Dolores Claiborne

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 with 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.”

And then, all at once, it was like she looked around at me, Andy… I think she saw me. And when she did, I understood why she was so unhappy: her father’d been at her somehow, and she was tryin to cover it up. On top of that, she’d all at once realized someone was lookin at her, that a woman God knows how many miles away but still in the path of the eclipse—a woman who’d just killed her husband—was lookin at her.

She spoke to me, although I didn’t hear her voice with my ears; it came from deep in the middle of my head. “Who are you?” she ast.

I don’t know if I would have answered her or not, but before I even had a chance to, a long, waverin scream came out of the well: “Duh-lorrrrr-issss…”