Dolores Claiborne - Stephen King [65]
There-thank you. Boy, don't that just hit the spot! No; put it away. One's enough to prime the pump; two might not do anythin but clog the pipes.
All right-here we go again.
On the night of the nineteenth I went to bed so worried I was almost sick to my stomach with it, because the radio said there was a good chance it was gonna rain. I'd been so goddam busy plannin what I was gonna do and workin my nerve up to do it that the thought of rain'd never even crossed my mind. I'm gonna toss n turn all night, I thought as I laid down, and then I thought, No you ain't, Dolores, and I'll tell you why-you can't do a damn thing about the weather, and it don't matter, anyway. You know you mean to do for him even if it rains like a bastard all day long. You've gone too far to back out now. And I did know that, so I closed my eyes n went out like a light.
Saturday-the twentieth of July, 1963-come up hot n muggy n cloudy. The radio said there most likely wouldn't be any rain after all, unless it was just a few thundershowers late in the evenin, but the clouds were gonna hang around most of the day, and chances of the coastal communities actually seem the eclipse were no better'n fifty-fifty.
It felt like a big weight had slipped off my shoulders just the same, and when I went off to Vera's to help serve the big brunch buffet she had planned, my mind was calm and my worries behind me. It didn't matter that it was cloudy, you see; it wouldn't even matter if it showered off n on. As long as it didn't pour, the hotel-people would be up on the roof and Vera's people would be out on the reach, all of em hopin there'd be just enough of a break in the cloud-cover to let em get a look at what wasn't gonna happen again in their lifetimes not in Maine, anyhow. Hope's a powerful force in human nature, you know-no one knows that better'n me.
As I remember, Vera ended up havin eighteen house guests that Friday night, but there were even more at the Saturday-mornin buffet-thirty or forty, I'd say. The rest of the people who'd be goin with her on the boat (and they were island folk for the most part, not from away) would start gatherin at the town dock around one o'clock, and the old Princess was due to set off around two. By the time the eclipse actually began-four-thirty or so-the first two or three kegs of beer'd probably be empty.
I expected to find Vera all nerved up and ready to fly out of her own skin, but I sometimes think she made a damn career outta surprisin me. She was wearin a billowy red-n-white thing that looked more like a cape than a dress-a caftan, I think they're called-and she'd pulled her hair back in a simple hosstail that was a long way from the fifty-buck hairdos she usually sported in those days.
She went around and around the long buffet table that was set up on the back lawn near the rose garden, visitin and laughin with all her friends-most of em from Baltimore, judgin by the look n sound-but she was different that day than she had been durin the week leadin up to the eclipse. Remember me tellin you how she went zoomin back n forth like a jet plane? On the day of the eclipse, she was more like a butterfly visitin among a lot of plants, and her laugh wasn't so shrill or loud.
She seen me bringin out a tray of scrambled eggs n hurried over to give me some instructions, but she didn't walk like she had been walkin the last few days-like she really wanted to be runnin-and the smile stayed on her face. I thought, She's happy-that's all it is. She's accepted that her kids aren't comm and has decided she can be happy just the same. And that was all unless you knew her, and knew how rare a thing it was for Vera Donovan to be happy. Tell you somethin, Andy-I knew her another thirty years, almost, but I don't think I ever saw her really happy again. Content, yes, and resigned, but happy? Radiant n happy, like a butterfly wanderin a field of flowers on a hot summer afternoon?