Judy fancied that the sizzles and pops were whispering about the fate of poor Abraham’s soul, and she felt a sudden desire to get away from the sorrows and petty cruelties assembled in Easter’s smoky drawing room. There was no telling how long it would take for Abraham’s kin to make
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it up to Dogtown. Their cart might get stuck on the road, and February days ended fast: if an axle broke they might have to turn back altogether and try again tomorrow.
The sound of stamping feet outside gave Judy a
moment’s hope that they had arrived and she would be able to leave. But it turned out to be John Morgan Stanwood, who surveyed the room as if everyone had been awaiting his arrival. A cold wind blew in, while his wife and their three grown daughters shivered behind him.
“Goddamn ye, Stanwood,” Tammy shouted. “Shut the goddamn door.”
Stanwood took his time, kicking the frost from his boots while his wife crept past him and hurried to comfort Widow Lurvey, her mother. When the old lady caught sight of her daughter, she set up another wail that startled the dogs in the back room and set off a chorus of woofs and whines.
“You woke the hounds of hell, Mother Lurvey,” scolded Stanwood. “Too bad you can’t wake Father Abraham over there.”
He winked at his daughters, who reddened and stared at the floor. The only one to laugh at the weak joke was Oliver, who reached for the deepest voice he could muster.
With another male in the room, he held himself straighter and stood wide like Stanwood, who was bowlegged, which to Oliver looked like a proud announcement of his manhood.
Oliver scratched his chest and stole a look at the Stanwood girls, who were among the prettier females on Cape Ann, even without benefit of fine clothes or face powder. Rachel, the oldest, was already engaged to a fellow from Annisquam; Lydia and Hannah were busy seeking
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husbands to get them out of Dogtown, too, attending church on Sunday only to smile at everything in pants. Oliver overheard that bit of gossip from Tammy. But the Stanwood sisters were known to him in another way.
Oliver ducked his head, remembering the August night last summer when the air stayed steamy even after sunset and the only relief from the heat and the bugs was the creek.
He had been taking off his trousers when Hannah’s giggle gave them away. He waded silently to near where they were bathing, and from behind the bushes watched Lydia Stanwood’s plump breasts float on the water. The other sisters joined her, and four more breasts winked at him.
Oliver’s member was instantly hard as stone, and as the girls splashed and whispered, he put his hand there and answered the urgent, unspoken questions his body had been putting to him the past year.
After that, Oliver felt a profound respect for John Stanwood as the sire of so many breasts. Indeed, Oliver was so smitten with his swaggering presence, he didn’t notice how Judy Rhines’s lip curled when Stanwood asked where that damned nigger had got to anyway.
Stanwood pinched Easter Carter’s leg as she brought him a cup of beer. “You got something nice for me, old girl?” he asked.
“I got the cabbage for you,” she said. “I got the cabbage and beer for everyone in honor of Abraham Wharf. But don’t you have a word for your poor mother-in-law over there?”
Stanwood shrugged and walked over to Mary, who
hadn’t let go of his wife’s hand. He whispered something in her ear and then stood behind her chair, where he winked at
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Molly and Sally and blew a kiss to Mrs. Stanley, who clucked and wagged a finger in his direction. Stanwood tried to catch Judy Rhines’s eye, too. He was a black-haired, dark-eyed rake accustomed to having women flutter at his attentions, but Judy would not even look his way.
By then, Mrs. Stanley’s rum had made its way around the room and the grannies were chewing over their stories about Abraham Wharf: how he used to brag about a cousin who was a judge in Boston. How his sheep had been the living envy of every farmer up and down the Cape.