The Cider House Rules (76 page)

Homer Wells said that Vernon Lynch had a constant brain tumor; it never grew, it always exerted the same pressure and the same interference. “It’s just there, like the weather, huh?” Ira Titcomb, the beekeeper, kidded with Homer. Ira was sixty-five, but he had another number marked on the trailer he used to carry his hives: the number of times he’d been stung by his bees.

“Only two hundred and forty-one times,” Ira said. “I been keepin’ bees since I was nineteen,” he said, “so that amounts to only five point two stings a year. Pretty good, huh?” Ira asked Homer.

“Right,” mumbled Homer Wells, ducking the expected punch, cringing in anticipation of the baseball whistling toward his face at the speed of Mr. Rose’s knife work.

Homer kept his own accounts, of course. The number of times he’d made love with Candy since Wally came home from the war was written in pencil (and then erased, and then rewritten) on the back of the photograph of Wally with the crew of
Opportunity Knocks.
Two hundred seventy—only a few more times than Ira Titcomb had been stung by bees. What Homer didn’t know was that Candy also kept a record—also written in pencil, she wrote “270” on the back of another print of the photograph of her teaching Homer how to swim. She kept the photograph, almost casually, in the bathroom she shared with Wally, where the photograph was always partially concealed by a box of tissues, or a bottle of shampoo. It was a cluttered bathroom, which Olive had outfitted properly before she died, and before Wally came home; it had the convenient handrails Wally needed to help himself on and off the toilet and in and out of the tub.

“It’s your standard cripple’s bathroom,” Wally would say. “An ape would have a good time in there. There’s all that stuff to swing from.”

And once, that summer, returning from the beach, they had stopped the car at the playground of the elementary school in Heart’s Haven. Wally and Angel wanted to play on the jungle gym. Angel was very agile on the thing, and Wally’s arms were so developed that he could move through it with an alarmingly apelike strength and grace—the two of them hooting like monkeys at Homer and Candy, who waited in the car.

“Our two children,” Homer had said to the love of his life.

“Yes, our family,” Candy had said, smiling—watching Wally and Angel climb and swing, climb and swing.

“It’s better for them than watching television,” said Homer Wells, who would always think of Wally and Angel as children. Homer and Candy shared the opinion that Wally watched too much television, which was a bad influence on Angel, who liked to watch it with him.

Wally was so fond of television that he had even given a TV to Homer to take to St. Cloud’s. Of course the reception was very poor up there, which had perhaps improved the McCarthy hearings, which had been Wilbur Larch’s first, sustained experience with television.

“Thank God it didn’t come in clearly,” he wrote to Homer.

Nurse Caroline had been in a bad mood all that year. If the U.S. Army really was “coddling Communists,” as Senator McCarthy claimed, Nurse Caroline said that she’d consider joining up.

Wilbur Larch, straining to see Senator McCarthy through the television’s snow and zigzagging lines, said, “He looks like a drunk to me. I’ll bet he dies young.”

“Not young enough to suit me,” Nurse Caroline said.

Finally, they gave the television away. Nurse Edna and Mrs. Grogan were becoming addicted to it, and Larch considered that it was worse for the orphans than organized religion. “It’s better for anyone than ether, Wilbur,” Nurse Edna complained, but Larch was firm. He gave the thing to the stationmaster, who (in Larch’s opinion) was the perfect sort of moron for the invention; it was just the right thing to occupy the mind of someone who waited all day for trains. It was Wilbur Larch who was the first man in Maine to call a television what it was: “an idiot box.” Maine, of course—and St. Cloud’s, especially—seemed to get everything more slowly than the rest of the country.

But Wally loved to watch it, and Angel watched it with him whenever Candy and Homer didn’t object. Wally argued, for example, that such televised events as the McCarthy hearings were educational for Angel. “He ought to know,” Wally said, “that the country is always in danger from right-wing nut cases.”

Although Senator McCarthy lost the support of millions of people as a result of the hearings—and although the Senate condemned him for his “contemptuous” conduct toward a subcommittee that had investigated his finances and for his abuse of a committee that recommended he be censured, the board of trustees of St. Cloud’s had been favorably impressed by Senator McCarthy. Mrs. Goodhall and Dr. Gingrich, especially, were encouraged to complain about Nurse Caroline’s socialist views and involvements, which they considered tinged the orphanage a shade of pink.

Nurse Caroline’s arrival had stolen a bit of the board’s fire. If Mrs. Goodhall was at first relieved to learn that someone “new” had invaded St. Cloud’s, she was later irritated to discover that Nurse Caroline approved of Dr. Larch. This led Mrs. Goodhall to investigate Nurse Caroline, whose nursing credentials were perfect but whose political activities gave Mrs. Goodhall a glow of hope.

Many times had Mrs. Goodhall advanced her thesis to the board that Dr. Larch was not only ninety-something, he was also a nonpracticing homosexual. Now she warned the board that Dr. Larch had hired a young Red.

“They’re all so old, they’ll be easily brainwashed,” Mrs. Goodhall said.

Dr. Gingrich, who was increasingly fascinated with the leaps of Mrs. Goodhall’s mind, was still marveling over the confusing image of a nonpracticing homosexual; it struck him as a brilliant accusation to make of anyone who was slightly (or hugely) different. It was the best rumor to start about anyone because it could never be proved or disproved. Dr. Gingrich wished he’d considered the accusation—just as a means of provocation—when he’d still been practicing psychiatry.

And now, not only was Dr. Larch old and homosexual and nonpracticing—he was also in danger of being brainwashed by a young Red.

Dr. Gingrich was dying to find out what Dr. Larch’s responses might be to the accusation that he was a nonpracticing homosexual, because Dr. Larch was so outspoken on the issue of Nurse Caroline’s politics.

“She’s a socialist, not a Communist!” Dr. Larch protested to the board.

“Same difference,” as they say in Maine—about so many things.

“The next thing you know,” Larch complained to his nurses, “they’ll be asking us to denounce things.”

“What would we denounce?” Nurse Edna asked worriedly.

“Let’s make a list,” Larch said.

“The abortion laws,” Nurse Angela said.

“At the top of the list!” Larch agreed.

“Oh my!” Nurse Edna said.

“Republicans,” said Wilbur Larch. “And the board of trustees,” he added.

“Oh dear,” Nurse Edna said.

“Capitalism,” Nurse Caroline said.

“There’s never been any capital around here,” Dr. Larch said.

“Insects and scab!” Nurse Edna said. They all stared at her. “And maggots,” Nurse Edna added. “They’re what I have to spray the apple trees for. Insects and scab and maggots.”

As a result, Wilbur Larch dug out of a closet the old black leather bag he’d had at the Boston Lying-In; he took the bag to a cobbler in Three Mile Falls who also repaired ladies’ handbags and put gold initials on saddles, and he had the cobbler engrave on his old black bag the gold initials F.S.—for Fuzzy Stone.

That August of 195_, just a few days before the picking crew was expected at Ocean View, Wilbur Larch sent the doctor’s bag to Homer Wells. It was the time of year, every year, when Melony took her vacation.

Most of the shipyard workers, even the electricians, took a couple of weeks in the summer and a couple of weeks around Christmas, but Melony took a whole month during harvest time; it made her feel good—or, maybe, young again—to pick apples. This year, she had decided, she’d try working at Ocean View.

She still hitchhiked whenever and wherever she traveled, and because she wore only men’s work clothes, she still looked like a tramp; no one would ever know that she was a shipyard’s skilled electrician, with enough money in a savings account to buy a nice house and a couple of cars.

When Melony arrived at the apple mart, Big Dot Taft was the first to see her. Big Dot and Florence Hyde were arranging some of the display tables, although the only new apples they had available were the Gravensteins. They had mostly jellies and jams and honey. Irene Titcomb was working the pie ovens. Wally was in the office; he was on the telephone and didn’t see Melony—and she didn’t see him.

Candy was in the kitchen of the fancy house, talking real estate to Olive’s vulgar brother, Bucky Bean. Bucky had bought what was left of the point of land Ray Kendall had owned on Heart’s Haven Harbor. Bucky had put a very cheap and shabby seafood restaurant there—one of Maine’s first carhop restaurants, one of those places where young girls dressed like cheerleaders bring you mostly fried and mostly tepid food, which you consume in your car. The food attaches itself to the cars by means of wobbly little trays that cling to the doors of the cars when the windows are rolled down. Homer always wanted to take Wilbur Larch to such a place—only to hear what the old man would say. Larch’s response, Homer was sure, would be related to his response to television and to Senator Joe McCarthy.

Bucky Bean’s new idea was to buy the part of the orchard called Cock Hill and sell it in one-acre lots as “summer property” with a view of the ocean.

Candy was in the process of rejecting the offer when Melony arrived at the apple mart. Candy’s opinion was that one-acre lots were too small and that the unsuspecting new owners would be unprepared for the chemical spray used on the apples that would regularly float over and descend upon their property every summer. Also, the families who bought property and built houses would doubtlessly believe it was their right to climb the fences and pick all the apples they wanted.

“You’re just like Olive,” Bucky Bean complained. “You’ve got no imagination concerning the future.”

That was when Melony approached Big Dot Taft, not only because Big Dot appeared to be in charge but also because Melony felt comfortable with big, fat women. Big Dot smiled to see how hefty Melony was; the two women appeared predisposed to like each other when Melony spoke—her voice reverberating through the near-empty stalls and surprising Meany Hyde and Vernon Lynch, who were putting water in the John Deere’s radiator. When Melony tried to speak normally, her voice was peculiarly deep; when she tried to raise the pitch of her voice, most people thought she was shouting.

“Does a guy named Homer Wells work here?” Melony asked Big Dot.

“He sure does,” Big Dot said cheerfully. “Are you a pal of Homer’s?”

“I used to be,” Melony said. “I haven’t seen him in a while,” she added coyly—at least coyly for Melony, whose love affair with Lorna had made her occasionally self-conscious and shy with other women; her self-confidence around men was as steadfast as ever.

“Where’s Homer?” Florence Hyde asked Meany. He was staring at Melony.

“He’s puttin’ out crates in the Frying Pan,” said Meany Hyde. Something made him shiver.

“You just come to say hello?” Big Dot asked Melony, whose fingers—Dot noticed—were instinctively opening and closing, making fists and then relaxing.

“I actually come for work,” Melony said. “I done a lot of pickin’.”

“Homer hires the pickers,” Big Dot said. “I guess you’re in luck—you bein’ old friends.”

“It’s too early for hirin’ pickers,” Vernon Lynch said. Something about the way Melony looked at him made him not insist on that point.

“Just go tell Homer there’s someone to see him,” Big Dot told Vernon. “Homer’s the boss.”

“The boss?” Melony said.

Irene Titcomb giggled, and turned her burn scar away. “It’s actually a kind of secret—who’s boss around here,” Irene said.

Vernon Lynch gunned the tractor so hard that an oily, black smoke barked out of the exhaust pipe and washed over the women in the mart.

“If you’re gonna work here,” Big Dot told Melony, “you might as well know it: that guy drivin’ the tractor is the number one asshole.”

Melony shrugged. “There’s just one?” she asked, and Big Dot laughed.

“Oh, my pies!” said Irene Titcomb, who went running off. Florence Hyde sized Melony up, in a friendly way, and Big Dot put her meaty paw on Melony’s shoulder as if they were lifelong pals. Irene Titcomb ran back to them and announced that the pies were saved.

“So tell us how you know Homer Wells,” Florence Hyde said to Melony.

“From where and since when?” asked Big Dot Taft.

“From Saint Cloud’s, since forever,” Melony told them. “He was my guy,” she told the women, her lips parting, showing the damage done to her teeth.

“You don’t say?” said Big Dot Taft.

Homer Wells and his son, Angel, were talking about masturbation—or, rather, Homer was talking. They were taking their lunch break under one of the old trees in the Frying Pan; they’d been putting crates out in the orchards all morning—taking turns driving the tractor and unloading the crates. They’d finished their sandwiches, and Angel had shaken up his soda and squirted his father with it, and Homer had tried to find a casual way to bring up the subject of masturbation. Candy had mentioned to Homer that the evidence on Angel’s bedsheets suggested that this might be the time for a father-and-son conversation regarding Angel’s obviously emerging sexuality.

“Boy, when I was your age—in Saint Cloud’s—it was really tough to beat off with any privacy,” Homer had begun (he thought, casually).

They’d been lying on their backs in the tall grass, under the fullest tree in the Frying Pan—the sun couldn’t filter through the lush, bent branches and all the heavy apples.

“Really,” Angel said indifferently, after a while.

“Yup,” Homer said. “You know, I was the oldest—about your age—and I was supposed to be in charge of all the other kids, more or less. I knew they weren’t even old enough to have pubic hair, or they didn’t even know what to make of their little hard-ons.”