John Irving: The Cider House Rules

'You stop it, Homer,' Dr. Larch used to say to him at those times. 'You just cut it out.'

As an adult, Homer Wells would still get caught staring.

But on Thanksgiving night in Waterville, he stared so hard into his real parents' lives that he almost found them before he fell asleep, exhausted. He was abruptly awakened by one of the grandchildren, an older boy; Homer had forgotten he was going to share his bed with him because the house was crowded.

'Move over,' the boy said. Homer moved over. 'Keep your pecker in your pajamas,' the boy told Homer, who had no intention of taking it out. 'You know what buggering is?' the boy asked, then.

'No,' Homer said.

'Yes, you do, Pecker Head,' the boy said. 'That's what you all do at Saint Cloud's. You bugger yourselves. All the time. I'm telling you, you try to bugger me and you'll go back there without your pecker,' the boy said. 'I'll cut off your pecker and feed it to the dog.'

'You mean Rufus?' Homer Wells asked.

'That's right, Pecker Head,' the boy said. 'You want to tell me again you don't know what buggering is?'

'I don't know,' Homer said.

'You want me to show you, don't you?' the boy asked.

'I don't think so,' Homer said.

'Yes you do, Pecker Head,' the boy said, and he then tried to bugger Homer Wells. Homer had never seen or heaid of anyone being so abused at St. Cloud's. Although the older boy had learned his style of buggery at a private school-a very good one-he had never been educated in the kind of crying that Homer Wells bad been taught by the family from Three Mile Falls. It seemed to Homer that it was a good time for crying, loudly-if one wanted to escape the buggery-and his crying immediately {34} awakened the one adult in the Draper household who had merely gone to sleep (as opposed to passing out). In other words, Homer woke Mom. He woke all the grandchildren, too, and since several of them were younger than Homer, and all of them had no knowledge of Homer's capacity for howls, his crying produced sheer terror among them-and even aroused Rufus, who snapped.

'What in Heaven's name?' Mom asked, at Homer's door.

'He tried to bugger me, so I let him have it,' said the private school boy. Homer, who was struggling to get his legendary howls under control-to send them back to history-didn't know that grandchildren are believed before orphans.

'Here in St. Cloud's,' wrote Dr. Larch, 'it is self-defeating and cruel to give much thought to ancestors. In other parts of the world, I'm sorry to say, an orphan's ancestors are always under suspicion.'

Mom hit Homer as hard as any representative of the failed family from Three Mile Falls ever hit him. She then banished him to the furnace room for the remainder of the night; it was at least warm and dry there, and there was a fold-out cot, which in the summers was used for camping trips.

There were also lots of wet shoes-a pair of which even belonged to Homer. Some of the wet socks were almost dry, and fit him. And the assortment of wet snowsuits and hardy tramping clothes gave Homer an adequate selection. He dressed himself in warm, outdoor clothes, which were-for the most part-nearly dry. He knew that Mom and the professor thought too highly of family ever to send him back to St. Cloud's over a mere buggery; if he wanted to go back, and he did, he'd have to leave on his own initiative.

In fact, Mom had provided Homer with a vision of how his alleged buggery would be treated and, doubtlessly, cured. She'd made him kneel before the fold-out cot in the furnace room. {35}

'Say after me,' she said, and repeated the professor's strange version of grace. '“I am vile, I abhor myself,”' Mom said, and Homer had said it after her-knowing that every word was untrue. He'd never liked himself so much. He felt he was on the track to finding out who he was, and how he could be of use, but he knew that the path led back to St. Cloud's.

When Mom kissed him good night, she said, 'Now, Homerji don't mind what the professor has to say about this. Whatever he says, you just take it with a grain of salt.'

Homer Wells didn't wait to hear the text of the professor's lesson regarding buggery. Homer stepped outside; even the snow didn't stop him. In Waterville, in 193-, it was no surprise to see so much s;now on the ground for Thanksgiving; and Professor Draper had very carefully instructed Homer on the merits and methods of snow-shoeing.

Homer was a good tramper. He found the town road fairly easily, and the bigger road after that. It was daylight when the first truck stopped; it was a logging truck. This seemed, to Homer, appropriate to where he was going. 'I belong to Saint Cloud's,' he told the driver. 'I got lost.' In 193- every logger knew where St. Cloud's was; this driver knew it was in the other direction.

'You're going the wrong way, kid,' he advised the boy.

'Turn around and look for a truck going the other way. What are you, from Saint Cloud's?' the driver asked. Like most people, he assumed that orphans were always running away from the orphanage-not running to it.

'I just belong there,' Homer Wells said, and the driver waved good-bye. In Dr. Larch's opinion, this driver- in order to be so insensitive as to let a boy go off alone in the snow-simply had to be an employee of the Ramses Paper Company.

The next driver was also driving a logging truck; it was empty, it was heading back to the forest for more logs, and St. Cloud's was more or less on the way. {36}

'You an orphan?' the driver asked Homer, when he said he was going to St. Cloud's.

'No,' Homer said. 'I just belong there-for now.'

In 193-, it took a long time to drive anywhere in Maine, especially with snow on the roads. It was growing dark when Homer Wells returned to his home. The quality of the light was the same as the early morning when he'd seen the mothers leaving their babies behind. Homer stood at the hospital entrance for a while and watched the snow fall. Then he went and stood at the entrance to the boys' division. Then he went back and stood outside the hospital entrance, because there was better light there.

He was still thinking of exactly what to say to Dr. Larch when the coach from the railroad station-that unmerry sleigh-stopped at the hospital entrance and let out a single passeinger. She was so pregnant that the driver at first appeared concerned she might slip and fall; then the driver appeared to realize why the woman had come here, and it must have struck him as immoral that he should actually help a woman like that through the snow. He drove off and left her making her careful way toward the entrance, and toward Homer Wells. Homer rang the bell at the entrance for the woman, who didn't seem to know what to do. It occurred to him that she was hoping for a little time to think of what she too wanted to say to Dr. Larch.

To anyone seeing them there, this was a mother with her son. There was just that kind of familiarity in the way that they looked at each other, and in the clear recognition between them-they knew perfectly well what the other was up to. Homer was worried what Dr. Larch would say to him, but he realized that the woman was more worried than he was-the woman didn't know Dr. Larch; she had no idea what sort of place St. Cloud's was.

More lights were turned on inside, and Homer recognized the divine shape of Nurse Angela coming to {37} open the door. For some reason, he reached out arid took the pregnant woman's hand. Maybe it was the tear frozen to her face that the new light had allowed him to see, but he wanted a hand to hold himself. He wais calm -Homer Wells-as Nurse Angela peered into the snowy night in disbelief while she struggled to open the frozen door. To the pregnant woman, and to her unwanted child, Homer said, 'Don't worry. Everyone is nice here.'