Dolores Claiborne

by Stephen King

  Anyway, he sure managed to forget the right thing that night; it was little but it was heavy, and it felt just right in my hand. I went over to the woodbox and got the short-handled hatchet we kep on the shelf just above it. Then I walked back into the livin room where he was dozin. I had the pitcher cupped in my right hand, and I just brought it down and around and smacked it against the side of his face. It broke into about a thousand pieces.

  He sat up pretty pert when I done that, Andy. And you shoulda heard him. Loud? Father God and Sonny Jesus! Sounded like a bull with his pizzle caught in the garden gate. His eyes come wide open and he clapped his hand to his ear, which was already bleedin. There was little dots of clotted cream on his cheek and in that scraggle down the side of his face he called a sideburn.

  "Guess what, Joe?" I says. "I ain't feelin tired anymore."

  I heard Selena jump outta bed, but I didn't dare look around. I could have been in hot water if I'd done that--when he wanted to, he could be sneaky-fast. I'd been holdin the hatchet in my left hand, down to my side with my apron almost coverin it. And when Joe started to get up outta his chair, I brought it out and showed it to him. "If you don't want this in your head, Joe, you better sit down again," I said.

  For a second I thought he was gonna get up anyway. If he had, that would have been the end of him right then, because I wasn't kiddin. He seen it, too, and froze with his butt about five inches off the seat.

  "Mommy?" Selena called from the doorway of her room.

  "You go on back to bed, honey," I says, not takin my eyes off Joe for a single second. "Your father n I're havin a little discussion here."

  "Is everything all right?"

  "Ayuh," I says. "Isn't it, Joe?"

  "Uh-huh," he says. "Right as rain."

  I heard her take a few steps back, but I didn't hear the door of her room close for a little while --ten, maybe fifteen seconds--and I knew she was standin there and lookin at us. Joe stayed just like he was, with one hand on the arm of his chair and his butt hiked up offa the seat. Then we heard her door close, and that seemed to make Joe realize how foolish he must look, half in his seat and half out of it, with his other hand clapped over his ear and little clots of cream dribblin down the side of his face.

  He sat all the way down and took his hand away. Both it and his ear were full of blood, but his hand wasn't swellin up and his ear was. "Oh bitch, ain't you gonna get a payback," he says.

  "Am I?" I told him. "Well then, you better remember this, Joe St. George: what you pay out to me, you are gonna get back double."

  He was grinnin at me like he couldn't believe what he was hearin. "Why, I guess I'll just have to kill you, then, won't I?"

  I handed over the hatchet to him almost before the words were out of his mouth. It hadn't been in my mind to do it, but as soon as I seen him holdin it, I knew it was the only thing I coulda done.

  "Go on," I says. "Just make the first one count so's I don't have to suffer."

  He looked from me to the hatchet and then back to me again. The look of surprise on his face would have been comical if the business hadn't been so serious.

  "Then, once it's done, you better heat up that boiled dinner and help yourself to some more of it," I told him. "Eat til you bust, because you'll be goin to jail and I ain't heard they serve anything good and home-cooked in jail. You'll be over in Belfast to start with, I guess. I bet they got one of those orange suits just your size."

  "Shut up, you cunt," he says.

  I wouldn't, though. "After that you'll most likely be in Shawshank, and I know they don't bring your meals hot to the table there. They don't let you out Friday nights to play poker with your beerjoint buddies, either. All I ask is that you do it quick and don't let the kids see the mess once it's over."

  Then I closed my eyes. I was pretty sure he wouldn't do it, but bein pretty sure don't squeeze much water when it's your life on the line. That's one thing I found out that night. I stood there with my eyes shut, seein nothin but dark and wonderin what it'd feel like, havin that hatchet come carvin through my nose n lips n teeth. I remember thinkin I'd most likely taste the wood-splinters on the blade before I died, and I remember bein glad I'd had it on the grindstone only two or three days before. If he was gonna kill me, I didn't want it to be with a dull hatchet.

  Seemed like I stood there like that for about ten years. Then he said, kinda gruff and pissed off, "Are you gonna get ready for bed or just stand there like Helen Keller havin a wet-dream?"

  I opened my eyes and saw he'd put the hatchet under his chair--I could just see the end of the handle stickin out from under the flounce. His newspaper was layin on top of his feet in a kind of tent. He bent over, picked it up, and shook it out--tryin to behave like it hadn't happened, none of it--but there was blood pourin down his cheek from his ear and his hands were tremblin just enough to make the pages of the paper rattle a tiny bit. He'd left his fingerprints in red on the front n back pages, too, and I made up my mind to burn the damned thing before he went to bed so the kids wouldn't see it and wonder what happened.

  "I'll be gettin into my nightgown soon enough, but we're gonna have an understandin on this first, Joe."

  He looks up and says, all tight-lipped, "You don't want to get too fresh, Dolores. That'd be a bad, bad mistake. You don't want to tease me."

  "I ain't teasin," I says. "Your days of hittin me are over, that's all I want to say. If you ever do it again, one of us is goin to the hospital. Or to the morgue."

  He looked at me for a long, long time, Andy, and I looked back at him. The hatchet was out of his hand and under the chair, but that didn't matter; I knew that if I dropped my eyes before he did, the punches in the neck and the hits in the back wouldn't never end. But at long last he looked down at his newspaper again and kinda muttered, "Make yourself useful, woman. Bring me a towel for my head, if you can't do nothin else. I'm bleedin all over my goddam shirt."

  That was the last time he ever hit me. He was a coward at heart, you see, although I never said the word out loud to him--not then and not ever. Doin that's about the most dangerous thing a person can do, I think, because a coward is more afraid of bein discovered than he is of anything else, even dyin.

  Of course I knew he had a yellow streak in him; I never would have dared hit him upside the head with that cream-pitcher in the first place I hadn't felt I had a pretty good chance of comin out on top. Besides, I realized somethin as I sat in that chair after he hit me, waitin for my kidneys to stop achin: if I didn't stand up to him then, I probably wouldn't ever stand up to him. So I did.

  You know, taking the cream-pitcher to Joe was really the easy part. Before I could do it, I had to once n for all rise above the memory of my Dad pushin my Mum down, and of him stroppin the backs of her legs with that length of wet sailcloth. Gettin over those memories was hard, because I dearly loved them both, but in the end I was able to do it ... prob'ly because I had to do it. And I'm thankful I did, if only because Selena ain't never going to have to remember her mother sittin in the corner and bawlin with a dishtowel over her face. My Mum took it when her husband dished it up, but I ain't goin to sit in judgment of either of em. Maybe she had to take it, and maybe he had to dish it up, or be belittled by the men he had to live n work with every day. Times were different back then--most people don't realize how different--but that didn't mean I had to take it from Joe just because I'd been enough of a goose to marry him in the first place. There ain't no home correction in a man beating a woman with his fists or a stovelength outta the woodbox, and in the end I decided I wasn't going to take it from the likes of Joe St. George, or from the likes of any man.

  There were times when he raised his hand to me, but then he'd think better of it. Sometimes when the hand was up, wantin to hit but not quite darin to hit, I'd see in his eyes that he was rememberin the cream-pitcher... maybe the hatchet, too. And then he'd make like he only raised that hand because his head needed scratchin, or his forehead wipin. That was one lesson he got the first ti
me. Maybe the only one.

  There was somethin else come out of the night he hit me with the stovelength and I hit him with the cream-pitcher. I don't like to bring it up--I'm one of those old-fashioned folks that believes what goes on behind the bedroom door should stay there--but I guess I better, because it's prob'ly part of why things turned out as they did.

  Although we were married and livin under the same roof together for the next two years--and it might have been closer to three, I really can't remember--he only tried to take his privilege with me a few times after that. He--

  What, Andy?

  Accourse I mean he was impotent! What else would I be talkin about, his right to wear my underwear if the urge took him? I never denied him; he just quit bein able to do it. He wasn't what you'd call an every-night sort of man, not even back at the start, and he wasn't one to draw it out, either--it was always pretty much wham, bam, and thank you, ma'am. Still n all, he'd stayed int'rested enough to climb on top once or twice a week... until I hit him with the creamer, that is.

