Dolores Claiborne

    The next hour and a half passed slower'n any time had since I was a little girl, and my Aunt Cloris promised to come n take me to my first movie down in Ellsworth. I finished Little Pete's jeans, sewed patches on two pairs of Joe Junior's chinos (even back then that boy would absolutely not wear jeans-I think part of him'd already decided he was gonna be a politician when he grew up), and hemmed two of Selena's skirts. The last thing I did was sew a new fly in one of Joe's two or three pairs of good slacks. They were old but not entirely worn out. I remember thinkin they would do to bury him in.

    Then, just when I thought it was never gonna happen, I noticed the light on my hands seemed a little dimmer.

    “Dolores?” Joe says. “I think this is what you n all the rest of the fools've been waitin for.”

    “Ayuh,” I says. “I guess. “ The light in the dooryard had gone from that strong afternoon yellow it has in July to a kind of faded rose, and the shadow of the house layin across the driveway had taken on a funny thin kind of look I'd never seen before and never have since.

    I took one of the reflector-boxes from the bag, held it out the way Vera'd showed me about a hundred times in the last week or so, and when I did I had the funniest thought: That little girl is doin this, too, I thought. The one who's sittin on her father's lap. She's doin this very same thing.

    I didn't know what that thought meant then, Andy, and I don't really know now, but I'm tellin you anyway-because I made up my mind I'd tell you everythin, and because I thought of her again later. Except in the next second or two I wasn't just thinkin of her; I was seem her, the way you see people in dreams, or the way I guess the Old Testament prophets must have seen things in their visions: a little girl maybe ten years old, with her own reflector-box in her hands. She was wearin a short dress with red n yellow stripes-a kind of sundress and straps instead of sleeves, you know-and lipstick the color of peppermint candy. Her hair was blonde, and put up in the back, like she wanted to look older'n she really was. I saw somethin else, as well, somethin that made me think of Joe: her Daddy's hand was on her leg, way up high. Higher'n it ought to've been, maybe. Then it was gone.

    “Dolores?” Joe ast me. “You all right?”

    “What do you mean?” I asks back. “Course I am.”

    “You looked funny there for a minute.”

    “It's just the eclipse,” I says, and I really think that's what it was, Andy, but I also think that little girl I saw then n again later was a real little girl, and that she was sittin with her father somewhere else along the path of the eclipse at the same time I was sittin on the back porch with Joe.

    I looked down in the box and seen a little tiny white sun, so bright it was like lookin at a fifty-cent piece on fire, with a dark curve bit into one side of it. I looked at it for a little while, then at Joe. He was holdin up one of the viewers, peerin into it.

    “Goddam,” he says. “She's disappearin, all right. “ The crickets started to sing in the grass right about then; I guess they'd decided sundown was comm early that day, and it was time for em to crank up. I looked out on the reach at all the boats, and saw the water they were floatin on looked a darker blue now-there was somethin about them that was creepy n wonderful at the same time. My brain kept tryin to believe that all those boats sittin there under that funny dark summer sky were just a hallucination.

    I glanced at my watch and saw it was goin on ten til five. That meant for the next hour or so everyone on the island would be thinkin about nothin else and watchin nothin else. East Lane was dead empty, our neighbors were either on the Island Princess or the hotel roof, and if I really meant to do him, the time'd come. My guts felt like they were all wound into one big spring and I couldn't quite get that thing I'd seen-the little girl sittin on her Daddy's lap-out of my mind, but I couldn't let either of those things stop me or even distract me, not for a single minute. I knew if I didn't do it right then, I wouldn't never.

    I put the reflector-box down beside my sewin and said, “Joe.”

    “What?” he ast me. He'd pooh-poohed the eclipse before, but now that it'd actually started, it seemed like he couldn't take his eyes off it. His head was tipped back and the eclipse-viewer he was lookin through cast one of those funny, faded shadows on his face.

    “It's time for the surprise,” I said.