Cider House Rules

by John Irving

  The situation Larch was thinking of was war, the so-called war in Europe; Larch, and many others, feared that the war wouldn’t stay there. (“I’m sorry, Homer,” Larch imagined having to tell the boy. “I don’t want you to worry, but you have a bad heart; it just wouldn’t stand up to a war.”) What Larch meant was that his own heart would never stand up to Homer Wells’s going to war.

  The love of Wilbur Larch for Homer Wells extended even to his tampering with history, a field wherein he was an admitted amateur, but it was nonetheless a field that he respected and also loved. (In an earlier entry in the file on Homer Wells—an entry that Dr. Larch removed, for it lent an incorrect tone of voice, or at least a tone of voice unusual for history—Dr. Larch had written: “I love nothing or no one as much as I love Homer Wells. Period.”)

  Thus Wilbur Larch was more prepared for how a war could change important plans than Olive Worthington was prepared for it. The other and more probable cause for a change in the wedding plans of her son and Candy Kendall—another way in which the young lovers’ plans could be changed—had been foreseen by Olive. It was an unwanted pregnancy. A pity that it was not foreseen by either Candy or Wally.

  Thus, when Candy got pregnant (she’d been a virgin, naturally), she and Wally were much distressed, but they were also surprised. Olive would have been distressed (had she known), but she wouldn’t have been surprised. Getting pregnant would never have surprised Wilbur Larch, who knew that it happened, and happened by accident, all the time. But Candy Kendall and Wally Worthington, so full of beauty and of the moment and of their own rightness for each other, simply couldn’t believe it. They were not the sort of people who would have been ashamed or unable to tell their parents; they were simply stunned at the prospect of having to derail their perfect plans—of having to get married ahead of schedule.

  Did Wally Worthington need a college degree to inherit his parents’ apple orchard? Of course not. Did Candy Kendall need to go to college at all? She didn’t. Wouldn’t she refine herself, and educate herself, if left to her own means? Of course she would! And Wally wasn’t much of a student, anyway, was he? Of course he wasn’t. He was a botany major, but only at the insistence of his mother—Olive thought that the study of plants might stimulate her son to become more excited and more knowledgeable about apple-growing.

  “It’s just that we’re not ready,” Candy said to Wally. “I mean, we aren’t, are we? Do you feel ready?”

  “I love you,” Wally said. He was a brave boy, and true, and Candy—who had not cried a single tear at the surprising discovery that she was with child—loved him, too.

  “But it’s just not the right time for us, is it, Wally?” Candy asked him.

  “I want to marry you, anytime,” he said truthfully, but he added something that she hadn’t thought of. He had thought of the war in Europe, even if his mother had missed it. He said, “What if there’s a war—I mean, what if we get involved in it?”

  “What if what?” said Candy, truly shocked.

  “I mean, if we were at war, I’d go—I’d have to, I’d want to,” Wally said. “Only, if there was a child, it wouldn’t feel right—going to a war.”

  “When would it feel right to go to a war, Wally?” Candy asked him.

  “Well, I mean, I’d just have to, that’s all—if we had one,” he said. “I mean, it’s our country, and besides, for the experience—I couldn’t miss it.”

  She slapped his face, she started to cry—in a rage. “For the experience! You’d want to go to war for the experience!”

  “Well, not if we had a child—that’s when it wouldn’t feel right,” Wally said. “Would it?” He was about as innocent as rain, and about as thoughtless.

  “What about me?” Candy asked, still shocked—and shocked, further, that she had slapped him. She put her hand very softly where his cheek was so red. “With or without a child, what would it be like for me if you went to a war?”

  “Well, it’s all ‘What if,’ isn’t it?” Wally asked. “It’s just something to think about,” he added. “About the business of the child, especially—I think. If you see what I mean,” he said.

  “I think we should try not to have the baby,” Candy told him.

  “I won’t have you going to one of those places where there’s no real doctor,” Wally said.

  “Of course not,” she agreed. “But aren’t there any real doctors who do it?”

  “It’s not what I’ve heard,” Wally admitted. He was too much of a gentleman to tell her what he’d heard: that there was a butcher in Cape Kenneth who did you for five hundred dollars. You went to a parking lot and put a blindfold around yourself and waited; you went alone. Someone picked you up and took you to the butcher; you were brought back when the butcher was through—you were blindfolded throughout. And what was worse, you had to appear absolutely hysterical in front of some fairly dignified and local doctor before the doctor would even tell you where the parking lot was and how you got in contact with the butcher. If you didn’t act upset enough, if you weren’t completely crazy, the doctor wouldn’t put you in touch with the butcher.

  That was the story Wally had heard, and he wanted no part of any of it for Candy. He doubted if Candy could act upset enough, anyway. Wally would have the baby instead of any of that; he’d marry Candy and be happy about it, too; it was what he wanted, one day, anyway.

  The story Wally had heard was partially true. You did have to go to the fairly dignified and local doctor, and you did have to work yourself up into a frenzy, and if the doctor thought you were ready to drown yourself, only then would he tell you the location of the parking lot and how to approach the butcher. What Wally didn’t know was the more human part of the story. If you were calm and collected and well-spoken and obviously sane, the doctor would skip the whole story about the parking lot and the butcher; if you looked like a reasonable woman—someone who wouldn’t turn him in, later—the doctor would simply give you an abortion, right there in his office, for five hundred dollars. And if you acted like a nut, he also gave you an abortion—right there in his office—for five hundred dollars. The only difference was that you had to stand around blindfolded in a parking lot and think that you were being operated on by a butcher; that’s what acting crazy got you. What was decidedly unjust, in either case, was that the doctor charged five hundred dollars.

  But Wally Worthington was not seeking the correct information about that doctor, or that so-called butcher. He hoped to get advice about another abortionist, somewhere, and he had a vague plan concerning the people he’d ask. There was little point in seeking the advice of the members of the Haven Club; he’d been told that one member had actually taken a cruise to Sweden for an abortion, but that was out of the question for Candy.

  Wally knew the orchardmen at Ocean View were the sort of men who might have need of a less extravagant remedy; he also knew that they liked him and that, with few exceptions, they could be trusted to keep what Wally thought was a reliable, manly confidence about the matter. He went first to the only bachelor on the orchard crew, supposing that bachelors (and this one was also a notorious ladies’ man) might have more use for abortionists than married men. Wally approached a member of the apple crew named Herb Fowler, a man only a few years older than Wally—he was good-looking in a too-thin, too-cruel kind of way, with a too-thin moustache on his dark lip.

  Herb Fowler’s present girlfriend worked in the packinghouse during harvest; during the times of the year when the apple mart was open, she worked with the other mart women. She was younger than Herb, just a local girl, about Candy’s age—her name was Louise Tobey, and the men called her Squeeze Louise, which was apparently okay with Herb. He was rumored to have other girlfriends, and he had the appalling habit of carrying lots of prophylactics on him—at all times of the day and night—and when anyone said anything at all about sex, Herb Fowler would reach into his pocket for a rubber and flip it at the speaker (all rolled up in its wrapper, of course). He’d just flip a prop
hylactic and say, “See these? They keep a fella free.”

  Wally had already had several rubbers flipped at him, and he was tired of the joke, and he was not in the best humor to have the joke played on him again in his present situation—but he imagined that Herb Fowler was the right sort of man to ask, that, despite the rubbers, Herb Fowler was always getting girls in trouble. One way or another, Herb looked like trouble for every girl alive.

  “Hey, Herb,” Wally said to him. It was a rainy, late-spring day; college was out, and Wally was working alongside Herb in the storage cellar, which was empty in the spring. They were varnishing ladders, and when they finished the ladders, they would start painting the tracks for the conveyors that ran nonstop when the packinghouse was in full operation. Every year, everything was repainted.

  “Yup, that’s my name,” Herb said. He kept a cigarette so fixedly drooped from his lips that his eyes were always squinted half shut, and he kept his long face tipped up and back so that he could inhale the trail of smoke through his nose.

  “Herb, I was wondering,” Wally said. “If you got a girl pregnant, what would you do about it. Knowing your view,” Wally smartly added, “about keeping yourself free.” That stole Herb’s punch line and probably made Herb cross; he had a rubber half out of his pocket, ready to flip at Wally while delivering his usual remark on the subject, but Wally’s saying it for him forced him to arrest the motion of his flipping hand. He never brought the rubber out.

  “Who’d you knock up?” Herb asked, instead.

  Wally corrected him. “I didn’t say I’d knocked up anybody. I asked you what you’d do—if.”

  Herb Fowler disappointed Wally. All he knew about was the same mysterious parking lot in Cape Kenneth—something about a blindfold, a butcher, and five hundred dollars.

  “Maybe Meany Hyde would know about it,” Herb added. “Why don’tcha ask Meany what he’d do if he knocked anybody up?” Herb Fowler smiled at Wally—he was not a nice character—but Wally wouldn’t satisfy him; Wally just smiled back.

  Meany Hyde was a nice man. He’d grown up with a bunch of older brothers who beat him up and otherwise abused him steadily. His brothers had nicknamed him Meany—probably just to confuse him. Meany was ever-friendly; he had a friendly wife, Florence, who was one of the packinghouse and apple mart women; there had been so many children that Wally couldn’t remember all their names, or tell one from the other, and therefore he found it hard to imagine that Meany Hyde even knew what an abortion was.

  “Meany listens to everything,” Herb Fowler told Wally. “Don’tcha ever watch Meany? What’s he do, except listen.”

  So Wally went to find Meany Hyde. Meany was waxing the press boards for the cider press; he was generally in charge of the cider mill, and because of his nice disposition, he was often in charge of overseeing all the cider house activities—including the dealings with the migrant workers who lived in the cider house during the harvest. Olive made a point of keeping Herb Fowler at a considerable distance from those poor migrant workers; Herb’s disposition was not so agreeable.

  Wally watched Meany Hyde waxing for a while. The sharp but clean odor of the fermented cider and the old cider apples was strongest on a wet day, but Meany seemed to like it; Wally didn’t mind it, either.

  “Say, Meany,” Wally said, after a while.

  “I thought you forgot my name,” Meany said cheerfully.

  “Meany, what do you know about abortion?” Wally asked.

  “I know it’s a sin,” Meany Hyde said, “and I know Grace Lynch has had one—and in her case, I sympathize with her—if you know what I mean.”

  Grace Lynch was Vernon Lynch’s wife; Wally—and everyone else—knew that Vernon beat her. They had no children; it was rumored that this was the result of Vernon’s beating Grace so much that Grace’s organs of generation (as Homer Wells knew them) were damaged. Grace was one of the pie women during the harvest and when the apple mart was humming; Wally wondered if she’d be working today. There was lots to do in the orchards on a good day in late spring; but when it was raining, there was just painting and washing, or fixing up the cider house to get it ready for the harvest.

  It was just like Meany Hyde to be waxing the press boards too early. Someone would probably tell him to wax them again, just before it was time for the first press. But Meany didn’t like painting or washing up, and when it rained, he could kill whole days fussing over his beloved cider press.

  “Who do you know needs an abortion, Wally?” Meany Hyde asked.

  “A friend of a friend,” Wally said, which would have prompted a rubber from Herb Fowler’s pocket, but Meany was nice—he took no pleasure in anyone else’s bad luck.

  “That’s a shame, Wally,” Meany said. “I think you should speak to Grace about it—just don’t speak to her when Vernon’s around.”

  Wally didn’t have to be told that. He had often seen the bruises on the backs of Grace Lynch’s arms where Vernon had grabbed her and shook her. Once he had seized her by the arms and yanked her toward him, lowering his head in order to butt her in the face. This had happened, Wally knew, because Senior had paid for Grace’s dental work (she’d told Senior and Olive that she’d fallen downstairs). Vernon had also beaten up a black man, one of the migrants, in the orchard called Old Trees, several harvests ago. The men had been telling jokes, and the black man had offered a joke of his own. Vernon hadn’t liked a black man telling jokes that had anything to do with sex—he’d told Wally, in fact, that black people should be prevented from having sex.

