Pet Sematary - Stephen King [119]
Timmy was buried-dont hold me to this, but I think it was on July 22. It was four or five days later that Marjorie Washburn, who was the mailwoman in those days, saw Timmy walking up the road toward Yorks Livery Stable. Well, Margie damn near drove right off the road, and you can understand why. She went back to the post office, tossed her leather bag with all her undelivered mail still in it on George Andersons desk, and told him she was going home and to bed right then.
Margie, are you sick? George asks. You are just as white as a gulls wing.
Ive had the fright of my life, and I dont want to talk to you about it, Margie Washburn says. I aint going to talk to Brian about it, or my mom, or anybody. When I get up to heaven, if Jesus asks me to talk to Him about it, maybe I will. But I dont believe it. And out she goes.
Everybody knew Timmy was dead; there was his bituary in the Bangor Daily News and the Ellsworth American just the week before, picture and all, and half the town turned out for his funeral up to the city. And here Margie seen him, walking up the
road-lurching up the road, she finally told old George Anderson
-only this was twenty years later, and she was dying, and George told me it seemed to him like she wanted to tell somebody what shed seen. George said it seemed to him like it preyed on her mind, you know.
Pale he was, she said, and dressed in an old pair of chino pants and a faded flannel hunting shirt, although it must have been ninety degrees in the shade that day. Margie said all his hair was sticking up in the back. His eyes were like raisins stuck in bread dough. I saw a ghost that day, George. Thats what scared me so. I never thought Id see such a thing, but there it was.
Well, word got around. Pretty soon some other people saw Timmy, too. Missus Stratton-well, we called her missus, but so far as anyone knew she could have been single or divorced or grass-widowed; she had a little two-room house down where the Pedersen Road joins the Hancock Road, and she had a lot of jazz records, and sometimes shed be willing to throw you a little party if you had a ten-dollar bill that wasnt working too hard. Well, she saw him from her porch, and she said he walked right up to the edge of the road and stopped there.
He just stood there, she said, his hands dangling at his sides and his head pushed forward, lookin like a boxer whos ready to eat him some canvas. She said she stood there on her porch, heart goin like sixty, too scared to move. Then she said he turned around, and it was like watching a drunk man try to do an about-face. One leg went way out and the other foot turned, and he just about fell over. She said he looked right at her and all the strength just run out of her hands and she dropped the basket of washing she had, and the clothes fell out and got smutty all over again.
She said his eyes she said they looked as dead and dusty as marbles, Louis. But he saw her and he grinned and she said he talked to her. Asked her if she still had those records because he wouldnt mind cutting a rug with her. Maybe that very night. And Missus Stratton went back inside, and she wouldnt come out for most of a week, and by then it was over anyway.
Lot of people saw Timmy Baterman. Many of them are dead now-Missus Stratton is, for one, and others have moved on, but
there are a few old crocks like me left around wholl tell you. if you ask em right.
We saw him, I tell you, walking back and forth along the Pedersen Road, a mile east of his daddys house and a mile west. Back and forth he went, back and forth all day, and for all anyone knew, all night. Shirt untucked,