Dolores Claiborne

they did tests that showed he was drunk when he fell into the well, it wouldn’t bother me none; Joe could have gotten booze lots of places, includin under our own kitchen sink.

One look into the mirror convinced me that wouldn’t do—if Joe hadn’t been home to put those bruises on my neck, then they’d want to know who had put em there, and what was I gonna say? Santy Claus did it? Luckily, I’d left myself an out—I’d told Vera that if Joe started actin out the Tartar, prob’ly I’d leave him to stew in his own sauce n watch the eclipse from East Head. I hadn’t had any plan in mind when I said those words, but I blessed em now.

East Head itself wouldn’t do—there’d been people there, and they’d know I hadn’t been with em—but Russian Meadow’s on the way to East Head, it’s got a good western view, and there hadn’t been nobody at all there. I’d seen that for myself from my seat on the porch, and again while I was warshin up our dishes. The only real question—

What, Frank?

No, I wa‘ant worried a bit about his truck bein at the house. He had a string of three or four DWIs right close together back in ’59, you see, and finally lost his driver’s license for a month. Edgar Sherrick, who was our constable back then, came around n told him that he could drink until the cows came home, if that was what he wanted, but the next time he got caught drinkin and drivin, Edgar’d hoe him into district court n try to get his driver’s license lifted for a year. Edgar n his wife lost a little girl to a drunk driver back in 1948 or ’49, and although he was an easygoin man about other things, he was death on drunks behind the wheel. Joe knew it, and he quit drivin if he’d had more’n two drinks right after him n Edgar had their little chat on our porch. No, when I came back from Russian Meadow and found Joe gone, I thought one of his friends must’ve come by n taken him someplace to celebrate Eclipse Day—that was the story I meant to tell.

What I started to say was the only real question I had was what to do about the whiskey bottle.

People knew I’d been buyin him his drink just lately, but that was all right; I knew they thought I’d been doin it so he’d lay off hittin me. But where would that bottle have ended up if the story I was makin up had been a true story? It might not matter, but then again it might. When you’ve done a murder, you never know what may come back to haunt you later on. It’s the best reason I know not to do it. I put myself in Joe’s place—it wa’ant as hard to do as you might think—and knew right off that Joe wouldn’t have gone nowhere with no one if there’d been so much as a sip of whiskey left in that bottle. It had to go down the well with him, and that’s where it did go… all but the cap, that was. That I dropped into the swill on top of the little pile of broken tinted glass.

I walked out to the well with the last of the Scotch swishin in the bottle, thinkin, “He put the old booze to him and that was all right, that was no more’n what I expected, but then he kinda mistook my neck for a pump-handle, and that wa‘ant all right, so I took my reflector-box and went up to Russian Meadow by m’self, cursin the impulse that made me stop n buy him that bottle of Johnnie Walker in the first place. When I got back, he was gone. I didn’t know where or who with, n I didn’t care. I just cleared up his mess and hoped he’d be in a better frame of mind when he got back.” I thought that sounded meek enough, and that it’d pass muster.

I guess what I mostly disliked about that goddam bottle was gettin rid of it meant goin back out there and lookin at Joe again. Still, my likes n dislikes didn’t make a whole lot of difference by then.

I was worried about the state the blackberry bushes might be in, but they wasn’t trampled down as bad as I’d been afraid they might be, and some were springin back already. I figured they’d look pretty much like always by the time I reported Joe missin.

I’d hoped the well wouldn’t look quite so scary in broad daylight, but it did. The hole in the middle of the cap looked even creepier. It didn’t look s’much like an eye with some of the boards pulled back, but not even that helped. Instead of an eye, it looked like an empty socket where somethin had finally rotted so bad it’d fallen completely out. And I could smell that dank, coppery smell. It made me think of the girl I’d glimpsed in my mind, and I wondered how she was doin on the mornin after.

I wanted to turn around n go back to the house, but I marched right up to the well instead, without so much as a single dragged foot. I wanted to get the next part behind me as soon as I could… n not look back. What I had to do from then on out, Andy, was to think about my kids and keep faced front no matter what.

I scooched down n looked in. Joe was still layin there with his hands in his lap and his head cocked over on one shoulder. There was bugs runnin around on his face, and it was seein those that made me know once n for good that he really was dead. I held the bottle out with a hanky wrapped around the neck—it wa’ant a question of fingerprints, I just didn’t want to touch it—and dropped it. It landed in the mud beside him but didn’t break. The bugs scattered, though; they ran down his neck and into the collar of his shirt. I never forgot that.

I was gettin up to leave—the sight of those bugs divin for cover had left me feelin pukey again—when my eye fixed on the jumble of boards I’d pulled up so I could get a look at him that first time. It wasn’t no good leavin em there; they’d raise all sorts of questions if I did.

I thought about em for a little while, and then, when I realized the mornin was slippin away on me and somebody might drop by anytime to talk about either the eclipse or Vera’s big doins, I said to hell with it n threw em down the well. Then I went back to the house. Worked my way back to the house, I should say, because there were pieces of my dress n slip hangin from a good many thorns, and I picked off as many as I could. Later on that day I went back and picked off the three or four I missed the first time. There were little bits of fluff from Joe’s flannel shirt, too, but I left those. “Let Garrett Thibodeau make anything of em he can,” I thought. “Let anyone make anything of em they can. It’s gonna look like he got drunk n fell down the well no matter what, and with the reputation Joe’s got around here, whatever they decide on’ll most likely go in my favor.”

Those little pieces of cloth didn’t go in the swill with the broken glass and the Johnnie Walker cap, though; those I threw in the ocean later on that day. I was across the dooryard and gettin ready to climb the porch steps when a thought hit me. Joe had grabbed onto the piece of my slip that’d been trailin out behind me—suppose he still had a piece of it? Suppose it was clutched in one of the hands that was layin curled up in his lap at the bottom of the well?

That stopped me cold… and cold’s just what I mean. I stood there in the dooryard under that hot July sun, my back all prickles and feelin zero at the bone, as some poime I read in high school said. Then Vera spoke up inside my mind again. “Since you can’t do anything about it, Dolores,” she says, “I’d advise you to let it go.” It seemed like pretty good advice, so I went on up the steps and back inside.

I spent most of the mornin walkin around the house n out on the porch, lookin for… well, I dunno. I dunno what I was lookin for, exactly. Maybe I was expectin that inside eye to happen on somethin else that needed to be done or taken care of, the way it had happened on that little pile of boards. If so, I didn’t see anything.

Around eleven o‘clock I took the next step, which was callin Gail Lavesque up at Pinewood. I ast her what she thought of the eclipse n all, then ast how things was goin over at Her Nibs’.

“Well,” she says, “I can’t complain since I haven’t seen nobody but that older fella with the bald head and the toothbrush mustache—do you know the one I mean?”

I said I did.

“He come downstairs about nine-thirty, went out back in the garden, walkin slow and kinda holdin his head, but at least up, which is more than you c’n say for the rest of em. When Karen Jolander asked him if he’d like a glass of fresh-squeezed orange-juice, he ran over to the edge of the porch n puked in the petunias. You shoulda heard him, Dolores—Bleeeeee-ahhh!”

I laughed until I almost cried, and no laughter ever felt better to me.

“They must have had quite a party when they got back from the ferry,” Gail says. “If I had a nickel for every cigarette butt I’ve dumped this mornin—just a nickel, mindja—I could buy a brand-new Chevrolet. But I’ll have the place spick n spiffy by the time Missus Donovan drags her hangover down the front stairs, you can count on that. ”

“I know you will,” I says, “and if you need any help, you know who to call, don’t you?”

Gail give a laugh at that. “Never mind,” she says. “You worked your fingers to the bone over the last week— and Missus Donovan knows it as well as I do. She don’t want to see you before tomorrow mornin, and neither do I.”

“All right,” I says, and then I took a little pause. She’d be expectin me to say goodbye, and when I said somethin else instead, she’d pay particular mind to it… which was what I wanted. “You haven’t seen Joe over there, have you?” I ast her.