Pet Sematary - Stephen King [68]
do when youre a kid and you want to get out after midnight- Louis laughed, even though he could not remember ever having wanted to get out of the house at some dark hour when he was a boy of ten. Still, if he had wanted to, he was sure that windows which had never creaked in the daytime would creak then.
I figured my folks must have thought burglars were trying to break in, but when my heart quieted down I could hear my dad still sawin wood in the bedroom on the first floor. I looked out and there was Stanny B., standin in our driveway and lookin up, swayin like there was a high wind when there wasnt so much as a puff of breeze. I dont think he ever would have come, Louis, except that hed gotten to that stage of drunkenness where youre as wide awake as an owl with diarrhea and you just dont give a care about anything. And he sort of yells up at me-only I guess he thought he was whispering-You comin down, boy, or am I comin up to get you?
Shh! I says, scared to death now that my dad will wake up and give me the whopping of my young life. Whatd you say? Stanny says, even louder than before. If my parents had been around on the road side of this house, Louis, I would have been a goner. But they had the bedroom that belongs to Norma and me now, with the river view.
I bet you got down those stairs in one hell of a hurry, Louis said. Have you got another beer, Jud? He was already two past his usual limit, but tonight that seemed okay. Tonight that seemed almost mandatory.
I do, and you know where theyre kept, Jud said and lit a fresh smoke. He waited until Louis was seated again. No, I wouldnt have dared to try the stairs. They went past my parents bedroom. I went down the ivy trellis, hand over hand, just as quick as I could. I was some scared, I can tell you, but I think I was more scared of my dad just then than I was of going up to the Pet Sematary with Stanny B.
He crushed out his smoke.
We went up there, the two of us, and I guess Stanny B. must have fallen down half a dozen times if he fell down once. He was really far gone; smelled like hed fallen into a vat of corn. One time he damn near put a stick through his throat. But he had a pick and shovel with him. When we got to the Pet Sematary, I
kind of expected hed sling me the pick and shovel and just pass out while I dug the hole.
Instead he seemed to sober up a little. He told me we was goin on, up over the deadfall and deeper into the woods, where there was another burial place. I looked at Stanny, who was so drunk he could barely keep his feet, and I looked at that deadfall, and I said, You cant climb that, Stanny B., youll break your neck.
And he said, I aint gonna break my neck, me, and neither are you. I can walk and you can lug your dog. And he was right. He sailed up over that deadfall just as smooth as silk, never even looking down, and I lugged Spot all the way up there, although he must have weighed thirty-five pounds or so and I only went about ninety myself. I want to tell you, though, Louis, I was some sore and sprung the next day. How do you feel today?
Louis didnt answer, only nodded.
We walked and we walked, Jud said. It seemed to me we was gonna walk forever. The woods were spookier in those days. More birds calling from the trees, and you didnt know what any of em was. Animals moving around out there. Deer, most likely, but back then there were moose too and bears and catamounts. I dragged Spot. After a while I started to get the funny idea that old Stanny B. was gone and I was following an Indian. Following an Indian and somewhere farther along hed turn around, all grinning and black-eyed, his face streaked up with that stinking paint they made from bearfat; that hed have a tommyhawk made out of a wedge of slate and a hake of ashwood all tied together with rawhide, and hed grab me by the back of the neck and whack off my hair-along with the top of my skull. Stanny wasnt staggerin or fallin anymore; he just walked straight and easy, with his head up, and