John Irving - The Cider House Rules

'You'd end up feeding lobsters,' Wally said.

'That's okay,' said Ray. They been feeding me.'

'You got a better chance in a plane,' Wally said.

'Yes, a chance,' Candy said scornfully. 'Why would you want to be anywhere where all you get is a chance?'

'Good question,' Olive said crossly. She let the silver serving fork fall to the meat platter with such force that the goose appeared to flinch.

'A chance is enough,' said Homer Wells, who did not immediately recognize the tone in his own voice. 'A chance is all we get, right? In the air, or underwater, or right here, from the minute we're born.' Or from the minute we're not born, he thought; now he recognized his tone of voice-it was Dr. Larch's.

'That's a rather grim philosophy,' Olive said.

'I thought you were studying anatomy,' Wally said to Homer, who looked at Candy, who looked away.

They sent Wally to Fort Meade, Maryland, for the month of January. He was a faithful but terrible letter writer; he wrote his mother, he wrote to Homer and to Candy, and even to Ray, but he never explained anything; if there was a plan to what they were teaching him, Wally either didn't know it or couldn't describe it. He simply wrote in tedious detail about the last thing that had occupied his mind before beginning the letter; this included the pouch he had devised to hang from his bunk bed to separate his shoe polish from his toothpaste {451} and the best-name-for-a-plane competition that dominated the imaginative life of Company A. He was also delighted that a cook sergeant had taught him more limericks than Senior, in his last years, had been able to remember. Every letter Wally wrote, to anyone, included a limerick; Ray liked them, and Homer liked them, but they made Candy angry and Olive was appalled. Candy and Homer showed each other the limericks Wally sent them, until Homer realized that this made Candy even angrier: the limericks Wally chose to send Candy were very mild-mannered compared to the ones Wally sent to Homer. For example, he sent this to Candy:

There was a young lady of Exeter,

So pretty that men craned their necks at her.

One was even so brave

As to take out and wave

The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.

He sent this to Homer Wells:

There was a young lady named Brent

With a cunt of enormous extent

And so deep and so wide,

The acoustics inside

Were so good you could hear when you spent.

Wally sent Ray limericks of a similar kind:

There's an unbroken babe from Toronto

Exceedingly hard to get onto

Rut when you get there

And have parted the hair,

You can fuck her as much as you want to.

God knows what limericks Wally sent to Olive- where does Wally find ones that are decent enough? wondered Homer, who, in the evening after Wally had gone and Candy had gone back to school, lay listening to his heart. It would help, he thought, if he knew what to listen for. {452}

Wally was sent to St. Louis-the Jefferson Barracks, Flight 17, 28th School Squadron. It struck Homer Wells that the Army Air Corps might have modeled itself on Gray's Anatomy-manifesting a steadfast belief in categories and in everything having a name. It was reassuring to Homer Wells; in his mind, this endless categorizing made Wally safer, but Homer couldn't convince Candy of this.

'He's safe one minute, and in another minute he's not safe,' she said, shrugging.

'Look after Homer, look after his heart,' Wally had written her.

'And who's looking after my heart? Yes, I'm still angry,' she wrote him, although he hadn't asked.

But if she was angry with Wally, she was also loyal; she was keeping her promise, about the waiting and seeing. She kissed Homer when she saw him, and when they said good-bye, but she wouldn't encourage him.

'We're just good pals,' she told her father; Ray hadn't asked.

'I can see that,' Ray said.

The work in the orchards was light that winter; pruning was the main job. The men took turns teaching Homer how to prune. 'You make your big cuts in the subfreezing weather,' Meany Hyde told him.

'A tree don't bleed so much when it's cold,' was how Vernon Lynch put it, hacking away.

'There's less chance of an infection when it's cold,' said Herb Fowler, who was not so free with the prophylactics in the winter months, perhaps because he would have needed to take his gloves off to get at them; but Homer felt sure that Herb was being wary ever since Homer had asked him about the holes.

'Are there holes?' Herb had replied. 'Manufacturer's defect, I suppose.'

But later he'd come up to Homer and whispered to him, 'Not all of them's got holes.' {453}

'You have a system?' Homer asked. 'Which ones have holes and which don't?'

'It's not my system,' Herb Fowler said. 'Some got holes, some don't. Manufacturer's defect.'

'Right,' said Homer Wells, but rubbers were rarely flung his way now.

Meany Hyde's wife, Florence, was pregnant again, and all winter Big Dot Taft and Irene Titcomb made jokes about Meany's potency.

'You keep away from me, Meany,' Big Dot would say. I'm not even lettin' you sip my coffee. I think all you gotta do is breathe on somebody and they're pregnant.'

'Well, that's all he did to me!' Florence would say, and Big Dot Taft would roar.

'Dontcha go givin' the men any breathin' lessons, Meany,' Irene Titcomb said.

'Meany can knock you up just by kissin' your ears,' Florence Hyde said proudly, glorying in her pregnancy.

'Gimme some earmuffs,' said Squeeze Louise Tobey. 'Gimme one of them ski hats.'

'Gimme a dozen of Herb's rubbers!' said Irene Titcomb.

No, don't take any, thought Homer Wells. That's probably how she got that way. Homer was staring at Florence Hyde. It was riveting to him to see someone enjoying her pregnancy.

'Honestly, Homer,' said Big Dot Taft, 'ain't you ever seen anyone about to have a baby before?'

'Yes,' said Homer Wells, who looked away. Grace Lynch was staring at him, and he looked away from her, too.

'If I was your age,' Vernon Lynch told Homer, when they were pruning in an orchard called Cock Hill, 'I'd enlist. I'd do what Wally's doing.'

I can't.,' said Homer Wells.

'They don't take orphans?' Vernon asked.

'No,' Homer said. I have a heart defect. Something was born with.' {454}

Vernon Lynch was not a gossip, but that was all that Homer needed to say – the workers at Ocean View not only forgave Homer for not enlisting, they even began to take care of him. They treated him the way Dr. Larch would have liked to see him treated.

'You know, I didn't mean anything,' Herb Fowler told Homer. 'About the manufacturer's defect. I wouldn't have said that if I'd known about your heart.'

'That's okay,' Homer said.

And in the early spring, when it was time to mend the boxes for the beehives, Ira Titcomb rushed to assist Homer, who was struggling with a particularly heavy pallet.

'Don't strain yourself, Jesus!' Ira said.

'I can manage, Ira. I'm stronger than you are,' Homer said, not understanding-at first-Ira's concern.

'I heard your heart's not as strong as the rest of you,' Ira said.

On Mother's Day, Vernon Lynch taught him how to operate the sprayers by himself. He insisted on giving Homer another lecture on the use of the respirator. 'You of all people,' Vernon told him, 'better keep this thing on, and keep it clean.'

'Me of all people,' said Homer Wells.

Even Debra Pettigrew forgave him for his seemingly undefined friendship with Candy. As the weather warmed up, they went parking again, and one night they managed some lingering kisses in the Pettigrews' unoccupied summer house on Drinkwater Lake; the shut-up, cold smell of the house reminded Homer of his first days in the cider house. When his kisses seemed to calm, Debra grew restless; when his kisses seemed too passionate, Debra said, 'Careful! Don't get too excited.' He was a young man with unusual kindness, or else he might have suggested to Debra that nothing she allowed him to do would ever endanger his heart.