Pet Sematary - Stephen King [17]
What about cats? Ellie asked and looked at Church again.
Well, cats live as long as dogs, he said, mostly, anyway. This was a lie, and he knew it. Cats lived violent lives and often died bloody deaths, always just below the usual range of human sight. Here was Church, dozing in the sun (or appearing to), Church who slept peacefully on his daughters bed every night, Church who had been so cute as a kitten, all tangled up in a ball of string. And yet Louis had seen him stalk a bird with a broken wing, his green eyes sparkling with curiosity and-yes, Louis would have sworn it-cold delight. He rarely killed what he stalked, but there had been one notable exception-a large rat, probably caught in the alley between their apartment house and the next. Church had really put the blocks to that baby. It had been so bloody and gore-flecked that Rachel, then in her sixth month with Gage, had had to run into the bathroom and vomit. Violent lives, violent deaths. A dog got them and ripped them open instead of just chasing them like the bumbling, easily fooled dogs in the TV cartoons, or another torn got them, or a poisoned bait, or a passing car. Cats were the gangsters of the animal world, living outside the law and often dying there. There were a great many of them who never grew old by the fire.
But those were maybe not things to tell your five-year-old daughter, who was for the first time examining the facts of death.
I mean, he said, Church is only three now, and youre five. He might still be alive when youre fifteen, a sophomore in high school. And thats a long time away.
It doesnt seem long to me, Ellie said, and now her voice trembled. Not long at all. -
Louis gave up the pretense of working on his model and gestured for her to come. She sat on his lap, and he was again struck by her beauty, which was emphasized now by her emotional upset. She was dark-skinned, almost Levantine. Tony Benton, one of the doctors he had worked with in Chicago, used to call her the Indian Princess.
Honey, he said, if it was up to me, Id let Church live to be a hundred. But I dont make the rules.
Who does? she asked, and then, with infinite scorn:
God, I suppose.
Louis stifled the urge to laugh. It was too serious. God or Somebody, he said. Clocks run down-thats all I know. There are no guarantees, babe.
I dont want Church to be like all those dead pets! she burst out, suddenly tearful and furious. I dont want Church to ever be dead! Hes my cat! Hes not Gods cat! Let God have His own cat! Let God have all the damn old cats He wants, and kill them all! Church is mine!
There were footsteps across the kitchen, and Rachel looked in, startled. Ellie was now weeping against Louiss chest. The horror had been articulated; it was out; its face had been drawn and could be regarded. Now, even if it could not be changed, it could at least be wept over.
Ellie, he said, rocking her, Ellie, Ellie, Church isnt dead; hes right over there, sleeping.
But he could be, she wept. He could be, any time. He held her and rocked her, believing, rightly or wrongly, that Ellie wept for the very intractability of death, its imperviousness to argument or to a little girls tears; that she wept over its cruel unpredictability; and that she wept because of the human beings wonderful, deadly ability to translate symbols into conclusions that were either fine and noble or blackly terrifying. If all those animals had died and been buried, then Church could die
(any time!)
and be- buried; and if that could happen to Church, it could happen to her mother, her father, her baby brother. To herself. Death was a vague idea; the Pet Sematary was real.
In the texture of those rude markers were truths which even a childs hands could feel.
It would be easy to lie at this point, the way he had lied earlier about the life expectancy of tomcats. But a lie would be remembered later and perhaps finally totted