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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmHe shut the door, ran around to the rear of the Civic, and slammed the hatchback. The car went rightthrough the intersection, and Louis heard the whoop of drunken voices. He gotbehind the wheel, started his car, and was reaching for the headlight switch when a horrible thoughtstruck him. What if Gage were facing backward, sitting there with those joints at knee and hip bendingthe wrong way, his sunken eyes looking toward the rear window instead of out through the windshield?It doesn’t matter, his mind responded with a shrill fury born of exhaustion. Will you get that throughyour head? it just doesn’t matter!But it does. it does matter. It’s Gage in there, not a bundle of towels!He reached over and gently began to press his hands against the canvas tarpaulin, feeling for thecontours underneath. He looked like a blind man trying to determine what a specific object might be. Atlast he came upon a protuberance that could only be Gage’s nose—facing in the right direction.Only then could he bring himself to put the Civic in gear and start the twenty-five minute drive back toLudlow.52At one o’clock that morning, Jud Crandall’s telephone rang, shrilling in the empty house, starting himawake. In his doze he was dreaming, and in the dream he was twenty-three again, sitting on a bench inthe B & A coupling shed with George Chapin and René Michaud, the three of them passing around abottle of Georgia Charger whiskey—jumped-up moonshine with a revenue stamp on it—while outside anor’easter blew its randy shriek over the world, silencing all that moved, including the rolling stock ofthe B & A railroad. So they sat and drank around the potbellied Defiant, watching the red glow of thecoals shift and change behind the cloudy isinglass, casting diamond-shaped flame shadows across thefloor, telling the stories which men hold inside for years like the junk treasures boys store under theirbeds, the stories they store up for nights such as this. Like the glow of the Defiant, these were darkstories with a glow of red at the center of each and the wind to wrap them around. He was twenty-three,and Norma was very much alive (although in bed now, he had no doubt; she would not expect him homethis wild night), andRené Michaud was telling a story about a Jew peddler in Bucks-port who— That was when the phonebegan to ring and he jerked up in hisfile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (284 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:50 PM