“I don’t like fucking surprises,” he says.
“I know you don’t,” I told him. “But you’ll get a kick out of this one, Joe. You’d never guess it in a thousand years.” Then I went into the kitchen so he could really get started on that bottle I’d bought him at the greenfront. I wanted him to enjoy it—I really did. After all, it was the last liquor he was ever gonna drink. He wouldn’t need A.A. to keep him off the sauce, either. Not where he was goin.
That was the longest afternoon of my life, and the strangest, too. There he was, sittin on the porch in his rocker, holdin the paper in one hand and a drink in the other, bitchin in the open kitchen window at me about somethin the Democrats were tryin to do down in Augusta. He’d forgot all about tryin to find out what I was happy about, and all about the eclipse, as well. I was in the kitchen, makin him a sandwich, hummin a tune, and thinkin, “Make it good, Dolores—put on some of that red onion he likes and just enough mustard to make it tangy. Make it good, cause it’s the last thing he’s ever gonna eat.”
From where I was standin, I could look out along the line of the woodshed and see the white rock and the edge of the blackberry tangle. The handkerchief I’d tied to the top of one of the bushes was still there; I could see that, too. It went noddin back n forth in the breeze. Every time it did, I thought of that spongy wellcap right under it.
I remember how the birds sang that afternoon, and how I could hear some of the people out on the reach yellin back and forth to each other, their voices all tiny and far—they sounded like voices on the radio. I can even remember what I was hummin: “Amazin Grace, how sweet the sound.” I went on hummin it while I made my crackers n cheese (I didn’t want em any more’n a hen wants a flag, but I didn’t want Joe wonderin why I wasn’t eatin, either).
It must have been quarter past two or so when I went back out on the porch with the tray of food balanced on one hand like a waitress and the bag Vera’d give me in the other. The sky was still overcast, but you could see it really had gotten quite a bit lighter.
That was a good little feed, as things turned out. Joe wasn’t much for compliments, but I could see from the way he put down his paper n looked at his sandwich while he was eatin that he liked it. I thought of somethin I’d read in some book or saw in some movie: “The condemned man ate a hearty meal. ” Once I’d got that in my head, I couldn’t get rid of the damned thing.
It didn’t stop me from diggin into my own kip, though; once I got started, I kept goin until every one of those cheese-n-cracker things were gone, and I drank a whole bottle of Pepsi as well. Once or twice I found myself wonderin if most executioners have good appetites on the days when they have to do their job. It’s funny what a person’s mind will get up to when that person’s nervin herself up to do somethin, isn’t it?
The sun broke through the clouds just as we were finishin up. I thought of what Vera’d told me that mornin, looked down at my watch, and smiled. It was three o’clock, right on the button. About that same time, Dave Pelletier—he delivered mail on the island back in those days—drove back toward town, hell bent for election and pullin a long rooster-tail of dust behind him. I didn’t see another car on East Lane until long after dark.
I put the plates and my empty soda bottle on the tray, scoochin down to do it, n before I could stand up, Joe done somethin he hadn’t done in years: put one of his hands on the back of my neck n give me a kiss. I’ve had better; his breath was all booze n onion n salami and he hadn’t shaved, but it was a kiss just the same, and nothing mean or half-assed or peckish about it. It was just a nice kiss, n I couldn’t remember the last time he’d give me one. I closed my eyes n let him do it. I remember that —closin my eyes and feelin his lips on mine and the sun on my forehead. One was as warm n nice as the other.
“That wa’ant half-bad, Dolores,” he said—high praise, comin from him.
I had a second there when I kinda wavered—I ain’t gonna sit here and say different. It was a second when it wasn’t Joe puttin his hands all over Selena that I saw, but the way his forehead looked in study-hall back in 1945— how I saw that and wanted him to kiss me just the way he was kissin me now; how I thought, “If he kissed me I’d reach up and touch the skin there on his brow while he did it… see if it’s as smooth as it looks.”
I reached out my hand n touched it then, just like I’d dreamed of doin all those years before, when I’d been nothin but a green girl, and the minute I did, that inside eye opened wider’n ever. What it saw was how he’d go on if I let him go on—not just gettin what he wanted from Selena, or spendin the money he’d robbed out of his kids’ bank accounts, but
Well, I had a hole for him, one thirty feet deep instead of just six, and lined with chunks of field-stone instead of dirt. You bet I had a hole for him, and one kiss after three years or maybe even five wasn’t gonna change it. Neither was touchin his forehead, which had been a lot more the cause of all my trouble than his pulin little dingus ever was… but I touched it again, just the same; traced one finger over it and thought about how he kissed me on the patio of The Samoset Inn while the band inside played “Moonlight Cocktail,” and how I’d been able to smell his father’s cologne on his cheeks when he did.
Then I hardened my heart.
“I’m glad,” I said, n picked up the tray again. “Why don’t you see what you can make of those viewers and the reflector-boxes while I do up these few dishes?”
“I don’t give a fuck about anything that rich cunt gave you,” he says, “and I don’t give a fuck about the goddam eclipse, either. I’ve seen dark before. It happens every goddam night.”
“All right,” I says. “Suit yourself.”
I got as far’s the door and he says, “Maybe you n me can get up to dickens later on. What would you think about that, Dee?”
“Maybe,” I says, all the time thinkin there was gonna be plenty of dickens, all right. Before it got dark for the second time that day, Joe St. George was gonna get more dickens than he’d ever dreamed of.
I kept my good weather eye on him while I was standin at the sink and doin up our few dishes. He hadn’t done anything in bed but sleep, snore, n fart for years, and I think he knew as well’s I did that the booze had as much to do with that as my ugly face… prob’ly more. I was scared that maybe the idear of gettin his ashes hauled later on would cause him to put the cap back on that bottle of Johnnie Walker, but no such bad luck. For Joe, fuckin (pardon my language, Nancy) was just a fancy, like kissin me had been. The bottle was a lot realer to him. The bottle was right there where he could touch it. He’d gotten one of the eclipse-viewers out of the bag and was holdin it up by the handle, turnin it this way n that, squintin at the sun through it. He reminded me of a thing I saw on TV once—a chimpanzee tryin to tune a radio. Then he put it down and poured himself another drink.
When I came back out on the porch with my sewin basket, I saw he was already gettin that owly, red- around-the-eyes look he had when he was on his way from moderately tickled to thoroughly tanked. He looked at me pretty sharp just the same, no doubt wonderin if I was gonna bitch at him.
“Don’t mind me,” I says, sweet as sugar-pie, “I’m just gonna sit here and do a little mendin and wait for the eclipse to start. It’s nice that the sun came out, isn’t it?”
“Christ, Dolores, you must think this is my birthday,” he says. His voice had started to get thick and furry.
“Well—somethin like it, maybe,” I says, and began sewin up a rip in a pair of Little Pete’s jeans.
The next hour and a half passed slower’n any time had since I was a little girl, and my Aunt Cloris promised to come n take me to my first movie down in Ellsworth. I finished Little Pete’s jeans, sewed patches on two pairs of Joe Junior’s chinos (even back then that boy would absolutely not wear jeans—I think part of him’d already decided he was gonna be a politician when he grew up), and hemmed two of Selena’s skirts. The last thing I did was sew a new fly in one of Joe’s two or three pairs of good slacks. They were old but not entirely worn out. I remember thinkin they would do to bury him in.
Then, just when I thought it was never gonna happen, I noticed the light on my hands seemed a little dimmer.
“Dolores?” Joe says. “I think this is what you n all the rest of the fools’ve been waitin for.”
“Ayuh,” I says. “I guess.” The light in the dooryard had gone from that strong afternoon yellow it has in July to a kind of faded rose, and the shadow of the house layin across the driveway had taken on a funny
