Dolores Claiborne

could. That’s what McAuliffe wanted, you see—for me to go on rushin ahead. To explain myself right into a jail-cell someplace.

At last he give up waitin. He twiddled his fingers like he was annoyed, then fixed those lighthouse eyes of his on me again. “After the choking incident, you left your husband; you went up to Russian Meadow, on the way to East Head, to watch the eclipse by yourself.”

“Ayuh.”

He leaned forward all of a sudden, his little hands on his little knees, and says, “Mrs. St. George, do you know what direction the wind was from that day?”

It was like the day in November of ’62, when I almost found the old well by fallin into it—I seemed to hear the same crackin noise, and I thought, “You be careful, Dolores Claiborne; you be oh so careful. There’s wells everywhere today, and this man knows where every goddam one of em is.”

“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