The Last Days of Dogtown (16 page)

“Please,” he begged, “don’t make me go back there. I’m afraid.” With pretty tears glistening in the corners of his sapphire eyes, he said, “I’m afraid they might still be there, waiting for me.”

With a few more hints, he had the old woman believing that his youth and beauty had often put him in similar jeopardy and that Stanwood had been the biggest threat to his virtue. Mrs. Linner swore he’d never return to that wicked place and that he could stay with her. Later that day, she paid a call on Reverend Jewett, the minister at Fifth Parish, who made an unprecedented visit into Dogtown. He told Mrs. Stanley — in very worldly, if not to say vulgar terms — of the consequences should she or any of her minions come after Sammy, who was now a member of his flock and under his care. The old whore smiled up at the handsome clergyman and said only, “My dear grandson is fortunate to have you for a friend.”

Though Sammy’s lodgings were larger and far more pleasant than ever, he felt dull and listless. Being penniless did not suit him. Mrs. Linner considered his labors a fair exchange for his board and gave him nothing extra for doing her laundry, heavy cleaning, and sundry errands and tasks.

It would have been most peculiar, and even a little scandalous, for any other boy to be washing a lady’s dresses and shifts and emptying her chamber pot. But even the keenest gossips were forgiving when it came to Sammy, who remained the polite and appealing ward, with his impeccable manners and his golden locks tied back fetchingly in the old Revolutionary style.

He was, in all respects, a model servant, and he never once took advantage of Mrs. Linner’s carelessness with her change purse. She often remarked how much kinder Sammy was than her own nephews, who showed no interest in her. This gave Sammy the idea that acting the part of her loyal grandson might be his quickest route back to solvency. The widow was seventy-five and short of breath. If she were to leave him her cottage as a legacy, he’d be in a position to invest and make his fortune. The plan cheered him up and set him back to scouting out a likely scheme.

He considered fishing; cod, pollack, and scale-fish were plentiful, and the market for oil on the rise. But Sammy didn’t care for the uncertainties of the sea, having heard too many stories about ships and fortunes lost in mighty gales. Granite seemed a safer bet, with businessmen as thick as seagulls in Folly Cove, ruining their shoes on the shore ledge. He might even work in a quarry for a while, if the wages stayed high.

But the truth was, Sammy disliked the company of men. Life in the brothel had made Sammy contemptuous of them all. The old ones had been desperate, the sailors loud and vulgar, the quarrymen filthy and rough. Sammy had been befriended by the wives of the farmers and fishermen he’d seen follow Sally or Molly through the curtain. Worst of all were the boys barely older than he, who’d showed up at Mrs. Stanley’s in pairs or threesomes, the money jingling in their pockets, teasing each other in booming voices and strutting like roosters. They left in silence, carrying their heads lower, and regained their voices only after they reached Gloucester, where they lied about the wild times they’d had in Dogtown.

Sammy was most comfortable among old women, and it was they who gave him the idea about how the summer trade might be a safe ticket to a wealthy future. Mrs. Linner’s friends all rented rooms to Boston lawyers and bankers, charging them a few dollars more every season. “The city folks spend all this time oohing and ahhing over the sunsets and the fresh air,” said Mrs. Linner, while Sammy poured their tea. “As if the sun don’t set every blessed day.” With more and more cottages and ocean-facing rooms being let from one summer to the next, Sammy decided if he ever got the chance, he’d buy property with a view to the water.

The hope of an inheritance and a future as a landowner buoyed Sammy’s spirits through Mrs. Linner’s long, miserable decline. For the better part of a year, he spoon-fed her, washed her soiled sheets, tended her little garden, and kept her accounts. But when she finally died, the house, its contents, and all her savings went to the negligent nephews who did not visit once during her last illness, even after she sent Sammy to fetch them. No one expressed surprise or sympathized about the fact that he’d gotten nothing. Blood was thicker than water, and that’s all there was to it.

Three days after Mrs. Linner’s funeral — which Sammy catered and cleaned up after — he made himself a money belt out of the old lady’s best tea towel and walked to the barbershop in Gloucester, where he got two silver dollars for his long, yellow braid. He carried Mrs. Linner’s silver service — a secret treasure she’d kept under lock and key — to Ipswich and sold that for a good price, too.

With a new nest egg strapped around his waist, Sammy found a room with another widow and pursued every odd job he could find: carting, running errands, even doing laundry. He returned to stealing, too; just a little bit and with great caution. In Sandy Bay he was known as “the little businessman,” a term of endearment among the ladies who followed his progress. “He’ll own the whole town someday,” one would cluck to another whenever Sammy Stanley’s name came up.

To which the usual rejoinder was, “He’ll make his mark, or I’m the Queen of England.”

The Lost Girls

W
ITH
S
AMMY’S
departure, life grew colder, hungrier, and dirtier for Molly and Sally. But even though they missed his cooking and hated having to haul water for themselves, neither of them missed having the boy in the house.

Sally had treated him as she might a cat, petting him and even calling him “puss” when the mood took her, then ignoring him for weeks at a time. Molly kept her distance from him; he looked a bit like one of her nephews and she disliked any reminders of the family she’d left. There was no knowing what Mrs. Stanley thought about Sammy, even though she’d been in charge of him and was the only one who required that the house be kept clean. By the time Sammy left, her interests and attentions had narrowed to keeping a reliable stock of rum in her house, and for that, all she needed was John Stanwood. “Such a nourishing beverage,” she said every time he brought her a bottle. “You know that molasses is excellent for the digestion.”

That the house was known by Mrs. Stanley’s name testified to her expansive sense of herself, and to the effect she had on men. Few people remembered that Molly and Sally had been doing business under the same roof for several months before she even appeared. But then, neither of them was in any way as memorable as Mrs. Stanley.

