Dolores Claiborne

  "No," I says, "I don't. And when I don't know where the wind's quarterin from, that usually means the day's calm."

  "Actually wasn't much more than a breeze--" Garrett started to say, but McAuliffe raised his hand n cut him off like a knife-blade.

  "It was out of the west," he said. "A west wind, a west breeze, if you so prefer, seven to nine miles an hour, with gusts up to fifteen. It seems strange to me, Mrs. St. George, that that wind didna bring your husband's cries to you as you stood in Russian Meadow, not half a mile away."

  I didn't say anything for at least three seconds. I'd made up my mind that I'd count to three inside my head before I answered any of his questions. Doin that might keep me from movin too quick and payin for it by fallin into one of the pits he'd dug for me. But McAuliffe musta thought he had me confused from the word go, because he leaned forward in his chair, and I'll declare and vow that for one or two seconds there, his eyes went from blue-hot to white-hot.

  "It don't surprise me," I says. "For one thing, seven miles an hour ain't much more'n a puff of air on a muggy day. For another, there were about a thousand boats out on the reach, all tootin to each other. And how do you know he called out at all? You sure as hell didn't hear him."

  He sat back, lookin a little disappointed. "It's a reasonable deduction to make," he says. "We know the fall itself didna kill him, and the forensic evidence strongly suggests that he had at least one extended period of consciousness. Mrs. St. George, if you fell into a disused well and found yourself with a broken shin, a broken ankle, four broken ribs, and a sprained wrist, wouldn't you call for aid and succor?"

  I gave it three seconds with a my-pretty-pony between each one, n then said, "It wasn't me who fell down the well, Dr. McAuliffe. It was Joe, and he'd been drinkin."

  "Yes," Dr. McAuliffe comes back. "You bought him a bottle of Scotch whiskey, even though everyone I've spoken to says you hated it when he drank, even though he became unpleasant and argumentative when he drank; you bought him a bottle of Scotch, and he had not just been drinking, he was drunk. He was verra drunk. His mouth was also filled wi' bluid, and his shirt was matted wi' bluid all the way down to his belt-buckle. When you combine the fact o' this bluid wi' a knowledge of the broken ribs and the concomitant lung injuries he had sustained, do ye know what that suggests?"

  One, my-pretty-pony ... two, my-pretty-pony ...three, my-pretty-pony. "Nope," I says.

  "Several of the fractured ribs had punctured his lungs. Such injuries always result in bleeding, but rarely bleeding this extensive. Bleeding of this sort was probably caused, I deduce, by the deceased crying repeatedly for riscue." That was how he said it, Andy--riscue.

  It wasn't a question, but I counted three all the same before sayin, "You think he was down there callin for help. That's what it all comes to, ain't it?"

  "No, madam," he says. "I do na just think so; I have a moral sairtainty."

  This time I didn't take no wait. "Dr. McAuliffe," I says, "do you think I pushed my husband down into that well?"

  That shook him up a little. Those lighthouse eyes of his not only blinked, for a few seconds there they dulled right over. He fiddled n diddled with his pipe some more, then stuck it back in his mouth n drew on it, all the time tryin to decide how he should handle that.

  Before he could, Garrett spoke up. His face had gone as red as a radish. "Dolores," he says, "I'm sure no one thinks... that is to say, that no one has even considered the idea that--"

  "Aye," McAuliffe breaks in. I'd put his train of thought off on a sidin for a few seconds, but I saw he'd got it back onto the main line without no real trouble. "I've considered it. Ye'll understand, Mrs. St. George, that part of my job--"

  "Oh, never mind no more Mrs. St. George," I says. "If you're gonna accuse me of first pushin my husband down the well n then standin over him while he screamed for help, you go right on ahead n call me Dolores."

  I wasn't exactly tryin to plink him that time, Andy, but I'll be damned if I didn't do it, anyway--second time in as many minutes. I doubt if he'd been used that hard since medical school.

  "Nobody is accusing you of anything, Mrs. St. George," he says all stiff-like, and what I seen in his eyes was "Not yet, anyway."

  "Well, that's good," I says. "Because the idear of me pushin Joe down the well is just silly, you know. He outweighed me by at least fifty pounds --prob'ly a fairish bit more. He larded up considerable the last few years. Also, he wa'ant afraid to use his fists if somebody crossed him or got in his way. I'm tellin you that as his wife of sixteen years, and you'll find plenty of people who'll tell you the same thing."

  Accourse Joe hadn't hit me in a long while, but I'd never tried to correct the general impression on the island that he made a pretty steady business of it, and right then, with McAuliffe's blue eyes tryin to bore in through my forehead, I was damned glad of it.

  "Nobody is saying you pushed him into the well," the Scotsman said. He was backin up fast now. I could see by his face that he knew he was, but didn't have no idear how it had happened. His face said that I was the one who was supposed to be backin up. "But he must have been crying out, you know. He must have done it for some time--hours, perhaps--and quite loudly, too."

  One, my-pretty-pony ... two, my-pretty-pony . . . three. "Maybe I'm gettin you now," I says. "Maybe you think he fell into the well by accident, and I heard him yellin n just turned a deaf ear. Is that what you been gettin at?"

  I seen by his face that that was exactly what he'd been gettin at. I also seen he was mad things weren't goin the way he'd expected em to go, the way they'd always gone before when he had these little interviews. A tiny ball of bright red color had showed up in each of his cheeks. I was glad to see em, because I wanted him mad. A man like McAuliffe is easier to handle when he's mad, because men like him are used to keepin their composure while other people lose theirs.

  "Mrs. St. George, it will be verra difficult to accomplish anything of value here if you keep responding to my questions with questions of your own."

  "Why, you didn't ask a question, Dr. McAuliffe," I says, poppin my eyes wide n innocent. "You told me Joe must have been yellin--'cryin out' was what you actually said--so I just ast if--"

  "All right, all right," he says, and put his pipe down in Garrett's brass ashtray hard enough to make it clang. Now his eyes were blazin, and he'd grown a red stripe acrost his forehead to go along with the balls of color in his cheeks. "Did you hear him calling for help, Mrs. St. George?"

  One, my-pretty-pony ... two, my-pretty-pony ...

  "John, I hardly think there's any call to badger the woman," Garrett broke in, soundin more uncomfortable than ever, and damn if it didn't break that little bandbox Scotsman's concentration again. .I almost laughed right out loud. It woulda been bad for me if I had, I don't doubt it, but it was a near thing, all the same.

  McAuliffe whipped around and says to Garrett, "You agreed to let me handle this."

  Poor old Garrett jerked back in his chair s'fast he almost tipped it over, and I'm sure he gave himself a whiplash. "Okay, okay, no need to get hot under the collar," he mumbles.

  McAuliffe turned back to me, ready to repeat the question, but I didn't bother lettin him. By then I'd had time to count to ten, pretty near.

  "No," I says. "I didn't hear nothing but people out on the reach, tootin their boat-horns and yellin their fool heads off once they could see the eclipse had started to happen."

  He waited for me to say some more--his old trick of bein quiet and lettin people rush ahead into the puckerbrush--and the silence spun out between us. I just kep my hands folded on top of my handbag and let her spin. He looked at me and I looked back at him.

  "You're gonna talk to me, woman," his eyes said.

  "You're going to tell me everything I want to hear ... twice, if that's the way I want it."

  And my own eyes were sayin back, "No I ain't, chummy. You can sit there drillin on me with those diamond-bit baby-blues of yours until hell's a skatin rink and you won't g
et another word outta me unless you open your mouth n ask for it."

  We went on that way for damned near a full minute, duellin with our eyes, y'might say, and toward the end of it I could feel myself weakenin, wantin to say somethin to him, even if it was only "Didn't your Ma ever teach you it ain't polite to stare?" Then Garrett spoke up--or rather his stomach did. It let out a long goiiiinnnnggg sound.

  McAuliffe looked at him, disgusted as hell, and Garrett got out his pocket-knife and started to clean under his fingernails. McAuliffe pulled a notebook from the inside pocket of his wool coat (wool! in July!), looked at somethin in it, then put it back.

  "He tried to climb out," he says at last, as casual as a man might say "I've got a lunch appointment."

  It felt like somebody'd jabbed a meatfork into my lower back, where Joe hit me with the stovelength that time, but I tried not to show it. "Oh, ayuh?" I says.

  "Yes," McAuliffe says. "The shaft of the well is lined with large stones (only he said "stanes," Andy, like they do), and we found bluidy hand-prints on several of them. It appears that he gained his feet, then slowly began to make his way up, hand over hand. It must have been a Herculean effort, made despite a pain more excruciating than I can imagine."

  "I'm sorry to hear he suffered," I said. My voice was as calm as ever--at least I think it was--but I could feel the sweat startin to break in my arm-pits, and I remember bein scairt it'd spring out on my brow or in the little hollows of my temples where he could see it. "Poor old Joe."

  "Yes indaid," McAuliffe says, his lighthouse eyes borin n flashin away. "Poor ... auld... Joe. I think he might have actually gotten out on his own. He probably would have died soon after even if he had, but yes; I think he might have gotten out. Something prevented him from doing so, however."

  "What was it?" I ast.

  "He suffered a fractured skull," McAuliffe said. His eyes were as bright as ever, but his voice'd become as soft as a purrin cat. "We found a large rock between his legs. It was covered wi'your husband's bluid, Mrs. St. George. And in that bluid we found a small number of porcelain fragments. Do you know what I deduce from them?"

  One... two... three.

  "Sounds like that rock must have busted his false teeth as well's his head," I says. "Too bad--Joe was partial to em, and I don't know how Lucien Mercier's gonna make him look just right for the viewin without em."

  McAuliffe's lips drew back when I said that n I got a good look at his teeth. No dentures there. I s'pose he meant it to look like a smile, but it didn't. Not a bit.

  "Yes," he says, showin me both rows of his neat little teeth all the way to the gumline. "Yes, that's my conclusion, as well--those porcelain shards are from his lower plate. Now, Mrs. St. George--do you have any idea of how that rock might have come to strike your husband just as he was on the verge of escaping the well?"

  One... two... three.

  "Nope," I says. "Do you?"

  "Yes," he says. "I rather suspect someone pulled it out of the earth and smashed it cruelly and wi' malice aforethought into his upturned, pleading face."

  Wasn't nobody said anything after that. I wanted to, God knows; I wanted to jump in as quick as ever I could n say, "It wasn't me. Maybe somebody did it, but it wasn't me." I couldn't, though, because I was back in the blackberry tangles and this time there was friggin wells everyplace.

  Instead of talkin I just sat there lookin at him, but I could feel the sweat tryin to break out on me again and I could feel my clasped hands wantin to lock down on each other. The fingernails'd turn white if they did that... and he'd notice. McAuliffe was a man built to notice such things; it'd be another chink to shine his version of the Battiscan Light into. I tried to think of Vera, and how she woulda looked at him--as if he was only a little dab of dogshit on one of her shoes--but with his eyes borin into me like they was just then, it didn't seem to do any good. Before, it'd been like she was almost there in the room with me, but it wasn't like that anymore. Now there was no one there but me n that neat little Scots doctor, who probably fancied himself just like the amateur detectives in the magazine stories (and whose testimony had already sent over a dozen people up n down the coast to jail, I found out later), and I could feel myself gettin closer n closer to openin my mouth n blurtin somethin out. And the hell of it was, Andy, I didn't have the slightest idear what it'd be when it finally came. I could hear the clock on Garrett's desk tickin--it had a big hollow sound.

  And I was gonna say somethin when the one person I'd forgot--Garrett Thibodeau--spoke up instead. He spoke in a worried, fast voice, and I realized he couldn't stand no more of that silence, either--he musta thought it was gonna go on until somebody had to scream just to relieve the tension.

  "Now John," he says, "I thought we agreed that, if Joe pulled on that stone just right, it could have come out on its own and--"

  "Mon, will ye not shut op!" McAuliffe yelled at him in a high, frustrated sort of voice, and I relaxed. It was all over. I knew it, and I believe that little Scotsman knew it, too. It was like the two us had been in a black room together, and him ticklin my face with what might have been a razor-blade ... n then clumsy old Constable Thibodeau stubbed his toe, fell against the window, and the shade went up with a bang n a rattle, lettin in the daylight, and I seen it was only a feather he'd been touchin me with, after all.

  Garrett muttered somethin about how there was no call for McAuliffe to talk to him that way, but the doc didn't pay him no mind. He turned back to me and said "Well, Mrs. St. George?" in a hard way, like he had me in a corner, but by then we both knew better. All he could do was hope I'd make a mistake... but I had three kids to think about, and havin kids makes you careful.

  "I've told you what I know," I says. "He got drunk while we were waitin for the eclipse. I made him a sandwich, thinkin it might sober him up a little, but it didn't. He got yellin, then he choked me n batted me around a little, so I went up to Russian Meadow. When I come back, he was gone. I thought he'd gone off with one of his friends, but he was down the well all the time. I s'pose he was tryin to take a short-cut out to the road. He might even have been lookin for me, wantin to apologize. That's somethin I won't never know... n maybe it's just as well." I give him a good hard look. "You might try a little of that medicine yourself, Dr. McAuliffe."

  "Never mind yer advice, madam," McAuliffe says, and those spots of color in his cheeks was burnin higher n hotter'n ever. "Are ye glad he's dead? Tell me that!"

  "What in holy tarnal hell has that got to do with what happened to him?" I ast. "Jesus Christ, what's wrong with you?"

  He didn't answer--just picked up his pipe in a hand that was shakin the tiniest little bit and went to work lightin it again. He never ast another question; the last question that was ast of me that day was ast by Garrett Thibodeau. McAuliffe didn't ask it because it didn't matter, at least not to him. It meant somethin to Garrett, though, and it meant even more to me, because nothing was going to end when I walked out of the Town Office Building that day; in some ways, me walkin out was gonna be just the beginning. That last question and the way I answered it mattered plenty, because it's usually the things that wouldn't mean squat in a courtroom that get whispered about the most over back fences while women hang out their warsh or out on the lobster-boats while men are sittin with their backs against the pilothouse n eatin their lunches. Those things may not send you to prison, but they can hang you in the eyes of the town.

  "Why in God's name did you buy him a bottle of liquor in the first place?" Garrett kinda bleated. "What got into you, Dolores?"

  "I thought he'd leave me alone if he had somethin to drink," I said. "I thought we could sit together in peace n watch the eclipse n he'd leave me alone."

  I didn't cry, not really, but I felt one tear go rollin down my cheek. I sometimes think that's the reason I was able to go on livin on Little Tall for the next thirty years--that one single tear. If not for that, they mighta driven me out with their whisperin and carpin and pointin at me from behind their hands--ayuh, in
the end they mighta. I'm tough, but I don't know if anyone's tough enough to stand up to thirty years of gossip n little anonymous notes sayin things like "You got away with murder." I did get a few of those--and I got a pretty good idear of who sent em, too, although that ain't neither here nor there at this late date --but they stopped by the time school let back in that fall. And so I guess you could say that I owe all the rest of my life, includin this part here, to that single tear... and to Garrett puttin the word out that in the end I hadn't been too stony-hearted to cry for Joe. There wasn't nothing calculated about it, either, and don't you go thinkin there was. I was thinkin about how sorry I was that Joe'd suffered the way the little bandbox Scotsman said he had. In spite of everything he'd done and how I'd come to hate him since I'd first found out what he was tryin to do to Selena, I'd never intended for him to suffer. I thought the fall'd kill him, Andy --I swear on the name of God I thought the fall'd kill him outright.

  Poor old Garrett Thibodeau went as red's a stop-sign. He fumbled a wad of Kleenex out of the box of em on his desk and kinda groped it out at me without lookin--I imagine he thought that first tear meant I was gonna go a gusher--and apologized for puttin me through "such a stressful interrogation." I bet those were just about the biggest words he knew.

  McAuliffe gave out a humph! sound at that, said somethin about how he'd be at the inquest to hear my statement taken, and then he left--stalked out, actually, n slammed the door behind him hard enough to rattle the glass. Garrett gave him time to clear out n then walked me to the door, holdin my arm but still not lookin at me (it was actually sorta comical) and mutterin all the time. I ain't sure what he was mutterin about, but I s'pose that, whatever it was, it was really Garrett's way of sayin he was sorry. That man had a tender heart and couldn't stand to see someone unhappy, I'll say that for him... and I'll say somethin else for Little Tall: where else could a man like that not only be constable for almost twenty years but get a dinner in his honor complete with a standin ovation at the end of it when he finally retired? I'll tell you what I think--a place where a tender-hearted man can succeed as an officer of the law ain't such a bad place to spend your life. Not at all. Even so, I was never gladder to hear a door close behind me than I was when Garrett's clicked shut that day.