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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmjumper turned inside out; his sweet little boy’s body, so tough and sturdy, nearly dismembered. His caphad been full of blood.Now, sitting on his bed in the grip of this numbing hangover, rainwater spilling its lazy courses downthe window beside him, his grief came for him fully, like some gray matron from Ward Nine inpurgatory. It came and dissolved him, unmanned him, took away whatever defenses remained, and heput his face in his hands and cried, rocking back and forth on his bed, thinking he would do anything tohave a second chance, anything at all.41Gage was buried at two o’clock that afternoon. By then the rain had stopped. Tattered clouds still movedoverhead, and most of the mourners arrived carrying black umbrellas provided by the undertaker.At Rachel’s request, the funeral director, who officiated at the short, nonsectarian graveside service, readthe passage from Matthew which begins “Suffer the little children to come unto Me.” Louis, standing onone side of the grave, looked across at his father-in-law. For a moment Goldman looked back at him,and then he dropped his eyes. There was no fight left in him today. The pouches under his eyes nowresembled mailbags, and around his black silk skullcap, hair as fine and white as tattered spiderwebsflew randomly in the breeze. With his grayish-black beard scragging his cheeks, he looked more like awino than ever. He gave Louis the impression of a man who did not really know where he was. Louistried but could still find no pity in his heart for him.Gage’s small white coffin, its latch presumably repaired, sat on a pair of chromed runners over the graveliner. The verges of the grave had been carpeted with Astroturf so violently green it hurt Louis’s eyes.Several baskets of flowers had been set on top of this artificial and strangely gay surface. Louis’s eyeslooked over the funeral director’s shoulder. Here was a low hill, covered with graves, family plots, oneRomanesque monument with the name PHIPPS engraved on it. Just above the sloping roof of PHIPPS,he could see a sliver of yellow. Louis looked at this, pondering it. He continued to look at it even afterthe funeral director said, “Let us bow our heads for a moment of silent prayer.” It took Louis a fewminutes, but he got it. It was a payloader. A payloader parked over the hill where the mourners wouldn’thave to look at it. And, when the funeral was over, Oz would crush his cigarette on the heel of histewwible workboot, put it in whatever container he carried around with him (in a cemetery, sextonscaught depositing their butts on the ground were almost always summarily fired—it looked bad; toomany of the clientele had died of lung cancer), jump in the payloader, fire that sucker up, and cut his sonoff from the sun forever . . . or at least until the day of the Resurrection.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (223 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM