The Cider House Rules

by John Irving

  "That's a rather grim philosophy," Olive said.

  "I thought you were studying anatomy," Wally said to Homer, who looked at Candy, who looked away.

  They sent Wally to Fort Meade, Maryland, for the month of January. He was a faithful but terrible letter writer; he wrote his mother, he wrote to Homer and to Candy, and even to Ray, but he never explained anything; if there was a plan to what they were teaching him, Wally either didn't know it or couldn't describe it. He simply wrote in tedious detail about the last thing that had occupied his mind before beginning the letter; this included the pouch he had devised to hang from his bunk bed to separate his shoe polish from his toothpaste and the best-name-for-a-plane competition that dominated the imaginative life of Company A. He was also delighted that a cook sergeant had taught him more limericks than Senior, in his last years, had been able to remember. Every letter Wally wrote, to anyone, included a limerick; Ray liked them, and Homer liked them, but they made Candy angry and Olive was appalled. Candy and Homer showed each other the limericks Wally sent them, until Homer realized that this made Candy even angrier: the limericks Wally chose to send Candy were very mild-mannered compared to the ones Wally sent to Homer. For example, he sent this to Candy:

  There was a young lady of Exeter,

  So pretty that men craned their necks at her.

  One was even so brave

  As to take out and wave

  The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.

  He sent this to Homer Wells:

  There was a young lady named Brent

  With a cunt of enormous extent

  And so deep and so wide,

  The acoustics inside

  Were so good you could hear when you spent.

  Wally sent Ray limericks of a similar kind:

  There's an unbroken babe from Toronto

  Exceedingly hard to get onto

  But when you get there

  And have parted the hair,

  You can fuck her as much as you want to.

  God knows what limericks Wally sent to Olive--where does Wally find ones that are decent enough? wondered Homer, who, in the evenings after Wally had gone and Candy had gone back to school, lay listening to his heart. It would help, he thought, if he knew what to listen for.

  Wally was sent to St. Louis--the Jefferson Barracks, Flight 17, 28th School Squadron. It struck Homer Wells that the Army Air Corps might have modeled itself on Gray's Anatomy--manifesting a steadfast belief in categories and in everything having a name. It was reassuring to Homer Wells; in his mind, this endless categorizing made Wally safer, but Homer couldn't convince Candy of this.

  "He's safe one minute, and in another minute he's not safe," she said, shrugging.

  "Look after Homer, look after his heart," Wally had written her.

  "And who's looking after my heart? Yes, I'm still angry," she wrote him, although he hadn't asked.

  But if she was angry with Wally, she was also loyal; she was keeping her promise, about the waiting and seeing. She kissed Homer when she saw him, and when they said good-bye, but she wouldn't encourage him.

  "We're just good pals," she told her father; Ray hadn't asked.

  "I can see that," Ray said.

  The work in the orchards was light that winter; pruning was the main job. The men took turns teaching Homer how to prune. "You make your big cuts in the subfreezing weather," Meany Hyde told him.

  "A tree don't bleed so much when it's cold," was how Vernon Lynch put it, hacking away.

  "There's less chance of an infection when it's cold," said Herb Fowler, who was not so free with the prophylactics in the winter months, perhaps because he would have needed to take his gloves off to get at them; but Homer felt sure that Herb was being wary ever since Homer had asked him about the holes.

  "Are there holes?" Herb had replied. "Manufacturer's defect, I suppose."

  But later he'd come up to Homer and whispered to him, "Not all of them's got holes."

  "You have a system?" Homer asked. "Which ones have holes and which don't?"

  "It's not my system," Herb Fowler said. "Some got holes, some don't. Manufacturer's defect."

  "Right," said Homer Wells, but rubbers were rarely flung his way now.

  Meany Hyde's wife, Florence, was pregnant again, and all winter Big Dot Taft and Irene Titcomb made jokes about Meany's potency.

  "You keep away from me, Meany," Big Dot would say. "I'm not even lettin' you sip my coffee. I think all you gotta do is breathe on somebody and they're pregnant."

  "Well, that's all he did to me!" Florence would say, and Big Dot Taft would roar.

  "Dontcha go givin' the men any breathin' lessons, Meany," Irene Titcomb said.

  "Meany can knock you up just by kissin' your ears," Florence Hyde said proudly, glorying in her pregnancy.

  "Gimme some earmuffs," said Squeeze Louise Tobey. "Gimme one of them ski hats."

  "Gimme a dozen of Herb's rubbers!" said Irene Titcomb.

  No, don't take any, thought Homer Wells. That's probably how she got that way. Homer was staring at Florence Hyde. It was riveting to him to see someone enjoying her pregnancy.

  "Honestly, Homer," said Big Dot Taft, "ain't you ever seen anyone about to have a baby before?"

  "Yes," said Homer Wells, who looked away. Grace Lynch was staring at him, and he looked away from her, too.

  "If I was your age," Vernon Lynch told Homer, when they were pruning in an orchard called Cock Hill, "I'd enlist. I'd do what Wally's doing."

  "I can't," said Homer Wells.

  "They don't take orphans?" Vernon asked.

  "No," Homer said. "I have a heart defect. Something I was born with."

  Vernon Lynch was not a gossip, but that was all that Homer needed to say--the workers at Ocean View not only forgave Homer for not enlisting, they even began to take care of him. They treated him the way Dr. Larch would have liked to see him treated.

  "You know, I didn't mean anything," Herb Fowler told Homer. "About the manufacturer's defect. I wouldn't have said that if I'd known about your heart."

  "That's okay," Homer said.

  And in the early spring, when it was time to mend the boxes for the beehives, Ira Titcomb rushed to assist Homer, who was struggling with a particularly heavy pallet.

  "Don't strain yourself, Jesus!" Ira said.

  "I can manage, Ira. I'm stronger than you are," Homer said, not understanding--at first--Ira's concern.

  "I heard your heart's not as strong as the rest of you," Ira said.

  On Mother's Day, Vernon Lynch taught him how to operate the sprayers by himself. He insisted on giving Homer another lecture on the use of the respirator. "You of all people," Vernon told him, "better keep this thing on, and keep it clean."

  "Me of all people," said Homer Wells.

  Even Debra Pettigrew forgave him for his seemingly undefined friendship with Candy. As the weather warmed up, they went parking again, and one night they managed some lingering kisses in the Pettigrews' unoccupied summer house on Drinkwater Lake; the shut-up, cold smell of the house reminded Homer of his first days in the cider house. When his kisses seemed too calm, Debra grew restless; when his kisses seemed too passionate, Debra said, "Careful! Don't get too excited." He was a young man with unusual kindness, or else he might have suggested to Debra that nothing she allowed him to do would ever endanger his heart.

  It was spring. Wally was sent to Kelly Field--San Antonio, Texas--for Air Corps cadet training (Squadron 2, Flight C), and Melony thought that the time was right for her to hit the road again.

  "You're crazy," Lorna told her. "The more of a war there is, the more good jobs there are for us. The country needs to build stuff--it don't need to eat more apples."

  "Fuck what the country needs," Melony said. "I'm lookin' for Homer Wells, and I'm gonna find him."

  "So will I see you next winter?" Lorna asked her friend.

  "If I don't find Ocean View or Homer Wells," Melony said.

  "So I'll see you next wint
er," Lorna said. "You're lettin' a man make an asshole out of you."

  "That's just what I'm not lettin' him do," Melony said.

  Mrs. Grogan's coat had seen better days, but the bundle of belongings contained within the grasp of Charley's belt had grown substantially. Melony had made money in the shipyards, and she'd treated herself to a few sturdy articles of a workingman's clothing, including a good pair of boots. Lorna gave her a present as she was leaving.

  "I used to knit," Lorna explained. It was a child's woolen mitten--just the left-hand mitten--and too small for Melony, but the colors were very pretty. "It was gonna be for a baby I never had, 'cause I didn't stay married long enough. I never got the right hand finished." Melony stared at the mitten, which she held in her hand--the mitten was very heavy; it was full of ball bearings that Lorna had swiped from the shipyards. "It's a super weapon," Lorna explained, "in case you meet anyone who's a bigger asshole than you are!"

  The gift brought tears to Melony's eyes, and the women hugged each other good-bye. Melony left Bath without saying good-bye to young Mary Agnes Cork, who would have done anything to please her, who asked all her school friends--and everyone who appeared at Ted and Patty Callahan's to browse the antiques--if any of them had ever heard of an apple orchard called Ocean View. If this knowledge might make Melony her friend, Mary Agnes Cork would never stop inquiring. After Melony left Bath, Lorna realized how much she missed her friend; Lorna discovered that she was asking about Ocean View all the time--as if this inquiry was as necessary and loyal a part of her friendship with Melony as the gift of that woolen weapon.

  This meant that now there were three of them, all looking for Homer Wells.

  That summer they moved Wally from San Antonio to Coleman, Texas. "I wish someone would declare war on Texas," he wrote Homer. "That might be some justification for being here." He claimed he was flying in his undershorts and socks--that was all any of them could stand to wear in such unrelenting heat.

  "Where does he think he's going?" Candy complained to Homer. "Does he expect a perfect climate? He's going to a war!" Homer sat opposite her on Ray Kendall's dock, the snail population forever influenced by their conversation.

  In the cool cement-floor classroom at Cape Kenneth High, Homer would unroll the map of the world; there would rarely be anyone present besides the janitor, who was no better informed about geography than Homer Wells. Homer used the summer solitude to study the places of the world where he thought it would be likely that Wally would go.

  Once Mr. Hood surprised him in his studies. Perhaps Mr. Hood was visiting his old classroom out of nostalgia, or perhaps it was time to place an order for the next year's rabbits.

  "I suppose you'll be enlisting," Mr. Hood said to Homer.

  "No, sir," Homer said. "I've got a bad heart--pulmonary valve stenosis."

  Mr. Hood stared at Homer's chest; Homer knew that the man had eyes for rabbits only--and not very sharp eyes, at that. "You had a heart murmur, from birth?" Mr. Hood asked.

  "Yes, sir," Homer said.

  "And do you still have a murmur?" Mr. Hood asked.

  "Not much of one, not anymore," Homer said.

  "That's not such a bad heart, then," Mr. Hood said encouragingly.

  But why would Homer Wells feel that Mr. Hood was an authority? He couldn't keep his uteri straight; he didn't know rabbits from sheep.

  Even the migrants were different that harvest--they were both older and younger; the men in their prime had enlisted, except for Mr. Rose.

  "Slim pickin's for pickers this year," he told Olive. "There's too many fools think the war's more interestin' than pickin' apples."

  "Yes, I know," Olive said. "You don't have to tell me about it."

  That harvest there was a woman Mr. Rose called Mama, although she wasn't old enough to be any of their mothers. Her allegiance seemed quite exclusively assigned to Mr. Rose; Homer knew this because the woman did what she wanted to do--she picked a little, when she felt like it or when Mr. Rose suggested it; she cooked a little, but she was not the cook every night, and she was not everyone's cook. Some nights she even sat on the roof, but only when Mr. Rose sat there with her. She was a tall, heavy young woman with a deliberate slowness that made her movements seem copied from Mr. Rose, and she wore a nearly constant smile that was not quite relaxed and not quite smirking--also copied from Mr. Rose.

  It surprised Homer that no special sleeping arrangements were made regarding the woman; she had her own bed, next to Mr. Rose, but no attempt was made to curtain-off their beds or otherwise construct a little privacy. There was only this: every once in a while, when Homer would drive by the cider house, he would note that everyone except Mr. Rose and his woman was either standing outside the house or sitting on the roof. That must have been their time together, and Mr. Rose must have orchestrated those meetings as deliberately as he appeared to direct everything else.

  There was a ban on shore lights by the end of that summer; there was no Ferris wheel to watch at night, no magic lights to call by other names, but these blackout conditions didn't keep the pickers off the roof. They would sit in the dark, looking at the dark, and Mr. Rose would say, "It used to be over there--it was much higher than this roof, and brighter than all the stars if you hitched the stars all together. It went 'round and 'round," Mr. Rose would say, the tall, heavy woman leaning against him, the dark heads above the roofline nodding. "Now there's stuff out there, under the ocean--stuff with bombs, underwater guns. That stuff knows when there's a light on, and the bombs get drawn to the lights--like metal to them magnets. It happens automatically."

  "There's no people, holding no triggers?" someone asked.

  "There's no triggers," said Mr. Rose. "Everythin's automatic. But there's people. They just there to look the stuff over, make sure it work right."

  "There's people out there, under the ocean?" someone asked.

  "Sure," said Mr. Rose. "Lots of people. They real smart. They got this stuff so they can see you."

  "On land?"

  "Sure," said Mr. Rose. "They can see you anywhere."

  A kind of communal sighing made the sitters on the roof resemble a chorus resting between numbers. In Wally's bedroom Homer marveled how the world was simultaneously being invented and destroyed.

  Nothing marvelous about that, Dr. Larch would have assured him. At St. Cloud's, except for the irritation about sugar stamps and other aspects of the rationing, very little was changed by the war. (Or by what other people once singled out as the Depression, thought Wilbur Larch.)

  We are an orphanage; we provide these services; we stay the same--if we're allowed to stay the same, he thought. When he would almost despair, when the ether was too overpowering, when his own age seemed like the last obstacle and the vulnerability of his illegal enterprise was as apparent to him as the silhouettes of the fir trees against the sharp night skies of autumn, Wilbur Larch would save himself with this one thought: I love Homer Wells, and I have saved him from the war.

  Homer Wells did not feel saved. Did anyone who was in love and was unsatisfied with how he was loved in return ever feel saved? On the contrary, Homer Wells felt that he'd been singled out for special persecution. What young man--even an orphan--is patient enough to wait and see about love? And if Wilbur Larch had saved Homer Wells from the war, even Dr. Larch was powerless to interfere with Melony.

  During the harvest that year, Wally moved again--to Perrin Field in Sherman, Texas (basic training, Company D)--but Melony moved five times. She had enough money; she didn't need to work. She took a job in one orchard after another, leaving as soon as she discovered that no one working there had ever heard of an Ocean View. She worked in an orchard in Harpswell, and in another in Arrowsic; she worked as far north as Rockport, and as far inland as Appleton and Lisbon. She took a side trip to Wiscasset because someone told her there was an Ocean View there; there was, but it was a rooming house. An ice-cream vendor told her he'd seen an Ocean View in Friendship; it turned out to be the name of a residen
t sailboat. Melony got in a fistfight with a head waiter in a seafood restaurant in South Thomaston because she insisted on asking each of the patrons about Ocean View; she won the fight, but she was fined for creating a disturbance; she was a little low on money when she passed through Boothbay Harbor in early November. The sea was slate gray and whitecapped, the pretty boats of summer were in dry dock, the wind had plenty of the coming winter in it; Melony's own pores, as well as the earth's, were closing as tightly as her disappointed heart.

  She did not recognize the sallow-faced, sulky juvenile who served the ice-cream sodas to the candy-counter customers in Rinfret's Pharmacy, but young Roy Rinfret--the former (and deeply disappointed) Curly Day--recognized Melony in an instant.

  "I used to be Curly Day! Remember me?" Curly asked Melony excitedly. He thrust a lot of free candy and chewing gum at her and insisted on treating her to an ice-cream soda. "A double scooper, on me," Curly said; his adoptive parents would have disapproved.

  "Boy, you didn't turn out so good," Melony told him. She meant nothing insulting by this remark; it was a reference to his color, which was pasty, and to his size--he hadn't grown very much. She meant nothing more, but the remark triggered everything that was morose and waiting to be fired in Curly Day.

  "You're not kidding, I didn't turn out so good," he said angrily. "I got ditched. Homer Wells stole the people I was meant for."

  Melony's teeth were too weak for chewing gum, but she pocketed it, anyway; it would make a nice gift for Lorna. Melony's cavities howled when she sucked hard candy, but she liked it occasionally in spite of this pain--or perhaps because of it--and she had never had an ice-cream soda before.

  To demonstrate his loathing for his environment, Curly Day squirted a runny glob of strawberry syrup on the floor--checking, first, to be sure that only Melony could see. He did this as if he were exercising the nozzle before he squirted the stuff on Melony's soda. "It draws ants," he explained; Melony doubted there were many ants left in November. "That's what they're always telling me," Curly said. " 'Don't spill, it draws ants.' " He squirted the floor a few more times. "I'm tryin' to get the ants to carry this place away."

  "You still pissed at Homer Wells?" Melony asked him slyly.