Molly and Sally were certainly nowhere near as pretty, nor had they been, even as girls. Molly Jacobs had once owned a beautiful head of raven hair, which helped soften the downward turn of her thin lips and the birdlike effect of close-set eyes arranged beside her long, narrow nose. She was thin in every aspect, with arms that seemed oddly short for the rest of her.

The fifth of six daughters born to a hardscrabble Plymouth farmer, she understood early that she was unmarriageable and doomed to serve as a permanent nursemaid to her sisters’ children. Once they grew up, she’d be the kind of maiden aunt that no one needed or wanted underfoot.

After her second sister bore her third son, Molly realized she didn’t like children, so at fourteen, she ran away to Boston and got her living the only way she could. She walked the streets near the waterfront and made a little name for herself as mistress of the French trick, which she learned from an older member of the sisterhood, as a sure way to keep from getting the clap or, just as bad, a baby.

Molly had been at it for a few years when she crossed paths with Sally Phipps. The barman, who kept an eye out for his regular girls, motioned her over and said, “Watch out for that ginger-haired bantam over there.” He nodded at a potbellied fellow who was drunk as a fiddler. “He’s underselling you something terrible, trading his poor little niece for the price of a rum punch.” Adding, “Niece, my arse.”

A moment later, a sailor slammed the door wide and said, “Set the fellow up.”

A slip of a girl crept in and stood in a corner, where she could lean up against one wall and stare at the other. Her white-blonde hair was wet from the rain, slicked down to her skull. Her chest rose and fell quickly, as though she’d been running, and Molly noticed the unmistakable swelling at her waist. When the red-haired “uncle” went outside for a piss, Molly hurried over to the pale, soaked girl and said, “Follow me.”

Sally looked into Molly’s sad face and considered the invitation. Ned had taken to slapping her for just about anything, including talking to strangers without his say-so. But he was out of the room, and she sure as hell didn’t want to lie down for anyone else that evening.

“Aw-right,” Sally drawled, and turned on a smile full of milky teeth and blind trust.

Molly led her out the back door, down the alley, and up a flight of stairs into her room, which was bare except for a plank bed, a stool, a couple of pegs, and a chamber pot. Sally headed straight for the cot and within a minute, a soft whistling sound came from her upturned nose. Sleep was by far the best time of the day for a streetwalker.

Poor thing, Molly thought and sat beside her, trying to decide on a next step. The barman wouldn’t tell the pimp where she lived, but there were others who might. Once that Ned sobered up, they might want to be somewhere else. Maybe this was the sign that she ought to leave Boston.

When she first left the farm, Molly had loved being on her own. Her sisters had made her feel invisible and unimportant. Being a woman alone — even a bad woman — meant that she could claim her own time, as well as her price. She’d chosen a new name, too — switching from Mary to Molly — and had picked out “Jacobs” as a surname, from the store where she had her first taste of pineapple.

But she’d turned against Boston, which now seemed nothing but dirty and dangerous. She’d heard it was quieter up in Portsmouth and the prospect of a traveling companion made the journey suddenly seem more like a holiday than a retreat.

Of course, she didn’t even know this girl’s name or where she came from. Molly wondered if her slow way of talking meant she was bottle-headed. Or maybe it was because she came from Georgia or Virginia or someplace where everyone talked like that. She’d find out in the morning, she decided, blew out the candle, and squeezed herself into the narrow space on the bed beside Sally.

At dawn, Molly tiptoed out to see about the next coach to Portsmouth and returned to find Sally sitting up, watching the door.

“I put in some sugar for you,” said Molly, offering her a mug of tea.

“Ain’t you a sweetheart.”

“I’m Molly Jacobs.”

Sally nodded, and then turned her attention to the tea. “Mmmmm.”

“Well, what’s your name?” Molly asked.

“Sally Phipps.”

“Where you from?”

“Bal’mer.”

“Is that south?” Molly asked.

Sally shrugged and beamed.

Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Molly decided. “How far along are you?”

“Eh?”

She pointed to Sally’s belly. “You’re carrying, ain’t you? You got a baby coming.”

Sally looked blank.

“Oh, no. You can’t be that simple. How long since you had your courses?”

Sally dropped her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “A while now.”

“First time you get caught?” Molly asked.

Without her smile, the light went out, and Sally was plain as a box, with no chin to speak of and blue eyes so light they seemed almost blank.

“Well, given the size of you, it might be six months, might be less.”

“Less?” Sally said, hopefully.

“You want to leave town with me?”

“I suppose. I sure don’t want to see Ned no more.”

“We’ll have to, well, work for a living when we get there, you know.”

Sally’s face fell again. At least she wasn’t that stupid, thought Molly. “Or maybe we can hire out at a dairy, or maids for some rich lady in a big house?”

Sally’s expression didn’t change much at those suggestions.

“Well, never mind that now,” said Molly, and set to stuffing her extra shift and stockings into a sack. “Fold up the blanket. We got to get moving. The first coach is going to Gloucester, which is as far as I can afford to get us right now.”

Sally slept through the whole bone-rattling journey, her head on Molly’s shoulder. Molly, who had trouble falling asleep in a feather bed, could have pinched her for spite. But the last leg of the trip perked her up. The North Shore was nothing like the coastal lands of her childhood: the boulders seemed to lift the whole landscape up into the sky, and a honeyed brightness in the air put a keen edge on every hummock. The April trees were budding in red and gold, and the marsh grasses seemed to be waving at her. She had a good feeling about making a fresh start here. Maybe she and Sally could hire out as housemaids after all. Maybe she could stay clean in this tangy air.

The coach finally stopped at the battered public house on the green. The publican’s wife stepped out of the tavern to greet the travelers and eyed the two girls warily. “Who might you be?”