Pet Sematary - Stephen King [118]
about what you think I was thinking about.
Louis-
Its late, Louis said. Its late, Im drunk, and my heart aches. If you feel like you have to tell me this story, then tell me and lets get it over with. Maybe I should have started with martinis, he thought. Then I could have been safely passed out when he came knocking.
All right, Louis. Thank you.
Just go on.
Jud paused a moment, thinking, then began to speak.
39
In those days-back during the war, I mean-the train still stopped in Orrington, and Bill Baterman had a funeral hack there at the loading depot to meet the freight carrying the body of his son Timmy. The coffin was unloaded by four railroad men. I was one of them. There was an army fellow on board from Graves and Registration-that was the armys wartime version of undertakers, Louis-but he never got off the train. He was sitting drunk in a boxcar that still had twelve coffins in it.
We put Timmy into the back of a mortuary Cadillac-in those days it still wasnt uncommon to hear such things called hurry-up wagons because in the old days, the major concern was to get them into the ground before they rotted. Bill Baterman stood by, his face stony and kinda I dunno kinda dry, I guess youd say. He wept no tears. Huey Garber was driving the train that day, and he said that army fella had really had a tour for himself. Huey said theyd flown in a whole shitload of those coffins to Limestone in Presque Isle, at which point both the coffins and their keeper entrained for points south.
The army fella comes walking up to Huey, and he takes a fifth of rye whiskey out of his uniform blouse, and he says in this soft, drawly Dixie voice, Well, Mr. Engineer, youre driving a mystery train today, did you know that?
Huey shakes his head.
Well, you are. At least, thats what they call a funeral train down in Alabama. Huey says the fella took a list out of his pocket and squinted at it. Were going to start by dropping two of those coffins off in Houlton, and then Ive got one for Passadumkeag, two for Bangor, one for Derry, one for Ludlow, and so on. I feel like a fugging milkman. You want a drink?
Well, Huey declines the drink on the grounds that the Bangor and Aroostook is pretty fussy on the subject of train drivers with rye on their breaths, and the fella from Graves and Registration dont hold it against Huey, any more than Huey holds the fact of the army fellas drunkenness against him. They even shook on her, Huey said.
So off they go, dropping those flag-covered coffins every other stop or two. Eighteen or twenty of em in all. Huey said it went on all the way to Boston, and there was weeping and wailing relatives at every stop except Ludlow and at Ludlow he was treated to the sight of Bill Baterman, who, he said, looked like he was dead inside and just waiting for his soul to stink. When he got off that train, he said he woke up that army fella, and they hit some spots-fifteen or twenty-and Huey got drunker than he had ever been and went to a whore, which hed never done in his whole life, and woke up with a set of crabs so big and mean they gave him the shivers, and he said that if that was what they called a mystery train, he never wanted to drive no mystery train again.
Timmys body was taken up to the Greenspan Funeral Home on Fern Street-it used to be across from where the New Franklin Laundry stands now-and two days later he was buried in Pleasantview Cemetery with full military honors.
Well, I tell you, Louis: Missus Baterman was dead ten years then, along with the second child she tried to bring into the world, and that had a lot to do with what happened. A second child might have helped to ease the pain, dont you think? A second child might have reminded old Bill that theres others that feel the pain and have to be helped through. I guess in that way, youre luckier-having another child and all, I mean. A child and a wife who are both alive and well.
According to the letter Bill got from the lieutenant