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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmplay some racket ball—the place was deserted, he said gleefully, and they could play the whole goddam day if they wanted to.Louis could understand the glee—when the university was in session, the waiting list for a racket ballcourt was sometimes two days long—but he declined all the same, telling Steve he wanted to work on anarticle he was writing for The Magazine of College Medicine.“You sure?” Steve asked. “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy, you know.”“Check me later,” Louis said. “Maybe I’ll be up for it.”Steve said he would and hung up. Louis had told only a half-lie this time; he did plan to work on hisarticle, which concerned itself with treating contagious ailments such as chicken-pox and mononucleosisin the infirmary environment, but the main reason he had turned down Steve’s offer was that he was amass of aches and pains. He had discovered this as soon as he finished talking to Rachel and went intothe bathroom to brush his teeth. His back muscles creaked and groaned, his shoulders were sore fromlugging the cat in that damned garbage bag, and the hamstringsin back of his knees felt like guitar strings tuned three octaves past their normal pitch. Christ, he thought,and you had the stupid idea you were in some kind of shape. He would have looked cute trying to playracket ball with Steve, lumbering around like an arthritic old man.And speaking of old men, he hadn’t made that hike into the woods the night before by himself; he hadgone with a guy who was closing in on eighty-five. He wondered if Jud was hurting as badly as he wasthis morning.He spent an hour and a half working on his article, but it did not march very well. The emptiness and thesilence began to get on his nerves, and at last he stacked his yellow legal pads and the offprints he hadordered from Johns Hopkins on the shelf above his typewriter, put on his parka, and crossed the road.Jud and Norma weren’t there, but there was an envelope tacked to the porch door with his name writtenacross the front of it. He took it down and opened the flap with his thumb.Louis,The good wife and me are off to Bucksport to do some shopping and to look at a welsh dresser at theEmporium Galorium that Norma’s had her eye on for about a hundred years, it seems like. Probablywe’ll have a spot of lunch at McLeod’s while we’re there and come back in the late afternoon. Come onover for a beer or two tonight, if you want.Your family is your family. I don’t want to be no “buttinsky,” but if Ellie were my daughter, I wouldn’tfile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (115 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM