Pet Sematary - Stephen King [20]
She started by him and Louis put a hand on her arm. Let me ask you something, he said, because I know that anything-literally anything-can happen to physical beings. As a doctor I know that. Do you want to be the one to explain to her what happened if her cat gets distemper or leukemia- cats are very prone to leukemia, you know-or if he gets run over in that road? Do you want to be the one, Rachel?
Let me go, she nearly hissed. The anger in her voice, however, was overmatched by the hurt and bewildered terror in her eyes-! dont want to talk about this, Louis, and you cant make me, that look said. Let me go, I want to get Gage before he falls out of his a-
Because maybe you ought to be the one, he said. You can tell her we dont talk about it, nice people dont talk about it, they just bury it-oops! but dont say buried, youll give her a complex.
I hate you! Rachel sobbed and tore away from him.
Then he was of course sorry, and it was of course too late.
Rachel-
She pushed by him roughly, crying harder. Leave me alone. Youve done enough. She paused in the kitchen doorway, turning toward him, the tears coursing down her cheeks. I dont want this discussed in front of Ellie anymore, Lou. I mean it. Theres nothing natural about death. Nothing. You as a doctor should know that.
She whirled and was gone, leaving Louis in the empty kitchen, which still vibrated with their voices. At last he went to the pantry to get the broom. As he swept, he reflected on the last thing she had said and on the enormity of this difference of opinion, which had gone undiscovered for so long. Because, as a doctor, he knew that death was, except perhaps for childbirth, the most natural thing in the world.
Taxes were not so sure; human conflicts were not; the conflicts of society were not; boom and bust were not. In the end there was only the clock, and the markers, which became eroded and nameless in the passage of time. Even sea turtles and the giant sequoias had to buy out someday.
Zelda, he said aloud. Christ, that must have been bad for her.
The question was should he just let it ride or should he try to do something about it?
He tilted the dustpan over the wastebasket, and flour slid out with a soft foom, powdering the cast-out cartons and used-up cans.
10
Hope Ellie didnt take it too hard, Jud Crandall said. Not for the first time Louis thought that the man had a peculiar- and rather uncomfortable-ability to put his finger gently on whatever the sore spot was.
He and Jud and Norma Crandall now sat on the Crandalls porch in the cool of the evening, drinking iced tea instead of beer. On 15, going-home-after-the-weekend traffic was fairly heavy-people recognized that every good late-summer weekend now might be the last one, Louis supposed. Tomorrow he took up his full duties at the University of Maine infirmary All day yesterday and today students had been arriving, filling apartments in Orono and dorms on campus, making beds, renewing acquaintances, and no doubt groaning over another year of eight oclock classes and commons food. Rachel had been cool to him all day-no, freezing was more like it-and when he went back across the road tonight, he knew that she would already be in bed, Gage sleeping with her more than likely, the two of them so far over to her side that the baby would be in danger of falling off. His half of the
bed would have grown to three quarters, all of it looking like a big, sterile desert.
I said I hoped-
Sorry, Louis said. Woolgathering. She was a little upset, yeah. How did you guess that?
Seen em come and go, like I said. Jud took his wifes hand gently and grinned at her. Havent we, dear?
Packs and packs of them, Norma Crandall said. We. love the children.
Sometimes that pet cemetery is their first eyeball-to-eyeball with death, Jud said. They see people die on TV, but they know thats pretend, like the old Westerns they used to have at the movies on Saturday afternoons. On TV and in the Western movies, they just hold their stomachs or their chests and fall over. Place up on that hill