id you do anything to him?' she asks.

All of a sudden my dream came back to me - Selena at four in her pretty pink dress, raisin up my sewin scissors and cuttin off her own nose. And I thought - prayed - 'God, please help me lie to my daughter. Please, God. I'll never ask You for nothing again if You'll just help me lie to my daughter so she'll believe me n never doubt.'

'No,' I says. I was wearin my gardenin gloves, but I took em off so I could put my bare hands on her shoulders. I looked her dead in the eye. 'No, Selena,' I told her. 'He was drunk n ugly n he choked me hard enough to leave these bruises on my neck, but I didn't do nothing to him. All I did was leave, n I did that because I was scairt to stay. You can understand that, can't you? Understand and not blame me? You know what it's like, to be scairt of him. Don't you?'

She nodded, but her eyes never left mine. They were a darker blue than I've ever seen em - the color of the ocean just ahead of a squall-line. In my mind's eye I saw the blades of the scissors flashin, and her little button of a nose fallin plop into the dust. And I'll tell you what I think - I think God granted half my prayer that day. It's how He usually answers em, I've noticed. No lie I told about Joe later was any better'n the one I told Selena that hot July afternoon amongst the beans n cukes. . . but did she believe me? Believe me n never doubt? As much as I'd like to think the answer to that is yes, I can't. It was doubt that made her eyes so dark, then n ever after.

'The worst I'm guilty of,' I says, 'is buyin him a bottle of booze - of tryin to bribe him to be nice - when I shoulda known better.'

She looked at me a minute longer, then bent down n took hold of the bag of cucumbers I'd picked. 'All right,' she said. 'I'll take these in the house for you.'

And that was all. We never spoke of it again, not before they found him n not after. She must have heard plenty of talk about me, both on the island and at school, but we never spoke of it again. That was when the coldness started to come in, though, that afternoon in the garden. And when the first crack in the wall families put between themselves n the rest of the world showed up between us. Since then it's only gotten wider n wider. She calls and writes me just as regular as clockwork, she's good about that, but we're apart just the same. We're estranged. What I did was mostly done for Selena, not for the boys or because of the money her Dad tried to steal. It was mostly for Selena that I led him on to his death, and all it cost me to protect her from him was the deepest part of her love for me. I once heard my own Dad say God pitched a bitch on the day He made the world, and over the years I've come to understand what he meant. And do you know the worst of it? Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's so funny you can't help from laughin even while it's all fallin apart around you.

Meantime, Garrett Thibodeau and his barbershop cronies kep busy not findin Joe. It'd gotten to the point where I thought I'd just have to stumble on him myself, as little as I liked the idear. If it hadn't been for the dough, I'd've been happy to leave him down there until the Last Trump blew. But the money was over there in Jonesport, sittin in a bank account with his name on it, and I didn't fancy waitin seven years to have him declared legally dead so I could get it back. Selena was gonna be startin college in just a little over two years, and she'd want some of that money to get herself goin.

The idear that Joe mighta taken his bottle into the woods behind the house n either stepped in a trap or taken a fall walkin home tipsy in the dark finally started to go the rounds. Garrett claimed it was his idear, but that's awful hard for me to believe, havin gone to school with him like I did. No matter. He put a sign-up sheet on the door of the town hall Thursday afternoon, and on Sat'dy mornin - a week after the eclipse, this was - he fielded a search-party of forty or fifty men.

They formed up a line by the East Head end of Highgate Woods and worked their way toward the house, first through the woods n then across Russian Meadow. I seen em crossin the meadow in a long line around one o'clock, laughin and jokin, but the jokin stopped and the cursin begun when they crossed over onto our property n got into the blackberry tangle.

I stood in the entry door, watchin em come with my heart beatin way up in my throat. I remember thinkin that at least Selena wa'ant home - she'd gone over to see Laurie Langill - and that was a blessin. Then I started thinkin that all those brambles would cause em to just say frig it n break off the search before they got anywhere near the old well. But they kept on comm. All at once I heard Sonny Benoit scream: 'Hey, Garrett! Over here! Git over here!' and I knew that, for better or worse, Joe had been found.

There was an autopsy, accourse. They did it the very day they found him, and I guess it might have still been goin on when Jack n Alicia Forbert brought the boys back around dusk. Pete was cryin, but he looked all confused - I don't think he really understood what'd happened to his Dad. Joe Junior did, though, and when he drew me aside, I thought he was gonna ask me the same question Selena had ast, n I steeled myself to tell the same lie. But he ast me somethin entirely different.

'Ma,' he says, 'if I was glad he was dead, would God send me to hell?'

