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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 coffee-colored 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.
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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
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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
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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.”