The Last Days of Dogtown

“Didn’t I hear about W

harf killing an Indian for touching one of his animals?” said Granny Day. Her friends pshawed that tale to nothing: no one could recall seeing an Indian anywhere near Dogtown. But they outdid one another in recalling how loud and long he’d wept at Anne’s grave, twenty years ago. Heartbroken, he was, and angry.

After she died, the four Wharf boys had moved down to the city one after the other, but the old man wouldn’t budge. “As I recollect, none of them pressed their father to join them,” said Easter.

Tammy snorted. “That reeking know-it-all son-of-a-bitch? Where’s the wonder in that?”

Judy was still puzzling over Abraham’s death. In his last year, he’d taken to spending more and more time near Whale’s Jaw. “It’s like God Himself put them there” was how he described the rocks to Judy Rhines. “Like a statue that God Himself had a hand in.”

He also told her that, as far as he was concerned, the Whale’s Jaw was the only proof of God that ever made sense to him. The fact that Cornelius had found Wharf dead

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beneath those giant stones made Judy wonder if he had lost even that little shred of faith.

Why had he sharpened the blade and killed himself?

Did he suffer from some hidden illness or awful pain? Was there something she might have done to lessen his despair?

She wasn’t sure why Wharf’s death had unsettled her so. He was neither a relation nor really a friend: a neighbor, an acquaintance at most. Perhaps it was just the fact of his suicide that gnawed at her. To choose death seemed a terrible insult to everyone who carried on with the lonely business of living.

As Judy pondered, the conversation ebbed to a quiet mutter and mumble. The voices lapped against Easter’s walls like water against a wooden hull. Sammy Stanley dozed, his shining curls against Granny Day’s knee.

The lull came to an abrupt end with an argument

between Easter and Stanwood about money he’d borrowed from her. It wasn’t easy to provoke Easter Carter, but there was no stopping her once she got riled. Between Stanwood’s cussing and Easter’s hollering, no one heard the wagon pull up, and everyone gasped as the door opened on two of Abraham’s grown grandsons, their faces wearing matching expressions of annoyance and disdain.

“We’re come for our grandfather,” said the shorter of the two.

Easter invited them to warm up and take a drop in his memory. “Nah,” said the elder, who favored Abraham in the shape of his eyes and the way he held his shoulders, one slightly ahead of the other. “We aim to be home before dark, and our only chance is to leave now. These damned roads.”

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“You’ll be taking me, too,” said Mary Lurvey, rising stiffly.

The Wharf boys stared at her.

Stanwood smiled at their confusion and explained.

“This is your great-aunt Mary. Your grandpa was her brother.”

“We don’t have room for no old lady,” said the shorter Wharf, as though she wasn’t standing right there.

“Two real gentlemen,” Tammy smirked.

“Witch,” he muttered.

“Now, now,” said Mrs. Stanley. “If a person saws a barrel in two and makes two tubs, they call her a witch.”

Hannah Stanwood giggled at the proximity of two