Pet Sematary(45)

They came back the same way they had gone, but he could remember very little about the trip. He stumbled on the deadfall, he remembered that-lurching forward and thinking absurdly of Peter Pan-oh Jesus, I lost my happy thoughts and down I come-and then Jud's hand had been there, firm and hard, and a few moments later they had been trudging past the final resting places of Smucky the Cat and Trixie and Marta Our Pet Rabit and onto the path he had once walked not only with Jud but with his whole family.

It seemed that in some weary way he had pondered the dream of Victor Pascow, the one which had resulted in his somnambulistic episode, but any connection between that night walk and this had eluded him. It had also occurred to him that the whole adventure had been dangerous-not in any melodramatic Wilkie Collins sense but in a very real one. That he had outrageously blistered his hands while in a state that was nearly somnambulistic was really the least of it. He could have killed himself on the deadfall. Both of them could have. It was hard to square such behavior with sobriety. In his current exhaustion, he was willing to ascribe it to confusion and emotional upset over the death of a pet the whole family had loved.

And after a time, there they were, home again.

They walked toward it together, not speaking, and stopped again in Louis's driveway. The wind moaned and whined. Wordlessly, Louis handed Jud his pick.

"I'd best get across," Jud said at last. "Louella Bisson or Ruthie Parks will be bringin Norma home and she'll wonder where the hell I am."

"Do you have the time?" Louis asked. He was surprised that Norma wasn't home yet; in his muscles it seemed to him that midnight must have struck.

"Oh, ayuh," Jud said. "I keep the time as long as I'm dressed and then I let her go."

He fished a watch out of his pants pocket and flicked the scrolled cover back from its face.

"It's gone eight-thirty," he said and snapped the cover closed again.

"Eight-thirty?" Louis repeated stupidly. "That's all?"

"How late did you think it was?" Jud asked.

"Later than that," Louis said.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Louis," Jud said and began to move away.

He turned toward Louis, mildly questioning.

"Jud, what did we do tonight?"

"Why, we buried your daughter's cat."

"Is that all we did?"

"Nothing but that," Jud said. "You're a good man, Louis, but you ask too many questions. Sometimes people have to do things that just seem right. That seem right in their hearts, I mean. And if they do those things and then end up not feeling right, full of questions and sort of like they got indigestion, only inside their heads instead of in their guts, they think they made a mistake. Do you know what I mean?"

"Yes," touis said, thinking that Jud must have been reading his mind as the two of them walked downhill through the field and toward the house lights.

"What they don't think is that maybe they should be questioning those feelings of doubt before they question their own hearts," Jud said, looking at him closely. "What do you think, Louis?"

"I think," Louis said slowly, "that you might be right."

"And the things that are in a man's heart-it don't do him much good to talk about those things, does it?"

"Well-"

"No," Jud said, as if Louis had simply agreed. "It don't." And in his calm voice that was so sure and so implacable, in that voice which somehow put the chill through Louis, he said: "They are secret things. Women are supposed to be the ones good at keeping secrets, and I guess they do keep a few, but any woman who knows anything at all would tell you she's never really seen into any man's heart. The soil of a man's heart is stonier, Louis-like the soil up there in the old Micmac burying ground. Bedrock's close. A man grows what he can... and he tends it."

Jud-"Don't question, Louis. Accept what's done and follow your heart."

"But-"

"But nothing. Accept what's done, Louis, and follow your heart. We did what was right this time... at least, I hope to Christ it was right. Another time it could be wrong-wrong as hell."

"Will you at least answer one question?"

"Well, let's hear what it is, and then we'll see."

"How did you know about that place?" This question had also occurred to Louis on the way back, along with the suspicion that Jud himself might be part Micmac-although he did not look like it; he looked as if every one of his ancestors had been one hundred percent card-carrying Anglos.

"Why, from Stanny B.," he said, looking surprised.

"He just told you?"

"No," Jud said. "It isn't the kind of place you just tell somebody about. I buried my dog Spot up there when I was ten. He was chasing a rabbit, and he run on some rusty barbed wire. The wounds infected and it killed him."

There was something wrong about that, something that didn't fit with something Louis had been previously told, but he was too tired to puzzle out the discontinuity. Jud said no more; only looked at him from his inscrutable old man's eyes.

"Goodnight, Jud," Louis said.

"Goodnight."

The old man crossed the road, carrying his pick and shovel.

"Thanks!" Louis called impulsively.