Pet Sematary

knew it. Louis thought of what he had seen-or thought he had seen-in Jud’s eyes the night before. That capering, gleeful thing. He remembered thinking that Jud’s decision to take Louis and Ellie’s cat on that particular night journey had not entirely been Jud’s own.
If not his, then whose? his mind asked. And because he had no answer, Louis swept the uncomfortable question away.
“I buried Spot and built the cairn,” Jud went on flatly, “and by the time I was done, Stanny B. was fast asleep. I had to shake the hell out of him to get him going again, but by the time we got down those forty-four stairs-”
“Forty-five,” Louis murmured.
Jud nodded. “Yeah, that’s right, ain’t it? Forty-five. By the time we got down those forty-five stairs, he was walking as steady as if he was sober again. We went back through the swamp and the woods and over the deadfall, and finally we crossed the road and we was at my house again. It seemed to me like ten hours must have gone past, but it was still full dark.
“What happens now?’ I ask Stanny B. ‘Now you wait and see what may happen,’ Stanny says, and off he walks, staggering and lurching again.
I imagine he slept out in back of the livery that night, and as things turned out, my dog Spot outlived Stanny B. by two years. His liver went bad and poisoned him, and two little kids found him in the road on July 4, 1912, stiff as a poker.
“But me, that night, I just climbed back up the ivy and got into bed and fell asleep almost as soon as my head touched the pillow.
“Next morning 1 didn’t get up until almost nine o’clock, and then my mother was calling me. My dad worked on the railroad, and he would have been gone since six.” Jud paused, thinking. “My mother wasn’t just calling me, Louis. She was screaming for me.”
Jud went to the fridge, got himself a Miller’s, and opened it on the drawer handle below the breadhox and toaster. His face looked yellow in the overhead light, the color of nicotine. He drained half his beer, uttered a belch like a gunshot, and then glanced down the hail toward the room where Norma slept. He looked back at Louis.
“This is hard for me to talk about,” he said. “I have turned it over in my mind, years and years, but I’ve never told anyone about it. Others knew what had happened, but they never talked to me about it. The way it is about sex, I guess. I’m telling you, Louis, because you’ve got a different kind of pet now.
Not necessarily a dangerous one, but… different. Do you find that’s true?”
Louis thought of Church jumping awkwardly off the toilet seat, his haunches thudding against the side of the tub; he thought of those muddy eyes that were almost but not quite stupid staring into his own.
At last he nodded.
“When I got downstairs, my mother was backed into a corner in the pantry between our icebox and one of the counters. There was a bunch of white stuff on the floor-curtains she’d been meaning to hang. Standing in the doorway of the pantry was Spot, my dog. There was dirt all over him and mud splashed clear up his legs. The fur on his belly was filthy, all knotted and snarled. He was just standing there-not growling or nothing-just standing there, but it was pretty clear that he had backed her into a corner, whether he meant to or not. She was in terror, Louis. I don’t know how you felt about your parents, but I know how I felt about mine-I loved them both dearly. Knowing I’d done something to put my own mother in terror took away any joy I might have felt when I saw Spot standing there. I didn’t even seem to feel surprised that he was there.”
“I know the feeling,” Louis said. “When I saw Church this morning, I just…
it seemed like something that was-” He paused a moment. Perfectly natural? Those were the words that came immediately to mind, but they were not the right words.
“Like something that was meant.”
“Yes,” Jud said. He lit a fresh cigarette. His hands were shaking the smallest bit. “And my mother seen me there, still in my underwear, and she screamed at me, ‘Feed your dog, Jud! Your dog needs to be fed, get him out of here before he messes the curtains!’ “So I found him some scraps and called him, and at first he didn’t come, at first it was like he didn’t know his own name, and I almost thought, well, this ain’t Spot at all, it’s some stray that looks like Spot, that’s all-”
“Yes!” Louis exclaimed.
Jud nodded. “But the second or third time I called him, he came. He sort of jerked toward me, and when I led him out onto the porch, damned if he didn’t run right into the side of the door and just about fall over. He ate the scraps though, just wolfed them down. By then I was over my first fright and was starting to get an idea of what had happened. I got on my knees and hugged him, I was so glad to see him. Then he licked my face, and… “ Jud shuddered