by John Irving
When Wally said, "Homer's never been to a drive-in before," he had to shout to be heard over the dogs.
"I've never been to a movie before," Homer admitted.
"Gosh," said Debra Pettigrew. She smelled nice; she was much neater and cleaner than she looked in her apple-mart clothes; Debra dressed with a certain pert orderliness for working, too. Her chubbiness was restrained, and as they drove to Cape Kenneth, her usual good nature emerged so warmly that even her shyness disappeared--she was a fun girl, as they say in Maine. She was nice-looking, relaxed, good-humored, hardworking and not very smart. Her prospects, at best, included marriage to someone pleasant and not a great deal older or smarter than herself.
In the summers, the Pettigrews occupied one of the new houses on the overcrowded, mucky shore of Drinkwater Lake; they'd managed to make the new place look lived-in--on its rapid way to ramshackle--almost instantly. The lawn had appeared to grow its dead cars overnight, and the dogs had survived the move from the Pettigrews' winter house in Kenneth Corners without losing a bit of their territorial savagery. Like all the cottages around Drinkwater Lake, the Pettigrews' had been named--as if the houses themselves were orphans, delivered incomplete and in need of further creation. The Pettigrews' house was named "All of Us!"
"The exclamation point is what kills me," Wally had said to Homer when they pulled up at the car-and-dog lot. "As if they're proud of their overpopulation." But Wally was very respectful once Debra joined them in the car.
This mannerism of what he'd seen of society struck Homer Wells quite forcefully; people, even nice people--because, surely, Wally was nice--would say a host of critical things about someone to whom they would then be perfectly pleasant. At St. Cloud's, criticism was plainer--and harder, if not impossible, to conceal.
The drive-in movie in Cape Kenneth was nearly as new to Maine as the Haven Club's heated pool and was a lot less practical. Drive-in movies would never be a great idea for Maine; the night fog along the coast lent to many a joyful film the inappropriately ghoulish atmosphere of a horror movie. In later years, people groping for rest rooms and the snack bar would fail to find their cars when they attempted to return to them.
The other problem was mosquitoes. In 194_, when Homer Wells went to his first drive-in movie, the hum of the mosquitoes in the night air of Cape Kenneth was far more audible than the sound track. Wally was relatively successful in preventing the mosquitoes from taking over the car because he always brought with him an aerosol pump sprayer with which he frequently doused the car--and the air surrounding the cars. The pump can was loaded with the insecticide they sprayed the apples with. Thus the air in and surrounding the Cadillac was rendered poisonous and foul but fairly free of mosquitoes. The hiss and stench of the spray aroused frequent complaints from Wally's fellow moviegoers in the cars nearest the Cadillac--until they were being bitten so badly by mosquitoes that they stopped protesting; some of them politely asked if they could borrow the device for the purpose of poisoning their own cars.
There was no snack bar at the Cape Kenneth drive-in in 194_, and there were no rest rooms. The men and boys took turns urinating against a dank cement wall at the rear of the drive-in pit; atop the wall were perched several small and uncouth boys (Cape Kenneth locals, too young or too poor for cars), who used the wall to watch the movie even though they were well beyond the possibility of hearing it. Occasionally, when the movie was dissatisfying, they peed from the top of the wall onto the luckless people who were peeing against it.
Girls and women were not expected to pee at the drive-in, and consequently were better behaved than the men and boys--the women drank less, for example, although their behavior inside the cars could not be monitored.
It was wondrous--this whole experience--for Homer Wells. He was especially acute at noticing what human beings did for pleasure--what (there could be no mistake about it) they chose to do--because he had come from a place where choice was not so evident, and examples of people performing for pleasure were not plentiful. It amazed him that people suffered drive-in movies by choice, and for pleasure; but he believed that, if he failed to see the fun in it, it was entirely his failure.
What he was most unprepared for was the movie itself. After people honked their horns and blinked their headlights and exhibited other less endearing forms of impatience--Homer heard what was, unmistakably, the sound of someone vomiting against a fender--a gigantic image filled the sky. It is something's mouth! thought Homer Wells. The camera backed, or rather, lurched away. Something's head--a kind of horse! thought Homer Wells. It was a camel, actually, but Homer Wells had never seen a camel, or a picture of one; he thought it was a horribly deformed horse--a mutant horse! Perhaps some ghastly fetus-phase of a horse! The camera staggered back farther. Mounted by the camel's grotesque hump was a black-skinned man almost entirely concealed in white wrapping--bandages! thought Homer Wells. The ferocious black Arab nomad brandished a frightening curved sword; whacking the lumbering camel with the flat of the blade, he drove the beast into a faulty, staggering gallop across such endless sand dunes that the animal and its rider were soon only a speck on the vast horizon. Suddenly, music! Homer jumped. Words! The titles, the names of the actors were written in the sand by an invisible hand.
"What was that?" Homer asked Wally. He meant: the animal, its rider, the desert, the credits--everything!
"Some dumb Bedouin, I think," Wally said.
A Bedouin? thought Homer Wells.
"It's a kind of horse?" he asked.
"What horse?" asked Debra Pettigrew.
"The animal," Homer said, sensing his mistake.
Candy turned around in the front seat and looked at Homer with heartbreaking affection. "That's a camel, Homer," she said.
"You've never seen a camel!" Wally shouted.
"Well, where would he see a camel?" Candy snapped at him.
"I was just surprised," Wally said defensively.
"I've never seen a Negro, either," Homer said. "That was one, wasn't it?--on the camel."
"A Negro Bedouin, I guess," Wally said.
"Gosh," said Debra Pettigrew, who looked at Homer a little fearfully, as if she suspected him of simultaneously existing on another planet, in another life-form.
Then the credits were over. The black man on the camel was gone and would never be seen again. The desert was also gone; apparently, it had served its uncertain function--it would never be seen again, either. It was a pirate movie. Great ships were blasting each other with cannons; swarthy men with uncut hair and baggy pants were doing terrible things to nicer-looking men, who were better-dressed. None of the men was black. Perhaps the camel's rider had been a kind of omen, thought Homer Wells. His exposure to storytelling, through Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte, had ill prepared him for characters who came from and traveled nowhere--or for stories that made no sense.
The pirates stole a chest of coins and a blond woman from the ship of pleasanter aspect before they sank the ship and sailed away in their own foul vessel, on which they coarsely attempted to make merry with drunkenness and song. They appeared to enjoy leering at the woman, and taunting her, but some mysterious and totally unseen force kept them from actually harming her--for a whole hour, during which they harmed nearly everyone else and many of themselves. The woman, however, was reserved for more teasing, yet she protested her fate bitterly, and Homer had the feeling that he was supposed to lament for her.
A man who apparently adored the complaining woman pursued her across the ocean, through burning harbor towns and charmless inns of suggested but never visualized lewdness. As the fog rolled in, there was much of the movie that was never visualized, although Homer remained riveted to the image in the sky. He was only partially aware that Wally and Candy were uninterested in the movie; they had slumped from sight in the front seat and only occasionally did Candy's hand appear, gripping--or lolling on--the back of the seat. Twice Homer heard her say, "No, Wally," once with a firmness he had never heard in her voice before.
Wally's frequent laughter continued at intervals, and he whispered and murmured and gurgled in his throat.
Homer was occasionally aware of Debra Pettigrew being less interested in the pirate movie than he was; when he looked at her, he was surprised to find her looking at him. Not critically but not very affectionately either. She appeared to be more and more amazed to see him, as the picture went on and on. Once she touched his hand; he thought she wanted something, and regarded her politely. She just stared at him; he looked back at the movie.
The blond woman was forever barring her door against her captors, and they were always breaking into her room despite her efforts; they seemed to break into her room for the single purpose of demonstrating to her that she couldn't bar them out. Once in the room, they taunted her in the usual fashion and then retreated--whereupon she attempted to bar their way again.
"I think I've missed something," Homer Wells announced after more than an hour had passed. Candy sat up in the front seat and looked at him, her genuine concern quite apparent despite the wild tangle her hair was in.
"What have you missed?" Wally asked--sleepily, Homer thought.
Debra Pettigrew, prettily, leaned close to Homer and whispered in his ear. "I think you've missed me," she said. "I think you've forgotten I'm here."
Homer had meant he'd missed something in the story; he stared at Debra in a particularly uncomprehending way. Debra kissed him, very neatly--very dryly--on his mouth. She sat back in the seat and smiled at him.
"Your turn," she said.
Wally, at this moment, opened the front door and sprayed lethal fumes all around the Cadillac--much of the stuff drifting back through the open door. Candy and Wally, and Debra, too, coughed in a very dramatic fashion, but Homer stared at Debra Pettigrew--the idea of the drive-in movie slowly coming to him.
He cautiously kissed Debra on her dry little mouth. She kissed him back. He settled himself more comfortably beside her, and she put her head on his shoulder, one hand on his chest. He put one hand on her chest, but she pushed it away. He knew he was still missing something, but he proceeded, tentatively, to discover the rules. He kissed her neck; this was acceptable--she snuggled against his neck and something new and daring (and wet) licked him at the throat (her tongue!); Homer permitted his tongue to venture into the poisoned air. He took a moment, contemplating the uses of his tongue; he decided to kiss her on her mouth and to suggest, gently, the application of his tongue there, but this was somewhat tensely rejected--her own tongue pushed his away; her teeth blocked further entry.
He was beginning to see it was a yes-no set of rules he had encountered; he was permitted to rub her tummy, but not to touch her breasts. The hand on her hips was allowed to remain there; the hand on her thigh, in her lap, was moved on. She put her arms around him and hugged him; her kisses were friendly and sweet; he began to feel like a well-treated pet--certainly better treated than most of the Pettigrew dogs.
"No!" Candy said, so loudly that both Homer and Debra Pettigrew flinched; then Debra giggled and cuddled against him. By straining his neck and rolling his eyes toward the back of his head, Homer Wells could manage to see the movie.
At last, the tireless lover had tracked the blond woman to yet another place of bondage; the stupid woman had barred herself in again, but this time she was attempting to keep herself untouched by her rescuer. It was quite frustrating to watch him hack and flail at her door.
From one of the cars in the hazardous fog around them, someone yelled, "Leave her!" Another person cried, "Kill her!" All Homer felt sure of was that no one would ever fuck her--she seemed protected from both sex and death by something as shifty as the Cape Kenneth fog--nor would any of them in the Cadillac pursue much adventure beyond the pleasure afforded to cherished household pets.
This feeling caused Homer to remember the affection Dr. Larch had for him--and Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela had for him, too. When the movie was over, he realized he was crying; he realized that although he loved where he was, he loved Dr. Larch more than anyone else--at this point in his life, he still loved Larch more than he loved Candy--and he realized that he missed Larch, too--while at the same time he hoped he would never again set foot in St. Cloud's.
It was an overwhelming confusion that inspired his weeping, but Debra Pettigrew mistook the cause; she thought the movie had moved him to tears.
"There, there," she said in a mothering tone, hugging him. Candy and Wally leaned over the front seat. Candy touched his head.
"It's okay. You can cry. I cry at lots of movies," she said.
Even Wally was deeply respectful. "Hey, buddy," he said. "We know this must all be a shock to you." His poor heart, sweet Wally was thinking. You dear boy, Candy thought, please watch out for your heart. She put her cheek against Homer's cheek and kissed him near his ear. It was a very sudden surprise to her, how much she enjoyed that kiss of friendship; it surprised Homer Wells, too. Despite the little dry kisses that Debra Pettigrew gave him in abundance, he felt a remarkable difference surge through him at the instant of Candy's kissing him. It was a feeling that rushed him from nowhere--and he knew, looking at Wally's fond and handsome face, that it was a feeling with nowhere to go. Was that what love was, and how it came to you--leaving you no options for its use? Like the black-skinned nomad on the camel: where did he belong in a movie about pirates?
I am that black-skinned rider on that camel, thought the orphan, Homer Wells. What was he called?
Later, after he'd taken Debra Pettigrew home and had nearly been eaten by her dogs, he asked Wally. Homer sat up front in the Cadillac--Candy in the middle of the seat between them.
"A Bedouin," Wally said.
I'm a Bedouin! thought Homer Wells.