'Joey, a person can't much help his feelins, and I think God knows that,' I said.

Then he started to cry, and he said somethin that broke my heart. 'I tried to love him' is what he told me. 'I always tried, but he wouldn't let me.'

I swep him into my arms n hugged him as hard as I could. I think that was about as close as I come to cryin in the whole business. . . but accourse you have to remember that I hadn't been sleepin too well n still hadn't the slightest idear of how things was going to play out.

There was to be an inquest on Tuesday, and Lucien Mercier, who ran the only mortuary on Little Tall back then, told me I'd finally be allowed to bury Joe in The Oaks on Wednesday. But on Monday, the day before the inquest, Garrett called me on the telephone n ast if I could come down to his office for a few minutes. It was the call I'd been expectin and dreadin, but there wasn't nothing to do but go, so I ast Selena if she'd give the boys their lunch, and off I went. Garrett wasn't alone. Dr John McAuliffe was with him. I'd more or less expected that, too, but my heart still sank a little in my breast.

McAuliffe was the county medical examiner back then. He died three years later when a snowplow hit his little Volkswagen Beetle. It was Henry Briarton took over the job when McAuliffe died. If Briar-ton had been the county man in '63, I'd've felt a good deal easier in my mind about our little talk that day. Briarton's smarter than poor old Garrett Thibodeau was, but only by a little. John McAuliffe, though. . . he had a mind like the lamp that shines outta Battiscan Light.

He was a genuine bottled-in-bond Scotsman who turned up in these parts right after World War II ended, hoot-mon burr n all. I guess he musta been an American citizen, since he was both doctorin and holdin a county position, but he sure didn't sound much like folks from around here. Not that it mattered to me; I knew I'd have to face him down, no matter if he was an American or a Scotsman or a heathen Chinee.

He had snowy white hair even though he couldn't have been more'n forty-five, and blue eyes so bright n sharp they looked like drillbits. When he looked at you, you felt like he was starin right into your

head and puttin the thoughts he saw there into alphabetical order. As soon as I seen him sittin beside Garrett's desk n heard the door to the rest of the Town Office Building click closed behind me, I knew that what happened the next day over on the mainland didn't matter a tinker's damn. The real inquest was gonna happen right there in that tiny town constable's office, with a Weber Oil calendar hangin on one wall and a pitcher of Garrett's mother hangin on another.

'I'm sorry to bother you in your time of grief, Dolores,' Garrett said. He was rubbin his hands together, kinda nervous, and he reminded me of Mr Pease over at the bank. Garrett musta had a few more calluses on his hands, though, because the sound they made goin back n forth was like fine sandpaper rubbin along a dry board. 'But Dr McAuliffe here has a few questions he'd like to ask you.'

I seen by the puzzled way Garrett looked at the doc that he didn't know what those questions might be, though, and that scared me even more. I didn't like the idear of that canny Scotsman thinkin matters were serious enough for him to keep his own counsels n not give poor old Garrett Thibodeau any chance at all to frig up the works.

'Ma deepest sympathies, Mrs St George,' McAuliffe says in that thick Scots accent of his. He was a little man, but compact n well put together for all that. He had a neat little mustache, as white's the hair on his head, he was wearin a three-piece wool suit, n he didn't look no more like home folks than he sounded like em. Those blue eyes went drillin away at my forehead, and I seen he didn't have a bit of sympathy for me, no matter what he was sayin. Prob'ly not for nobody else, either. . . includin him-self. 'I'm verra, verra sorry for your grief and misfortune.'

Sure, and if I believe that, you'll tell me one more, I thought. The last time you was really sorry, doc, was the last time you needed to use the pay toilet and the string on your pet dime broke. But I made up my mind right then that I wasn't goin to show him how scared I was. Maybe he had me n maybe he didn't. You've got to remember that, for all I knew, he was gonna tell me that when they laid Joe on the table there in the basement of County Hospital n opened his hands, a little piece of white nylon fell outta one; a scrid of a lady's slip. That could be, all right, but I still wasn't gonna give him the satisfaction of squirmin under his eyes. And he was used to havin people squirm when he looked at em; he'd come to take it as his due, and he liked it.

'Thank you very much,' I said.

'Will ye sit doon, madam?' he asks, like it was his office instead of poor old confused Garrett's.

I sat down and he ast me if I'd kindly give him permission to smoke. I told him the lamp was lit as far's I was concerned. He chuckled like I'd made a funny... but his eyes didn't chuckle. He took a big old black pipe out of his coat pocket, a briar, and stoked it up. His eyes never left me while he was doin it, either. Even after he had it clamped between his teeth and the smoke was risin outta the bowl, he never took his eyes off me. They gave me the willies, peerin at me through the smoke like they did, and made me think of Battiscan Light again - they say that one shines out almost two mile even on a night when the fog's thick enough to carve with your hands.

I started to squirm under that look of his in spite of all my good intentions, and then I thought of Vera Donovan sayin 'Nonsense - husbands die every day, Dolores.' It occurred to me that McAuliffe could stare at Vera until his eyes fell out n never get her to so much as cross her legs the other way. Thinkin of that eased me a little, and I grew quiet again; just folded my hands on top of my handbag n waited him out.

At last, when he seen I wasn't just gonna fall outta my chair onto the floor n confess to murderin my husband - through a rain of tears is how he would've liked it, I imagine - he took the pipe out of his mouth n said, 'You told the constable 'twas your husband who put those bruises on your neck, Mrs St George.'

'Ayuh,' I says.

'That you and he had sat down on the porch to watch the eclipse, and there commenced an argument.'

'Ayuh.'

'And what, may I ask, was the argument about?'

'Money on top,' I says, 'booze underneath.'

'But you yourself bought him the liquor he got drunk on that day, Mrs St George! Isna that right?'

'Ayuh,' I says. I could feel myself wantin to say somethin more, to explain myself, but I didn't, even though I could. That's what McAuliffe wanted, you see - for me to go on rushin ahead. To explain myself right into a jail-cell someplace.

At last he give up waitin. He twiddled his fingers like he was annoyed, then fixed those lighthouse eyes of his on me again. 'After the choking incident, you left your husband; you went up to Russian Meadow, on the way to East Head, to watch the eclipse by yourself.'

'Ayuh.'

He leaned forward all of a sudden, his little hands on his little knees, and says, 'Mrs St George, do you know what direction the wind was from that day?'

It was like the day in November of '62, when I almost found the old well by fallin into it - I seemed to hear the same crackin noise, and I thought, 'You be careful, Dolores Claiborne; you be oh so careful. There's wells everywhere today, and this man knows where every goddam one of em is.'

'No,' I says, 'I don't. And when I don't know where the wind's quarterin from, that usually means the day's calm.'

'Actually wasn't much more than a breeze - Garrett started to say, but McAuliffe raised his hand n cut him off like a knife-blade.

'It was out of the west,' he said. 'A west wind, a west breeze, if you so prefer, seven to nine miles an hour, with gusts up to fifteen. It seems strange to me, Mrs St George, that that wind didna bring your husband's cries to you as you stood in Russian Meadow, not half a mile away.'

I didn't say anything for at least three seconds. I'd made up my mind that I'd count to three inside my head before I answered any of his questions. Doin that might keep me from movin too quick and payin for it by fallin into one of the pits he'd dug for me. But McAuliffe musta thought he had me confused from the word go, because he leaned forward in his chair, and I'll declare and vow that for one or two seconds there, his eyes went from blue-hot to white-hot.

'It don't surprise me,' I says. 'For one thing, seven miles an hour ain't much more'n a puff of air on a muggy day. For another, there were about a thousand boats out on the reach, all tootin to each other. And how do you know he called out at all? You sure as hell didn't hear him.'

He sat back, lookin a little disappointed. 'It's a reasonable deduction to make,' he says. 'We know the fall itself didna kill him, and the forensic evidence strongly suggests that he had at least one extended period of consciousness. Mrs St George, if you fell into a disused well and found yourself with a broken shin, a broken ankle, four broken ribs, and a sprained wrist, wouldn't you call for aid and succor?'

I gave it three seconds with a my-pretty-pony between each one, n then said, 'It wasn't me who fell down the well, Dr McAuliffe. It was Joe, and he'd been drinkin.'

'Yes,' Dr McAuliffe comes back. 'You bought him a bottle of Scotch whiskey, even though everyone I've spoken to says you hated it when he drank, even though he became unpleasant and argumentative when he drank; you bought him a bottle of Scotch, and he had not just been drinking, he was drunk. He was verra drunk. His mouth was also filled wi' bluid, and his shirt was matted wi' bluid all the way down to his belt-buckle. When you combine the fact o'this bluid wi' a knowledge of the broken ribs and the concomitant lung injuries he had sustained, do ye know what that suggests?'

One, my-pretty-pony . . . two, my-pretty-pony three, my-pretty-pony. 'Nope,' I says.

'Several of the fractured ribs had punctured his lungs. Such injuries always result in bleeding, but rarely bleeding this extensive. Bleeding of this sort was probably caused, I deduce, by the deceased crying repeatedly for riscue.' That was how he said it, Andy riscue.

It wasn't a question, but I counted three all the same before sayin, 'You think he was down there callin for help. That's what it all comes to, ain't it?'

'No, madam,' he says. 'I do na just think so; I have a moral sairtainty.'

This time I didn't take no wait. 'Dr McAuliffe,' I says, 'do you think I pushed my husband down into that well?'

That shook him up a little. Those lighthouse eyes of his not only blinked, for a few seconds there they dulled right over. He fiddled n diddled with his pipe some more, then stuck it back in his mouth n drew on it, all the time tryin to decide how he should handle that.

Before he could, Garrett spoke up. His face had gone as red as a radish. 'Dolores,' he says, 'I'm sure no one thinks . . . that is to say, that no one has even considered the idea that -,

'Aye,' McAuliffe breaks in. I'd put his train of thought off on a sidin for a few seconds, but I saw he'd got it back onto the main line without no real trouble. 'I've considered it. Ye'll understand, Mrs St George, that part of my job -,

'Oh, never mind no more Mrs St George,' I says. 'If you're gonna accuse me of first pushin my husband down the well n then standin over him while he screamed for help, you go right on ahead n call me Dolores.'

I wasn't exactly tryin to plink him that time, Andy, but I'll be damned if I didn't do it, anyway - second time in as many minutes. I doubt if he'd been used that hard since medical school.

'Nobody is accusing you of anything, Mrs St George,' he says all stiff-like, and what I seen in his eyes was 'Not yet, anyway.'

'Well, that's good,' I says. 'Because the idear of me pushin Joe down the well is just silly, you know. He outweighed me by at least fifty pounds - prob'ly a fairish bit more. He larded up considerable the last few years. Also, he wa'ant afraid to use his fists if somebody crossed him or got in his way. I'm tellin you that as his wife of sixteen years, and you'll find plenty of people who'll tell you the same thing.'

Accourse Joe hadn't hit me in a long while, but I'd never tried to correct the general impression on the island that he made a pretty steady business of it, and right then, with McAuliffe's blue eyes tryin to bore in through my forehead, I was damned glad of it.

'Nobody is saying you pushed him into the well,' the Scotsman said. He was backin up fast now. I could see by his face that he knew he was, but didn't have no idear how it had happened. His face said that I was the one who was supposed to be backin up. 'But he must have been crying out, you know. He must have done it for some time - hours, perhaps - and quite loudly, too.'

One, my-pretty-pony . .. two, my-pretty-pony three. 'Maybe I'm gettin you now,' I says.

'Maybe you think he fell into the well by accident, and I heard him yellin n just turned a deaf ear. Is that what you been gettin at?'

I seen by his face that that was exactly what he'd been gettin at. I also seen he was mad things weren't goin the way he'd expected em to go, the way they'd always gone before when he had these little inter-views. A tiny ball of bright red color had showed up in each of his cheeks. I was glad to see em, because I wanted him mad. A man like McAuliffe is easier to handle when he's mad, because men like him are used to keepin their composure while other people lose theirs.

'Mrs St George, it will be verra difficult to accomplish anything of value here if you keep responding to my questions with questions of your own.'

'Why, you didn't ask a question, Dr McAuliffe,' I says, poppin my eyes wide n innocent. 'You told me Joe must have been yellin - "cryin out" was what you actually said - so I just ast if -, 'All right, all right,' he says, and put his pipe down in Garrett's brass ashtray hard enough to make it clang. Now his eyes were blazin, and he'd grown a red stripe acrost his forehead to go along with the balls of color in his cheeks. 'Did you hear him calling for help, Mrs St George?'

One, my-pretty-pony . . . two, my-pretty-pony...

'John, I hardly think there's any call to badger the woman,' Garrett broke in, soundin more uncomfortable than ever, and damn if it didn't break that little bandbox Scotsman's concentration again. I almost laughed right out loud. It woulda been bad for me if I had, I don't doubt it, but it was a near thing, all the same.

McAuliffe whipped around and says to Garrett, 'You agreed to let me handle this.'

Poor old Garrett jerked back in his chair s'fast he almost tipped it over, and I'm sure he gave himself a whiplash. 'Okay, okay, no need to get hot under the collar,' he mumbles.

McAuliffe turned back to me, ready to repeat the question, but I didn't bother lettin him. By then I'd had time to count to ten, pretty near.

'No,' I says. 'I didn't hear nothing but people out on the reach, tootin their boat-horns and yellin their fool heads off once they could see the eclipse had started to happen.'

He waited for me to say some more - his old trick of bein quiet and lettin people rush ahead into the puckerbrush - and the silence spun out between us. I just kep my hands folded on top of my handbag and let her spin. He looked at me and I looked back at him.