The Last Days of Dogtown

A N I T A D I A M A N T

another hour before the two of them said their good-byes and went their separate ways: Polly to Dora Stiles’s elegant Gloucester home, where a basket of mending awaited her; Oliver to face Tammy and her cows.

With Polly’s scent on his skin, he had no fears of the foul tirade that awaited him, but even so, the smile drained from his face as the house came into view. The cows were grazing by the front door.

With better roads and quicker routes elsewhere on Cape Ann, the traffic over Tammy’s bridge had slowed to almost nothing. Without her tolls, she’d taken up dairying.

Oliver couldn’t quite fathom how she’d paid for the two huge, brown creatures, but Betsy and Bertie did what Oliver would never have believed possible: they made a mother out of Tammy Younger.

Although she tried to hide it, he knew she doted on those animals and spent hours brushing them, her eyes half-closed, her forehead against their great bowed bellies. She even sang to them in her piercing, reedy voice; weird lullabies: one song for Bertie, a different one for Betsy.

When Oliver caught her putting dandelion wreaths on their necks, Tammy spat at him and called him a dim-witted son-of-a-bitch who didn’t know his ass from his elbow. “I’m working a charm,” she said.

No one could argue that the milk wasn’t the richest on Cape Ann, and it churned into the sweetest butter anyone could remember. Even so, no one would buy it from the foul-tempered crone who insulted the housewives and shopkeepers who were willing to pay double for her perfect yellow-gold logs.

So Oliver became the go-between, welcomed at general

160

DOGTOWN FINAL PAGES 27/9/06 2:07 PM Page 161

The L A S T D AY S of D O G TOW N

stores and bakeshops in Gloucester, where Tammy’s butter gained him a large circle of acquaintances and a few friends.

He kept half of what he took in for himself, deciding that when Tammy discovere

d the extent of his thievery, he’d quit and be done with her forever.

Tammy was scratching at the dirt like an angry rooster when Oliver appeared. “You bastard no-good mutton-head,” she shrieked. “You lying sack of shit. The girls had their hearts set on the high pasture this morning.”

The cows seemed happy enough, nibbling and chewing where they were. He shrugged.

“You dunderhead, I oughta . . .” But she had no idea of what she ought to do to Oliver. He was taller than she and her knees were much too sore to chase him. She knew he was keeping part of her profit, but assumed the gutless fool wasn’t taking more than a trifle. Not that she spent any time pondering her nephew’s habits or choices; she hadn’t even noticed that his clothes fit him properly and that his shirts were always clean.

The girls had her full attention. Bertie was twice as good a milker as Betsy, but Betsy’s milk was so rich and fat, it ran yellow from the teat. Between the two of them, Tammy was assured of her sugar and cocoa. The nuisance was that it should come by way of Oliver, but she had no choice, as no one in town would speak to her.

Toothless, breathless, and lame as she was, outrage was still strong in Tammy. When Oliver hadn’t shown up, she’d cussed and spit and undertaken such a furious fit of

161

DOGTOWN FINAL PAGES 27/9/06 2:07 PM Page 162

A N I T A D I A M A N T

churning that there was an extra log of butter in the cooling bucket. “You ought to be horsewhipped,” she said. Oliver laughed at that, another proof of her weakness.

“Take your backside into town and bring me some

tobacco from Mansfield,” she ordered. “And a pound of sugar, and another packet of cocoa, and three of those bananas if he’s got ’em.” She tried to come up with an order too big for Oliver to skim anything from the transaction.

“And don’t be leaving my linen there this time. You lost me the best wrapper last time.”

“That was a year ago, old woman,” Oliver said.

“You think you’re smart enough to pull something over on me?” she shrieked.

Oliver shook his head and poured away half of the water to make the pail lighter for the journey.