Pet Sematary - Stephen King [62]
He talked to Ellie for almost five minutes. She prattled on about the doll Grandma had gotten her, about the trip she and Grandda had taken to the stockyards (Boy, do they stink, Daddy, Ellie said, and Louis thought, Your granddas no rose, either, sweetie), about how she had helped make bread, and about how Gage had gotten away from Rachel while she was changing him. Gage had run down the hallway and pooped right in the doorway leading into Granddas study (Atta boy, Gage! Louis thought, a big grin spreading over his face).
He actually thought he was going to get away-at least for this morning-and was getting ready to ask Ellie for her mother again so he could say goodbye to her when Ellie asked, Hows Church, Daddy? Does he miss me?
The grin faded from Louiss mouth, but he answered readily. and with the perfect note of offhanded casualness: Hes fine, I guess. I gave him the leftover beef stew last night and then put him out. Havent seen him this morning, but I just woke up.
Oh boy, you would have made a great murderer-cool as a cucumber. Dr. Creed, when did you last see the deceased? He came in for supper. Had a plate of beef stew, in fact. I havent seen him since then.
Well, give him a kiss for me.
Yuck, kiss your own cat, Louis said, and Ellie giggled.
You want to talk to Mommy again, Daddy?
Sure. Put her on.
Then it was over. He talked to Rachel for another couple of minutes; the subject of Church was not touched upon. He and his wife exchanged love-yous, and Louis hung up.
Thats that, he said to the empty, sunny room, and maybe the worst thing about it was that he didnt feel bad, didnt feel guilty at all.
24
Steve Masterton called around nine-thirty and asked if Louis would like to come up to the university and play some racket ball
-the place was deserted, he said gleefully, and they could play the whole goddam day if they wanted to.
Louis could understand the glee-when the university was in session, the waiting list for a racket ball court was sometimes two days long-but he declined all the same, telling Steve he wanted to work on an article he was writing for The Magazine of College Medicine.
You sure? Steve asked. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy, you know.
Check me later, Louis said. Maybe Ill be up for it.
Steve said he would and hung up. Louis had told only a half-lie this time; he did plan to work on his article, which concerned itself with treating contagious ailments such as chicken-pox and mononucleosis in the infirmary environment, but the main reason he had turned down Steves offer was that he was a mass of aches and pains. He had discovered this as soon as he finished talking to Rachel and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. His back muscles creaked and groaned, his shoulders were sore from lugging the cat in that damned garbage bag, and the hamstrings
in back of his knees felt like guitar strings tuned three octaves past their normal pitch. Christ, he thought, and you had the stupid idea you were in some kind of shape. He would have looked cute trying to play racket ball with Steve, lumbering around like an arthritic old man.
And speaking of old men, he hadnt made that hike into the woods the night before by himself; he had gone with a guy who was closing in on eighty-five. He wondered if Jud was hurting as badly as he was this morning.
He spent an hour and a half working on his article, but it did not march very well. The emptiness and the silence began to get on his nerves, and at last he stacked his yellow legal pads and the offprints he had ordered from Johns Hopkins on the shelf above his typewriter, put on his parka, and crossed the road.
Jud and Norma werent there, but there was an envelope tacked to the porch door with his name written across the front of it. He took it down and opened the flap with his thumb.
Louis,
The good wife and me are off to Bucksport to do some shopping and to look at a welsh dresser at the Emporium Galorium that Normas had her eye on for about a hundred years, it seems like. Probably well have a spot of lunch at McLeods