Dolores Claiborne - Stephen King [74]
I was coughin, though-coughin so damned hard it seemed a wonder to me that I wasn't sprayin blood as well as spit. My throat felt like it was on fire.
He pulled me back onto my feet so hard one of my slip straps broke, then caught the nape of my neck in the crook of his arm and yanked me toward him until we was close enough to kiss-not that he was in a kissin mood anymore.
I told you what'd happen if you didn't leave off bein so fresh with me, he says. His eyes were all wet n funny, like he'd been cryin, but what scared me about em was the way they seemed to be lookin right through me, as if I wasn't really there for him anymore. I told you a million times. Do you believe me now, Dolores?
Yes, I said. He'd hurt my throat s'bad I sounded like I was talkin through a throatful of mud. Yes, I do.
Say it again! he says. He still had my neck caught in the crook of his elbow and now he squeezed so hard it pinched one of the nerves in there. I screamed. I couldn't help it; it hurt dreadful. That made him grin. Say it like you mean it! he told me.
I do! I screamed. I do mean it! I'd planned on actin frightened, but Joe saved me the trouble; I didn't have to do no actin that day, after all.
Good, he says, I'm glad to hear it. Now tell me where the money is, and every red cent better be there.
It's out back of the woodshed, I says. I didn't sound like I was talkin through a mouthful of mud anymore; by then I sounded like Groucho Marx on You Bet Your Life. Which sort of fit the situation, if you see what I mean. Then I told him I put the money in a jar and hid the jar in the blackberry bushes.
Just like a woman! he sneers, and then give me a shove toward the porch steps. Well, come on. Let's go get it.
I walked down the porch steps and along the side of the house with Joe right behind me. By then it was almost as dark as it gets at night, and when we reached the shed, I saw somethin so strange it made me forget everythin else for a few seconds. I stopped n pointed up into the sky over the blackberry tangle. Look, Joe! I says. Stars!
And there were-I could see the Big Dipper as clear as I ever saw it on a winter's night. It gave me goosebumps all over my body, but it wasn't nothing to Joe. He gave me a shove so hard I almost fell over. Stars? he says. You'll see plenty of em if you don't quit stallin, woman-I guarantee you that.
I started walkin again. Our shadows had completely disappeared, and the big white rock where me n Selena had sat that evenin the year before stood out almost as bright as a spotlight, like I've noticed it does when there's a full moon. The light wasn't like moonlight, Andy-I can't describe what it was like, how gloomy n weird it was-but it'll have to do. I know that the distances between things had gotten hard to judge, like they do in moonlight, and that you couldn't pick out any single blackberry bush anymore-they were all just one big smear with those fireflies dancing back n forth in front of em.
Vera'd told me time n time again that it was dangerous to look straight at the eclipse; she said it could burn your retinas or even blind you. Still, I couldn't no more resist turnin my head n takin one quick glance up over my shoulder than Lot's wife could resist takin one last glance back at the city of Sodom. What I saw has stayed in my memory ever since. Weeks, sometimes whole months go by without me thinkin about Joe, but hardly a day goes by when I don't think of what I saw that afternoon when I looked up over my shoulder and into the sky. Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt because she couldn't keep her eyes front n her mind on her business, and I've sometimes thought it's a wonder I didn't have to pay the same price.
The eclipse wasn't total yet, but it was close. The sky itself was a deep royal purple, and what I saw hangin in it above the reach looked like a big black pupil with a gauzy veil of fire spread out most of the way around it. On one side there was a thin crescent of sun still left, like beads of molten gold in a blast