Dolores Claiborne - Stephen King [59]
So I let time go by, although that's always been the hardest thing for me to do once I've made up my mind about a thing. Still, the days piled up into weeks, like they always do. Every now n then I'd ask Selena about him. Is your Dad bein good? is what I asked, and we both understood what I was really askin. She always said yes, which was a relief, because if Joe started up again, I'd have to get rid of him right away, and damn the risks. Or the consequences.
I had other things to worry about as Christmas passed and 1963 got started. One was the money-every day I'd wake up thinkin that this might be the day he'd start spendin it. Why wouldn't I worry about that? He'd got through the first three hundred right smart, and I had no way of keepin him from pissin away the rest while I was waitin for time to take time, as they like to say in his AA meetins. I can't tell you how many times I hunted for the god-dam savins passbook they had to have given him when he opened his own account with that dough, but I never found it. So all I could do was watch for him to come home with a new chainsaw or an expensive watch on his wrist, and hope he hadn't already lost some of it or even all of it in one of the high-stakes poker games he claimed went on every weekend in Ellsworth n Bangor. I never felt s'helpless in my whole life.
Then there was the questions of when and how I was gonna do it if I ended up havin the nerve to do it at all, that was. The idear of usin the old well as a pit-trap was all right as far as it went; the trouble was, it didn't go anywheres near far enough. If he died neat n clean, like people do on TV, everythin would be fine. But even thirty years ago I'd seen enough of life to know that things hardly ever go the way they do on TV.
Suppose he fell down in there and started screamin, for instance? The island wasn't built up then the way it is now, but we still had three neighbors along that stretch of East Lane-the Carons, the Langills, and the Jolanders. They might not hear screams comm from the blackberry patch behind our house, but then again they might especially if the wind was high and blowin the right way. Nor was that all. Runnin between the village and the Head like it does, East Lane could be pretty busy. There was trucks n cars goin past our place all the time, not as many of them back then, either, but enough to worry a woman who was thinkin about what I was thinkin about.
I'd about decided I couldn't use the well to settle his hash after all, that it was just too risky, when the answer came. It was Vera who gave it to me that time, too, although I don't think she knew it.
She was fascinated by the eclipse, you see. She was on the island most of that season, and as winter started to wear thin, there'd be a new clippin about it pinned to the kitchen bulletin board every week. When spring began with the usual high winds n cold slops, she was here even more, and those clip-pins showed up just about every other day. There were pieces from the local papers, from away papers like the Globe and the New York Times, and from magazines like Scientific American.
She was excited because she was sure the eclipse would finally lure Donald n Helga back to Pinewood-she told me that again n again-but she was exited on her own account, too. By the middle of May, when the weather finally started to warm up, she had pretty well settled in completely-she never even talked about Baltimore. That friggin eclipse was the only thing she talked about. She had four cameras-I ain't talkin about Brownie Starfiashes, either-in the entry closet, three of em already mounted on tripods. She had eight or nine pairs of special sunglasses, specially made open boxes she called eclipse-viewers, periscopes with special tinted mirrors inside em, and I dunno what else.
Then, near the end of May, I came in and saw the article pinned to the bulletin board was from our own little paperThe Weekly Tide. HARBORSIDE TO BE ECLIPSE CENTRAL FOR RESIDENTS, SUMMER VISITORS, the headline said. The