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The L A S T D AY S of D O G TOW N
Oliver began to doubt his plan in asking Stanwood for help, but before he realized it, the man was on his feet with the front of Oliver’s shirt bunched in his fist. “What’s your business?” he said. “Or is it the old bitch?”
“You got any pliers?” Oliver blurted.
“What for?”
“Never mind.”
“Damnation. You come all this way, ask me if I have pliers, and say never mind?” He took Oliver’s arm in his other hand and squeezed hard.
“Tammy needs a tooth yanked.”
Stanwood let go and sat down again. “She’ll pay
something for that, I expect.”
Oliver recalled the time Tammy had nothing to give the carpenter for his efforts, but said, “Sure. She’s got some nice honey.”
“How about rum?” Stanwood said. “Or some of that hard cider?”
Oliver shrugged. “She don’t tell me everything she’s got.”
“Time you grew yourself some balls.” He tipped his chair back against the rock. “You go tell Tammy I’ll be there shortly.”
“You don’t want to come with me now?”
“I’ll be by shortly.”
“Today?”
“Today.”
“Soon?”
“I’ll be there!” Stanwood grabbed a long twig from the ground and said, “Get out of here, or I’ll thrash you and then leave that old horror to suffer like she deserves.”
Oliver rushed back to the path. But as he had no desire
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to see Tammy before Stanwood showed up, he slowed down, shuffling and kicking at pebbles. He stopped at a pile of rubble that used to be a well, picked up a rock the size of his fist, and dropped it down the hole, listening to the quick, sad click as it landed on other long-dry stones.
God, he was hungry.
When Tammy finally died, he thought, and the property came to him, as surely it must, he’d sell it to the first bidder and eat until he could hold no more. Chicken and biscuits and a whole damned cake.
The next house he passed was still occupied, and only a little better off than Stanwood’s. It belonged to John Wharf, a distant relation of Abraham’s and the last of the line left in Dogtown. The Gloucester Wharfs had never tired of telling John what a born embarrassment he was—a fai
led cooper, a failed fisherman, and a failed farmer. So after his wife died and his daughter married, he’d retreated to the hills, where no one would remind him of his disappointments.
The door to the cottage was open. Oliver peered in and smiled.