The Lord's Work 25 page

It began to get very cold in the cider house; they gave her a wood-burning stove, which Melony vented through a window in the bunkroom; the stove kept the toilet from freezing. The morning the outdoor shower was frozen was the morning Melony decided to move on. She only briefly regretted not being able to stay and save more mice.

'If you're lookin' for another orchard,' the foreman warned her, 'you won't find any that's hirin' in the winter.'

'I'd like a city job for the winter,' Melony told him.

'What city?' the foreman asked. Melony shrugged. She had securely strapped up her small bundle of things in \'7b411\'7d Charley's belt; the sleeves of Mrs. Grogan's coat reached only halfway down her forearms, and the coat was an especially tight fit across the shoulders and the hips— even so, Melony managed to look comfortable in it. 'There's no real cities in Maine,' the foreman told her.

'It won't take much of a city to be a city for me,' Melony said. He watched her walk to the same part of the road where he'd called good-bye to her before. It was that time of year when the trees are bare and the sky looks like lead, and underfoot the ground feels more unyielding every day—yet it's too early for snow, or else there's a freak storm and the snow doesn't last. For some reason the foreman felt a strong desire to leave with Melony; he surprised himself by muttering out loud, 'I hope it snows soon.'

'What?' one of the apple-mart women said.

'So long!' the foreman called to Melony, but she didn't answer him.

'Good riddance,' said one of the women in the mart.

'The slut,' another one said.

'What makes her a slut?' the foreman asked sharply.

'Who you seen her sleepin' with?'

'She's just a tramp,' one of them said.

'At least she's interesting,' the foreman snapped. The women regarded him for a moment before one of them spoke up.

'Got a crush on her, do you?' she asked.

'I'll bet you wish you was that boyfriend she's lookin' for,' another woman said, which drew a teasing sort of laughter from all the mart women.

'It's not that!' the foreman snapped. 'I hope she never finds that boyfriend—for his sake!' the foreman said. 'And for hers,' he added.

The woman whose fat husband had tried to rape Melony turned away from this conversation. She opened the large, communal thermos on the table next to the cash register; but when she tried to pour herself some coffee, none came out. What came out instead was \'7b412\'7d poison oats and poison corn. If Melony had actually meant to poison any of them, she would have been more restrained in the proportions. It was clearly just a message, and the apple-mart women regarded it as silently as if they were trying to read bones.

'You see what I mean?' the foreman asked them. He picked up an apple from a display basket on the counter and took a healthy chomp; the apple had been left out in the cold so long that it was partially frozen, and so mealy in the foreman's mouth that he instantly spat it out.

It was very cold on the road to the coast, but the walking warmed Melony up; also, since there was no traffic, she had no choice about walking. When she reached the coastal highway, she didn't have to wait long for a ride. A pale but jolly boy driving a panel truck stopped for her.

'Yarmouth Paint and Shellac, at your service,' the boy said to Melony; he was a little younger than Homer Wells, and—in Melony's opinion—not nearly so worldlylooking. The truck reeked of wood-stain smells and of varnish and creosote. 'I'm a wood-treatment expert,' the boy said to her proudly.

At best, a salesman, Melony thought; more likely, a delivery boy. She smiled tightly, not showing her chipped teeth. The boy fidgeted, awaiting some form of greeting from her. I can make anyone nervous in less than a minute, Melony thought.

'Uh, where you goin'?' the boy asked her—the panel truck sloshing along.

The city,' Melony said.

'What city?' the boy said.

Now Melony allowed her lips to part with her smile— the worried boy now staring at the troubled history of her mouth.

'You tell me,' Melony said.

I gotta go to Bath,' the boy said nervously. Melony stared at him as if he'd said he had to have a bath.

'Bath,' she repeated.

'It's a city, sort of,' the wood-treatment expert told her. \'7b413\'7d

It was Clara's city! Dr. Larch or Homer Wells could have told Melony—old Clara had come to St. Cloud's from Bath! But Melony didn't know that, and wouldn't have cared; her relationship to Clara had been unpleasantly envious. Homer Wells knew Clara more intimately than he knew Melony. It might have interested Melony that Bath would put her much closer to Ocean View than she'd been at York Farm—that there might even be residents of Bath who would have heard of an Ocean View Orchards; there were certainly many Bath residents who could have directed her to Heart's Haven or to Heart's Rock.

'You wanna go to Bath?' the boy asked her cautiously.

Again Melony showed him her damaged teeth; she was displaying less of a smile than of the manner in which a dog might show its hackles. 'Right,' she said.

Wally came home for Thanksgiving; Candy had been home for several weekends in the early fall, but Homer had not known how to initiate seeing her without Wally. Wally was surprised that Homer and Candy hadn't seen each other; and, from Candy's embarrassment with Wally's surprise, Homer detected that she had been equally troubled about initiating a meeting with him. But the turkey had to be basted every fifteen minutes, the table had to be set, and Olive was too obviously enjoying having a full house again—there was no time to feel awkward.

Raymond Kendall had shared a Thanksgiving dinner with the Worthingtons before, but never without Senior's semi-presence; Ray went through a few minutes of struggling to be overly polite before he relaxed and talked shop with Olive.

'Dad acts like he's having a date,' Candy said to Olive in the kitchen.

'I'm flattered,' Olive said, squeezing Candy's arm and laughing. But that was the end of any further nonsense.

Homer volunteered to carve the turkey. He did such a \'7b414\'7d good job that Olive said, 'You should be a surgeon, Homer!'

Wally laughed; Candy looked at her plate, or at her hands in her lap, and Ray Kendall said, The boy's just good with his hands. If you've got good hands, once you do a thing your hands won't forget how.'

'That's like you, Ray,' Olive said, which moved the attention away from Homer's work with the knife; he carved every bit of meat off the bones as quickly as possible.

Wally talked about the war. He said he'd thought about dropping out of college to go to flying school. 'So if there is a war—if we get into it, I mean—then I'll already know how to fly.'

'You'll do no such thing,' Olive said to him.

'Why would you want to do such a thing?' Candy asked him. 'I think you're being selfish.'

'What do you mean, selfish?' Wally asked. 'A war is for your country, it's serving your country!'

'To you, it's an adventure,' Candy said. That's what's selfish about it.'

'You'll do no such thing, anyway,' Olive repeated.

'I was too young to go to the last war,' Ray said, 'and if there's another one, I'll be too old.'

'Lucky you!' Olive said.

'That's right,' Candy said.

Ray shrugged. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I wanted to go to the last one. I tried to lie about my age, but someone told on me.'

'Now you know better,'Olive said.

'I'm not so sure of that,' Ray said. 'If there's a new one, there'll be lots of new weapons—they're buildin' stuff you can't even imagine.'

'I try to imagine it,' Wally said. 'I imagine the war all the time.'

'Except the dying, Wally,' Olive Worthington said, carrying the turkey carcass out to the kitchen. 'I don't think you've imagined the dying.' \'7b415\'7d

'Right,' said Homer Wells, who imagined the dying all the time. Candy looked at him and smiled.

'You should have called me on the weekends, Homer,' she said.

'Yeah, why didn't you?' Wally asked him. Too busy with Debra Pettigrew, that's why.' Homer just shook his head.

'Too busy with the practical anatomy of the rabbit!' Olive called from the kitchen.

'The what?' Wally said.

But Olive was wrong. It had taken Homer only about three weeks of Senior Biology to realize that he knew more about the particular animal under scrutiny and its relation to human anatomy than did his cadaverous teacher, Mr. Hood.

It was, as Wilbur Larch could have guessed, the urogenital system that revealed Mr. Hood's deficiencies in comparison to the experience of young Dr. Wells. In discussing the three stages of specialization of the uterus, Mr. Hood became confused. The intrauterine life of the rabbit embryo is only thirty days; between five to eight young are born. In keeping with the primitive nature of the little animal, the rabbit has two complete uteri— the structure of the organ at this stage is called uterus duplex. The structure of the organ in the human female, which Homer Wells knew very well—wherein two uterine tubes open into a single uterine cavity—is called uterus simplex. The third stage of uterine structure falls between the two—a partially fused condition existing in some mammals (sheep, for example); it is called uterus bicornis.

Poor Mr. Hood, attempting to reveal the secrets of the uterus upon the chalky blackboard, confused his duplex with his bicornis; he called a sheep a rabbit (and vice versa). It was a smaller error than if he'd imagined the human female had two complete uteri and had spread this misinformation to the class, but it was an error; Homer Wells caught it. It was the first time he had been \'7b416\'7d put in a position of correcting an authority. 'An orphan is especially uncomfortable and insecure in such a position,' wrote Dr. Wilbur Larch.

'Excuse me, sir?'said Homer Wells.

'Yes, Homer?' said Mr. Hood. His gauntness, in a certain light, made him appear as exposed as the many rabbit cadavers lying open on the students' laboratory tables. He looked skinned, almost ready for labeling. A kind but weary patience was in his eyes; they were the man's only alert features.

'It's the other way around, sir,' said Homer Wells.

'Pardon me?' said Mr. Hood.

'The rabbit has two complete uteri, the rabbit is uterus duplex—not the sheep, sir,' Homer said. 'The sheep's uterus is partially fused together, it's almost one—the sheep is uterus bicornis.'

The class waited. Mr. Hood blinked; for a moment, he looked like a lizard regarding a fly, but he suddenly retreated. 'Isn't that what I said?' he asked, smiling.

'No,' the class murmured, 'you said it the other way around.'

'Well, it's my mistake, then,' Mr. Hood said almost cheerfully. 'I meant it just the way you said it, Homer,' he said.

'Maybe I misunderstood you, sir,' Homer said, but the class murmured, 'No, you got it right.'

The short boy named Bucky, with whom Homer had to share his rabbit cadaver, nudged Homer in the ribs. 'How come you know all about cunts?' he asked Homer.

