The Cider House Rules

"It's a kind of bull's-eye, you're right," Angel said.

"Say it again," Rose Rose said.

"Mercedes," he said.

"It for rich people, ain't it?" Rose Rose asked.

"The car?" he asked.

"The name or the car," she said.

"Well," Angel said, "it's an expensive car, but the name means 'Our Lady of Mercies.' "

"Well, fuck it, then," Rose Rose said. "Didn't I tell you not to tell me what the names mean?"

"Sorry," he said.

"How come you never wear a shirt?" she asked him. "Ain't you never cold?"

Angel shrugged.

"You can go on with them names, any time," she told him.

After the first four or five days of the harvest, the wind shifted; there was a strong sea breeze off the Atlantic, and the early mornings were especially cold. Angel wore a T-shirt and a sweat shirt over that. One morning, when it was so cold that Rose Rose had left Baby Rose with Candy, Angel saw that she was shivering and he gave her his sweat shirt. She wore it all day. She was still wearing it when Angel went to help with the cider press that night, and for a while they sat on the cider house roof together. Black Pan sat up there with them, and he told them about the time when there'd been an Army installation on the coast, which they could see at night.

"It was a secret weapon," he told them. "And your father," Black Pan told Angel, "he made up a name for it--he had us all shittin' our pants, we was so scared. It was a kind of wheel, he told us--it sent people to the moon, or somethin'."

"It was a Ferris wheel," said Mr. Rose in the darkness. "It was just a Ferris wheel."

"Yeah, that what it was!" Black Pan said. "I seen one, once."

"But it was somethin' else that used to be out there," Mr. Rose said dreamily. "It got used in the war."

"Yeah," Black Pan said. "They shot it at somebody."

Watching the lights on the coast, Rose Rose announced: "I'm movin' to the city."

"Maybe, when you old enough," said Mr. Rose.

"Maybe Atlanta," she said. "I been in Atlanta," she told Angel--"at night, too."

"That was Charleston," Mr. Rose said. "Unless you was in Atlanta some other time."

"You said it was Atlanta," she told him.

"Maybe I said it was Atlanta," said Mr. Rose, "but it was Charleston." Black Pan laughed.

Rose Rose forgot to give the sweat shirt back, but in the morning, when it was still cold, she was wearing one of Mr. Rose's old sweaters and she handed the sweat shirt back to Angel.

"Got my own clothes, sort of, this mornin'," she told Angel, the baseball cap pulled lower than usual over her eyes. Black Pan was watching after Baby Rose, and it took Angel a while to see that Rose Rose had a black eye--a white person doesn't spot a black eye on a black person right away, but she had a good one.

"He say it okay if I wear your hat, but for you to wear your own shirt," Rose Rose told Angel. "I told you," she said. "You don't wanna get involved with me."

After the picking that day, Angel went to the cider house to have a word with Mr. Rose. Angel told Mr. Rose that he meant nothing improper by letting Rose Rose wear his sweat shirt; Angel added that he really liked Mr. Rose's daughter, and so forth. Angel got pretty worked up about it, although Mr. Rose remained a calm, calm man. Of course, Angel (and all the rest of them) had seen Mr. Rose peel and core an apple in about three or four seconds--it was widely presumed that Mr. Rose could bleed a man in half a minute. He could have made the whole mess of a human being look like a series of slight shaving injuries.

"Who told you I beat my daughter, Angel?" Mr. Rose asked gently. Rose Rose had told Angel, of course, but now Angel saw the trap; he was only making trouble for her. Mr. Rose would never allow himself to have any trouble with Angel. Mr. Rose knew the rules: they were the real cider house rules, they were the pickers' rules.

"I just thought you had hit her," Angel said, backing off.