King, Stephen - Pet Sematary by King Stephen

Author:King, Stephen [King, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-10-29T20:24:06+00:00

“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

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