by John Irving
They took Candy’s Jeep, keeping the top down. It wasn’t necessary to take the wheelchair; it was just a Little League game, and Homer could drive the Jeep right up to the foul line and they could watch the game from the car seats. The town was thrilled to have a lighted field, although it was stupid to play Little League games after dark; it kept the little kids up later than was necessary, and the field wasn’t that well lit—home runs and long foul balls were always lost. The tiny infielders seemed to lose the high pop-ups. But Wally loved watching the kids play; when Angel had played, Wally had never missed a game. Angel was too old for Little League now, and he found watching the games the depths of boredom.
The game was nearly over when they arrived, which relieved Homer Wells (who hated baseball). A worried fat boy was pitching; he took the longest time between pitches, as if he were waiting for it to grow so dark (or for the lights to fail so completely) that the batter could no longer see the ball at all.
“You know what I miss?” Wally asked Homer Wells.
“What’s that?” said Homer, who dreaded the answer. Maybe walking, Homer thought—or maybe he’s going to say, “Loving my wife; that’s what I miss.”
But Wally said, “Flying. I really miss flying. I miss being up there.” Wally was not watching the ball game but looking above the tall field lights at some point high in the darkness. “Above everything,” he said. “That’s how it was.”
“I never did it,” said Homer Wells.
“My God, that’s true!” Wally said, genuinely shocked. “That’s right, you’ve never flown! My God, you’d love it. We’ve got to arrange that, somehow. And Angel would really find it exciting,” Wally added. “It’s the thing I miss most.”
When the game was over and they were driving home, Wally reached across to the gearshift and popped the Jeep into neutral. “Cut the engine just a second,” he said to Homer. “Let’s just coast.” Homer turned off the key and the Jeep ambled silently along. “Cut the headlights, too,” Wally said. “Just for a second.” And Homer Wells cut the lights. They could see the lights from the Ocean View house ahead of them, and both of them knew the road so well that they felt fairly secure just freewheeling in the darkness, but then the trees rose up and cut their view of the lighted house, and there was an unfamiliar dip in the road. For just a moment they seemed to be completely lost, possibly plunging off the road into the dark trees, and Homer Wells turned the headlights back on.
“That was flying,” Wally said, when they pulled into the driveway—ahead of them, gleaming in the headlights, the wheelchair was parked in waiting. When Homer carried Wally from the Jeep to the wheelchair, Wally let both his arms lock around Homer’s neck. “Don’t ever think I’m not grateful to you, for all you’ve done, old boy,” Wally told Homer, who put him very gently in the chair.
“Come on,” Homer said.
“No, I mean it. I know how much you’ve done for me, and I don’t usually get the opportunity to say how grateful I really am,” Wally said. He kissed Homer smack between the eyes, then, and Homer straightened up, clearly embarrassed.
“You’ve certainly done everything for me, Wally,” Homer said, but Wally dismissed this with a wave; he was already wheeling himself toward the house.
“It’s not the same, old boy,” Wally said, and Homer went to park the Jeep.
That night when Homer put Angel to bed, Angel said, “You know, you really don’t have to put me to bed anymore.”
“I don’t do it because I have to,” Homer said. “I like to.”
“You know what I think?” Angel said.
“What’s that?” asked Homer, who dreaded the answer.
“I think you ought to try having a girlfriend,” Angel said cautiously. Homer laughed.
“Maybe when you try having one, I’ll try one, too,” Homer said.
“Sure, we can double-date!” Angel said.
“I get the back seat,” Homer said.
“Sure, I’d rather get to drive, anyway,” Angel said.
“Not for long, you won’t rather drive,” his father told him.
“Sure!” Angel said, laughing. Then he asked his father: “Was Debra Pettigrew big like Melony?”
“No!” Homer said. “Well, she was on her way to being big, but she wasn’t that big—not when I knew her.”
“There’s no way Big Dot Taft’s sister could have been small,” Angel said.
“Well, I never said she was small,” Homer said, and they both laughed. It was a lighthearted enough moment for Homer to lean over Angel and kiss the boy—smack between the eyes, where Wally had just kissed Homer. It was a good place to kiss Angel, in Homer’s opinion, because he liked to smell his son’s hair.
“Good night, I love you,” Homer said.
“I love you. Good night, Pop,” Angel said, but when Homer was almost out the door, Angel asked him, “What’s the thing you love best?”
“You,” Homer told his son. “I love you best.”
“Next to me,” said Angel Wells.
“Candy and Wally,” Homer said, making them as close to one word as his tongue could manage.
“Next to them,” Angel said.
“Well, Doctor Larch—and all of them, in Saint Cloud’s, I guess,” said Homer Wells.
“And what’s the best thing you ever did?” Angel asked his father.
“I got you,” Homer said softly.
“Next best,” Angel said.
“Well, I guess it was meeting Candy and Wally,” Homer said.
“You mean, when you met them?” Angel asked.
“I guess so,” said Homer Wells.
“Next best,” Angel insisted.
“I saved a woman’s life, once,” Homer said. “Doctor Larch was away. The woman had convulsions.”
“You told me,” Angel said. Angel had never been especially interested that his father had become a highly qualified assistant to Dr. Larch; Homer had never told him about the abortions. “What else?” Angel asked his father.
Tell him now, thought Homer Wells, tell him all of it. But what he said to his son was, “Nothing else, really. I’m no hero. I haven’t done any best things, or even any one best thing.”
“That’s okay, Pop,” Angel said cheerfully. “Good night.”
“Good night,” said Homer Wells.
Downstairs, he couldn’t tell if Wally and Candy had gone to bed, or if Wally was in bed alone; the bedroom door was closed, and there was no light coming from the crack under the door. But someone had left a light on in the kitchen, and the outdoor light on the post at the head of the driveway was still on. He went to the apple-mart office to read the mail; with the light on in the office, Candy would know where he was. And if she’d already gone to the cider house, he could walk there from the office; it would be smart, in that case, to leave the office light on and not turn it out until he came back from the cider house. That way, if Wally woke up and saw the light, he’d figure that Homer or Candy was still working in the office.
The package from St. Cloud’s, arriving so exactly on the day of Melony’s visit, startled Homer. He almost didn’t want to open it. The old man has probably sent me enema bags! Homer Wells thought. He was shocked to see the black leather doctor’s bag; the leather was scuffed and soft, and the brass clasp was so tarnished that its luster was as dull as the cinch buckle of an old saddle, but everything that was worn and used about the bag’s appearance only made the gold initials that much brighter.
F.S.
Homer Wells opened the bag and sniffed deeply inside it; he was anticipating the hearty and manly smell of old leather, but mixed with the leather smell were the feminine traces of ether’s tangy perfume. That was when—in one whiff—Homer Wells detected something of the identity that Dr. Larch had fashioned for Fuzzy Stone.
“Doctor Stone,” Homer said aloud, remembering when Larch had addressed him as if he were Fuzzy.
He didn’t want to walk back to the house to put the doctor’s bag away, but he didn’t want
to leave the bag in the office, either; when he came back to the office to turn out the light, he thought he might forget the bag. And the thing about a good doctor’s bag is that it’s comfortable to carry. That was why he took it with him to the cider house. The bag was empty, of course—which didn’t feel quite right to Homer—so he picked some Gravensteins and a couple of early Macs on his way to the cider house and put the apples in the bag. Naturally, the apples rolled back and forth; that didn’t feel quite authentic. “Doctor Stone,” he mumbled once, his head nodding as he took high steps through the tall grass.
Candy had been waiting for him for a while, long enough so her nerves were shot. He thought that if it had happened the other way around—if she’d been the one to break things off—he would have been as upset as she was.
It was heartbreaking for him to see that she had made up one of the beds. The clean linen and the blankets had already been put in the cider house in anticipation of the picking crew’s arrival, the mattresses rolled and waiting at the opposite ends of the beds. Candy had made up the bed the farthest from the kitchen doorway. She’d brought a candle from the house, and had lit it—it gave the harsh barracks a softer light, although candles were against the rules. Recently, Homer had found it necessary to emphasize candles on the list; one of the pickers had started a small fire with one some years ago.
PLEASE DON’T SMOKE IN BED—AND NO CANDLES, PLEASE!
was the way he’d written that rule.
The candlelight was faint; it couldn’t be seen from the fancy house.
Candy had not undressed herself, but she was sitting on the bed—and she had brushed her hair out. Her hairbrush was on the apple crate that served as a night table, and this commonplace article of such familiarity and domesticity gave Homer Wells (with the black doctor’s bag in his hand) a shiver of such magnitude that he envisioned himself as a helpless physician paying a house call to someone with not long to live.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly to her. “We’ve tried it—we’ve certainly tried—but it just doesn’t work. Only the truth will work.” His voice was croaking at his own pomposity.
Candy sat with her knees together and her hands in her lap; she was shivering. “Do you really think Angel’s old enough to know all this?” she whispered, as if the flickering room were full of sleeping apple pickers.
“He’s old enough to beat off, he’s old enough to know what drive-ins are for—I think he’s old enough,” said Homer Wells.
“Don’t be coarse,” Candy said.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“There’s always so much to do during harvest,” Candy said; she picked at her white, summery dress as if there were lint on it (but it was spotlessly clean), and Homer Wells remembered that Senior Worthington had this habit—that in Senior’s case it was a symptom of his Alzheimer’s disease and that Dr. Larch had even known the name for the symptom. What did the neurologists call it? Homer tried to remember.
“We’ll wait and tell them after the harvest, then,” Homer said. “We’ve waited fifteen years. I guess we can wait another six weeks.”
She stretched out on her back on the thin bed, as if she were a little girl waiting to be tucked in and kissed good night in a foreign country. He went to the bed and sat uncomfortably on the edge of it, at her waist, and she put her hand on his knee. He covered her hand with his hand.
“Oh, Homer,” she said, but he wouldn’t turn to look at her. She took his hand and pulled it under her dress and made him touch her; she wasn’t wearing anything under the dress. He didn’t pull his hand away, but he wouldn’t allow his hand to be more than a deadweight presence against her. “What do you imagine will happen?” she asked him coolly—after she realized that his hand was dead.
“I can’t imagine anything,” he said.
“Wally will throw me out,” Candy said, blandly and without self-pity.
“He won’t,” Homer said. “And if he did, I wouldn’t—then you’d be with me. That’s why he won’t.”
“What will Angel do?” Candy asked.
“What he wants,” Homer said. “I imagine he’ll be with you when he wants, and with me when he wants.” This part was hard to say—and harder to imagine.
“He’ll hate me,” Candy said.
“He won’t,” said Homer Wells.
She pushed his hand away from her and he returned the dead thing to his own lap; in another moment, her hand found his knee again, and he held her hand lightly there—at the wrist, almost as if he were taking her pulse. At his feet, the shabby doctor’s bag, heavy with apples, crouched like a cat drawn in upon itself and waiting; in the flickering room, the doctor’s bag looked like the only natural object—that bag would look at home wherever anyone took it; it was a bag that belonged wherever it was.
“Where will you go?” Candy asked him after a while.
“Will I have to go anywhere?” he asked her.
“I imagine so,” Candy said.
Homer Wells was trying to imagine it all when he heard the car. Candy must have heard it in the same instant because she sat up and blew out the candle. They sat holding each other on the bed, listening to the car approach them.
It was an old car, or else it was not very well cared for; the valves were tapping and something like the tailpipe was loose and rattled. The car was heavy and low; they heard it scrape on the high crown of the dirt road through the orchard, and the driver had to be familiar with the way through the orchard because the headlights were off—that’s how the car had gotten so close without their knowing it was coming.
Candy hurried to unmake the bed; in the darkness, she probably wasn’t refolding the blankets and the linen very neatly, and Homer had to help her roll up the mattress.
“It’s Wally!” Candy whispered, and indeed the car sounded like the Cadillac, which (since Raymond Kendall’s death) had lost its pinpoint timing. In fact, Homer remembered, the Cadillac’s muffler was loose, and it had a rebuilt engine, which already needed a valve job. And it was too heavy and low-built a car for proper use on the ragged dirt roads that wound through the orchards.
But how could Wally have managed it? wondered Homer Wells. Wally would have had to crawl to the Cadillac (Homer himself had parked it behind one of the storage barns, where the road was much too rocky and broken up for the wheelchair).
“Maybe it’s some local kid,” Homer whispered to Candy; the cider house was not unknown to a few locals; the orchard roads had been lovers’ lanes for more than one couple.
The heavy car pulled right up to the cider house wall. Candy and Homer felt the front bumper nudge against the building.
“It’s Wally!” Candy whispered; why would some local kid bother to park so close? The motor knocked for a while after the key was turned off. And then there was that ping of engine heat from the heavy car as it settled into place.
Homer let go of Candy; he tripped on the doctor’s bag as he started for the door, and Candy caught hold of him, pulling him back against her.
“I’m not going to make him crawl in here,” Homer said to her, but Candy could not make herself move out of the darkest corner of the cider house.
Homer picked up the doctor’s bag and felt his way into the dark kitchen; his hand groped for the light switch, his hand brushing over his new list of rules. He had not heard the car door open, but he suddenly heard low voices; he paused, with his hand on the light switch. Oh Wally, this isn’t fair! he thought; if there were voices Homer knew that Wally had brought Angel with him. That would have made it easier for Wally to get to the Cadillac—Angel could have brought the car around for him. But regardless of the torment that burdened Wally, Homer was angry at his friend for involving Angel. But wasn’t Angel involved in it, anyway? Homer wondered. (Now they turned the headlights on—to light their way to the door?)
It was not the way Homer had imagined telling them both, but what did the way matter? Homer Wells turned on the light, which momentarily blinded him. He thought that he mu
st be as lit up as a Christmas tree in the cider house door. And, he thought, wasn’t it fitting that it had been the Cadillac that had rescued him from St. Cloud’s, and now here was the Cadillac—in a way, come to rescue him again? For here he was, with the well-worn doctor’s bag in hand, at last prepared to tell the truth—ready, at last, to take his medicine.
In the bright light, he nervously picked the imaginary lint off his clothes. He remembered what the neurologists call it: carphologia.
He tightened his grip on Dr. Larch’s bag and peered into the darkness. Suddenly, it was clear to him—where he was going. He was only what he always was: an orphan who’d never been adopted. He had managed to steal some time away from the orphanage, but St. Cloud’s had the only legitimate claim to him. In his forties, a man should know where he belongs.
Dr. Larch began another letter to Harry Truman, before he remembered that Eisenhower had been President for a few years. He had written several letters to Roosevelt after Roosevelt had died, and he’d written many more to Eleanor, but the Roosevelts had never written back. Harry Truman had never written back, either, and Larch couldn’t remember if he’d written to Mrs. Truman, too, or to Truman’s daughter—whichever one it was hadn’t answered, either.
He tried not to get depressed at the thought of writing to Eisenhower; he tried to recall how he’d begun the last one. He’d begun “Dear General,” but after that he couldn’t remember; he’d said something about how he’d been a doctor to the “troops” in World War I—he’d tried to sneak up on his real subject, a kind of flanking maneuver. Maybe it was time to try Mrs. Eisenhower. But when Larch wrote “Dear Mamie,” he felt ridiculous.
Oh, what’s the use? thought Wilbur Larch. You have to be crazy to write to Eisenhower about abortion. He tore the letter out of the typewriter; out of the blue, he decided that the President’s head resembled that of a baby.