The Last Days of Dogtown

Sally smiled and went on with the sweeping.

Stanwood returned carrying a bucket, a mop, and some boiled eggs from Easter. Molly took him outside to talk business. He agreed to supplying johns for half the take and when Molly explained their services, he said, “I got no problem with it,” and tried not to appear too eager. There wasn’t any of that sort of thing to be had elsewhere on Cape Ann, and he was just the one to sell it. “But I gotta make sure that you two know what you’re doing first.”

“Nothing’s free,” Molly said.

“Free?” he bellowed. “You bag of bones. Here I been carrying and carting like some kind of mule. You owe me for that, and for what it’s going to cost me to get you some kind of beds in there.”

“I’ll do you twice for it,” she said.

“The other one, too.”

“Sally will go you once.”

“Twice.”

“Once.”

Stanwood shrugged. He was aroused and ready to go, and he followed Molly into the woods like a dog trailing a plate of meat. Sally snuck up to watch as Stanwood leaned up against a tree and unbuttoned his trousers. Molly knelt before him and, using one of the flannels she’d brought from Boston, started rubbing his skinny stalk with the cool, damp cloth.

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“Goddamn,” he roared, but in a moment he was

moaning a different tune.

Sally couldn’t really see the mechanics of the act, only the back of Molly’s head, pumping in and out. It was over fast. Stanwood whinnied and leaned against the tree as Molly bent over, spat, wiped her mouth, and started back for the house. When he returned to the house, he looked at Sally up and down and said, “You as good as your sister?”

He spent the rest of the day sitting and watching as they cleaned the shack and hung paper over the empty window-panes. Molly felt his eyes on her, like a wet wool coat. When he finally left, she sat on the floor and put her head in her hands.

Sally sat beside her and pulled her close, stroking her hair until she calmed down. As the sun started to set, she said, “Let’s go to sleep.”

Silently, they made a nest of blankets and cloaks, and burrowed into each other’s arms. As she drifted off, Molly remembered the perfect safety she’d felt as a little girl in her mother’s lap, and hugged Sally tight.

Stanwood woke them up midmorning with the tip of his boot. A red-faced youngster in a dirty uniform stood at the door.

“My turn,” Sally whispered. “Outside,” she ordered the cabin boy, found a flannel, and was gone before Molly was fully awake.

When she returned, Molly was still in bed, the blanket over her face.

“It’s not so bad,” said Sally. “Salty. He was a baby, that one. I don’t think he’d been with a woman ever, not that he has now, either. It’s the quickest money I ever made.” Sally’s

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voice was flat, lower than usual. Molly felt her eyes burn with tears.

“Now, don’t you get to feeling bad,” she said, as though she’d heard Molly’s thoughts. “You ain’t the one turned me out. You saved me from Ned, and now I have me a sister and a roof.”

Molly pulled back the covers and stared.

“Don’t be scared if I rattle on about what’s going on in your head,” Sally said. “It’s my gift. I always know when a pot’s about to boil over, and sometimes I can tell when there’s going to be trouble in a room so I clear out first. It don’t work all the time, though. And I’m better on girls than boys.