Dolores Claiborne (2 page)

Yet in the summer of 1963, the last summer before America—and the whole world—would be changed forever by an assassin’s bullet, Sharbot and Little Tall were linked by a remarkable celestial phenomenon: the last total eclipse visible in northern New England until the year 2016.

Both Sharbot, in far western Maine, and Little Tall Island, the state’s easternmost spot, lay in the path of totality. And although over half the towns along the path of the eclipse were denied a view of the phenomenon by low-hanging clouds on that still, humid day, both Sharbot and Little Tall enjoyed perfect viewing conditions. For residents of Sharbot, the eclipse began at 4:29 P.M., EDT; for residents of Little Tall, it began at 4:34. The period of totality which raced across the state lasted almost exactly three minutes. In Sharbot, total darkness lasted from 5:39 until 5:41; on Little Tall, darkness was total from 5:42 until almost 5:43, a period of fifty-nine seconds, in fact.

As this strange darkness rolled its wave across the state, stars came out and filled the daytime sky; birds went to roost; bats circled aimlessly above chimneys; cows lay down in the fields where they had been cropping and went to sleep. The sun became a blazing fairy-ring in the sky, and as the world within that swatch of unnatural blackness lay suspended and hushed and the crickets began to sing, two people who would never meet sensed each other, turned toward each other as flowers turn to follow the heat of the sun.

One was a girl named Jessie Mahout—she was in Sharbot, at the western end of the state. The other was a mother of three named Dolores St. George—she was on Little Tall Island, at the eastern end of the state.

Both heard owls hoot in the daytime. Both lay in deep valleys of terror, nightmare geographies of which both believed they would never speak. Both felt the darkness was entirely fitting, and thanked God for it.

Jessie Mahout would marry a man named Gerald Burlingame, and her story is told in
Gerald’s Game.
Dolores St. George would take back her birth name, Dolores Claiborne, and she tells her story in the pages that follow. Both are tales of women in the path of the eclipse, and of how they emerge from the darkness.

W
hat
did you ask, Andy Bissette? Do I “understand these rights as you’ve explained em to me”?

Gorry! What makes some men so
numb?

No,
you
never mind—still your jawin and listen to me for awhile. I got an idear you’re gonna be listenin to me most of the night, so you might as well get used to it. Coss I understand what you read to me! Do I look like I lost all m’brains since I seen you down to the market? That was just Monday afternoon, in case you lost track. I told you your wife would give you merry hell about buying that day-old bread—penny wise and pound foolish, the old saying is—and I bet I was right, wasn’t I?

I understand my rights just fine, Andy; my mother never raised no fools. I understand my responsibilities too, God help me.

Anything I say might be used against me in a court of law, you say? Well will wonders never cease! And you can just get that smirk off your face, Frank Proulx. You may be a hot-shot town cop these days, but it hasn’t been too long since I seen you runnin around in a saggy diaper with that same foolish grin on your face. I’ll give you a little piece of advice—when you get around an old biddy like me, you just want to save that grin. I c’n read you easier’n an underwear ad in the Sears catalogue.

All right, we’ve had our fun; might as well get down to it. I’m gonna tell you three a hell of a lot startin right about now, and a hell of a lot of it prob’ly
could
be used against me in a court of law, if anyone wanted to at this late date. The joke of it is, folks on the island know most of it already, and I’m just about half-past give-a-shit, as old Neely Robichaud used to say when he was in his cups. Which was most of the time, as anyone who knew him will tell you.

I
do
give a shit about one thing, though, and that’s why I come down here on my own hook. I didn’t kill that bitch Vera Donovan, and no matter what you think now, I intend to make you believe that. I didn’t push her down that frigging staircase. It’s fine if you want to lock me up for the other, but I don’t have none of that bitch’s blood on my hands. And I think you
will
believe that by the time I’m finished, Andy. You was always a good enough boy, as boys go—fair-minded, is what I mean—and you’ve turned into a decent man. Don’t let it go to your head, though; you grew up same as any other man, with some woman to warsh your clothes and wipe your nose and turn you around when you got y’self pointed in the wrong direction.

One other thing before we get started—I know you, Andy, and Frank, accourse, but who’s this woman with the tape-recorder?

Oh Christ, Andy, I
know
she’s a stenographer! Didn’t I just tell you my Mamma didn’t raise any fools? I may be sixty-six come this November, but I still got all my marbles. I know a woman with a tape-recorder and a shorthand pad’s a stenographer. I watch
all
those courtroom shows, even that L. A. Law where nobody can seem to keep their clothes on for fifteen minutes at a time.

What’s your name, honey?

Uh-huh ... and whereabouts do you hail from?

Oh, quit it, Andy! What else you got to do tonight? Was you plannin to go over to the shingle and see if you could catch a few fellas diggin quahogs without a licence? That’d prob’ly be more excitement than your heart could take, wouldn’t it? Ha!

There. That’s better. You’re Nancy Bannister from Kennebunk, and I’m Dolores Claiborne from right here on Little Tall Island. Now I already said I’m going to do a country-fair job of talking before we’re done in here, and you’re going to find I wasn’t lyin a bit. So if you need me to speak up or to slow down, just say so. You needn’t be shy with me. I want you to get every goddam word, startin with this: twenty-nine years ago, when Police Chief Bissette here was in the first grade and still eatin the paste off the back of his pitchers, I killed my husband, Joe St. George.

I feel a draft in here, Andy. Might go away if you shutcha goddam trap. I don’t know what you’re lookin so surprised about, anyway. You know I killed Joe. Everybody on Little Tall knows it, and probably half the people across the reach in Jonesport know it, too. It’s just that nobody could prove it. And I wouldn’t be here now, admittin it in front of Frank Proulx and Nancy Bannister from Kennebunk if it hadn’t been for that stupid bitch Vera, gettin up to more of her nasty old tricks.

Well, she’ll never get up to any more of em, will she? There’s that for consolation, at least.

Shift that recorder a little closer to me, Nancy, dear—if this is going to get done, it’ll get done right, I’ll be bound. Don’t those Japanese just make the most
cunning
little things? Yes indeed... but I guess we both know that what’s going on the tape inside that little cutie-pie could put me in the Women’s Correctional for the rest of my life. Still, I don’t have no choice. I swear before heaven I always knew that Vera Donovan’d just about be the death of me—I knew it from the first time I saw her. And look what she’s done—just look what that goddamned old bitch has done to me. This time she’s really stuck her gum in my gears. But that’s rich people for you; if they can’t kick you to death, they’re apt to kiss you to death with kindness.

What?

Oh,
gorry!
I’m
gettin
to it, Andy, if you’ll just give me a little peace! I’m just tryin to decide if I should tell it back to front or front to back. I don’t s’pose I could have a little drink, could I?

Oh,
frig
ya coffee! Take the whole pot and shove it up your kazoo. Just gimme a glass of water if you’re too cheap to part with a swallow of the Beam you keep in your desk drawer. I ain’t—

What do you mean, how do I know that? Why, Andy Bissette, someone who didn’t know better’d think you just toddled out of a Saltines box yesterday. Do you think me killin my husband is the only thing the folks on this island have got to talk about? Hell, that’s old news. You, now—you still got some juice left in you.

Thank you, Frank. You was always a pretty good boy, too, although you was kinda hard to look at in church until your mother got you cured of the booger-hookin habit. Gorry, there were times when you had that finger so far up y’nose it was a wonder you didn’t poke your brains out. And what the hell are you blushin for? Was never a kid alive who didn’t mine a little green gold outta their old pump every now and again. At least you knew enough to keep your hands outta your pants and off your nuts, at least in church, and there’s a lot of boys who
never—

Yes, Andy,
yes—I am
gonna tell it. Jeezly-crow, you ain’t
never
shook the ants out of your pants, have you?

Tell you what: I’m gonna compromise. Instead of telling her front to back or back to front, I’m gonna start in the middle and just kinda work both ways. And if you don’t like it, Andy Bissette, you can write it up on your T.S. list and mail it to the chaplain.

Me and Joe had three kids, and when he died in the summer of ’63, Selena was fifteen, Joe Junior was thirteen, and Little Pete was just nine. Well, Joe didn’t leave me a pot to piss in and hardly a window to throw it out of—

I guess you’ll have to fix this up some, Nancy, won’t you? I’m just an old woman with a foul temper and a fouler mouth, but that’s what happens, more often than not, when you’ve had a foul life.

Now, where was I? I ain’t lost my place already, have I?

Oh—yes. Thank you, honeybunch.

What Joe left me with was that shacky little place out by the East Head and six acres of land, most of it blackberry tangles and the kind of trashwood that grows back after a clear-cut operation. What else? Lemme see. Three trucks that didn’t run—two pickups and a pulp-hauler—four cord of wood, a bill at the grocery, a bill at the hardware, a bill with the oil company, a bill with the funeral home ... and do you want the icing on the goddam cake? He wa’ant a week in the ground before that rumpot Harry Doucette come over with a friggin IOU that said Joe owed him twenty dollars on a baseball bet!

He left me all that, but do you think he left me any goddam insurance money? Nossir! Although that might have been a blessin in disguise, the way things turned out. I guess I’ll get to that part before I’m done, but all I’m trying to say now is that Joe St. George really wa’ant a man at all; he was a goddam millstone I wore around my neck. Worse, really, because a millstone don’t get drunk and then come home smellin of beer and wantin to throw a fuck into you at one in the morning. Wasn’t none of that the reason why I killed the sonofawhore, but I guess it’s as good a place as any to start.

An island’s not a good place to kill
anybody,
I can tell you that. Seems like there’s always someone around, itching to get his nose into your business just when you can least afford it. That’s why I did it when I did, and I’ll get to that, too. For now suffice it to say that I did it just about three years after Vera Donovan’s husband died in a motor accident outside of Baltimore, which was where they lived when they wasn’t summerin on Little Tall. Back in those days, most of Vera’s screws were still nice and tight.

With Joe out of the pitcher and no money coming in, I was in a fix, I can tell you—I got an idear there’s no one in the whole world feels as desperate as a woman on her own with kids dependin on her. I’d ’bout decided I’d better cross the reach and see if I couldn’t get a job in Jonesport, checkin out groceries at the Shop n Save or waitressin in a restaurant, when that numb pussy all of a sudden decided she was gonna live on the island all year round. Most everyone thought she’d blown a fuse, but I wasn’t all that surprised—by then she was spendin a lot of time up here, anyway.

The fella who worked for her in those days—I don’t remember his name, but you know who I mean, Andy, that dumb hunky that always wore his pants tight enough to show the world he had balls as big as Mason jars—called me up and said The Missus (that’s what he always called her, The Missus; my, wasn’t he dumb) wanted to know if I’d come to work for her full-time as her housekeeper. Well, I’d done it summers for the family since 1950, and I s’pose it was natural enough for her to call me before she called anyone else, but at the time it seemed like the answer to all my prayers.

I said yes right on the spot, and I worked for her right up until yest’y forenoon, when she went down the front stairs on her stupid empty head.

What was it her husband did, Andy? Made airplanes, didn’t he?

Oh. Ayuh, I guess I did hear that, but you know how people on the island talk. All I know for sure is that they was well-fixed,
mighty
well-fixed, and she got it all when he died. Except for what the government took, accourse, and I doubt if it got anywhere near as much as it was probably owed. Michael Donovan was sharp as a tack. Sly, too. And although nobody would believe it from the way she was over the last ten years, Vera was as sly as he was ... and she had her sly days right up until she died. I wonder if she knew what kind of a jam she’d be leavin me in if she did anything besides die in bed of a nice quiet heart-attack? I been down by East Head most of the day, sittin on those rickety stairs and thinkin about that ... that and a few hundred other things. First I’d think no, a bowl of oatmeal has more brains than Vera Donovan had at the end, and then I’d remember how she was about the vacuum cleaner and I’d think maybe ... yes, maybe ...