  “Or pretty soon,” Vernon had said, “there’ll be too many of them.”

  In the Old Trees orchard, Vernon had snapped the man off his ladder, and when the man picked himself off the ground, Vernon held both his arms and butted him in the face over and over again, until Everett Taft, who was one of the foremen, and Ira Titcomb, the beekeeper, had to pull Vernon off. The black man had taken over twenty stitches in his mouth, in his lips, and in his tongue; everyone knew Grace Lynch hadn’t lost her teeth falling down any stairs.

  It was Vernon who should have had Meany’s name, or something worse.

  “Wally?” Meany asked him, as he was leaving the cider house. “Don’t tell Grace I told you to ask her.”

  So Wally went looking for Grace Lynch. He drove the pickup through the muddy lane that divided the orchard called Frying Pan, because it was in a valley, and was the hottest to work in, from the orchard called Doris, after someone’s wife. He drove to the building called Number Two (it was simply the second building for keeping the larger vehicles; the sprayers were sheltered in Number Two because the building was more isolated, and the sprayers—and the chemicals that went inside them—stank). Vernon Lynch was painting in there; he had a spray gun with a long, needlelike nozzle and he was hosing down the Hardie five-hundred-gallon sprayer with a fresh coat of apple red. Vernon wore a respirator to protect himself from the paint fumes (it was the same mask the men wore when they sprayed the trees), and he wore his foul-weather gear—the complete oilskin suit. Wally somehow knew it was Vernon, although not a single feature of Vernon was visible. Vernon had a way of attacking his work that made his actions unmistakably his, and Wally noticed that Vernon was painting the Hardie as if he were wielding a flamethrower. Wally drove on; he didn’t want to ask Vernon where his wife was today. Wally shuddered as he imagined several of Vernon’s leering responses.

  In the empty, off-season apple mart, three of the mart women were smoking cigarettes and talking. They didn’t have much to do; and when they saw the boss’s son coming, they didn’t throw down their coffee cups, stamp out their cigarettes and disperse in different directions. They just stepped a little away from one another and smiled at Wally sheepishly.

  Florence Hyde, Meany’s wife, didn’t even pretend to be busy at anything; she dragged on her cigarette, and called out to Wally. “Hi, honey!”

  “Hi, Florence,” Wally said, smiling.

  Big Dot Taft, who’d miraculously run a mile, get
ting stung all the while, the night Senior had dumped Ira Titcomb’s bees, put out her cigarette and picked up an empty crate; then she put the crate down and wondered where she’d left her broom. “Hi, cutey,” Dot said to Wally cheerfully.

  “What’s new?” Wally asked the women.

  “Nothing new here,” said Irene Titcomb, Ira’s wife. She laughed and turned her face away. She was always laughing—and turning away the side of her face with the burn scar, as if she were meeting you for the first time and could keep the scar a secret. The accident had happened years ago, and there couldn’t have been anyone in Heart’s Haven or Heart’s Rock who hadn’t seen Irene Titcomb’s scar and didn’t know the exact details of how she got it.

  One night Ira Titcomb had sat out in his yard all night with an oil torch and a shotgun; something had been getting into his hives—probably a bear or a raccoon. Irene had known this was Ira’s plan, yet she was surprised when she woke up, hearing him calling her. He was on the lawn and waving the lit torch under her window; all she saw was the torchlight. He asked her to make him some bacon and eggs, if she wouldn’t mind, because he was so bored waiting for whatever it was he intended to shoot that he’d gotten hungry.

  Irene was humming to herself, watching the bacon fry, when Ira came to the kitchen window and tapped on the pane to find out if the food was ready. Irene was unprepared for the vision of Ira in his beekeeper suit, moving out of the darkness and into the faint light from the kitchen window with fire in his hands. She had seen her husband in his beekeeper suit many times, but she hadn’t imagined that he’d be wearing it while he waited to shoot a bear or a coon. She’d never seen the way the suit glowed in firelight, or at night, either.