So that was the bugger, and the inquest the next day wasn't nothing compared to it. McAuliffe ast me many of the same questions, and they were hard questions, but they didn't have no power over me anymore, and we both knew it. My one tear was all very well, but McAuliffe's questions--plus the fact that everyone could see he was pissed like a bear at me--went a long way toward startin the talk which has run on the island ever since. Oh well; there would have been some talk no matter what, ain't that right?
The verdict was death by misadventure. McAuliffe didn't like it, and at the end he read his findins in a dead-level voice, without ever lookin up once, but what he said was official enough: Joe fell down the well while drunk, had prob'ly called for help for quite awhile without gettin an answer, then tried to climb out on his own hook. He got most of the way to the top, then put his weight on the wrong stone. It pulled free, bashed him in the head hard enough to fracture his skull (not to mention his dentures), and knocked him back down to the bottom again, where he died.
Maybe the biggest thing--and I never realized this until later--was they couldn't find no motive to hang on me. Of course, the people in town (and Dr. McAuliffe too, I have no doubt) thought that if I had done it, I did it to get shut of him beatin me, but all by itself that didn't carry enough weight. Only Selena and Mr. Pease knew how much motive I'd really had, and no one, not even smart old Dr. McAuliffe, thought of questionin Mr. Pease. He didn't come forward on his own hook, either. If he had've, our little talk in The Chatty Buoy would've come out, and he'd most likely have been in trouble with the bank. I'd talked him into breakin the rules, after all.
As for Selena ... well, I think Selena tried me in her own court. Every now n then I'd see her eyes on me, dark n squally, and in my mind I'd hear her askin, "Did you do anything to him? Did you, Mamma? Is it my fault? Am I the one who has to pay?"
I think she did pay--that's the worst part. The little island girl who was never out of the state of Maine until she went to Boston for a swim-meet when she was eighteen has become a smart, successful career-woman in New York City--there was an article about her in the New York Times two years ago, did you know that? She writes for all those magazines and still finds time to write me once a week... but they feel like duty-letters, just like the phone-calls twice a month feel like duty-calls. I think the calls n the chatty little notes are the way she pays her heart to be quiet about how she don't ever come back here, about how she's cut her ties with me. Yes, I think she paid, all right; I think the one who was the most blameless of all paid the most, and that she's payin still.
She's forty-four years old, she's never married, she's too thin (I can see that in the pitchers she sometimes sends), and I think she drinks--I've heard it in her voice more'n once when she calls. I got an idear that might be one of the reasons she don't come home anymore; she doesn't want me to see her drinkin like her father drank. Or maybe because she's afraid of what she might say if she had one too many while I was right handy. What she might ask.
But never mind; it's all water over the dam now. I got away with it, that's the important thing. If there'd been insurance, or if Pease hadn't kep his mouth shut, I'm not sure I woulda. Of the two, a fat insurance policy prob'ly woulda been worse. The last thing in God's round world I needed was some smart insurance investigator hookin up with that smart little Scots doctor who was already mad as hell at the idear of bein beaten by an ignorant island woman. Nope, if there'd been two of em, I think they might've got me.
So what happened? Why, what I imagine always happens in cases like that, when a murder's been done and not found out. Life went on, that's all. Nobody popped up with last-minute information, like in a movie, I didn't try to kill nobody else, n God didn't strike me dead with a lightnin-bolt. Maybe He felt hittin me with lightnin over the likes of Joe St. George woulda been a waste of electricity.
Life just went on. I went back to Pinewood n to Vera. Selena took up her old friendships when she went back to school that fall, and sometimes I heard her laughin on the phone. When the news finally sunk in, Little Pete took it hard... and so did Joe Junior. Joey took it harder'n I expected, actually. He lost some weight n had some nightmares, but by the next summer he seemed mostly all right again. The only thing that really changed durin the rest of 1963 was that I had Seth Reed come over n put a cement cap on the old well.
Six months after he died, Joe's estate was settled in County Probate. I wa'ant even there. A week or so later I got a paper tellin me that everythin was mine--I could sell it or swap it or drop it in the deep blue sea. When I'd finished goin through what he'd left, I thought the last of those choices looked like the best one. One kinda surprisin thing I discovered, though: if your husband dies sudden, it can come in handy if all his friends were idiots, like Joe's were. I sold the old shortwave radio he'd been tinkerin on for ten years to Norris Pinette for twenty-five dollars, and the three junk trucks settin in the back yard to Tommy Anderson. That fool was more'n glad to have em, and I used the money to buy a '59 Chevy that had wheezy valves but ran good otherwise. I also had Joe's savins passbook made over to me, and re-opened the kids' college accounts.
Oh, and one other thing--in January of 1964, I started goin by my maiden name again. I didn't make no particular fanfare about it, but I was damned if I was gonna drag St. George around behind me the rest of my life, like a can tied to a dog's tail. I guess you could say I cut the string holdin the can... but I didn't get rid of him as easy as I got rid of his name, I can tell you that.
Not that I expected to; I'm sixty-five, and I've known for at least fifty of those years that most of what bein human's about is makin choices and payin the bills when they come due. Some of the choices are pretty goddam nasty, but that don't give a person leave to just walk away from em--especially not if that person's got others dependin on her to do for em what they can't do for themselves. In a case like that, you just have to make the best choice you can n then pay the price. For me, the price was a lot of nights when I woke up in a cold sweat from bad dreams n even more when I never got to sleep at all; that and the sound the rock made when it hit him in the face, bustin his skull and his dentures--that sound like a china plate on a brick hearth. I've heard it for thirty years. Sometimes it's what wakes me up, and sometimes it's what keeps me outta sleep and sometimes it surprises me in broad daylight. I might be sweepin the porch at home or polishin the silver at Vera's or sittin down to my lunch with the TV turned to the Oprah show and all at once I'll hear it. That sound. Or the thud when he hit bottom. Or his voice, comin up outta the well: "Duh-lorrrr-issss ..."
I don't s'pose those sounds I sometimes hear are so different from whatever it was that Vera really saw when she screamed about the wires in the corners or the dust bunnies under the bed. There were times, especially after she really began to fail, when I'd crawl in bed with her n hold her n think of the sound the rock made, n then close my eyes n see a china plate strikin a brick hearth and shatterin all to bits. When I saw that I'd hug her like she was my sister, or like she was myself. We'd lie in that bed, each with her own fright, and finally we'd drowse off together--her with me to keep the dust bunnies away, and me with her to keep away the sound of the china plate--and sometimes before I went to sleep I'd think, "This is how. This is how you pay off bein a bitch. And it ain't no use sayin if you hadn't been a bitch you wouldn't've had to pay, because sometimes the world makes you be a bitch. When it's all doom n dark outside and only you inside to first make a light n then tend it, you have to be a bitch. But oh, the price. The terrible price. "
Andy, do you s'pose I could have one more tiny little nip from that bottle of yours? I'll never tell a soul.
Thank you. And thank you, Nancy Bannister, for puttin up with such a long-winded old broad as me. How your fingers holdin out?
Are they? Good. Don't lose your courage now; I've gone at it widdershins, I know, but I guess I've finally gotten around to the part you really want to hear about, just the same. That's good, because it's late and I'm tired.
I've been workin my whole life, but I can't remember ever bein as tired as I am right now.
I was out hangin laundry yest'y mornin--it seems like six years ago, but it was only yest'y--and Vera was havin one of her bright days. That's why it was all so unexpected, and partly why I got so flustered. When she had her bright days she sometimes got bitchy, but that was the first n last time she got crazy.
So I was down below in the side yard and she was up above in her wheelchair, supervisin the operation the way she liked to do. Every now n then she'd holler down, "Six pins, Dolores! Six pins on every last one of those sheets! Don't you try to get away with just four, because I'm watching!"
"Yeah," I says, "I know, and I bet you only wish it was forty degrees colder and a twenty-knot gale blowin."
"What?" she caws down at me. "What did you say, Dolores Claiborne?"
"I said someone must be spreadin manure in their garden," I says, "because I smell a lot more bullshit around here than usual."
"Are you being smart, Dolores?" she calls back in her cracked, wavery voice.
She sounded about like she did on any day when a few more sunbeams than usual was findin their way into her attic. I knew she might get up to mischief later on, but I didn't much care--right then I was just glad to hear her makin as much sense as she was. To tell you the truth, it seemed like old times. She'd been number'n a pounded thumb for the last three or four months, and it was sorta nice to have her back... or as much of the old Vera as was ever gonna come back, if you see what I mean.
"No, Vera," I called up to her. "If I'd been smart, I'd've gotten done workin for you a long time ago."
I expected her to yell somethin else down at me then, but she never. So I went on hangin up her sheets n her diapers n her warshcloths n all the rest. Then, with half the basket still to do, I stopped. I had a bad feeling. I can't say why, or even where it started. All at once it was just there. And for just a moment the strangest thought came to me: "That girl's in trouble... the one I saw on the day of the eclipse, the one who saw me. She's all grown up now, almost Selena's age, but she's in terrible trouble."
I turned around n looked up, almost expectin to see the grownup version of that little girl in her bright striped dress n pink lipstick, but I didn't see nobody, and that was wrong. It was wrong because Vera should have been there, just about hangin out onto the roof to make sure I used the right number of clothespins. But she was gone, and I didn't understand how that could be, because I'd put her in her chair myself, and then set the brake once I had it by the window the way she liked.
Then I heard her scream.
"Duh-lorrrrr-isss!"
Such a chill ran up my back when I heard that, Andy! It was like Joe had come back. For a moment I was just frozen to the spot. Then she screamed again, and that second time I recognized it was her.
"Duh-lorrr-isss! It's dust bunnies! They're everywhere! Oh-dear-God! Oh-dear-God! Duh-lorrr-iss, help! Help me!"
I turned to run for the house, tripped over the damned laundry-basket, and went sprawlin over it n into the sheets I'd just hung. I got tangled up in em somehow n had to fight my way out. For just a minute it was like the sheets had grown hands and were tryin to strangle me, or just hold me back. And all the while that was goin on, Vera kep screamin, and I thought of the dream I'd had that one time, the dream of the dust-head with all the long snaggly dust-teeth. Only what I saw in my mind's eye was Joe's face on that head, and the eyes were all dark n blank, like someone had pushed two lumps of coal into a cloud of dust, and there they hung n floated.
"Dolores, oh please come quick! Oh please come quick! The dust bunnies! THE DUST BUNNIES ARE EVERYWHERE!"
Then she just screamed. It was horrible. You'd never in your wildest dreams have thought a fat old bitch like Vera Donovan could scream that loud. It was like fire n flood n the end of the world all rolled up into one.
I fought my way clear of the sheets somehow, and as I got up I felt one of my slip-straps pop, just like on the day of the eclipse, when Joe almost killed me before I managed to get shut of him. And you know that feelin you get when it seems like you've been someplace before, and know all the things people are gonna say before they say em? That feelin came over me so strong it was like there were ghosts all around me, ticklin me with fingers I couldn't quite see.
And you know somethin else? They felt like dusty ghosts.
I ran in the kitchen door n pelted up the back stairs as fast as my legs'd carry me, and all the time she was screamin, screamin, screamin. My slip started to slide down, and when I got to the back landin I looked around, sure I was gonna see Joe stumblin up right behind me n snatchin at the hem.
Then I looked back the other way, and I seen Vera. She was three-quarters of the way down the hall toward the front staircase, waddlin along with her back to me n screamin as she went. There was a big brown stain on the seat of her nightgown where she'd soiled herself--not out of meanness or bitchiness that last time, but out of plain cold fear.
Her wheelchair was stuck crosswise in her bedroom door. She must've released the brake when she saw whatever it was that had scared her so.
Always before when she come down with a case of the horrors, the only thing she could do was sit or lay where she was n bawl for help, and there'll be plenty of people who'll tell you she couldn't move under her own power, but she did yesterday; I swear she did. She released the brake on her chair, turned it, wheeled it across the room, then somehow got out of it when it got stuck in the doorway n went staggerin off down the hall.
I stood there, just frozen to the spot for the first second or two, watchin her lurch along and wonderin what she'd seen that was terrible enough to get her to do what she was doin, to walk after her days of walkin should have been over--what that thing was that she could only think to call the dust bunnies.
But I seen where she was headed--right for the front stairs.
"Vera!" I yelled at her. "Vera, you just stop this foolishness! You're going to fall! Stop!"
Then I ran just as fast as I could. That feelin that all this was happenin for the second time rolled over me again, only this time it felt like I was Joe, that I was the one tryin to catch up n catch hold.
I don't know if she didn't hear me, or if she did n thought in her poor addled brain that I was in front of her instead of behind. All I know for sure is that she went on screamin--"Dolores, help! Help me, Dolores! The dust bunnies!"--and lurched on a little faster.
She'd just about used the hallway up. I raced past the door to her room n clipped my ankle a goddam good one on one of the wheelchair's footrests--here, you can see the bruise. I ran as fast's I could, shoutin, "Stop, Vera! Stop!" until my throat was raw.
She crossed the landin and stuck one foot out into space. I couldn't've saved her then, no matter what--all I coulda done was pull myself over with her--but in a situation like that, you don't have time to think or count the cost. I jumped for her just as that foot of hers come down on thin air and she started to tilt forward. I had one last little glimpse of her face. I don't think she knew she was goin over; there wasn't nothing there but bug-eyed panic. I'd seen the look before, although never that deep, and I can tell you it didn't have nothing to do with fear of fallin. She was thinkin about what was behind her, not what was ahead.
I snatched at the air and didn't get nothing but the littlest fold of her nightie between the second n third fingers of my left hand. It slipped through em like a whisper.
"Duh-lorrrrr--" she screamed, and then there was a solid, meaty thud. It turns my blood cold to remember that sound; it was just like the one Joe made when he hit the bottom of the well. I seen her do a cartwheel n then heard somethin snap. The sound was as clear n harsh as a stick of kindlin when you break it over your knee. I saw blood squirt out of the side of her head n that was all I wanted to see. I turned away so fast my feet tangled in each other and I went to my knees. I was starin back down the hallway toward her room, and what I saw made me scream. It was Joe. For a few seconds I saw
him as clear as I see you now, Andy; I saw his dusty, grinnin face peekin out at me from under her wheelchair, lookin through the wire spokes of the wheel that had got caught in the door.
Then it was gone, and I heard her moanin and cryin.
I couldn't believe she'd lived through that fall; can't believe it still. Joe hadn't been killed outright either, accourse, but he'd been a man in the prime of life, and she was a flabby old woman who'd had half a dozen small strokes n at least three big ones. Also, there wasn't no mud n squelch to cushion her landin like there had been to cushion his.
I didn't want to go down to her, didn't want to see where she was broken and bleedin, but there wa'ant no question, accourse; I was the only one there, and that meant I was elected. When I got up (I had to haul on the newel post at the top of the bannister to do it, my knees were so watery-feelin), I stepped one foot on the hem of my own slip. The other strap popped, n I raised up my dress a little so I could pull it off ... and that was just like before, too. I remember lookin down at my legs to see if they were scratched and bleedin from the thorns in the blackberry tangle, but accourse there wasn't nothing like that.
I felt feverish. If you've ever been really sick n your temperature's gone way, way up, you know what I mean; you don't feel out of the world, exactly, but you sure as hell don't feel in it, either. It's like every thin was turned to glass, and there isn't anything you can get a solid grip on anymore; everythin's slippery. That's how I felt as I stood there on the landin, holdin the top of the bannister in a death-grip and lookin at where she'd finished up.
She was layin a little over halfway down the staircase with both legs twisted so far under her you couldn't hardly see em. Blood was runnin down one side of her poor old face. When I stumbled down to where she lay, still clingin onto the bannister for dear life as I went, one of her eyes rolled up in its socket to mark me. It was the look of an animal caught in a trap.