  Part of it was probably the booze--he was drinkin a lot more durin those last years--but I don't think that was all of it. I remember him rollin offa me one night after about twenty minutes of useless puffin and blowin, and his little thing still just hangin there, limp as a noodle. I dunno how long after the night I just told you about this would have been, but I know it was after because I remember layin there with my kidneys throbbin and thinkin I'd get up pretty soon and take some aspirin to quiet them down.

  "There," he says, almost cryin, "I hope you're satisfied, Dolores. Are you?"

  I didn't say nothing. Sometimes anything a woman says to a man is bound to be the wrong thing.

  "Are you?" he says. "Are you satisfied, Dolores?"

  I didn't say nothing still, just laid there and looked up at the ceilin and listened to the wind outside. It was from the east that night, and I could hear the ocean in it. That's a sound I've always loved. It soothes me.

  He turned over and I could smell his beer-breath on my face, rank and sour. "Turnin out the light used to help," he says, "but it don't no more. I can see your ugly face even in the dark." He reached out, grabbed my boob, and kinda shook it. "And this," he says. "All floppy and flat as a pancake. Your cunt's even worse. Christ, you ain't thirty-five yet and fuckin you's like fuckin a mudpuddle."

  I thought of sayin "If it was a mudpuddle you could stick it in soft, Joe, and wouldn't that relieve your mind," but I kep my mouth shut. Patricia Claiborne didn't raise any fools, like I told you.

  There was some more quiet. I'd 'bout decided he'd said enough mean things to finally send him off to sleep and I was thinkin about slippin out to get my aspirin when he spoke up again ... and that time, I'm pretty sure he was cryin.

  "I wish I'd never seen your face," he says, and then he says, "Why didn't you just use that friggin hatchet to whack it off, Dolores? It would have come to the same."

  So you see, I wasn't the only one that thought gettin hit with the cream-pitcher--and bein told things was gonna change around the house--might have had somethin to do with his problem. I still didn't say nothing, though, just waited to see if he was gonna go to sleep or try to use his hands on me again. He was layin there naked, and I knew the very first place I was gonna go for if he did try.

  Pretty soon I heard him snorin. I don't know if that was the very last time he tried to be a man with me, but if it wasn't, it was close.

  None of his friends got so much as a whiff of these goins-ons, accourse--he sure as hell wasn't gonna tell em his wife'd whopped the bejesus out of him with a creamer and his weasel wouldn't stick its head up anymore, was he? Not him! So when the others'd talk big about how they was handlin their wives, he'd talk big right along with em, sayin how he laid one on me for gettin fresh with my mouth, or maybe for buyin a dress over in Jonesport without askin him first if it was all right to take money out of the cookie jar.

  How do I know? Why, because there are times when I can keep my ears open instead of my mouth. I know that's hard to believe, listenin to me tonight, but it's true.

  I remember one time when I was workin part-time for the Marshalls--remember John Marshall, Andy, how he was always talkin about buildin a bridge over to the mainland?--and the doorbell rang. I was all alone in the house, and I was hurryin to answer the door and I slipped on a throw-rug and fell hard against the corner of the mantel. It left a great big bruise on my arm, just above the elbow.

  About three days later, just when that bruise was goin from dark brown to a kind of yellow-green like they do, I ran into Yvette Anderson in the village. She was comin out of the grocery and I was goin in. She looked at the bruise on my arm, and when she spoke to me, her voice was just drippin with sympathy. Only a woman who's just seen something that makes her happier'n a pig in shit can drip that way. "Ain't men awful, Dolores?" she says.

  "Well, sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't," I says back. I didn't have the slightest idear what she was talkin about--what I was mostly concerned with was gettin some of the pork chops that were on special that day before they were all gone.

  She pats me kinda gentle on the arm--the one that wasn't bruised--and says, "You be strong, now. All things work for the best. I've been through it and I know. I'll pray for you, Dolores." She said that last like she'd just told me she was gonna give me a million dollars and then went on her way upstreet. I went into the market, still mystified. I would have thought she'd lost her mind, except anyone who's ever passed the time of day with Yvette knows she ain't got a whole hell of a lot to lose.

  I had my shoppin half done when it hit me. I stood there watchin Skippy Porter weigh my chops, my marketbasket over my arm and my head thrown back, laughin from way down deep inside my belly, the way you do when you know you can't do nothing but let her rip. Skippy looked around at me and says, "You all right, Missus Claiborne?"

  "I'm fine," I says. "I just thought of somethin funny." And off I went again.

  "I guess you did," Skippy says, and then he went back to his scales. God bless the Porters, Andy; as long as they stay, there'll be at least one family on the island knows how to mind its business. Meantime, I just went on laughin. A few other people looked at me like I'd gone nuts, but I didn't care. Sometimes life is so goddam funny you just have to laugh.

  Yvette's married to Tommy Anderson, accourse, and Tommy was one of Joe's beer-and-poker buddies in the late fifties and early sixties. There'd been a bunch of them out at our place a day or two after I bruised my arm, tryin to get Joe's latest bargain, an old Ford pick-em-up, runnin. It was my day off, and I brought em all out a pitcher of iced tea, mostly in hopes of keepin em off the suds at least until the sun went down.

  Tommy must have seen the bruise when I was pourin the tea. Maybe he asked Joe what happened after I left, or maybe he just remarked on it. Either way, Joe St. George wasn't a fella to let opportunity pass him by--not one like that, at least. Thinkin it over on my way home from the market, the only thing I was curious about was what Joe told Tommy and the others I'd done--forgot to put his bedroom slippers under the stove so they'd be warm when he stepped into em, maybe, or cooked the beans too mushy on Sat'dy night. Whatever it was, Tommy went home and told Yvette that Joe St. George had needed to give his wife a little home correction. And all I'd ever done was bang off the corner of the Marshalls' mantelpiece runnin to see who was at the door!

  That's what I mean when I say there's two sides to a marriage--the outside and the inside. People on the island saw me and Joe like they saw most other couples our age: not too happy, not too sad, mostly just goin along like two hosses pullin a wagon ... they may not notice each other like they once did, and they may not get along with each other as well as they once did when they do notice each other, but they're harnessed side by side n goin down the road as well's they can just the same, not bitin each other, or lollygaggin, or doin any of the other things that draw the whip.

  But people aren't hosses, n marriage ain't much like pullin a wagon,
even though I know it sometimes looks that way on the outside. The folks on the island didn't know about the cream-pitcher, or how Joe cried in the dark and said he wished he'd never seen my ugly face. Nor was that the worst of it. The worst didn't start until a year or so after we finished our doins in bed. It's funny, ain't it, how folks can look right at a thing and draw a completely wrong conclusion about why it happened. But it's natural enough, as long as you remember that the inside and outside of a marriage aren't usually much alike. What I'm gonna tell you now was on the inside of ours, and until today I always thought it would stay there.

  Lookin back, I think the trouble must have really started in '62. Selena'djust started high school over on the mainland. She had come on real pretty, and I remember that summer after her freshman year she got along with her Dad better than she had for the last couple of years. I'd been dreadin her teenage years, foreseein a lot of squabbles between the two of em as she grew up and started questionin his idears and what he saw as his rights over her more and more.

  Instead, there was that little time of peace and quiet and good feelins between them, when she'd go out and watch him work on his old clunkers behind the house, or sit beside him on the couch while we were watchin TV at night (Little Pete didn't think much of that arrangement, I can tell you) and ask him questions about his day durin the commercials. He'd answer her in a calm, thoughtful way I wasn't used to ... but I sort of remembered. From high school I remembered it, back when I was first gettin to know him and he was decidin that yes, he wanted to court me.

  At the same time this was happenin, she drew a distance away from me. Oh, she'd still do the chores I set her, and sometimes she'd talk about her day at school... but only if I went to work and pulled it out of her. There was a coldness that hadn't been there before, and it was only later on that I began to see how everything fit together, and how it all went back to the night she'd come out of her bedroom and seen us there, her Dad with his hand clapped to his ear and blood runnin through the fingers, her Mom standin over him with a hatchet.