The Cider House Rules

"Your friend!" the boy said.

"Ask me what business I'm in," Mr. Rose said to the boy.

"What fuckin' business are you in, Mister?" the young man shouted at Mr. Rose. Homer felt himself neatly shoved out of the way; he saw that Mr. Rose was standing, very suddenly, chest to chest with the boy. There was no sour smell of vomit on Mr. Rose's breath, however. Somehow, Mr. Rose had slipped one of those mints in his mouth; the alertness that had been missing when Mr. Rose felt ill was back in his eyes. The boy seemed surprised that he was standing so close to Mr. Rose, and so suddenly; he was a little taller, and quite a bit heavier, than Mr. Rose, yet he looked unsure of himself. "I said, 'What fuckin' business are you in, Mister?' " the boy repeated, and Mr. Rose smiled.

"I'm in the throwin'-up business!" Mr. Rose said in a humble manner. Someone in the crowd laughed; Homer Wells felt a surge of vast relief; Mr. Rose smiled in such a way that allowed the boy to smile, too. "Sorry if any of it got on you," Mr. Rose said nicely.

"No problem," said the young man, turning to leave. After taking a few steps, the boy turned inquisitively in Mr. Rose's direction, but Mr. Rose had grasped Homer Wells by the arm and was already walking on. Homer saw shock on the boy's face. The young man's flannel jacket, which was still zipped shut, was flapping wide open--a single, crisp slash had slit it from the collar to the waist--and every button on the boy's shirt was gone. The boy gaped at himself, and then at Mr. Rose, who did not look back, and then the boy allowed himself to be pulled into the comfort of the crowd.

"How'd you do that?" Homer asked Mr. Rose, when they reached the van.

"Your hands got to be fast," Mr. Rose said. "Your knife got to be sharp. But you do it with your eyes. Your eyes keep their eyes off your hands."

The wide-open jacket of the boy made Homer remember Clara and how a scalpel made no mistakes. Only a hand makes mistakes. His chest was cold, and he was driving too fast.

When Homer turned off Drinkwater Road and drove through the orchards to the cider house, Mr. Rose said, "You see? I was right, wasn't I? What good is it--to apple pickers--to know about that wheel?"

It does no good to know about it, thought Homer Wells. And what good would it do Melony to know about it, or Curly Day, or Fuzzy--or any Bedouin?

"Am I right?" Mr. Rose demanded.

"Right," said Homer Wells.

8

Opportunity Knocks

After the harvest at York Farm, the foreman asked Melony to stay on to help with the mousing. "We have to get the mice before the ground freezes, or else they'll have the run of the orchards all winter," the foreman explained. The men used poison oats and poison corn, scattering the poison around the trees and putting it in the pine mice tunnels.

Poor mice, thought Melony, but she tried mousing for a few days. When she saw a pine mouse tunnel, she tried to conceal it; she never put any poison in it. And she only pretended to scatter the oats and corn around the trees; she didn't like the way the poison smelled. She would dump it into the dirt road and fill her bag with sand and gravel and scatter that instead.

"Have a nice winter, mice," she whispered to them.

It began to get very cold in the cider house; they gave her a woodburning stove, which Melony vented through a window in the bunkroom; the stove kept the toilet from freezing. The morning the outdoor shower was frozen was the morning Melony decided to move on. She only briefly regretted not being able to stay and save more mice.

"If you're lookin' for another orchard," the foreman warned her, "you won't find any that's hirin' in the winter."

"I'd like a city job for the winter," Melony told him.

"What city?" the foreman asked. Melony shrugged. She had securely strapped up her small bundle of things in Charley's belt; the sleeves of Mrs. Grogan's coat reached only halfway down her forearms, and the coat was an especially tight fit across the shoulders and the hips--even so, Melony managed to look comfortable in it. "There's no real cities in Maine," the foreman told her.

"It won't take much of a city to be a city for me," Melony said. He watched her walk to the same part of the road where he'd called good-bye to her before. It was that time of year when the trees are bare and the sky looks like lead, and underfoot the ground feels more unyielding every day--yet it's too early for snow, or else there's a freak storm and the snow doesn't last.

For some reason the foreman felt a strong desire to leave with Melony; he surprised himself by muttering out loud, "I hope it snows soon."

"What?" one of the apple-mart women said.

"So long!" the foreman called to Melony, but she didn't answer him.

"Good riddance," said one of the women in the mart.

"The slut," another one said.

"What makes her a slut?" the foreman asked sharply. "Who you seen her sleepin' with?"

"She's just a tramp," one of them said.

"At least she's interesting," the foreman snapped. The women regarded him for a moment before one of them spoke up.