Oliver stood in the middle of the road and tried to decide what to do next. He did not want to go back and face Tammy without some kind of cure for her pain. Maybe the time had come for him to go down to the harbor and sign up for a berth on the next ship out. On his way, he could go past Mrs. Pulcifer’s house, though he’d never had any luck cadging food from that tightfisted lady. As he stood and considered his poor choices, he noticed the big yellow cat lying in the morning sun, stretched out on the neatly swept pathway between the house and the carpenter’s shed.
Hodgkins’s spread was not even half a mile from
Tammy’s place, and yet it seemed like a different world.
There were no cats where Oliver lived. Cats belonged to a world with barns and garden plots laid out in rows, where lilac bushes got trimmed back beside stone walls that weren’t tumbling into piles. Suddenly, the carpenter’s garden seemed the prettiest place on earth. Nothing like his house or the rest of Dogtown, which was a graveyard by comparison. What Hodgkins had was modest in every detail and more than a little worn for wear, but it belonged to the world where people had carpets on the floor and meals were served at the same time every day. That was where his future lay. He was as sure of that as he was sure he could have eaten every last one of those biscuits and still had room for more.
But he wouldn’t be going after his future that day.
There were holes in both knees of his too-short trousers, his shirt barely covered his belly, and one of his shoes was ripped at the seam. That day belonged to Dogtown and to
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Tammy’s damn teeth. Oliver picked up a rock and chucked it at a sapling, missing it three times before he hit the slender trunk.
Then it came to him: Stanwood had tools.
There was a shed out behind his house, a little bit of a lean-to where Stanwood had once cobbled shoes and mended the odd barrel. Surely he’d have pliers. Oliver hadn’t noticed much skill in Hodgkins’s surgeries: the carpenter yanked till Tammy yelled, then yanked some more until Tammy screamed, and out came the tooth, bloody root and all. Surely Stanwood, who was a far cleverer man, could do that.
Oliver set out at a brisk pace and reached the back road in no time, his step quickened by the thought that he might also get a look at Hannah Stanwood, the last unmarried daughter, though he’d overheard Tammy say she’d been seen sitting on the knee of a certain sea captain’s son, and it was only a matter of time.
He left the road in favor of a shortcut that led past the Muzzy house, another Dogtown ruin, where nothing remained but a broken grindstone and a sinkhole. The sun, high overhead, warmed the brushy landscape that Oliver knew from years of berrying.
Oliver pushed his shirtsleeves up over his elbows and congratulated himself on his new plan, which not only solved his problem with Tammy but also gave him the chance to spend some time with Stanwood. He imagined them
tramping back to the Younger place together, man to man.
Stanwood would tell him tales of his adventures in the navy, and they would share a laugh. He might even offer some fatherly advice about Oliver’s next step. Had there been
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anyone around to see Oliver’s smile and rushing steps, he might have imagined him on his way to see his sweetheart.
The sight of the Stanwood homestead pulled him up short. The house was about the same size as the carpenter’s, but that was the only comparison. The path to the door was littered with leaves and fallen branches. Clapboards hung loose, and an old brown rug was stuffed into a broken window. Off to the side of the main house, a sorry-looking pile of weathered boards leaned up against a six-foot outcrop of granite. And beside it sat John Stanwood, tipped up on two legs of a three-legged stool, eyes closed in the springtime sun like the yellow cat down the road.
Stanwood was unshaven and his greasy hair hung
down his neck, though his boots were polished to a high sheen and his breeches, worn as they were, looked clean.
Oliver remembered hearing something about Stanwood’s undeserved good fortune in his wife.
He peered into the dim booth, which was certainly not in Mrs. Stanwood’s care. The workbench clutter was covered with a layer of thick dust. Only the empty bottles, scattered about the bench and floor, looked like they’d seen any recent use. He could smell the liquor on Stanwood, even from five feet away.
Finally Oliver could wait no longer, and said, “Good morning, Captain.”
“I was wondering when you’d get around to saying something.” Stanwood opened his eyes to a slit and looked the boy over.
“You admiring my little boo’?” He glanced back at the dim wreck behind him. “My refuge from the hens.” He winked and the effort nearly knocked him off his seat.
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