John Irving - The Cider House Rules

The dispensary had two doors (one leading to a toilet and shower), which in such a small room created a problem with furniture. With a window on the south end and on the east wall, and a cloor on the north and on the west, there was no wall one could put anything against; the stark bed fit under the east window. The closed and locked cupboards with their frail glass doors formed an awkward maze around the dispensary counter in the middle of the room; it seemed fitting, for a dispensary, that the medicines and the ether cans and the hardware of small surgery should occupy the most central space, but Larch had other reasons for arranging the room this way. The labyrinth of cabinets in the middle of the room not only left access to the hall and bathroom doors; it also blocked the bed from view of the hall door, which, like all the doors in the orphanage, had no lock.

The cluttered dispensary afforded him some privacy for his ether frolics. How Larch Hiked the heft of that quarter-pound can. Ether is a matter of experience and technique. Imbibing ether is pung;ent but light, even though ether is twice as heavy as air; inducing ether anesthesia-bringing one's patients through the panic of that suffocating odor-is different. With his more delicate patients, Larch often preceded his ether administration with five or six drops of oil of orange. For {115} himself, he required no aromatic preparation, no fruity disguise. He was always conscious of the bump the ether can made when he set it on the floor by the bed: he was not always conscious of the moment when his fingers lost their grip on the mask; the cone-by the force of his own exhalations-fell from his face. He was usually conscious of the limp hand that had released the cone; oddly, that hand was the first part of him to wake up, often reaching for the mask that was no longer there. He could usually hear voices outside the dispensary-if they were calling him. He was confident that he would always have time to recover.

'Doctor Larch?' Nurse Angela or Nurse Edna, or Homer Wells, would ask, which was all Larch needed to be brought back from his ether voyage.

'Right here!' Larch would answer. 'Just resting.'

It was the dispensary, after all; don't the dispensaries of surgeons always smell of ether? And for a man who worked so hard and slept so little (if he slept at all), wasn't it natural that he would need an occasional nap? It was Melony who first suggested to Homer Wells that Dr. Larch possessed certain remote habits and singular powers.

'Listen, Sunshine,' Melony told Homer, 'how come your favorite doctor doesn't look at women? He doesn't -believe me. He won't even look at me, and every male everywhere, every time, looks at me-men and boys look at me. Even you, Sunshine. You look at me.' But Homer Wells looked away.

'And what's the smell he carries around?' Melony asked.

'Ether,' said Homer Wells. 'He's a doctor. He smells like ether.'

'You're saying this is normal?' Melony asked him.

'Right,' said Homer Wells.

'Like a dairy farmer?' Melony asked slyly. 'He's supposed to smell like milk and cowshit, right?'

'Right,' said Homer Wells, cautiously. {116}

'Wrong, Sunshine,' Melony said. Tour favorite doctor smells like he's got ether inside him-like he's got ether instead of blood.'

Homer let this pass. The top of his dark head measured up to Melony's shoulder. They were walking on the treestripped and eroded riverbank in the part of St. Cloud's where the abandoned buildings had remained abandoned; the river there had eroded not only the bank but also the foundations of these buildings, which in several cases did not have proper foundations or even cellar holes-some of these buildings were set on posts, which were visible and rotting in the gnawing water at the river's edge.

The building Homer and Melony preferred had a porch that had not been designed to overhang the river, though it hung over the river now; through the porch's broken floorboards, Homer and Melony could watch the bruisecolored water rush by.

The building had been a kind of dormitory for the rough men who worked in the saw mills and lumberyards of the old St. Cloud's; it was not a building of sufficient style for the bosses or even the foremen-the Ramses Paper Company people had kept rooms in the whore hotel. It was a building for the sawyers, the stackers, the yardmen- the men who broke up the logjams, who drove the logs downstream, who hauled the logs and cut lumber overland; the men who worked the mills.

Usually, Homer and Melony stayed outside the building, on the porch. Inside, there were only an empty communal kitchen and the countless, sordid bunkrooms -the ruptured mattresses infested with mice. Because of the railroad, hoboes had come and gone, staking out their territory in the manner of dogs, by peeing around it, thus isolating the mattresses least overrun by the mice. Even with the window glass gone and the rooms half filling with snow in the winters, there was no ridding the inside of that building from the smell of urine.

One day, when the weak spring sun had lured a blacl {117}snake, sluggish with cold, to warm itself on the floorboards of the porch, Melony said to Homer Wells, 'Watch this, Sunshine.' With surprising quickness of hand for such a big girl, she seized the napping snake behind its head. It was a milk snake-almost three feet long, and it twined around Melony's arm, but Melony held it the proper way, tightly, behind the head, not choking it. Once she had caught it, she seemed to pay no attention to it; she watched the sky as if for a sign and went on talking to Homer Wells.

'Your favorite doctor, Sunshine,' Melony said. 'He knows more about you than you know. And more about me than I know, maybe.'

Homer let this pass. He was wary of Melony, especially now that she had a snake. She could grab hold of me just as quickly, he was thinking. She could do something to me with the snake.

'You ever think about your mother?' Melony asked, still searching the sky. 'You ever wish you knew who she was, why she didn't keep you, who your father was- you know, those things?'

'Right,' said Homer Wells, who kept his eyes on the snake. It wound itself around Melony's arm; then it uncoiled itself and hung like a rope; then it thickened and thinned, all by itself. Tentatively, it explored around Melony's big hip; appearing to feel more secure, it settled around her thick waist-it could just reach.

'I was told I was left at the door,' Melony said. 'Maybe so, maybe not.'

'I was born here,' said Homer Wells.

'So you were told,' Melony said.

'Nurse Angela named me,' Homer offered in evidence.

'Nurse Angela or Nurse Edna would have named you if you'd been left,' Melony said. She still watched the sky, she remained indifferent to the snake. She's bigger than I am, she's older than I am, she knows more than I do, thought Homer Wells. And she has a snake, he reminded himself, letting Melony's last remark pass. {118}

'Sunshine,' Melony said absently. 'Just think about it: if you were born here in Saint Cloud's, there's got to be a record of it. Your favorite doctor knows who your mother is. He's got to have her name on file. You're written down, on paper. It's a law.'

'A law,'Homer Wells said flatly.

'It's a law that there's got to be a record of you,' Melony said. 'In writing-a record, a file. You're history, Sunshine.'

'History,' said Homer Wells. He had an image of Dr. Larch sitting at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office; if there were records, that was where they would be.

'If you want to know who your mother is,' Melony said, 'all you got to do is look her up. You just look up your file. You could look me up while you were at it. A smart reader like you, Sunshine-it wouldn't take you much time. And any of it would make more interesting reading than Jane Eyre. My file alone is more interesting than that, I'll bet. And who knows what's in yours?'