hen I woke up it was dark and the telephone was ringin. I got up n felt my way into the living room to answer it. As soon as I said hello, someone - some woman - said, 'You can't murder her. I hope you know that. If the law doesn't get you, we will. You aren't as smart as you think you are. We don't have to live with murderers here, Dolores Claiborne; not as long as there's still some decent Christians left on the island to keep it from happenin.'

My head was so muzzy that at first I thought I was havin a dream. By the time I figured out I was really awake, she'd hung up. I started for the kitchen, meanin to put on the coffee-pot or maybe grab a beer out of the fridge, when the phone rang again. It was a woman that time, too, but not the same one. Filth started to stream out of her mouth n I hung up quick. The urge to cry come over me again, but I was damned if I'd do it. I pulled the telephone plug outta the wall instead. I went into the kitchen n got a beer, but it didn't taste good to me n I ended up pourin most of it down the sink. I think what I really wanted was a little Scotch, but I haven't had a drop of hard liquor in the house since Joe died.

I drew a glass of water n found I couldn't abide the smell of it - it smelled like pennies that've been carried around all day in some kid's sweaty fist. It made me remember that night in the blackberry tangles - how that same smell came to me on a little puff of breeze - n that made me think of the girl in the pink lipstick n the striped dress. I thought of how it'd crossed my mind that the woman she'd grown into was in trouble. I wondered how she was n where she was, but I never once wondered if she was, if you see what I mean; I knew she was. Is. I have never doubted it.

But that don't matter; my mind's wanderin again n my mouth's followin right along behind, like Mary's little lamb. All I started to say was that the water from my kitchen sink didn't use me any better than Mr Budweiser's finest had - even a couple of ice-cubes wouldn't take away that coppery smell -and I ended up watchin some stupid comedy show and drinkin one of the Hawaiian Punches I keep in the back of the fridge for Joe Junior's twin boys. I made myself a frozen dinner but didn't have no appetite for it once it was ready n ended up scrapin it into the swill. I settled for another Hawaiian Punch instead - took it back into the livin room n just sat there in front of the TV. One comedy'd give way to another, but I didn't see a dime's worth of difference. I s'pose it was because I wa'ant payin much attention.

I didn't try to figure out what I was gonna do; there's some figurin you're wiser not to try at night, because that's the time your mind's most apt to go bad on you. Whatever you figure out after sundown, nine times outta ten you got it all to do over again in the mornin. So I just sat, and some time after the local news had ended and the Tonight show had come on, I fell asleep again.

I had a dream. It was about me n Vera, only Vera was the way she was when I first knew her, back when Joe was still alive and all our kids, hers as well as mine, were still around n underfoot most of the time. In my dream we were doin the dishes - her warshin n me wipin. Only we weren't doin em in the kitchen; we were standin in front of the little Franklin stove in the livin room of my house. And that was funny, because Vera wasn't ever in my house - not once in her whole life.

She was there in this dream, though. She had the dishes in a plastic basin on top of the stove - not my old stuff but her good Spode china. She'd warsh a plate n then hand it to me, and each one of em'd slip outta my hands and break on the bricks the Franklin stands on. Vera'd say, 'You have to be more careful than that, Dolores; when accidents happen and you're not careful, there's always a hell of a mess.'

I'd promise her to be careful, and I'd try, but the next plate'd slip through my fingers, n the next, n the next, n the next.

'This is no good at all,' Vera said at last. 'Just look at the mess you're making!'

I looked down, but instead of pieces of broken plates, the bricks were littered with little pieces of Joe's dentures n broken stone. 'Don't you hand me no more, Vera,' I said, startin to cry. 'I guess I ain't up to doing no dishes. Maybe I've got too old, I dunno, but I don't want to break the whole job lot of them, I know that.'

She kep on handin em to me just the same, though, and I kep droppin em, and the sound they made when they hit the bricks kep gettin louder n deeper, until it was more a boomin sound than the brittle crash china makes when it hits somethin hard n busts. All at once I knew I was havin a dream n those booms weren't part of it. I snapped awake s'hard I almost fell outta the chair n onto the floor. There was another of those booms, and this time I knew it for what it was - a shotgun.

I got up n went over to the window. Two pickup trucks went by on the road. There were people in the backs, one in the bed of the first n two I think - in the bed of the second. It looked like all of em had shotguns, and every couple of seconds one of em'd trigger off a round into the sky. There'd be a bright muzzle-flash, then another loud boom. From the way the men (I guess they were men, although I can't say for sure) were swayin back n forth - and from the way the trucks were weavin back n forth -I'd say the whole crew was pissyass drunk. I recognized one of the trucks, too.

What?

No, I ain't gonna tell you - I'm in enough trouble myself. I don't plan to drag nobody else in with me over a little drunk night-shootin. I guess maybe I didn't recognize that truck after all.

Anyway, I threw up the window when I seen they wasn't puttin holes in nothin but a few low-lyin clouds. I thought they'd use the wide spot at the bottom of our hill to turn around, and they did. One of em goddam near got stuck, too, and wouldn't that have been a laugh.

They come back up, hootin and tootin and yellin their heads off. I cupped m'hands around m'mouth n screamed 'Get outta here! Some folks 're tryin t'sleep!' just as loud's I could. One of the trucks swerved a little wider n almost run into the ditch, so I guess I threw a startle into em, all right. The fella standin in the back of that truck (it was the one I thought I recognized until a few seconds ago) went ass-overdashboard. I got a good set of lungs on me, if I do say so m'self, n I can holler with the best of em when I want to.

'Get offa Little Tall Island, you goddam murderin cunt!' one of em yelled back, n triggered a few more shots off into the air. But that was just in the way of showin me what big balls they had, I think, because they didn't make another pass. I could hear em roarin off toward town - and that goddam bar that opened there year before last, I'll bet a cookie - with their mufflers blattin and their tailpipes chamberin backfires as they did all their fancy downshifts. You know how men are when they're drunk n drivin pick-em-ups.

Well, it broke the worst of my mood. I wa'ant scared anymore and I sure as shit didn't feel weepy anymore. I was good n pissed off, but not s'mad I couldn't think, or understand why folks were doin the things they were doin. When my anger tried to take me past that place, I stopped it happenin by thinkin of Sammy Marchant, how his eyes had looked as he knelt there on the stairs lookin first at that rollin pin and then up at me - as dark as the ocean just ahead of a squall-line, they were, like Selena's had been that day in the garden.

I already knew I was gonna have to come back down here, Andy, but it was only after those men left that I quit kiddin myself that I could still pick n choose what I was gonna tell or hold back. I saw I was gonna have to make a clean breast of everything. I went back to bed n slept peaceful until quarter of nine in the morning. It's the latest I've slept since before I was married. I guess I was gettin rested up so I could talk the whole friggin night.

Once I was up, I meant to do it just as soon's I could - bitter medicine is best taken right away - but somethin put me off my track before I could get out of the house, or I would've ended up tellin you all this a lot sooner.

I took a bath, and before I got dressed I put the telephone plug back in the wall. It wasn't night anymore, and I wasn't half in n half out of some dream anymore. I figured if someone wanted to phone up and call me names, I'd dish out a few names of my own startin with 'yellowbelly' n 'dirty no-name sneak.' Sure enough, I hadn't done more'n roll on my stockins before it did ring. I picked it up, ready to give whoever was on the other end a good dose of what-for, when this woman's voice said, 'Hello? May I speak to Miz Dolores Claiborne?'

I knew right away it was long distance, n not just because of the little echo we get out here when the call's from away. I knew because nobody on the island calls women Miz. You might be a Miss n you might be a Missus, but Miz still ain't made it across the reach, except once a month on the magazine rack down to the drugstore.

'Speakin,' I says.

'This is Alan Greenbush callin,' she says.

'Funny,' I says, pert's you please, 'you don't sound like an Alan Greenbush.'

'It's his office calling,' she says, like I was about the dumbest thing she ever heard of. 'Will you hold for Mr Greenbush?'

She caught me so by surprise the name didn't sink in at first - I knew I'd heard it before, but I didn't know where.

'What's it concernin?' I ast.

There was a pause, like she wasn't really s'posed to let that sort of information out, and then she said,

'I believe it concerns Mrs Vera Donovan. Will you hold, Miz Claiborne?'

Then it clicked in - Greenbush, who sent her all the padded envelopes registered mail.

'Ayuh,' I says.

'Pardon me?' she says.

'I'll hold,' I says.

'Thank you,' she says back. There was a click n I was left for a little while standin there in my underwear, waitin. It wasn't long but it seemed long. Just before he came on the line, it occurred to me that it must be about the times I'd signed Vera's name -they'd caught me. It seemed likely enough; ain't you ever noticed how when one thing goes wrong, everythin else seems to go wrong right behind it?

Then he come on the line. 'Miz Claiborne?' he says.

'Yes, this is Dolores Claiborne,' I told him.

'The local law enforcement official on Little Tall Island called me yesterday afternoon and informed me that Vera Donovan had passed away,' he said. 'It was quite late when I received the call, and so I decided to wait until this morning to telephone you.'

I thought of tellin him there was folks on the island not so particular about what time they called me, but accourse I didn't.

He cleared his throat, then said, 'I had a letter from Mrs Donovan five years ago, specifically instructing me to give you certain information concerning her estate within twenty-four hours of her passing.' He cleared his throat again n said, 'Although I have spoken to her on the phone frequently since then, that was the last actual letter I received from her.' He had a dry, fussy kind of voice. The kind of voice that when it tells you some-thin, you can't not hear it.

'What are you talkin about, man?' I ast. 'Quit all this backin and fillin and tell me!'

He says, 'I'm pleased to inform you that, aside from a small bequest to The New England Home for Little Wanderers, you are the sole beneficiary of Mrs Donovan's will.'

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and all I could think of was how she'd caught onto the vacuum cleaner trick after awhile.

'You'll receive a confirming telegram later today,' he says, 'but I'm very glad to have spoken to you well before its arrival - Mrs Donovan was very emphatic about her desires in this matter.'

'Ayuh,' I says, 'she could be emphatic, all right.'

'I'm sure you're grieved at Mrs Donovan's passing - we all are - but I want you to know that you are going to be a very wealthy woman, and if I can do anything at all to assist you in your new circumstances, I would be as happy to do so as I was to assist Mrs Donovan. Of course I'll be calling to give you updates on the progress of the will through probate, but I really don't expect any problems or delays. In fact -'Whoa on, chummy,' I says, n it came out in a kind of croak. Sounded quite a bit like a frog in a dry pond. 'How much money are you talkin about?'

Accourse I knew she was well off, Andy; the fact that in the last few years she didn't wear nothing but flannel nighties n lived on a steady diet of Campbell's soup and Gerber's baby-food didn't change that. I saw the house, I saw the cars, n I sometimes looked at a wee bit more of the papers that came in those padded envelopes than just the signature line. Some were stock transfer forms, n I know that when you're sellin two thousand shares of Upjohn and buyin four thousand of Mississippi Valley Light n Power, you ain't exactly totterin down the road to the poorhouse.

I wa'ant askin so I could start applyin for credit cards n orderin things from the Sears catalogue, either - don't go gettin that idear. I had a better reason than that. I knew that the number of people who thought I'd murdered her would most likely go up with every dollar she left me, n I wanted to know how bad I was gonna get hurt. I thought it might be as much as sixty or seventy thousand dollars . . . although he had said she left some money to an orphanage, and I figured that'd take it down some.

There was somethin else bitin me, too - bitin the way a June deerfly does when it settles on the back of your neck. Somethin way wrong about the whole proposition. I couldn't put m'finger on it, though -no more'n I'd been able to put m'finger on exactly who Greenbush was when his secretary first said his name.

He said somethin I couldn't quite make out. It sounded like blub-dub-a-gub-area-of-thirty-million dollars.

'What did you say, sir?' I ast.

'That after probate, legal fees, and a few other small deductions, the total should be in the area of thirty million dollars.'

My hand on the telephone had started to feel the way it does when I wake up n realize I slep most of the night on it. . . numb through the middle n all tingly around the edges. My feet were tinglin, too, n all at once the world felt like it was made of glass again.

'I'm sorry,' I says. I could hear my mouth talkin perfectly well n perfectly clear, but I didn't seem to be attached to any of the words that were comin out of it. It was just flappin, like a shutter in a high wind. 'The connection here isn't very good. I thought you said somethin with the word million in it.' Then I laughed, just to show how silly I knew that was, but part of me must've thought it wa'ant silly at all, because that was the fakest-soundin laugh I ever heard come outta me - Yar-yar-yar, it sounded like.

'I did say million,' he said. 'In fact, I said thirty million.' And do you know, I think he woulda chuckled if it hadn't been Vera Donovan's dead body I was gettin that money over. I think he was excited - that underneath that dry, prissy voice he was excited as hell. I s'pose he felt like John Bearsford Tipton, the rich fella who used to give away a million bucks at a crack on that old TV show. He wanted my business, accourse that was part of it -I got a feelin that money's like electric trains to fellas like him n he didn't want to see such an almighty big set as Vera's taken away from him - but I think most of the fun of it for him was just hearin me flub-dubbin around like I was doin.

'I don't get it,' I says, and now my voice was so weak I could hardly hear it myself.

'I think I understand how you feel,' he says. 'It's a very large sum, and of course it will take a little getting used to.'

'How much is it really?' I ast him, and that time he did chuckle. If he'd been where I coulda got to him, Andy, I believe I woulda booted him in the seat of the pants.

He told me again, thirty million dollars, n I kep thinkin that if my hand got any stupider, I was gonna drop the phone. And I started to feel panicky. It was like someone was inside my head, swingin a steel cable around n around. I'd think thirty million dollars, but those were just words. When I tried to see what they meant, the only pitcher I could make inside my head was like the ones in the Scrooge McDuck comic books Joe Junior used to read Little Pete when Pete was four or five. I saw a great big vault fulla coins n bills, only instead of Scrooge McDuck paddlin around in all that dough with the spats on his flippers n those little round spectacles perched on his beak, I'd see me doin it in my bedroom slippers. Then that pitcher'd slip away and I'd think of how Sammy Marchant's eyes had looked when they moved from the rollin pin to me n then back to the rollin pin again. They looked like Selena's had looked that day in the garden, all dark n full of questions. Then I thought of the woman who called on the phone n said there was still decent Christians on the island who didn't have to live with murderers. I wondered what that woman n her friends were gonna think when they found out Vera's death had left me thirty million dollars to the good. . . and the thought of that came close to put-tin me into a panic.

'You can't do it!' I says, kinda wild. 'Do you hear me? You can't make me take it!'

Then it was his turn to say he couldn't quite hear - that the connection must be loose someplace along the line. I ain't a bit surprised, either. When a man like Greenbush hears someone sayin they don't want a thirty-million-dollar lump of cash, they figure the equipment must be frigged up. I opened my mouth to tell him again that he'd have to take it back, that he could give every cent of it to The New England Home for Little Wanderers, when I suddenly understood what was wrong with all this. It didn't just hit me; it come down on my head like a dropped load of bricks.

'Donald n Helga!' I says. I musta sounded like a TV game-show contestant comm up with the right answer in the last second or two of the bonus round.

'I beg pardon?' he asks, kinda cautious.

'Her kids!' I says. 'Her son and her daughter! That money belongs to them, not me! They're kin! I ain't nothing but a jumped-up housekeeper!'

There was such a long pause then that I felt sure we musta been disconnected, and I wa'ant a bit sorry. I felt faint, to tell you the truth. I was about to hang up when he says in this flat, funny voice, 'You don't know.'

'Don't know what?' I shouted at him. 'I know she's got a son named Donald and a daughter named Helga! I know they was too damned good to come n visit her up here, although she always kep space for em, but I guess they won't be too good to divide up a pile like the one you're talkin about now that she's dead!'

'You don't know,' he said again. And then, as if he was askin questions to himself instead of to me, he says, 'Could you not know, after all the time you worked for her? Could you? Wouldn't Kenopensky have told you?' N before I could get a word in edgeways, he started answerin his own damned questions. 'Of course it's possible. Except for a squib on an inside page of the local paper the day after, she kept the whole thing under wraps - you could do that thirty years ago, if you were willing to pay for the privilege. I'm not sure there were even obituaries.' He stopped, then says, like a man will when he's just discoverin somethin new - somethin huge - about someone he's known all his life: 'She talked about them as if they were alive, didn't she. All these years!'

'What are you globberin about?' I shouted at him. It felt like an elevator was goin down in my stomach, and all at once all sorts of things - little things - started fittin together in my mind. I didn't want em to, but it went on happenin, just the same. 'Accourse she talked about em like they were alive! They are alive! He's got a real estate company in Arizona - Golden West Associates! She designs dresses in San Francisco . . . Gaylord Fashions!'

Except she'd always read these big paperback historical novels with women in low-cut dresses kissin men without their shirts on, and the trade name for those books was Golden West - it said so on a little foil strip at the top of every one. And it all at once occurred to me that she'd been born in a little town called Gaylord, Missouri. I wanted to think it was somethin else - Galen, or maybe Galesburg - but I knew it wasn't. Still, her daughter mighta named her dress business after the town her mother'd been born in . . . or so I told myself.

'Miz Claiborne,' Greenbush says, talkin in a low, sorta anxious voice, 'Mrs Donovan's husband was killed in an unfortunate accident when Donald was fifteen and Helga was thirteen - 'I know that!' I says, like I wanted him to believe that if I knew that I must know everything.

'- and there was consequently a great deal of bad feeling between Mrs Donovan and the children.'

I'd known that, too. I remembered people remarkin on how quiet the kids had been when they showed up on Memorial Day in 1961 for their usual summer on the island, and how several people'd mentioned that you didn't ever seem to see the three of em together anymore, which was especially strange, considerin Mr Donovan's sudden death the year before; usually somethin like that draws people closer. . . although I s'pose city folks may be a little different about such things. And then I remembered somethin else, somethin Jimmy DeWitt told me in the fall of that year.

'They had a wowser of an argument in a restaurant just after the Fourth of July in '61,' I says. 'The boy n girl left the next day. I remember the hunky - Kenopensky, I mean - takin em across to the mainland in the big motor launch they had back then.'

'Yes,' Greenbush said. 'It so happens that I knew from Ted Kenopensky what that argument was about. Donald had gotten his driver's licence that spring, and Mrs Donovan had gotten him a car for his birthday. The girl, Helga, said she wanted a car, too. Vera - Mrs Donovan - apparently tried to explain to the girl that the idea was silly, a car would be useless to her without a driver's licence and she couldn't get one of those until she was fifteen. Helga said that might be true in Maryland, but it wasn't the case in Maine - that she could get one there at fourteen . . . which she was. Could that have been true, Miz Claiborne, or was it just an adolescent fantasy?'

'It was true back then,' I says, 'although I think you have to be at least fifteen now. Mr Greenbush, the car she got her boy for his birthday . . . was a Corvette?'