Dolores Claiborne

    “He looked so sad,” she said. “There was blood running between his fingers and tears in his eyes and he just looked so sad. I hated you more for that look than for the blood and tears, Mommy, and I made up my mind to make it up to him. Before I went to bed, I got down on my knees and prayed. “God,” I said, “if you keep her from hurting him any more, I'll make it up to him. I swear I will. For Jesus” sake, amen. "”

    You got any idear how I felt, hearin that from my daughter a year or more after I thought the door was shut on that business? Do you, Andy? Frank? What about you, Nancy Bannister from Kennebunk? No-I see you don't. I pray to God you never will.

    She started bein nice to him-bringin him special treats when he was out in the back shed, workin on somebody's snowmobile or outboard motor, sittin beside him while we were watchin TV at night, sittin with him on the porch step while he whittled, listenin while he talked all his usual line of Joe St George bullshit politics-how Kennedy was lettin the Jews n Catholics run everythin, how it was the Commies tryin to get the niggers into the schools n lunchrooms down south, and pretty soon the country would be ruined. She listened, she smiled at his jokes, she put Cornhuskers on his hands when they chapped, and he wasn't too deaf to hear opportunity knockin. He quit givin her the lowdown on politics in favor of givin her the lowdown on me, how crazy I could be when I was riled, and everythin that was wrong with our marriage. Accordin to him it was mostly me.

    It was in the late spring of 1962 that he started touchin her in a way that was little more'n just fatherly. That was all it was at first, though-little strokes along the leg while they were sittin on the couch together and I was out of the room, little pats on the bottom when she brought him his beer out in the shed. That's where it started, and it went on from there. By the middle of July, poor Selena'd gotten as scared of him as she already was of me. By the time I finally took it into my head to go across to the mainland and get some answers out of her, he'd done just about everything a man can do to a woman short of fucking her-… and frightened her into doing any number of things to him, as well.

    I think he would have picked her cherry before Labor Day if it hadn't been for Joe Junior and Little Pete bein out of school and underfoot a lot of the time. Little Pete was just there and in the way, but I think Joe Junior had more'n half an idear of what was up, and set out to put himself in the way of it. God bless him if he did, is all I can say. I was certainly no help, workin twelve and sometimes fourteen hours a day like I was back then. And all the time I was gone, Joe was around her, touchin her, askin her for kisses, askin her to touch him in his “special places” (that's what he called em), and tellin her that he couldn't help it, he had to ask-she was nice to him, I wasn't, a man had certain needs, and that was all there was to it. But she couldn't tell. If he did, he said, I might kill both of them. He kep remindin her about the creamer and the hatchet. He kep tellin her about what a cold, bad-tempered bitch I was and about how he couldn't help it because a man had certain needs. He drilled those things into her, Andy, until she was half-crazy with em. He-What, Frank?

    Yes, he worked, all right, but his kind of work didn't slow him down much when it came to chasm his daughter. A jack of all trades, I called him, and that's just what he was. He did chores for any number of the summer people and caretook two houses (I hope the people who hired him to do that kep a good inventory of their possessions); there were four or five different fishermen who'd call him to crew when they were busy-Joe could haul traps with the best of em, if he wa'ant too hung over-and accourse he had his small engines for a sideline. In other words, he worked the way a lot of island men work (although not as hard as most)-a drib here n a drab there. A man like that can pretty much set his own hours, and that summer and early fall, Joe set his so's to be around the house as much as he could when I was gone. To be around Selena.

    Do you understand what I need you to understand, I wonder? Do you see that he was workin as hard to get into her mind as he was into her pants? I think it was seem me with that goddam hatchet in my hand that had the most power over her, so that was what he used the most. When he saw he couldn't use it anymore to gain her sympathy, he used it to scare her with. He told her over n over again that I'd drive her out of the house if lever found out what they was doin.

    What they was doin! Gorry!