When Candy fell asleep, she slumped against Wally's shoulder, but this bothered his driving; he pushed her very gently in Homer's direction. The rest of the way to Heart's Haven, she slept with her head on Homer's shoulder, her hair lightly touching his face. When they got to Ray Kendall's lobster pound, Wally shut off the car and whispered, "Hey, Sleepy." He kissed Candy on the lips, which woke her up. She sat bolt upright, for a second disoriented, and she looked accusingly at both Wally and Homer, as if she weren't sure which one of them had kissed her. "Easy," Wally said to her, laughing. "You're home."
Home, thought Homer Wells. He knew that for the Bedouin--come from nowhere, going nowhere--there was no home.
In August of that same summer another Bedouin left what had been home for him; Curly Day departed St. Cloud's for Boothbay, where a young druggist and his wife had recently moved and had plunged into a life of community service. Dr. Larch had his doubts about the young couple, but he had more doubts regarding Curly Day's resilience to another winter in St. Cloud's. The end of the summer was the last good time for visits from adoptive families; the good weather in the early fall was brief. And Curly's general positivism had been in decline since the departure of Homer Wells; Curly could never be convinced that Homer had not somehow stolen the beautiful couple whom a kinder fate had intended for him.
The druggist and his wife were not a beautiful couple. They were well off and good-hearted; but they had not been born to a life of ease, and it seemed unlikely that they would ever adjust to anything resembling gracious living. They had striven to their station in life, and their idea of helping their fellow man seemed rooted in the notion that their fellow man should be taught how to strive. They had requested an older orphan; they wanted someone capable of doing a few hours' work in the drugstore after school.
They saw their childlessness as entirely God's decision and agreed that God had meant for them to find a foundling and educate him in the methods of self-support and self-improvement, for which the foundling would be broadly rewarded by inheriting the young couple's pharmacy, and with it the means to care for them in their apparently eagerly anticipated old age.
They were practical and Christian people--albeit grim when they reviewed for Larch their earlier efforts to have a child of their own. Be
fore he met the couple--at a time when he had only corresponded with them by mail--Larch had hoped he might persuade them to allow Curly to keep his first name. When an orphan gets to be as old as Curly, Larch argued, the name has more than casual significance. But Larch's hopes sank when he saw the couple; the young man was prematurely bald--so perfectly bald that Larch wondered if the fellow had not suffered from the application of an untested pharmaceutical product--and the young wife's hair was fine and lank. The couple seemed shocked at the wealth of Curly Day's curly hair, and Larch imagined that their first family trip would probably include a visit to the barber.
Curly himself seemed as unenthusiastic about the couple as the couple were unenthusiastic about his name, yet he wanted to leave St. Cloud's--badly. Larch saw that the boy still hoped for an adoption as dazzling as the one he'd imagined, for a couple as glittering with the promise of another life as Candy and Wally were. Of the very plain young couple from Boothbay, Curly Day said to Dr. Larch: "They're okay. They're nice, I guess. And Boothbay is on the coast. I think I'd like the ocean."
Larch did not say to the boy that the couple adopting him did not appear to be a boating couple, or a beach couple, or even a fishing-off-a-dock couple; he suspected them of thinking that a life of playing with, on, or in the sea was frivolous, something for tourists. (Larch thought that way himself.) Larch expected that the drugstore remained open every daylight hour of the summer, and that the hardworking young couple remained in the store every minute--selling tanning oil to summer people while they themselves stayed as pale as the winter, and were proud of it.
"You can't be too choosy, Wilbur," Nurse Edna said. "If the boy gets sick, there'll be lots of pills and cough medicines around."
"He'll still be Curly to me," Nurse Angela said defiantly.
Worse, Larch imagined: he'll always be Curly to Curly. But Larch let him go; it was high time for him to be gone--that was the main reason.
The couple's name was Rinfret; they called Curly "Roy." And so Roy "Curly" Rinfret took up residence in Boothbay. Rinfret's Pharmacy was a harborfront store; the family lived several miles inland, where the sea was out of sight. "But not out of scent," Mrs. Rinfret had maintained; she declared that, when the wind was right, the ocean could be smelled from the house.