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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmHe tilted the dustpan over the wastebasket, and flour slid out with a soft foom, powdering the cast-outcartons and used-up cans.10“Hope Ellie didn’t take it too hard,” Jud Crandall said. Not for the first time Louis thought that the manhad a peculiar— and rather uncomfortable—ability to put his finger gently on whatever the sore spotwas.He and Jud and Norma Crandall now sat on the Crandalls’ porch in the cool of the evening, drinkingiced tea instead of beer. On 15, going-home-after-the-weekend traffic was fairly heavy—peoplerecognized that every good late-summer weekend now might be the last one, Louis supposed. Tomorrowhe took up his full duties at the University of Maine infirmary All day yesterday and today students hadbeen arriving, filling apartments in Orono and dorms on campus, making beds, renewing acquaintances,and no doubt groaning over another year of eight o’clock classes and commons food. Rachel had beencool to him all day—no, freezing was more like it—and when he went back across the road tonight, heknew that she would already be in bed, Gage sleeping with her more than likely, the two of them so farover to her side that the baby would be in danger of falling off. His half of thebed would have grown to three quarters, all of it looking like a big, sterile desert.“I said I hoped—”“Sorry,” Louis said. “Woolgathering. She was a little upset, yeah. How did you guess that?”“Seen em come and go, like I said.” Jud took his wife’s hand gently and grinned at her. “Haven’t we,dear?”“Packs and packs of them,” Norma Crandall said. “We. love the children.”“Sometimes that pet cemetery is their first eyeball-to-eyeball with death,” Jud said. “They see people dieon TV, but they know that’s pretend, like the old Westerns they used to have at the movies on Saturdayafternoons. On TV and in the Western movies, they just hold their stomachs or their chests and fall over.Place up on that hill seems a lot more real to most of em than all those movies and TV shows puttogether, don’t you know.”Louis nodded, thinking: Tell my wife that, why don’t you?“Some kids it don’t affect at all, at least not so you can see it, although I’d guess most of em kinda . .kinda take it home in their pockets to look over later, like all the other stuff they collect. Most of em arefine. But some . . you remember the little Holloway boy, Norma?”file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste...%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (39 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM