The Cider House Rules

by John Irving

  What a good story! thought Wilbur Larch. It had taken him the rest of August of 194_. He wanted to leave the matter all set up--all arranged--when Homer Wells returned to St. Cloud's from his summer job.

  Wilbur Larch had created a replacement for himself, one who would be acceptable to the authorities--whoever they were. He had created someone with qualified obstetrical procedure, and--what better?--an orphan familiar with the place from birth. He had also created a perfect lie, because the Dr. F. Stone whom Wilbur Larch had in mind would perform abortions, of course, while at the same time--what better?--he would be on record for claiming he was against performing them. When Larch retired (or, he knew, if he was ever caught), he would already have available his most perfect replacement. Of course, Larch was not through with Fuzzy; such an important replacement might require some revision.

  Wilbur Larch lay in the dispensary with both the stars of Maine and the stars of ether circling around him. He had given Fuzzy Stone a role in life that was much more strenuous than Fuzzy ever could have been capable of. How could poor Fuzzy even have imagined it, as he succumbed to the failure of his breathing contraption?

  Only one problem, thought Wilbur Larch, dreaming with the stars. How do I get Homer to play the part?

  Homer Wells, gazing at the actual stars of Maine and at the orchards visible in the waning moonlight out Wally's window, saw something glint--something beyond the orchard from which he knew the ocean could be viewed. Homer moved his head up and down in Wally's window, and the glint flashed to him; the feeble signal reminded him of the night when the deep Maine woods had not returned his voice to him--when he had yelled his echoless good night to Fuzzy Stone.

  Then he realized where the glint was coming from. There must be one, small, polished spot on the tin roof of the cider house; he was seeing the waning moon bounce off the roof of the cider house--off a spot no bigger than a knife blade. This little glint in the night was one of those things that--even after you identify it--you can't leave alone.

  It was no help to him, to listen to Wally's peaceful breathing. The problem is, Homer Wells knew, I am in love with Candy. It was Candy who suggested he not go back to St. Cloud's.

  "My father likes you so much," she'd told Homer. "I know he'll give you a job on the boat, or in the pound."

  "My mother likes you so much," Wally had added. "I know she'll keep you on in the orchards, especially through harvest. And she gets lonely whenever I go back to college. I'll bet she'd be delighted to have you stay right where you are--in my room!"

  Out in the orchards, the roof of the cider house flashed to him; the flash was as small and as quick as the one glimpse of an eyetooth Grace Lynch had revealed--her mouth had parted only that much when she'd last looked at him.

  How could I not be in love with Candy? he wondered. And if I stay here, he asked himself, what can I do?

  The roof of the cider house flashed; then it stood dark and still. He had seen the wink of the curette before it went to work; he had seen it at rest in the examining tray, dull with blood, in need of cleaning.

  And if I go back to St. Cloud's, he asked himself, what can I do?

  In Nurse Angela's office, on the new typewriter, Dr. Larch began a letter to Homer Wells. "I remember nothing so vividly as kissing you," Dr. Larch began, but he stopped; he knew he couldn't say that. He pulled the page from the typewriter, then he hid it deep within A Brief History of St. Cloud's, as if it were another particle of history without an audience.

  David Copperfield had a fever when he'd gone to bed, and Larch went to check on the boy. Dr. Larch was relieved to feel that young Copperfield's fever had broken; the boy's forehead was cool, and a slight sweat chilled the boy's neck, which Larch carefully rubbed dry with a towel. There was not much moonlight; therefore, Larch felt unobserved. He bent over Copperfield and kissed him, much in the manner that he remembered kissing Homer Wells. Larch moved to the next bed and kissed Smoky Fields, who tasted vaguely like hot dogs; yet the experience was soothing to Larch. How he wished he had kissed Homer more, when he'd had the chance! He went from bed to bed, kissing the boys; it occurred to him, he didn't know all their names, but he kissed them anyway. He kissed all of them.

  When he left the room, Smoky Fields asked the darkness, "What was that all about?" But no one else was awake, or else no one wanted to answer him.

  I wish he would kiss me, thought Nurse Edna, who had a very alert ear for unusual goings-on.

  "I think it's nice," Mrs. Grogan said to Nurse Angela, when Nurse Angela told her about it.

  "I think it's senile," Nurse Angela said.

  But Homer Wells, at Wally's window, did not know that Dr. Larch's kisses were out in the world, in search of him.

  He didn't know, either--he could never have imagined it!--that Candy was also awake, and also worried. If he does stay, if he doesn't go back to St. Cloud's, she was thinking, what will I do? The sea tugged all around her. Both the darkness and the moon were failing.

  There came that time when Homer Wells could make out the boundaries of the cider house, but the roof did not wink to him, no matter how he moved his head. With no signal flashing to him, Homer may have thought he was speaking to the dead when he whispered, "Good night, Fuzzy."

  He did not know that Fuzzy Stone, like Melony, was looking for him.

  7

  Before the War

  One day that August a hazy sun hung over the coastal road between York Harbor and Ogunquit; it was not the staring sun of Marseilles, and not the cool, crisp sun that blinks on much of the coast of Maine at that time of year. It was a St. Cloud's sunlight, steamy and flat, and Melony was irritated by it and sweating when she accepted a ride in a milk truck that was heading inland.

  She knew she was south of Portland, and that there was relatively little of the Maine coast that lay south of Portland, yet it had taken her these months to search the apple orchards in this limited vicinity. She was not discouraged, she knew she'd had some bad luck, and that her luck was due to improve. She'd managed to pick the pockets of several citizens of Portland; this tided her over for a while. She'd gotten in trouble with some Navy men whose pockets she'd tried to pick in Kittery. She'd managed not to have sex with the men, but they had broken her nose, which had healed crookedly, and they had chipped her two front teeth--the big uppers. Not that she tended to smile a lot anyway, but she had since adopted a rather closemouthed and tight-lipped expression.

  The first two orchards she'd visited were within view of the ocean, but they were not called Ocean View, and no one in either orchard had heard of the Ocean View Orchards. She then found an inland orchard, where someone told her he had heard of an Ocean View, but that he was sure it was just a name: that the place wasn't anywhere near the coast. She took a job washing bottles in a dairy in Biddeford, but she quit it as soon as she'd made some traveling money.

  The orchard between York Harbor and Ogunquit turned out to be called York Farm, which looked as plain as its name, but Melony told the milk truck driver to let her out there, anyway; it was, at least, an apple orchard; someone might have heard of Ocean View.

  The foreman at York Farm took one look at Melony and assumed she was a would-be picker, trying to get work ahead of the migrants.

  "You're about three weeks early," he told her. "We're only pickin' the Gravensteins this month, and I don't need help pickin' them--there ain't that many."

  "You heard of an orchard called Ocean View?" Melony asked the foreman.

  "You used to pick there?" the foreman asked.

  "No. I'm just looking for it," Melony said.

  "It sounds like a rest home," the foreman said, but when Melony didn't even smile, he stopped being friendly. "You any idea how many places there must be in Maine called Ocean View?" he asked.

  Melony shrugged. If they were hiring at York Farm in three weeks, she thought she wouldn't mind staying; some of the other pickers might have heard of the place where Homer Wells had gone.

  "You got anything for me
to do?" Melony asked the foreman.

  "In three weeks--if you know how to pick," he added.

  "There can't be much to picking apples," Melony said.

  "You think it's easy?" the foreman asked. "Come here," he said, and walked her through the dingy apple mart; two older women were hand-lettering a wooden price list. In the first orchard behind the apple mart, the foreman proceeded to lecture Melony on the art of apple picking.

  "You take an apple with its stem," the foreman said. "But just above the stem is the bud for next year's apple. That's the spur," he said. "You pull the spur, you pull two years in one." He demonstrated to Melony how to twist the apple. "Twist, don't pull," he told her.

  Melony reached into the tree and twisted an apple free. She did it correctly; she looked at the foreman and shrugged. She took a bite of the apple, which wasn't ripe; she spit out the bite and threw the apple away.

  "That's a Northern Spy," the foreman explained. "We pick them last--they're not ready before October."

  Melony was bored. She started back toward the apple mart.

  "I'll give you ten cents a bushel!" the foreman called after her. "Only a nickel a bushel for drops, or if you bruise the fruit! You look pretty strong!" he said, following after her. "If you get the hang of it, you might pick ninety bushels a day. I've had guys here doin' a hundred bushels. That's ten bucks a day," he said. "Come back in three weeks," he added, stopping next to the women working on the sign in the apple mart; Melony was already back on the road.

  "I'll be somewhere else in three weeks," she said to the foreman.

  "Too bad," the foreman said. He watched her walk down the road, headed back toward the coast. "She looks strong," he said to one of the women in the mart. "I'll bet she weighs about one-sixty."

  "She's just a tramp," the woman said.

  About a mile away from the apple mart, Melony walked by an orchard where two workers were picking Gravensteins. One of the men waved to her; Melony started to wave back but thought better of it. She was not more than a hundred yards past the men when she heard their pickup truck coming after her. The truck pulled up next to her, off to the side of the road, and the driver said to her, "You look like you lost your sweetheart. Good thing you found me." The man in the passenger side of the truck opened the door before the truck stopped rolling.

  "You better leave me alone, buster," Melony said to the driver, but the other man was already around the truck and coming closer. Melony hopped over the road ditch and ran into the orchard. The man pursued her, whooping. The driver killed the truck motor and joined the chase--he left his door open, he was in such a hurry.

  There was nowhere to hide, but the orchards seemed endless. Melony ran down one row between the trees, then up another. The first man to chase her was gaining on her, but she noticed that the driver lagged farther and farther behind; he was a big, slow man, and he was huffing and puffing after he'd passed five or six trees. Melony was huffing and puffing herself, but she ran with a certain, even strength, and although the first, smaller man was gaining on her, she could hear him breathing harder and harder.

  She crossed a dirt road into another orchard. Way behind her, maybe two or three hundred yards, she saw that the heavy driver had slowed to a determined walk. "Get her, Charley!" he called to the faster man.

  To Charley's surprise, Melony stopped and turned to face him. She caught her breath fairly quickly, then she ran at Charley--she moved low to the ground, a kind of animal whine in her throat, and the man called Charley did not have time to stop and catch his breath before she flung herself upon him. They fell together--when she felt her knee against his throat, she jounced on him. He made a choking sound and rolled on his side. Melony jumped up to her feet; she stamped twice on his face, and when Charley managed to turn over, on all fours, she jumped up as high as she could and landed with both feet in the small of his back. He was already unconscious when she pinned his arms behind him and bit his ear; she felt her teeth meet. She let him go and knelt beside him; she caught her breath again; then she spit on him. When she stood up, she saw that the heavy man had managed only to cross the dirt road into the second orchard.

  "Charley! Get up!" he said, wheezing, but Charley didn't move. Melony rolled Charley over on his back and undid his belt. She tugged it roughly through the loops until she had the belt off him. The big man, the driver, was now only three or four apple trees away from her. She wound one end of the belt twice around her wrist and fist; when she let her arm hang at her side, the buckle end of the belt touched the top of her foot. The big man stopped, only two trees away from her. "What'd you do to Charley?" he asked her, but Melony started swinging the belt; she swung it around and around her head, faster and faster. The square brass belt buckle began to whistle. Melony advanced on the heavy driver, a man in his late forties or early fifties; his hair was gray and thin, and he had quite a paunch thrust ahead of himself. He stood his ground for a moment and watched Melony come nearer to him. The belt was a broad strap of sweat-and-oil-stained leather; the brass buckle was the size of a man's palm; with its square edges, it hummed through the air like the north wind--it made a sound like a scythe.

  "Hey!" the fat man said.

