John Irving - The Cider House Rules

'It doesn't surprise me,' Wally told his friend. 'I have every reason to believe that you can get away with anything.'

Upstairs, after supper, Angel watched his father pack the old black doctor's bag-and some other bags, as well.

'Don't worry, Pop,' Angel told his father. 'You're going to do just fine.' {712}

'You're going to do just fine, too,' Homer told his son. 'I'm not worried about that.' Downstairs they heard Candy pushing Wally around in the wheelchair. They were playing the game that Wally and Angel often played-the game Wally called 'flying.'

'Come on,' Wally was saying. 'Angel can make it go faster.'

Candy was laughing. 'I'm going as fast as I can,' Candy said.

'Please stop thinking about the furniture,' Wally told her.

'Please look after Wally,' Homer said to Angel. 'And mind your mother,' he told his son.

'Right,'said Angel Wells.

In the constantly changing weather of Maine, especially on cloudy days, the presence of St. Cloud's could be felt in Heart's Rock; with a heavy certainty, the air of St. Cloud's could be distinguished in the trapped stillness that hovered above the water of Drinkwater Lake (like those water bugs, those water walkers, that were nearly constant there). And even in the fog that rolled over those bright, coastal lawns of Heart's Haven's well-to-do, there was sometimes in the storm-coming air that leaden, heart-sinking feeling that was the essence of the air of St. Cloud's.

Candy and Wally and Angel would go to St. Cloud's for Christmas, and for the longer of Angel's school vacations, too; and after Angel had his driver's license, he was free to visit his father as often as he liked, which was often.

But when Homer Wells went to St. Cloud's-even though Wally had offered him a car-Homer took the train. Homer knew he wouldn't need a car there, and he wanted to arrive the way most of his patients did; he wanted to get the feel of it.

In late November, there was already snow as the train moved north and inland, and by the time the train {713} reached St. Cloud's, the blue-cold snow was deeply on the ground and heavily bent the trees. The stationmaster, who hated to leave the television, was shoveling snow off the platform when the train pulled in. The stationmaster thought he recognized Homer Wells, but the stern, black doctor's bag and the new beard fooled him. Homer had started the beard because it had hurt to shave (after he'd burned his face with the sunlamp), and once the beard had grown for a while, he thought the change would be suitable. Didn't: a beard go with his new name?

'Doctor Stone,' Homer said to the stationmaster, introducing himself. 'Fuzzy Stone,' he said. '1 used to be an orphan here. Now I'm the new doctor.'

'Oh, I thought you was familiar!' the stationmaster said, bowing as he shook Homer's hand.

Only one other passenger had gotten off the train in St. Cloud's and Homer Wells had no difficulty imagining what she wanted. She was a thin young woman in a long muskrat coat with a scarf, and a ski hat pulled almost over her eyes, and she hung back on the platform, waiting for Homer to move away from the stationmaster, It was the doctor's bag that had caught her attention, and after Homer had arranged for the usual louts to tote his heavier luggage, he started up the hill to the orphanage carrying just the doctor's bag; the young woman followed him.

They walked uphill in this fashion, with the woman lagging purposefully behind, until they almost reached the girls' division. Then Homer stopped walking and waited for her.

'Is this the way to the orphanage?' the young woman asked him.

'Right,' said Homer Wells. Since he had grown the beard, he tended to oversmile at people; he imagined that the beard made it hard for people to tell whether he was smiling.

'Are you the doctor?' the young woman asked him, staring at the snow on both their boots-and, warily, at the doctor's bag.{714}

'Yes, I'm Doctor Stone,' he said, taking the woman's arm and leading her toward the hospital entrance of the boys' division. 'May I help you?' he asked her.

And so he arrived, as Nurse Edna would say, bringing the Lord's work with him. Nurse Angela threw her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear. 'Oh Homer!' she whispered. 'I knew you'd be back!'

'Call me “Fuzzy,” ' he whispered to her, because he knew that Homer Wells (like Rose Rose) was long gone.

For several days, Nurse Caroline would be shy with him, but he wouldn't need more than a few operations and a few deliveries to convince her that he was the real thing. Dr. Stone, even as a name, would be a fitting successor to Dr. Larch. For wasn't Stone a good, hard, feet-on-the-ground, reliable-sounding sort of name for a physician?

And Mrs. Grogan would remark that she had not enjoyed being read aloud to so much since those hard-toremember days of Homer Wells. And it was to everyone's relief that Fuzzy Stone would exhibit as few symptoms of his former respiratory difficulties as Homer Wells had exhibited signs of a weak and damaged heart.

Candy and Wally Worthington would throw themselves full tilt into apple farming. Wally would serve two terms as president of the Maine Horticultural Society; Candy would serve a term as director of the New York- New England Apple Institute. And Angel Wells, whom Rose Rose had introduced to love and to imagination, would one day be a noveliSt.

'The kid's got fiction in his blood,' Wally would tell Homer Wells.

To Candy, a novelist was also what Homer Wells had become-for a novelist, in Candy's opinion, was also a kind of impostor doctor, but a good doctor nonetheless.

Homer never minded giving up his name-it wasn't his actual name, to begin with-and it was as easy to be a Fuzzy as it was to be a Homer-as easy (or as hard) to be a Stone as it was to be anything else.{715}

When he was tired or plagued with insomnia (or both), he would miss Angel, or he would think of Candy. Sometimes he longed to carry Wally into the surf, or to fly with him. Some nights Homer imagined he would be caught, or he worried about what he would do when Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna were too old for the Lord's work, and for all the other work in St. Cloud's. And how would he ever replace Mrs. Grogan? Sometimes, when he was especially tired, he dreamed that abortions were legal-that they were safe and available, and therefore he could stop performing them (because someone else would do them)-but he was rarely that tired.

And, after a while, he would write to Candy and say that he had become a socialist; or, at least, that he'd become sympathetic to socialist views. Candy understood by this confession that Homer was sleeping with Nurse Caroline, which she also understood would be good for them-that is, this new development was good for Homer and for Nurse Caroline, and it was good for Candy, too.

Homer Wells saw no end to the insights he perceived nightly, in his continuous reading from Jane Eyre, and from David Copperfield and Great Expectations. He would smile to remember how he had once thought Dickens was 'better than' Bronte. When they both gave such huge entertainment and instruction, what did it matter? he thought-and from where comes this childish business of 'better'? If not entertainment, he took continued instruction from Gray's Anatomy.

For a while, he lacked one thing-and he was about to order it when one came unordered to him. 'As if from God,' Mrs. Grogan would say.

The stationmaster sent him the message: there was a body at the railroad station, addressed to Dr. Stone. It was from the hospital in Bath-which had been Dr. Larch's long-standing source for bodies, in the days when he'd ordered them. It was some mistake, Homer Wells was sure, but he went to the railroad to view the body {716} anyway-and to spare the stationmaster any unnecessary agitation.