Stephen King: Pet Sematary

“Doc,” Crandall said. “I thought that was you.”

Hope you meant it about the beer,” Louis said, coming in.

“Oh, about beer I never lie,” Crandall said. “A man who lies about beer makes enemies. Sit down, Doc. I put an extra couple on ice, just in case.”

The porch was long and narrow, furnished with rattan chairs and sofas. Louis sank into one and was surprised at how comfortable it was. At his left hand was a tin pail filled with ice cubes and a few cans of Black Label. He took one.

“Thank you,” he said and opened it. The first two swallows hit his throat like a blessing.

“More’n welcome,” Crandall said. “I hope your time here will be a happy one, Doc.”

“Amen,” Louis said.

“Say! If you want crackers or somethin, I could get some. I got a wedge of rat that’s just about ripe.”

“A wedge of what?”

“Rat cheese.” Crandall sounded faintly amused.

“Thanks, but just the beer will do me.”

“Well then, we’ll just let her go.” Crandall belched contentedly.

“Your wife gone to bed?” Louis asked, wondering why he was opening the door like this.

“Ayuh. Sometimes she stays up. Sometimes she don’t.”

“Her arthritis is quite painful, isn’t it?”

“You ever see a case that wasn’t?” Crandall asked.

Louis shook his head.

“I guess it’s tolerable,” Crandall said. “She don’t complain much. She’s a good old girl, my Norma.” There was a great and simple weight of affection in his voice. Out on Route 15, a tanker truck droned by, one so big and long that for a moment Louis couldn’t see his house across the road. Written on the side, just visible in the last light, was the word ORINCO.

“One hell of a big truck,” Louis commented.

“Orinco’s near Orrington,” Crandall said. “Chemical fertilizer fact’ry. They come and go, all right. And the oil tankers, and the dump trucks, and the people who go to work in Bangor or Brewer and come home at night.” He shook his head.

“That’s the one thing about Ludlow I don’t like anymore. That frigging road. No peace from it. They go all day and all night. Wake Norma up sometimes. Hell, wake me up sometimes, and I sleep like a goddam log.”

Louis, who thought this strange Maine landscape almost eerily quiet after the constant roar of Chicago, only nodded his head.

“One day soon the Arabs will pull the plug, and they’ll be able to grow African violets right down the yellow line,” Crandall said.

“You might be right.” Louis tilted his can back and was surprised to find it empty.

Crandall laughed. “You just grab yourself one to grow on, Doc.”

Louis hesitated and then said, “All right, but just one more. I have to be getting back.”

“Sure you do. Ain’t moving a bitch?”

“It is,” Louis agreed, and then for a time they were silent. The silence was a comfortable one, as if they had known each other for a long time. This was a feeling about which Louis had read in books, but which he had never experienced until.

now. He felt ashamed of his casual thoughts about free medical advice earlier.

On the road a semi roared by, its running lights twinkling like earthstars.

“That’s one mean road, all right,” Crandall repeated thoughtfully, almost vaguely, and then turned to Louis. There was a peculiar little smile on his seamed mouth. He poked a Chesterfield into one corner of the smile and popped a match with his thumbnail. “You remember the path there that your little girl commented on?”

For a moment Louis didn’t; Ellie had commented on a whole catalogue of things before finally collapsing for the night. Then he did remember. That wide mown patch winding up through the copse of trees and over the hill.

“Yes, I do. You promised to tell her about it sometime.”

“I did, and I will,” Crandall said. “That path goes up into the woods about a mile and a half. The local kids around Route 15 and Middle Drive keep it nice because they use it. Kids come and go… there’s a lot more moving around than there used to be when I was a boy; then you picked a place out and stuck to it. But they seem to tell each other, and every spring a bunch of them mows that path. They keep it nice all the summer long. Not all of the adults in town know it’s there-a lot of them do, of course, but not all, not by a long chalk-but all of the kids do. I’d bet on it.”

“Know what’s there?”

“The pet cemetery,” Crandall said.

“Pet cemetery,” Louis repeated, bemused.

“It’s not as odd as it prob’ly sounds,” Crandall said, smoking and rocking.

“It’s the road. It uses up a lot of animals, that road does. Dogs and cats, mostly, but that ain’t all. One of those big Orinco trucks run down the pet raccoon the Ryder -children used to keep. That was back-Christ, must have been in ‘73, maybe earlier. Before the state made keeping a coon or even a denatured skunk illegal, anyway.”

“Why did they do that?”

“Rabies,” Crandall said. “Lot of rabies in Maine now. There was a big old St.

Bernard went rabid downstate a couple of years ago and killed four people. That was a hell of a thing. Dog hadn’t had his shots. If those foolish people had seen that dog had had its shots, it never would have happened. But a coon or a skunk, you can vaccinate it twice a year and still it don’t always take. But that coon the Ryder boys had, that was what the oldtimers used to call a ‘sweet coon. ’ It’d waddle right up to you-gorry, wa’n’t he fat!-and lick your face like a dog. Their dad even paid a vet to spay him and declaw him. That must have cost him a country fortune!

“Ryder, he worked for IBM in Bangor. They went out to Colorado five years ago.

… or maybe it was six. Funny to think of those two almost old enough to drive.

Were they broken up over that coon? I guess they were. Matty Ryder cried so long his mom got scared and wanted to take him to the doctor. I spose he’s over it now, but they never forget. When a good animal gets run down in the road, a kid never forgets.”

Louis’s mind turned to Ellie as he had last seen her tonight, fast asleep with Church purring rustily on the foot of the mattress.

“My daughter’s got a cat,” he said. “Winston Churchill. We call him Church for short.”

“Do they climb when he walks?”

“I beg your pardon?” Louis had no idea what he was talking about.

“He still got his balls or has he been fixed?”

“No,” Louis said. “No, he hasn’t been fixed.”

In fact there had been some trouble over that back in Chicago. Rachel had wanted to get Church spayed, had even made the appointment with the vet. Louis canceled it. Even now he wasn’t really sure why. it wasn’t anything as simple or as stupid as equating his masculinity with that of his daughter’s tom, nor even his resentment at the idea that Church would have to be castrated so the fat housewife next door wouldn’t need to be troubled with twisting down the lids of her plastic garbage cans-those things had been part of it, but most of it had been a vague but strong feeling that it Would destroy something in Church that he himself valued-that it would put out the go-to-hell look in the cat’s green eyes. Finally he had pointed out to Rachel that they were moving to the country, and it shouldn’t be a problem. Now here was Judson Crandall, pointing out that part of country living in Ludlow consisted of dealing with Route 15, and asked him if the cat was fixed. Try a little irony, Dr. Creed-it’s good for your blood.

“I’d get him fixed,” Crandall said, crushing his smoke between his thumb and forefinger. “A fixed cat don’t tend to wander as much. But if it’s all the time crossing back and forth, its luck will run out, and it’ll end up there with the Ryder kids’ coon and little Timmy Dessler’s cocker spaniel and Missus Bradleigh’s parakeet. Not that the parakeet got run over in the road, you understand. It just went feet up one day.”