ebEpvI

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmthe blocks to that baby. It had been so bloody and gore-flecked that Rachel, then in her sixth month withGage, had had to run into the bathroom and vomit. Violent lives, violent deaths. A dog got them andripped them open instead of just chasing them like the bumbling, easily fooled dogs in the TV cartoons,or another torn got them, or a poisoned bait, or a passing car. Cats were the gangsters of the animalworld, living outside the law and often dying there. There were a great many of them who never grewold by the fire.But those were maybe not things to tell your five-year-old daughter, who was for the first timeexamining the facts of death.“I mean,” he said, “Church is only three now, and you’re five. He might still be alive when you’refifteen, a sophomore in high school. And that’s a long time away.”“It doesn’t seem long to me,” Ellie said, and now her voice trembled. “Not long at all.” -Louis gave up the pretense of working on his model and gestured for her to come. She sat on his lap, andhe was again struck by her beauty, which was emphasized now by her emotional upset. She was darkskinned,almost Levantine. Tony Benton, one of the doctors he had worked with in Chicago, used to callher the Indian Princess.“Honey,” he said, “if it was up to me, I’d let Church live to be a hundred. But I don’t make the rules.”“Who does?” she asked, and then, with infinite scorn:“God, I suppose.”Louis stifled the urge to laugh. It was too serious. “God or Somebody,” he said. “Clocks run down-that’sall I know. There are no guarantees, babe.”“I don’t want Church to be like all those dead pets!” she burst out, suddenly tearful and furious. “I don’twant Church to ever be dead! He’s my cat! He’s not God’s cat! Let God have His own cat! Let Godhave all the damn old cats He wants, and kill them all! Church is mine!”There were footsteps across the kitchen, and Rachel looked in, startled. Ellie was now weeping againstLouis’s chest. The horror had been articulated; it was out; its face had been drawn and could beregarded. Now, even if it could not be changed, it could at least be wept over.“Ellie,” he said, rocking her, “Ellie, Ellie, Church isn’t dead; he’s right over there, sleeping.”“But he could be,” she wept. “He could be, any time.” He held her and rocked her, believing, rightly orwrongly, that Ellie wept for the very intractability of death, its imperviousness to argument or to a littlegirl’s tears; that she wept over its cruel unpredictability; and that she wept because of the human being’sfile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste...%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (33 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM