Sammy, who was no more than six years old, blinked in terror and bit his lip till it bled. He’d never seen a dead man, and the sudden heat in the room made him
swoony. Judy noticed the child’s distress and took his hand, leading him away from the corpse and toward the back room. Sammy pulled away when he spotted the crew of dogs, who raised their heads in a single gesture and stared.
“They bite?” he asked.
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“Don’t fret about them,” Judy said, and handed him a cold biscuit smeared with goose fat.
Sammy took the food in his hand but made no move to eat it.
“Go ahead,” Judy smiled.
He looked up at her, bewildered.
“Don’t tell me you’re not hungry.”
“Never before the ladies,” he said.
“Well, that’s very nice manners.” Judy Rhines leaned down and said, “But right now, I think you better eat
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that bread before one of the dogs comes over and snaps it up.”
The thought horrified Sammy, who opened his
mouth as wide as he could and ate the whole thing in two bites. The salt and sheer goodness of it brought water to his blue eyes. After he swallowed, the boy wiped his mouth delicately on the inside of his cuff, took Judy’s hand, and kissed it as he made a brisk little bow. She tried not to laugh and watched him cross the room to sit beside Granny Day.
Sammy had arrived two years earlier, a note pinned to his coat. No one knew what it said, or even who had brought the child. According to the gossip, when Mrs.
Stanley read the message the only words out of her mouth were, “Damn me.” She introduced the boy child as her daughter’s son and said his name was Sam Maskey, though he was known as Sammy Stanley.
No one knew Mrs. Stanley even had a daughter till that moment. About Mr. Stanley, she placed a well-tended hand over her heart and said, “Lost at sea.” No one questioned the claim though few believed it.
Sammy knew his grandmother wasn’t fond of him,
even though he did as he was told and kept still, which was all that grown people seemed to want of children. The first time he sat in Granny Day’s grammar school, she’d had a devil of a time getting him to say his letters out loud and thought he might be deaf if not stupid. But then she spied him reading the Bible, and when she coaxed him discovered that he’d memorized all of Genesis and had started on Exodus. For that, she’d patted him on the head and given him a cracker too hard to chew.
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Sammy felt Oliver Younger’s eyes on him. The older boy curled a strand of his lank, greasy hair around his finger and pouted his lips. That didn’t bother the boy. Mrs. Stanley had never shown him anything in the way of affection, but she’d taught him that you were more likely to get what you wanted if you were polite and smelled good, and Oliver was plainly filthy and rude.
After a moment, Oliver lost interest in the child and turned his glance away from that corner of the room. He didn’t want to have to meet Granny Day’s eyes; he’d quit her classroom long before Sammy arrived. He’d left the Gloucester grammar school as well, even though it had been warm and the girls would sometimes share their dinners. He just got tired of fighting for the good name of Dogtown, a place he hated yet felt required to defend.
Besides, Oliver didn’t put much stock in schooling. A man could go to sea or enlist in a war without book learning.
A man could come back covered in glory and with enough pay to claim Judy Rhines as his own. She’d see him in uniform and recognize him as just the fellow to take her out of the ruin of Dogtown. She’d cook for him and keep him warm and smile at him sweeter than she smiled at that pretty boy. Oliver longed to speak to her, or just to gaze in her direction without worrying about being caught.
The room grew still as Mrs. Stanley took herseat, and for a moment the only sound was the hissing of the fire.