Dolores Claiborne(80)

I remembered somethin she said, too - this was after I'd stood up to her about firin the Jolander girl. When Vera come up to me later, I thought sure she was gonna fire me. Instead she give me a bagful of eclipse-watchin stuff n made what was - to Vera Donovan, at least - an apology. She said that sometimes a woman had to be a high-ridin bitch. 'Some-times,' she told me, 'being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto.'

Ayuh, I thought. When there's nothin else left, there's that. There's always that.

'Miz Claiborne?' a voice said in my ear, and that's when I remembered he was still on the line; I'd gone away from him completely. 'Miz Claiborne, are you still there?'

'Still here,' I sez. He'd ast me what she told me about em, n that was all it took to set me off thinkin about those sad old times. . . but I didn't see how I could tell him all that, not some man from New York who didn't know nothin about how we live up here on Little Tall. How she lived up on Little Tall. Puttin it another way, he knew an almighty lot about Upjohn and Mississippi Valley Light n Power, but not bugger-all about the wires in the corners.

Or the dust bunnies.

He starts off, 'I asked what she told you -'She told me to keep their beds made up n plenty of Quaker Rolled Oats in the pantry,' I says. 'She said she wanted to be ready because they might decide to come back anytime.' And that was close enough to the truth of how it was, Andy - close enough for Greenbush, anyway.

'Why, that's amazing!' he said, and it was like listenin to some fancy doctor say, 'Why, that's a brain tumor!'

We talked some more after that, but I don't have much idear what things we said. I think I told him again that I didn't want it, not so much as one red penny, and I know from the way he talked to me -kind n pleasant n sorta jollyin me along - that when he talked to you, Andy, you must not've passed along any of the news flashes Sammy Marchant prob'ly gave you n anyone else on Little Tall that'd listen. I s'pose you figured it wa'ant none of his business, at least not yet.

I remember tellin him to give it all to the Little Wanderers, and him sayin he couldn't do that. He said I could, once the will had cleared through probate (although the biggest ijit in the world coulda told he didn't think I'd do any such thing once I finally understood what'd happened), but he couldn't do doodly-squat with it.

Finally I promised I'd call him back when I felt 'a little clearer in my mind,' as he put it, n then hung up. I just stood there for a long time - must've been fifteen minutes or more. I felt . . . creepy. I felt like that money was all over me, stuck to me like bugs used to stick to the flypaper my Dad hung in our outhouse every summer back when I was little. I felt afraid it'd just stick to me tighter n tighter once I started movin around, that it'd wrap me up until I didn't have no chance in hell of ever gettin it off again.

By the time I did start movin, I'd forgot all about comin down to the police station to see you, Andy. To tell the truth, I almost forgot to get dressed. In the end I pulled on an old pair of jeans n a sweater, although the dress I'd meant to wear was laid out neat on the bed (and still is, unless somebody's broke in and took out on the dress what they would've liked to've taken out on the person who b'longed inside of it). I added my old galoshes n called it good.

I skirted around the big white rock between the shed n the blackberry tangle, stoppin for a little bit to look into it n listen to the wind rattlin in all those thorny branches. I could just see the white of the concrete wellcap. Lookin at it made me feel shivery, like a person does when they're comm down with a bad cold or the flu. I took the short-cut across Russian Meadow and then walked down to where the Lane ends at East Head. I stood there a little while, lettin the ocean wind push back my hair n warsh me clean, like it always does, and then I went down the stairs.

Oh, don't look so worried, Frank - the rope acrost the top of em n that warnin sign are both still there; it's just that I wa'ant much worried about that set of rickety stairs after all I had to go through.

I walked all the way down, switchin back n forth, until I come to the rocks at the bottom. The old town dock - what the oldtimers used to call Simmons Dock - was there, you know, but there's nothin left of it now but a few posts n two big iron rings pounded into the granite, all rusty n scaly. They look like what I imagine the eye-sockets in a dragon's skull would look like, if there really were such things. I fished off that dock many a time when I was little, Andy, and I guess I thought it'd always be there, but in the end the sea takes everything.

I sat on the bottom step, danglin my galoshes over, and there I stayed for the next seven hours. I watched the tide go out n I watched it come most of the way in again before I was done with the place.

At first I tried to think about the money, but I couldn't get my mind around it. Maybe people who've had that much all their lives can, but I couldn't. Every time I tried, I just saw Sammy Marchant first lookin at the rollin pin. . . n then up at me. That's all the money meant to me then, Andy, and it's all it means to me now - Sammy Marchant lookin up at me with that dark glare n sayin, 'I thought she couldn't walk. You always told me she couldn't walk, Dolores.'

Then I thought about Donald n Helga. 'Fool me once, shame on you,' I says to no one at all as I sat there with my feet danglin so close over the incomers that they sometimes got splattered with curds of foam. 'Fool me twice, shame on me.' Except she never really fooled me. . . her eyes never fooled me.