John Irving - The Cider House Rules

I am that black-skinned rider on that camel, thought the orphan, Homer Wells. What was he called?

Later, after he'd taken Debra Pettigrew home and had nearly been eaten by her dogs, he asked Wally. Homer sat up front in the Cadillac-Candy in the middle of the seat between them.

'A Bedouin,' Wally said.

I'm a Bedouin! thought Homer Wells.

When Candy fell asleep, she slumped against Wally's shoulder, but this bothered his driving; he pushed her very gently in Homer's direction. The rest of the way to Heart's Haven, she slept with her head on Homer's shoulder, her hair lightly touching his face. When they got to Ray Kendall's lobster pound, Wally shut off the car and whispered, 'Hey, Sleepy.' He kissed Candy on the lips, which woke her up. She sat bolt upright, for a second disoriented, and she looked accusingly at both Wally and Homer, as if she weren't sure which one of them had kissed her. 'Easy,' Wally said to her, laughing. 'You're home.'

Home, thought Homer Wells. He knew that for the Bedouin-come from nowhere, going nowhere-there was no home.

In August of that same summer another Bedouin left what had been home for him; Curly Day departed St. Cloud's for Boothbay, where a young druggist and his wife had recently moved and had plunged into a life of 325 community service. Dr. Larch had his doubts about the young couple, but he had more doubts regarding Curly Day's resilience to another winter in St. Cloud's. The end of the summer was the last good time for visits from adoptive families; the good weather in the early fall was brief. And Curly's general positivism had been in decline since the departure of Homer Wells; Curly could never be convinced that Homer had not somehow stolen the beautiful couple who a kinder fate had intended for him.

The druggist and his wife were not a beautiful couple. They were well off and good-hearted; but they had not been born to a life of ease, and it seemed unlikely that they would ever adjust to anything resembling gracious living. They had striven to their station in life, and their idea of helping their fellow man seemed rooted in the notion that their fellow man should be taught how to strive. They had requested an older orphan; they wanted someone capable of doing a few hours' work in the drugstore after school.

They saw their childlessness as entirely God's decision and agreed that God had meant for them to find a foundling and educate him in the methods of self-support and self-improvement, for which the foundling would be broadly rewarded by inheriting the young couple's pharmacy, and with it the means to care for them in their apparently eagerly anticipated old age.

They were practical and Christian people-albeit grim when they reviewed for Larch their earlier efforts to have a child of their own. Before he met the couple- at a time when he had only corresponded with them by mail-Larch had hoped he might persuade them to allow Curly to keep his first name. When an orphan gets to be as old as Curly, Larch argued, the name has more than casual significance. But Larch's hopes sank when he saw the couple; the young man was prematurely bald- so perfectly bald that Larch wondered if the fellow had not suffered from the application of an untested pharmaceutical product-and the young wife's hair was fine and {326} lank. The couple seemed shocked at the wealth of Curly Day's curly hair, and Larch imagined that their first family trip would probably include a visit to the barber.

Curly himself seemed as unenthusiastic about the couple as the couple were unenthusiastic about his name, yet he wanted to leave St. Cloud's-badly. Larch saw that the boy still hoped for an adoption as dazzling as the one he'd imagined, for a couple as glittering with the promise of another life as Candy and Wally were. Of the very plain young couple from Boothbay, Curly Day said to Dr. Larch: 'They're okay. They're nice, I guess. And Boothbay is on the coast. I think I'd like the ocean.'

Larch did not say to the boy that the couple adopting him did not appear to be a boating couple, or a beach couple, or even a fishing-off-a-dock couple; he suspected them of thinking that a life of playing with, on, or in the sea was frivolous, something for tourists. (Larch thought that way himself.) Larch expected that the drugstore remained open every daylight hour of the summer, and that the hardworking young couple remained in the store every minute-selling tanning oil to summer people while they themselves stayed as pale as the winter, and were proud of it.

'You can't be too choosy, Wilbur,' Nurse Edna said. 'If the boy gets sick, there'll be lots of pills and cough medicines around.'

'He'll still be Curly to me,' Nurse Angela said defiantly.

Worse, Larch imagined: he'll always be Curly to Curly. But Larch let him go; it was high time for him to be gone-that was the main reason.

The couple's name was Rinfret; they called Curly 'Roy.' And so Roy 'Curly' Rinfret took up residence in Boothbay. Rinfret's Pharmacy was a harborfront store; the family lived several miles inland, where the sea was out of sight. 'But not out of scent,' Mrs. Rinfret had maintained; she declared that, when the wind was right, the ocean could be smelled from the house. {327}

Not with Curly's nose, Dr. Larch imagined: Curly's nose was such a constant streamer, Dr. Larch suspected that Curly had no sense of smell at all.

'Let us be happy for Curly Day,' Dr. Larch announced to the boys' division one evening in August in 194-over David Copperfield's steady sobs. 'Curly Day has found a family,' Dr. Larch said. 'Good night, Curly!'

'G'night, Burly!' young Copperfield cried.

When Homer Wells received the letter telling him the news of Curly's adoption, he read it again and again-in the moonlight streaming through Wally's window, while Wally slept.

A druggist! thought Homer Wells. He'd been upset enough by the news to talk about it with Wally and Candy. They'd sat in the moonlight, earlier that evening, throwing snails off Ray Kendall's dock. Ploink! Ploink! went the periwinkles; Homer Wells talked and talked. Ke told them about the litany-'Let us be happy for Curly Day,' and so forth; he tried to explain how it had felt to be addressed as a Prince of Maine, as a King of New England.

'I guess I imagined someone who looked like you,' Homer said to Wally.

Candy remembered that Dr. Larch had said this to her, too: that he'd told her that her babies would be these princes, these kings. 'But I didn't know what he meant.,' she said. 'I mean, he was nice-but it was unimaginable.'

'It still is unimaginable to me,' Wally said. 'I mean, what you saw,' he said to Homer. 'What all of you imagined -it must have been different, for each of you.' Wally was unwilling to accept the notion that someone who looked like himself would ever be adequate to the expression.

'It sounds a little mocking,' Candy said. I just can't see what he meant.'

'Yeah,' Wally agreed. 'It sounds a little cynical.' {328}

'Maybe it was,' said Homer Wells. 'Maybe he said it for himself and not for us.'

He told them about Melony, but not everything about her. He took a deep breath and told them about Fuzzy Stone; he imitated the breathing contraption admirably -he had them both so roaring with laughter at the racket he was making that they drowned out the insignificant ploink of the snails dropping into the sea. Wally and Candy didn't know they were at the end of the story until Homer simply arrived at it. 'Fuzzy Stone has found a new family,' he repeated to them. 'Good night, Fuzzy,' he concluded hollowly.

There wasn't a sound, then, not even a snail; the sea lapped at the dock posts; the boats moored around them rocked on the water. When a line was pulled taut and yanked out of the water, you could hear the water drip off the line; when the thicker ropes were stretched, they made a noise like grinding teeth.