Pet Sematary(69)

"On my way," he said and hung up.

32

It had not been a heart attack. It had been a cerebral accident, sudden and probably painless. When Louis called Steve Master-ton that afternoon and told him what was going on, Steve said that he wouldn't mind going out just that way.

"Sometimes God dillies and dailies," Steve said, "and sometimes He just points at you and tells you to hang up your jock."

Rachel did not want to talk about it at all and would not allow Louis to talk to her of it.

Ellie was not so much upset as she was surprised and interested-it was what Louis thought a thoroughly healthy six year-old reaction should be. She wanted to know if Mrs. Crandall had died with her eyes shut or open. Louis said he didn't know.

Jud took hold as well as could have been expected, considering the fact that the lady had been sharing bed and board with him for almost sixty years. Louis found the old man-and on this day he looked very much like an old man of eighty-three-sitting alone at the kitchen table, smoking a Chesterfield, drinking a bottle of beer, and staring blankly into the living room.
Chapter 13

From the cellar, probably. Maybe there's a broken cellar window. In fact there must be a broken window down there. I'll check it tomorrow when 1 get home.

Hell, before I go to work. I'll-Gage stopped crying and began to make an ugly, gargling choking sound.

"Louis!" Rachel screamed.

Louis moved fast. Gage was on his side and vomit was trickling out of his mouth onto an old towel Rachel had spread beside him. He was vomiting, yes, but not enough. Most of it was inside, and Gage was blushing with the onset of asphyxiation.

Louis grabbed the boy under the arms, aware in a distant way of how hot his son's armpits were under the Dr. Denton suit, and put him up on his shoulder as if to burp him. Then Louis snapped himself backward, jerking Cage with him.

Gage's neck whip-lashed. He uttered a loud bark that was not quite a belch, and an amazing flag of almost solid vomit flew from his mouth and spattered on the floor and the dresser. Cage began to cry again, a solid, bawling sound that was music to Louis's ears. To cry like that you had to be getting an unlimited supply of oxygen.

Rachel's knees buckled and she collapsed onto the bed, head supported in her hands. She was shaking violently. "He almost died, didn't he, Louis? He almost ch-ch-ch--oh my God-"

Louis walked around the room with his son in his arms. Gage's cries were tapering off to whimperings; he was already almost asleep again.

"The chances are fifty to one he would have cleared it himself, Rachel. I just gave him a hand."

"But he was close," she said. She looked up at him, and her white-ringed eyes were stunned and unbelieving. "Louis, he was so close."

Suddenly he remembered her shouting at him in the sunny kitchen: He's not going to die, no one is going to die around here.

"Honey," Louis said, "we're all close. All the time."

It was milk that had almost surely caused the fresh round of vomiting. Gage had awakened around midnight, she said, an hour or so after Louis had gone to sleep, with his "hungry cry," and Rachel had gotten him a bottle. She had drowsed off again herself while he was still taking it. About an hour later, the choking spell began.

No more milk, Louis said, and Rachel had agreed, almost humbly. No more milk.

Louis got back downstairs at around a quarter of two and spent fifteen minutes hunting up the cat. During his search, he found the door which communicated between the kitchen and basement standing ajar, as he suspected he would. He remembered his mother telling him about a cat that had gotten quite good at pawing open old-fashioned latches, such as the one on their cellar door. The cat would just climb the edge of the door, she'd said, and pat the thumb plate of the latch with its paw until the door opened. A cute enough trick, Louis thought, but not one he intended to allow Church to practice often. There was, after all, a lock on the cellar door, too. He found Church dozing under the stove and tossed it out the front door without ceremony. On his way back to the hide-a-bed, he closed the cellar door again.

And this time shot the bolt.

29

In the morning, Gage's temperature was almost normal. His cheeks were chapped, but otherwise he was bright-eyed and full of beans. All at once, in the course of a week it seemed, his meaningless gabble had turned into a slew of words; he would imitate almost anything you said. What Ellie wanted him to say was "shit."

"Say shit, Gage," Ellie said over her oatmeal.

"Shit-Gage," Gage responded agreeably over his own cereal. Louis allowed the cereal on condition that Gage eat it with only a little sugar. And, as usual, Gage seemed to be shampooing with it rather than actually eating it.

Ellie dissolved into giggles.

"Say farts, Gage," she said.

"Farz-Gage," Gage said, grinning through the oatmeal spread across his face.

"Farz-n-shit."

Ellie and Louis broke up. It was impossible not to.

Rachel was not so amused. "That's enough vulgar talk for one morning, I think,"

she said, handing Louis his eggs.

"Shit-n-farz-n-farz-n-shit," Gage sang cheerily, and Ellie hid her giggles in her hands. Rachel's mouth twitched a little, and Louis thought she was looking a hundred percent better in spite of her broken rest. A lot of it was relief, Louis supposed. Gage was better and she was home.