The Last Days of Dogtown

“My brother didn’t set a foot into church for forty years,” Mary said. “Forty years he went without hearing a word of scripture.” Abraham had come to sit by her fire just two nights earlier and asked if she thought that killing yourself meant sure damnation. Mary had dismissed his

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question with a sour warning to stop talking rubbish, and she spent the rest of their last evening together complaining about her dyspepsia and her ungrateful children.

The memory of that last conversation was a terrible shame to Mary, whose shrill sobs reminded Judy of nothing so much as a stuck pig. The unkindness of that notion caused her to hurry over to the bereaved woman with another cup of comfort. The smell of boiling cabbage, wet woolens, and cheap tobacco seemed even stronger in that corner of the room, and Judy welcomed the clean, icy blast when the door swung open again.

“Well, if it ain’t Granny Day,” said Easter, greeting a lady nearly as wrinkled and bald as one of last year’s crab apples.

“Didn’t know if I’d make it in this cold,” apologized the newcomer. “But then I thought I owed it to him.”

“It’s all right, dear,” said Easter, steering her over toward Abraham’s body as she retold the story of how Cornelius Finson had found him early that morning with a long knife in his own hand. He’d done the deed in the shadow of the Whale’s Jaw, two enormous boulders that together made a perfect replica of a great fish head.

Cornelius, or Black Neal as some called him, had carried the corpse to Easter, who sent him straight into town to find some able-bodied relations to carry Wharf back to Gloucester for a Christian burial.

When Granny Day opened the door, the biggest of the settlement dogs had padded in behind her. A long-haired brute, nearly six hands tall, Bear ambled directly over to Easter Carter and nuzzled at her hand. Finding nothing there to eat, he headed for the chilly lean-to, which had been

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tacked onto the house back in the day when there’d been food enough to require a separate pantry. A shaggy congregation was already gathered there, huddled jowl by haunch on a filthy scrap of carpet: Pinknose, Brindle, Spots, Big Brown, and Greyling. One by one, the dogs had slipped into the house behind a two-legged guest, lured out of secret burrows by the unusual commotion and the smell of cooking.

When Bear entered, the others rose so he could take the warmest spot in the center. He lowered himself in his rightful place with a sigh while the rest of them circled and scratched and settled again.

Judy Rhines smiled at the pack, watching as steam rose off the breathing heap of fur. Let them call us Dogtowners, she thought, I’m satisfied to be thought of as one of them.

She felt less inclined to claim fellowship with the collection of unhappy creatures in the parlor, each one wrapped in her own dark shawl. And poor, broody Oliver, arms crossed over his narrow chest, slouched against the wall, his chin on his chest.

With his thick black hair, green eyes, and high cheek-bones, he wouldn’t be a bad-looking boy if he’d only pick up his head and stop scowling. Oliver caught her gaze and seemed to glare back, then took to studying the ceiling.

A strange one, she thought, and wondered if he’d ever make anything of himself. It was too bad that Oliver had nowhere else to go. Tammy was his blood-kin, but he might have been better off bound out as an apprentice: maybe some honest farmer with a softhearted wife. Of course, that was a rough gamble, too, as Judy well knew.

Oliver’s great-aunt was a terror, but there was no changing Tammy Younger. Her name was often invoked

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by mothers wishing to keep their children from straying into the woods. They called her a witch and warned that her favorite tea included the plump fingers and toes of heedless boys and girls.

Judy thought of Tammy as a force of nature, unpleasant as a wasp’s nest, but inevitable. Then again, Judy was known as a soft touch, having once been heard defending skunks and mosquitoes as having a rightful place and purpose. Abraham Wharf used to scold her about being so tenderhearted. “You take care of yourself,” he’d said to her, only a month before he died. “You take good care of Judy Rhines for once’t.” Remembering his words, Judy Rhines drew her dark brows together and bowed her head. Oliver watched and wondered how she could grieve for such a bad-tempered old windbag.

He’d never seen her look so low. Judy usually wore a gentle half smile that drew people to her. There was a sort of natural pleasantness, an irresistible goodness to her face.

Not that she was a great beauty. Her eyes were a pale brown, a shade lighter than the brown of her hair, which she parted in a sharp line over her right ear. In her homespun dress, unbleached apron, dust-colored shoes, and bare head, Judy Rhines put Oliver in mind of a hen. It was not the most flattering picture, he knew, but it was comfortable enough to let him imagine her caring for him in return.

Oliver glanced over at Tammy, making sure she hadn’t caught him staring at Judy. She was at least thirty, Oliver guessed, though she could be forty.

Mary Lurvey’s weeping had turned into a desperate coughing fit that fixed all attention upon her. In September, Tammy had warned that Mary wouldn’t last the winter.