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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm“Amen,” Louis said, and they drank.It was the only time Louis saw Jud progress beyond a mild tipsiness, and even so he did not becomeincapacitated. He reminisced; a constant stream of warm memories and anecdotes, colorful and clear andsometimes arresting, flowed from him. Yet between the stories of the past, Jud dealt with the present in away Louis could only admire; if it had been Rachel who had simply dropped dead after her grapefruitand morning cereal, he wondered if he could have done half so well.Jud called the Brookings-Smith Mortuary in Bangor and made as many of the arrangements as he couldby telephone; he made an appointment to come in the following day and make the rest. Yes, he wouldhave her embalmed; he wanted her in a dress, which he would provide; yes, he would pick outunderwear; no, he did not want the mortuary to supply the special shoes which laced up the back. Wouldthey have someone wash her hair? he asked. She washed it last on Monday night, and so it had beendirty when she died. He listened, and Louis, whose uncle had been in what those in the business called“the quiet trade,” knew the undertaker was telling Jud that a final wash and set was part of the servicerendered. Jud nodded and thanked the man he was talking to, then listened again. Yes, he said, he wouldhave her cosmeticized, but it was to be a lightly applied layer. “She’s dead and people know it,” he said,lighting a Chesterfield. “No need to tart her up.” The coffin would be closed during the funeral, he toldthe director with calm authority, but open during the visiting hours the day before. She was to be buriedin Mount Hope Cemetery, where they had bought plots in 1951. He had the papers in hand and gave themortician the plot number so thatpreparations could begin out there: H-101. He himself had H-102, he told Louis later on.He hung up, looked at Louis, and said, “Prettiest cemetery in the world is right there in Bangor, as far asI’m concerned. Crack yourself another beer, if you want, Louis. All of this is going to take awhile.”Louis was about to refuse—he was feeling a little tiddly—when a grotesque image arose unbiddenbehind his eyes: Jud pulling Norma’s corpse on a pagan litter through the woods. Toward the Micmacburying ground beyond the Pet Sematary.It had the effect of a slap on him. Without a word, he got up and got another beer out of the fridge. Judnodded at him and dialed the telephone again. By three that afternoon, when Louis went home for asandwich and a bowl of soup, Jud had progressed a long way toward organizing his wife’s final rites; hemoved from one thing to the next like a man planning a dinner party of some importance. He called theNorth Ludlow Methodist Church, where the actual funeral would take place, and the CemeteryAdministration Office at Mount Hope; these were both calls the undertaker at Brookings-Smith wouldbe making, but Jud called first as a courtesy. It was a step few bereaved ever thought of . . . or if theythought of it, one they could rarely bring themselves to take. Louis admired Jud all the more for it. Laterhe called Norma’s few surviving relatives and his own, paging through an old and tattered address bookwith a leather cover to find the numbers. And between calls, he drank beer and remembered the past.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (156 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM