John Irving - The Cider House Rules

And people will always eat apples, he thought-it must be a nice life.

The apple enameled on the Cadillac's door-and monogrammed in gold-was of special interest to {255} Melony, who managed to prod herself into action; she tried to steal the apple on the door before she realized it wouldn't come off. Mary Agnes's arrival at the girls' division -with her scrawny arms hoarding jars of jelly and honey-had prompted Melony to go see foi herself what was going on. She thought, sourly, hov/ it was typical how nothing had been left for her-not even a glimpse of the beautiful people; she wouldn't have minded another look at them. There was nothing worth stealing, she could see at a glance-just an old hook; it was fate, she would think later, that the title of (he book and the name of its author were visible to her. The book appeared discarded on the car's floor. Little Dorrit meant nothing to Melony, but Charles Dickens was a name she recognized-he was a kind of hero to Homer Wells. Without thinking that this was her life's first unselfish act, she stole the book-for Homer. At the time, she wasn't even thinking how it might impress him, how it might gain for her some favorable light in his eyes. She thought only generously: Oh look, a present for Sunshine!

It meant more to her than she could ever admit to herself: that Homer had promised never to leave St. Cloud's without her.

Then she saw Wally; he was walking toward the Cadillac, in the direction of the hospital entrance, but he kept turning around to look at the hill. In his mind, he saw the orchard at harvest time-the long ladders were in the trees, the pickers were the orphans themselves. The bushel crates were stacked in the rows between the trees; in one row a tractor towed a flatbed trailer already heavy with apples. It looked like a good crop.

Where will they get a tractor? Wally wondered. He tripped, caught his balance, looked where he was walking -toward the abandoned Cadillac. Melony was gone. She'd lost her nerve. The thought of confronting that handsome young man, alone-she wasn't sure if she could have tolerated his indifference. If he'd been clearly {256} appalled by her appearance, that wouldn't have bothered Melony; she rather enjoyed her ability to shock people. But she could not bear the thought that he might not even notice her. And if he'd handed her a jar of honey, she'd have cracked his skull with it. Nobody honeys me, she thought- Little Dorrit slipped inside her shirt, against her thudding heart.

She crossed the road between the boys' and girls' divisions just as the stationmaster's assistant was climbing the same road, toward the hospital. At first she didn't recognize him-he was so dressed up. To Melony he was just a simpleton in overalls, a busybody who tried to fashion for himself an air of self-importance out of what Melony imagined was the world's stupidest job: watching for trains to arrive, and then watching them leave. The loneliness of the railroad station depressed Melony; she avoided the place. You went there for one thing: to leave. But to stand there all day, imagining leaving- could there be anything sadder, or more stupid, than that? And now here was this oaf, still wearing his yearlong effort to grow a moustache, but dressed to kill- well, no, Melony realized: he's dressed for a funeral.

That was it: the plain but ambitious boy had been impressed by the white Cadillac; he'd conceived that the stationmaster's job was his for the taking if he exhibited a proper and adult solemnity regarding the stationmaster's passing. He was terrified of Dr. Larch, and the idea of pregnant women made him feel furtive; but he had imagined that paying his respects at the orphanage, where the stationmaster's body reposed, was a grueling but necessary rite of passage. The spit-up smell he associated with babies made him nauseous, too; an unusual bravery had guided him to the orphanage, giving his silly, young face an almost adult countenance-except for the silky smudge that marred his upper lip and made all his efforts at manhood ridiculous. He had also burdened himself for the uphill climb by carrying all the catalogues; the stationmaster wouldn't be needing them {257} now, and his assistant imagined that he could ingratiate himself to Dr. Larch by bringing the catalogues as a present-a kind of peace offering. He had not bothered to consider what use Wilbur Larch would have for seeds and lingerie, or how the old doctor would respond to declarations regarding the peril of souls-his own and many restless others.

The two orphans the stationmaster's assistant most despised were Homer and Melony. Homer, because his serenity gave him a confident, adult appearance that the assistant felt powerless to achieve; and Melony, because she mocked him. Now, to make a bad day worse, here was Melony-blocking his way.

'What's that on your lip? A fungus?' Melony asked him. 'Maybe you should wash it.' She was bigger than the stationmaster's assistant, especially now that she stood uphill from him. He tried to ignore her.

'I've come to view the body,' he said with dignityhad he any sense, he should have known these words were ill chosen for presentation to Melony.

'Wanna view my body?' she asked him. 'I'm not kidding,' she added, when she saw how lost he was, and frightened. Melony had an instinct for pressing any advantage, but she relented when her adversary was too easy. She saw that the stationmaster's assistant would go on standing in the road until he dropped from fatigue, and so she stepped aside for him, and said, 'I was kidding.'

He stumbled ahead, blushing, and had almost turned the corner by the boys' division when she called after him, 'You'd have to shave before I'd let you!' He staggered slightly, causing Melony to marvel at her power; then he turned the corner and felt himself uplifted by the gleaming Cadillac-by what he mistook for the white hearse. If, at that moment, a choir had erupted into heavenly voice, the assistant would have fallen to his knees, the catalogues spilling around him. The same light that blessed the Cadillac seemed to shine fo rth from {258} the blond hair of the powerful-looking young man: the driver of the hearse. Now there was a responsibility that awed the stationmaster's assistant!

He approached Wally carefully. Wally was leaning on the Cadillac, smoking a cigarette and intently visualizing an apple orchard in St. Cloud's. The stationmaster's assistant, who looked like a mortician's ghoulish lackey, surprised Wally.

'I've come to view the body,' the assistant said.

The body?' Wally said. ' What body?'

A fear of embarrassing himself almost paralyzed the stationmaster's assistant. The world, he imagined, was brimming with etiquette beyond his grasp; obviously, it had been tactless to mention the body of the deceased to the very man who was responsible for safely driving the dead away.

'A thousand pardons!' the assistant blurted; it had been something he'd read.

'A thousand what?' Wally said, growing alarmed.

'How thoughtless of me,' said the stationmaster's assistant, bowing unctuously and sliding toward the hospital entrance.

'Has someone died?' Wally asked anxiously, but the assistant managed to slip inside the hospital entrance, where he quickly hid himself in a corner of the wall and wondered what to do next. Clearly, he'd upset the highstrung and fine-tuned feelings of the hearse driver. This is a delicate business, the assistant thought, trying to calm himself. What mistake will I make next? He cowered in the corner of the hall, where he could smell ether wafting from the nearby dispensary; he had no idea that the body he wished to 'view' was less than fifteen feet from him. He thought he could smell babies, too-he heard one bawling. He thought that babies were born while women had their legs straight up, the soles of their feet facing the ceiling; this vision pinned him to the corner of the hall. I smell blood! he imagined, struggling to control his panic. He clung to the wall like so much plaster {259} -so much so that Wally failed to notice him when he came in the hospital entrance, worried about who had died. Wally entered the dispensary, as if drawn to the ether-although he quickly felt his nausea returning. He apologized to the feet of the stationmaster.