Dolores Claiborne(43)

I'd about decided I couldn't use the well to settle his hash after all, that it was just too risky, when the answer came. It was Vera who gave it to me that time, too, although I don't think she knew it.

She was fascinated by the eclipse, you see. She was on the island most of that season, and as winter started to wear thin, there'd be a new clippin about it pinned to the kitchen bulletin board every week. When spring began with the usual high winds n cold slops, she was here even more, and those clip-pins showed up just about every other day. There were pieces from the local papers, from away papers like the Globe and the New York Times, and from magazines like Scientific American.

She was excited because she was sure the eclipse would finally lure Donald n Helga back to Pinewood - she told me that again n again - but she was exited on her own account, too. By the middle of May, when the weather finally started to warm up, she had pretty well settled in completely - she never even talked about Baltimore. That friggin eclipse was the only thing she talked about. She had four cameras - I ain't talkin about Brownie Starfiashes, either - in the entry closet, three of em already mounted on tripods. She had eight or nine pairs of special sunglasses, specially made open boxes she called 'eclipse-viewers,' periscopes with special tinted mirrors inside em, and I dunno what else.

Then, near the end of May, I came in and saw the article pinned to the bulletin board was from our own little paper- The Weekly Tide. HARBORSIDE TO BE 'ECLIPSE CENTRAL' FOR RESIDENTS, SUMMER VISITORS, the headline said. The picture showed Jimmy Gagnon and Harley Fox doin some sort of carpentry on the hotel roof, which was as flat n broad then as it is now. And do you know what? I felt somethin turn over in me again, just like I'd felt when I saw that first article about the eclipse pinned up in the very same place.

The story said that the owners of The Harborside were plannin to turn the roof into a kind of open-air observatory on the day of the eclipse . . . except it sounded like the same old business-as-usual with a brand-new label on it to me. They said the roof was bein 'specially renovated' for the occasion (the idear of Jimmy Gagnon n Harley Fox renovatin anythin is pretty funny, when you Stop to think of it), and they expected to sell three hundred n fifty special 'eclipse tickets.' Summer residents would get the first pick, then year-round residents. The price was actually pretty reasonable - two bucks a throw - but accourse they were plannin on servin food n havin a bar, and those are the places where hotels have always clipped folks. Especially the bar.

I was still readin the article when Vera come in. I didn't hear her, and when she spoke I went just about two feet into the air.

'Well, Dolores,' she says, 'which'll it be? The roof of The Harborside or the Island Princess?'

'What about the Island Princess?' I asked her.

'I've chartered it for the afternoon of the eclipse,' she says.

'You never!' I says, but I knew the second after it was out of my mouth that she had; Vera had no use for idle talk, nor idle boastin, neither. Still, the thought of her charterin a ferry as big as the Princess kinda took my breath away.

'I did,' she said. 'It's costing me an arm and a leg, Dolores, most of it for the replacement ferry that will run the Princess's regular routes that day, but I certainly did do it. And if you come on my excursion, you'll ride free with all drinks on the house.' Then, kinda peekin at me from underneath her eyelids, she says, 'That last part should appeal to your husband, wouldn't you agree?'

'My God,' I says, 'why'd you charter the damned ferry, Vera?' Her first name still sounded strange to me every time it came out of my mouth, but by then she'd made it clear she hadn't been jokin - she didn't mean to let me go back to Mrs Donovan even if I wanted to, which I sometimes did. 'I mean, I know you're excited about the eclipse and all, but you coulda got an excursion boat almost as big down to Vinalhaven, and prob'ly at half the expense.'

She gave a little shrug and shook her long hair back at the same time - it was her Kiss-My-Back-Cheeks look if I ever seen it. 'I chartered it because I love that tubby old whore,' she says. 'Little Tall Island is my favorite place in all the world, Dolores - do you know that?'

As a matter of fact I did know it, so I nodded my head.

'Of course you do. And it's the Princess which has almost always brought me here - the funny, fat, waddling old Princess. I'm told it will hold four hundred comfortably and safely, fifty more than the roof of the hotel and I'm going to take anyone who wants to go with me and the kids.' Then she grinned, and that grin was all right; it was the grin of a girl who's glad just to be alive. 'And do you know something else, Dolores?' she asked me.

'Nope,' I says. 'I'm flummoxed.'

'You won't need to bow and scrape to anyone if you -' Then she stopped, and give me the queerest look. 'Dolores? Are you all right?'

But I couldn't say anything. The most awful, most wonderful pitcher had filled my mind. In it I seen the big flat roof of The Harborside Hotel filled with people standin around with their necks craned back, and I seen the Princess stopped dead in the middle of the reach between the mainland and the island, her decks also chockablock with people lookin up, and above it all hung a big black circle surrounded by fire in a sky filled with daytime stars. It was a spooky pitcher, enough to raise the hackles on a dead man, but that wasn't what had gut-punched me. It was thinkin about the rest of the island that done that.