Dolores Claiborne(42)

I put her note back on the table, did up the snaps on my slicker again, and pulled on my gumrubber boots. Then I walked around back n stood by the big white stone where me'n Selena sat the night I told her she didn't have to be afraid of Joe anymore, that he'd promised to let her alone. The rain'd stopped, but I could still hear the water drippin deep in the blackberry tangle behind the house, and see drops of water hangin off the bare branches. They looked like Vera Donovan's diamond-drop earrings, only not so big.

That patch covered better'n half an acre, and by the time I'd pushed my way in, I was damned glad I had on my slicker and tall boots. The wet was the least of it; those thorns were murder. In the late forties, that patch had been flowers and field-grass, with the well-head sittin on the shed side of it, but about six years after me n Joe were married and moved onto the place - which his Uncle Freddy left him when he died - the well went dry. Joe got Peter Doyon to come over and dowse us a new one, on the west side of the house. We've never had a spot of water-trouble since.

Chapter Ten

Once we stopped usin the old well, the half-acre behind the shed grew up in those chest-high snarls of scrub blackberry, and the thorns tore and pulled at my slicker as I walked back n forth, lookin for the board cap on the old well. After my hands got cut in three or four places, I pulled the sleeves down over em.

In the end, I almost found the damned thing by fallin into it. I took a step onto somethin that was both loose and kinda spongy, there was a crackin noise under my foot, and I drew back just before the board I'd stepped on gave way. If I'd been unlucky, I'd've fallen forward, and the whole cap would most likely have collapsed. Ding-dong-bell, pu**y's in the well.

I got down on my knees, keepin one hand up in front of my face so the blackberry thorns wouldn't scratch my cheeks or maybe put out one of my eyes, and took a good close look.

The cap was about four feet wide n five feet long; the boards were all white n warped n rotted. I pushed on one of em with my hand, and it was like pushin down on a licorice stick. The board I'd put my foot on was all bowed down, and I could see fresh splinters stickin up from it. I woulda fallen in, all right, and in those days I went about one-twenty. Joe weighed at least fifty pounds more'n that.

I had a handkerchief in my pocket. I tied it around the top of a bush on the shed side of the cap so I could find it again in a hurry. Then I went back into the house. That night I slept like a lamb, and I had no bad dreams for the first time since I'd found out from Selena what her Prince Charmin of a Dad had been up to with her.

That was in late November, and I didn't intend to do anythin more for quite awhile. I doubt if I need to tell you why, but I will, anyway: if anythin happened to him too soon after our talk on the ferry, Selena's eyes might turn to me. I didn't want that to happen, because there was a part of her that still loved him and prob'ly always would, and because I was afraid of how she'd feel if she even suspected what happened. Of how she'd feel about me, accourse - I guess that goes without sayin - but I was even more afraid of how she might feel about herself. As to how that turned out. . . well, never mind now. I'll get there, I guess.

So I let time go by, although that's always been the hardest thing for me to do once I've made up my mind about a thing. Still, the days piled up into weeks, like they always do. Every now n then I'd ask Selena about him. 'Is your Dad bein good?' is what I asked, and we both understood what I was really askin. She always said yes, which was a relief, because if Joe started up again, I'd have to get rid of him right away, and damn the risks. Or the consequences.

I had other things to worry about as Christmas passed and 1963 got started. One was the money - every day I'd wake up thinkin that this might be the day he'd start spendin it. Why wouldn't I worry about that? He'd got through the first three hundred right smart, and I had no way of keepin him from pissin away the rest while I was waitin for time to take time, as they like to say in his AA meetins. I can't tell you how many times I hunted for the god-dam savins passbook they had to have given him when he opened his own account with that dough, but I never found it. So all I could do was watch for him to come home with a new chainsaw or an expensive watch on his wrist, and hope he hadn't already lost some of it or even all of it in one of the high-stakes poker games he claimed went on every weekend in Ellsworth n Bangor. I never felt s'helpless in my whole life.

Then there was the questions of when and how I was gonna do it. . . if I ended up havin the nerve to do it at all, that was. The idear of usin the old well as a pit-trap was all right as far as it went; the trouble was, it didn't go anywheres near far enough. If he died neat n clean, like people do on TV, everythin would be fine. But even thirty years ago I'd seen enough of life to know that things hardly ever go the way they do on TV.

Suppose he fell down in there and started screamin, for instance? The island wasn't built up then the way it is now, but we still had three neighbors along that stretch of East Lane - the Carons, the Langills, and the Jolanders. They might not hear screams comm from the blackberry patch behind our house, but then again they might . . . especially if the wind was high and blowin the right way. Nor was that all. Runnin between the village and the Head like it does, East Lane could be pretty busy. There was trucks n cars goin past our place all the time, not as many of them back then, either, but enough to worry a woman who was thinkin about what I was thinkin about.