ebEpvI

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmV. tube. So don’t talk to me about how difficult it was for you and your wife, you bastard.“Ever since Zelda died, we have. . . I suppose we have clung to Rachel. . . always wanting to protecther. . . and to make it up to her. Make up for the problems she had with her . . . her back. . . for yearsafterward. Make up for not being there.”Yes, the old man was really crying. Why did he have to be crying? It made it harder for Louis to hold onto his clean, pure hate. More difficult, but not impossible. He deliberately called up the image ofGoldman reaching into the pocket of his smoking jacket for his overflowing checkbook . . . but hesuddenly saw Zelda Goldman in the background, an unquiet ghost in a stinking bed, her cheesy face fullof spite and agony, her hands pulled into claws. The Goldman ghost. Oz the Gweat and Tewwible.“Please,” he said. “Please, Mr. Goldman. Irwin. No more. Let’s not make things any worse than theyhave to be, okay?”“I believe now that you are a good man and that I misjudged you, Louis. Oh, listen, I know what youthink. Am I that stupid? No. Stupid, but not that stupid. You think I’m saying all of this because now Ican, you’re thinking oh yeah, he’s getting what he wants and once he tried to buy me off, but . . . butLouis, I swear. . .““No more,” Louis said gently. “I can’t. . . I really can’t take any more.” Now his voice was trembling aswell. “Okay?”“All right,” Goldman said and sighed. Louis thought it was a sigh of relief. “But let me say again that Iapologize. You don’t have to accept it. But that is what I called to say, Louis. I apologize.”“All right,” Louis said. He closed his eyes. His head was thudding. “Thank you, Irwin. Your apology isaccepted.”“Thank you,” Goldman said. “And thank you . . . for letting them come. Perhaps it is what they bothneed. We’ll wait for them at the airport.”“Fine,” Louis said, and an idea suddenly occurred to him. It was crazy and attractive in its very sanity.He would let bygones be bygones. . . and he would let Gage lie in his Pleasantview grave. Instead oftrying to reopen a door that had swung shut, he would latch it and double-bolt it and throw away the key.He would do just what he had told his wife he was going to do: tidy up their affairs here and catch aplane back to Shytown. They would perhaps spend the entire summer there, he and his wife and hisgood-hearted daughter. They would go to the zoo and the planetarium and boating on the lake. He wouldtake Ellie to the top of the Sears Tower and show her the Midwest stretching away like a great fiatgameboard, rich and dreaming. Then when mid-August came, they would come back to this housewhich now seemed so sad and so shadowy, and perhaps it would be like starting over again. Perhapsthey could begin weaving from fresh thread. What was on the Creed loom right now was ugly, splatteredfile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (238 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:50 PM