The Cider House Rules

Only one problem, thought Wilbur Larch, dreaming with the stars. How do I get Homer to play the part?

Homer Wells, gazing at the actual stars of Maine and at the orchards visible in the waning moonlight out Wally's window, saw something glint--something beyond the orchard from which he knew the ocean could be viewed. Homer moved his head up and down in Wally's window, and the glint flashed to him; the feeble signal reminded him of the night when the deep Maine woods had not returned his voice to him--when he had yelled his echoless good night to Fuzzy Stone.

Then he realized where the glint was coming from. There must be one, small, polished spot on the tin roof of the cider house; he was seeing the waning moon bounce off the roof of the cider house--off a spot no bigger than a knife blade. This little glint in the night was one of those things that--even after you identify it--you can't leave alone.

It was no help to him, to listen to Wally's peaceful breathing. The problem is, Homer Wells knew, I am in love with Candy. It was Candy who suggested he not go back to St. Cloud's.

"My father likes you so much," she'd told Homer. "I know he'll give you a job on the boat, or in the pound."

"My mother likes you so much," Wally had added. "I know she'll keep you on in the orchards, especially through harvest. And she gets lonely whenever I go back to college. I'll bet she'd be delighted to have you stay right where you are--in my room!"

Out in the orchards, the roof of the cider house flashed to him; the flash was as small and as quick as the one glimpse of an eyetooth Grace Lynch had revealed--her mouth had parted only that much when she'd last looked at him.

How could I not be in love with Candy? he wondered. And if I stay here, he asked himself, what can I do?

The roof of the cider house flashed; then it stood dark and still. He had seen the wink of the curette before it went to work; he had seen it at rest in the examining tray, dull with blood, in need of cleaning.

And if I go back to St. Cloud's, he asked himself, what can I do?

In Nurse Angela's office, on the new typewriter, Dr. Larch began a letter to Homer Wells. "I remember nothing so vividly as kissing you," Dr. Larch began, but he stopped; he knew he couldn't say that. He pulled the page from the typewriter, then he hid it deep within A Brief History of St. Cloud's, as if it were another particle of history without an audience.

David Copperfield had a fever when he'd gone to bed, and Larch went to check on the boy. Dr. Larch was relieved to feel that young Copperfield's fever had broken; the boy's forehead was cool, and a slight sweat chilled the boy's neck, which Larch carefully rubbed dry with a towel. There was not much moonlight; therefore, Larch felt unobserved. He bent over Copperfield and kissed him, much in the manner that he remembered kissing Homer Wells. Larch moved to the next bed and kissed Smoky Fields, who tasted vaguely like hot dogs; yet the experience was soothing to Larch. How he wished he had kissed Homer more, when he'd had the chance! He went from bed to bed, kissing the boys; it occurred to him, he didn't know all their names, but he kissed them anyway. He kissed all of them.

When he left the room, Smoky Fields asked the darkness, "What was that all about?" But no one else was awake, or else no one wanted to answer him.

I wish he would kiss me, thought Nurse Edna, who had a very alert ear for unusual goings-on.

"I think it's nice," Mrs. Grogan said to Nurse Angela, when Nurse Angela told her about it.

"I think it's senile," Nurse Angela said.

But Homer Wells, at Wally's window, did not know that Dr. Larch's kisses were out in the world, in search of him.

He didn't know, either--he could never have imagined it!--that Candy was also awake, and also worried. If he does stay, if he doesn't go back to St. Cloud's, she was thinking, what will I do? The sea tugged all around her. Both the darkness and the moon were failing.

There came that time when Homer Wells could make out the boundaries of the cider house, but the roof did not wink to him, no matter how he moved his head. With no signal flashing to him, Homer may have thought he was speaking to the dead when he whispered, "Good night, Fuzzy."

He did not know that Fuzzy Stone, like Melony, was looking for him.

7

Before the War

One day that August a hazy sun hung over the coastal road between York Harbor and Ogunquit; it was not the staring sun of Marseilles, and not the cool, crisp sun that blinks on much of the coast of Maine at that time of year. It was a St. Cloud's sunlight, steamy and flat, and Melony was irritated by it and sweating when she accepted a ride in a milk truck that was heading inland.

She knew she was south of Portland, and that there was relatively little of the Maine coast that lay south of Portland, yet it had taken her these months to search the apple orchards in this limited vicinity. She was not discouraged, she knew she'd had some bad luck, and that her luck was due to improve. She'd managed to pick the pockets of several citizens of Portland; this tided her over for a while. She'd gotten in trouble with some Navy men whose pockets she'd tried to pick in Kittery. She'd managed not to have sex with the men, but they had broken her nose, which had healed crookedly, and they had chipped her two front teeth--the big uppers. Not that she tended to smile a lot anyway, but she had since adopted a rather closemouthed and tight-lipped expression.

The first two orchards she'd visited were within view of the ocean, but they were not called Ocean View, and no one in either orchard had heard of the Ocean View Orchards. She then found an inland orchard, where someone told her he had heard of an Ocean View, but that he was sure it was just a name: that the place wasn't anywhere near the coast. She took a job washing bottles in a dairy in Biddeford, but she quit it as soon as she'd made some traveling money.

The orchard between York Harbor and Ogunquit turned out to be called York Farm, which looked as plain as its name, but Melony told the milk truck driver to let her out there, anyway; it was, at least, an apple orchard; someone might have heard of Ocean View.

The foreman at York Farm took one look at Melony and assumed she was a would-be picker, trying to get work ahead of the migrants.

"You're about three weeks early," he told her. "We're only pickin' the Gravensteins this month, and I don't need help pickin' them--there ain't that many."

"You heard of an orchard called Ocean View?" Melony asked the foreman.

"You used to pick there?" the foreman asked.