The Cider House Rules (46 page)

“Let me go,” said Homer Wells.

“I know what they do where you come from!” Grace Lynch cried, tugging on his wrists.

“Right,” said Homer Wells. Systematically, he began to peel back her fingers, but she scrambled nimbly up the side of the vat and bit him sharply on the back of his hand. He had to push her, then, and he might have hurt her if they both hadn’t heard the splashy arrival of Wally in the green van. Grace Lynch let Homer go and scurried to put on her clothes. Wally sat in the van in the drenching rain and pumped the horn; Homer ran outside to see what he wanted.

“Get in!” Wally shouted. “We’ve got to go rescue my stupid father—he’s in some kind of trouble at Sanborn’s.”

For Homer Wells, who’d grown up in a world without fathers, it was a shock to hear that anyone who had a father would call his father stupid, even if it was true. There was a peck bag of Gravensteins in the passenger seat of the van; Homer held the apples in his lap as Wally drove down Drinkwater Road to Sanborn’s General Store. The proprietors, Mildred and Bert Sanborn, were among Senior’s oldest friends; he’d been a schoolboy with both of them and had once dated Milly (before he’d met Olive—and before Milly had married Bert).

Titus Hardware and Plumbing was next door to Sanborn’s; Warren Titus, the plumber, was standing on the porch of the general store, not letting anyone inside, when Wally and Homer drove into Heart’s Rock.

“It’s a good thing you’re here, Wally,” Warren said, when the boys ran up to the porch. “Your Dad’s got some wild hair across his ass.”

In the store, Homer and Wally saw that Mildred and Bert Sanborn had—for the moment—cornered Senior in a niche of shelves reserved for baking goods; Senior appeared to have littered the floor and much of himself with all the flour and sugar within his reach. His trapped appearance reminded Homer of Grace Lynch.

“What’s the trouble, Pop?” Wally asked his father. Mildred Sanborn gave a sigh of relief to see Wally, but Bert wouldn’t take his eyes off Senior.

“Trouble Pop,” Senior said.

“He got in a rage when he couldn’t find the dog food,” Bert said to Wally, without looking away from Senior; Bert thoroughly expected Senior to bolt, at any moment, to another part of the store and destroy it.

“What did you want with dog food, Pop?” Wally asked his father.

“Dog food Pop,” Senior repeated.

“It’s like he don’t remember, Wally,” Bert Sanborn said.

“We told him he didn’t have a dog,” Mildred said.

“I remember doing it to you, Milly!” Senior shouted.

“There he goes again,” Bert said. “Senior, Senior,” he said gently. “We’re all your friends here.”

“I have to feed Blinky,” Senior said.

“Blinky was his dog when he was a boy,” Milly Sanborn told Wally.

“If Blinky was still alive, Senior,” Bert Sanborn said, “he’d be older than we are.”

“Older than we are,” Senior said.

“Let’s go home, Pop,” Wally said.

“Home Pop,” Senior said, but he let Homer and Wally lead him to the van.

“I tell you Wally, it’s not booze,” said Warren Titus, who opened the side door of the van for them. “It’s not on his breath, not this time.”

“It’s something else, Wally,” Bert Sanborn said.

“Who are you?” Senior asked Homer.

“I’m Homer Wells, Mister Worthington,” Homer said.

“Mister Worthington,” Senior said.

When they’d driven for almost five minutes, in silence, Senior shouted, “Everyone just shut up!”

When they got to Ocean View, Olive met the van in the driveway; she ignored Senior and spoke to Wally. “I don’t know what he’s had this morning, unless it’s vodka; it wasn’t on his breath when he left. I wouldn’t have let him take the van if I thought he’d been drinking.”

“I think it’s something else, Mom,” Wally said. With Homer’s help, he led Senior to the bedroom, got his shoes off, and coaxed him to lie down on the bed.

“You know, I drilled Milly once,” Senior told his son.

“Sure you did, Pop,” said Wally.

“I drilled Milly! I drilled Milly!” Senior said.

Wally tried to humor Senior with a limerick; Senior had taught Wally a lot of limericks, but Senior had difficulty remembering a limerick now, even if Wally talked him through it, line by line.

“Remember the Duchess of Kent, Pop?” Wally asked his father.

“Sure,” Senior said, but he didn’t say anything more.

“Oh, pity the Duchess of Kent!” Wally began, but Senior just listened. “Her cunt is so dreadfully bent,” Wally said.

“Bent?” Senior said.

Wally tried again, two lines at a time.

Oh, pity the Duchess of Kent!

Her cunt is so dreadfully bent . . .

“Dreadfully bent!” Senior sang out.

Oh, pity the Duchess of Kent!

Her cunt is so dreadfully bent,

The poor wench doth stammer,

“I need a sledgehammer

To pound a man into my vent.”

My God! thought Homer Wells. But Senior appeared to be baffled; he said nothing. Wally and Homer left him when they thought he’d fallen asleep.

Downstairs, Homer Wells told Olive and Wally that he thought it was something neurological.

“Neurological?” Olive said.

“What’s that mean?” Wally said.

They heard Senior cry out from upstairs. “Vent!” he shouted.

Homer Wells, who had a habit of repeating the pigtails of sentences, knew that Senior’s repetitions were insane. That habit was the first symptom he described in his letter about Senior Worthington to Dr. Larch. “He repeats everything,” he wrote to Dr. Larch. Homer also noted that Senior appeared to forget the names of the most common things; he recalled how the man had become stuck asking Wally for a cigarette—he had just kept pointing at Wally’s breast pocket. “I think the word for cigarette had escaped him,” wrote Homer Wells. Homer had also observed that Senior could not operate the latch on the glove compartment the last time that Homer had driven him to Sanborn’s for some simple shopping. And the man had the oddest habit of picking at his clothes all the time. “It’s as if he thinks he’s got dirt, or hair, or lint on his clothes,” wrote Homer Wells. “But there’s nothing there.”

Olive Worthington assured Homer that the family doctor, a geezer even older than Dr. Larch, was quite certain that Senior’s problems were entirely “alcohol-related.”

“Doc Perkins is too old to be a doctor anymore, Mom,” Wally said.

“Doc Perkins delivered you—I guess he knows what he’s doing,” Olive said.

“I bet I was easy to deliver,” Wally said cheerfully.

I’ll bet you were, imagined Homer Wells, who thought that Wally took everything in the world for granted—not in a selfish or spoiled way, but like a Prince of Maine, like a King of New England; Wally was just born to be in charge.

Dr. Larch’s letter to Homer Wells was so impressive that Homer immediately showed it to Mrs. Worthington.

“What you have described to me, Homer, sounds like some kind of evolving organic brain syndrome,” Dr. Larch wrote. “In a man of this age, there aren’t a lot of diagnoses to choose from. I’d say your best bet is Alzheimer’s presenile dementia; it’s pretty rare; I looked it up in one of my bound volumes of the
New England Journal of Medicine.

“Picking imaginary lint off one’s clothes is what neurologists call
carphologia.
In the progress of deterioration common to Alzheimer’s disease, a patient will frequently echo back what is said to him. This is called
echolalia.
The inability to name even familiar objects such as a cigarette is due to a failure to recognize the objects. This is called
anomia.
And the loss of the ability to do any type of skilled or learned movement such as opening the glove compartment is also typical. It is called
apraxia.

“You should prevail upon Mrs. Worthington to have her husband examined by a neurologist. I know there is at least one in Maine. It’s only my guess that it’s Alzheimer’s disease.”

“
Alzheimer’s
disease?” asked Olive Worthington.

“You mean it’s a
disease—
what’s wrong with him?” Wally asked Homer.

Wally cried in the car on the way to the neurologist. “I’m sorry, Pop,” he said. But Senior seemed delighted.

When the neurologist confirmed Dr. Larch’s diagnosis, Senior Worthington was exuberant.

“I have a disease!” he yelled proudly—even happily. It was almost as if someone had announced that he was cured; what he had was quite incurable. “I have a
disease
!” He was euphoric about it.

What a relief it must have been to him—for a moment, anyway—to learn that he wasn’t simply a drunk. It was such an enormous relief to Olive that she wept on Wally’s shoulder; she hugged and kissed Homer with an energy Homer had not known since he left the arms of Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna. Mrs. Worthington thanked Homer over and over again. It meant a great deal to Olive (although she had long ago fallen out of love with Senior, if she had ever truly loved him) to know that this new information permitted her to renew her respect for Senior. She was overwhelmingly grateful to Homer and to Dr. Larch for restoring Senior’s self-esteem—and for restoring some of her esteem for Senior, too.

All this contributed to the special atmosphere that surrounded Senior’s death at the end of the summer, shortly before the harvest; a sense of relief was far more prevalent than was a sense of grief. That Senior Worthington was on his way to death had been certain for some time; that, in the nick of time, he had managed to die with some honor— “. . . of a bona fide disease!” Bert Sanborn said—was a welcome surprise.

Of course, the residents of Heart’s Rock and Heart’s Haven had some difficulty with the term—Alzheimer was not a name familiar to the coast of Maine in 194_. The workers at Ocean View had particular trouble with it; Ray Kendall, one day, made it easier for everyone to understand. “Senior got
Al’s Hammer
disease,” he announced. Al’s Hammer! Now
there
was a disease anyone could understand.

“I just hope it ain’t catchin’,” said Big Dot Taft.

“Maybe you got to be rich to get it?” wondered Meany Hyde.

“No, it’s neurological,” Homer Wells insisted, but that didn’t mean anything to anyone except Homer.

And so the men and women at Ocean View developed a new saying as they got ready for the harvest that year. “You better watch out,” Herb Fowler would say, “or you’ll get Al’s Hammer.”

And when Louise Tobey would show up late, Florence Hyde (or Irene Titcomb, or Big Dot Taft) would ask her, “What’s the matter, you got your period or Al’s Hammer?” And when Grace Lynch would show up with a limp, or with a noticeable bruise, everyone would think but never say out loud, “She caught old Al’s Hammer last night, for sure.”

“It seems to me,” Wally said to Homer Wells, “that you ought to be a doctor—you obviously have an instinct for it.”

“Doctor Larch is the doctor,” said Homer Wells. “I’m the Bedouin.”

Just before the harvest—when Olive Worthington had put fresh flowers in the bedroom wing of the cider house and had typed a clean page of rules (almost exactly the same rules from the previous years) and had tacked them next to the light switch by the kitchen door—she offered the Bedouin a home.

“I always hate it when Wally goes back to college,” Olive told Homer. “And this year, with Senior gone, I’m going to hate it more. I would like it very much if you thought you could be happy here, Homer—you could stay in Wally’s room. I like having someone in the house at night, and someone to talk to in the morning.” Olive was keeping her back to Homer while she looked out the bay window in the Worthingtons’ kitchen. The rubber raft that Senior used to ride was bobbing in the water within her view, but Homer couldn’t be sure if Olive was looking at the raft.

“I’m not sure how Doctor Larch would feel about it,” Homer said.

“Doctor Larch would like you to go to college one day,” Olive said. “And so would I. I would be happy to inquire, at the high school in Cape Kenneth, if they’d work with you—if they’d try to evaluate what you know and what you need to learn. You’ve had a very
. . . odd
education. I know that Doctor Larch is interested in having you take all the sciences.” (Homer understood that her mind must have been recalling this from a letter from Dr. Larch.) “And Latin,” said Olive Worthington.

“Latin,” said Homer Wells. This was
surely
Dr. Larch’s work.
Cutaneus maximus,
thought Homer Wells,
dura mater,
not to mention good old
umbilicus.
“Doctor Larch wants me to be a doctor,” Homer said to Mrs. Worthington. “But I don’t want to be.”

“I think he wants you to have the
option
of becoming a doctor, should you change your mind,” Olive said. “I think he said Latin or Greek.”

They must have had quite some correspondence, thought Homer Wells, but all he said was, “I really like working on the farm.”

“Well, I certainly want you to keep working here,” Olive told him. “I need your help—through the harvest, especially. I don’t imagine you’d be a full-time student; I have to talk to the high school, but I’m sure they’d view you as something of an experiment.”

“An experiment,” said Homer Wells. Wasn’t everything an experiment for a Bedouin?

He thought about the broken knife he’d found on the cider house roof. Was it there because he was
supposed
to find it? And the broken glass, a piece of which had signaled to him in his insomnia at Wally’s window: was the glass on the roof
in order
to provide him with some message?

He wrote to Dr. Larch, requesting Larch’s permission to stay at Ocean View. “I’ll take biology,” Homer Wells wrote, “and anything scientific. But do I have to take Latin? Nobody even speaks it anymore.”

Where did he get to be such a know-it-all? wondered Wilbur Larch, who nevertheless saw certain advantages to Homer Wells
not
knowing Latin or Greek, both the root of so many medical terms. Like coarctation of the aorta, Dr. Larch was thinking. It can be a relatively mild form of a congenital heart disorder that could decrease as the patient grew older; by the time the patient was Homer’s age, the patient might have no murmur at all and only a trained eye could detect, in an X ray, the slight enlargement of the aorta. In a mild case, the only symptoms might be a hypertension in the upper extremities. So don’t learn Latin if you don’t want to, thought Wilbur Larch.