The Last Days of Dogtown

mmy full in the face so that before he could catch himself, he sneezed a high-pitched, “Achew,” a sound that alerted Stanwood, who was still crouched like a dog in the bushes.

He struggled to his feet, pulling up his trousers in front, and turned so that Sammy could see his narrow backside.

Had Sammy not trained himself to silence, he would have laughed and revealed himself for sure. But the breeze did it for him, blowing dust up his nose and making him sneeze three times in quick succession.

Stanwood heard a treble voice above calling, “You, you, you!” and glared up into the green boughs of the fir trees.

Seeing nothing there, he turned and scanned the half-bare oaks until he faced Sammy’s autumn-gilded birch, glowing like a blazing candle in the midmorning sun. Sammy retreated to a branch on the far side from where Stanwood stood and was still as stone. But the wind had loosened his hair and blew it around his face, billowing the apron as well.

Peering through eyes addled by a long drunken binge as well as the curtain of yellow leaves, Stanwood saw a gauzy shimmer of white and gold. He squinted up, shading his eyes, to figure out what he was seeing. In the past week, he’d swallowed enough brandy, cider, rum, and beer to kill a larger man, and he suspected that his eyes and judgment were not completely trustworthy.

Much as Sammy tried to stay out of sight, the breeze conspired against him, ruffling the branches and revealing

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glimpses of his golden hair, his white shirtfront, all through a veil of shifting, sparkling leaves. As Stanwood stared, the image came to look more and more like a snowy robe and a floating halo. He fell to his knees and started blubbering words that Sammy couldn’t make sense of until he heard,

“Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven . . .”

Stanwood stopped, unable to summon the rest of the prayer. His eyes bulged in fear and his jaw hung open, making him appear even more an idiot than usual. Which is what set Sammy off: only that much stupidity could make him angry enough to risk his safety.

Shifting his weight against the tree trunk, Sammy cupped his hands around his mouth and crooned, “Oooh.”

In the highest note he could reach he sang, “Oooh, thou sinner. Base sinner, art thou.”

Stanwood clasped his hands at his chest and squeezed his eyes shut. “Mercy,” he squeaked. “Oh, angel, have mercy!”

“A sinner who loves his sin shall burn in hell forever,”

Sammy warbled, drawing out the words in a broad

imitation of the British accent. “Fornicator,” he chanted.

“Drunkard. Gambler. Thief. Thy sins are manifold.”

Stanwood dropped to his knees and flung himself

facedown into a pile of leaves, his naked ass to the air.

“He that sinneth against me, wrongeth his own soul,”

said Sammy, trying to sound menacing and angelic at the same time. “Ooh. The man that hateth me loveth death.

The pit shall be his portion!”

He knew that he was not being the sort of Christian that Reverend Jewett described in his sermons, but Sammy couldn’t stop himself. Stanwood was vile and crude, and

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Sammy was afraid of him. Perhaps it was even God’s will that he be an instrument of Stanwood’s instruction.