by John Irving
This morning, Homer noted, there were women waiting in the snow to be picked up by the coach. Homer Wells didn't recognize the women, who fidgeted the whole time it took the St. Cloud's staff to unload. There seemed to be a certain tension between these groups--the women waiting to board appeared shy, even ashamed; the men and women coming to work seemed, by comparison, arrogant, even superior, and one of them (it was a woman) made a rough remark to the women waiting to leave. Homer couldn't hear the remark, but its effect drove the waiting women away from the coach like a blast of the winter wind. The women who boarded the coach did not look back, or even at each other. They didn't even speak, and the driver, who struck Homer as a friendly man who had something to say to nearly everyone in any weather, had no words for them. The coach simply turned around and glided across the snow to the station; in the lit windows, Homer Wells could see that several of the women had their faces in their hands, or sat as stonily as the other kind of mourner at a funeral--the one who must assume an attitude of total disinterest or else risk total loss of control.
He had never before seen the mothers who had their unwanted babies at St. Cloud's and then left them there, and he didn't see them very clearly this time. It was unquestionably more meaningful that he first saw them as they were taking their leave rather than arriving, full-bellied and undelivered of their problems. Importantly, Homer knew they did not look delivered of all their problems when they left. No one he had seen looked more miserable than those women; he suspected it was no accident that they left in darkness.
When he tried to put himself to sleep, Thanksgiving night with the Drapers in Waterville, Homer Wells saw the mothers leaving in the snow, but he also saw more than he'd actually seen. On the nights he couldn't sleep, Homer rode in the coach to the station with the women, he boarded the train with them, he went to their homes with them; he singled out his mother and followed her. It was hard to see what she looked like and where she lived, where she'd come from, if she'd gone back there--and harder still was to imagine who his father was, and if she went back to him. Like most orphans, Homer Wells imagined that he saw his missing parents often, but he was always unrecognized by them. As a child he was embarrassed to be caught staring at adults, sometimes affectionately, other times with an instinctual hostility he would not have recognized on his own face.
"You stop it, Homer," Dr. Larch used to say to him at those times. "You just cut it out."
As an adult, Homer Wells would still get caught staring.
But on Thanksgiving night in Waterville, he stared so hard into his real parents' lives that he almost found them before he fell asleep, exhausted. He was abruptly awakened by one of the grandchildren, an older boy; Homer had forgotten he was going to share his bed with him because the house was crowded.
"Move over," the boy said. Homer moved over. "Keep your pecker in your pajamas," the boy told Homer, who had no intention of taking it out. "You know what buggering is?" the boy asked, then.
"No," Homer said.
"Yes, you do, Pecker Head," the boy said. "That's what you all do at Saint Cloud's. You bugger yourselves. All the time. I'm telling you, you try to bugger me and you'll go back there without your pecker," the boy said. "I'll cut off your pecker and feed it to the dog."
"You mean Rufus?" Homer Wells asked.
"That's right, Pecker Head," the boy said. "You want to tell me again you don't know what buggering is?"
"I don't know," Homer said.
"You want me to show you, don't you?" the boy asked.
"I don't think so," Homer said.
"Yes you do, Pecker Head," the boy said, and he then tried to bugger Homer Wells. Homer had never seen or heard of anyone being so abused at St. Cloud's. Although the older boy had learned his style of buggery at a private school--a very good one--he had never been educated in the kind of crying that Homer Wells had been taught by the family from Three Mile Falls. It seemed to Homer that it was a good time for crying, loudly--if one wanted to escape the buggery--and his crying immediately awakened the one adult in the Draper household who had merely gone to sleep (as opposed to passing out). In other words, Homer woke Mom. He woke all the grandchildren, too, and since several of them were younger than Homer, and all of them had no knowledge of Homer's capacity for howls, his crying produced sheer terror among them--and even aroused Rufus, who snapped.
"What in Heaven's name?" Mom asked, at Homer's door.
"He tried to bugger me, so I let him have it," said the private school boy. Homer, who was struggling to get his legendary howls under control--to send them back to history--didn't know that grandchildren are believed before orphans.
"Here in St. Cloud's," wrote Dr. Larch, "it is self-defeating and cruel to give much thought to ancestors. In other parts of the world, I'm sorry to say, an orphan's ancestors are always under suspicion."
Mom hit Homer as hard as any representative of the failed family from Three Mile Falls ever hit him. She then banished him to the furnace room for the remainder of the night; it was at least warm and dry there, and there was a fold-out cot, which in the summers was used for camping trips.
There were also lots of wet shoes--a pair of which even belonged to Homer. Some of the wet socks were almost dry, and fit him. And the assortment of wet snowsuits and hardy tramping clothes gave Homer an adequate selection. He dressed himself in warm, outdoor clothes, which were--for the most part--nearly dry. He knew that Mom and the professor thought too highly of family ever to send him back to St. Cloud's over a mere buggery; if he wanted to go back, and he did, he'd have to leave on his own initiative.
In fact, Mom had provided Homer with a vision of how his alleged buggery would be treated and, doubtlessly, cured. She'd made him kneel before the fold-out cot in the furnace room.
"Say after me," she said, and repeated the professor's strange version of grace. " 'I am vile, I abhor myself,' " Mom said, and Homer had said it after her--knowing that every word was untrue. He'd never liked himself so much. He felt he was on the track to finding out who he was, and how he could be of use, but he knew that the path led back to St. Cloud's.
When Mom kissed him good night, she said, "Now, Homer, don't mind what the professor has to say about this. Whatever he says, you just take it with a grain of salt."
Homer Wells didn't wait to hear the text of the professor's lesson regarding buggery. Homer stepped outside; even the snow didn't stop him. In Waterville, in 193_, it was no surprise to see so much snow on the ground for Thanksgiving; and Professor Draper had very carefully instructed Homer on the merits and methods of snowshoeing.
Homer was a good tramper. He found the town road fairly easily, and the bigger road after that. It was daylight when the first truck stopped; it was a logging truck. This seemed, to Homer, appropriate to where he was going. "I belong to Saint Cloud's," he told the driver. "I got lost." In 193_ every logger knew where St. Cloud's was; this driver knew it was in the other direction.
"You're going the wrong way, kid," he advised the boy. "Turn around and look for a truck going the other way. What are you, from Saint Cloud's?" the driver asked. Like most people, he assumed that orphans were always running away from the orphanage--not running to it.
"I just belong there," Homer Wells said, and the driver waved good-bye. In Dr. Larch's opinion, this driver--in order to be so insensitive as to let a boy go off alone in the snow--simply had to be an employee of the Ramses Paper Company.
The next driver was also driving a logging truck; it was empty, it was heading back to the forest for more logs, and St. Cloud's was more or less on the way.
"You an orphan?" the driver asked Homer, when he said he was going to St. Cloud's.
"No," Homer said. "I just belong there--for now."
In 193_, it took a long time to drive anywhere in Maine, especially with snow on the roads. It was growing dark when Homer Wells returned to his home. The quality of the light was the same as the early morning when he'd seen the mothers leaving their babies behind. Homer stoo
d at the hospital entrance for a while and watched the snow fall. Then he went and stood at the entrance to the boys' division. Then he went back and stood outside the hospital entrance, because there was better light there.
He was still thinking of exactly what to say to Dr. Larch when the coach from the railroad station--that unmerry sleigh--stopped at the hospital entrance and let out a single passenger. She was so pregnant that the driver at first appeared concerned she might slip and fall; then the driver appeared to realize why the woman had come here, and it must have struck him as immoral that he should actually help a woman like that through the snow. He drove off and left her making her careful way toward the entrance, and toward Homer Wells. Homer rang the bell at the entrance for the woman, who didn't seem to know what to do. It occurred to him that she was hoping for a little time to think of what she too wanted to say to Dr. Larch.
To anyone seeing them there, this was a mother with her son. There was just that kind of familiarity in the way that they looked at each other, and in the clear recognition between them--they knew perfectly well what the other was up to. Homer was worried what Dr. Larch would say to him, but he realized that the woman was more worried than he was--the woman didn't know Dr. Larch; she had no idea what sort of place St. Cloud's was.
More lights were turned on inside, and Homer recognized the divine shape of Nurse Angela coming to open the door. For some reason, he reached out and took the pregnant woman's hand. Maybe it was the tear frozen to her face that the new light had allowed him to see, but he wanted a hand to hold himself. He was calm--Homer Wells--as Nurse Angela peered into the snowy night in disbelief while she struggled to open the frozen door. To the pregnant woman, and to her unwanted child, Homer said, "Don't worry. Everyone is nice here."
He felt the pregnant woman squeeze his hand so hard that it hurt. The word "Mother!" was strangely on his lips when Nurse Angela finally got the door open and seized Homer Wells in her arms.
"Oh, oh!" she cried. "Oh, Homer--my Homer, our Homer! I knew you'd be back!"
And because the pregnant woman's hand still firmly held Homer's hand--neither one of them felt able to let go--Nurse Angela turned and included the woman in her embrace. It seemed to Nurse Angela that this pregnant woman was just another orphan who belonged (like Homer Wells) exactly where she was.
What he told Dr. Larch was that he'd felt of no use in Waterville. Because of what the Drapers had said, when they'd called Larch to say that Homer had run away, Homer had to explain about the buggery--afterward, St. Larch explained all about buggery to Homer. The professor's drinking surprised Dr. Larch (he was good, as a rule, at detecting that), and the prayers baffled Larch. Dr. Larch's note to the Drapers was of a brevity the professor's own language rarely allowed.
"Repent," the note said. Larch might have left it at that, but he couldn't resist adding, "You are vile, you should abhor yourselves."
Wilbur Larch knew that a fourth foster family for Homer Wells would not be easy to find. The search took Dr. Larch three years, by which time Homer was twelve--almost thirteen. Larch knew what the danger would be: it would take Homer a great many years to feel as comfortable anywhere else as he felt at St. Cloud's.
"Here in St. Cloud's," Larch wrote in his journal, "we have only one problem. That there will always be orphans is not in the category of a problem; that is simply not to be solved--one does the best one can with that, one takes care of them. That our budget will always be too small is also not a problem; that won't be solved, either--an orphanage goes down to the wire; by definition, that is what should happen. And it is not a problem that every woman who gets pregnant doesn't necessarily want her baby; perhaps we can look ahead to a more enlightened time, when women will have the right to abort the birth of an unwanted child--but some women will always be uneducated, will always be confused, will always be frightened. Even in enlightened times, unwanted babies will manage to be born.
"And there will always be babies, who were very much wanted, who will end up orphans--by accident, by both planned and random acts of violence, which are not problems either. Here in St. Cloud's we would waste our limited energy and our limited imagination by regarding the sordid facts of life as if they were problems. Here in St. Cloud's we have only one problem. His name is Homer Wells. We have been very successful with Homer. We have managed to make the orphanage his home, and that is the problem. If you try to give an institution of the state, or of any government, anything like the love one is meant to invest in a family--and if the institution is an orphanage and you succeed in giving it love--then you will create a monster: an orphanage that is not a way-station to a better life, but an orphanage that is the first and last stop, and the only station the orphan will accept.
"There is no excuse for cruelty, but--at an orphanage--perhaps we are obliged to withhold love; if you fail to withhold love at an orphanage, you will create an orphanage that no orphan will willingly leave. You will create a Homer Wells--a true orphan, because his only home will always be at St. Cloud's. God (or whoever) forgive me. I have made an orphan; his name is Homer Wells and he will belong to St. Cloud's forever."
By the time Homer was twelve, he had the run of the place. He knew its stoves and its wood boxes, its fuse boxes, its linen closets, its laundry room, its kitchen, its corners where the cats slept--when the mail came, who got any, everyone's name, who was on what shift; where the mothers went to be shaved when they arrived, how long the mothers stayed, when--and with what necessary assistance--they left. He knew the bells; in fact, he rang them. He knew who the tutors were; he could recognize their style of walking from the train station, when they were still two hundred yards away. He was even known at the girls' division, although the very few girls older than he was frightened him and he spent as little time there as he could--going only on errands for Dr. Larch: messages and delivering medicines. The director of the girls' division was not a doctor, so when the girls were sick, either they visited Dr. Larch at the hospital or Larch went to the girls' division to visit them. The director of the girls' division was Boston Irish and had worked for a while at The New England Home for Little Wanderers. Her name was Mrs. Grogan, although she never mentioned Mr. Grogan, and no one seeing her would have an easy time imagining that there had ever been a man in her life. She may have preferred the sound of Missus to the sound of Miss. At The New England Home for Little Wanderers she had belonged to a society called God's Little Servants, which had given Dr. Larch pause. But Mrs. Grogan showed no signs of seeking members for such a society in St. Cloud's; perhaps she was too busy--in addition to her duties as director of the girls' division, she was responsible for arranging what little education was available for the orphans.
If there was an orphan who remained at St. Cloud's past the sixth grade level of school, there was no school to go to--and the only school for grades one through six was in Three Mile Falls; this was only a onestation stop on the train from St. Cloud's, but in 193_ the trains were often delayed, and the Thursday engineer was notorious for forgetting to stop at the St. Cloud's station (as if the sight of so many abandoned buildings convinced him that St. Cloud's was still a ghost town, or perhaps he disapproved of the women who got off the train there).
The majority of the pupils in the one-room schoolhouse in Three Mile Falls thought themselves superior to the occasional orphans in attendance; this feeling prevailed the most strongly among those students who came from families where they were neglected or abused, or both, and thus grades one through six, for Homer Wells, were comprised of experiences more combative than educational. He missed three Thursdays out of four, for years, and at least one other day (every week) because of a late train; in the winters, he missed a day a week because he was sick. And when there was too much snow, the trains didn't run.
The three tutors suffered the same perils pressed upon train service in those years, because they all came to St. Cloud's from Three Mile Falls. There was a woman who taught math; she was a bookkeeper for a textile mill--"a rea
l-life accountant," Nurse Edna claimed--but she refused to have anything to do with algebra or geometry, and she firmly preferred addition and subtraction to multiplication and division (Homer Wells would be a grown man before Dr. Larch would discover that the boy had never learned the multiplication table).
Another woman, a well-to-do plumber's widow, taught grammar and spelling. Her method was rigorous and messy. She presented great clumps of uncapitalized, misspelled, and unpunctuated words, and demanded that the clumps be put into proper sentences, meticulously punctuated and correctly spelled. She then corrected the corrections; the final document--she employed a system of different-colored inks--resembled a much-revised treaty between two semiliterate countries at war. The text itself was always strange to Homer Wells, even when it was finally correct. This was because the woman borrowed heavily from a family hymnal, and Homer Wells had never seen a church or heard a hymn (unless one counted Christmas carols, or the songs Mrs. Grogan sang--and the plumber's widow was not such a fool that she used Christmas carols). Homer Wells used to have nightmares about deciphering the passages that the plumber's widow concocted.
o lorde mi got wen i en ausum wundor
konsider al the wurlds thi hends hav mad . . .
Or there was this one:
o ruck of eges clift fur me let mi hid misulf en theee . . .
