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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmLouis could get it away from him, Louis would simply mention the unique treasure he had uncovered inGage’s Pampers.“What!” Gage responded smartly. He was talking pretty well now; Louis had decided the kid mightactually be half-bright.“You wanna go out?”“Wanna go out!” Gage agreed excitedly. “Wanna go out. Where my neeks, Daddy?”This sentence, if reproduced phonetically, would have looked something like this: Weh ma neeks, Dahdee?The translation was Where are my sneakers, Father? Louis was often struck by Gage’s speech, notbecause it was cute, but because he thought that small children all sounded like immigrants learning aforeign language in some helter-skelter but fairly amiable way. He knew that babies make all the soundsthe human voice box is capable of. . . the liquid trill that proves so difficult for first-year Frenchstudents, the glottal grunts and clicks of the Australian bush people, the thickened, abrupt consonants ofGerman. They lose the capability as they learn English, and Louis wondered now (and not for the firsttime) if childhood was not more a period of forgetting than of learning.Gage’s neeks were finally found. . . they were also under the couch. One of Louis’s other beliefs wasthat in families with small children, the area under living room couches begins after a while to develop astrong and mysterious electromagnetic force that eventually sucks in all sorts of litter—everything frombottles and diaper pins to green Crayolas and old issues of Sesame Street magazine with foodmouldering between the pages.Gage’s jacket, however, wasn’t under the couch—it was halfway down the stairs. His Red Sox cap,without which Gage refused to leave the house, was the most difficult of all to find because it was whereit belonged—in the closet. That was, naturally, the last place they looked.“Where goin, Daddy?” Gage asked companionably, giving his father his hand.“Going over in Mrs. Vinton’s field,” he said. “Gonna go fly a kite, my man.”“Kiiiyte?” Gage asked doubtfully.“You’ll like it,” Louis said. “Wait a minute, kiddo.”They were in the garage now. Louis found his keyring, unlocked the little storage closet, and turned onthe light. He rummaged through the closet and found the Vulture, still in its store bag with the sales slipstapled to it. He had bought it in the depths of mid-February, when his soul had cried out for some hope.“Lat?” Gage asked. This was Gage-ese for “Whatever in the world might you have there, Father?”file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (176 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM