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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmLouis looked at Jud for a long time, saying nothing. Jud flushed deeply but didn’t look away.Finally Louis said: “Sounds like maybe you did a little snooping, Jud. I am sorry because of it.”“I didn’t ask him which you bought.”“Not right out, maybe.”But Jud did not reply, and although his blush had deepened even more—his complexion wasapproaching a plum color now—his eyes still didn’t waver.At last, Louis sighed. He felt unutterably tired. “Oh, fuck it. I don’t care. Maybe you’re even right.Maybe it was on my mind. If it was, it was on the downside of it. I didn’t think much about what I wasordering. I was thinking about Gage.”“I know you were thinking about Gage. But you knew the difference. Your uncle was an undertaker.”Yes, he had known the difference. A sealing vault was a piece of construction work, something whichwas meant to last a long, long time. Concrete was poured into a rectangular mould reinforced with steelrods, and then, after the graveside services were over, a crane lowered a slightly curved concrete top intoplace. The lid was sealed with a substance like the hot-patch highway departments used to fill potholes.Uncle Carl had told Louis that sealant—trade-named Ever-Lock—got itself a fearsome grip after all thatweight had been on it for a while.Uncle Carl, who liked to yarn as much as anyone (at least when he was with his own kind, and Louis,who had worked with him summers for a while, qualified as a sort of apprentice undertaker), told hisnephew of an exhumation order he’d gotten once from the Cook County D.A.’s office. Uncle Carl wentout to Groveland to oversee the exhumation. They could be tricky things, he said—people whose onlyideas concerning disinterral came from those horror movies starring Boris Karloff as Dr. Frankenstein’smonster and Dwight Frye as Igor had an entirely wrong impression. Opening a sealing vault was no jobfor two men with picks and shovels—not unless they had about six weeks to spend on the job. This onewent all right . . . at first. The grave was opened, and the crane grappled onto the top of the vault. Onlythe top didn’t just pull off, as it was supposed to do. The whole vault, its concrete sides already a littlewet and discolored, started to rise out of the ground instead. Uncle Carl screamed for the crane operatorto back off. Uncle Carl wanted to go back to the mortuary and get some stuff that would weaken thesealant’s grip a bit.The crane operator either didn’t hear or wanted to go for the whole thing, like a little kid playing with atoy crane and junk prizes in a penny arcade. Uncle Carl said that the damned fool almost got it too. Thevault was three quarters of the way out— Uncle Carl and his assistant could hear water pattering fromfile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (208 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM