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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmHe got up, headed for the stairs, and suddenly detoured down the hall to Ellie’s room. She was sleepingpeacefully, mouth open, wearing her blue baby-doll pajamas that she had really outgrown. My God,Ellie, he thought, you’re sprouting like corn. Church lay between her splayed ankles, also dead to theworld. You should pardon the pun.Downstairs there was a bulletin board on the wall by the phone with various messages, memos, and billstacked to it. Written across the top in Rachel’s neat caps was THINGS TO PUT OFF AS LONG ASPOSSIBLE. Louis got the telephone book, looked up a number, and jotted it on a blank memo sheet.Below the number he wrote: Quentin L. Jolander, D.V.M.—call for appointment re Church---if Jolanderdoesn’t neuter animals, he will refer.He looked at the note, wondering if it was time, knowing that it was. Something concrete had to comeout of all this bad feeling, and he had decided sometime between this morning and tonight—withouteven knowing he was deciding— that he didn’t want Church crossing the road anymore if he could helpit.His old feelings on the subject rose up in him, the idea that neutering would lessen the cat, would turnhim into a fat oldtorn before his time, content to just sleep on the radiator until someone put something into his dish. Hedidn’t want Church like that. He liked Church the way he was, lean and mean.Outside in the dark, a big semi droned by on Route 15, and that decided him. He tacked the memo upand went to bed.11The next morning at breakfast, Ellie saw the new memo on the bulletin board and asked him what itmeant.“It means he’s going to have a very small operation,” Louis said. “He’ll probably have to stay over at thevet’s for one night afterward. And when he comes home, he’ll stay in our yard and not want to roamaround so much.”“Or cross the road?” Ellie asked.She may be only five, Louis thought, but she’s sure no slouch. “Or cross the road,” he agreed.“Yay!” Ellie said, and that was the end of the subject.Louis, who had been prepared for a bitter and perhaps hysterical argument about Church being out of thefile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste...%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (45 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM