Pet Sematary - Stephen King [73]
Jud, what are you talking about? Louis asked, alarmed.
Lester did it and Stanny did it for the same reason I did it. You do it because it gets hold of you. You do it because that burial place is a secret place, and you want to share the secret, and when you find a reason that seems good enough, why Jud took his hands away from his face and looked at Louis with eyes that seemed incredibly ancient, incredibly haggard. Why then you just go ahead and do it. You make up reasons they seem like good reasons.. but mostly you do it because you want to. Or because you have to. My dad, he didnt take me up there because hed heard about it but hed never been. Stanny B. had been up there and he took me.. and seventy years go by and then all at once
Jud shook his head and coughed dryly into the palm of his hand.
Listen, he said. Listen, Louis. Lesters bull was the only damn animal I ever knew of that turned really mean. I blieve that Missus Lavesques little chow might have bit the postman once, after, and I heard a few other things animals that got a little nasty.. but Spot was always a good dog. He always smelled like dirt, it didnt matter how many times you washed him, he always smelled like dirt-but he was a good dog. My mother would never touch him afterward, but he was a good dog just the same. But Louis, if you was to take your cat out tonight and kill it, I would never say a word.
That place all at once it gets hold of you and you make up the sweetest-smelling reasons in the world.. but I could have been wrong, Louis. That's all Im saying. Lester could have been wrong. Stanny B. could have been wrong. Hell, I aint God either. But bringing the dead back to life thats about as close to playing God as you can get, aint it?
Louis opened his mouth again, then closed it again. What would have come out would have sounded wrong, wrong and
cruel: Jud, I didnt go through all that just to kill the damn cat again.
Jud drained his beer and then put it carefully aside with the other empties. I guess thats it, he said. I am talked out.
Can I ask you one other question? Louis asked.
I guess so, Jud said.
Louis said: Has anyone ever buried a person up there? Juds arm jerked convulsively; two of the beer bottles fell off the table, and one of them shattered.
Christ on His throne, he said to Louis. No! And who ever would? You dont even want to talk about such things, Louis!
I was just curious, Louis said uneasily.
Some things it dont pay to be curious about, Jud Crandall said, and for the first time he looked really old and infirm to Louis Creed, as if he were standing somewhere in the neighborhood of his own freshly prepared grave.
And later, at home, something else occurred to him about how Jud had looked at that moment.
He had looked like he was lying.
27
Louis didnt really know he was drunk until he got back in his own garage.
Outside there was starlight and a chilly rind of moon. Not enough light to cast a shadow, but enough to see by. Once he got in the garage, he was blind. There was a light switch somewhere, but he was damned if he could remember anymore just where it was. He felt his way along slowly, shuffling his feet, his head swimming, anticipating a painful crack on the knee or a toy that he would stumble over, frightening himself with its crash, perhaps falling over himself. Ellies little Schwinn with its red training wheels. Gages Crawly-Gator.
Where was the eat? Had he left him in?
Somehow he sailed off course and ran into the wall. A splinter whispered into one palm and he cried out Shit! to the darkness, realizing after the word was out that it sounded more seared than mad. The whole garage seemed to have taken a stealthy half-turn. Now it wasnt just the light switch; now he didnt know where the fuck anything was, and that included the door into the kitchen.
He began walking again, moving slowly, his palm stinging. This is what it would be like to be blind, he thought, and that made him think of a Stevie Wonder concert he and Rachel had gone to-when? Six years ago? As impossible