The Last Days of Dogtown (14 page)

Stanwood knew that he was a lucky sod. For all the times he’d been drunk and fallen, he’d never broken a bone. As much as he drank, he rarely paid for a round and even so, the fellows in the pubs always greeted him warmly. He was their local scamp, a bandy-legged rascal who got away with things they’d never dare. He’d been a handsome youth, and his flashing black eyes and thick black hair had survived the years of hard drinking, which had stamped his face with a craggy map of worldliness — or depravity, depending on the light.

Stanwood was Mrs. Stanley’s lure, drawing the men far out of the city and into Dogtown for pleasures they’d not soon forget — not the way he sold it. He spoke of Sally and Molly with words that turned men into tense knots of need, describing their smells and their skills so vividly, no one even laughed or challenged his worse lies. They listened and leered and got to their feet every so often to adjust their trousers, and the younger ones would sometimes retreat outside for a little while.

“They got tongues like silk, mouths like satin. You don’t know what I’m talking about? Brother, you are going to thank me.” And he was thanked, with drinks and coins, and in kind from Mrs. Stanley herself.

Though he was a favorite with the men, Stanwood was detested by nearly every female on Cape Ann. In Gloucester, ladies met his wanton stares with daggers and even his own daughters cringed at his company.

Stanwood had never been in doubt of his own wickedness. He’d been on his way to hell since childhood and figured there was no point in trying to change. Why bother with church, or charity, or Christian pieties when the devil had long ago spoken for his soul? Stanwood had never wasted time thinking about his eternal destination, until the day that the angel appeared to him and he decided that he’d been given a chance at heaven. He’d never heard of anyone, not even a minister, claiming a visitation from on high. Didn’t he recall something about Jesus talking to whores? His Mary would know, he thought, and rushed to ask her.

Grabbing his startled wife’s hand, he declared, “I’ve seen the light, Mary. You’re looking at a new man.”

Mary saw nothing new in the unshaven, bloodshot, wet, and coatless man before her. The stench of liquor barely masked the bodily odors that had filled the room with his entrance. It would take a daylong airing to clear out the smell of him.

“No, no,” Stanwood said, seeing the disbelief on her face. “God sent an angel to warn me against the pit. I’ve been given a chance at salvation,” he insisted. “That would make me one of the elected, wouldn’t it?”

Mary frowned. Her husband had come home with a hundred excuses, and all of them lies. There was a time he’d been able to get her hopes up a little, but those days were long past. He had never tried blasphemy before, though.

“Be careful what you’re saying, John,” she said.

“I ain’t lying,” said Stanwood. “I swear. Where’s that Bible? I’ll swear on the Bible.”

“You sold it.”

“What?”

“Last year. You took the Bible and the hymnal that my mother got from her mother. You sold them.” Mary said this calmly enough, though that indignity had finally freed her from the notion that she owed her husband any feeling at all. She’d stopped being hurt by his absences, or upset by his language, or surprised by the latest tale of wantonness. Mary Stanwood was certain John could do nothing to shock her anymore, until she saw the tears in his eyes.

“Poor Mary,” he said, taking her hand again. “To have put up with me all these years. But God has seen fit to give me another chance and now you must, too.” He knelt before her, pressed her hands to his heart, and presented her with another surprise. “Mary. I am not just telling you this to get out of a scrape. I’m a sorry sight of a man, I know. I’ve done you every wrong a husband can do, but I’m changed. I swear it.”

She had never heard him admit to lying or any other failing in himself, and without thinking, she squeezed his hand in return.

Looking up, he noticed the deep lines etched above her lip and on her brow and said, “I’ve turned you into a wrinkled crone, haven’t I? When did your pretty brown hair get so gray?”

Mary pulled her hands back, grabbed the bucket, and walked out.

Stanwood rushed after her. “I saw an angel, Mary,” he said. “So help me, and may God send me straight to hell this minute if I’m not telling you true.” He couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “The angel, I tell you, the angel was floating up in the air, high up above me. Twenty feet up.

“First I heard the voice calling out to me. Like a heavenly choir, it was. And there was organ music, too. So sweet, Mary. You never heard anything like it.”

Mary tried to ignore him as she walked to the creek, but Stanwood insisted, flitting around her like a no-see-um, taking no notice of how she winced at the heaviness of the pail. Nor did he take the burden from her hands, even though she had to stop and catch her breath more than once while carrying it back up the slope.

“She was on a ladder, Mary, a golden ladder. Hey, ain’t there a Bible story like that, Mary? The angel with the ladder?”

Mary knew the story of Jacob’s ladder, but she’d be damned if she’d give her husband that satisfaction. She set about making dinner, putting a sliver of salt pork in the pot to sizzle, and scraping a knife over a turnip while Stanwood hovered at her elbow, talking away. “Mary, it’s a wonder, ain’t it? You know the Scripture well as any. Doesn’t it say that Jesus loved the sinner? Doesn’t it say that?”

Mary pressed her lips together as she stirred and wondered if her husband would complain if she didn’t make biscuits, too. Stanwood, annoyed at the lack of wonderment or praise from his wife, fell silent. The heat from the fire reminded him of the stiffness in his neck and knees after a long day of looking heavenward.

“I want a hot bath,” he said, and instantly repented of his sharp tone and added a chastened, “Please.”

The courtesy startled Mary, but the prospect of an evening of Stanwood wheedling for attention and praise had become completely unbearable: it was time for one of her little holidays with her daughter in Gloucester.

“Get your angel to heat the water,” she said, and took off her apron. She got her second dress down from its peg, put it in a basket, and left without another word.

“I’ll see you over at Rachel’s, then,” he called. “We can all go to church together on Sunday.”

Exhausted from his encounter with the divine and parched after long hours without so much as a glass of ale, he turned back into the empty house, stepped out of his filthy trousers, and was snoring before his head touched the bed.

Stanwood’s next recitation of his heavenly vision was entrusted to Easter Carter. He delivered it in a rushed whisper as though he was imparting a great secret, but she said only, “Well, dearie, that’s a new one on me.”

Feeling misunderstood and greatly unappreciated, Stanwood decided that he needed a more devout audience and went to see the Reverend Reuben Hartshorn, pastor of First Parish. The cleric motioned him to a chair on the far side of his study, arranging himself as sternly as possible for a man with apples for cheeks, who would not be thirty for another six months. “The purpose of your visit, sir?” he demanded.

Hat in hand, Stanwood said, “I have seen an angel.”

A furrow appeared between the young minister’s eyes. “An angel,” he repeated sourly.

“It was in Dogtown Woods,” Stanwood said. “An angel appeared to me from up above, sitting high up on a golden ladder. First I hear an organ, or something like it, and it was playing a hymn. It might have been ‘How Long Wilt Thou Forget Me, Lord?’

“And then she warned me of the error of my ways, but she said if I quit sinning I’d go straight to heaven and I figured I should come to you, so you can spread the word.”

Reverend Hartshorn’s face had puckered into a scowl. “This, er, passionate experience of the divine to which you lay claim is not necessarily evidence of salvation,” he said, choosing his words carefully. According to his theology, election was an absolute mystery; however, the notion that this foul-smelling lout could lay claim to revelation seemed monstrous.

“The surest and most substantial proof of divine love is sober and well-behaved obedience to the commandments of God,” Hartshorn said. “The stronger God’s love, the more uniform and steady the obedience.”

But Stanwood was not as thickheaded as the pastor thought him. “So if I get steady and become obedient, that would clinch it, right?”

“Mr. Stanford,” said Hartshorn.

“Stanwood.”

“God’s grace is a mystery, but so is the bottomless depravity of mankind. If you wish instruction in the doctrines of the church, to learn the perseverance of saints in the paths of holiness, and to study the truth that salvation is available to us only through the atonement of the Redeemer, I would suggest you begin with attendance at divine worship.”

Stanwood did not understand that he was being dismissed. “But since I was visited by the Holy Spirit, you want to study what she said to me, don’t you? It’s a miracle, it is. A kind of proof, eh?”

At that suggestion, the young minister lost the last of his composure. “Your presumption is evidence of utter depravity,” he shouted, loud enough to be heard in the kitchen. “Indeed,” he continued, regaining control, “you are insolent proof of the worst corruption and degeneracy. Good day.”

Stanwood was not much chastened by the minister’s screed, as he knew all about Hartshorn’s famously dark views. Mrs. Stanwood had often returned from his Sunday service trembling at the prospect of certain damnation, which had been described in great detail and length during the sermon.

His next stop was at the parsonage attached to Second Parish, which was inhabited by the Reverend David Fuller, an elderly cleric whose great claim to fame was his selfless patriotism during the Revolutionary struggle and the merciful brevity of his service. That extremely bald gentleman was eating his dinner when word came of an urgent visitor who insisted upon waiting. Ever since his seventieth birthday, some seven years gone, Reverend Fuller had distrusted his fading memory and feared offending a parishioner, if not a patron, so he hurried his meat, staining his waistcoat in the process, and postponed his port to attend to the troubled soul whose name was not immediately familiar.

Fuller permitted himself an audible sigh when he recognized his visitor as one of the more wretched fellows of the community. Regretting his haste and his wine, he called for his wife. The stout little woman, who had been waiting outside the door, stepped in immediately.

“Mrs. Fuller, give Mr. Stangood something from the kitchen, would you? He’s just leaving.”

“But I have to tell you of my meeting with the angel.”

Reverend Fuller shook his head sadly, feeling an imminent bout of dyspepsia due to his miscalculated rush. “In these fallen times, the angels do not make themselves known to us,” he said. “Good-bye, Mr. Stangood.”

Mrs. Fuller was glad to give her full attention to Stanwood’s story, while he consumed a chicken leg and two biscuits. She knew how well it would go over, when she served it, reheated, to her friends at tea later that afternoon.

Stanwood ran into the Reverend Elijah Leonard on the street as he approached the Third Parish parsonage, his next destination. The Universalist minister imposed upon Stanwood to tell his tale out of doors rather than inflict the fellow’s pungent company on his wife. Upon hearing it, Reverend Leonard broke into a beatific smile and said, “Oh, my good fellow, the Lord loves us all equally and makes no special case for you or me. Talk of revelation must be suspect in these modern times, for it is reason itself that reveals our Maker. As for angels,” he said, not letting Stanwood get in a word edgewise. “If wagering were not a sin, I would bet that you had been deep in your cups. I can see that the conscience that God has placed in the breast of every man, woman, and child has finally gotten the better of you.” As he closed the door behind him, Leonard wished him a breezy, “Good afternoon, Mr. Stanhope.”

Stanwood felt his mood darken. He pulled his hat down hard and walked away. After three ecclesiastical meetings and nothing stronger than milk to drink, Stanwood’s head ached and he wondered again if his vision had been nothing more than a rum dream. Still, the memory of that bright light and sweet voice was strong enough to get him past the taverns that had, only two days before, been his most familiar haunts. Ignoring the invitation of an old acquaintance who hailed him from one of those dark doorways, he went directly to his eldest daughter’s shabby room, where he also found his wife.

Rachel spooned out a helping of hominy for her father, which was all she would eat for dinner until her seafaring husband returned. The two women braced for complaints about the lack of meat, the size of the portion, and nothing but tea for a beverage. But Stanwood bowed his head over the gruel, gave thanks, and talked eagerly about their attendance at holy service come Sunday. After a short, awkward evening, Mary got into bed with Rachel, leaving Stanwood to nod off on the chair.

The following morning, he was turned out of the house so that the women could spread the sheets Rachel took in for hemming. With nothing to do, he walked the streets until he found himself near the docks and one of the rougher public houses. As he opened the door into the dim, sour room, wide smiles greeted him.

Someone said, “I’ll buy the drink if you can make me forget my troubles.” Heads turned in expectation.

When Stanwood said, “Nothing but water for me,” the room erupted in laughter and a crowd gathered around. Delighted to have an audience at last, he started with whatever he could recall of his drinking exploits the evening before his revelation, and where memory lapsed, filled in with details from other soggy nights and days. After a well-received recital of cups and carousing, he launched into a long and colorful description of the bodily price he had paid for his fun. “Out both ends.” He winked and gestured. “First one and then the other,” inviting the crowd to laugh.

Without changing his demeanor or his tone, Stanwood continued, “And then, on my knees in the ugliest state you ever did see, God Himself sent an angel to save me from hell. So I’m here to show you my salvation, so you can follow my lead.”