Cider House Rules

by John Irving

  Homer had detected nothing hostile in the looks from the people; as an orphan, he always suspected that people singled him out to stare at—and so he had not felt especially singled out in the company of Mr. Rose. But now he noticed more of the looks and realized that the looks an orphan might detect were only imagined, by comparison.

  When they got to the Ferris wheel, there was no line, but they had to wait for the ride in progress to be over. When the wheel stopped, Homer and Mr. Rose got on and sat together in one chair.

  “We could each sit in our own chairs, if you prefer,” said Homer Wells.

  “Keep it like it is,” said Mr. Rose. When the wheel began its ascent, he sat very still and straight and held his breath until they were nearly at the top of the rise.

  “Over there’s the orchard,” pointed Homer Wells, but Mr. Rose stared straight ahead, as if the stability of the entire Ferris wheel relied on each rider’s maintaining perfect balance.

  “What’s so special about doin’ this?” asked Mr. Rose rigidly.

  “It’s just for the ride, and the view, I guess,” said Homer Wells.

  “I like the view from the roof,” Mr. Rose said. When they started the descent of the wheel turn, Mr. Rose said, “It’s a good thing I didn’t eat much today.”

  By the time they passed ground level and began their ascent again, a substantial crowd had formed—but they didn’t appear to be standing in line for the next ride. There were only two couples and one boy by himself sharing the wheel with Homer and Mr. Rose, and when they were at the top of the wheel turn again, Homer realized that the crowd below them had formed to stare at Mr. Rose.

  “They come to see if niggers fly,” Mr. Rose said, “but I ain’t goin’ nowhere—not for no one’s entertainment. They come to see if the machine is gonna break down, tryin’ to carry a nigger—or maybe they wanna see me throw up.”

  “Just don’t do anything,” Homer Wells said.

  “That’s the advice I been hearin’ all my life, boy,” Mr. Rose said. As they started their descent, Mr. Rose leaned out of the chair—quite dangerously farther than was necessary—and vomited in a splendid arc over the crowd below them. The crowd moved as one, but not everyone moved in time.

  When their chair was at the bottom of the descent again, the Ferris wheel was stopped so that the sick man could get off. The crowd had retreated, except for a young man who was especially splattered. As Homer Wells and Mr. Rose were leaving the Ferris wheel grounds, the young man came forward and said to Mr. Rose, “You looked like you meant to do that.”

  “Who means to get sick?” said Mr. Rose; he kept walking, and Homer kept up with him. The young man was about Homer’s age; he should have homework, thought Homer Wells—if he’s still in school, it’s a school night.

  “I think you meant to,” the young man said to Mr. Rose, who stopped walking away then.

  “What business you in?” Mr. Rose asked the boy.

  “What?” the young man asked, but Homer Wells stepped between them.

  “My friend is sick,” Homer Wells said. “Please just leave him alone.”

  “Your friend!” the boy said.

  “Ask me what business I’m in,” Mr. Rose said to the boy.

  “What fuckin’ business are you in, Mister?” the young man shouted at Mr. Rose. Homer felt himself neatly shoved out of the way; he saw that Mr. Rose was standing, very suddenly, chest to chest with the boy. There was no sour smell of vomit on Mr. Rose’s breath, however. Somehow, Mr. Rose had slipped one of those mints in his mouth; the alertness that had been missing when Mr. Rose felt ill was back in his eyes. The boy seemed surprised that he was standing so close to Mr. Rose, and so suddenly; he was a little taller, and quite a bit heavier, than Mr. Rose, yet he looked unsure of himself. “I said, ‘What fuckin’ business are you in, Mister?’ ” the boy repeated, and Mr. Rose smiled.

  “I’m in the throwin’-up business!” Mr. Rose said in a humble manner. Someone in the crowd laughed; Homer Wells felt a surge of vast relief; Mr. Rose smiled in such a way that allowed the boy to smile, too. “Sorry if any of it got on you,” Mr. Rose said nicely.

  “No problem,” said the young man, turning to leave. After taking a few steps, the boy turned inquisitively in Mr. Rose’s direction, but Mr. Rose had grasped Homer Wells by the arm and was already walking on. Homer saw shock on the boy’s face. The young man’s flannel jacket, which was still zipped shut, was flapping wide open—a single, crisp slash had slit it from the collar to the waist—and every button on the boy’s shirt was gone. The boy gaped at himself, and then at Mr. Rose, who did not look back, and then the boy allowed himself to be pulled into the comfort of the crowd.

  “How’d you do that?” Homer asked Mr. Rose, when they reached the van.

  “Your hands got to be fast,” Mr. Rose said. “Your knife got to be sharp. But you do it with your eyes. Your eyes keep their eyes off your hands.”

  The wide-open jacket of the boy made Homer remember Clara and how a scalpel made no mistakes. Only a hand makes mistakes. His chest was cold, and he was driving too fast.

  When Homer turned off Drinkwater Road and drove through the orchards to the cider house, Mr. Rose said, “You see? I was right, wasn’t I? What good is it—to apple pickers—to know about that wheel?”

  It does no good to know about it, thought Homer Wells. And what good would it do Melony to know about it, or Curly Day, or Fuzzy—or any Bedouin?

  “Am I right?” Mr. Rose demanded.

  “Right,” said Homer Wells.

  8

  Opportunity Knocks

  After the harvest at York Farm, the foreman asked Melony to stay on to help with the mousing. “We have to get the mice before the ground freezes, or else they’ll have the run of the orchards all winter,” the foreman explained. The men used poison oats and poison corn, scattering the poison around the trees and putting it in the pine mice tunnels.

  Poor mice, thought Melony, but she tried mousing for a few days. When she saw a pine mouse tunnel, she tried to conceal it; she never put any poison in it. And she only pretended to scatter the oats and corn around the trees; she didn’t like the way the poison smelled. She would dump it into the dirt road and fill her bag with sand and gravel and scatter that instead.

  “Have a nice winter, mice,” she whispered to them.

  It began to get very cold in the cider house; they gave her a woodburning stove, which Melony vented through a window in the bunkroom; the stove kept the toilet from freezing. The morning the outdoor shower was frozen was the morning Melony decided to move on. She only briefly regretted not being able to stay and save more mice.

  “If you’re lookin’ for another orchard,” the foreman warned her, “you won’t find any that’s hirin’ in the winter.”

  “I’d like a city job for the winter,” Melony told him.

  “What city?” the foreman asked. Melony shrugged. She had securely strapped up her small bundle of things in Charley’s belt; the sleeves of Mrs. Grogan’s coat reached only halfway down her forearms, and the coat was an especially tight fit across the shoulders and the hips—even so, Melony managed to look comfortable in it. “There’s no real cities in Maine,” the foreman told her.

  “It won’t take much of a city to be a city for me,” Melony said. He watched her walk to the same part of the road where he’d called good-bye to her before. It was that time of year when the trees are bare and the sky looks like lead, and underfoot the ground feels more unyielding every day—yet it’s too early for snow, or else there’s a freak storm and the snow doesn’t last.

  For some reason the foreman felt a strong desire to leave with Melony; he surprised himself by muttering out loud, “I hope it snows soon.”

  “What?” one of the apple-mart women said.

  “So long!” the foreman called to Melony, but she didn’t answer him.

  “Good riddance,” said one of the women in the mart.

  “The slut,” another one said.

  “W
hat makes her a slut?” the foreman asked sharply. “Who you seen her sleepin’ with?”

  “She’s just a tramp,” one of them said.

  “At least she’s interesting,” the foreman snapped. The women regarded him for a moment before one of them spoke up.

  “Got a crush on her, do you?” she asked.

  “I’ll bet you wish you was that boyfriend she’s lookin’ for,” another woman said, which drew a teasing sort of laughter from all the mart women.

  “It’s not that!” the foreman snapped. “I hope she never finds that boyfriend—for his sake!” the foreman said. “And for hers,” he added.

  The woman whose fat husband had tried to rape Melony turned away from this conversation. She opened the large, communal thermos on the table next to the cash register; but when she tried to pour herself some coffee, none came out. What came out instead was poison oats and poison corn. If Melony had actually meant to poison any of them, she would have been more restrained in the proportions. It was clearly just a message, and the apple-mart women regarded it as silently as if they were trying to read bones.

  “You see what I mean?” the foreman asked them. He picked up an apple from a display basket on the counter and took a healthy chomp; the apple had been left out in the cold so long that it was partially frozen, and so mealy in the foreman’s mouth that he instantly spat it out.

  It was very cold on the road to the coast, but the walking warmed Melony up; also, since there was no traffic, she had no choice about walking. When she reached the coastal highway, she didn’t have to wait long for a ride. A pale but jolly boy driving a panel truck stopped for her.

  “Yarmouth Paint and Shellac, at your service,” the boy said to Melony; he was a little younger than Homer Wells, and—in Melony’s opinion—not nearly so worldly-looking. The truck reeked of wood-stain smells and of varnish and creosote. “I’m a wood-treatment expert,” the boy said to her proudly.

  At best, a salesman, Melony thought; more likely, a delivery boy. She smiled tightly, not showing her chipped teeth. The boy fidgeted, awaiting some form of greeting from her. I can make anyone nervous in less than a minute, Melony thought.

  “Uh, where you goin’?” the boy asked her—the panel truck sloshing along.

  “The city,” Melony said.

  “What city?” the boy asked.

  Now Melony allowed her lips to part with her smile—the worried boy now staring at the troubled history of her mouth.

  “You tell me,” Melony said.

  “I gotta go to Bath,” the boy said nervously. Melony stared at him as if he’d said he had to have a bath.

  “Bath,” she repeated.

  “It’s a city, sort of,” the wood-treatment expert told her.

  It was Clara’s city! Dr. Larch or Homer Wells could have told Melony—old Clara had come to St. Cloud’s from Bath! But Melony didn’t know that, and wouldn’t have cared; her relationship to Clara had been unpleasantly envious. Homer Wells knew Clara more intimately than he knew Melony. It might have interested Melony that Bath would put her much closer to Ocean View than she’d been at York Farm—that there might even be residents of Bath who would have heard of an Ocean View Orchards; there were certainly many Bath residents who could have directed her to Heart’s Haven or to Heart’s Rock.

  “You wanna go to Bath?” the boy asked her cautiously.

  Again Melony showed him her damaged teeth; she was displaying less of a smile than of the manner in which a dog might show its hackles. “Right,” she said.

  Wally came home for Thanksgiving; Candy had been home for several weekends in the early fall, but Homer had not known how to initiate seeing her without Wally. Wally was surprised that Homer and Candy hadn’t seen each other; and, from Candy’s embarrassment with Wally’s surprise, Homer detected that she had been equally troubled about initiating a meeting with him. But the turkey had to be basted every fifteen minutes, the table had to be set, and Olive was too obviously enjoying having a full house again—there was no time to feel awkward.

  Raymond Kendall had shared a Thanksgiving dinner with the Worthingtons before, but never without Senior’s semi-presence; Ray went through a few minutes of struggling to be overly polite before he relaxed and talked shop with Olive.

  “Dad acts like he’s having a date,” Candy said to Olive in the kitchen.

  “I’m flattered,” Olive said, squeezing Candy’s arm and laughing. But that was the end of any further nonsense.

  Homer volunteered to carve the turkey. He did such a good job that Olive said, “You should be a surgeon, Homer!”

  Wally laughed; Candy looked at her plate, or at her hands in her lap, and Ray Kendall said, “The boy’s just good with his hands. If you’ve got good hands, once you do a thing your hands won’t forget how.”

  “That’s like you, Ray,” Olive said, which moved the attention away from Homer’s work with the knife; he carved every bit of meat off the bones as quickly as possible.

  Wally talked about the war. He said he’d thought about dropping out of college to go to flying school. “So if there is a war—if we get into it, I mean—then I’ll already know how to fly.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Olive said to him.

  “Why would you want to do such a thing?” Candy asked him. “I think you’re being selfish.”

  “What do you mean, selfish?” Wally asked. “A war is for your country, it’s serving your country!”

  “To you, it’s an adventure,” Candy said. “That’s what’s selfish about it.”

  “You’ll do no such thing, anyway,” Olive repeated.

  “I was too young to go to the last war,” Ray said, “and if there’s another one, I’ll be too old.”

  “Lucky you!” Olive said.

  “That’s right,” Candy said.

  Ray shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I wanted to go to the last one. I tried to lie about my age, but someone told on me.”

  “Now you know better,” Olive said.

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Ray said. “If there’s a new one, there’ll be lots of new weapons—they’re buildin’ stuff you can’t even imagine.”

  “I try to imagine it,” Wally said. “I imagine the war all the time.”

  “Except the dying, Wally,” Olive Worthington said, carrying the turkey carcass out to the kitchen. “I don’t think you’ve imagined the dying.”

  “Right,” said Homer Wells, who imagined the dying all the time. Candy looked at him and smiled.

  “You should have called me on the weekends, Homer,” she said.

  “Yeah, why didn’t you?” Wally asked him. “Too busy with Debra Pettigrew, that’s why.” Homer just shook his head.

  “Too busy with the practical anatomy of the rabbit!” Olive called from the kitchen.

  “The what?” Wally said.

  But Olive was wrong. It had taken Homer only about three weeks of Senior Biology to realize that he knew more about the particular animal under scrutiny and its relation to human anatomy than did his cadaverous teacher, Mr. Hood.

  It was, as Wilbur Larch could have guessed, the urogenital system that revealed Mr. Hood’s deficiencies in comparison to the experience of young Dr. Wells. In discussing the three stages of specialization of the uterus, Mr. Hood became confused. The intrauterine life of the rabbit embryo is only thirty days; between five to eight young are born. In keeping with the primitive nature of the little animal, the rabbit has two complete uteri—the structure of the organ at this stage is called uterus duplex. The structure of the organ in the human female, which Homer Wells knew very well—wherein two uterine tubes open into a single uterine cavity—is called uterus simplex. The third stage of uterine structure falls between the two—a partially fused condition existing in some mammals (sheep, for example); it is called uterus bicornis.

  Poor Mr. Hood, attempting to reveal the secrets of the uterus upon the chalky blackboard, confused his duplex with his bicornis; he called a sheep a rabbit (an
d vice versa). It was a smaller error than if he’d imagined the human female had two complete uteri and had spread this misinformation to the class, but it was an error; Homer Wells caught it. It was the first time he had been put in a position of correcting an authority. “An orphan is especially uncomfortable and insecure in such a position,” wrote Dr. Wilbur Larch.

  “Excuse me, sir?” said Homer Wells.

  “Yes, Homer?” said Mr. Hood. His gauntness, in a certain light, made him appear as exposed as the many rabbit cadavers lying open on the students’ laboratory tables. He looked skinned, almost ready for labeling. A kind but weary patience was in his eyes; they were the man’s only alert features.

  “It’s the other way around, sir,” said Homer Wells.

  “Pardon me?” said Mr. Hood.

  “The rabbit has two complete uteri, the rabbit is uterus duplex—not the sheep, sir,” Homer said. “The sheep’s uterus is partially fused together, it’s almost one—the sheep is uterus bicornis.”

  The class waited. Mr. Hood blinked; for a moment, he looked like a lizard regarding a fly, but he suddenly retreated. “Isn’t that what I said?” he asked, smiling.

  “No,” the class murmured, “you said it the other way around.”

  “Well, it’s my mistake, then,” Mr. Hood said almost cheerfully. “I meant it just the way you said it, Homer,” he said.

  “Maybe I misunderstood you, sir,” Homer said, but the class murmured, “No, you got it right.”

  The short boy named Bucky, with whom Homer had to share his rabbit cadaver, nudged Homer in the ribs. “How come you know all about cunts?” he asked Homer.

  “Search me,” said Homer Wells. He had learned that phrase from Debra Pettigrew. It was the one game they played. He would ask her something she couldn’t answer. She would say “Search me.” And Homer Wells, saying “Okay,” would begin to search her. “Not there!” Debra would cry, pushing his hand away, but laughing. Always laughing, but always pushing his hand away. There was no way Homer Wells would gain admittance to the uterus simplex of Debra Pettigrew.

  “Not unless I ask her to marry me,” he told Wally, when they were back together in Wally’s bedroom, Thanksgiving night.