“Yes,” Jud agreed, “sometimes you can. Maybe she’ll learn something about what death really is, which is where the pain stops and the good memories begin. Not the end of life, but the end of pain. You don’t tell her those things; she will figure them out on her own.
“And if she’s anything like me, she’ll go on loving her pet. It won’t turn vicious, or bite, or anything like that. She’ll go on loving it . . . but she’ll draw her own conclusions . . . and she’ll breathe a sigh of relief when it finally dies.”
“That’s why you took me up there,” Louis said. He felt better now.
He had an explanation. It was diffuse, it relied more upon the logic of the nerve endings than the logic of the rational mind, but under the circumstances, he found he could accept that. And it meant he could forget the expression he thought he had seen on Jud’s face briefly last night—that dark, capering glee. “Okay, that’s—”
Abruptly, almost shockingly, Jud covered his face with both hands.
For one moment Louis thought he had been struck by a sudden pain, and he half-rose, concerned, until he saw the convulsive heave of the chest and realized that the old man was struggling not to cry.
“That’s why, but it ain’t why,” he said in a strangled, choked voice. “I did it for the same reason Stanny B. did it and for the same reason Lester Morgan did it. Lester took Linda Lavesque up
there after her dog got run over in the road. He took her up there even though he had to put his goddam bull out of its misery for chasing kids through its pasture like it was mad. He did it anyway, he did it anyway, Louis,” Jud almost moaned, “and what the Christ do you make of that!”
“Jud, what are you talking about?” Louis asked, alarmed.
“Lester did it and Stanny did it for the same reason I did it. You do it because it gets hold of you. You do it because that burial place is a secret place, and you want to share the secret, and when you find a reason that seems good enough, why. . .“ Jud took his hands away from his face and looked at Louis with eyes that seemed incredibly ancient, incredibly haggard. “Why then you just go ahead and do it. You make up reasons. . . they seem like good reasons . . but mostly you do it because you want to. Or because you have to. My dad, he didn’t take me up there because he’d heard about it but he’d never been. Stanny B. had been up there. . .
and he took me. . and seventy years go by. . . and then. . . all at once. . .“
Jud shook his head and coughed dryly into the palm of his hand.
“Listen,” he said. “Listen, Louis. Lester’s bull was the only damn animal I ever knew of that turned really mean. I b’lieve that Missus Lavesque’s little chow might have bit the postman once, after, and I heard a few other things. . . animals that got a little nasty . . but Spot was always a good dog. He always smelled like dirt, it didn’t matter how many times you washed him, he always smelled like dirt—but he was a good dog. My mother would never touch him afterward, but he was a good dog just the same. But Louis, if you was to take your cat out tonight and kill it, I would never say a word.
“That place. . . all at once it gets hold of you . . . and you make up the sweetest-smelling reasons in the world . . but I could have been wrong, Louis. That’s all I’m saying. Lester could have been wrong.
Stanny B. could have been wrong. Hell, I ain’t God either. But bringing the dead back to life. . . that’s about as close to playing God as you can get, ain’t it?”
Louis opened his mouth again, then closed it again. What would have come out would have sounded wrong, wrong and cruel: Jud, I didn’t go through all that just to kill the damn cat again.
Jud drained his beer and then put it carefully aside with the other empties. “I guess that’s it,” he said. “I am talked out.”
“Can I ask you one other question?” Louis asked.
“I guess so,” Jud said.
Louis said: “Has anyone ever buried a person up there?” Jud’s arm jerked convulsively; two of the beer bottles fell off the table, and one of them shattered.
“Christ on His throne,” he said to Louis. “No! And who ever would? You don’t even want to talk about such things, Louis!”
“I was just curious,” Louis said uneasily.
“Some things it don’t pay to be curious about,” Jud Crandall said, and for the first time he looked really old and infirm to Louis Creed, as if he were standing somewhere in the neighborhood of his own freshly prepared grave.
And later, at home, something else occurred to him about how Jud had looked at that moment.
He had looked like he was lying.
27
Louis didn’t really know he was drunk until he got back in his own garage.
Outside there was starlight and a chilly rind of moon. Not enough light to cast a shadow, but enough to see by. Once he got in the garage, he was blind. There was a light switch somewhere, but he was damned if he could remember anymore just where it was. He felt his way along slowly, shuffling his feet, his head swimming, anticipating a painful crack on the knee or a toy that he would stumble over, frightening himself with its crash, perhaps falling over himself. Ellie’s little Schwinn with its red training wheels.
Gage’s Crawly-Gator.
Where was the eat? Had he left him in?
Somehow he sailed off course and ran into the wall. A splinter whispered into one palm and he cried out “Shit!” to the darkness, realizing after the word was out that it sounded more seared than mad. The whole garage seemed to have taken a stealthy half-turn.
Now it wasn’t just the light switch; now he didn’t know where the fuck anything was, and that included the door into the kitchen.
He began walking again, moving slowly, his palm stinging. This is what it would be like to be blind, he thought, and that made him think of a Stevie Wonder concert he and Rachel had gone to—
when? Six years ago? As impossible as it seemed, it had to be. She had been pregnant with Ellie then. Two guys had led Wonder to his synthesizer, guiding him over the cables that snaked across the stage so he wouldn’t stumble. And later, when he had gotten up to dance with one of the back-up singers, she had led him carefully to a clear place on the floor. He had danced well, Louis remembered thinking. He had danced well, but he had needed a hand to lead him to the space where he could do it.
How about a hand right now to lead me to my kitchen door? he thought. . . and abruptly shuddered.
If a hand came out of the darkness now to lead him, how he would scream—scream and scream and scream.
He stood still, heart thudding. Come on, he told himself. Stop this shit, come on, come on— Where was that fucking cat?
Then he did slam into something, the rear bumper of the station wagon, and the pain sang up his body from his barked shin, making his eyes water. He grabbed his leg and rubbed it, standing one-legged like a heron, but at least he knew where he was now, the geography of the garage fixed firmly in his mind again, and besides, his night vision was coming, good old visual purple. He had left the cat in, he remembered that now, hadn’t really wanted to touch it, to pick it up and put it out and— And that was when Church’s hot, furry body oiled against his ankle like a low eddy of water, followed by its loathsome tail, curling against his calf like a clutching snake, and then Louis did scream; he opened his mouth wide and screamed.
28
“Daddy!” Ellie screamed.
She ran up the jet way toward him, weaving in and out between deplaning passengers like a quarterback on a keeper play. Most of them stood aside, grinning. Louis was a little embarrassed by her ardor, but he felt a large, stupid grin spreading across his own face just the same.
Rachel was carrying Gage in her arms, and he saw Louis when Ellie shouted. “Dayeee!” he yelled exuberantly and began to wriggle in Rachel’s arms. She smiled (a trifle wearily, Louis thought) and set him on his feet. He began to run after Ellie, his legs pumping busily. “Dayeee! Dayeee!”