Dolores Claiborne(63)

Meantime, Garrett Thibodeau and his barbershop cronies kep busy not findin Joe. It'd gotten to the point where I thought I'd just have to stumble on him myself, as little as I liked the idear. If it hadn't been for the dough, I'd've been happy to leave him down there until the Last Trump blew. But the money was over there in Jonesport, sittin in a bank account with his name on it, and I didn't fancy waitin seven years to have him declared legally dead so I could get it back. Selena was gonna be startin college in just a little over two years, and she'd want some of that money to get herself goin.

The idear that Joe mighta taken his bottle into the woods behind the house n either stepped in a trap or taken a fall walkin home tipsy in the dark finally started to go the rounds. Garrett claimed it was his idear, but that's awful hard for me to believe, havin gone to school with him like I did. No matter. He put a sign-up sheet on the door of the town hall Thursday afternoon, and on Sat'dy mornin - a week after the eclipse, this was - he fielded a search-party of forty or fifty men.

They formed up a line by the East Head end of Highgate Woods and worked their way toward the house, first through the woods n then across Russian Meadow. I seen em crossin the meadow in a long line around one o'clock, laughin and jokin, but the jokin stopped and the cursin begun when they crossed over onto our property n got into the blackberry tangle.

I stood in the entry door, watchin em come with my heart beatin way up in my throat. I remember thinkin that at least Selena wa'ant home - she'd gone over to see Laurie Langill - and that was a blessin. Then I started thinkin that all those brambles would cause em to just say frig it n break off the search before they got anywhere near the old well. But they kept on comm. All at once I heard Sonny Benoit scream: 'Hey, Garrett! Over here! Git over here!' and I knew that, for better or worse, Joe had been found.

There was an autopsy, accourse. They did it the very day they found him, and I guess it might have still been goin on when Jack n Alicia Forbert brought the boys back around dusk. Pete was cryin, but he looked all confused - I don't think he really understood what'd happened to his Dad. Joe Junior did, though, and when he drew me aside, I thought he was gonna ask me the same question Selena had ast, n I steeled myself to tell the same lie. But he ast me somethin entirely different.

'Ma,' he says, 'if I was glad he was dead, would God send me to hell?'

'Joey, a person can't much help his feelins, and I think God knows that,' I said.

Then he started to cry, and he said somethin that broke my heart. 'I tried to love him' is what he told me. 'I always tried, but he wouldn't let me.'

I swep him into my arms n hugged him as hard as I could. I think that was about as close as I come to cryin in the whole business. . . but accourse you have to remember that I hadn't been sleepin too well n still hadn't the slightest idear of how things was going to play out.

There was to be an inquest on Tuesday, and Lucien Mercier, who ran the only mortuary on Little Tall back then, told me I'd finally be allowed to bury Joe in The Oaks on Wednesday. But on Monday, the day before the inquest, Garrett called me on the telephone n ast if I could come down to his office for a few minutes. It was the call I'd been expectin and dreadin, but there wasn't nothing to do but go, so I ast Selena if she'd give the boys their lunch, and off I went. Garrett wasn't alone. Dr John McAuliffe was with him. I'd more or less expected that, too, but my heart still sank a little in my breast.

McAuliffe was the county medical examiner back then. He died three years later when a snowplow hit his little Volkswagen Beetle. It was Henry Briarton took over the job when McAuliffe died. If Briar-ton had been the county man in '63, I'd've felt a good deal easier in my mind about our little talk that day. Briarton's smarter than poor old Garrett Thibodeau was, but only by a little. John McAuliffe, though. . . he had a mind like the lamp that shines outta Battiscan Light.

He was a genuine bottled-in-bond Scotsman who turned up in these parts right after World War II ended, hoot-mon burr n all. I guess he musta been an American citizen, since he was both doctorin and holdin a county position, but he sure didn't sound much like folks from around here. Not that it mattered to me; I knew I'd have to face him down, no matter if he was an American or a Scotsman or a heathen Chinee.

He had snowy white hair even though he couldn't have been more'n forty-five, and blue eyes so bright n sharp they looked like drillbits. When he looked at you, you felt like he was starin right into your

head and puttin the thoughts he saw there into alphabetical order. As soon as I seen him sittin beside Garrett's desk n heard the door to the rest of the Town Office Building click closed behind me, I knew that what happened the next day over on the mainland didn't matter a tinker's damn. The real inquest was gonna happen right there in that tiny town constable's office, with a Weber Oil calendar hangin on one wall and a pitcher of Garrett's mother hangin on another.

'I'm sorry to bother you in your time of grief, Dolores,' Garrett said. He was rubbin his hands together, kinda nervous, and he reminded me of Mr Pease over at the bank. Garrett musta had a few more calluses on his hands, though, because the sound they made goin back n forth was like fine sandpaper rubbin along a dry board. 'But Dr McAuliffe here has a few questions he'd like to ask you.'

I seen by the puzzled way Garrett looked at the doc that he didn't know what those questions might be, though, and that scared me even more. I didn't like the idear of that canny Scotsman thinkin matters were serious enough for him to keep his own counsels n not give poor old Garrett Thibodeau any chance at all to frig up the works.