Jud looked at Louis and lit another cigarette.
"It went just the way Stanny set it up. When I got back, my dad said he'd put a bullet in Spot's head to spare him any more suffering. I didn't even have to say anything about the Pet Sematary; my dad asked me if I didn't think Spot would want me to bury him up there, and I said I guessed he would. So off I went, dragging my dog in a grain sack. My dad asked me if I wanted help, and I said no because I remembered what Stanny B. said.
"I laid awake that night-forever, seemed like. You know how time is for kids. It would seem to me I must have stayed awake right around until morning, and then the clock would only chime ten or eleven. A couple of times I almost nodded off, but each time I snapped wide awake again. It was almost as if someone had shaken me and said, 'Wake up, Jud! Wake up!' Like something wanted to make sure I stayed awake."
Louis raised his eyebrows at that, and Jud shrugged.
"When the clock in the downstairs hall chimed twelve, I got right up and sat there dressed on my bed with the moon shinin in the window. Next I know, the clock is chimin the half-hour, then one o'clock, and still no Stanny B. He's forgot all about me, that dumb Frenchman, I think to myself, and I'm gettin ready to take my clothes off again when these two pebbles whap off the window, damn near hard enough to break the glass. One of them did put a crack in a pane, but I never noticed it until the next morning, and my mother didn't see it until the next winter, and by then she thought the frost done it.
"I just about flew across to that window and heaved it up. It grated and rumbled against the frame, the way they only seem to do when you're a kid and you want to get out after midnight-" Louis laughed, even though he could not remember ever having wanted to get out of the house at some dark hour when he was a boy of ten. Still, if he had wanted to, he was sure that windows which had never creaked in the daytime would creak then.
"I figured my folks must have thought burglars were trying to break in, but when my heart quieted down I could hear my dad still sawin wood in the bedroom on the first floor. I looked out and there was Stanny B., standin in our driveway and lookin up, swayin like there was a high wind when there wasn't so much as a puff of breeze. I don't think he ever would have come, Louis, except that he'd gotten to that stage of drunkenness where you're as wide awake as an owl with diarrhea and you just don't give a care about anything. And he sort of yells up at me-only I guess he thought he was whispering-'You comin down, boy, or am I comin up to get you?' "Shh!' I says, scared to death now that my dad will wake up and give me the whopping of my young life. 'What'd you say?' Stanny says, even louder than before. If my parents had been around on the road side of this house, Louis, I would have been a goner. But they had the bedroom that belongs to Norma and me now, with the river view."
"I bet you got down those stairs in one hell of a hurry," Louis said. "Have you got another beer, Jud?" He was already two past his usual limit, but tonight that seemed okay. Tonight that seemed almost mandatory.
"I do, and you know where they're kept," Jud said and lit a fresh smoke. He waited until Louis was seated again. "No, I wouldn't have dared to try the stairs. They went past my parents' bedroom. I went down the ivy trellis, hand over hand, just as quick as I could. I was some scared, I can tell you, but I think I was more scared of my dad just then than I was of going up to the Pet Sematary with Stanny B."
He crushed out his smoke.
"We went up there, the two of us, and I guess Stanny B. must have fallen down half a dozen times if he fell down once. He was really far gone; smelled like he'd fallen into a vat of corn. One time he damn near put a stick through his throat. But he had a pick and shovel with him. When we got to the Pet Sematary, I
kind of expected he'd sling me the pick and shovel and just pass out while I dug the hole.
"Instead he seemed to sober up a little. He told me we was goin on, up over the deadfall and deeper into the woods, where there was another burial place. I looked at Stanny, who was so drunk he could barely keep his feet, and I looked at that deadfall, and I said, 'You can't climb that, Stanny B., you'll break your neck. ' "And he said, 'I ain't gonna break my neck, me, and neither are you. I can walk and you can lug your dog. ' And he was right. He sailed up over that deadfall just as smooth as silk, never even looking down, and I lugged Spot all the way up there, although he must have weighed thirty-five pounds or so and I only went about ninety myself. I want to tell you, though, Louis, I was some sore and sprung the next day. How do you feel today?"
Louis didn't answer, only nodded.