Pet Sematary(86)

"She's known where babies come from for a year or more," he reminded her again.

She was quiet for a long time, looking up at the ceiling and biting her lips.

"If you think it's best," she said finally. "If you think it won't... won't hurt her."

"Come over here, Rachel," he said, and that night they slept back-to-stomach in Louis's bed, and when she woke up trembling in the middle of the night, the Valium worn off, he soothed her with his hands and whispered in her ear that everything was okay, and she slept again.

33

"For man-and woman-is like the flowers in the valley, which bloom today and are tomorrow cast into the oven: the time of man is but a season; it cometh, and so it passeth away. Let us pray."

Ellie, resplendent in a navy blue dress bought especially for the occasion, dropped her head so abruptly that Louis, sitting next to her in the pew, heard her neck creak. Ellie had been in few churches, and of course it was her first funeral; the combination had awed her to unaccustomed silence.

For Louis, it had been a rare occasion with his daughter. Mostly blinded by his love for her, as he was by his love for Gage, he rarely observed her in a detached way; but today he thought he was seeing what was almost a textbook case of the child nearing the end of life's first great developmental stage; an organism of almost pure curiosity, storing up information madly in almost endless circuits. Ellie had been quiet even when Jud, looking strange but elegant in his black suit and lace-up shoes (Louis believed it was the first time he had ever seen him in anything but loafers or green rubber boots), had bent over, kissed her, and said: "Glad you could come, honey. And I bet Norma is too."

Ellie had gazed at him, wide-eyed.

Now the Methodist minister, Reverend Laughlin, was pronouncing the benediction, asking God to lift up His countenance upon them and give them peace.

"Will the pallbearers come forward?" he asked.

Louis started to rise, and Ellie halted him, tugging his arm frantically. She looked scared. "Daddy!" she stage-whispered. "Where are you going?"

"I'm one of the pallbearers, honey," Louis said, sitting down beside her again for a moment and putting an arm around her shoulders. "That means I'm going to help carry Norma out. There are four of us that are going to do it-me and two of Jud's nephews and Norma's brother."

"Where will I find you?"

Louis glanced down front. The other three pallbearers had assembled there, along with Jud. The rest of the congregation was filing out, some of them weeping.

"If you just go out on the steps, I'll meet you there," he said. "All right, Ellie?"

"Yes," she said. "Just don't forget me."

"No, I won't."

He got up again, and she tugged his hand again.

"Daddy?"

"What, babe?"

"Don't drop her," Ellie whispered.

Louis joined the others, and Jud introduced him to the nephews, who were really second or third cousins... descendants of Jud's father's brother. They were big fellows in their twenties with a strong facial resemblance. Norma's brother was somewhere in his late fifties, Louis guessed, and while the strain of a death in the family was on his face, he seemed to be bearing up well.

"Pleased to meet you all," Louis said. He felt a trifle uncomfortable-an outsider in the family circle.

They nodded at him.

"Ellie okay?" Jud asked and nodded to her. She was lingering in the vestibule, watching.

Sure-she just wants to make sure I don't go up in a puff of smoke, Louis thought and almost smiled. But then that thought called up another one: Oz the Gweat and Tewwible. And the smile died.

"Yes, I think so," Louis said and raised a hand to her. She raised hers in return and went outside then in a swirl of navy blue dress. For a moment Louis was uneasily struck by how adult she looked. It was the sort of illusion, no matter how fleeting, that could give a man pause.

"You guys ready?" one of the nephews asked.

Louis nodded; so did Norma's younger brother.

"Take it easy with her," Jud said. His voice had roughened. Then he turned away and walked slowly up the aisle with his head down.

Louis moved to the back left corner of the steel-gray American Eternal coffin Jud had chosen for his wife. He laid hold of his runner and the four of them slowly carried Norma's coffin out into the bright still cold of February first. Someone-the church custodian, he supposed-had laid down a good bed of cinders over the slippery path of tamped snow. At the curb a Cadillac hearse idled white exhaust into the winter air. The funeral director and his husky son stood beside it, watching them, ready to lend a hand if anyone (her brother, perhaps) should slip or flag.

Jud stood beside him and watched as they slid the coffin inside. "Goodbye, Norma," he said and lit a cigarette. "I'll see you in a while, old girl."

Louis slipped an arm around Jud's shoulders, and Norma's brother stood close by on his other side, crowding the mortician and his son into the background. The burly nephews (or second cousins, or whatever they were) had already done a fade, the simple job of lifting and carrying done. They had grown distant from this part of the family; they had known the woman's face from photographs and a few duty visits perhaps-long afternoons spent in the parlor eating Norma's cookies and drinking Jud's beer, perhaps not really minding the old stories of times they had not lived through and people they had not known, but aware of things they could have been doing all the same (a car that could have been washed and Turtle-waxed, a league bowling practice, maybe just sitting around the TV and watching a boxing match with some friends), and glad to be away when the duty was done.