Pet Sematary - Stephen King [22]
Louis thought again of Rachels near-hysteria.
Your Ellie will get over it, Norma said and shifted position. You must be thinking that death is all we talk about around here, Louis. Jud and I are getting on, but I hope neither of us has gotten to the gore-crow stage yet-
No, of course not, dont be silly, Louis said.
-But its not such a bad idea to be on nodding acquaintance with it. These days I dont know no one wants to talk about it or think about it, it seems. They took it off the TV because they thought it might hurt the children some way hurt their minds.. and people want closed coffins so they dont have to look at the remains or say goodbye it just seems like people want to forget it.
And at the same time they brought in the cable TV with all those movies showing people-Jud looked at Norma and
cleared his throat-showing people doing what people usually do with their shades pulled down, he finished. Queer how things change from one generation to the next, isnt it?
Yes, Louis said. I suppose it is.
Well, we come from a different time, Jud said, sounding almost apologetic We was on closer terms with death. We saw the flu epidemic after the Great War, and mothers dying with child, and children dying of infection and fevers that it seems like doctors just wave a magic wand over these days. In the time when me and Norma was young, if you got cancer, why, that was your death warrant, right there. No radiation treatments back in the 1920s! Two wars, murders, suicides..
He fell silent for a moment.
We knew it as a friend and as an enemy, he said finally. My brother Pete died of a burst appendix in 1912, back when Taft was President. Pete was just fourteen, and he could hit a baseball farther than any kid in town. In those days you didnt need to take a course in college to study death, hot-spice, or whatever they call it. In those days it came into the house and said howdy and sometimes it took supper with you and sometimes you could feel it bite your ass.
This time Norma didnt correct him; instead she nodded silently.
Louis stood up, stretched. I have to go, he said. Big day tomorrow.
Yes, the merry-go-round starts for you tomorrow, dont it? Jud said, also standing. Jud saw Norma was also trying to get up and gave her a hand. She rose with a grimace.
Bad tonight, is it? Louis asked.
Not so bad, she said.
Put some heat on it when you go to bed.
I will, Norma said. I always do. And Louis.. dont fret about Ellie. Shell be too busy gettin to know her new friends this fall to worry much about that old place. Maybe someday all of emII go up and repaint some of the signs, or pull weeds, or plant flowers. Sometimes they do, when the notion takes them. And shell feel better about it. Shell start to get that nodding acquaintance.
Not if my wife has anything to say about it.
Come on over tomorrow night and tell me how it went up at the college, if you get the chance, Jud said. Ill whup you at cribbage.
Well, maybe Ill get you drunk first, Louis said. Double-skunk you.
Doc, Jud said with great sincerity, the day I get double-skunked at cribbage would be the day Id let a quack like you treat me.
He left on their laughter and crossed the road to his own house in the late-summer dark.
Rachel was sleeping with the baby, curled up on her side of the bed in a fetal, protective position. He supposed she would get over it-there had been other arguments and times of coldness in their marriage, but this one was surely the worst of the lot. He felt sad and angry