Dolores Claiborne - Stephen King [51]
I can see him now, Andy, only twelve but already purt-near six feet tall, standin on the back porch with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets, lookin down at me as I held his report with the A-plus on it. I remember the little tiny smile on the corners of his mouth. There was no good will in that smile, no good humor, no happiness. It was his father's smile, although I could never have told the boy that.
Of all the Presidents, Dad hates Roosevelt the most, he told me. That's why I picked him to do my report on. Now give it back, please. I'm going to burn it in the woodstove.
No you aint, Sunny Jim, I says, and if you want to see what it feels like to be knocked over the porch rail and into the dooryard by your own Mom, you just try to get it away from me.
He shrugged. He done that like Joe, too, but his smile got wide, and it was sweeter than any his father ever wore in his life when it did that. Okay, he said. Just don't let him see it, okay?
I said I wouldn't, and he run off to shoot baskets with his friend Randy Gigeure. I watched him go, holdin his report and thinkin about what had just passed between us. Mostly what I thought about was how he'd gotten his teacher's only A-plus in twenty years, and how he'd done it by pickin the President his father hated the most to make his report on.
Then there was Little Pete, always swaggern around with his butt switchin and his lower lip pooched out, callin people sheenies and bein kept after school three afternoons outta every five for get-tin in trouble. Once I had to go get him because he'd been fightin, and hit some other little boy on the side of the head so hard he made his ear bleed. What his father said about it that night was I guess he'll know to get out of your way the next time he sees you comm, won't he, Petey? I saw the way the boy's eyes lit up when Joe said that, and I saw how tenderly Joe carried him to bed an hour or so later. That fall it seemed like I could see everything but the one thing I wanted to see most a way to get clear of him.
You know who finally gave me the answer? Vera. That's right-Vera Donovan herself. She was the only one who ever knew what I did, at least up until now. And she was the only one who gave me the idear.
All through the fifties, the Donovans-well, Vera n the kids, anyway-were the summer people of all summer people-they showed up Memorial Day weekend, never left the island all summer long, and went back to Baltimore on Labor Day weekend. I don't know's you could set your watch by em, but I know damn well you could set your calendir by em. I'd take a cleanin crew in there the Wednesday after they left and swamp the place out from stem to stern, strippin beds, coverin furniture, pickin up the kids toys, and stackin the jigsaw puzzles down in the basement. I believe that by 1960, when the mister died, there must have been over three hundred of those puzzles down there, stacked up between pieces of cardboard and growin mildew. I could do a complete cleanin like that because I knew that the chances were good no one would step foot into that house again until Memorial Day weekend next year.
There were a few exceptions, accourse; the year that Little Pete was born they come up n had their Thanksgiving on the island (the place was fully winterized, which we thought was funny, but accourse summer people mostly are funny), and a few years later they come up for Christmas. I remember the Donovan kids took Selena n Joe Junior sleddin with em Christmas afternoon, and how Selena come home from three hours on Sunrise Hill with her cheeks as red as apples and her eyes sparkling like diamonds. She couldn't have been no more'n eight or nine then, but I'm pretty sure she had a crush the size of a pickup truck on Donald Donovan, just the same.
So they took Thanksgiving on the island one year and Christmas on it another, but that was all. They