The Cider House Rules

"Hung around; to linger means to hang around!" Melony said sharply. She began again " '. . . the moon shut herself wholly within her chamber, and drew close her curtain of dense cloud; the night grew dark . . .' "

"It's gettin' scary now," Wednesday observed.

" '. . . rain came driving fast on the wind.' " Melony had changed "gale" to "wind" without their knowing it. " 'I wish he would come! I wish he would come! I exclaimed, seized with hypochondriac foreboding.' " Melony stopped with that; tears filled her eyes, and she couldn't see the words. There was a long silence before anyone spoke.

"What was she seized with?" Sammy asked, frightened.

"I don't know!" Melony said, sobbing. "Some kind of fear, I think."

They were respectful of Melony's sobs for a while, and then Sammy said, "I guess it's some kind of horror story."

"What you want to read that before you try to sleep?" Rather asked Melony with friendly concern, but Melony lay down on her bed and turned off her reading light.

When all the lights were out, Melony felt Sandra sit on her bed beside her; if it had been Ma, she knew, her bed would have sagged more heavily. "You ask me, you better forget that boyfriend," Sandra said. "If he didn't tell you how to find him, he ain't no good, anyway." Melony had not felt anyone stroke her temples since Mrs. Grogan in the girls' division at St. Cloud's; she realized she missed Mrs. Grogan very much, and for a while this took her mind off Homer Wells.

When everyone else was asleep, Melony turned her reading light back on; whatever failure Jane Eyre might be for someone else, it had always worked for Melony--it had helped her--and she felt in need of its help, now. She read another twenty pages, or so, but Homer Wells would not leave her mind. "I must part with you for my whole life," she read, with horror. "I must begin a new existence amongst strange faces and strange scenes." The truth of that closed the book for her, forever. She slid the book under her bed in the bunkroom in the cider house at York Farm, where she would leave it. Had she just read the passage from David Copperfield that Homer Wells so loved and repeated to himself as if it were a hopeful prayer, she would have discarded David Copperfield, too. "I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me." Fat chance! Melony would have thought. She knew that all the phantoms of those days were attached to her and Homer more securely than their shadows. And so Melony cried herself to sleep--she was not hopeful, yet she was determined, her mind's eye searching the darkness for Homer Wells.

She could not have seen him that night--he was so well hidden beyond the range of the lights shining from the mill room at Ocean View. Even if he'd sneezed or fallen down, the sound of the grinder and the pump would have concealed his presence. He watched the red-eyed glow of the cigarettes that darted and paused above the roof of the cider house. When he got cold, he went to watch them pressing and to have a little cider and rum.

Mr. Rose seemed glad to see him; he gave Homer a drink with very little cider in it, and together they watched the orchestra of the pump and grinder. A man named Jack, who had a terrible scar across his throat--a hard-to-survive kind of scar--aimed the spout. A man named Orange slapped the racks in place and received the splatter with a wild kind of pride; his name was Orange because he had tried to dye his hair once, and orange was how it turned out--there was no evidence of that color on him now. The rum had made Jack and Orange both savage about their business and defiantly unwary of the flying mess, yet Homer felt that Mr. Rose, who seemed sober, was still in control--the conductor of both the men and the machinery and operating them both at full throttle.

"Let's try to get out of here by midnight," Mr. Rose said calmly. Jack choked the flow of pomace to the top rack; Orange levered the press into place.

In the other corner of the mill room, two men whom Homer Wells didn't know were bottling at high speed. One of the men began to laugh, and his partner started to laugh with him so loudly that Mr. Rose called out to them, "What's so funny?"

One of the men explained that his cigarette had fallen out of his mouth, into the vat; at this announcement, even Jack and Orange began to laugh, and Homer Wells smiled, but Mr. Rose said quietly, "Then you better fish it out. Nobody wants that muckin' up the cider."

The men were quiet, now; just the machinery went on with its sluicing and screaming. "Go on," Mr. Rose repeated. "Go fish."

The man with the lost cigarette stared into the thousand-gallon vat; it was only half full, but it was still a swimming pool. He took off his rubber boots, but Mr. Rose said, "Not just the boots. Take off all your clothes, and then go take a shower--and be quick about it. We got work to do."

"What?" the man said. "I ain't gonna strip and go wash just to go swimmin' in there!"

"You're filthy all over," said Mr. Rose. "Be quick about it."

"Hey, you can be quick about it," the man said to Mr. Rose. "You want that butt out of there, you can fish it out yourself."

It was Orange who spoke to the man.

"What business you in?" Orange asked him.

"Hey, what?" the man asked.

"What business you in, man?" Orange asked.

"Say, you in the apple business, man," Jack advised the man.

"Say, what?" the man asked.

"Just say you in the apple business, man," Orange said.

It was at that moment that Mr. Rose took Homer's arm and said to him, "You got to see the view from the roof, my friend." The tug at his elbow was firm but gentle. Mr. Rose very gracefully led Homer out of the mill room, then outside by the kitchen door.

"You know what business Mistuh Rose is in, man?" Homer heard Orange asking.

"He in the knife business, man," he heard Jack say.

"You don't wanna go in the knife business with Mistuh Rose," Homer heard Orange say.