John Irving - The Cider House Rules

'You're filthy all over,' said Mr. Rose. 'Be quick about it.'

'Hey, you can be quick about it,' the man said to Mr. Rose. 'You want that butt out of there, you can fish it out yourself.'

It was Orange who spoke to the man.

'What business you in?' Orange asked him.

'Hey, what?' the man asked.

'What business you in, man?' Orange asked.

'Say you in the apple business, man,' Jack advised the man.

'Say what?' the man asked.

'Just say you in the apple business, man,' Orange said.

It was at that moment that Mr. Rose took Homer's arm and said to him, 'You got to see the view from the roof, my friend.' The tug at his elbow was firm but gentle. Mr. Rose very gracefully led Homer out of the mill room, then outside by the kitchen door.

'You know what business Mistuh Rose is in, man?' Homer heard Orange asking.

'He in the knife business, man,' he heard Jack say.

'You don't wanna go in the knife business with Mistuh Rose,' Homer heard Orange say.

'You just stay in the apple business, you do fine, man,' Jack said.

Homer was following Mr. Rose up the ladder to the roof when he heard the shower turn on; it was an inside shower-more private than the shower at York Farm. Except for their cigarettes, the men on the roof were hard to see, but Homer held Mr. Rose's hand and followed him along the plank on the rooftop until they found two good seats.

'You all know Homer,' Mr. Rose said to the men on the roof. There was a blur of greetings. The man called Hero {403} was up there, and the man called Branches; there was someone named Willy, and two or three people Homer didn't know, and the old cook whose name was Black Pan. The cook was the shape of a stew pot; it had required some effort for him to gain his perch on the roof.

Someone handed Homer a bottle of beer, but the bottle was warm and full of rum.

'It's stopped again,' Branches said, and everyone stared toward the sea.

The night-life lights of Cape Kenneth were so low along the horizon that some of the lights themselves were not visible-only the reflections from them, especially when the lights were cast out over the ocean-but the high Ferris wheel blazed brightly. It was holding still, loading new riders, letting off the old.

'Maybe it stop to breathe,' Branches said, and everyone laughed at that.

Someone suggested that it stopped to fart, and everyone laughed louder.

Then Willy said, 'When it gets too close to the ground, it has to stop, I think,' and everyone appeared to consider this seriously.

Then the Ferris wheel started again, and the men on the roof of the cider house released a reverential rnoan.

'There it go again!' Hero said.

'It like a star,' Black Pan, the old cook, said. 'It look real cool, but you get too close, it burn you-it hotter than aflame!'

'It's a Ferris wheel,' said Homer Wells.

'It a what?' Willy said.

'A what wheel?' Branches asked.

'A Ferris wheel,' said Homer Wells. 'That's the Cape Kenneth Carnival, and that's the Ferris wheel.' Mr. Rose nudged him in the ribs, but Homer didn't understand. No one spoke for a long time, and when Homer looked at Mr. Rose, Mr. Rose softly shook his head.

'I heard of somethin' like that,' Black Pan said. 'I think they had one in Charleston.' {404}

'It's stopped again,' Hero observed.

'It's letting off passengers- riders,' said Homer Wells. 'It's taking on new riders.'

'People ride that fuckin' thing?' Branches asked.

'Don't shit me, Homer,' Hero said.

Again, Homer felt the nudge in his ribs, and Mr. Rose said, mildly, 'You all so uneducated-Homer's havin' a little fun with you.'

When the bottle of rum passed from man to man, Mr. Rose just passed it along.

'Don't the name Homer mean nothin' to you?' Mr. Rose asked the men.

'I think I heard of it,' the cook Black Pan said.

'Homer was the world's first storyteller!' Mr. Rose announced. The nudge at Homer's ribs was back, and Mr. Rose said, 'Our Homer knows a good story, too.'

'Shit,' someone said after a while.

'What kind of wheel you call it, Homer?' Branches asked.

'A Ferris wheel,' said Homer Wells.

'Yeah!' someone said. Everyone laughed.

'A fuckin' Ferris wheel!' Hero said. 'That's pretty good.'

One of the men Homer didn't know rolled off the roof. Everyone waited until he was on the ground before they called down to him.

'You all right, asshole?' Black Pan asked.

'Yeah,' the man said, and everyone laughed.

When Mr. Rose heard the shower start up again, he knew that his bottle man had found the cigarette and was washing the cider off himself.

'Willy and Hero, you're bottlin' now,' said Mr. Rose.

'I bottled last time,' Hero said.

'Then you gettin' real good at it,' said Mr. Rose.

'I'll press for a while,' someone said.

'Jack and Orange are goin' good,' Mr. Rose said. 'We'll just let them go for a while.'

Homer sensed that he should leave the roof with Mr. {405} Rose. They helped each other with the ladder; on the ground Mr. Rose spoke very seriously to Homer.

'You got to understand,' Mr. Rose whispered. 'They don't want to know what that thing is. What good it do them to know?'

'Okay,' said Homer Wells, who stood a long while out of the range of the lights blazing in the mill room. Now that he was more familiar with their dialect, he could occasionally understand the voices from the roof.

'It's stopped again,' he heard Branches say.

'Yeah, it takin' on riders!' someone said, and everyone laughed.

'You know, maybe it's an army place,' Black Pan said.

'What army?' someone asked.

'We almost at war,' Black Pan said. I heard that.'

'Shit,' someone said.

'It's somethin' for the airplanes to see,' Black Pan said.

'Whose airplanes?' Hero asked.

'There it go again,' Branches said.

Homer Wells walked back through the orchards to the Worthington house; he was touched that Mrs. Worthington had left the light over the stairs on for him, and when he saw the light under her bedroom door, he said, quietly, 'Good night, Missus Worthington. I'm back.'

'Good night, Homer,' she said.

He looked out Wally's window for a while. There was no way, at that distance, that he could witness the reaction on the cider house roof when the Ferris wheel in Cape Kenneth was shut off for the night-when all the lights went out with a blink, what did the men on the roof have to say about that? he wondered.

Maybe they thought that the Ferris wheel came from another planet and, when all the lights went out, that it had returned there.

And wouldn't Fuzzy Stone have loved to see it? thought Homer Wells. And Curly Day, and young Copperfield! And it would have been fun to ride it with Melony-just once, to see what she would have said {406} about it. Dr. Larch wouldn't be impressed. Was anything a mystery to Dr. Larch?

In the morning, Mr. Rose chose to rest his magic hands between trees; he came up to Homer, who was working as a checker in the orchard called Frying Pan, counting the one-bushel crates before they were loaded on the flatbed trailer and giving every picker credit for each bushel picked.

I want you to show me that wheel,' Mr. Rose said, smiling.

'The Ferris wheel?' said Homer Wells.

'If you don't mind showin' me,' said Mr. Rose. 'There just can't be no talk about it.'

'Right,' Homer said. 'We better go soon, before it gets any colder and they close it for the season. I'll bet it's pretty cold, riding it now.'

'I don't know if I want to ride it until I see it,' said Mr. Rose.

'Sure,' said Homer.

Mrs. Worthington let him take the van, but when he picked up Mr. Rose at the cider house, everyone was curious.