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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm“I buried Spot and built the cairn,” Jud went on flatly, “and by the time I was done, Stanny B. was fastasleep. I had to shake the hell out of him to get him going again, but by the time we got down thoseforty-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, hewas walking as steady as if he was sober again. We went back through the swamp and the woods andover the deadfall, and finally we crossed the road and we was at my house again. It seemed to me liketen hours must have gone past, but it was still full dark.“What happens now?’ I ask Stanny B. ‘Now you wait and seewhat may happen,’ Stanny says, and off he walks, staggering and lurching again. I imagine he slept outin 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 apoker.“But me, that night, I just climbed back up the ivy and got into bed and fell asleep almost as soon as myhead touched the pillow.“Next morning 1 didn’t get up until almost nine o’clock, and then my mother was calling me. My dadworked on the railroad, and he would have been gone since six.” Jud paused, thinking. “My motherwasn’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 breadhoxand 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. Helooked 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’venever told anyone about it. Others knew what had happened, but they never talked to me about it. Theway it is about sex, I guess. I’m telling you, Louis, because you’ve got a different kind of pet now. Notnecessarily 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 sideof 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 oneof the counters. There was a bunch of white stuff on the floor—curtains she’d been meaning to hang.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (126 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM