with the angels or maybe he’s just sleeping. And if he’s sleeping, do you really know what it is you might wake up?
Oh Gage, where are you? I want you home with us.
But was he really controlling his own actions? Why couldn’t he summon up Gage’s face, and why was he going against everyone’s warning-Jud’s, the dream of Pascow, the trepidation of his own troubled heart?
He thought of the grave markers in the Pet Sematary, those rude circles, spiraling down into the Mystery, and then the coldness came over him again. Why was he standing here, trying to summon up Gage’s face anyway?
He would be seeing it soon enough.
The headstone was here now; it read simply CAGE WILLIAM CREED, followed by the two dates. Someone had been here today to pay his or her respects, he saw; there were fresh flowers. Who would that have been? Missy Dandridge?
His heart beat heavily but slowly in his chest. This was it then; if he was going to do it, he had better start. There was only so much night ahead, and then the day would come.
Louis glanced into his heart one final time and saw that yes, he did intend to go ahead with this. He nodded his head almost imperceptibly and fished for his pocketknife. He had cinched his bundle with Scotch strapping tape, and now he cut it. He unrolled the tarp at the foot of Gage’s grave like a bedroll and then arranged items in exactly the same way he would have arranged instruments to suture a cut or to perform a small in-office operation.
Here was the flashlight with its lens felted as the hardware store clerk had suggested. The felt was also secured with strapping tape. He had made a small circle in the middle by placing a penny on the felt and cutting around it with a scalpel. Here was the short-handled pick which he should not have to use-he had brought it only as a contingency. He would have no sealed cap to deal with, and he shouldn’t run into any rocks in a newly filled grave. Here was the shovel, the spade, the length of rope, the work gloves. He put the gloves on, grabbed the spade, and started.
The ground was soft, the digging easy. The grave’s shape was well defined, the dirt he was throwing out softer than the earth at the verge. His mind made a kind of automatic comparison between the ease of this dig and the rocky, unforgiving ground of the place where, if all went well, he would be reburying his son later on this night. Up there he would need the pick. Then he tried to stop thinking altogether. It only got in the way.
He threw the dirt on the ground to the left of the grave, working into a steady rhythm that only became more difficult to maintain as the hole deepened. He stepped into the grave, smelling that dank aroma of fresh dirt, a smell he remembered from his summers with Uncle Carl.
Digger, he thought and stopped to wipe sweat from his brow. Uncle Carl had told him that was the nickname for every graveyard sexton in America. Their friends called them Digger.
He started in again.
He stopped only once more, and that was to check his watch. It was twenty minutes past twelve. He felt time slipping through his fist like something that had been greased.
Forty minutes later, the spade gritted across something, and Louis’s teeth came down on his upper lip hard enough to bring blood. He got the flashlight and shone it down. Here was more dirt, and scrawled across it in a diagonal slash, a grayish-silver line. It was the top of the grave liner. Louis got most of the dirt off, but he was wary of making too much noise, and nothing was much louder than a shovel scraping across concrete in the dead of night.
He climbed out of the grave and got the rope. This he threaded through the iron rings on one half of the segmented grave-liner top. He got out of the grave again, spread out the tarpaulin, lay down on it, and grasped the ends of the rope.
Louis, I think this is it. Your last chance.
You’re right. It’s my last chance and I’m damned well taking it.
He wound the ends of the rope around his hands and pulled. The square of concrete came up easily, gritting on the pivot end.
It stood neatly upright over a square of blackness, now a vertical tombstone instead of a horizontal grave cover.
Louis pulled the rope out of the rings and tossed it aside. He wouldn’t need it for the other hail; he could stand on the sides of the grave liner and pull it up.
He got down into the grave again, moving carefully, not wanting to overturn the cement slab he had already pulled up and mash his toes or break the damned thing, which was quite thin. Pebbles rattled down into the hole, and he heard several of them chip hollowly off Gage’s coffin.
Bending, he grasped the other half of the grave-liner top and pulled upward. As he did so, he felt something squelch coldly under his fingers. When he had this second half of the top standing on end, he looked down at his hand and saw a fat earthworm wriggling feebly there. With a choked cry of disgust, Louis wiped it off on the earthen sidewall of his son’s grave.
Then he shone his flashlight downward.
Here was the coffin he had last seen resting on chrome runners over the grave at the funeral service, surrounded by that ghastly green Astroturf. This was the safety-deposit box in which he was supposed to bury all his hopes for his son.
Fury, clean and white hot, the antithesis of his former coldness, rose up in him. Idiotic! The answer was no!
Louis groped for the spade and found it. He raised it over his shoulder and brought it down on the coffin’s latch once, twice, a third time, a fourth. His lips were drawn back in a furious grimace.
Going to break you out, Gage, see if 1 don’t!
The latch had splintered on the first stroke and probably no more were necessary, but he went on, not wanting just to open the coffin but to hurt it.
Some kind of sanity finally returned, and he stopped with the spade raised for another blow.
The blade was bent and scratched. He tossed it aside and scrambled out of the grave on legs that felt weak and rubbery. He felt sick to his stomach, and the anger had gone as quickly as it had come. In its place the coldness flooded back in, and never in his life had his mind felt so alone and disconnected; he felt like an astronaut who has floated away from his ship during an EVA and now only drifts in a great blackness, breathing on borrowed time. Did Bill Baterman feel like this? he wondered.
He lay on the ground, on his back this time, waiting to see if he was under control and ready to proceed. When the rubbery feeling had left his legs, he sat up and slipped back down into the grave. He shone the flashlight on the latch and saw it was not just broken, but demolished. He had swung the spade in a blind fury, but every blow he had struck had gone directly there, bull’s eye, as if guided. The wood around it had splintered.
Louis slipped the flashlight into his armpit. He squatted down slightly. His hands groped, like the hands of a catcher in a troupe of circus flyers, waiting to perform his part in a mortal docking.
He found the groove in the lid, and he slipped his fingers into it. He paused for a moment-one could not rightly call it a hesitation-and then he opened his son’s coffin.
50
Rachel Creed almost made her flight from Boston to Portland. Almost. Her Chicago plane left on time (a miracle in itself), was cleared straight into LaGuardia (another), and left New York only five minutes behind schedule. It got to the gate in Boston fifteen minutes late-at 11:12 P. M. That left her with thirteen minutes.
She still might have made her connecting flight, but the shuttle bus which makes a circle around the Logan terminals was late. Rachel waited, now in a kind of constant low-grade panic, shifting from foot to foot as if she needed to go to the bathroom, switching the travel bag her mother had loaned her from one shoulder to the other.
When the shuttle still hadn’t come at 11:25, she began to run. Her heels were low but still high enough to cause her problems. One of her ankles buckled painfully, and she paused long enough to take off the shoes. Then she ran on in her pantyhose, past Allegheny and Eastern Airlines, breathing hard now, getting the beginnings of a stitch in her side.
Her breath was hot in her throat, that tuck in her side deeper and more painful.
Now she was running past the international terminal, and there, up ahead, was Delta’s triangular sign. She burst in through the doors, almost dropped one shoe, juggled it, caught it. It was 11:37.
One of the two clerks on duty glanced up at her.
“Flight 104,” she panted. “The Portland flight. Has it left?”
The clerk glanced behind him at the monitor. “Still at the gate it says here,”
he said, “but they called for final boarding five minutes ago. I’ll call ahead.
Bags to check?”
“No,” Rachel gasped, and brushed her sweaty hair out of her eyes. Her heart was galloping in her chest.
“Then don’t wait for me to call. I will-but I advise you to run very fast.”
Rachel didn’t run very fast-she was no longer able. But she did as well as she could. The escalator had been turned off for the night, and she pounded up the stairs, tasting copper shavings in her mouth. She reached the security checkpoint and almost threw the tote bag at the startled female guard, then waited for it to come through on the conveyor belt, her hands clenching and unclenching. It was barely out of the X-ray chamber before she had snatched it by the strap and ran again, the bag flying out behind her and then banging her on the hip.
She looked up at one of the monitors as she ran.
FLIGHT 104 PORTLAND SCHED 11:25P GATE 31 BOARDING Gate 31 was at the far end of the concourse-and even as she snatched her glance at the monitor, BOARDING in steady letters changed to DEPARTING, blinking rapidly.
A frustrated cry burst from her. She ran into the gate area just in time to see the gate attendant removing the strips which read: FLIGHT 104 BOSTON-PORTLAND 11:25.
“It’s gone?” she asked incredulously. “It’s really gone?”
The attendant looked at her sympathetically. “It rolled out of the jetway at 11:40. I’m sorry, ma’am. You made a helluva good try, if that’s any consolation.” He pointed out the wide glass windows. Rachel could see a big 727 with Delta markings, its running lights Christmas-tree bright, starting its takeoff roll.
“Christ, didn’t anyone tell you I was coming?” Rachel cried.
“When they called up here from downstairs, 104 was on an active taxiway. If I’d called her back, she would have gotten caught in the parade going out to Runway 30, and that pilot would have had my bee-hind on a platter. Not to mention the hundred or so passengers on board. I’m very sorry. If you’d been even four minutes sooner-”
She walked away, not listening to the rest. She was halfway back to the security checkpoint when waves of faintness rode over her. She stumbled into another gate area and sat down until the darkness had passed. Then she slipped her shoes back on, picking a squashed Lark cigarette butt off the tattered sole of one stocking first. My feet are dirty and I don’t give a fuck, she thought disconsolately.
She walked back toward the terminal.
The security guard eyed her sympathetically. “Missed it?”
“I missed it, all right,” Rachel said.
“Where were you headed?”
“Portland. Then Bangor.”
“Well, why don’t you rent a car? If you really have to be there, that is?
