John Irving - The Cider House Rules

Even the oafs took notice. The assistant was stricken by {229} a flood of sudden and conflicting feelings: that the stationmaster was dead might mean that he, the assistant, would be the next stationmaster; that it was possible for someone to suffer a heart attack lasting several hours was unimaginably painful; and what was this promise-or threat-about an automobile?

What relatives, what friends? the two louts wondered.

'What's that about an automobile?' the assistant asked Curly Day. Curly suspected that he'd made a mistake but decided to bluff it out. It was not advisable to display weakness or indecision before a bully, and Curly'.s crafty instincts for survival led him to choose confidence over the truth.

'It means there's a car coming for him,' said Curly Day. The two clods looked mildly impressed; they had not thought the stationm aster was important enough to warrant a car to carry him away.

'You mean a hearse?' asked the assistant. There was a hearse in Three Mile Falls-he had seen it once: a long, black car that moved slowly enough to have been pulled by mules.

'I mean a car,' said Curly Day, for whom the word 'hearse' meant nothing at all. 'I mean an automobile.'

No one moved, no one spoke; perhaps the symptoms of the special heart attack, reputed to last for several hours, were slowly beginning in all of them. They were all just waiting for the next event of the day, when Senior Worthington's oyster-white Cadillac crept into view.

In the many poor and isolated towns they had driven through, Wally and Candy had drawn more than their share of stares, but they were still unprepared for the stunned gaping of the stationmaster's assistant and the extremes of gawking they provoked from the two louts who sat on the bench in front of the station house as if they'd been nailed there.

'Here we are: Saint Cloud's,' Wally said to Candy with a clearly false enthusiasm. Candy could not help herself; she reached for his leg and gripped him at midthigh- 230 Little Dorrit plunged from her lap, grazing her lockedtogether ankles on its way to the Cadillac's floor. The faces of Curly Day and David Copperfield were what struck Candy with the most force. In spite of his grime and dishevelment, Curly Day's face was shining-his smile was a lucky beam of sunlight; it pierced the garbage and revealed the hidden glitter. It was the hugeness of the expectation in Curly's dirty face that took Candy's breath away; her eyes swam, her vision blurred-but not before the wide-openness of David Copperfield's mouth astonished her. From the teardrop shape of his fat lower lip there hung a clear, healthy string of drool, suspended nearly to his tight little fists, which he clenched against his stomach as if the blinding white Cadillac had knocked the wind out of him, as solidly as a punch.

Wally wasn't sure, but he thought that the stationmaster's assistant appeared to be in charge of this strange assemblage of people. 'Excuse me,' Wally said to the assistant, whose mouth didn't move, whose eyes didn't blink. 'Could you tell me the way to the orphanage?'

'You sure got here in a hurry,' said the assistant lifelessly. A white hearse! he was thinking. Not to mention the beauty of the body-snatchers; the assistant found he was unable to look at the girl; his mind's eye would never forget its actual brief glimpse of her.

'Pardon me?' Wally said. The man is deranged, Wally was thinking; I should be talking to someone else. A passing look at the oafs upon the bench was enough to tell Wally that he should not ask them anything. And the littlest child, with the crystal string of slobber now winking like an icicle in the sunlight and reaching nearly to the grass-stained dimples on the child's knees, appeared to be too young for speech. 'Hello,' Wally ventured pleasantly.

'Dead!' said David Copperfield, the drool dancing like tinsel on a Christmas tree.

Not him, Wally thought, and sought the eyes of Curly Day; Curly's eyes were easy to find-they were riveted {231} on Candy. 'Hello,' Candy said to him, and Curly Day swallowed visibly-and with apparent pain. The wet end of his nose looked raw, but he rubbed it vigorously anyway.

'Could you tell us the way to the orphanage?' Wally asked Curly Day, who, unlike the louts and the assistant, knew that this Cadillac and these angelic specimens of the living had not been sent to retrieve the unwanted body of the dead stationmaster. They want the orphanage, thought Curly Day. They've come here to adopt someone! his pounding heart told him. Oh, God, thought Curly Day-let it be me!

David Copperfield, in his typical trance, reached his hand out to touch the perfect monogram on the Cadillac's door: Senior Worthington's gold monogram on the face of a gleaming Red Delicious apple-with a leaf of spring-green brightness, the artless shape of a tear. Curly batted young Copperfield's hand away.

I got to take charge of things, Curly was thinking, if I want them to pick me.

'I'll show you the orphanage,' said Curly Day. 'Give us a ride.'

Candy smiled and opened the rear door for them. She was a little surprised when Curly picked up young Copperfield and shoved him in the car-not on the 5eat but on the floor. Copperfield seemed content on the floor; in fact, when he touched the strangely mottled scarlet upholstery of the seat, he pulled back his hand with alarm-he'd never touched leather before-and he jumped as if he feared the seat might be alive. It had been a startling day for young Copperfield: most of the morning confined in an enema-bag carton; his first attempt at flight; his long fall through the weeds; and then sitting on that dead man's face. What next? young Copperfield wondered. When the Cadillac began to move, he screamed. He'd never been inside a car before.

'He don't know about cars,' Curly Day explained to Candy. Curly himself had never felt leather before {232} either, but he tried to sit on the luxurious seat as if he were born to ride forever in this fashion. He didn't realize that the bleached-out stains that striped the scarlet were the result of an accident with chemicals-it would often be Curly Day's misfortune to mistake an accident for something artistically intended.

'Slow down, Wally,' Candy said. 'The little one is frightened.' She leaned over the front seat and extended her arms to young Copperfield, whose howling abruptly ceased. He recognized the way her hair fell forward to either side of her face-this together with her outstretched arms and a certain comfort in her smile were familiar to Copperfield from Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna. Men, Copperfield thought, picked you up in one arm and carried you over a hip; by 'men' he meant Homer Wells and Dr. Larch. Curly Day sometimes lugged Copperfield around in this fashion, but Curly wasn't quite strong enough and often dropped him.

'Come here, come here, don't be afraid,' Candy said to Copperfield, swinging him over the seat and putting him in her lap. Copperfield smiled and touched Candy's hair; he had never felt blond hair before, he wasn't quite sure if it was real. He had never smelled anyone who smelled this good either; he drove his face into the side of her neck and took a great big sniff of her. She actually hugged him, even kissed him on the blue dent of his temple. She looked at Wally and almost cried.

Curly Day, sick with envy, gripped the leather seat and wondered what he could say that would make them want him. Why would anyone want me? he began to wonder, but he fought off the thought. He sought Wally's eyes in the Cadillac's rearview mirror; it was too painful for him to see the way Candy held David Copperfield,

'You're one of the orphans?' Wally asked-he hoped, tactfully.

'You bet!' Curly Day said, too loudly; he sounded too enthusiastic about it, he thought. 'I'm not just one of the {233} orphans,' he blurted out suddenly, I'm the best one! This made Candy laugh; she turned around in the front seat and smiled at him, and Curly felt he was losing his grip on the leather upholstery. He knew he should say something else, but his nose was running so violently he was sure that whatever he said would be grotesque; before he could drag his sleeve across his face, there was her hand with her handkerchief extended to him. And she wasn't just handing the handkerchief to him, he realized; she was actually pressing the handkerchief to his nose and holding it correctly in place.