Dolores Claiborne(53)

'Mr Pease wanted me to put the money back in the bank, but I wouldn't - I figured if you were able to get it out of the kids' accounts, you might find a way to get it out of mine, too. Then he wanted to give me a check, but I was afraid that if you found out what I was up to before I wanted you to find out, you might stop payment on it. So I told Mr Pease to give it to me in cash. He didn't like it, but in the end he did it, and now I have it, every cent, and I've put it in a place where it's safe.'

He grabbed me by the throat then. I was pretty sure he would, and I was scared, but I wanted it, too - it'd make him believe the last thing I had to say that much more when I finally said it. But even that wa'ant the most important thing. Havin him grab me by the throat like that made it seem more like self-defense, somehow - that was the most important thing. And it was self-defense, no matter what the law might say about it; I know, because I was there and the law wasn't. In the end I was defendin myself, and I was defendin my children.

He cut off my wind and throttled me back n forth, yellin. I don't remember all of it; I think he must have knocked my head against one of the porch posts once or twice. I was a goddam bitch, he said, he'd kill me if I didn't give that money back, that money was his - foolishness like that. I began to be afraid he really would kill me before I could tell him what he wanted to hear. The dooryard had gotten a lot darker, and it seemed full of those little stitchin lights, as if the hundred or two hundred fireflies I'd seen before had been joined by ten thousand or so more. And his voice sounded so far away that I thought it had all gone wrong, somehow - that I'd fallen down the well instead of him.

Finally he let me go. I tried to stay on my feet but my legs wouldn't hold me. I tried to fall back into the chair I'd been sittin in, but he'd yanked me too far away from it and my ass just clipped the edge of the seat on my way down. I landed on the porch floor next to the litter of broken glass that was all that was left of his eclipse-viewer. There was one big piece left, with a crescent of sun shinin in it like a jewel. I started to reach for it, then didn't. I wasn't going to cut him, even if he gave me the chance. I couldn't cut him. A cut like that a glass-cut -might not look right later. So you see how I was thinkin. . . not much doubt anyplace along the line about whether or not it was first-degree, is there, Andy? Instead of the glass, I grabbed hold of my reflector-box, which was made of some heavy wood. I could say I was thinkin it would do to bash him with if it came to that, but it wouldn't be true. Right then I really wasn't thinkin much at all.

I was coughin, though - coughin so damned hard it seemed a wonder to me that I wasn't sprayin blood as well as spit. My throat felt like it was on fire.

He pulled me back onto my feet so hard one of my slip straps broke, then caught the nape of my neck in the crook of his arm and yanked me toward him until we was close enough to kiss - not that he was in a kissin mood anymore.

'I told you what'd happen if you didn't leave off bein so fresh with me,' he says. His eyes were all wet n funny, like he'd been cryin, but what scared me about em was the way they seemed to be lookin right through me, as if I wasn't really there for him anymore. 'I told you a million times. Do you believe me now, Dolores?'

'Yes,' I said. He'd hurt my throat s'bad I sounded like I was talkin through a throatful of mud. 'Yes, I do.'

'Say it again!' he says. He still had my neck caught in the crook of his elbow and now he squeezed so hard it pinched one of the nerves in there. I screamed. I couldn't help it; it hurt dreadful. That made him grin. 'Say it like you mean it!' he told me.

'I do!' I screamed. 'I do mean it!' I'd planned on actin frightened, but Joe saved me the trouble; I didn't have to do no actin that day, after all.

'Good,' he says, 'I'm glad to hear it. Now tell me where the money is, and every red cent better be there.'

'It's out back of the woodshed,' I says. I didn't sound like I was talkin through a mouthful of mud anymore; by then I sounded like Groucho Marx on You Bet Your Life. Which sort of fit the situation, if you see what I mean. Then I told him I put the money in a jar and hid the jar in the blackberry bushes.

Chapter Thirteen

'Just like a woman!' he sneers, and then give me a shove toward the porch steps. 'Well, come on. Let's go get it.'

I walked down the porch steps and along the side of the house with Joe right behind me. By then it was almost as dark as it gets at night, and when we reached the shed, I saw somethin so strange it made me forget everythin else for a few seconds. I stopped n pointed up into the sky over the blackberry tangle. 'Look, Joe!' I says. 'Stars!'

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.