

But if only his friends could have been there to see how he pretended to stop when the job was half done! And how the old witch turned all womanish and carried on weeping and wailing. “She’s not near as tough as she pretends.”

Stanwood enjoyed many a free pint in exchange for that story. The men slapped their knees whenever he described Tammy’s eyes rolling around in her head, cussing him out, then weeping and begging, scared for no reason. It was sweet revenge to imagine her thus repaid for all the shakedowns and shaming she’d done them through the years.

The story that passed over the teacups lacked some of the vivid, bloody details, but there wasn’t much pity for Tammy among the ladies, either. They shared a shiver of satisfaction over the comeuppance of Cape Ann’s most poisonous gossip, before smoothly turning the conversation to the subject of teeth, and whose were false, and whose were rotting, and whether powdered charcoal or burnt bread made a better dentrifice.