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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm“Stanny’s grandda bought from the Micmacs and did a goodbusiness with them long after most of the other trappers and traders had given up or gone west becausehe traded with them at a fair price and because, Stanny said, he knew the whole Bible by heart, and theMicmacs liked to hear him speak the words the blackrobes had spoken to them in the years before thebuckskin men and woodsmen came.”He fell silent. Louis waited.“The Micmacs told Stanny B.’s grandda about the burying ground which they didn’t use anymorebecause the Wendigo had soured the ground, and about Little God Swamp, and the steps, and all the rest.“The Wendigo story, now, that was something you could hear in those days all over the north country. Itwas a story they had to have, the same way I guess we have to have some of our Christian stories.Norma would damn me for a profaner if she heard me say that, but Louis, it’s true. Sometimes, if thewinter was long and hard and the food was short, there were north country Indians who would finally getdown to the bad place where it was starve or. . . or do something else.”“Cannibalism?”Jud shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe they’d pick out someone who was old and used up, and then there wouldbe stew for a while. And the story they worked out would be that the Wendigo had walked through theirvillage or encampment while they were sleepin and touched them. And the Wendigo was supposed togive those it touched a taste for the flesh of their own kind.”Louis nodded. “Saying the devil made them do it.”“Sure. My own guess is that the Micmacs around here had to do it at some point and that they buried thebones of whoever they ate—one or two, maybe even ten or a dozen—up there in their burying ground.”“And then decided the ground had gone sour,” Louis muttered.“So here’s Stanny B., come out in back of the livery to get his jug, I guess,” Jud said, “already halfcrocked,he was. His grandfather was worth maybe a million dollars when he died—or so people said—and Stanny B. was nothing but the local ragman. He asked me what was wrong, and I told him. He sawI’d been bawling, and he told me there was a way it could be fixed up, if I was brave and sure I wanted itfixed up.“I said I’d give anything to have Spot well again, and I asked him if he knew a vet that could do it.‘Don’t know no vet, me,’ Stanny said, ‘but I know how to fix your dog, boy. You go home now and tellyour dad to put that dog in a grain sack, but you ain’t gonna bury him, no! You gonna drag him up to thefile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (122 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM