It would have been most peculiar, and even a little scandalous, for any other boy to be washing a lady’s dresses and shifts and emptying her chamber pot. But even the keenest gossips were forgiving when it came to Sammy, who remained the polite and appealing ward, with his impeccable manners and his golden locks tied back fetchingly in the old Revolutionary style.
He was, in all respects, a model servant, and he never once took advantage of Mrs. Linner’s carelessness with her change purse. She often remarked how much kinder Sammy was than her own nephews, who showed no interest in her. This gave Sammy the idea that acting the part of her loyal grandson might be his quickest route back to solvency.
The widow was seventy-five and short of breath. If she were to leave him her cottage as a legacy, he’d be in a position to invest and make his fortune. The plan cheered him up and set him back to scouting out a likely scheme.
He considered fishing; cod, pollack, and scale-fish were plentiful, and the market for oil on the rise. But Sammy didn’t care for the uncertainties of the sea, having heard too many stories about ships and fortunes lost in mighty gales.
Granite seemed a safer bet, with businessmen as thick as seagulls in Folly Cove, ruining their shoes on the shore ledge. He might even work in a quarry for a while, if the wages stayed high.
But the truth was, Sammy disliked the company of men.
Life in the brothel had made Sammy contemptuous
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of them all. The old ones had been desperate, the sailors loud and vulgar, the quarrymen filthy and rough. Sammy had been befriended by the wives of the farmers and fishermen he’d seen follow Sally or Molly through the curtain. Worst of all were the boys barely older than he, who’d showed up at Mrs. Stanley’s in pairs or threesomes, the money jingling in their pockets, teasing each other in booming voices and strutting like roosters. They left in silence, carrying their heads lower, and regained their voices only after they reached Gloucester, where they lied about the wild times they’d had in Dogtown.
Sammy was most comfortable among old women, and it was they who gave him the idea about how the summer trade might be a safe ticket to a wealthy future. Mrs.
Linner’s friends all rented rooms to Boston lawyers and bankers, charging them a few dollars more every season.
“The city folks spend all this time oohing and ahhing over the sunsets and the fresh air,” said Mrs. Linner, while Sammy poured their tea. “As if the sun don’t set every blessed day.” With more and more cottages and ocean-facing rooms being let from one summer to the next, Sammy decided if he ever got the chance, he’d buy property with a view to the water.
The hope of an inheritance and a future as a landowner buoyed Sammy’s spirits through Mrs. Linner’s long, miserable decline. For the better part of a year, he spoon-fed her, washed her soiled sheets, tended her little garden, and kept her accounts. But when she finally died, the house, its contents, and all her savings went to the negligent nephews who did not visit once during her last illness, even after she sent Sammy to fetch them. No one expressed surprise or
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sympathized about the fact that he’d gotten nothing. Blood was thicker than water, and that’s all there was to it.
Three days after Mrs. Linner’s funeral—which Sammy catered and cleaned up after—he made himself a money belt out of the old lady’s best tea towel and walked to the barbershop in Gloucester, where he got two silver dollars for his long, yellow braid. He carried Mrs. Linner’s silver service—a secret treasure she’d kept under lock and key—
to Ipswich and sold that for a good price, too.
With a new nest egg strapped around his waist, Sammy found a room with another widow and pursued every odd job he could find: carting, running errands, even doing laundry. He returned to stealing, too; just a little bit and with great caution. In Sandy Bay he was known as “the little businessman,” a term of endearment among the ladies who followed his progress. “He’ll own the whole town someday,” one would cluck to another whenever Sammy Stanley’s name came up.
To which the usual rejoinder was, “He’ll make his mark, or I’m the Queen of England.”
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The Lost Girls
With Sammy’s departure, life grew colder,
hungrier, and dirtier for Molly and Sally. But
even though they missed his cooking and
hated having to haul water for themselves, neither of them missed having the boy in the house.