فصل بیست و هشت

TWENTY-EIGHT

‘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 sturdy legs pumping busily. ‘Dayee! Dayee!’ Louis had time to notice that Gage was wearing a jumper he had never seen before – it looked like more of Grandda’s work to Louis. Then Ellie hurtled into him and shinnied up him like a tree.

‘Hi, Daddy!’ she bellowed, and smacked his cheek so heartily that his ear actually rang for the next fifteen minutes.

‘Hi, hon,’ he said, and bent over to catch Gage. He pulled him up into the crook of his arm and hugged them both. ‘I’m glad to see you back.’ Rachel came up then, her travelling bag and pocket-book slung over one arm, Gage’s diaper bag (I’LL BE A BIG BOY SOON was printed on the side, a sentiment probably more meant to cheer up the parents than the diaper-wearing child) slung over the other. She looked like a professional photographer at the end of a long, gruelling assignment.

Louis bent between his two kids and planted a kiss on her mouth. ‘Hi.’ ‘Hi, doc,’ she said, and smiled.

‘You look beat.’

‘I am beat. We got as far as Boston with no problem. We changed planes with no problem. We took off with no problem. But as the plane is banking over the city, Gage looks down and says, “Pretty, pretty,” and then whoopses all over himself.’ Louis groaned. ‘Oh, Jesus.’

‘I got him changed in the toilet,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s a virus, or anything. He was just airsick.’ ‘Come on home,’ Louis said. ‘I’ve got chilli on the stove.’

‘Chilli! Chilli!’ Ellie screamed in Louis’s ear, transported with delight and excitement.

‘Chiwwi! Chiwwi!’ Gage screamed in Louis’s other ear, which at least equalized the ringing.

‘Come on,’ Louis said. ‘Let’s get your suitcases and blow this joint.’ ‘Daddy, how’s Church?’ Ellie asked as he set her down. It was a question Louis had expected, but not Ellie’s suddenly anxious face, and the deep worry-line that appeared between her dark blue eyes. Louis frowned, then glanced at Rachel.

‘She woke up screaming over the weekend,’ Rachel said quietly. ‘She had a nightmare.’ ‘I dreamed that Church got run over,’ Ellie said.

‘Too many turkey sandwiches after the big day, that’s my guess,’ Rachel said. ‘She had a bout of diarrhea, too. Set her mind at rest, Louis, and let’s get out of this airport. I’ve seen enough airports in the last week to last me for at least five years.’ ‘Why, Church is fine, honey,’ Louis said slowly.

Yes, he’s fine. He lies around the house all day long and looks at you with those strange, muddy eyes – as if he’d seen something that had blasted away most of whatever intelligence a cat has. He’s just great. I put him out with a broom at night because I don’t like to touch him. I just kind of sweep at him with it and he goes. And the other day when I opened the door, Ellie, he had a mouse – or what was left of it. He’d strewed the guts hell to breakfast. And speaking of breakfast, I skipped mine that morning. Otherwise— ‘He’s just fine.’

‘Oh,’ Ellie said, and that furrow between her eyes smoothed out. ‘Oh, that’s good. When I had that dream, I was sure he was dead.’ ‘Were you?’ Louis asked, and smiled. ‘Dreams are funny, aren’t they?’ ‘Dweems!’ Gage hollered – he had reached that parrot-stage that Louis remembered from Ellie’s development. ‘Dweeeeeems!’ He gave Louis’s hair a tug hearty enough to make his eyes water.

‘Come on, gang,’ Louis said, and they started down to the baggage area.

They had gotten as far as the car in the parking lot when Gage began saying ‘Pretty, pretty,’ in a strange, hiccupping voice. This time he whoopsed all over Louis, who had put on his new pair of double-knit slacks for the plane-meeting occasion. Apparently Gage thought pretty was the code-word for I’ve got to throw up now, so sorry, stand clear.

It turned out to be a virus after all.

By the time they had driven the seventeen miles from the Bangor airport to their house in Ludlow, Gage had begun to show signs of fever and had fallen into an uncomfortable doze. Louis backed into the garage, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Church slink along one wall, tail up, strange eyes fixed on the car. He disappeared into the dying glow of the day, and a moment later Louis saw another disembowelled mouse lying beside a stack of four summer tires – he had had the snows put on while Rachel and the kids were gone. The mouse’s innards glowed pink and raw in the garage’s gloom. Its head was missing.

Louis got out quickly and purposely bumped against the pile of tires, which were stacked up like black checkers. The top two fell over and covered the mouse. ‘Ooops,’ he said.

‘You’re a spaz, Daddy,’ Ellie said, not unkindly.

‘That’s right,’ Louis said with a kind of hectic cheer. He felt a little like saying Pretty, pretty and blowing his groceries all over everything. ‘Daddy’s a spaz.’ He could not remember Church ever killing a single mouse before his queer resurrection; he sometimes cornered them and played with them in that deadly cat way that ultimately ended in destruction, but he or Ellie or Rachel had always intervened before the end. And once cats were fixed, he knew, few of them would do more than give a mouse an interested stare, at least as long as they were well-fed.

‘Are you going to stand there dreaming or help me with this kid?’ Rachel asked. ‘Come back from Planet Mongo, Dr Creed. Earth-people need you.’ She sounded tired and irritable.

‘I’m sorry, babe,’ Louis said. He came around to get Gage, who was now as hot as the coals in a banked stove.

So only the three of them ate Louis’s famous South Side Chilli that night; Gage reclined on the living-room sofa, feverish and apathetic, drinking a bottle filled with lukewarm chicken-broth and watching a cartoon show on TV.

After dinner Ellie went to the garage door and called Church. Louis, who was doing the dishes while Rachel unpacked upstairs, hoped the cat wouldn’t come, but he did – he came walking in his new slow lurch, and he came almost at once, as if he – as if it – had been lurking out there. Lurking. The word came immediately to mind.

‘Church!’ Ellie cried. ‘Hi, Church!’ She picked the cat up and hugged it. Louis watched out of the corner of his eye; his hands, which had been groping on the bottom of the sink for any left-over silverware, were still. He saw Ellie’s happy face change slowly to puzzlement. The cat lay quiet in her arms, its ears laid back, its eyes on hers.

After a long moment – it seemed very long to Louis – she put Church down. The cat padded away toward the dining room without looking back. Executioner of small mice, Louis thought randomly. Christ, what did we do that night?

He tried honestly to remember but it already seemed far away, dim and distant, like the messy death of Victor Pascow on the floor of the infirmary’s reception room. He could remember carriages of wind passing in the sky, and the white glimmer of snow in the back field which rose to the woods. That was all.

‘Daddy?’ Ellie said in a low, subdued voice.

‘What, Ellie?’

‘Church smells funny.’

‘Does he?’ Louis asked, his voice carefully neutral.

‘Yes!’ Ellie said, distressed. ‘Yes, he does! He never smelled funny before! He smells like … he smells like ka-ka!’ ‘Well, maybe he rolled in something bad, honey,’ Louis said. ‘Whatever that bad smell is, he’ll lose it.’ ‘I certainly hope so,’ Ellie said in a comical dowager’s voice. She walked off.

Louis found the last fork, washed it and pulled the plug. He stood at the sink, looking out into the night while the soapy water ran down the drain with a thick chuckling sound.

When the sound from the drain was gone he could hear the wind outside, thin and wild, coming from the north, bringing down winter, and he realized he was afraid, simply, stupidly afraid, the way you are afraid when a cloud suddenly sails across the sun and somewhere you hear a ticking sound you can’t account for.

‘A hundred and three?’ Rachel asked. ‘Jesus, Lou! Are you sure?’

‘It’s a virus,’ Louis said. He tried not to let Rachel’s voice, which seemed almost accusatory, grate on him. She was tired. It had been a long day for her, she had crossed half the country with her kids today, here it was eleven o’clock, and the day wasn’t over yet. Ellie was deeply asleep in her room. Gage was on their bed in a state that could best be described as semi-conscious. Louis had started him on Liquiprin an hour ago. ‘The aspirin will bring his fever down by morning, hon.’ ‘Aren’t you going to give him ampicillin, or anything?’

Patiently, Louis said, ‘If he had the flu or a strep infection, I would. He doesn’t. He’s got a virus, and that stuff doesn’t do doodly-squat for viruses. It would just give him the runs and dehydrate him more.’ ‘Are you sure it’s a virus?’

‘Well, if you want a second opinion,’ Louis snapped, ‘be my guest.’ ‘You don’t have to shout at me!’ Rachel shouted.

‘I wasn’t shouting!’ Louis shouted back.

‘You were,’ Rachel began, ‘you were shuh-shuh-shouting—’ And then her mouth began to quiver and she put a hand up to her face. Louis saw there were deep gray-brown pockets under her eyes and felt badly ashamed of himself.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and sat down beside her. ‘Christ, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I apologize, Rachel.’ ‘Never complain, never explain,’ she said, smiling wanly. ‘Isn’t that what you told me once? The trip was a strain. And I’ve been afraid you’d hit the roof when you looked in Gage’s dresser drawers. I guess maybe I ought to tell you now, while you’re feeling sorry for me.’ ‘What’s to hit the roof about?’

She smiled wanly. ‘My mother and father bought him ten new outfits. He was wearing one of them today.’ ‘I noticed he had on something new,’ he said shortly.

‘I noticed you noticing,’ she replied, and pulled a comic scowl that made him laugh, although he didn’t feel much like laughing. ‘And six new dresses for Ellie.’ ‘Six dresses!’ he said, strangling the urge to yell. He was suddenly furious – sickly furious and hurt in a way he couldn’t explain. ‘Rachel, why? Why did you let him do that? We don’t need … we can buy …’ He ceased. His rage had made him inarticulate, and for a moment he saw himself carrying Ellie’s dead cat through the woods, shifting the plastic bag from one hand to the other … and all the while Irwin Goldman, that dirty old fuck from Lake Forest, had been busy trying to buy his daughter’s affection by unlimbering the world-famous checkbook and the world-famous fountain pen.

For one moment he felt himself on the verge of shouting: He bought her six dresses and I brought her goddam cat back from the dead, so who loves her more?

He clamped down on the words. He would never say anything like that. Never.

She touched his neck gently. ‘Louis,’ she said. ‘It was both of them together. Please try to see. Please. They love the children, and they don’t see them much. And they’re getting old. Louis, you’d hardly recognize my father. Really.’ ‘I’d recognize him,’ Louis muttered.

‘Please, honey. Try to see. Try to be kind. It doesn’t hurt you.’ He looked at her for a long time. ‘It does, though,’ he said finally. ‘Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does.’ She opened her mouth to reply, and then Ellie called out from her room: ‘Daddy! Mommy! Somebody!’ Rachel started to get up, and Louis pulled her back down. ‘Stay with Gage. I’ll go.’ He thought he knew what the trouble was. But he had put the cat out, damn it; after Ellie had gone to bed he had caught it in the kitchen sniffing around its dish and had put it out. He didn’t want the cat sleeping with her. Not any more. Odd thoughts of disease, mingled with memories of Uncle Carl’s funeral parlor, had come to him when he thought of Church sleeping on Ellie’s bed.

She’s going to know that something’s wrong and Church was better before.

He had put the cat out but when he went in, Ellie was sitting up in bed, more asleep than awake, and Church was spread out on the counterpane, a batlike shadow. The cat’s eyes were open and stupidly gleaming in the light from the hall.

‘Daddy, put him out,’ Ellie almost groaned. ‘He stinks so bad.’

‘Shhh, Ellie, go to sleep,’ Louis said, astounded by the calmness of his own voice. It made him think of the morning after his sleepwalking incident, the day after Pascow had died. Getting to the infirmary and ducking into the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror, convinced that he must look like hell. But he had looked pretty much all right. It was enough to make you wonder how many people were going around with dreadful secrets bottled up inside.

It’s not a secret, goddammit! It’s just the cat!

But Ellie was right. It stank to high heaven.

He took the cat out of her room and carried it downstairs, trying to breathe through his mouth. There were worse smells; shit was worse, if you wanted to be perfectly blunt. A month ago they’d had a go-round with the septic tank, and as Jud had said when he came over to watch Puffer and Sons pump the tank, ‘That ain’t Chanel Number Five, is it Louis?’ The smell of a gangrenous wound – what old Doctor Bracermunn at med school had called ‘hot flesh’ – was worse, too. Even the smell which came from the Civic’s catalytic converter when it had been idling in the garage for a while was worse.

But this smell was pretty damn bad. And how had the cat gotten in, anyway? He had put it out earlier, sweeping it out with the broom while all three of them – his people – were upstairs. This was the first time he had actually held the cat since the day it had come back, almost a week ago. It lay hotly in his arms, like a quiescent disease, and Louis wondered: What bolthole did you find, you bastard?

He thought suddenly of his dream that night – Pascow simply passing through the door between the kitchen and the garage.

Maybe there was no bolthole. Maybe it had just passed through the door, like a ghost.

‘Bag that,’ he whispered aloud, and his voice was slightly hoarse.

Louis became suddenly sure that the cat would begin to struggle in his arms, that it would scratch him. But Church lay totally still, radiating that stupid heat and that dirty stink, looking at Louis’s face as if he could read the thoughts going on behind Louis’s eyes.

He opened the door and tossed the cat out into the garage, maybe a little too hard. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Kill another mouse, or something.’ Church landed awkwardly, his hindquarters bunching beneath him and then collapsing. It seemed to shoot Louis a look of green, ugly hate. Then it strolled drunkenly off and was gone.

Christ, Jud, he thought, but I wish you’d kept your mouth shut.

He went to the sink and washed his hands and forearms vigorously, as if scrubbing for an operation. You do it because it gets hold of you … you make up reasons … they seem like good reasons … but mostly you do it because once you’ve been up there, it’s your place, and you belong to it … and you make up the sweetest-smelling reasons in the world … No, he couldn’t blame Jud. He had gone of his own free will and he couldn’t blame Jud.

He turned off the water and began to dry his hands and arms. And suddenly the towel stopped moving and he stared straight ahead, looking out into the little piece of night framed in the window over the sink.

Does that mean it’s my place now? That it’s mine, too?

No. Not if I don’t want it to be.

He slung the towel over the rack and went upstairs.

Rachel was in bed, the covers pulled up to her chin, and Gage was tucked in neatly beside her. She looked at Louis apologetically. ‘Would you mind, hon? Just for tonight? I’d feel better having him with me. He’s so hot.’ ‘No,’ Louis said. ‘That’s fine. I’ll pull out the hide-a-bed downstairs.’ ‘You really don’t mind?’

‘No. It won’t hurt Gage, and it’ll make you feel better.’ He paused, then smiled. ‘You’re going to pick up his virus, though. That comes almost guaranteed. I don’t suppose that changes your mind, does it?’ She smiled back and shook her head. ‘What was Ellie fussing about?’ ‘Church. She wanted me to take Church away.’

‘Ellie wanted Church taken away? That’s a switch.’

‘Yeah, it is,’ Louis agreed, and then added: ‘She said he smelled bad, and I did think he was a little fragrant. Maybe he rolled in a pile of someone’s mulch, or something.’ ‘That’s too bad,’ Rachel said, rolling over on her side. ‘I really think Ellie missed Church as much as she missed you.’ ‘Uh-huh,’ Louis said. He bent and kissed her mouth softly. ‘Go to sleep, Rachel.’ ‘I love you, Lou. I’m glad to be home. And I’m sorry about the couch. We’ll do something tomorrow night, okay? Make some whoopee?’ ‘Sure,’ Louis said, and turned out the light.

Downstairs, he stacked the couch cushions, pulled out the hide-a-bed, and tried to prepare himself mentally for a night of having the rod under the thin mattress dig into the small of his back. The bed was sheeted, at least; he wouldn’t have to make it up from scratch. Louis got two blankets from the top shelf in the front hall closet and spread them on the bed. He began to undress, then paused.

You think he’s in again? Fine. Take a walk around and have a look. Like you told Rachel, it won’t hurt. May even help. And checking to make sure all the doors are on the latch won’t even catch you a virus.

He took a deliberate tour of the entire downstairs, checking the locks on doors and windows. He had done everything right the first time, and Church was nowhere to be seen.

‘There,’ he said. ‘Let’s see you get in tonight, you dumb cat.’ He followed this with a mental wish that Church would freeze his balls off. Except that Church of course no longer had any.

He switched off the lights and got into bed. The rod started to press into his back almost immediately, and Louis was thinking he would be awake half the night when he fell asleep. He fell asleep resting uncomfortably on his side in the hide-a-bed but when he woke up he was— —in the burying ground beyond the Pet Sematary again. This time he was alone. He had killed Church himself this time, and then had decided for some reason to bring him back to life a second time. God knew why: Louis didn’t. He had buried Church deeper this time, though, and Church couldn’t dig his way out. Louis could hear the cat crying somewhere under the earth, making a sound like a weeping child. The sound came up through the pores of the ground, through its stony flesh; the sound and the smell, that awful sickish-sweet smell of rot and decay. Just breathing it in made his chest feel heavy, as if a weight was on it.

The crying … the crying …

… the crying was still going on …

… and the weight was still on his chest.

‘Louis!’ It was Rachel, and she sounded alarmed. ‘Louis, can you come?’ She sounded more than alarmed; she sounded scared, and the crying had a choked, desperate quality to it. It was Gage.

He opened his eyes and stared into Church’s greenish-yellow eyes. They were less than four inches from his own. The cat was on his chest, neatly curled up there like something from an old wives’ tale of breath-stealing. The stink came off it in slow, noxious waves. It was purring.

Louis uttered a cry of disgust and surprise. He shot both hands out in a primitive warding-off gesture. Church thumped off the bed, landed on its side, and walked away in that stumbling lurch.

Jesus! Jesus! It was on me! Oh God, it was right on me!

His disgust could not have been greater if he had awakened to find a spider in his mouth. For a moment he thought he was going to throw up.

‘Louis!’

He pushed the blankets back and stumbled to the stairs. Faint light spilled from their bedroom. Rachel was standing at the head of the stairs in her nightgown.

‘Louis, he’s vomiting again … choking on it … I’m scared.’

‘I’m here,’ he said, and came up to her, thinking: It got in. Somehow it got in. From the cellar, probably. Maybe there’s a broken cellar window. In fact there must be a broken window down there. I’ll check it tomorrow when I get home. Hell, before I go to work. I’ll— Gage stopped crying and began to make an ugly, gargling, choking sound.

‘Louis!’ Rachel screamed.

Louis moved fast. Gage was on his side and vomit was trickling out of his mouth on to an old towel Rachel had spread beside him. He was vomiting, yes, but not enough. Most of it was inside, and Gage was blushing with the onset of asphyxiation.

Louis grabbed the boy under the arms, aware in a distant way of how hot his son’s armpits were under the Dr Denton suit, and put him up on his shoulder as if to burp him. Then Louis snapped himself backward, jerking Gage with him. Gage’s neck whiplashed. He uttered a loud bark that was not quite a belch, and an amazing flag of almost solid vomit flew from his mouth and spattered on the floor and the dresser. Gage began to cry again, a solid, bawling sound that was music to Louis’s ears. To cry like that you had to be getting an unlimited supply of oxygen.

Rachel’s knees buckled and she collapsed on to the bed, head supported in her hands. She was shaking violently.

‘He almost died, didn’t he, Louis? He almost ch-ch-ch — oh my God—’ Louis walked around the room with his son in his arms. Gage’s cries were tapering off to whimperings; he was already almost asleep again.

‘The chances are fifty-to-one he would have cleared it himself, Rachel. I just gave him a hand.’ ‘But he was close,’ she said. She looked up at him, and her white-ringed eyes were stunned and unbelieving. ‘Louis, he was so close.’ Suddenly he remembered her shouting at him in the sunny kitchen: He’s not going to DIE, no one is going to DIE around here … ‘Honey,’ Louis said, ‘we’re all close. All the time.’

It was milk that had almost surely caused the fresh round of vomiting. Gage had awakened around midnight, she said, an hour or so after Louis had gone to sleep, with his ‘hungry cry’, and Rachel had gotten him a bottle. She had drowsed off again herself while he was still taking it. About an hour later, the choking spell began.

No more milk, Louis said, and Rachel had agreed, almost humbly. No more milk.

Louis got back downstairs at around quarter of two and spent fifteen minutes hunting up the cat. During his search, he found the door which communicated between kitchen and basement standing ajar, as he suspected he would. He remembered his mother telling him about a cat that had gotten quite good at pawing open old-fashioned latches, such as the one on their cellar door. The cat would just climb the edge of the door, she’d said, and pat the thumb plate of the latch with its paw until the door opened. A cute enough trick, Louis thought, but not one he intended to allow Church to practice often. There was, after all, a lock on the cellar door, too. He found Church dozing under the stove and tossed him out of the front door without ceremony. On his way back to the hide-a-bed, he closed the cellar door again.

And this time shot the bolt.