John Irving - The Cider House Rules

Why doesn't he use his good hand? Homer Wells wondered. But the thumb worked; the pistol-finally-was cocked. Homer Wells concluded from this demonstration that the arrow had managed to pass through the hand without damaging the branch of the median nerve that goes to the muscles of the thumb. Lucky man, thought Homer Wells, as the cavalry officer shot the approaching Indian in the heart – it must be the heart, thought Homer Wells, because the Indian died instantly. It was funny how he could see the pictures of the hand in Gray's Anatomy more clearly than he could see the movie.

He took Debra home, begging her forgiveness for not offering to walk her to her door; one of the dogs was loose, it had broken its chain, and it pawed furiously at the driver's-side window (which Homer had rolled up, just in time). It breathed and slobbered and clicked its teeth against the glass, which became so fogged and smeared that Homer had difficulty seeing when he turned the Cadillac around.

'Cut it out, Eddy!' Debra Pettigrew was screaming at the dog as Homer drove away. 'Would you just cut it out, Eddy, please!' But the dog chased the Cadillac for nearly a mile. {377}

Eddy? thought Homer Wells. Didn't Nurse Angela name someone Eddy, once? He thought so; but it must have been someone who was adopted quickly-the way it was supposed to be done.

By the time he got to Kendall's Lobster Pound, Ray was home. He was making tea and warming his deeply lined, cracked hands on the pot-under his ragged nails was the mechanic's permanent, oil-black grime.

'Well, look who survived the drive-in!' Ray said. 'You better sit a while and have some tea with me.' Homer could see that Candy and Wally were out on the dock, huddled together. 'Lovebirds don't feel the cold, I guess,' Ray said to Homer. 'It don't look like they're finished saying good-bye.'

Homer was happy to have the tea and to sit with Ray; he liked Ray and he knew Ray liked him.

'What'd you learn today?' Ray asked him. Homer was going to say something about the drive-in rules but he guessed that wasn't what Ray meant.

'Nothing,' said Homer Wells.

'No, I'll bet you learned somethin',' Ray said. 'You're a learner. I know, because I was one. Once you see how somethin' is done, you know how to do it yourself; that's all I mean.' Ray had taught Homer oil changes and lubrications, plugs and points and engine timing, fuel-line maintenance and front-end alignment; he'd shown the boy how to tighten a clutch, and-to Ray's astonishment -Homer had remembered. He'd also shown him a. valve job and how to replace the universal. In one summer Homer Wells had learned more about mechanics than Wally knew. But it wasn't just Homer's manual dexterity that Ray was fond of; Ray respected loneliness, and an orphan, he imagined, had a fair share of that.

'Shoot,' said Ray, 'I'll bet there's nothin' you couldn't learn-nothin' your hands wouldn't remember, if your hands ever got to hold it, whatever it was.'

'Right,' said Homer Wells, smiling. He remembered the perfect balance in the set of dilators with the {378} Douglass points; how you could hold one steadily between your thumb and index finger just by resting the shaft against the pad of your middle finger. It would move only and exactly when and where you moved it. And how wonderfully precise it was, Homer thought; that the vaginal speculum comes in more than one size; that there was always a size that was just right. And how sensitive an adjustment could be accomplished by just a half turn of the little thumbscrew, how the duck-billed speculum could hold the lips of the vagina open exactly wide enough.

Homer Wells, twenty-one, breathing in the steam from the hot tea, sat waiting for his life to begin.

In the Cadillac with Wally, driving back to Ocean View-the rock-and-water prettiness of Heart's Haven giving way to the scruffier, more tangled land of Heart's Rock-Homer said, 'I was wondering-but don't tell me if you'd rather not talk about it-I was just wondering how it happened that Candy got pregnant. I mean, weren't you using anything?'

'Sure I was,' Wally said. 'I was using one of Herb Fowler's rubbers, but it had a hole in it.'!

'It had a hole in it?'

'Not a big one,' Wally said, 'but I could tell it had a hole-you know, it leaked.'

'Any hole is big enough,' Homer said.

'Sure is,' Wally said. 'The way he carries the things around with him, it probably got poked by something in his pocket.'

'I guess you don't use the rubbers Herb throws at you anymore,' said Homer Wells.

'That's right,' Wally said.

When Wally was asleep-as peacefully as a prince, as out-to-the-world as a king-Homer Wells slipped out of bed, found his pants, found the rubbers in the pocket, and took one to the bathroom where he filled it up with water from the cold water tap. The hole was tiny but {379} precise-a fine but uninterrupted needle of water streamed out of the end of the rubber. The hole was bigger than a pinprick but not nearly so large as a nail would make; maybe Herb Fowler used a thumbtack, or the point of a compass, thought Homer Wells.

It was a deliberate sort of hole, perfectly placed, dead center. The thought of Herb Fowler making the holes made Homer Wells shiver. He remembered the first fetus he'd seen, on his way back from the incinerator-how it appeared to have fallen from the sky. He recalled the extended arms of the murdered fetus from Three Mile Falls. And the bruise that was green-going-to-yellow on Grace Lynch's breast. Had Grace's journey to St. Cloud's originated with one of Herb Fowler's prophylactics?

In St. Cloud's he had seen anguish and the plainer forms of unhappiness-and depression, and destructiveness. He was familiar with mean-spiritedness and with injustice, too. But this is evil, isn't it? wondered Homer Wells. Have I seen evil before? He thought of the woman with the pony's penis in her mouth. What do you do when you recognize evil? he wondered.

He looked out Wally's window-but in the darkness, in his mind's eye, he saw the eroded, still unplanted hillside behind the hospital and the boys' division at St. Cloud's; he saw the thick but damaged, sound-absorbing forest beyond the river that carried away his grief for Fuzzy Stone. If he had known Mrs. Grogan's prayer, he would have tried it, but the prayer that Homer used to calm himself was the end of Chapter 43 of David Copperfield. There being twenty more chapters to go, these words were perhaps too uncertain for a prayer, and Homer spoke them to himself uncertainly-not as if he believed the words were true, but as if he were trying to force them to be true; by repeating and repeating the words he might make the words true for him, for Homer Wells:

I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go {380} by me. They are gone, and I resume the journey of my story.

But all that night he lay awake because the phantoms of those days were not gone. Like the tiny, terrible holes in the prophylactics, the phantoms of those days were not easy to detect-and their meaning was unknown-but they were there.

In the morning Wally left, halfheartedly, for the university in Orono. The next day, Candy left for Camden Academy. The day before the picking crew arrived at Ocean View, Homer Wells-the tallest and oldest boy at Cape Kenneth High School-attended the first class meeting of Senior Biology. His friend Debra Pettigrew had to lead him to the laboratory; Homer got lost en route and wandered into a class called Wood Shop.

The textbook for Senior Biology was B. A. Bensley's Practical Anatomy of the Rabbit; the text and illustrations were intimidating to the other students, but the book filled Homer Wells with longing. It was a shock for him to realize how much he missed Dr. Larch's wellworn copy of Gray's. Homer, at first glance, was critical of Bensley; whereas Gray's began with the skeleton, Bensley began with the tissues. But the teacher of the class was no fool; a cadaverous man was Mr. Hood, but he pleased Homer Wells by announcing that he did not intend to follow the text exactly-the class, like Gray's, would begin with the bones. Comforted by what, for him, was routine, Homer relished his first look at the ancient yellowed skeleton of a rabbit. The class was hushed; some students were repulsed. Wait till they get to the urogenital system, thought Homer Wells, his eyes skimming over the per^ct bones; but this thought shocked him, too. He realized he was looking forward to getting to the poor rabbit's urogenital system.