Pet Sematary - Stephen King [128]
42
By evening a fresh rack of clouds had come in and a strong west wind had begun to blow. Louis put on his light jacket, zipped it up, and took the Civic keys from the peg on the wall.
Where you going, Lou? Rachel asked. She spoke without much interest. After supper she had begun crying again, and although her weeping was gentle, she had seemed incapable of stopping. Louis had forced her to take a Valium. Now she sat with the paper folded open to the barely started crossword puzzle. In the other room, Ellie sat silently watching Little House on the Prairie with Gages picture on her lap.
I thought Id pick up a pizza.
Didnt you get enough to eat earlier?
I just didnt seem hungry then, he said, telling the truth and then adding a lie: I am now.
That afternoon, between three and six, the final rite of Gages funeral had taken place at the Ludlow house. This was the rite of food. Steve Masterton and his wife had come with a hamburger-and-noodle casserole. Charlton had appeared with a quiche. It will keep until you want it, if it doesnt all get eaten, she told Rachel. Quiche is easy to warm up. The Dannikers from up the road brought a baked ham. The Goldmans appeared-neither of them would speak to Louis or even come close to him, for which he was not sorry-with a variety of cold cuts and cheeses. Jud also brought cheese-a large wheel of his old favorite, Mr. Rat. Missy Dandridge brought a key lime pie. And Surrendra Hardu brought apples. The rite of food apparently transcended religious differences.
This was the funeral party, and although it was quiet, it was not quite subdued. There was rather less drinking than at an ordinary party, but there was some. After a few beers (only the night before he had sworn he would never touch the stuff again, but in the cold afternoon light the previous evening had seemed impossibly long ago) Louis thought to pass on a few little funerary anecdotes his Uncle Carl had told him-that at Sicilian funerals unmarried women sometimes snipped a piece of the deceased's shroud and slept with it under their pillows, believing it would bring them luck in love; that at Irish funerals mock weddings were sometimes performed, and the toes of the dead were tied together because of an ancient Celtic belief that it kept the deceaseds ghost from walking. Uncle Carl said that the custom of tying D.O.A. tags to the great toes of corpses had begun in New York, and since all of the early morgue keepers had been Irish, he believed this to be a survival of that old superstition. Then, looking at their faces, he had decided such tales would be taken wrong.
Rachel had broken down only once, and her mother was there to comfort her. Rachel clung to Dory Goldman and sobbed against her shoulder in an open, let-it-all-go way that had been so far impossible for her with Louis, perhaps because she saw them both as culpable in Gages death or perhaps because Louis, lost in the peculiar half-world of his own fancies, had not encouraged her grief. Either way, she had turned to her mother for comfort, and Dory was there to give it, mingling her tears with her daughter's. Irwin Goldman stood behind them, his hand on Rachels shoulder, and looked with sickly triumph across the room at Louis.
Ellie circulated with a silver tray loaded with canapes, little rolls with a feathered toothpick poked through each one. Her picture of Gage was tucked firmly under her arm.
Louis received condolences. He nodded and thanked the condolers. And if his eyes seemed distant, his manner a little cold, people supposed he was thinking of the past, of the accident, of the Gageless life ahead; none (perhaps not even Jud) would have suspected that Louis had begun to think about the strategies of grave robbing only in an academic way, of course; it was not that he intended to do anything. It was only a way to keep his mind occupied.
It was not as if he intended to do anything.
Louis stopped at the Orrington Corner Store, bought two six-packs of cold beer, and called ahead to Napolis for a