Stephen King - Dolores Claiborne

We were comin into the dock then, and there was no more time for talk. I was just as glad; I didn’t want her lookin at me with those tearful eyes of hers; wantin what I guess every kid wants, for everything to be made right but with no pain and nobody hurt. Wantin me to make promises I couldn’t make, because they were promises I didn’t know if I could keep. I wasn’t sure that inside eye would let me keep em. We got off the ferry without another word passin between us, and that was just as fine as paint with me.

That evenin, after Joe got home from the Car-stairs place where he was buildin a back porch, I sent all three kids down to the market. I saw Selena castin little glances back at me all the way down the drive, and her face was just as pale as a glass of milk. Every time she turned her head, Andy, I saw that double-damned hatchet in her eyes. But I saw somethin else in them, too, and I believe that other thing was relief. At least things are gonna quit just goin around n around like they have been, she musta been thinkin; scared as she was, I think part of her musta been thinkin that.

Joe was sittin by the stove readin the American, like he done every night. I stood by the woodbox, lookin at him, and that eye inside seemed to open wider’n ever. Lookit him, I thought, sittin there like the Grand High Poobah of Upper Butt-Crack. Sittin there like he didn’t have to put on his pants one leg at a time like the rest of us. Sittin there as if puttin his hands all over his only daughter was the most natural thing in all the world and any man could sleep easy after doin it. I tried to think of how we’d gotten from the Junior-Senior Prom at The Samoset Inn to where we were right now, him sittin by the stove and readin the paper in his old patched bluejeans and dirty thermal undershirt and me standin by the woodbox with murder in my heart, and I couldn’t do it. It was like bein in a magic forest where you look back over your shoulder and see the path has disappeared behind you.

Meantime, that inside eye saw more n more. It saw the crisscross scars on his ear from when I hit him with the creamer; it saw the squiggly little veins in his nose; it saw the way his lower lip pooched out so he almost always looked like he was havin a fit of the sulks; it saw the dandruff in his eyebrows and the way he’d pull at the hairs growin out of his nose or give his pants a good tug at the crotch every now and then.

All the things that eye saw were bad, and it come to me that marryin him had been a lot more than the biggest mistake of my life; it was the only mistake that really mattered, because it wasn’t just me that would end up payin for it. It was Selena he was occupied with then, but there were two boys comin along right behind her, and if he wouldn’t stop at tryin to rape their big sister, what might he do to them?

I turned my head and that eye inside saw the hatchet, layin on the shelf over the woodbox just the same as always. I reached out for it n closed my fingers around the handle, thinkin, I ain’t just going to put it in your hand this time, Joe. Then I thought of Selena turnin back to look at me as the three of em walked down the driveway, and I decided that whatever happened, the goddam hatchet wasn’t going to be any part of it. I bent down and took a chunk of rock maple out of the woodbox instead.

Hatchet or stovelength, it almost didn’t matter —Joe’s life come within a whisker of endin right then and there. The longer I looked at him sittin in his dirty shirt, tuggin at the hairs stickin outta his nose and readin the funnypages, the more I thought of what he’d been up to with Selena; the more I thought about that, the madder I got; the madder I got, the closer I came to just walkin over there and breakin his skull open with that stick of wood. I could even see the place I’d hit the first lick. His hair had started to get real thin, especially in back, and the light from the lamp beside his chair made a kind of gleam there. You could see the freckles on the skin between the few strands of hair that was left. Right there, I thought, that very place. The blood’ll jump up n splatter all over the lampshade, but I don’t care; it’s an ugly old thing, anyway. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to see the blood flyin up onto the shade like I knew it would. And then I thought about how drops would fly onto the light-bulb, too, and make a little sizzlin sound. I thought about those things, and the more I thought, the more my fingers bore down on that chunk of stovewood, gettin their best grip. It was crazy, oh yes, but I couldn’t seem to turn away from him, and I knew that inside eye would go on lookin at him even if I did.

I told myself to think of how Selena would feel if I did it—all her worst fears come true—but that didn’t work, either. As much as I loved her and as much as I wanted her good regard, it didn’t. That eye was too strong for love. Not even wonderin what would happen to the three of em if he was dead and I was in South Windham for killin him would make that inside eye close up. It stayed wide open, and it kep seein more and more ugly things in Joe’s face. The way he scraped white flakes of skin up from his cheeks when he shaved. A blob of mustard from his dinner dryin on his chin. His big old horsey dentures, which he got from mail-order and didn’t fit him right. And every time I saw somethin else with that eye, my grip on that stovelength would tighten down a little more.

At the last minute I thought of somethin else. If you do this right here and right now, you won’t be doin it for Selena, I thought. You wouldn’t be doin it for the boys, either. You’d be doin it because all that grabbin was goin on under your very nose for three months or more and you was too dumb to notice. If you’re going to kill him and go to prison and only see your kids on Sat’dy afternoons, you better understand why you’re doin it: not because he was at Selena, but because he fooled you, and that’s one way you’re just like Vera—you hate bein fooled worse’n anything.

That finally put a damper on me. The inside eye didn’t close, but it dimmed down and lost a little of its power. I tried to open my hand and let that chunk of rock maple fall, but I’d been squeezin it too tight and couldn’t seem to let go. I had to reach over with my other hand and pry the first two fingers off before it dropped back into the woodbox, and the other three fingers stayed curled, like they were still holdin on. I had to flex my hand three or four times before it started to feel normal again.

After it did, I walked over to Joe and tapped him on the shoulder. “I want to talk to you,” I says.

“So talk,” he says from behind the paper. “I ain’t stoppin you.”

“I want you lookin at me when I do,” I says. “Put that rag down.”

He dropped the paper into his lap and looked at me. “Ain’t you got the busiest mouth on you these days,” he says.

“I’ll take care of my mouth,” I says, “you just want to take care of your hands. If you don’t, they’re gonna get you in more trouble than you could handle in a year of Sundays.”

His brows went up and he asked me what that was supposed to mean.

“It means I want you to leave Selena alone,” I says.

He looked like I’d hoicked my knee right up into his family jewels. That was the best of a sorry business, Andy—the look on Joe’s face when he found out he was found out. His skin went pale and his mouth dropped open and his whole body kinda jerked in that shitty old rocker of his, the way a person’s body will jerk sometimes when they are just fallin off to sleep and have a bad thought on their way down.

He tried to pass it off by actin like he’d had a muscle-twinge in his back, but he didn’t fool either one of us. He actually looked a little ashamed of himself, too, but that didn’t win him any favor with me. Even a stupid hound-dog has sense enough to look ashamed if you catch it stealin eggs out of a henhouse.