The Last Days of Dogtown

theology, she would have had her excuse to throw him out of the attic. She had never wanted him there; he was too big, too black, too reticent, and she refused to believe her husband’s reassurances that he was more civilized than half the fishermen in town. Somes withstood his wife’s complaints in this matter as in little else because Cornelius was the only honest bookkeeper he’d ever hired. He thought him a good man, too, and at Christmas, shook his hand, presented him with a silver dollar, and insisted he

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take a cup of cider and a biscuit—when his wife’s back was turned.

But Mrs. Somes never reconciled herself to having the African under her roof and festered at having to wash his meager linen and feed him. She would grumble and drop his plate on the table with a rude grunt. Cornelius ate what she served as quickly as he could, which ruined his digestion and confirmed his landlady’s opinion that he was not entirely human.

Cornelius usually breathed better out from under her roof, but he found little ease on that hot, dark summer night. It was barely cooler under the trees, where the crickets shrilled, loud as crows. He stared at Judy’s dark house for a moment and turned back, feeling as though he were still caught in the nightmare that had started him on this pointless ramble.

He hurried back to the main road and lengthened his stride, suddenly wanting nothing but his own bed. But Cornelius lost his footing and then he heard someone scream.

He had no way of knowing how long it was before he regained his senses and found himself lying on his side, clutching his knee, which felt like a harpoon had pierced the joint and was still lodged inside. Panting, he waited for the pain to subside before he tried to stand again, but the throbbing only grew stronger and faster. The longer he lay there, the more it seemed that the pounding in his leg was keeping time with the high-pitched thrum of the crickets.

Cornelius turned on his back and faced the sky and tried to slow his breathing and take stock. The numberless stars above him had the night to themselves. He thought

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he’d never seen anything so beautiful and wondered if there was a painter great enough to capture the wild riot of blue-white and blue-black above him. He’d watched the weekend painters of Cape Ann, dabbing at squares of canvas. But their efforts all seemed puny and washed out to him, as if they were seeking to hide rather than reveal the shining light before them.

He watched a star streak across the horizon. And another, and then another, until there were no more. Very well, Cornelius thought, it’s time to go. He pushed himself to sitting, but when he tried to get his feet under him again, he saw a different kind of light. “Damn me,” he bellowed.

“Damn it all.”

To be splayed out on the public road meant that

someone would find him in the morning and there would be a fuss of getting him back to his room. The thought of Mrs. Somes’s displeasure at seeing him in this condition pushed Cornelius to try to reach his feet again. But the pain felled him like a bullet, and he did not wake from that faint for a long while.

At first light, he heard a sound in the distance. Lifting his head, Cornelius thought he saw a brown skirt receding down the road. He lay back, wishing he’d fallen in the woods, where he might have died in peace, and closed his eyes again until a hoarse bark roused him. A wet nose grazed his cheek and a woman’s voice called, “Poppa?

Poppa, come here.”

The white dog turned at the sound, trotted a few steps toward it, reconsidered, and returned to Cornelius’s side, where he resumed his short, husky yapping. “Here, here, here,” he barked.

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“Poppa!” The voice was cross now and louder than before until Polly Younger was standing over him.

“Cornelius?”

“It’s my knee,” he said.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’d be lying there if you could walk, would you? I’ll go fetch Oliver.”

He watched her yellow gingham disappear, the dog waddling behind. Time passed and he began to wonder if he’d only dreamed that Polly had been there, or perhaps she had simply gone the way of the brown skirt. But then she was back with Oliver, dragging a rough plank sled.

“Sorry it took so long, old man,” said Oliver. “I knew I’d never be able to carry you on my own, so I had to borrow this old thing. We can at least get you home on it.”