Dolores Claiborne

  "Ayuh," I agreed along with him, "but you know what they say."

  "Nope," he says. He dropped the eclipse-viewer into his lap n turned to look at me. He'd laughed s'hard there were tears standin in his piggy little bloodshot eyes. "You're the one with a sayin for every occasion, Dolores. What do they say about husbands who finally put one over on their meddling busybody wives?"

  "'Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,' " I says. "You fooled me about Selena, and then you fooled me about the money, but I guess I finally caught up to you. "

  "Well maybe you did and maybe you didn't," he says, "but if you're worried about it bein spent, you can just stop, because--"

  I broke in there. "I ain't worried," I says. "I told you that already. I ain't a bit worried."

  He give me a hard look then, Andy, his smile dryin up little by little. "You got that smart look on your face again," he says, "the one I don't much care for. "

  "Tough titty," I says.

  He looked at me for a long time, tryin to figure out what was goin on inside my head, but I guess it was as much a mystery to him then as ever. He pooched his lip out again n sighed so hard he blew back the lock of hair that'd fallen on his forehead.

  "Most women don't understand the first thing about money, Dolores," he says, "n you're no exception to the rule. I put it all together in one account, that's all ... so it'd draw more interest. I didn't tell you because I didn't want to listen to a lot of your ignorant bullshit. Well, I've had to listen to some anyway, like I just about always do, but enough's enough." Then he raised up the eclipse-viewer again to show me the subject was closed.

  "One account in your own name," I says.

  "So what?" he ast. By then it was like we was sittin in a deep twilight, and the trees had begun fadin against the horizon. I could hear a whippoorwill singin from behind the house, and a nightjar from somewhere else. It felt like the temperature had begun to drop, too. It all gave me the strangest feelin ... like livin in a dream that's somehow turned real. "Why shouldn't it be in my name? I'm their father, ain't I?"

  "Well, your blood is in em. If that makes you a father, I guess you are one."

  I could see him tryin to figure out if that one was worth pickin up and yankin on awhile, and decidin it wa'ant. "You don't want to talk about this anymore, Dolores," he says. "I'm warnin you."

  "Well, maybe just a little more," I says back, smiling. "You forgot all about the surprise, you see."

  He looked at me, suspicious again. "What the fuck're you babblin on about, Dolores?"

  "Well, I went to see the man in charge of the savins department at Coastal Northern in Jonesport," I says. "A nice man named Mr. Pease. I explained what happened, and he was awful upset. Especially when I showed him the original savins books weren't missin, like you told him they were."

  That was when Joe lost what little int'rest in the eclipse he'd had. He just sat there in that shitty old rocker of his, starin at me with his eyes wide open. There was thunder on his brow n his lips were pressed down into a thin white line like a scar. He'd dropped the eclipse-viewer back into his lap and his hands were openin and closin, real slow.

  "It turned out you weren't supposed to do that," I told him. "Mr. Pease checked to see if the money was still in the bank. When he found out it was, we both heaved a big sigh of relief. He ast me if I wanted him to call the cops n tell em what happened. I could see from his face he was hopin like hell I'd say no. I ast if he could issue that money over to me. He looked it up in a book n said he could. So I said, 'That's what we'll do, then.' And he did it. So that's why I ain't worried about the kids' money anymore, Joe--I've got it now instead of you. Ain't that a corker of a surprise?"

  "You lie!" Joe shouted at me, n stood up so fast his rocker almost fell over. The eclipse-viewer fell out of his lap n broke to pieces when it hit the porch floor. I wish I had a pitcher of the way he looked just then; I'd stuck it to him, all right--and it went in all the way to the hilt. The expression on the dirty sonofawhore's face was purt-near worth everythin I'd been through since that day on the ferry with Selena. "They can't do that!" he yells. "You can't touch a cent of that dough, can't even look at the fuckin passbook--"

  "Oh no?" I says. "Then how come I know you already spent three hundred of it? I'm thankful it wasn't more, but it still makes me mad as hell every time I think of it. You're nothing but a thief, Joe St. George--one so low he'd even steal from his own children!"

  His face was as white as a corpse's in the gloom. Only his eyes was alive, and they were burnin with hate. His hands was held out in front of him, openin and closin. I glanced down for just a second and saw the sun--less'n half by then, just a fat crescent--reflected over n over in the shattered pieces of smoked glass layin around his feet. Then I looked back at him again. It wouldn't do to take my eyes off him for long, not with the mood he was in.

  "What did you spend that three hundred on, Joe? Whores? Poker? Some of both? I know it wa'ant another junker, because there ain't any new ones out back."

  He didn't say nothin, just stood there with his hands openin and closin, and behind him I could see the first lightnin bugs stitchin their lights across the dooryard. The boats out on the reach were just ghosts by then, and I thought of Vera. I figured if she wasn't in seventh heaven already, she was prob'ly in the vestibule. Not that I had any business thinkin about Vera; it was Joe I had to keep my mind on. I wanted to get him movin, and I judged one more good push'd do it.

  "I guess I don't care what you spent it on, anyway," I says. "I got the rest, and that's good enough for me. You can just go fuck yourself ... if you can get your old limp noodle to stand up, that is."

  He stumbled across the porch, crunchin the pieces of the eclipse-viewer under his shoes, and grabbed me by the arms. I could have gotten away from him, but I didn't want to. Not just then.

  "You want to watch your fresh mouth," he whispered, blowin Scotch fumes down into my face. "If you don't, I'm apt to."

  "Mr. Pease wanted me to put the money back in the bank, but I wouldn't--I figured if you were able to get it out of the kids' accounts, you might find a way to get it out of mine, too. Then he wanted to give me a check, but I was afraid that if you found out what I was up to before I wanted you to find out, you might stop payment on it. So I told Mr. Pease to give it to me in cash. He didn't like it, but in the end he did it, and now I have it, every cent, and I've put it in a place where it's safe."

  He grabbed me by the throat then. I was pretty sure he would, and I was scared, but I wanted it, too--it'd make him believe the last thing I had to say that much more when I finally said it. But even that wa'ant the most important thing. Havin him grab me by the throat like that made it seem more like self-defense, somehow--that was the most important thing. And it was self-defense, no matter what the law might say about it; I know, because I was there and the law wasn't. In the end I was defendin myself, and I was defendin my children.

  He cut off my wind and throttled me back n forth, yellin. I don't remember all of it; I think he must have knocked my head against one of the porch posts once or twice. I was a goddam bitch, he said, he'd kill me if I didn't give that money back, that money was his--foolishness like that. I began to be afraid he really would kill me before I could tell him what he wanted to hear. The dooryard had gotten a lot darker, and it seemed full of those little stitchin lights, as if the hundred or two hundred fireflies I'd seen before had been joined by ten thousand or so more. And his voice sounded so far away that I thought it had all gone wrong, somehow--that I'd fallen down the well instead of him.

  Finally he let me go. I tried to stay on my feet but my legs wouldn't hold me. I tried to fall back into the chair I'd been sittin in, but he'd yanked me too far away from it and my ass just clipped the edge of the seat on my way down. I landed on the porch floor next to the litter of broken glass that was all that was left of his eclipse-viewer. There was one big piece left, with a crescent of sun shinin in it like a jewel. I started to reach for it,
then didn't. I wasn't going to cut him, even if he gave me the chance. I couldn't cut him. A cut like that--a glass-cut--might not look right later. So you see how I was thinkin ... not much doubt anyplace along the line about whether or not it was first-degree, is there, Andy? Instead of the glass, I grabbed hold of my reflector-box, which was made of some heavy wood. I could say I was thinkin it would do to bash him with if it came to that, but it wouldn't be true. Right then I really wasn't thinkin much at all.

  I was coughin, though--coughin so damned hard it seemed a wonder to me that I wasn't sprayin blood as well as spit. My throat felt like it was on fire.

  He pulled me back onto my feet so hard one of my slip straps broke, then caught the nape of my neck in the crook of his arm and yanked me toward him until we was close enough to kiss--not that he was in a kissin mood anymore.

  "I told you what'd happen if you didn't leave off bein so fresh with me," he says. His eyes were all wet n funny, like he'd been cryin, but what scared me about em was the way they seemed to be lookin right through me, as if I wasn't really there for him anymore. "I told you a million times. Do you believe me now, Dolores?"

  "Yes," I said. He'd hurt my throat s'bad I sounded like I was talkin through a throatful of mud. "Yes, I do."

  "Say it again!" he says. He still had my neck caught in the crook of his elbow and now he squeezed so hard it pinched one of the nerves in there. I screamed. I couldn't help it; it hurt dreadful. That made him grin. "Say it like you mean it!" he told me.

  "I do!" I screamed. "I do mean it!" I'd planned on actin frightened, but Joe saved me the trouble; I didn't have to do no actin that day, after all.

  "Good," he says, "I'm glad to hear it. Now tell me where the money is, and every red cent better be there."

  "It's out back of the woodshed," I says. I didn't sound like I was talkin through a mouthful of mud anymore; by then I sounded like Groucho Marx on You Bet Your Life. Which sort of fit the situation, if you see what I mean. Then I told him I put the money in a jar and hid the jar in the blackberry bushes.

  "Just like a woman!" he sneers, and then give me a shove toward the porch steps. "Well, come on. Let's go get it."

  I walked down the porch steps and along the side of the house with Joe right behind me. By then it was almost as dark as it gets at night, and when we reached the shed, I saw somethin so strange it made me forget everythin else for a few seconds. I stopped n pointed up into the sky over the blackberry tangle. "Look, Joe!" I says. "Stars!"

  And there were--I could see the Big Dipper as clear as I ever saw it on a winter's night. It gave me goosebumps all over my body, but it wasn't nothing to Joe. He gave me a shove so hard I almost fell over. "Stars?" he says. "You'll see plenty of em if you don't quit stallin, woman--I guarantee you that."

  I started walkin again. Our shadows had completely disappeared, and the big white rock where me n Selena had sat that evenin the year before stood out almost as bright as a spotlight, like I've noticed it does when there's a full moon. The light wasn't like moonlight, Andy--I can't describe what it was like, how gloomy n weird it was--but it'll have to do. I know that the distances between things had gotten hard to judge, like they do in moonlight, and that you couldn't pick out any single blackberry bush anymore--they were all just one big smear with those fireflies dancing back n forth in front of em.

  Vera'd told me time n time again that it was dangerous to look straight at the eclipse; she said it could burn your retinas or even blind you. Still, I couldn't no more resist turnin my head n takin one quick glance up over my shoulder than Lot's wife could resist takin one last glance back at the city of Sodom. What I saw has stayed in my memory ever since. Weeks, sometimes whole months go by without me thinkin about Joe, but hardly a day goes by when I don't think of what I saw that afternoon when I looked up over my shoulder and into the sky. Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt because she couldn't keep her eyes front n her mind on her business, and I've sometimes thought it's a wonder I didn't have to pay the same price.

  The eclipse wasn't total yet, but it was close. The sky itself was a deep royal purple, and what I saw hangin in it above the reach looked like a big black pupil with a gauzy veil of fire spread out most of the way around it. On one side there was a thin crescent of sun still left, like beads of molten gold in a blast furnace. I had no business lookin at such a sight and I knew it, but once I had, it seemed like I couldn't look away. It was like ... well, you might laugh, but I'm gonna say it anyway. It was like that inside eye had gotten free of me somehow, that it had floated up into the sky and was lookin down to see how I was gonna make out. But it was so much bigger than I'd ever imagined! So much blacker!

  I probably woulda looked at it until I went stone blind, except Joe gave me another shove and bashed me into the shed wall. That kinda woke me up n I started walkin again. There was a great big blue spot, the kind you see after someone takes a flash pitcher, hangin in front of me, and I thought, "If you burned your retinas and have to look at that for the rest of your life, it'll serve you right, Dolores--it wouldn't be no more than the mark Cain had to bear."

  We walked past the white rock, Joe right behind me n holdin onto the neck of my dress. I could feel my slip slidin down on one side, where the strap had broken. What with the dark and that big blue spot hangin in the middle of things, everythin looked off-kilter and out of place. The end of the shed wa'ant nothing but a dark shape, like someone' d taken a pair of shears and cut a roof-shaped hole in the sky.

  He pushed me toward the edge of the blackberry patch, and when the first thorn prinked my calf, I remembered that this time I'd forgot to put on my jeans. It made me wonder what else I might have forgot, but accourse it was too late to change anything then; I could see that little scrap of cloth flutterin in the last of the light, and had just time to remember how the wellcap lay beneath it. Then I tore out of his fist and pelted into the brambles, hellbent for election.

  "No you don't, you bitch!" he bawls at me, n I could hear the bushes breakin as he trampled in after me. I felt his hand grab for the neck of my dress again and almost catch. I jerked loose and kep on goin. It was hard to run because my slip was fallin down and kep hookin on the brambles. In the end they unravelled a great long strip of it, and took plenty of meat off my legs, as well. I was bloody from knees to ankles, but I never noticed until I got back into the house, n that was a long time after.

  "Come back here!" he bellowed, n this time I felt his hand on my arm. I yanked it free n so he grabbed at my slip, which was floatin out behind me like a bridal train by then. If it'd held, he mighta reeled me in like a big fish, but it was old n tired from bein warshed two or three hundred times. I felt the strip he'd got hold of tear away n heard him curse, kinda high n outta breath. I could hear the sound of the brambles breakin n snappin n whippin in the air, but couldn't see hardly anything; once we was in the blackberry tangle, it was darker'n a woodchuck's asshole, and in the end that hankie I tied up wasn't any help. I saw the edge of the wellcap instead--no more'n a glimmer of white in the darkness just ahead of me--and I jumped with all my might. I just cleared it, and because I was facin away from him, I didn't actually see him step onto it. There was a big crrr-aack! sound, and then he hollered--

  No, that ain't right.

  He didn't holler, n I guess you know it as well's I do. He screamed like a rabbit with its foot caught in a slipwire. I turned around and seen a big hole in the middle of the cap. Joe's head was stickin out of it, and he was holdin onto one of those smashed boards with all his might. His hands were bleedin, and there was a little thread of blood runnin down his chin from the corner of his mouth. His eyes were the size of doorknobs.

  "Oh Christ, Dolores," he says. "It's the old well. Help me out, quick, before I fall all the way in."

  I just stood there, and after a few seconds his eyes changed. I seen the understandin of what it had all been about come into em. I was never so scared as I was then, standin there on the far side of the wellcap n starin at him wi
th that black sun hangin in the sky to the west of us. I had forgot my jeans, and he hadn't fallen right in like he was s'posed to. To me it seemed like everything had started goin wrong.

  "Oh," he said. "Oh, you bitch." Then he started to claw n wriggle his way up.

  I told myself I had to run, but my legs wouldn't move. Where was there to run to, anyway, if he got out? One thing I found out on the day of the eclipse: if you live on an island and you try to kill someone, you better do a good job. If you don't, there's nowhere to run n nowhere to hide.

  I could hear his fingernails scratchin up splinters in that old board as he worked at pullin himself out, hand over hand. That sound is like what I saw when I looked up at the eclipse--somethin that's always been a lot closer to me than I ever wanted it to be. Sometimes I even hear it in my dreams, only in the dreams he gets out n comes after me again, and that ain't what really happened. What happened was the board he was clawin his way along all of a sudden snapped under his weight and he dropped. It happened so fast it was almost like he'd never been there in the first place; all at once there was nothin there but a saggy gray square of wood with a ragged black hole in the middle of it and fireflies zippin back n forth over it.

  He screamed again goin down. It echoed off the sides of the well. That was somethin else I hadn't figured on--him screamin when he fell. Then there was a thud and he stopped. Just flat stopped. The way a lamp stops shinin if someone yanks the plug outta the wall.

  I knelt on the ground n hugged my arms acrost my middle n waited to see if there was gonna be any more. Some time went by, I don't know how much or how long, but the last of the light went out of the day. The total eclipse had come and it was dark as night. There still wasn't any sound comin from the well, but there was a little breeze comin from it toward me, and I realized I could smell it--you know that smell you sometimes get in water that comes from shallow wells? It's a coppery smell, dank n not very nice. I could smell that, and it made me shiver.

  I saw my slip was hangin down almost to the top of my left shoe. It was all torn n full of rips. I reached under the neck of my dress on the right side n popped that strap, too. Then I pulled the slip down n off. I was bundlin it into a ball beside me n tryin to see the best way to get around the wellcap when all at once I thought of that little girl again, the one I told you about before, and all at once I saw her just as clear as day. She was down on her knees, too, lookin under her bed, and I thought, "She's so unhappy, and she smells that same smell. The one that's like pennies and oysters. Only it didn't come from the well; it has something to do with her father."