The Last Days of Dogtown (9 page)

Strange Sightings

T
HE SETTLEMENT
of Dogtown was more and more like a cracked pitcher. In the three years following Abraham Wharf’s death, the village leaked life at a steady pace: Mary Lurvey passed away, as did Granny Day and a few other unmourned widows. Hannah Stanwood married and moved into town.

Meanwhile, Oliver built himself a lean-to on the side of Tammy’s house, where he slept better for the wall between him and his only living relation. Judy Rhines’s hair turned gray while Easter went entirely bald under her cap. None of these small details — not even the deaths — got much notice in Gloucester, which had no need of such weak beer when there were far more intoxicating stories about indiscreet young ladies, foreclosures, and barroom brawls.

But the summer of 1817 saw Dogtown’s stock rise briefly, at least in terms of gossip, thanks to a strange convergence of unusual sightings and odd visitations. Judy spotted a black swan in Goose Cove, and within a week John Wharf plowed up a stone that looked exactly like a rabbit. Oliver Younger was clamming on the beach near Wheeler’s Point when he came across a huge pile of shells and ashes from a driftwood fire, prompting talk of an Indian decampment. Black Ruth made a rare appearance in town, too.

But chatter over these things and virtually everything else came to a halt with the sighting of a serpent in Gloucester Harbor.

Easter didn’t believe it at first. A twisted ankle and a string of rainy days had kept her from hearing it sooner. “You’re having fun with a poor cripple!” she said, her ankle propped on the bench and wrapped in an old tea towel.

“It seems to be true,” said Judy Rhines, who’d brought the news along with a jar of preserves. “More people say they’ve seen it every day.” Boats were out hunting the beast with spyglasses, hooks, and nets at the ready. A fellow named Cheever Felch had come up from Boston and was making a name for himself, claiming that the monster was 100 feet in length and dark brown in color, with white markings at the throat.

Judy had overheard Reverend Felch herself. A man of the church and a self-taught naturalist, he’d been repeating his story to a young Boston newspaperman, who scribbled it down amid a crowd of jostling boys on Front Street. A group of town ladies had been drawn to the scene, too. Judy had thought them lovely in their straw bonnets and white cotton summer frocks, freshly pressed and spotless. Soft Moroccan slippers peeked out from beneath their clean hems, prompting her to pull at her gray skirt to hide the unfashionably pointed brogans on her feet.

“You sure it wasn’t a whale?” Easter said. “Sometimes those whales can fool you.”

“It weren’t no whale,” said Ruth, who’d been standing just outside the door, listening to Judy’s report. Judy jumped up from her seat, startled at the African woman’s sudden appearance. Easter smiled, “You sure you ain’t making this up for fun? You seen it?”

“I seen it,” said Ruth. “Longer and thinner, like a kind of snake, but a snake the like of which you didn’t see before.” Ruth’s speech was marked by extra syllables in the most unlikely words, so that “snake” came out sounding like
sa-nake,
echoing a voice from her past.

“In Ah-frica, they see such quite common,” Ruth went on.

“You don’t say?” Judy said, trying not to sound like she was bursting with questions for the last black woman on Cape Ann. When Ruth had arrived and the secret of her sex had been revealed, people had stared and debated the weird and oddly threatening presence of an African woman who wore men’s clothing, took a man’s name, and practiced a man’s trade. But over the years, her reticence had worn down all objections so that eventually the minor discrepancy of “John Woodman’s” gender was more or less forgotten.

“I thought you came from Rhode Island,” Judy said, studying Ruth’s long, impassive face and trying to catch her downcast eye.

“African woman there, she told it to me. She remembered things from over there, like horses with necks to the treetops and birds with colors like a rainbow. Sea creatures like the size of a house. But no whales. She never seen no whales before America.”

It was the longest speech either Judy or Easter had ever heard her deliver. Easter grinned and said, “Well, well, well.”

Embarrassed, Ruth hurried up the narrow stairs, ducking her head on the way up. Judy realized she’d never once seen Ruth sit down, not in Easter’s house or anywhere else.

Judy dropped her voice. “She ever eat with you?”

“Mostly not. She takes it outside or upstairs,” Easter said. “When I had the miseries last winter and we got snowed in, she did me a load of favors. Hauled water and brought in a clutch of eggs for supper. Ruined a nice piece of ham, though. She put enough pepper on the meat to make it get up and gallop right out of the pan. It was good of her, all the same.”

“You never did tell me how she came to be here from Narragansett,” said Judy.

“Well, I ain’t sure I got the whole story to tell.”

Ruth listened to their conversation from her pallet above stairs. The eaves seemed to collect words and drop them directly into her ears, so she didn’t miss a whisper that was spoken below. She’d heard all manner of secrets and scandals confided in that parlor, and she’d learned that Easter repeated nothing except what was light and harmless, and already well-known.

Mimba had been right about white people. The best thing was to treat them like ghosts and cannibals, not to be trusted. But sometimes, a white ghost would look at you straight on, with a full smile, eye to eye. The smile of the eye was the secret, Mimba had taught her. You had to be careful always, but every now and again you could act as though they had souls, too. Easter was one like that.

Easter hadn’t been fooled by Ruth’s clothes, not from the moment, fourteen summers back, when she first walked up the path. But Easter had been just about the only one.

Ruth was surprised by how easy it had been to escape suspicion. During the long journey from Rhode Island, over country roads and through city streets, no one noticed the woman’s face between the coat and the cap. The breeches alone would have been disguise enough.

When she first arrived in Gloucester, Ruth had asked a boy how to get to Brimfield farm. Following his directions, she’d taken an old walled road, past weedy fields and stunted trees and through a swamp that seemed to suck the color out of the sky and the song out of the birds. The air was so hot and thick, Ruth felt like she’d stepped into an oven. A parched, abandoned landscape where lightning or carelessness had scorched the trees and only the grasses seemed confident of the future, it was the most desolate place she’d ever seen.

Ruth set down her heavy sack and turned to study the stone walls that lined either side of the road. She bent over and, starting from the ground, ran her hands up and over the big, two-man stones, then past the smaller cobbles nearer the top. All of it had been placed hither thither, without thought as to how the whole would last. Ruth frowned at the shoddiness of the work: without a trench, it would all tumble into ruin sooner rather than later. Of course, these were mere property lines, little more than rubbish heaps where some farmer had tossed up the fieldstones he’d plowed out before planting rows of corn and rutabaga, though rocks were by far the most reliable crop in those craggy parts.

Across the road, another effort showed the difference between one man and the next. The flat capping stones on top would keep rain and snow from loosening the wall below. Much better, Ruth thought, though she disagreed with his placement of one handsome rock, pale with black seams, almost like stitching on a quilt. He’d laid it too near the ground, which was, to her eye, a waste.

It would be good to work again, Ruth thought. The two vertical lines between her eyes eased as she bent down to reach for a smooth, white, egg-shaped pebble that seemed out of place in the dust. But as she began to straighten up, the hairs at the back of Ruth’s cropped head stood up: someone was nearby. She gripped the stone, ready to throw it, ready to run. With both fists clenched tightly, she turned, but found no enemy; only a brown dog of middling size.

He stood in the middle of the road, sniffing in her direction. Ruth remained braced for attack, but the cur stayed where he was, his eyes on hers. After a moment, he cocked his head to one side, and Ruth couldn’t help but smile.

The dog shook himself from one end to the other, stretched his front legs out in a long bow, sneezed, and set off up the path. The dancing tan flags on his haunches seemed to invite her to follow. Ruth shouldered her burlap bag and trailed after him to a rambling two-story house. Though weather-battered and worn, it showed signs of life, with squash and beans growing helter-skelter, Indian-style, on either side of the open door into which the dog had disappeared. The next moment, a child wearing an outsize cap appeared at the threshold and wiped her hands on her apron, just like a grown woman. As she drew closer, Ruth realized it was a woman after all. And not a young one either, though she was barely more than four feet tall.

“I’m Easter Carter,” she said. “And what might I call you?”

“John Woodman.”

Easter put her hands on her hips. “Come, come. That’s a man’s name. You got a woman’s name?”

“Ruth,” she said and frowned. She’d meant to leave that name behind for good.

“Whither goest thou?” said Easter, grinning at her own joke.

Ruth made no reply.

“What brings you up this way, dearie?”

“I came to see Brimfield farm.”

Easter cocked her head to one side, a perfect imitation of the dog in the road. “Don’t see why. The Brimfields all died or moved away years ago. The fields were near the coast. Looks like someone sent you on a goose chase, dearie. You should have walked Washington Street to get there. You’re in Dogtown now.”

Ruth set down her sack. It had been two days since she’d slept and nearly as long since she’d eaten. A girl’s high giggle issued out the door, and a man’s laugh rumbled out after it. Ruth took a step back.

“I get the young ones up here for a good time,” Easter said. “I got no lodgings for strange men, though.” Then she winked as though they were sharing a joke.

Ruth had the feeling that the odd little woman was asking her a question, though she wasn’t quite sure what it was.

“Can you pay for room and board?” Easter asked.

Ruth pulled out her last coin and pointed at a pile of rocks that had once been a garden wall. “I can fix that.”

“I suppose you can,” Easter said, glancing at Ruth’s hardened hands. “But I got nothing worth keeping inside a wall, and I don’t want to keep no one out, so that’s no use to me.”

“My walls hold for good,” Ruth said.

“Most folks do their own fencing round here,” said Easter. “But there’s a cover for every pot, I always say. We’ll just have to see what cover fits yours, won’t we?” Easter stepped forward and reached for the burlap.

Ruth grabbed the bag and turned her glance to the ground to hide the anger on her face. Easter laughed. “I ain’t stealing your pretties.” Then she looked up and smiled right into Ruth’s eyes. “You come with me. I got room upstairs, and I sure could use a man around the house.” That set her to chuckling again.

Ruth kept her eyes on the tiny woman’s back as they walked inside, past the couple dimly visible in a corner of the parlor, and up a flight of stairs to a long attic room that was too low for Ruth to stand up in. Sunlight filtered through spaces between the timbers and mouse droppings littered the floor. Still, it was as big as the whole house, and it smelled of pine.

Easter went back downstairs to her guests, leaving Ruth to shake her head. She felt as if she’d walked into one of the legends that Mimba used to tell by the fire, though in those stories characters like Easter always turned out to be flesh-eating witches, and Ruth was certain that Easter was harmless.

Within a week, Ruth had scrubbed the floor of her aerie with sand. She mixed ground clamshells with clay to caulk the ceiling and stuffed her sack with sweet straw for a pillow. Easter crept up the steps when Ruth went out, curious to see what all the hauling and scuffling overhead had been about, and found that the African had hung bunches of sedge and wild peppermint to dry from the rafters. She’d woven a floor mat from river reeds.

“Right cozy,” she told Judy, who wondered if her friend hadn’t acted hastily in inviting such a peculiar stranger to live in her house.

Easter did not notice the white, oval-shaped stones in the four corners of her attic, set out to protect the house against evil spirits. Ruth polished and repositioned them from season to season, and she checked them whenever there was a bad luck sign, like an owl calling during daylight or a night when a full moon was swallowed by its dark twin. On the day she saw the sea serpent breach and dive into the dark waters of the harbor, she moved the stones as close to the walls as they’d go without touching.

Ruth had never seen a worse or clearer omen of coming evil, and it had rattled her bad enough that she’d gone and flapped her gums, like a foolish old woman, in front of Easter and Judy Rhines. She wondered if Judy would pass her words around; no doubt she’d make something of the way that Ruth, silent as a post most of the day, had rattled on.