Stanwood was Mrs. Stanley’s lure, drawing the men far out of the city and into Dogtown for pleasures they’d not soon forget—not the way he sold it. He spoke of Sally and Molly with words that turned men into tense knots of need, describing their smells and their skills so vividly, no one even laughed or challenged his worse lies. They listened and leered and got to their feet every so often to adjust their trousers, and the younger ones would sometimes retreat outside for a little while.
“They got tongues like silk, mouths like satin. You don’t know what I’m talking about? Brother, you are going to thank me.” And he was thanked, with drinks and coins, and in kind from Mrs. Stanley herself.
Though he was a favorite with the men, Stanwood was detested by nearly every female on Cape Ann. In
Gloucester, ladies met his wanton stares with daggers and even his own daughters cringed at his company.
Stanwood had never been in doubt of his own
wickedness. He’d been on his way to hell since childhood
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and figured there was no point in trying to change. Why bother with church, or charity, or Christian pieties when the devil had long ago spoken for his soul? Stanwood had never wasted time thinking about his eternal destination, until the day that the angel appeared to him and he decided that he’d been given a chance at heaven. He’d never heard of anyone, not even a minister, claiming a visitation from on high.
Didn’t he recall something about Jesus talking to whores?
His Mary would know, he thought, and rushed to ask her.
Grabbing his startled wife’s hand, he declared, “I’ve seen the light, Mary. You’re looking at a new man.”
Mary saw nothing new in the unshaven, bloodshot, wet, and coatless man before her. The stench of liquor barely masked the bodily odors that had filled the room with his entrance. It would take a daylong airing to clear out the smell of him.
“No, no,” Stanwood said, seeing the disbelief on her face. “God sent an angel to warn me against the pit. I’ve been given a chance at salvation,” he insisted. “That would make me one of the elected, wouldn’t it?”
Mary frowned. Her husband had come home with a
hundred excuses, and all of them lies. There was a time he’d been able to get her hopes up a little, but those days were long past. He had never tried blasphemy before, though.
“Be careful what you’re saying, John,” she said.
“I ain’t lying,” said Stanwood. “I swear. Where’s that Bible? I’ll swear on the Bible.”
>
“You sold it.”
“What?”
“Last year. You took the Bible and the hymnal that my mother got from her mother. You sold them.” Mary said
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this calmly enough, though that indignity had finally freed her from the notion that she owed her husband any feeling at all. She’d stopped being hurt by his absences, or upset by his language, or surprised by the latest tale of wantonness.
Mary Stanwood was certain John could do nothing to shock her anymore, until she saw the tears in his eyes.
“Poor Mary,” he said, taking her hand again. “To have put up with me all these years. But God has seen fit to give me another chance and now you must, too.” He knelt before her, pressed her hands to his heart, and presented her with another surprise. “Mary. I am not just telling you this to get out of a scrape. I’m a sorry sight of a man, I know. I’ve done you every wrong a husband can do, but I’m changed.
I swear it.”