The Cider House Rules (52 page)

Someone handed Homer a bottle of beer, but the bottle was warm and full of rum.

“It’s stopped again,” Branches said, and everyone stared toward the sea.

The night-life lights of Cape Kenneth were so low along the horizon that some of the lights themselves were not visible—only the reflections from them, especially when the lights were cast out over the ocean—but the high Ferris wheel blazed brightly. It was holding still, loading new riders, letting off the old.

“Maybe it stop to breathe,” Branches said, and everyone laughed at that.

Someone suggested that it stopped to fart, and everyone laughed louder.

Then Willy said, “When it gets too close to the ground, it
has
to stop, I think,” and everyone appeared to consider this seriously.

Then the Ferris wheel started again, and the men on the roof of the cider house released a reverential moan.

“There it go again!” Hero said.

“It like a star,” Black Pan, the old cook, said. “It look real cool, but you get too close, it burn you—it hotter than a flame!”

“It’s a Ferris wheel,” said Homer Wells.

“It a
what
?” Willy said.

“A
what
wheel?” Branches asked.

“A Ferris wheel,” said Homer Wells. “That’s the Cape Kenneth Carnival, and that’s the Ferris wheel.” Mr. Rose nudged him in the ribs, but Homer didn’t understand. No one spoke for a long time, and when Homer looked at Mr. Rose, Mr. Rose softly shook his head.

“I heard of something’ like that,” Black Pan said. “I think they had one in Charleston.”

“It’s stopped again,” Hero observed.

“It’s letting off passengers
—riders,
” said Homer Wells. “It’s taking on new riders.”

“People
ride
that fuckin’ thing?” Branches asked.

“Don’t shit me, Homer,” Hero said.

Again, Homer felt the nudge in his ribs, and Mr. Rose said, mildly, “You all so uneducated—Homer’s havin’ a little fun with you.”

When the bottle of rum passed from man to man, Mr. Rose just passed it along.

“Don’t the name Homer mean nothin’ to you?” Mr. Rose asked the men.

“I think I heard of it,” the cook Black Pan said.

“Homer was the world’s first storyteller!” Mr. Rose announced. The nudge at Homer’s ribs was back, and Mr. Rose said, “
Our
Homer knows a good story, too.”

“Shit,” someone said after a while.

“What kind of wheel you call it, Homer?” Branches asked.

“A Ferris wheel,” said Homer Wells.

“Yeah!” someone said. Everyone laughed.

“A fuckin’
Ferris
wheel!” Hero said. “That’s pretty good.”

One of the men Homer didn’t know rolled off the roof. Everyone waited until he was on the ground before they called down to him.

“You all right, asshole?” Black Pan asked.

“Yeah,” the man said, and everyone laughed.

When Mr. Rose heard the shower start up again, he knew that his bottle man had found the cigarette and was washing the cider off himself.

“Willy and Hero, you’re bottlin’ now,” said Mr. Rose.

“I bottled last time,” Hero said.

“Then you gettin’ real good at it,” said Mr. Rose.

“I’ll press for a while,” someone said.

“Jack and Orange are goin’ good,” Mr. Rose said. “We’ll just let them go for a while.”

Homer sensed that he should leave the roof with Mr. Rose. They helped each other with the ladder; on the ground Mr. Rose spoke very seriously to Homer.

“You got to understand,” Mr. Rose whispered. “They don’t want to know what that thing is. What good it do them to know?”

“Okay,” said Homer Wells, who stood a long while out of the range of the lights blazing in the mill room. Now that he was more familiar with their dialect, he could occasionally understand the voices from the roof.

“It’s stopped again,” he heard Branches say.

“Yeah, it takin’ on
riders
!” someone said, and everyone laughed.

“You know, maybe it’s an army place,” Black Pan said.

“What army?” someone asked.

“We almost at war,” Black Pan said. “I heard that.”

“Shit,” someone said.

“It’s somethin’ for the airplanes to see,” Black Pan said.

“Whose airplanes?” Hero asked.

“There it go again,” Branches said.

Homer Wells walked back through the orchards to the Worthington house; he was touched that Mrs. Worthington had left the light over the stairs on for him, and when he saw the light under her bedroom door, he said, quietly, “Good night, Missus Worthington. I’m back.”

“Good night, Homer,” she said.

He looked out Wally’s window for a while. There was no way, at that distance, that he could witness the reaction on the cider house roof when the Ferris wheel in Cape Kenneth was shut off for the night—when all the lights went out with a blink, what did the men on the roof have to say about
that
? he wondered.

Maybe they thought that the Ferris wheel came from another planet and, when all the lights went out, that it had returned there.

And wouldn’t Fuzzy Stone have loved to see it? thought Homer Wells. And Curly Day, and young Copperfield! And it would have been fun to ride it with Melony—just once, to see what she would have said about it. Dr. Larch wouldn’t be impressed. Was anything a mystery to Dr. Larch?

In the morning, Mr. Rose chose to rest his magic hands between trees; he came up to Homer, who was working as a checker in the orchard called Frying Pan, counting the one-bushel crates before they were loaded on the flatbed trailer and giving every picker credit for each bushel picked.

“I want you to show me that wheel,” Mr. Rose said, smiling.

“The Ferris wheel?” said Homer Wells.

“If you don’t mind showin’ me,” said Mr. Rose. “There just can’t be no talk about it.”

“Right,” Homer said. “We better go soon, before it gets any colder and they close it for the season. I’ll bet it’s pretty cold, riding it now.”

“I don’t know if I want to ride it until I see it,” said Mr. Rose.

“Sure,” said Homer.

Mrs. Worthington let him take the van, but when he picked up Mr. Rose at the cider house, everyone was curious.

“We’ve got to check somethin’ in the far orchard,” Mr. Rose told the men.

“What far orchard he talkin’ about?” Black Pan asked Hero when Homer and Mr. Rose got in the van.

Homer Wells remembered his ride on the Ferris wheel with Wally. It was much colder now, and Mr. Rose was subdued all the way to Cape Kenneth and uncharacteristically drawn into himself as they walked through the carnival together. The summer crowd was gone; some of the carnival events were already closed up tight.

“Don’t be nervous,” Homer said to Mr. Rose. “The Ferris wheel is perfectly safe.”

“I’m not nervous about no wheel,” said Mr. Rose. “You see a lot of people my color around here?”

Homer had detected nothing hostile in the looks from the people; as an orphan, he always suspected that people singled him out to stare at—and so he had not felt especially singled out in the company of Mr. Rose. But now he noticed more of the looks and realized that the looks an orphan might detect were only imagined, by comparison.

When they got to the Ferris wheel, there was no line, but they had to wait for the ride in progress to be over. When the wheel stopped, Homer and Mr. Rose got on and sat together in one chair.

“We could each sit in our own chairs, if you prefer,” said Homer Wells.

“Keep it like it is,” said Mr. Rose. When the wheel began its ascent, he sat very still and straight and held his breath until they were nearly at the top of the rise.

“Over there’s the orchard,” pointed Homer Wells, but Mr. Rose stared straight ahead, as if the stability of the entire Ferris wheel relied on each rider’s maintaining perfect balance.

“What’s so special about doin’ this?” asked Mr. Rose rigidly.

“It’s just for the ride, and the view, I guess,” said Homer Wells.

“I like the view from the roof,” Mr. Rose said. When they started the descent of the wheel turn, Mr. Rose said, “It’s a good thing I didn’t eat much today.”

By the time they passed ground level and began their ascent again, a substantial crowd had formed—but they didn’t appear to be standing in line for the next ride. There were only two couples and one boy by himself sharing the wheel with Homer and Mr. Rose, and when they were at the top of the wheel turn again, Homer realized that the crowd below them had formed to stare at Mr. Rose.

“They come to see if niggers fly,” Mr. Rose said, “but I ain’t goin’ nowhere—not for no one’s entertainment. They come to see if the machine is gonna break down, tryin’ to carry a nigger—or maybe they wanna see me throw up.”

“Just don’t do anything,” Homer Wells said.

“That’s the advice I been hearin’ all my life, boy,” Mr. Rose said. As they started their descent, Mr. Rose leaned out of the chair—quite dangerously farther than was necessary—and vomited in a splendid arc over the crowd below them. The crowd moved as one, but not everyone moved in time.

When their chair was at the bottom of the descent again, the Ferris wheel was stopped so that the sick man could get off. The crowd had retreated, except for a young man who was especially splattered. As Homer Wells and Mr. Rose were leaving the Ferris wheel grounds, the young man came forward and said to Mr. Rose, “You looked like you
meant
to do that.”

“Who means to get sick?” said Mr. Rose; he kept walking, and Homer kept up with him. The young man was about Homer’s age; he should have homework, thought Homer Wells—if he’s still in school, it’s a school night.

“I think you meant to,” the young man said to Mr. Rose, who stopped walking away then.

“What business you in?” Mr. Rose asked the boy.

“What?” the young man asked, but Homer Wells stepped between them.

“My friend is sick,” Homer Wells said. “Please just leave him alone.”

“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.