  "Hey what, buster?" Melony said. She suddenly lowered the belt and cracked the buckle across one of the man's shins, where it lifted up a flap of blue jeans and skin that looked like a torn dollar bill. When the man bent over to grab his legs, she swiped the belt buckle across the side of his face; he sat down suddenly and put his hand to his cheek, where he discovered a gouge the approximate length and thickness of a cigarette. He hadn't the time to contemplate this wound before the belt buckle smacked him squarely across the bridge of his nose--the force of the blow, and his pain, temporarily blinded him. He tried to cover his head with one arm while he groped for Melony with the other, but she found it easy to hit him everywhere, and he quickly drew up his knees to his chest and covered his face and head with both arms. The buckle raked and nicked his spine for a while; then she stopped using the buckle end on him--she just strapped him with the flat end of the belt across the backs of his legs and his ass. It seemed she would never stop.

  "Are the keys in that truck, buster?" she asked him between blows.

  "Yes!" he cried, but she hit him some more before she left him. She took the belt with her, walking back through the first orchard, occasionally taking a swipe at an apple with the tip of the belt, with which she had developed some skill.

  The man called Charley regained consciousness, but he didn't move or open his eyes. "Is she gone, Charley?" the fat man asked after a while, because he hadn't moved or opened his eyes either.

  "I hope so," Charley said, but neither of the men moved until they heard Melony start the truck.

  It crossed her mind that she was in debt to Dr. Larch for once getting her a job where she had learned to drive, but it was a passing thought. She turned the truck around and drove back to the apple mart, where the foreman was surprised to see her.

  She told the foreman, in front of the women who were working on the sign, that two of his men had tried to rape her. One of the men, the fat one, was married to the woman who was hand-lettering the sign. Melony said to the foreman that he could fire those two men and give her their jobs. "I can do whatever the two of them do, and better than they do it," Melony said.

  Or else, she said to the foreman, he could call the police and she'd tell the police how she'd been attacked. The woman whose husband had assaulted Melony was pale and silent, but the other woman said to the foreman what she'd said earlier: "She's just a tramp. What do you want to listen to her for?"

  "I can do everything you do, too," Melony said to the woman. "Especially everything you do on your back. You look like you're shit on your back," Melony said, and she flicked the flat end of the belt toward the woman, who jumped away as if the belt were a snake.

  "Hey, that's Charley's belt," the foreman said.

  "Right," said Melony; this echo of Homer Wells nearly brought tear
s to her eyes. "Charley lost it," she added. She went to the truck and took out her bundle--her few things, which were all wrapped in Mrs. Grogan's coat. She used the belt to cinch the coat and its contents more securely together.

  "I can't fire those guys," the foreman told her. "They've worked here all their lives."

  "So call the police, then," Melony said.

  "She's threatening you," the fat man's wife said to the foreman.

  "No shit," Melony said.

  The foreman got Melony settled comfortably in the cider house.

  "You can stay here, at least until the pickin' crew comes," he said. "I don't know if you want to stay here when they're here. Sometimes there's women with them, and sometimes there's kids, but if it's just men, I don't think you want to stay here. They're Negroes."

  "It'll do for now, anyway," Melony said, looking around.

  There were fewer beds than there were in the Worthingtons' cider house, and it was a lot less neat and clean. York Farm was a much smaller, poorer orchard than Ocean View, and there was no one there who cared very much about the style and shape of the quarters for the migrants; York Farm was without an Olive Worthington. The vinegar smell was stronger in the York Farm cider house, and behind the press were dried clots of pomace that clung to the wall like apple scab. There was no stove in the kitchen section--just a hot plate, which tended to blow the old fuses. There was one fuse box for the pump and grinder and the low-watt, overhead bulbs; the light in the refrigerator was out, but this at least made the mold less visible.

  It was fine for Melony, who had contributed, lastingly, to the history of the many wrecked rooms in both the abandoned and the lived-in buildings of St. Cloud's.

  "This Ocean View--the one you're lookin' for?" the foreman asked. "How come you're lookin' for it?"

  "I'm looking for my boyfriend," Melony told him.

  She has a boyfriend? the foreman wondered.

  He went to see how the men were doing. The fat man, whose wife had accompanied him to the hospital (although she had not spoken to him, and wouldn't for more than three months), sat rather placidly through his stitches, but he grew quite excited when the foreman told him that he'd fixed Melony up in the cider house and had given her a job--at least through the harvest.