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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm“Hey, up there!” Rachel called. “What’s so funny?”“Private joke,” Louis called back, still laughing. He was frightened, but the fright didn’t stop thelaughter. The laughter came, rising from a belly that was as hard as stones mortared into a wall. Itoccurred to him that shoving the sheets down the laundry chute was absolutely the best thing he couldhave done. Missy Dandridge came in five days a week to vacuum, clean . . . and do the laundry. Rachelwould never see those sheets at all until she put them back on the bed. . . clean. He supposed it waspossible that Missy would mention it to Rachel, but he didn’t think so. She would probably whisper toher husband that the Creeds were playing some strange sex game that involved mud and pineneedles instead of body paints.This thought made Louis laugh all the harder.The last of the giggles and chuckles dried up as he was dressing, and he realized that he felt a littlebetter. How that could be he didn’t know, but he did. The room looked normal now except for thestripped bed. He had gotten rid of the poison. Maybe “evidence” was actually the word he was lookingfor, but in his mind it felt like poison.Perhaps this is what people do with the inexplicable, he thought. This is what they do with the irrationalthat refuses to be broken down into the normal causes and effects that run the Western world. Maybethis was how your mind coped with the flying saucer you saw hovering silently over your back field onemorning, casting its own tight little pool of shadow; the rain of frogs; the hand from under the bed thatstroked your bare foot in the dead of night. There was a giggling fit or a crying fit...and since it was itsown inviolable self and would not break down, you simply passed terror intact, like a kidney stone.Gage was in his chair, eating Cocoa Bears and decorating the table with it. He was decorating the plasticmat under his high chair with Cocoa Bears and apparently shampooing with it.Rachel came out of the kitchen with his eggs and a cup of coffee. “What was the big joke, Lou? Youwere laughing like a loon up there. Scared me a little.”Louis opened his mouth with no idea of what he was going to say, and what came out was a joke he hadheard the week before at the corner market down the road—something about a Jewish tailor who boughta parrot whose only line was “Ariel Sharon jerks off.”By the time he finished, Rachel was laughing too—so was Cage for that matter.Fine. Our hero has taken care of all the evidence—to wit: the muddy sheets and the loony laughter in thebathroom. Our hero will now read the morning paper—or at least look at it—putting the seal ofnormality on the morning.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste...%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (66 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM