Dolores Claiborne(67)

And I was gonna say somethin when the one person I'd forgot - Garrett Thibodeau - spoke up instead. He spoke in a worried, fast voice, and I realized he couldn't stand no more of that silence, either - he musta thought it was gonna go on until somebody had to scream just to relieve the tension.

'Now John,' he says, 'I thought we agreed that, if Joe pulled on that stone just right, it could have come out on its own and -,

'Mon, will ye not shut op!' McAuliffe yelled at him in a high, frustrated sort of voice, and I relaxed. It was all over. I knew it, and I believe that little Scotsman knew it, too. It was like the two us had been in a black room together, and him ticklin my face with what might have been a razor-blade. . . n then clumsy old Constable Thibodeau stubbed his toe, fell against the window, and the shade went up with a bang n a rattle, lettin in the daylight, and I seen it was only a feather he'd been touchin me with, after all.

Garrett muttered somethin about how there was no call for McAuliffe to talk to him that way, but the doc didn't pay him no mind. He turned back to me and said 'Well, Mrs St George?' in a hard way, like he had me in a corner, but by then we both knew better. All he could do was hope I'd make a mistake. . . but I had three kids to think about, and havin kids makes you careful.

'I've told you what I know,' I says. 'He got drunk while we were waitin for the eclipse. I made him a sandwich, thinkin it might sober him up a little, but it didn't. He got yellin, then he choked me n batted me around a little, so I went up to Russian Meadow. When I come back, he was gone. I thought he'd gone off with one of his friends, but he was down the well all the time. I s'pose he was tryin to take a short-cut out to the road. He might even have been lookin for me, wantin to apologize. That's somethin I won't never know . . . n maybe it's just as well.' I give him a good hard look. 'You might try a little of that medicine yourself, Dr McAuliffe.'

'Never mind yer advice, madam,' McAuliffe says, and those spots of color in his cheeks was burnin higher n hotter'n ever. 'Are ye glad he's dead? Tell me that!'

'What in holy tarnal hell has that got to do with what happened to him?' I ast. 'Jesus Christ, what's wrong with you?'

He didn't answer - just picked up his pipe in a hand that was shakin the tiniest little bit and went to work lightin it again. He never ast another question; the last question that was ast of me that day was ast by Garrett Thibodeau. McAuliffe didn't ask it because it didn't matter, at least not to him. It meant somethin to Garrett, though, and it meant even more to me, because nothing was going to end when I walked out of the Town Office Building that day; in some ways, me walkin out was gonna be just the beginning. That last question and the way I answered it mattered plenty, because it's usually the things that wouldn't mean squat in a courtroom that get whispered about the most over back fences while women hang out their warsh or out on the lobster-boats while men are sittin with their backs against the pilothouse n eatin their lunches. Those things may not send you to prison, but they can hang you in the eyes of the town.

'Why in God's name did you buy him a bottle of liquor in the first place?' Garrett kinda bleated. 'What got into you, Dolores?'

'I thought he'd leave me alone if he had somethin to drink,' I said. 'I thought we could sit together in peace n watch the eclipse n he'd leave me alone.'

I didn't cry, not really, but I felt one tear go rollin down my cheek. I sometimes think that's the reason I was able to go on livin on Little Tall for the next thirty years - that one single tear. If not for that, they mighta driven me out with their whisperin and carpin and pointin at me from behind their hands -ayuh, in the end they mighta. I'm tough, but I don't know if anyone's tough enough to stand up to thirty years of gossip n little anonymous notes sayin things like 'You got away with murder.' I did get a few of those - and I got a pretty good idear of who sent em, too, although that ain't neither here nor there at this late date - but they stopped by the time school let back in that fall. And so I guess you could say that I owe all the rest of my life, includin this part here, to that single tear . . . and to Garrett puttin the word out that in the end I hadn't been too stony-hearted to cry for Joe. There wasn't nothing calculated about it, either, and don't you go thinkin there was. I was thinkin about how sorry I was that Joe'd suffered the way the little bandbox Scotsman said he had. In spite of everything he'd done and how I'd come to hate him since I'd first found out what he was tryin to do to Selena, I'd never intended for him to suffer. I thought the fall'd kill him, Andy - I swear on the name of God I thought the fall'd kill him outright.

Poor old Garrett Thibodeau went as red's a stopsign. He fumbled a wad of Kleenex out of the box of em on his desk and kinda groped it out at me without lookin - I imagine he thought that first tear meant I was gonna go a gusher - and apologized for puttin me through 'such a stressful interrogation.' I bet those were just about the biggest words he knew.

McAuliffe gave out a humph! sound at that, said somethin about how he'd be at the inquest to hear my statement taken, and then he left - stalked out, actually, n slammed the door behind him hard enough to rattle the glass. Garrett gave him time to clear out n then walked me to the door, holdin my arm but still not lookin at me (it was actually sorta comical) and mutterin all the time. I ain't sure what he was mutterin about, but I s'pose that, whatever it was, it was really Garrett's way of sayin he was sorry. That man had a tender heart and couldn't stand to see someone unhappy, I'll say that for him . . . and I'll say somethin else for Little Tall: where else could a man like that not only be constable for almost twenty years but get a dinner in his honor complete with a standin ovation at the end of it when lie finally retired? I'll tell you what I think - a place where a tender-hearted man can succeed as an officer of the law ain't such a bad place to spend your life. Not at all. Even so, I was never gladder to hear a door close behind me than I was when Garrett's clicked shut that day.