The Cider House Rules

Homer closed his fingers around the candle, and Mr. Rose patted his hand.

"That 'gainst the rules, ain't it?" Mr. Rose asked Homer.

Black Pan was baking corn bread and the smell rose from the cider house and hung deliciously over the roof, which was warming in the late-morning sun; pretty soon, it would be uncomfortably hot on the roof.

"Ain't that bread ready to eat yet?" Peaches hollered into the kitchen.

"No it ain't," Black Pan said from inside the cider house. "And pipe down, or you wake the baby."

"Shit," Peaches said. Black Pan came outside and kicked Peaches--not terribly hard--where he was leaning against the cider house wall.

"When that bread ready, you won't call it 'shit,' will you?" Black Pan asked him.

"I wasn't callin' nothin' 'shit,' man--I was just sayin' it," Peaches said.

"Just pipe down," Black Pan said. He observed the bicycle lesson. "How it comin' with that?" he asked.

"They tryin' hard," Muddy said.

"They inventin' a new sport," Peaches said, and everyone laughed.

"Show some respect," said Mr. Rose, and everyone piped down. Black Pan went back inside the cider house.

"What you bet he burns the bread?" Peaches asked quietly.

"If he burns it, it 'cause he took the time to kick your ass," Muddy told him.

The bicycle was broken; either the rear wheel wouldn't turn, or else the chain was jammed in the wheel.

"There's another bicycle," Angel told Rose Rose. "You try that one, while I fix this one." But while he fixed Candy's bicycle, Rose Rose had to suffer with a boy's bicycle, so that in addition to her troubles, she slipped and hurt her crotch against the crossbar. Homer was actually worried about how hard a fall she had, and he asked her if she was all right.

"It just like a cramp," she called to him, but she remained bent over until Angel managed to get Candy's bicycle running again.

"It looks hopeless," Homer confided to Mr. Rose.

"What about them rules?" Mr. Rose asked him. Homer put the candle in his pocket. He and Mr. Rose regarded each other--it was almost a contest, the way they looked at each other.

"I'm worried about your daughter," said Homer Wells, after a while. Together they watched Rose Rose fall off the bicycle again.

"Don't worry about her," said Mr. Rose.

"She looks unhappy, sometimes," Homer said.

"She ain't unhappy," Mr. Rose said.

"Are you worried about her?" Homer asked him.

"Once you start worryin', you can worry 'bout anybody, can't you?" said Mr. Rose.

It appeared to Homer Wells that her fall against the crossbar was still giving Rose Rose some pain because she stood for a while with her hands on her knees and her head down (as if her stomach hurt her) each time she fell off the bicycle.

Homer and Mr. Rose missed the moment when she gave up. They just noticed that she was running off, in the direction of the orchard called Frying Pan, and that Angel was running after her; both bicycles were left behind.

"That's too bad," Homer said. "They would have had a good time at the beach. Maybe I can convince them to let me drive them there."

"Leave 'em alone," said Mr. Rose; the way Homer heard it, it was more of a command than a suggestion. "They don't have to go to no beach," Mr. Rose said, more mildly. "They just young, they not sure how to have a good time," he said. "Just think what might happen at the beach. They might get drowned. Or some people might not like seein' a white boy with a colored girl--and they both in bathin' suits. It better they don't go nowhere," Mr. Rose concluded. That was the end of that subject, because then Mr. Rose asked, "Are you happy, Homer?"

"Am I happy?" said Homer Wells.