He would have given any amount to forget about his Dogtown beginnings. During the day, Sam rarely thought of his past, but sunset brought back the endless evenings he spent buried under his blanket and coat, his eyes clenched tight, his fingers in his ears. He had pretended not to
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understand what was going on around him for as long as he could. But by the time he was eight years old, he knew what a whore was, how she made her living, and that his grandmother sold not only herself, but Molly and Sally, too.
He tried to separate himself from the family business as best he could by going to school and spending time with respectable people, but the night belonged to Dogtown. He could smell the men around him, and he heard the bass rumble of their laughter, their oaths, their uncensored cries.
He was terrified by the involuntary stirrings of his own member and tried to ignore what was happening to him.
He wrapped his hands in the blanket, left his feet out of the covers to freeze in the cold, and whispered the words of Jeremiah. He tried to run wherever he needed to go and to work to exhaustion so that he’d sleep as soon as his head touched the bed.
But his body would not be forsworn. Night after night, he wrestled with self-loathing and a terror of being caught, but need and pleasure always triumphed. Weeping for shame, Sam would loosen his trousers, relieve himself quickly, and swear not to do it ever again. He dreaded night-fall even as he looked forward to it, guilt and anticipation contending.
Unleashing the scripture’s thunder over Mrs. Stanley’s grave had felt like cautery on an unhealed wound. If those words were hard enough to crack an old whore’s heart, then surely they were strong enough to cleanse his heart and soul, Sam thought. He was done with the place and its taint forever. He was free.
As he neared his lodgings, Sam decided that his first act as a free man would be to bathe in the hottest water he
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could stand. When he opened the door, however, Widow Long was waiting for him with a toddy in her hand. “Dear boy,” she said. “Here’s something to warm you after your sad day.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Sam said, as she sat down with him. Smiling and looking more alert than she had in weeks, she said, “Well, then?”
“Well, then, what, Mistress Long?”
“What did you find up there in Dogtown? What did Mrs. Stanley look like?”
He stared at her eager face and said, “She looked dead.”
“Did she die of a blow or was it the pox? Did you see a wound? And what of the others?” she pressed. “Will they stay up there, those two horrid creatures? Will that Molly woman keep pestering at you for money?”
Sam startled at the question.
“Oh, I know about her visits. I’m not so addled that I don’t know what’s going on under my own roof!” she said.
“I remember the first time I laid eyes on those appalling women. Mr. Long used to call ’em city rats.”
The more his landlady pestered him with questions, the lower Sam’s spirits sank. His name would be linked to those two dollymops until they were dead and gone. Which is why he could not permit them to starve: as much as he wished for their speedy demise, it would reflect poorly on him if they died of neglect.
Alice Ives’s unnerving taps had reminded him of this burdensome responsibility. He would have to find out
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whether something was seriously amiss in Dogtown, but the idea of returning to that house was so noxious, Sam was up the whole night, brooding. By dawn, he had a plan for doing Molly and Sally a good turn without going anywhere near them, and get the credit for it among his neighbors.
Later that morning, Sam stopped at Alice’s door to inquire after her father. “I’ve brought a special lozenge for Mr. Ives that might be helpful,” he said. “My gift, of course.”