The Cider House Rules (81 page)

'A body?' the stationmaster asked. He gripped the sides of the small table where the constant television revealed to him its blurry, fade-in and fade-out images—any of which the stationmaster found preferable to the more vivid picture of those long-ago bodies.

'Someone who didn't want to have a baby,' Nurse Caroline told him. 'She butchered herself, trying to get the baby out. She got to us too late for us to be able to do anything about it.' {653}

Unanswering, and never taking his
eyes
from the snowy, zigzagging figures on the TV screen, the stationmaster clung to the table as if it were an altar and the television was his god—at least, he knew, he would never see on that television anything resembling what Nurse Caroline described, and so the stationmaster continued to watch the TV instead of looking into Nurse Caroline's eyes.

Carmen? Cecelia? Charity? Claudia? Constance? Cookie? Cordelia? Angel Wells cocked the Red Sox cap at the correct angle; although it was cool in the early morning, he elected not to wear a shirt. Dagmar? he thought. Daisy? Dolores? Dotty?

'Where are you going in my hat?' Candy asked him; she was picking up the breakfast dishes.

'It's
my
hat,' Angel said, going out the door.

'Love is blind,' Wally said, pushing his wheelchair away from the table.

Does he mean me or Angel? Candy wondered. Homer and Wally were worried about Angel's puppylike infatuation with Rose Rose, but that is all it seemed to Candy: puppylike. Candy knew that Rose Rose had too much experience to allow Angel to get carried away. That wasn't the point, Homer had said. Candy imagined that Rose Rose had more experience in her little finger than… but that wasn't the point, either, Wally had said.

'Well, I hope the point isn't that she's
colored,'
Candy had said.

'The point is Mister Rose,' Wally had said. The word 'Right!' had been almost visible on Homer's lips. Men want to control everything, Candy thought.

Homer Wells was in the apple-mart office. In the mail there was a letter for him from Dr. Larch, but Homer didn't look through the mail. That was Wally's job; besides, the picking crew had arrived. The harvest would be starting as soon as Homer could get it organized. He {654} looked out the office window and saw his son not wearing any shirt and talking to Big Dot Taft. He opened the screen door and hollered at Angel. 'Hey, it's cold this morning—put on a shirt!' Angel was already walking toward the barns beyond the apple mart.

'I got to warm up the tractor!' he told his father.

'Warm yourself up first!' Homer told him, but the boy was already very warm this morning.

Edith? Angel asked himself. Ernestine? Esmeralda? Eve! he thought.

He bumped into Vernon Lynch, who was glowering over a cup of hot coffee.

'Watch where yer goin',' Vernon told Angel.

'Faith!' Angel said to him. 'Felicia! Francesca! Frederica!'

'Asshole,' said Vernon Lynch.

'No, that's you,' Big Dot Taft told him. 'You're the asshole, Vernon.'

'God, I love the harvest!' Wally said, cruising around the kitchen table, while Candy washed the dishes. 'It's my favorite time.'

'Mine, too,' Candy said, smiling. What she thought was: I have six more weeks to live.

Black Pan, the cook, was back; Candy had to hurry— she had to take Black Pan shopping. A man named Peaches had picked for them before, but not for several years; he was called Peaches because his beard never grew. Also, a man named Muddy was back; no one had seen Muddy for years. He'd been badly knifed at the cider house one night, and Homer had driven him to the hospital in Cape Kenneth. Muddy had taken one hundred twenty-three stitches; Homer Wells thought he'd looked like a kind of experimental sausage.

The man who'd cut him was long gone. That was one of Mr. Rose's rules; Homer guessed it might have been the dominant rule of the cider house. No hurting each other. You cut people to scare them, to show them who's boss, but you don't send people to the hospital. Then the {655} law comes, and everyone at the cider house feels small. The man who'd cut Muddy hadn't been thinking about the community.

'He was really tryin' to cut my ass off, man,' Muddy had said, as if he were surprised.

'He was an amateur,' Mr. Rose had said. 'He long gone now, anyway.'

The rest of the crew, except for Mr. Rose's daughter, hadn't been to Ocean View before. Mr. Rose arranged, with Angel, how Rose Rose and her daughter would spend the day.

'She gonna ride around with you and help you out,' Mr. Rose told Angel. 'She can sit on the fender, or stand behind the seat. She can ride on the trailer, before it full.'

'Sure!'Angel said.

'If she need to take the baby back to the cider house, she can walk,' Mr. Rose said. 'She don't need no special favors.'

'No,' Angel said; it surprised him that Mr. Rose would speak this way about his daughter when she was standing beside him, looking a little embarrassed. Baby Rose—pacifier in place—rode her hip.

'Sometimes Black Pan can look after the baby,' Mr. Rose said, and Rose Rose nodded.

'Candy said she'd look after her, too,' Angel offered.

'No need botherin' Missus Worthington,' said Mr. Rose, and Rose Rose shook her head.

When Angel drove the tractor, he always stood up; if he sat down without a cushion on the seat (and he thought a cushion was for an old man with piles), he couldn't quite see the radiator cap. He was afraid that, if he sat down, the engine might overheat and the radiator would boil over without his noticing it. But most of all, it looked better to drive a tractor standing up.

He was glad he was driving the International Harvester; years ago, Raymond Kendall had built a swivel for the seat. He could let Rose Rose sit down—with or without Baby Rose in her lap—and he could stand a {656} little to one side of the swivel seat and operate the tractor without awkwardness. There was a foot clutch, a foot brake, and a hand throttle. The emergency hand brake was next to Rose Rose's hip; the gearshift was by her knee.

'Why you wear that old baseball cap?' she asked him. 'You got nice eyes, but nobody see 'em. You got nice hair, but nobody see it. And you got one pale forehead 'cause the sun can't find your face. If you didn't wear th at dumb cap, your face would be as brown as your body.'

This implied to Angel, of course, that Rose Rose liked his body being brown, didn't care for his forehead being pale, and had managed—despite the hat—to notice his eyes and hair (and to like them, too).

After filling the trailer with his first load of apples, Angel took a long drink from a water jug in the orchard, twisting the baseball cap backward on his head as he drank. Then he wore it that way, the way a catcher wears a baseball cap—or the way Candy wore it, with the visor tipped over her hair and the back of her neck. Somehow it looked better that way on Candy. When Rose Rose saw Angel wearing the cap that way, she said, 'Now you look real stupid, like you got a ball for a head.'

The next day, Angel let Candy wear the cap.

Baby Rose was sucking the pacifier, like a three-horsepower pump, and Rose Rose smiled at Angel. 'Where's that nice hat?' she asked him.

'I lost it,' he lied.

'Too bad,' she said. 'It was nice.' 'I thought you didn't like that hat,' he said.

'I didn't like that hat on
you,'
said Rose Rose.

The next day he brought the hat and put it on her head as soon as she was settled into the tractor seat. Rose Rose looked awfully pleased; she wore the hat the same way Angel had worn it—low, over her eyes. Baby Rose looked cross-eyed at the visor.

'You lost it and then you found it, huh?' Rose Rose asked Angel.

'Right,' Angel said.{657}

'You better be careful,' she told him. 'You don't wanna get involved with me.'

But Angel was flattered and encouraged that she'd even noticed his interest—especially since he was unsure how to express his interest.

'How old
are
you?' he asked her casually, later that day.

''Bout your age, Angel,' was all she said. Baby Rose slumped against her breast; a floppy-brimmed white sailor's hat protected the baby from the sun, but under the brim of the hat, the little girl looked glassy-eyed and exhausted from chomping on the pacifier all day. 'I don't believe
you
can still be teethin',' Rose Rose said to her daughter. She took hold of the baby-blue plastic ring and pulled the pacifier out of the little girl's mouth; it made a
pop
like a wine cork, which startled Baby Rose. 'You becomin' an addict,' Rose Rose said, but when Baby Rose started to cry, her mother put the nipple back.

'How do you like the name Gabriella?' Angel asked Rose Rose.

'I never heard it before,' she said.

'How about Ginger?' Angel asked.

'That somethin' you eat,' Rose Rose said.

'Gloria?' Angel asked.

'That nice,' said Rose Rose. 'Who it for?'

'Your baby!' Angel said. 'I've been thinking of names for your baby.' Rose Rose raised the visor of the Boston Red Sox cap and looked into Angel's eyes.

'Why you thinkin' of that?' she asked him.

'Just to be of help,' he said awkwardly. 'Just to help you decide.'

'Decide?' Rose Rose asked.

'To help you make up your mind,' said Angel Wells.

The picker named Peaches was almost as fast as Mr. Rose. He was emptying his canvas bag into a bushel crate, and he interrupted Rose Rose and Angel.

'You countin' me, Angel?' Peaches asked.

'I got you,' Angel said. Sometimes Angel examined the {658} fruit if he didn't know the picker very well—to make sure they weren't bruising it; if they were bruising it, or if there were other signs that they were picking too fast, Angel wouldn't give them the top price for a bushel. But Angel knew Peaches was a good picker, so he just put a number on the list without getting off the tractor to look at the apples. '

'Ain't you a checker?' Peaches asked Angel, then.

'Sure, I got you!' Angel said to him.

'Don't you wanna check me, then? Better make sure I ain't pickin' pears, or somethin',' Peaches said, grinning. Angel went to look over the apples, and that was when Peaches said to him: 'You don't wanna go into the knife business with Mistuh Rose.' Then he walked away, with his bag and his ladder, before Angel could say anything about his apples—which were, of course, perfect.

Back on the tractor, Angel got up his nerve. 'Are you still married to the baby's father?' he asked Rose Rose.

'Wasn't ever married,' she said.

'Are you still together, you and the father?' Angel asked.

'Baby got no father,' Rose Rose said. 'I wasn't ever
together.'

'I like Hazel and Heather,' Angel said, after a while. 'They're both names of plants, so they sort of go with Rose.'

'I don't have no plant, I got a little girl,' Rose Rose said, smiling.

'I also like the name Hope,' Angel said.

'Hope ain't no name,' Rose Rose said.

'Iris is nice,' Angel said. 'But it's sort of cute, because it's another flower. Then there's Isadora.'

'Whew!' said Rose Rose. 'No name is better than some.'

'Well, how about plain old Jane?' asked Angel Wells, who was getting frustrated. 'Jennifer? Jessica? Jewel? Jill? Joyce? Julia? Justine?'

She touched him. She just put her hand on his hip, which nearly caused him to jackknife the trailer and spill {659} the load. 'Don't never stop,' she told him. 'I never knew there was so many names. Go on,' she said, her hand urging him—it was just a little shove, before she returned her hand to her lap, where Baby Rose sat mesmerized by the tractor's motion and the tractor's sound.

'Katherine? Kathleen? Kirsten? Kitty?' Angel Wells began.

'Go on,' Rose Rose said, her hand grazing his hip again.

'Laura? Laurie? Laverne? Lavinia? Leah? That means “weary,” ' he told her. 'Leslie? Libby? Loretta? Lucy? Mabel? That means “lovable,” ' he told her. 'Malvina? That means “smooth snow,” ' he explained.

'I never livin' where they got snow,' Rose Rose said.

'Maria?' Angel said. 'Marigold? That's another flower. Mavis? That means a “thrush,” it's a kind of bird,' he said.

'Don't tell me what they mean,' Rose Rose instructed him.

'Melissa? Mercedes?' Angel said.

'Ain't that a car?' Rose Rose asked him.

'It's a good car,' Angel said. 'A German car. Very expensive.'

'I seen one, I think,' Rose Rose said. They got a funny bull's eye on the hood.'

'Their insignia,' said Angel Wells.

'Their what?' she asked.

'It's a kind of bull's eye, you're right,' Angel said.

'Say it again,' Rose Rose said.

'Mercedes,' he said.

'It for rich people, ain't it?' Rose Rose asked.

'The car?' he asked.

'The name or the car,' she said.

'Well,' Angel said, 'it's an expensive car, but the name means “Our Lady of Mercies.” '

'Well, fuck it, then,' Rose Rose said. 'Didn't I tell you not to tell me what the names mean?'

'Sorry,' he said.{660}

'How come you never wear a shirt?' she asked him.

'Ain't you never cold?'

Angel shrugged.

'You can go on with them names, any time,' she told him.

After the first four or five days of the harvest, the wind shifted; there was a strong sea breeze off the Atlantic, and the early mornings were especially cold. Angel wore a T-shirt and a sweat shirt over that. One morning, when it was so cold that Rose Rose had left Baby Rose with Candy, Angel saw that she was shivering and he gave her his sweat shirt. She wore it all day. She was still wearing it when Angel went to help with the cider press that night, and for a while they sat on the cider house roof together. Black Pan sat up there with them, and he told them about the time when there'd been an Army installation on the coast, which they could see at night.

'It was a secret weapon,' he told them. 'And your father,' Black Pan told Angel, 'he made up a name for it—he had us all shittin' our pants, we was so scared. It was a kind of wheel, he told us—it sent people to the moon, or somethin'.'