John Irving - The Cider House Rules

Fortunately, for Melony, the picking crew at York Farm included two women and a child; Melony felt safe to stay in the cider house. One of the women was a wiiFe and the other woman was the first woman's mother and the cook; the wife picked with the crew, while the old lady looked after the food and the child-who was silent to the point of nonexistence. There was only one shower, and it was outdoors-installed behind the cider house, on a cinder-block platform, under a former grape arbor whose trellises were rotted by the weather. The women showered first, every evening, and they permitted no peeking. The York Farm crew boss was a mild man-it was his wife who came along-and he raised no objections to Melony's sharing the cider house with his crew.

His name was Rather; it was a nickname, stemming from the man's laconic habit of remarking during each activity that he'd rather be doing something else. His {390} authority seemed less certain, or at least less electrical, than the authority commanded by Mr. Rose; no one called him Mister Rather. He was a steady but not an exceptionally fast picker, yet he always accounted for over a hundred bushels a day; it took Melony just one day to observe that his fellow workers paid Rather a commission. They gave him one bushel for every twenty bushels they picked.

'After all,' Rather explained to Melony, 'I get them the job.' He was fond of saying that his commission, under the circumstances, was 'rather small,' but Rather never suggested that Melony owed him anything. 'After all, I didn't get you your job!' he told her cheerfully.

By her third day in the field, she was managing eighty bushels; she also assisted as a bottler with the first cider press. Yet Melony was disappointed; she'd found the time to ask if anyone had heard of Ocean View, and no one had.

Perhaps because he viewed everything with slightly less cynicism than Melony brought to each of her experiences, Homer Wells needed a few days to notice the commission Mr. Rose exacted from his crew. He was the fastest picker among them, without ever appearing to rush-and he never dropped fruit; he never bruised the apples by bumping his canvas picking bucket against the ladder rungs. Mr. Rose could have managed a hundred and ten bushels a day on his own, but-even with his speed- Homer realized that his regular hundred and fifty or hundred and sixty bushels a day were very high. He took as his commission only one bushel out of every forty, but he had a crew of fifteen and no one picked fewer than eighty bushels a day. Mr. Rose would pick a very fast half dozen bushels, then he'd just rest for a while, or else he'd supervise the picking technique of his crew.

'A little slower, George,'he'd say. 'You bruise that fruit, what's it gonna be good for?'

'Just cider,' George would say.

'That's right,' Mr. Rose would say. 'Cider apples is only a nickel a bushel.' {391}

'Okay,' George would say.

'Sure,'Mr. Rose wouldsay, 'everything gonna be okay.' The third day it rained and no one picked; both apples and pickers slip in the rain, and the fruit is more sensitive to bruising.

Homer went to watch Meany Hyde and Mr. Rose conduct the first cider press, which they directed out of range of the splatter. They put two men on the press, and two bottling, and they shifted fresh men into the rotation almost every hour. Meany watched only one thing: whether the racks were stacked crookedly or whether they were right. When the press boards are stacked crookedly, you can lose the press-three bushels of apples in one rness, eight or ten gallons of cider and the pomace flying everywhere. The men at the press won? rubber aprons; the bottlers wore rubber boots. The whine of the grinder reminded Homer Wells of the sounds he had only imagined at St. Cloud's-the saw-mill blades that were ear-splitting in his dreams, and in his insomnia. The pump sucked, the spout disgorged a pulp of seeds and skin and mashed apples, and even worms (if there were worms). It looked like what Nurse Angela calmly called upchuck. From the big tub under the press, the cider whirred through a rotary screen, which strained it into the thousand-gallon vat where, only recently, Grace Lynch had exposed herself to Homer.

In eight hours of no nonsense, they had a thousand gallons. The conveyor tracks rattled the jugs; along, straight into cold storage. A man named Branches was assigned to hose out the vat and rinse off the rotary screen; his name stemmed from his dexterity in the big trees-and his scorn for using a ladder. A man named Hero washed the press cloths; Meany Hyde told Homer that the man had been a kind of hero, once. That's all heard. He's been comin' here for years, but he was a hero. Just once,' Meany added, as if there might be more shame attached to the rarity of the man's heroism than there was glory to be sung for his moment in the sun.

'I'll bet you was bored,' Mr. Rose said to Homer, who {392} lied-who said it had been interesting; eight hours of hanging around a cider mill are several hours in excess of interesting. 'You got to come at night to get the real feel of it,' Mr. Rose confided. This was just a rainy-day press. When you pick all day and press all night, then you get the feel of it.' He winked at Homer, assuming he'd managed to make some secret life instantly clear; then he handed Homer a cup of cider. Homer had been sipping cider all day, but the cup was offered solemnly-some pledge about pressing cider at night was being made on the spot-and so Homer took the cup and drank. His eyes watered instantly; the cider was so strongly laced with rum that Homer felt his face flush and his stomach glow. Without further acknowledgment, Mr. Rose took back the cup and offered the remaining swallows to the man called Branches, who bolted it down without needing to make the slightest adjustment on the spray nozzle of his hose.

When Homer Wells was loading some cider jugs into the van, he saw the cup make its way between Meany Hyde and the man called Hero-all of it under the calm supervision of Mr. Rose, who had not revealed the source of the rum to anyone. The phrase 'a gift for concealment' occurred to Homer Wells in regard to Mr. Rose; Homer had no idea where such a phrase had come from, unless it was Charles Dickens or Charlotte Bronte-he doubted he had encountered it in Gray's Anatomy or in Bensley's Practical Anatomy of the Rabbit.

There were no movements wasted in what movement there was to be seen by Mr. Rose-a quality that Homer Wells had formerly associated only with Dr. Larch; surely Dr. Larch had other, quite different qualities, as did Mr. Rose.

Back at the apple mart, the harvest appeared at a momentary standstill, held up by the rain, which Big Dot Taft and the mart women watched sourly from their assembly-line positions along the conveyor tracks in the packing line.

No one seemed very excited by the cider Homer {393} brought. It was very bland, as the first cider usually is, and too watery-composed, typically, of early Macs and Gravensteins. You don't get a good cider until October, Meany Hyde had told Homer, and Mr. Rose had confirmed this with a solemn nod. A good cider needs some of those last-picked apples-Golden Delicious and Winter Banana, and the Baldwins or Russets, too.

'Cider's got no smoke before October,' said Big Dot Taft, inhaling her cigarette listlessly.

Homer Wells, listening to Big Dot Taft, felt like her voice-dulled. Wally was away, Candy was away, and the anatomy of a rabbit was, after Clara, no challenge; the migrants, whom he'd so eagerly anticipated, were just plain hard workers; life was just a job. He had grown up without noticing when? Was there nothing remarkable in the transition?

They had four days of good picking weather at Ocean View before Meany Hyde said there would be a night press and Mr. Rose again invited Homer to come to the cider house and 'get the feel of it.' Homer had a quiet dinner with Mrs. Worthington and only after he'd helped her wash the dishes did he say he thought he'd go to the cider house and see if he could help with the pressing; he knew they would have been hard at work for two or three hours.