Pet Sematary - Stephen King [49]
Hello?
Louis? Rachels voice, a little distant but absolutely fine. Were here. We made it. No problems.
Great! he said and sat down to talk to her, thinking: I wish to God you were here.
The Thanksgiving dinner Jud and Norma put on was a fine one. When it was over, Louis went home feeling full and sleepy. He went upstairs to the bedroom, relishing the quiet a little, flipped off his loafers, and lay down. It was just after three oclock; the day outside was lit with thin, wintry sunshine.
I'll just doze a little, he thought and fell fast asleep.
It was the bedroom extension that woke him up. He groped for it, trying to pull himself together, disoriented by the fact that it was almost dark outside. He could hear the wind whining around the corners of the house and the faint, husky mutter of the furnace.
Hello, he said. It would be Rachel, calling from Chicago again to wish him a happy Thanksgiving. She would put Ellie on and Ellie would talk and then Gage would get on and Gage
would babble-and how the hell had he managed to sleep all afternoon when he had meant to watch the football game
But it wasnt Rachel. It was Jud.
Louis? Fraid maybe youve got a little spot of trouble.
He swung out of bed, still trying to scrub the sleep out of his mind. Jud? What trouble?
Well, theres a dead cat over here on our lawn, Jud said. I think it might be your daughters.
Church? Louis asked. There was a sudden sinking in his belly. Are you sure, Jud?"
No, I aint one hundred percent sure, Jud said, but it sure looks like him.
Oh. Oh shit. Ill be right over, Jud.
All right, Louis.
He hung up and just sat there for a minute longer. Then he went in and used the bathroom, put his shoes on, and went downstairs.
Well, maybe it isnt Church. Jud himself said he wasnt one hundred percent sure. Christ, the cat doesnt even want to go upstairs anymore unless someone carries him why would he cross the road?
But in his heart he felt sure that it was Church and if Rachel called this evening as she almost certainly would, what was he going to say to Ellie?
Crazily, he heard himself saying to Rachel: 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 he gets run over in the road? But he hadnt really believed anything was going to happen to Church, had he?
He remembered one of the guys he played poker with, Wickes Sullivan, asking him once how he could get horny for his wife and not get horny for the naked women he saw day in and day out. Louis had tried to explain to him that it wasnt the way people imagined in their fantasies-a woman coming in to get a Pap smear or to learn how to give herself a breast self-examination didnt suddenly drop a sheet and stand there like Venus on the half-shell. You saw a breast, a vulva, a thigh. The rest was draped in a sheet, and there was a nurse in attendance, more to protect the doctors reputation than anything else. Wicky wasnt buying it. A tit is a tit, was Wickys thesis, and a twat is a twat. You should either be horny all the time or none of the time. All Louis could respond was that your wifes tit was different.
Just like your familys supposed to be different, he thought now. Church wasnt supposed to get killed because he was inside the magic circle of the family. What he hadnt been able to make Wicky understand was that doctors compartmentalized just as cheerfully and blindly as anyone else. A tit wasnt a tit unless it was your wifes tit. In the office, a tit was a case. You could stand up in front of a medical colloquium and cite leukemia figures in children until you were blue in the face and still not believe it if one of your own kids got a call on the Bone-Phone. My kid? My kids cat, even? Doctor, you must be joking.
Never