Pet Sematary(55)

"Well, Hanratty came back, but Lester shot him dead two weeks later. That bull turned mean, really mean. But he's the only animal I ever heard of that did.

Most of them just seem.

a little stupid... a little slow... a little... " "A little dead?"

"Yeah," Jud said. "A little dead. Like they had been... somewhere... and came back... but not all the way. Now, your daughter isn't going to know that, Louis. Not that her cat was hit by a car, and killed, and came back. So you could say you can't teach a child a lesson unless the child knows there's a lesson to be learned. Except...

"Except sometimes you can," Louis said, more to himself than to Jud.

"Yes," Jud agreed, "sometimes you can. Maybe she'll learn something about what death really is, which is where the pain stops and the good memories begin. Not the end of life, but the end of pain. You don't tell her those things; she will figure them out on her own.

"And if she's anything like me, she'll go on loving her pet. It won't turn vicious, or bite, or anything like that. She'll go on loving it... but she'll draw her own conclusions... and she'll breathe a sigh of relief when it finally dies."

"That's why you took me up there," Louis said. He felt better now. He had an explanation. It was diffuse, it relied more upon the logic of the nerve endings than the logic of the rational mind, but under the circumstances, he found he could accept that. And it meant he could forget the expression he thought he had seen on Jud's face briefly last night-that dark, capering glee. "Okay, that's-"

Abruptly, almost shockingly, Jud covered his face with both hands. For one moment Louis thought he had been struck by a sudden pain, and he half-rose, concerned, until he saw the convulsive heave of the chest and realized that the old man was struggling not to cry.

"That's why, but it ain't why," he said in a strangled, choked voice. "I did it for the same reason Stanny B. did it and for the same reason Lester Morgan did it. Lester took Linda Lavesque up there after her dog got run over in the road. He took her up there even though he had to put his goddam bull out of its misery for chasing kids through its pasture like it was mad. He did it anyway, he did it anyway, Louis," Jud almost moaned, "and what the Christ do you make of that!"

"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 didn't take me up there because he'd heard about it but he'd 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. Lester's bull was the only damn animal I ever knew of that turned really mean. I b'lieve that Missus Lavesque's 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 didn't 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 I'm saying. Lester could have been wrong. Stanny B. could have been wrong. Hell, I ain't God either. But bringing the dead back to life... that's about as close to playing God as you can get, ain't it?"

Louis opened his mouth again, then closed it again. What would have come out would have sounded wrong, wrong and cruel: Jud, I didn't 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 that's 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?" Jud's 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 don't even want to talk about such things, Louis!"

"I was just curious," Louis said uneasily.
Chapter 12

"Some things it don't 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 didn't 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.