Louis replaced the fire screen carefully. Now there were two clear boot tracks in their fireplace, one in the ashes and one on the hearth. They both pointed toward the Christmas tree, as if Santa had hit bottom on one foot and immediately stepped out to leave the goodies assigned to the Creed household. The illusion was perfect unless you happened to notice that they were both left feet . . . and Louis doubted if Ellie was that analytical.
"Louis Creed, I love you," Rachel said and kissed him.
"You married a winner, baby," Louis said, smiling sincerely. "Stick with me and I'll make you a star."
They started for the stairs. He pointed at the card table Ellie had set up in front of the TV. There were oatmeal cookies and two Ring-Dings on it. Also a can of Micheloeb. FOR YOU, SANNA, the note said in Ellie's large, sticklike printing. "You want a cookie or a Ring-Ding?"
"Ring-Ding," she said and ate half of it. Louis popped the tab on the beer.
"A beer this late is going to give me acid indigestion," he said.
"Crap," she said good-humoredly. "Come on, Doc."
Louis put down the can of beer and suddenly grasped the pocket of his robe as if he had forgotten something--although he had been aware of that small packet of weight all evening long.
"Here," he said. "For you. You can open it now. It's after midnight. Merry Christmas, babe."
She turned the little box, wrapped up in silver paper and tied with wide satiny-blue ribbon, in her hands. "Louis, what is it?"
He shrugged. "Soap. Shampoo sample. I forget, exactly."
She opened it on the stairs, saw the Tiffany box, and squealed. She pulled out the cotton batting and then just stood there, her mouth slightly agape.
"Well?" he asked anxiously. He had never bought her a real piece of jewelry before, and he was nervous. "Do you like it?"
She took it out, draped the fine gold chain over her tented fingers, and held the tiny sapphire to the hall light. It twirled lazily, seeming to shoot off cool blue rays.
"Oh Louis, it's so damn beautiful--" He saw she was crying a little and felt both touched and alarmed.
"Hey, babe, don't do that," he said. "Put it on."
"Louis, we can't afford--you can't afford--"
"Shhh," he said. "I socked some money away off and on since last Christmas . . . and it wasn't as much as you might think."
"How much was it?"
"I'll never tell you that, Rachel," he said solemnly. "An army of Chinese torturers couldn't get it out of me. Two thousand dollars."
"Two thousand--!" She hugged him so suddenly and so tightly that he almost fell down the stairs. "Louis, you're crazy!"
"Put it on," he said again.
She did. He helped her with the clasp, and then she turned around to look at him. "I want to go up and look at it," she said. "I think I want to preen."
"Preen away," he said. "I'll put out the cat and get the lights."
"When we make it," she said, looking directly into his eyes, "I want to take everything off except this."
"Preen in a hurry, then," Louis said, and she laughed.
He grabbed Church and draped it over his arm--he didn't bother much with the broom these days. He supposed that, in spite of everything, he had almost gotten used to the cat again. He went toward the entryway door, turning off lights as he went. When he opened the door communicating between the kitchen and garage, an eddy of cold air swirled around his ankles.
"Have a merry Christmas, Ch--"
He broke off. Lying on the welcome mat was a dead crow. Its head was mangled. One wing had been ripped off and lay behind the body like a charred piece of paper. Church immediately squirmed out of Louis's arms and began to nuzzle the frozen corpse eagerly. As Louis watched, the cat's head darted forward, its ears laid back, and before he could turn his head, Church had ripped out one of the crow's milky, glazed eyes.
Church strikes again, Louis thought a little sickly, and turned his head--not however, before he had seen the bloody, gaping socket where the crow's eye had been. Shouldn't bother me, shouldn't, I've seen worse, oh yeah, Pascow, for instance, Pascow was worse, a lot worse--
But it did bother him. His stomach turned over. The warm build of sexual excitement had suddenly deflated. Christ, that bird's damn near as big as he is. Must have caught it with its guard down. Way, way down.
This would have to be cleaned up. Nobody needed this sort of present on Christmas morning. And it was his responsibility, wasn't it? Sure was. His and nobody else's. He had recognized that much in a subconscious way even on the evening of his family's return, when he had purposely spilled the tires over the tattered body of the mouse Church had killed.
The soil of a man's heart is stonier, Louis.
This thought was so clear, somehow so three-dimensional and auditory, that Louis jerked a little, as if Jud had materialized at his shoulder and spoken aloud.
A man grows what he can . . . and tends it.
Church was still hunched greedily over the dead bird. He was working at the other wing now. There was a tenebrous rustling sound as Church pulled it back and forth, back and forth. Never get it off the ground, Orville. That's right, Wilbur, fucking bird's just as dead as dogshit, might as well feed it to the cat, might as well--
Louis suddenly kicked Church, kicked him hard. The cat's hindquarters rose and came down splayfooted. It walked away, sparing him another of its ugly yellow-green glances. "Eat me," Louis hissed at it, catlike himself.
"Louis?" Rachel's voice came faintly from their bedroom. "Coming to bed?"
"Be right there," he called back. I've just got this little mess to clean up, Rachel, okay? Because it's my mess. He fumbled for the switch that controlled the garage light. He went quickly back to the cupboard under the kitchen sink and got a green Hefty Bag. He took the bag back into the garage and took the shovel down from its nail on the garage wall. He scraped up the crow and dropped it into the bag. Then he shoveled up the severed wing and slipped that in. He tied a knot in the top of the bag and dropped it into the bin on the far side of the Civic. By the time he had finished, his ankles were growing numb.
Church was standing by the garage doorway. Louis made a threatening gesture at the cat with the shovel, and it was gone like black water.
*
Upstairs Rachel was lying on her bed, wearing nothing but the sapphire on its chain . . . as promised. She smiled at him lazily. "What took you so long, Chief?"
"The light over the sink was out," Louis said. "I changed the bulb."
"Come here," she said and tugged him gently toward her. Not by the hand. "He knows if you've been sleeping," she sang softly; a little smile curved up the corners of her lips. "He knows if you're awake . . . oh my, Louis dear, what's this?"
"Something that just woke up, I think," Louis said, slipping off his robe. "Maybe we ought to see if we can get it to sleep before Santa comes, what do you think?"
She rose on one elbow; he felt her breath, warm and sweet.
"He knows if you've been bad or good . . . so be good . . . for goodness sake . . . Have you been a good boy, Louis?"
"I think so," he said. His voice was not quite steady.
"Let's see if you taste as good as you look," she said.
*
The sex was good, but Louis did not find himself simply slipping off afterward as he usually did--when the sex was good--slipping off easy with himself, his wife, his life. He lay in the darkness of Christmas morning, listening to Rachel's breathing slow and deep, and he thought about the dead bird on the doorstep--Church's Christmas present to him.
Keep me in mind, Dr. Creed. I was alive and then I was dead and now I'm alive again. I've made the circuit and I'm here to tell you that you come out the other side with your purr-box broken and a taste for the hunt, I'm here to tell you that a man grows what he can and tends it. Don't forget that, Dr. Creed, I'm part of what your heart will grow now, there's your wife and your daughter and your son . . . and there's me. Remember the secret and tend your garden w
ell.
At some point Louis slept.
31
Their winter passed. Ellie's faith in Santa Claus was restored--temporarily at least--by the footprints in the hearth. Gage opened his presents splendidly, pausing every now and then to munch a particularly tasty-looking piece of wrapping paper. And that year, both kids had decided by midafternoon that the boxes were more fun than the toys.
The Crandalls came over on New Year's Eve for Rachel's eggnog, and Louis found himself mentally examining Norma. She had a pale and somehow transparent look that he had seen before. His grandmother would have said Norma was beginning to "fail," and that was perhaps not such a bad word for it. All at once her hands, so swollen and misshapen by arthritis seemed covered with liver spots. Her hair looked thinner. The Crandalls went home around ten, and the Creeds saw the New Year in together in front of the TV. It was the last time Norma was in their house.
Most of Louis's semester break was sloppy and rainy. In terms of heating costs, he was grateful for the thaw, but the weather was still depressing and dismal. He worked around the house, building bookshelves and cupboards for his wife, and a model Porsche in his study for himself. By the time classes resumed on January 23, Louis was happy to go back to the university.
The flu finally arrived--a fairly serious outbreak struck the campus less than a week after the spring semester had begun, and he had his hands full--he found himself working ten and sometimes twelve hours a day and going home utterly whipped . . . but not really unhappy.
The warm spell broke on January 29 with a roar. There was a blizzard followed by a week of numbing subzero weather. Louis was checking the mending broken arm of a young man who was hoping desperately--and fruitlessly, in Louis's opinion--that he would be able to play baseball that spring when one of the candy-stripers poked her head in and told him his wife was on the telephone.
Louis went into his office to take the call. Rachel was crying, and he was instantly alarmed. Ellie, he thought. She's fallen off her sled and broken her arm. Or fractured her skull. He thought with alarm of the crazed fraternity boys and their toboggan.
"It isn't one of the kids, is it?" he asked. "Rachel?"
"No, no," she said, crying harder. "Not one of the kids. It's Norma, Lou. Norma Crandall. She died this morning. Around eight o'clock, right after breakfast, Jud said. He came over to see if you were here and I told him you'd left half an hour ago. He . . . oh, Lou, he just seemed so lost and so dazed . . . so old . . . thank God Ellie was gone and Gage is too young to understand . . ."
Louis's brow furrowed, and in spite of this terrible news he found it was Rachel his mind was going out to, seeking, trying to find. Because here it was again. Nothing you could quite put your finger on, because it was so much an overall attitudinal fix. That death was a secret, a terror, and it was to be kept from the children, above all to be kept from the children, the way that Victorian ladies and gentlemen had believed the nasty, grotty truth about sexual relations must be kept from the children.
"Jesus," he said. "Was it her heart?"
"I don't know," she said. She was no longer crying, but her voice was choked hoarse. "Could you come, Louis? You're his friend, and I think he needs you."
You're his friend.
Well I am, Louis thought with a small touch of surprise. I never expected to have an eighty-year-old man for a buddy, but I guess I do. And then it occurred to him that they had better be friends, considering what was between them. And considering that, he supposed that Jud had known they were friends long before Louis had. Jud had stood by him on that one, and in spite of what had happened since, in spite of the mice, in spite of the birds, Louis felt that Jud's decision had probably been the right one . . . or, if not the right one, at least the compassionate one. He would do what he could for Jud now, and if it meant being best man at the death of his wife, he would be that.
"On my way," he said and hung up.
32
It had not been a heart attack. It had been a cerebral accident, sudden and probably painless. When Louis called Steve Masterton that afternoon and told him what was going on, Steve said that he wouldn't mind going out just that way.
"Sometimes God dillies and dallies," Steve said, "and sometimes He just points at you and tells you to hang up your jock."
Rachel did not want to talk about it at all and would not allow Louis to talk to her of it.
Ellie was not so much upset as she was surprised and interested--it was what Louis thought a thoroughly healthy six-year-old reaction should be. She wanted to know if Mrs. Crandall had died with her eyes open or shut. Louis said he didn't know.
Jud took hold as well as could have been expected, considering the fact that the lady had been sharing bed and board with him for almost sixty years. Louis found the old man--and on this day he looked very much like an old man of eighty-three--sitting alone at the kitchen table, smoking a Chesterfield, drinking a bottle of beer, and staring blankly into the living room.
He looked up when Louis came in and said, "Well, she's gone, Louis." He said this in such a clear and matter-of-fact way that Louis thought it must not have really cleared through all the circuits yet--hadn't hit him yet where he lived. Then Jud's mouth began to work and he covered his eyes with one arm. Louis went to him and put an arm around him. Jud gave in and wept. It had cleared the circuits, all right. Jud understood perfectly. His wife had died.
"That's good," Louis said. "That's good, Jud, she would want you to cry a little, I think. Probably be pissed off if you didn't." He had started to cry a little himself. Jud hugged him tightly, and Louis hugged him back.
