John Irving - The Cider House Rules

'It was a Ferris wheel,' said Mr. Rose in the darkness. 'It was just a Ferris wheel.'

'Yeah, that what it was!' Black Pan said. 'I seen one, once.'

'But it was somethin' else that used to be out there,' Mr. Rose said dreamily. 'It got used in the war.'

'Yeah,' Black Pan said. They shot it at somebody.'

Watching the lights on the coast, Rose Rose announced: 'I'm movin' to the city.'

'Maybe, when you old enough,' said Mr. Rose.

'Maybe Atlanta,' she said. 'I been in Atlanta,' she told Angel-'at night, too.'

'That was Charleston,'Mr. Rose said. 'Unless you was in Atlanta some other time.'

'You said it was Atlanta,' she told him.

'Maybe I said it was Atlanta,' said Mr. Rose, 'but it was Charleston.' Black Pan laughed.{661}

Rose Rose forgot to give the sweat shirt back, but in the morning, when it was still cold, she was wearing one of Mr. Rose's old sweaters and she handed the sweat shirt back to Angel.

'Got my own clothes, sort of, this mornin',' she told Angel, the baseball cap pulled lower than usual over her eyes. Black Pan was watching after Baby Rose, and it took Angel a while to see that Rose Rose had a black eye-a white person doesn't spot a black eye on a black person right away, but she had a good one.

'He say it okay if I wear your hat, but for you to wear your own shirt,' Rose Rose told Angel. 'I told you,' she said. 'You don't wanna get involved with me.'

After the picking that day, Angel went to the cider house to have a word with Mr. Rose. Angel told Mr. Rose that he meant nothing improper by letting Rose Rose wear his sweat shirt; Angel added that he really liked Mr. Rose's daughter, and so forth. Angel got pretty worked up about it, although Mr. Rose remained a calm, calm man. Of course, Angel (and all the rest of them) had seen Mr. Rose peel and core an apple in about three or four seconds-it was widely presumed that Mr. Rose could bleed a man in half a minute. He could have made the whole mess of a human being look like a series of slight shaving injuries.

'Who told you I beat my daughter, Angel?' Mr. Rose asked gently. Rose Rose had told Angel, of course, but now Angel saw the trap; he was only making trouble for her. Mr. Rose would never allow himself to have any trouble with Angel. Mr. Rose knew the rules: they were the real cider house rules, they were the pickers' rules.

'I just thought you had hit her,' Angel said, backing off.

'Not me,' said Mr. Rose.

Before he put the tractor away, Angel spoke with Rose Rose. He told her that if she was frightened about staying in the cider house, she could always stay with him-that he had an extra bed in his room, or that he could vacate {662} his room and make it into a guest room for her and her baby.

'A guest room?' Rose Rose said; she laughed. She told him he was the nicest man she ever knew. She had such a languid manner, like someone who was used to sleeping while standing up-her heavy limbs as relaxed as if she were underwater. She had a lazy body, yet in her presence Angel felt the same potential for lightning-quick movement that surrounded her father as intimately as someone's scent. Rose Rose gave Angel the shivers.

At supper, his father asked him, 'How are you getting along with Mister Rose?'

'I'm more curious how you're getting along with Rose Rose,' Candy said.

'How he's getting along with the girl is his own business,' Wally said.

'Right,' said Homer Wells, and Wally let it pass.

'How you're getting along with Mister Rose is our business, Angel,' Wally said.

'Because we love you,' Homer said.

'Mister Rose won't hurt me,' Angel told them.

'Of course he won't!' Candy said.

'Mister Rose does what he wants,' Wally said.

'He's got his own rules,' said Homer Wells.

'He beats his daughter,' Angel told them. 'He hit her once, anyway.'

'Don't make that your business, Angel,' Wally told the boy.

'That's right,' Homer said.

'I'll make it my business!' Candy told them. 'If he's beating that girl, he'll hear about it from me.'

'No, he won't,' Wally said.

'Better not,' Homer told her.

'Don't tell me what to do,' she told them, and they were quiet; they both knew better than to try to tell Candy what to do.

'Are you sure it's true, Angel?' Candy asked.

'Almost sure,' the boy said. 'Ninety-nine percent.' {663}

'Make it a hundred percent, Angel, before you say it's true,' his father told him.

'Right,' Angel said as he got up from the table and cleared his dishes.

'Good thing we got all that straightened out,' Wally said when Angel was in the kitchen. 'Good thing we're all such experts at the truth,' he said as Candy got up from the table to clear the dishes. Homer Wells kept sitting where he was.

The next morning Angel learned that Rose Rose had never been in the ocean-that she'd picked citrus in Florida and peaches in Georgia, and she'd driven up the East Coast all the way to Maine, but she'd never stuck so much as her toe in the Atlantic. She'd never even felt the sand.

'That's crazy!' said Angel Wells. 'We'll go to the beach some Sunday.'

'What for?' she said. 'You think I gonna look better with a tan? What would I go to a beach for?'

'To swim!' Angel said. 'The ocean! The salt water!'

'I don't know how to swim,' Rose Rose informed him.

'Oh,' he said. 'Well, you don't have to swim to enjoy the ocean. You don't have to go in over your head.'

'I don't have no bathin' suit,' she said.

'Oh,' Angel said. 'Well, I can get you one. I'll bet one of Candy's would fit you.' Rose Rose looked only mildly surprised. Any bathing suit of Candy's would be a tight fit.

For their lunch break, after Rose Rose had seen how Baby Rose was getting along with Black Pan, Angel drove her to the baby-tree orchard near Cock Hill; they were not picking the baby trees, so there was no one there. You could barely see the ocean. You could see the unnatural end of the horizon, how the sky inexplicably flattened out-and by standing on the tractor, they could distinguish the different tones of blue and gray where the sky bled into the sea. Rose Rose remained unimpressed.{664}

'Come on,' Angel said to her. 'You got to let me take you to see it!' He tugged her by one arm-just fooling around, just an affectionate gesture-but she suddenly cried out; his hand grazed the small of her back as she turned away from him, and when he looked at his hand, he saw her blood.

'It's my period,' she lied. Even a fifteen-year-old boy knows that the blood from anyone's period isn't usually found on the back.

After they kissed for a while, she showed him some of the wounds-not the ones on the backs of her legs, and not the ones on her rump; he had to take her word for those. She showed him only the cuts on her back-they were fine, thread-thin, razorlike cuts; they were extremely deliberate, very careful cuts that would heal completely in a day or two. They were slightly deeper than scratches; they were not intended to leave scars.

'I told you,' she said to Angel, but she still kissed him, hard. 'You shouldn't have no business with me. I ain't really available.'

Angel agreed not to bring up the matter of the cuts with Mr. Rose; that would only make things worse-Rose Rose convinced him of that. And if Angel wanted to take her to the beach-somehow, some Sunday, they should both be as nice to Mr. Rose as they could manage.

The man named Muddy, who'd been reassembled with one hundred twenty-three stitches, had said it the best. What he said once was, 'If old Rose had cut me, I wouldn't of needed one stitch. I would of bled a pint an hour, or even slower, and when it was finally all over it would have looked like someone hadn't used anythin' on me except a stiff toothbrush.'