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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmIn an upstairs room, Gage began to cry.“That’s nice,” she said, also crying now. “You woke the baby up too. Thanks for a nice, quiet, stresslessSunday morning.”She started by him and Louis put a hand on her arm. “Let me ask you something,” he said, ‘“because Iknow that anything—literally anything—can happen to physical beings. As a doctor I know that. Do youwant to be the one to explain to her what happened if her cat gets distemper or leukemia— cats are veryprone to leukemia, you know—or if he gets run over in that road? Do you want to be the one, Rachel?”“Let me go,” she nearly hissed. The anger in her voice, however, was overmatched by the hurt andbewildered terror in her eyes—! don’t want to talk about this, Louis, and you can’t make me, that looksaid. “Let me go, I want to get Gage before he falls out of his a—”“Because ‘maybe you ought to be the one,” he said. “You can tell her we don’t talk about it, nice peopledon’t talk about it, they just bury it—oops! but don’t say ‘buried,’ you’ll give her a complex.”“I hate you!” Rachel sobbed and tore away from him.Then he was of course sorry, and it was of course too late.“Rachel—”She pushed by him roughly, crying harder. “Leave me alone. You’ve done enough.” She paused in thekitchen doorway, turning toward him, the tears coursing down her cheeks. “I don’t want this discussedin front of Ellie anymore, Lou. I mean it. There’s nothing natural about death. Nothing. You as a doctorshould know that.”She whirled and was gone, leaving Louis in the empty kitchen, which still vibrated with their voices. Atlast he went to the pantry to get the broom. As he swept, he reflected on the last thing she had said andon the enormity of this difference of opinion, which had gone undiscovered for so long. Because, as adoctor, he knew that death was, except perhaps for childbirth, the most natural thing in the world.Taxes were not so sure; human conflicts were not; the conflicts of society were not; boom and bust werenot. In the end there was only the clock, and the markers, which became eroded and nameless in thepassage of time. Even sea turtles and the giant sequoias had to buy out someday.“Zelda,” he said aloud. “Christ, that must have been bad for her.”The question was should he just let it ride or should he try to do something about it?file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste...%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (38 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM