The Cider House Rules

"Got a crush on her, do you?" she asked.

"I'll bet you wish you was that boyfriend she's lookin' for," another woman said, which drew a teasing sort of laughter from all the mart women.

"It's not that!" the foreman snapped. "I hope she never finds that boyfriend--for his sake!" the foreman said. "And for hers," he added.

The woman whose fat husband had tried to rape Melony turned away from this conversation. She opened the large, communal thermos on the table next to the cash register; but when she tried to pour herself some coffee, none came out. What came out instead was poison oats and poison corn. If Melony had actually meant to poison any of them, she would have been more restrained in the proportions. It was clearly just a message, and the apple-mart women regarded it as silently as if they were trying to read bones.

"You see what I mean?" the foreman asked them. He picked up an apple from a display basket on the counter and took a healthy chomp; the apple had been left out in the cold so long that it was partially frozen, and so mealy in the foreman's mouth that he instantly spat it out.

It was very cold on the road to the coast, but the walking warmed Melony up; also, since there was no traffic, she had no choice about walking. When she reached the coastal highway, she didn't have to wait long for a ride. A pale but jolly boy driving a panel truck stopped for her.

"Yarmouth Paint and Shellac, at your service," the boy said to Melony; he was a little younger than Homer Wells, and--in Melony's opinion--not nearly so worldly-looking. The truck reeked of wood-stain smells and of varnish and creosote. "I'm a wood-treatment expert," the boy said to her proudly.

At best, a salesman, Melony thought; more likely, a delivery boy. She smiled tightly, not showing her chipped teeth. The boy fidgeted, awaiting some form of greeting from her. I can make anyone nervous in less than a minute, Melony thought.

"Uh, where you goin'?" the boy asked her--the panel truck sloshing along.

"The city," Melony said.

"What city?" the boy asked.

Now Melony allowed her lips to part with her smile--the worried boy now staring at the troubled history of her mouth.

"You tell me," Melony said.

"I gotta go to Bath," the boy said nervously. Melony stared at him as if he'd said he had to have a bath.

"Bath," she repeated.

"It's a city, sort of," the wood-treatment expert told her.

It was Clara's city! Dr. Larch or Homer Wells could have told Melony--old Clara had come to St. Cloud's from Bath! But Melony didn't know that, and wouldn't have cared; her relationship to Clara had been unpleasantly envious. Homer Wells knew Clara more intimately than he knew Melony. It might have interested Melony that Bath would put her much closer to Ocean View than she'd been at York Farm--that there might even be residents of Bath who would have heard of an Ocean View Orchards; there were certainly many Bath residents who could have directed her to Heart's Haven or to Heart's Rock.

"You wanna go to Bath?" the boy asked her cautiously.

Again Melony showed him her damaged teeth; she was displaying less of a smile than of the manner in which a dog might show its hackles. "Right," she said.

Wally came home for Thanksgiving; Candy had been home for several weekends in the early fall, but Homer had not known how to initiate seeing her without Wally. Wally was surprised that Homer and Candy hadn't seen each other; and, from Candy's embarrassment with Wally's surprise, Homer detected that she had been equally troubled about initiating a meeting with him. But the turkey had to be basted every fifteen minutes, the table had to be set, and Olive was too obviously enjoying having a full house again--there was no time to feel awkward.

Raymond Kendall had shared a Thanksgiving dinner with the Worthingtons before, but never without Senior's semi-presence; Ray went through a few minutes of struggling to be overly polite before he relaxed and talked shop with Olive.

"Dad acts like he's having a date," Candy said to Olive in the kitchen.

"I'm flattered," Olive said, squeezing Candy's arm and laughing. But that was the end of any further nonsense.

Homer volunteered to carve the turkey. He did such a good job that Olive said, "You should be a surgeon, Homer!"

Wally laughed; Candy looked at her plate, or at her hands in her lap, and Ray Kendall said, "The boy's just good with his hands. If you've got good hands, once you do a thing your hands won't forget how."

"That's like you, Ray," Olive said, which moved the attention away from Homer's work with the knife; he carved every bit of meat off th

e bones as quickly as possible.

Wally talked about the war. He said he'd thought about dropping out of college to go to flying school. "So if there is a war--if we get into it, I mean--then I'll already know how to fly."

"You'll do no such thing," Olive said to him.

"Why would you want to do such a thing?" Candy asked him. "I think you're being selfish."