ebEpvI

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmThe last word became a miserable choke. She tried to drink coffee, but that was no good. A momentlater she was sobbing into her hands.There was a queer moment then. There were crossing lines of tension then. They all seemed to focus onLouis. He felt this with the same preternatural insight he’d had all this day, and of them all, this was theclearest and surest. Even the waitress felt those converging lines of awareness. He saw her pause at atable near the back where she was laying placemats and silver. For a moment Louis was puzzled, andthen he understood: they were waiting for him to comfort his wife.He couldn’t do it. He wanted to do it. He understood it was his responsibility to do it. All the same, hecouldn’t. It was the cat that got in his way. Suddenly and with no rime or reason. The cat. The fuckingcat. Church with his ripped mice and the birds he had grounded forever. When he found them, Louis hadcleaned up the messes promptly, with no complaint or comment, certainly without protest. He had, afterall, bought them. But had he bought this?He saw his fingers. Louis saw his fingers. He saw his fingerslightly skating over the back of Gage’s jacket. Then Gage’s jacket had been gone. Then Gage had beengone.He looked into his coffee cup and let his wife cry beside him, uncomforted.After a moment—in terms of clock time probably quite short, but both then and in retrospect it seemedlong—Steve put an arm around her and hugged her gently. His eyes on Louis’s were reproachful andangry. Louis turned from them toward Jud, but Jud was looking down, as if in shame. There was no helpthere.“I knew something like this would happen,” Irwin Goldman said. That was how the trouble started. “Iknew it when she married you. ‘You’ll have all the grief you can stand and more,’ I said. And look atthis. Look at this. . . this mess.”37Louis looked slowly around at his father-in-law, who had appeared before him like some malign jack-infile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm(193 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM