The Last Days of Dogtown (35 page)

His eyes glittered in the dark. She took his hand and whispered, “Sleep now, my dear. I’ll be here when you wake up. Take your rest. Judy’s here.”

In the morning, the matron gasped at the sight of them lying in each other’s arms and rushed out to find Easter, whom she knew to be Judy Rhines’s friend. Judy and Cornelius were still asleep when they returned, her pale hand resting upon his dark cheek. Easter sighed and shook her head. She’d been right then, all those years ago.

“Let’s get him out of here,” Easter said, tapping Judy’s shoulder.

“He’s coming home with me,” she said, instantly awake.

“You sure that’s wise?” Easter whispered, as though they could keep anything secret in that place.

“I don’t care. He’s coming with me.”

Oliver arrived soon after, and the three of them got Cornelius on his feet and out into the blinding sunlight and melting snow. Passersby stared as the haggard African staggered down the street, with Oliver supporting him on one side and Judy on the other. Easter brought up the rear and watched as heads turned and the whispering began: she knew the story would be all over town before noon.

Judy threw an extravagant number of logs on the fire and sent Oliver to find her a fresh-killed chicken. After she got Cornelius out of his filthy clothes and settled in bed, Easter took her aside and asked, “What’s the Judge going to say when he finds out about all this?”

“I don’t care,” Judy announced, in a voice that was new for her. “I do not give a tinker’s damn what he says, or anyone else.”

“You may yet,” Easter said. “I’ve got to get back to the tavern.” She would have a lot of explaining to do if she was going to save anything of her friend’s reputation. “I’ll be back quick as I can. Tomorrow morning at the latest.”

Judy placed a cool cloth on Cornelius’s brow, which was nearly as hot as the kettle. The stubble on his chin was white. He had grown so old, and yet she thought she’d never seen a more noble face.

Oliver brought back a piece of ham wrapped in paper, and he stood over the sleeping man.

“He looks better,” Judy said.

Oliver had been thinking how much worse he appeared. “I’ll stop back later. I may even have a chicken by then.”

That evening, Easter sent over a boy carrying a pail of beer, a slice of pie, and a scrawled slip of paper that read,
“Keep up yr own strenth
.”

Judy was grateful for her friends’ attentions, but the truth was that she wished only to be left alone with Cornelius so that she could care for him without having to feign distance or disinterest. She wondered how she could feel so much happiness at such a terrible time. Cornelius had not opened his eyes all day. Her good name was lost, and with it her sinecure from Judge Cook. She would be destitute. And yet, as she climbed into the bed beside him and inhaled his still-familiar musk, she felt like singing.

He woke up near midnight, still feverish but clearheaded, and returned the pressure of her fingers. They stared at each other by the candle’s light. The whites of his eyes were a frightening shade of orange, but Judy smiled into them with such tenderness, the stabbing pains in Cornelius’s back eased a little. Perhaps there was a God, he thought, returning Judy’s steady gaze. How else could he explain the miracle of her presence beside him?

“I must tell you,” he began, but a coughing fit seized him, wreaking new agonies.

“Hush, dear,” Judy urged him. “Don’t tire yourself. There is no need to say anything now.”

“I have something I have to say to you before I can die….”

She shuddered, but met his eyes and nodded.

Cornelius took a shallow sip of air and began. “Abraham Wharf was mostly dead when I first saw him. But the old man still had some life in him. I came upon him in the evening, and he was still warm. When I tapped him on the back, he didn’t wake up. And I left him there.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “Save your strength.”

“I could have shaken him,” Cornelius continued, taking breaths between every few words. “I could have carried him inside somewhere. I could have saved him. But I walked away, and I let him lie there, under those stones. Next morning, he was stiff.”

“Oh, Cornelius,” Judy said, stroking his cheek. “It was so long ago.”

“I went back to make sure he was dead. And then I cut his throat. I did it to keep him quiet in death.” Cornelius spoke this part with his eyes closed, so that he would not have to see Judy’s reaction. “It was a kind of magic I heard from my mother. Wharf was a devil. Blackhearted. Mean. He knew about you and me. He said he’d turn me over to a bounty hunter. Tell Stanwood. Paint them a picture, he said. Like a bear covering a doe, he said. And worse.”

He groaned. “But that’s not the worst I did, Judy. I am a sorry man. I am a coward,” he said, ignoring her attempts at hushing him. “I used to tell myself I stayed away from you to protect you from the gossip. If Wharf knew about us, I figured it was only a matter of time before others knew. And you would be ruined.

“But that wasn’t the half of it,” he said. “The truth is, I was afraid on my own account. They kill us like dogs, like nothing. They need no excuse. And you were a fine excuse.”

Tears leaked through his lashes. “But worst is how I treated you. How I never said your name. I knew what you wanted of me, to tell you things. To say your name. I did not even give you that. You were so fine to me, and I was too afraid to tell you. To love you.”

Breathless and worn out by his confession, Cornelius fell into a deep and peaceful sleep that gave Judy a few hours of hope. But the fever returned in the morning, worse than before. With it came waves of pain that he could not beat back without screaming. Easter stopped in but did not stay long.

By the time the afternoon light started to fade, Cornelius was at his weakest. Judy sat beside him, her head in her hands, until she felt his touch on her knee.

“Talk to me,” he whispered.

She wiped her eyes and rallied. “I was glad to see that you took in the dog, the tan. Oliver says she’s been with you for some time now. She’s still here, you know. Over there by the fire, watching. She’s a nice one, I can tell. Reminds me of my Grey, a little. Did you think of that?”

Cornelius smiled behind his closed eyes.

Judy took his hand and told him about her friendship with Martha Cook, the secret of her illness, and of the Judge’s decency. She recounted Easter’s camel story and described Harriet’s cooking in detail. All through that short winter sunset and deep into the night, she talked. She confessed, to herself as well as to Cornelius, that last summer’s work had been too much for her. Her neck and legs still ached from the long days. She was too old for it.

Judy paused for a moment and stared into the candle. The silence in the room startled her and she cried, “Cornelius?”

His eyes fluttered open and met hers.

“Should I go on?”

He nodded.

“I don’t know what else I can tell you,” Judy said. But then she began, “When I was a little girl, I used to think that my sister, Priscilla, could do anything.” She was surprised at what her memory washed up, especially since she had never spoken about her childhood. “Priscilla was ten years older than me. She was the pretty one, and the only mother I knew since ours died giving birth to me.

“I don’t remember much from those days,” Judy said. “I had a doll with a red dress. Priss taught me how to read. She hogged the blankets at night. And then she left.

“I think she ran off with a man and I can’t imagine that it ended well or she would have come for me. Or that’s what I told myself. Pa never spoke of her again.

“He broke his leg when I was eight, which is when he bound me out to service, so I’d learn housekeeping. I went to Mrs. Clarkson first. She was a widow with twin sons, thick-waisted boys, walleyed and shy as a couple of rabbits.

“She wasn’t a bad sort,” Judy remembered. “She was, well, disappointed, I suppose is what you’d call her. She took to her bed every evening right after dinner, and stayed there till I made the breakfast. She was a watery sort of person. She made tea so weak, and soupy stew, and sometimes her biscuits came to the table as gruel.

“After she passed away, I stayed on and cared for the boys till I was eighteen and I got a place with a family in Gloucester, where I met a boy named Arthur. We used to go walking on Sundays when we should have been in church. I thought we’d get married, but he got into some kind of trouble and shipped out without a good-bye. That decided me against marriage.

“Not that he ever asked,” she said.

Cornelius raised a finger to signal that he was still listening. “I worked for some other families after that. None of them were cruel to me. None were all that kind, either. But wherever I lived, I never felt at home. I never had a sound sleep. Even my dreams were full of being told to clean a mess, or haul some more water, or stir a pot.

“But that seems like a hundred years ago,” she said. “Like I’m talking about a girl in a book someone else wrote.

“Then the day I wandered into Dogtown and stopped at Easter Carter’s house, it was, well, like some revelation. There she was, living on her own — that was long before Ruth moved in. Tiny Easter Carter in that big house, all by herself. Bold as brass, and didn’t care who said what about her. I asked her wasn’t she afraid to sleep up there all alone. She said she liked being where no one else was breathing up the fresh air.

“That planted the seed,” Judy said. “Knowing that Easter would be near helped me get up the gumption. So even if I never stopped being a scullery girl, and even if I was poor, I could be my own mistress in Dogtown. I suppose it was the same for you, too, wasn’t it, Cornelius, dear? You could be your own master there. As much as anywhere.” Judy put his hand to her lips. He squeezed her fingers.

“You changed that, Cornelius. When you came to my house, to my bed, I was not the mistress of my own heart any longer. And when you did not return to me, I was more alone than ever, even more than when my sister left. I used to think about going to sleep out in the cold like Abraham Wharf.

“I suppose Easter kept me from it. And Greyling. Isn’t it odd how much comfort a dog can be.” Judy stopped, hoarse and exhausted from three days of weeping and whispering. She watched Cornelius’s chest rise and sink, the breaths shallow and more uneven than before. His skin was clammy, and he was quiet for so long, she wondered if he was past hearing her.

His eyes flew open. “No coffin,” he rasped.

“Oh, my dear,” she said. “I know. I won’t let them put you in a box. Is there something else I can do, anything else?”

“Shepherd,” he croaked.

“Shepherd?”

“Lord. Shepherd.”

Judy ran to the library and took the large Bible from its stand, riffling through its gilt-edged pages until she found it.

“‘The Lord is my shepherd,’” she read, slowly. “‘I shall not want.’” By “forever,” he was sleeping soundly.

“Shall I read another?” she asked, not expecting an answer.

Judy read the Twenty-fourth Psalm, the Twenty-fifth, and the rest of them, to the last “Praise ye the Lord.” Only then did she set the book on the floor and lie down beside him.

When she woke up, he was gone.

There was no funeral gathering for Cornelius, no spirits or biscuits after his cold burial. Even so, Judy was not alone at the cemetery. Oliver and Polly brought their boys, and Natty and David carried giant pinecones to place on the grave. Easter was there with Louisa Tuttle from the tavern. Four well-dressed Gloucester ladies arrived in a group, old acquaintances of Martha Cook’s, curious to discover if Judy Rhines was really as brazen as the gossip painted her. Reverend Hildreth’s appearance caused a ripple of surprise among their ranks.

Judy Rhines had called upon the clergyman to ask for his service at the burial, and discovered that despite his Universalist leanings and abolitionist sermons, he had no desire to be seen anywhere near a real African, not even a dead one. There were certain members of his flock who barely tolerated his politics, and given the strong smell of scandal that now clung to Mistress Rhines, the minister had been less than gentle in declining her request.

“It is not my practice to provide the sacraments to those who are not of my congregation,” he had said, expecting her to wilt and scurry away. But she had done no such thing.

“Sir, if you do not bring your Bible and lay Cornelius to rest properly,” she said, “I stand ready to call upon your wife and ask if she is aware of your visits to a particular mansion on High Street and of your ministry to the lady of that house. Or perhaps it would be easier if I simply tell certain people that they need not keep this secret close anymore.”

As he began the service, the pastor raised his chin and put his famously resonant voice to good use, so that even the deafest of the ladies heard every word. “‘As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.’”

He paused, turned the page, and began, “‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’”

At that, Judy Rhines doubled over and sobbed with such inconsolable sorrow, Natty and David burst into tears as well. Oliver reached out to comfort his friend and found he had to hold fast to keep her from flinging herself into the grave.