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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm“No,” he said grimly. “No way at all. You hear me? I’m puttin a stop to this. This has gone far enough.”The wind whined around the eaves, and the trees on the other side of the road shook their leaves inhypnotic patterns. His mind went back to that night around the Defiant stove in the coupling shed, whichhad stood right where the Evarts Furniture Mart stood in Brewer now. They had talked the night away,he and George and René Michaud, and now he was the only one left— René crushed between twoboxcars on a stormy night in March of 1939, George Chapin dead of a heart attack just last year. Of somany, he was the only one left, and the old get stupid. Sometimes the stupidity masquerades as kindness,and sometimes it masquerades as pride—a need to tell old secrets, to pass things on, to pour from the oldglass to the new one, to.So dis Jew peddler come in and he say “I got sumpin you never seen before. These pos’cards, dey juslook like wimmin in bathin suits until you rub dem wit a wet cloth, and den—”Jud’s head nodded. His chin settled slowly, gently, against his chest.“—dey’s as nakid as the day dey was born! But when dey dry, the clo’es, dey come back on! And datain’t all! I got—”René telling this story in the coupling shed, leaning forward, smiling, and Jud holds the bottle—he feelsthe bottle and his hand closes around it on thin air.In the ashtray, the cigarette ash on the end of the cigarette grew longer. At last it tipped forward into theashtray and burned out, its shape recalled in the neat roll of ash like a rune.Jud slept.And when the taillights flashed outside and Louis turned the Honda Civic into his driveway some fortyminutes later and drove it into the garage, Jud did not hear, stir, or awaken, any more than Peter awokewhen the Roman soldiers came to take a tramp named Jesus into their custody.Louis found a fresh dispenser of strapping tape in one of the kitchen drawers, and there was a coil ofrope in the corner of the garage near last winter’s snow tires. He used the tape to bind thepick and shovel together in a single neat bundle and the rope to fashion a rough sling.53file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (288 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:50 PM