Stephen King - Dolores Claiborne

I glanced at my watch and saw it was goin on ten til five. That meant for the next hour or so everyone on the island would be thinkin about nothin else and watchin nothin else. East Lane was dead empty, our neighbors were either on the Island Princess or the hotel roof, and if I really meant to do him, the time’d come. My guts felt like they were all wound into one big spring and I couldn’t quite get that thing I’d seen—the little girl sittin on her Daddy’s lap—out of my mind, but I couldn’t let either of those things stop me or even distract me, not for a single minute. I knew if I didn’t do it right then, I wouldn’t never.

I put the reflector-box down beside my sewin and said, “Joe.”

“What?” he ast me. He’d pooh-poohed the eclipse before, but now that it’d actually started, it seemed like he couldn’t take his eyes off it. His head was tipped back and the eclipse-viewer he was lookin through cast one of those funny, faded shadows on his face.

“It’s time for the surprise,” I said.

“What surprise?” he ast, and when he lowered the eclipse-viewer, which was just this double layer of special polarized glass in a frame, to look at me, I saw it wasn’t fascination with the eclipse after all, or not completely. He was halfway to bein shit-faced, and so groggy I got a little scared. If he didn’t understand what I was sayin, my plan was buggered before it even got started. And what was I gonna do then? I didn’t know. The only thing I did know scared the hell outta me: I wasn’t gonna turn back. No matter how wrong things went or what happened later, I wasn’t gonna turn back.

Then he reached out a hand, grabbed me by the shoulder, and shook me. “What in God’s name’re you talkin about, woman?” he says.

“You know the money in the kids’ bank accounts?” I asks him.

His eyes narrowed a little, and I saw he wasn’t anywhere near as drunk as I’d first thought. I understood something else, too—that one kiss didn’t change a thing. Anyone can give a kiss, after all; a kiss was how Judas Iscariot showed the Romans which one was Jesus.

“What about it?” he says.

“You took it.”

“Like hell!”

“Oh yes,” I says. “After I found out you’d been foolin with Selena, I went to the bank. I meant to withdraw the money, then take the kids and get them away from you.”

His mouth dropped open and for a few seconds he just gaped at me. Then he started to laugh—just leaned back in his rocker and let fly while the day went on gettin darker all around him. “Well, you got fooled, didn’t you?” he says. Then he helped himself to a little more Scotch and looked up at the sky through the eclipse-viewer again. This time I couldn’t hardly see the shadow on his face. “Half gone, Dolores!” he says. “Half gone now, maybe a little more!”

I looked down into my reflector-box and seen he was right; only half of that fifty-cent piece was left, and more was goin all the time. “Ayuh,” I says. “Half gone, so it is. As to the money, Joe—”

“You just forget that,” he told me. “Don’t trouble your pointy little head about it. That money’s just about fine.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about it,” I says. “Not a bit. The way you fooled me, though—that weighs on my mind.”

He nodded, kinda solemn n thoughtful, as if to show me he understood n even sympathized, but he couldn’t hold onto the expression. Pretty soon he busted out laughin again, like a little kid who’s gettin scolded by a teacher he ain’t in the least afraid of. He laughed so hard he sprayed a little silver cloud of spit into the air in front of his mouth.

“I’m sorry, Dolores,” he says when he was able to talk again, “I don’t mean to laugh, but I did steal a march on you, didn’t I?”

“Oh, ayuh,” I agreed. It wasn’t nothing but the truth, after all.

“Fooled you right and proper,” he says, laughin and shakin his head the way you do when someone tells a real knee-slapper.

“Ayuh,” I agreed along with him, “but you know what they say.”

“Nope,” he says. He dropped the eclipse-viewer into his lap n turned to look at me. He’d laughed s’hard there were tears standin in his piggy little bloodshot eyes. “You’re the one with a sayin for every occasion, Dolores. What do they say about husbands who finally put one over on their meddling busybody wives?”

“‘Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,’ ” I says. “You fooled me about Selena, and then you fooled me about the money, but I guess I finally caught up to you. ”

“Well maybe you did and maybe you didn’t,” he says, “but if you’re worried about it bein spent, you can just stop, because—”

I broke in there. “I ain’t worried,” I says. “I told you that already. I ain’t a bit worried.”

He give me a hard look then, Andy, his smile dryin up little by little. “You got that smart look on your face again,” he says, “the one I don’t much care for. ”

“Tough titty,” I says.

He looked at me for a long time, tryin to figure out what was goin on inside my head, but I guess it was as much a mystery to him then as ever. He pooched his lip out again n sighed so hard he blew back the lock of hair that’d fallen on his forehead.

“Most women don’t understand the first thing about money, Dolores,” he says, “n you’re no exception to the rule. I put it all together in one account, that’s all… so it’d draw more interest. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to listen to a lot of your ignorant bullshit. Well, I’ve had to listen to some anyway, like I just about always do, but enough’s enough.” Then he raised up the eclipse-viewer again to show me the subject was closed.

“One account in your own name,” I says.

“So what?” he ast. By then it was like we was sittin in a deep twilight, and the trees had begun fadin against the horizon. I could hear a whippoorwill singin from behind the house, and a nightjar from somewhere else. It felt like the temperature had begun to drop, too. It all gave me the strangest feelin… like livin in a dream that’s somehow turned real. “Why shouldn’t it be in my name? I’m their father, ain’t I?”

“Well, your blood is in em. If that makes you a father, I guess you are one.”

I could see him tryin to figure out if that one was worth pickin up and yankin on awhile, and decidin it wa’ant. “You don’t want to talk about this anymore, Dolores,” he says. “I’m warnin you.”

“Well, maybe just a little more,” I says back, smiling. “You forgot all about the surprise, you see.”

He looked at me, suspicious again. “What the fuck’re you babblin on about, Dolores?”

“Well, I went to see the man in charge of the savins department at Coastal Northern in Jonesport,” I says. “A nice man named Mr. Pease. I explained what happened, and he was awful upset. Especially when I showed him the original savins books weren’t missin, like you told him they were.”

That was when Joe lost what little int’rest in the eclipse he’d had. He just sat there in that shitty old rocker of his, starin at me with his eyes wide open. There was thunder on his brow n his lips were pressed down into a thin white line like a scar. He’d dropped the eclipse-viewer back into his lap and his hands were openin and closin, real slow.

“It turned out you weren’t supposed to do that,” I told him. “Mr. Pease checked to see if the money was still in the bank. When he found out it was, we both heaved a big sigh of relief. He ast me if I wanted him to call the cops n tell em what happened. I could see from his face he was hopin like hell I’d say no. I ast if he could issue that money over to me. He looked it up in a book n said he could. So I said, ‘That’s what we’ll do, then.’ And he did it. So that’s why I ain’t worried about the kids’ money anymore, Joe— I’ve got it now instead of you. Ain’t that a corker of a surprise?”