Pet Sematary(72)

"Hey, babe, don't do that," he said. "Put it on."

"Louis, we can't afford-you can't afford-"

"Shhh," he said. "I socked some money away off and on since last Christmas...

and it wasn't as much as you might think."

"How much was it?"

"I'll never tell you that, Rachel," he said solemnly. "An army of Chinese torturers couldn't get it out of me. Two thousand dollars."

"Two thousand-i" She hugged him so suddenly and so tightly that he almost fell down the stairs. "Louis, you're crazy!"

"Put it on," he said again.

She did. He helped her with the clasp, and then she turned around to look at him. "I want to go up and look at it," she said. "I think I want to preen."

"Preen away," he said. "I'll put out the cat and get the lights."

"When we make it," she said, looking directly into his eyes, "I want to take everything off except this."

"Preen in a hurry, then," Louis said, and she laughed.

He grabbed Church and draped it over his arm-he didn't bother much with the broom these days. He supposed that, in spite of everything, he had almost gotten used to the cat again. He went toward the entryway door, turning off lights as he went. When he opened the door communicating between the kitchen and garage, an eddy of cold air swirled around his ankles.

"Have a merry Christmas, Ch-"

He broke off. Lying on the welcome mat was a dead crow. Its head was mangled.

One wing had been ripped off and lay behind the body like a charred piece of paper. Church immediately squirmed out of Louis's arms and began to nuzzle the frozen corpse eagerly. As Louis watched, the cat's head darted forward, its ears laid back, and before he could turn his head, Church had ripped out one of the crow's milky, glazed eyes.

Church strikes again, Louis thought a little sickly, and turned his head-not, however, before he had seen the bloody, gaping socket where the crow's eye had been. Shouldn't bother me, shouldn't, I've seen worse, oh yeah, Pascow, for instance, Pascow was worse, a lot worse-But it did bother him. His stomach turned over. The warm build of sexual excitement had suddenly deflated. Christ, that bird's damn near as big as he is. Must have caught it with its guard down. Way, way down.

This would have to be cleaned up. Nobody needed this sort of present on Christmas morning. And it was his responsibility, wasn't it? Sure was. His and nobody else's. He had recognized that much in a subconscious way even on the evening of his family's return, when he had purposely spilled the tires over the tattered body of the mouse Church had killed.

The soil of a man's heart is stonier, Louis.

This thought was so clear, somehow so three-dimensional and auditory, that Louis jerked a little, as if Jud had materialized at his shoulder and spoken aloud.

A man grows what he can... and tends it.

Church was still hunched greedily over the dead bird. He was working at the other wing now. There was a tenebrous rustling sound as Church pulled it back and forth, back and forth. Never get it off the ground, Orville. That's right, Wilbur, f**king bird's just as dead as dogshit, might as well feed it to the cat, might as well-Louis suddenly kicked Church, kicked him hard. The cat's hindquarters rose and came down splayfooted. It walked away, sparing him another of its ugly yellow-green glances. "Eat me," Louis hissed at it, catlike himself.

"Louis?" Rachel's voice came faintly from their bedroom. "Coming to bed?"

"Be right there," he called back. I've just got this little mess to clean up, Rachel, okay? Because it's my mess. He fumbled for the switch that controlled the garage light. He went quickly back to the cupboard under the kitchen sink and got a green Hefty Bag. He took the bag back into the garage and took the shovel down from its nail on the garage wall. He scraped up the crow and dropped it into the bag. Then he shoveled up the severed wing and slipped that in. He tied a knot in the top of the bag and dropped it into the bin on the far side of the Civic. By the time he had finished, his ankles were growing numb.

Church was standing by the garage doorway. Louis made a threatening gesture at the cat with the shovel, and it was gone like black water.

Upstairs, Rachel was lying on her bed, wearing nothing but the sapphire on its chain... as promised. She smiled at him lazily. "What took you so long, Chief?"

"The light over the sink was out," Louis said. "I changed the bulb."

"Come here," she said and tugged him gently toward her. Not by the hand. "He knows if you've been sleeping," she sang softly; a little smile curved up the corners of her lips. "He knows if you're awake... oh my, Louis dear, what's this?"

"Something that just woke up, I think," Louis said, slipping off his robe. "Maybe we ought to see if we can get it to sleep before Santa comes, what do you think?"

She rose on one elbow; he felt her breath, warm and sweet.

"He knows if you've been bad or good... so be good... for goodness sake...

Have you been a good boy, Louis?"

"I think so," he said. His voice was not quite steady.

"Let's see if you taste as good as you look," she said.

The sex was good, but Louis did not find himself simply slipping off afterward as he usually did when the sex was good-slipping off easy with himself, his wife, his life. He lay in the darkness of Christmas morning, listening to Rachel's breathing slow and deep, and he thought about the dead bird on the doorstep-Church's Christmas present to him.