The Last Days of Dogtown

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

days later, when the banns announcing his marriage to Polly Wharf went up on the door of Second Parish.

Judy Rhines spent the days leading up to the wedding helping Polly sew her simple trousseau. She also brought gifts of fresh eggs and canned peaches and whatever else she could put her hands on, trying to make amends for what she hadn’t done for Oliver in the past.

One evening, sitting with the couple after an early dinner, she cleared her breath and said, “I wish to talk to you both about something. It isn’t my place, but I can’t hold my tongue, so forgive an old maid’s meddling.”

She brushed off their protests and continued. “I think you should let Tammy stay in the house. It’s yours to do with as you choose; no one disputes that. But if you take it, Tammy will live in one of those Dogtown cellars and she’ll be dead by winter. I know you got no reason to show her any mercy, but I say let the devil take care of his own.

“Besides,” Judy said, “it’s an unhappy house and Tammy’s not long for this world. And if you ask me, Dogtown is too far away from town for a confinement.”

Oliver and Polly smiled at each other. “We’d more or less decided that for ourselves,” Polly said.

“I want nothing to do with the place,” Oliver added, softly. “I’ll sell it the day she dies.”

The wedding took place on a sunny June morning. Judy stood beside Oliver as one of Polly’s uncles walked her down the aisle. Easter Carter wore a loud green silk dress no one had ever seen before. Everett Mansfield attended, with his

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

wife and daughters, who carried baskets of wildflowers and giggled at the new minister’s unfortunate lisp. All of Polly’s cousins attended, and although not one of them cracked a smile during the service, Aunt Hannah Goff turned out to be a brick, standing everyone to a respectable punch. She also moved them into a little cottage owned by Mr. Goff on the far upper reach of Washington Street on the edge of town; although it was hardly a fashionable neighborhood, at least it removed her niece from the shadowy associations of a Dogtown address.

Oliver took a job filleting mackerel, though the smell made Polly queasier as the weeks of her confinement passed. Otherwise she felt healthy enough to keep on sewing fancywork right up to the day the baby was born.

They named him Nathaniel, and he was a rosy, sweet-tempered boy. No new father ever doted on his son more than Oliver Younger, who spent every spare moment with the child, holding him, counting his fingers and toes, kissing his petal-soft cheeks, whispering endearments, and bestowing a thousand heartfelt promises and blessings that were fully and miraculously his to give.

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Departure

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f fter the baby was born, Judy Rhines moved in with Polly and Oliver for a month to help with the cooking and washing. Judy’s presence made it a

little easier for Oliver to tear himself away from his little family and go to work. After he left in the mornings, while Polly napped, Judy would take the boy in her arms, rock him and hum to him, and delight in his resolute yawns and sneezes. To her great surprise, Judy fell in love with him, and shared his besotted parents’ belief that he was the best baby in creation. Oliver and Polly started calling her

“Auntie Judy,” a name that gave her more pleasure than they knew.

After Judy returned to her own house, the Youngers made a place for her in their home, leaving out her cot and the old rug for Greyling so she could stop over on her near-daily travels to and from Dogtown. By then, Judy had been retained by Judge Joshua Cook as a companion for his wife, Martha, who suffered from rashes, fever, and various other ailments and discomforts that kept her at home and in need of constant attention and distraction.

Judy was more than pleased about this new position.

She had never spent time with anyone as well read or as thoughtful as Martha Cook, who seemed a paragon of

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integrity and kindness. Martha, for her part, found a natural intelligence and curiosity in Judy that flattered the teacher in her. While Judy sewed, or tended to the flowers, or poured tea, Martha would read aloud from the Boston newspapers or from the books in the judge’s leather-bound library. She tried to engage her attendant in conversation about the stories or style of her selections, but Judy was too aware of her deficiencies to do anything but defer to her mistress on every point.

When the days grew milder and the evenings longer, Martha declared it was the season for novels, and Judy was soon enchanted by the tales of English gentlewomen in straitened circumstances, most of whom were redeemed by noble friends and gallant lovers in the last chapter. Judy and Martha spent hours discussing the characters as though they were flesh-and-blood neighbors rather than figures in a book. After several months of encouragement, Martha managed to coax Judy into voicing an opinion of her own.