Jud cried for ten minutes or so, and then the storm passed. Louis listened to the things Jud said then with great care--he listened as a doctor as well as a friend. He listened for any circularity in Jud's conversation; he listened to see if Jud's grasp of when was clear (no need to check him on where; that would prove nothing because for Jud Crandall the where had always been Ludlow, Maine); he listened most of all for any use of Norma's name in the present tense. He found little or no sign that Jud was losing his grip. Louis was aware that it was not uncommon for two old married people to go almost hand-in-hand, a month, a week, even a day apart. The shock, he supposed, or maybe even some deep inner urge to catch up with the one gone (that was a thought he would not have had before Church; he found that many of his thoughts concerning the spiritual and the supernatural had undergone a quiet but nonetheless deep sea-change). His conclusion was that Jud was grieving hard but that he was still compos mentis. He sensed in Jud none of that transparent frailty that had seemed to surround Norma on New Year's Eve, when the four of them had sat in the Creed living room, drinking eggnog.
Jud brought him a beer from the fridge, his face still red and blotchy from crying.
"A bit early in the day," he said, "but the sun's over the yardarm somewhere in the world and under the circumstances . . ."
"Say no more," Louis told him and opened the beer. He looked at Jud. "Shall we drink to her?"
"I guess we better," Jud said. "You should have seen her when she was sixteen, Louis, coming back from church with her jacket unbuttoned . . . your eyes would have popped. She could have made the devil swear off drinking. Thank Christ she never asked me to do it."
Louis nodded and raised his beer a little. "To Norma," he said.
Jud clinked his bottle against Louis's. He was crying again but he was also smiling. He nodded. "May she have peace, and let there be no frigging arthritis wherever she is."
"Amen," Louis said, and they drank.
*
It was the only time Louis saw Jud progress beyond a mild tipsiness, and even so he did not become incapacitated. He reminisced; a constant stream of warm memories and anecdotes, colorful and clear and sometimes arresting, flowed from him. Yet between the stories of the past, Jud dealt with the present in a way Louis could only admire; if it had been Rachel who had simply dropped dead after her grapefruit and morning cereal, he wondered if he could have
done half so well.
Jud called the Brookings-Smith Mortuary in Bangor and made as many of the arrangements as he could by telephone; he made an appointment to come in the following day and make the rest. Yes, he would have her embalmed; he wanted her in a dress, which he would provide; yes, he would pick out underwear; no, he did not want the mortuary to supply the special shoes which laced up the back. Would they have someone wash her hair? he asked. She washed it last on Monday night, and so it had been dirty when she died. He listened, and Louis, whose uncle had been in what those in the business called "the quiet trade," knew the undertaker was telling Jud that a final wash and set was part of the service rendered. Jud nodded and thanked the man he was talking to, then listened again. Yes, he said, he would have her cosmeticized, but it was to be a lightly applied layer. "She's dead and people know it," he said, lighting a Chesterfield. "No need to tart her up." The coffin would be closed during the funeral, he told the director with calm authority, but open during the visiting hours the day before. She was to be buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, where they had bought plots in 1951. He had the papers in hand and gave the mortician the plot number so that the preparations could begin out there: H-101. He himself had H-102, he told Louis later on.
He hung up, looked at Louis, and said, "Prettiest cemetery in the world is right here in Bangor, as far as I'm concerned. Crack yourself another beer, if you want, Louis. All of this is going to take awhile."
Louis was about to refuse--he was feeling a little tiddly--when a grotesque image arose unbidden behind his eyes: Jud pulling Norma's corpse on a pagan litter through the woods. Toward the Micmac burying ground beyond the Pet Sematary.
It had the effect of a slap on him. Without a word, he got up and got another beer out of the fridge. Jud nodded at him and dialed the telephone again. By three that afternoon, when Louis went home for a sandwich and a bowl of soup, Jud had progressed a long way toward organizing his wife's final rites; he moved from one thing to the next like a man planning a dinner party of some importance. He called the North Ludlow Methodist Church, where the actual funeral would take place, and the Cemetery Administration Office at Mount Hope; these were both calls the undertaker at Brookings-Smith would be making, but Jud called first as a courtesy. It was a step few bereaved ever thought of . . . or if they thought of it, one they could rarely bring themselves to take. Louis admired Jud all the more for it. Later he called Norma's few surviving relatives and his own, paging through an old and tattered address book with a leather cover to find the numbers. And between calls, he drank beer and remembered the past.