John Irving - The Cider House Rules

Mr. Rose would maintain his almost Buddhist position; he made it through lunch without moving, but in the afternoon he asked Black Pan to bring him some water, and when the men were through picking that day, he called Muddy over to him. Muddy was very frightened but he approached Mr. Rose and stood at a distance of about six feet from him.

'Where your knife, Muddy?' Mr. Rose asked him. 'You lose it?'

'I didn't lose it,' Muddy told him. 'But I can't find it,' he added.

'It around, you mean?' Mr. Rose asked him. 'It around somewhere, but you don't know where.'

'I don't know where it is,' Muddy admitted.

'Never do you no good, anyway-do it?' Mr. Rose asked him.

'I never could use it,' Muddy admitted. It was a cold and sunless late afternoon, but Muddy was sweating; he held his hands at his sides as if his hands were dead fish.

'Where she get the knife, Muddy?' Mr. Rose asked.{704}

'What knife?' Muddy asked him.

'It look like your knife-what I seen of it,' said Mr. Rose.

'I gave it to her,' Muddy admitted.

'Thank you for doin'that, Muddy,' Mr. Rose said. 'If she gone with her thumb, I glad she got a knife with her.'

'Peaches!' Muddy screamed. 'Go get Homer!' Peaches came out of the cider house and stared at Mr. Rose, who didn't move a muscle; Mr. Rose didn't look at Peaches at all. 'Black Pan!' Muddy screamed, as Peaches went running off to get Homer Wells. Black Pan came out of the cider house and he and Muddy got down on their knees and peered at Mr. Rose together.

'You all stay calm,' Mr. Rose advised them. 'You too late,' he told them. 'No one gonna catch her now. She had all day to get away,' Mr. Rose said proudly.

'Where she get you?' Muddy asked Mr. Rose, but neither he nor Black Pan dared to poke around under the blanket. They just watched Mr. Rose's eyes and his dry lips.

'She good with that knife-she better with it than you ever be!' Mr. Rose said to Muddy.

'I know she good,' Muddy said.

'She almost the best,' said Mr. Rose. 'And who taught her?' he asked them.

'You did,' they told him.

'That right,' said Mr. Rose. That why she almost as good as me.' Very slowly, without exposing any of himself -keeping himself completely under the blanket, except for his face-Mr. Rose rolled over on his side and tucked his knees up to his chest. 'I real tired of sittin' up,' he told Muddy and Black Pan. 'I gettin' sleepy.'

'Where she get you?' Muddy asked him again.

'I didn't think it would take this long,' said Mr. Rose. 'It taken all day, but it felt like it was gonna go pretty fast.'

All the men were standing around him when Homer Wells and Peaches arrived in the Jeep. Mr. Rose had very little left to say when Homer got to him.{705}

'You breakin' them rules, too, Homer,' Mr. Rose whispered to him. 'Say you know how I feel.'

'I know how you feel,' said Homer Wells.

'Right,' said Mr. Rose-grinning.

The knife had entered in the upper right quadrant, close to the rib margin. Homer knew that a knife moving in an upward direction would give a substantial liver laceration, which would continue to bleed-at a moderate rate-for many hours. Mr. Rose might have stopped bleeding several times, and started again. In most cases, a liver stab wound hemorrhages very slowly.

Mr. Rose died in Homer's arms before Candy and Angel arrived at the cider house, but long after his daughter had made good her escape. Mr. Rose had managed to soak the blade of his own knife in his wound, and the last thing he told Homer was that it should be clear to the authorities that he had stabbed himself. If he hadn't meant to kill himself, why would he have let himself bleed to death from what wasn't necessarily a mortal wound?

'My daughter run away,' Mr. Rose told all of them.

'And I so sorry that I stuck myself. You better say that what happen. Let me hear you say it!' he raised his voice to them.

'That what happen,' Muddy said.

'You kill yourself,' Peaches told him.

'That what happen,' Black Pan said.

'You hearin' this right, Homer?' Mr. Rose asked him.

That was how Homer reported it, and that was how the death of Mr. Rose was received-the way he wanted it, according to the cider house rules. Rose Rose had broken the rules, of course, but everyone at Ocean View knew the rules Mr. Rose had broken with her.

At the end of the harvest, on a gray morning with a wild wind blowing in from the ocean, the overhead bulb that hung in the cider house kitchen blinked twice and burned out; the spatter of apple mash on the far wall, near the press and grinder, was cast so somberly in {706} shadows that the dark clots of pomace looked like black leaves that had blown indoors and stuck against the wall in a storm.

The men were picking up their few things. Homer Wells was there-with the bonus checks-and Angel had come-with him to say good-bye to Muddy and Peaches and Black Pan and the rest of them. Wally had made some arrangements with Black Pan to be crew boss the following year. Wally had been right about Mr. Rose being the only one of them who could read well and write at all. Muddy told Angel that he'd always thought the list of rules tacked to the kitchen wall was something to do with the building's electricity.

''Cause it was always near the light switch,' Muddy explained. 'I thought they was instructions 'bout the lights.'

The other men, since they couldn't read at all, never noticed that the list was there.

'Muddy, if you should happen to see her,' Angel said, when he was saying good-bye.

'I won't see her, Angel,' Muddy told the boy. 'She long gone.'

Then they were all long gone. Angel would never see Muddy again, either-or Peaches, or any of the rest of them except Black Pan. It wouldn't work out, having Black Pan as a crew boss, as Wally would discover; the man was a cook, not a picker, and a boss had to be in the field with the men. Although Black Pan would gather a fair picking crew together, he was never quite in charge of them-in future years, of course, no one would ever be as in charge of a picking crew at Ocean View as Mr. Rose had been. For a while, Wally would try hiring French Canadians; they were, after all, closer to Maine than the Carolinas. But the French Canadian crews were often ill-tempered and alcoholic, and Wally would always be trying to get the French Canadians out of jail.

One year Wally would hire a commune, but that crew {707} arrived with too many small children. The pregnant women on the ladders made everyone nervous. They left something cooking all day, and started a. small fire in the kitchen. And when the men ran the press, they allowed their children to splash about in the vat.

Wally would finally settle on Jamaicans. They were friendly, non-violent, and good workers. They brought with them an interesting music and a straightforward but contained passion for beer (and for a little marijuana). They knew how to handle the fruit and they never hurt each other.

But after Mr. Rose's last summer at Ocean View, the pickers-whoever they were-would never sit on the cider house roof. It just never occurred to them. And no one would ever put up a list of rules again.

In future years the only person who ever sat on the cider house roof was Angel Wells, who would do it because he liked that particular view of the ocean, and because he wanted to remember that November day in 195-, after Muddy and the rest of them had left, and his father turned to him (they were alone at: the cider house) and said, 'How about sitting on the roof for a while with me? It's time you knew the whole story.'

'Another little story?' Angel asked.

'I said the whole story,' said Homer Wells.

And although it was a cold day, that November, and the wind off the sea was briny and raw, father and son sat on that roof a long time. It was, after all, a long story, and Angel would ask a lot of questions.