'Search me,' said Homer Wells. He had learned that phrase from Debra Pettigrew. It was the one game they played. He would ask her something she couldn't answer. She would say 'Search me.' And Homer Wells, saying 'Okay,' would begin to search her. 'Not therel' Debra would cry, pushing his hand away, but laughing. Always laughing, but always pushing his hand away. There was no way Homer Wells would gain admittance to the uterus simplex of Debra Pettigrew. \'7b417\'7d

'Not unless I ask her to marry me,' he told Wally, when they were back together in W ally's bedroom, Thanksgiving night.

'I wouldn't go that far, old boy,' Wally said.

Homer didn't tell Wally about embarrassing Mr. Hood, or how the man seemed changed by the incident. If Mr. Hood had always been cadaverous, now there was an insomnia about his presence, too—as if he were not only dead but also working too hard; staying up late; boning up on his rabbit anatomy; trying to keep all the uteri straight. His tiredness made him slightly less cadaverous, but only because exhaustion is a life-sign; it is at least a form of being human. Mr. Hood began to look as if he were waiting for his retirement, hoping that he could get there.

Where have I seen that look before? wondered Homer Wells.

Nurse Angela or Nurse Edna, or even Mrs. Grogan, could have reminded him; they were all familiar with that look—that strained combination of exhaustion and expectation, that fierce contradiction between grim anxiety and childlike faith. For years that look had penetrated even the most innocent expressions of Wilbur Larch; lately, Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna, and even Mrs. Grogan, had recognized the look in their own expressions.

'What are we waiting for?' Nurse Edna asked Nurse Angela one morning. There was an aura of something pending, some form of inevitable change. These good women were as insulted by the now-famous Goodhall-Gingrich questionnaire as they felt sure Dr. Larch had been; Larch did seem unusually cheered by the remarks of the former Snowy Meadows; the board had thought Snowy's response was so praiseworthy that they'd sent it along for Dr. Larch to see.

To the question of being 'properly supervised,' Snowy said that: Dr. Larch and the nurses never let him; out of their sight. To the question regarding whether or not the \'7b418\'7d medical attention was 'adequate,' Snowy Meadows advised the board to 'just ask Fuzzy Stone.' In Snowy's opinion, Dr. Larch had breathed for Fuzzy. 'You never heard a worse set of lungs,' said Snowy Meadows, 'but old Larch just hooked the kid up to a real life-saver.' And to the question of whether or not the foster home was 'carefully and correctly chosen,' Snowy Meadows claimed that Dr. Larch was a genius at this delicate guesswork. 'How could the guy have known that I was going to fit right in with a furniture family? Well, I'm telling you, he did know,' Snowy Meadows (now Robert Marsh) wrote to the board. 'You know, private property, the world of personal possessions—that doesn't mean the world to everybody. But let me tell you,' Snowy Meadows said, 'furniture means the world to an orphan.'

'One of you must have dropped that boy on his head,' Wilbur Larch said to Nurse Edna and to Nurse Angela, although they could tell he was very pleased by Snowy's remarks.

But just to be fair, the board sent Larch Curly Day's slightly less enthusiastic response to the questionnaire. Roy Rinfret of Boothbay was seething with resentment. 'I was no more prepared to be adopted by druggists than was prepared to have my belly-cord cut,' wrote Roy 'Curly' Rinfret. 'The most beautiful couple in the world walked off with someone who didn't even need or want to be adopted, and I got nabbed by druggists!' Curly complained. 'You call it being supervised when little children are stumbling over dead bodies?' Curly Day asked the board. 'Imagine this: on the day I find a dead man in the grass, the couple of my dreams adopts someone else, Dr. Larch tells me that an orphanage is not a pet store, and shortly thereafter, two druggists hire me to work in their drugstore for free—and you call that being adopted!'

'Why, that ungrateful little snot!' said Nurse Angela. 'Why, Curly Day, aren't you ashamed?' Nurse Edna asked the indifferent air. \'7b419\'7d

'If that boy were here,' Nurse Angela said, 'I'd take him over my knee, I would!'

And why hasn't our Homer Wells filled out the questionnaire? the women wondered.

Speaking of 'ungrateful,' thought Wilbur Larch, although he held his tongue.

Nurse Angela did not hold hers. She wrote directly to Homer Wells, which would have irritated Dr. Larch if he'd known. Nurse Angela came right to the point. 'That questionnaire is the least you can do,' she wrote Homer. 'We all could use a little support. Just because you're having the time of your life (I suppose), don't you dare forget how to be of use—don't you forget where you belong. And if you happen to run into any young doctors or nurses who would be sympathetic to our situation, think you know that you'd better recommend us to them—and them to us. We're not getting any younger, you know.'

My dear Homer [wrote Dr. Larch, in the next day's mail], It's come to my attention that the board of trustees is attempting to communicate with several former residents of St. Cloud's in the form of a ridiculous questionnaire. Answer it as you see fit, but please do answer it. And you must be prepared for some other, more troubling correspondence from them. It was necessary for me to be frank with them regarding the health of the orphans. Although I saw no reason to tell them I had 'lost' Fuzzy Stone to a respiratory ailment —what good would that admission do Fuzzy? —I did tell the board about your heart. I felt that if anything ever happened to me, there should be someone who knew. I do apologize for not telling you about your condition. I am telling you now because, reconsidering the matter, I would never want you to hear about your heart from someone else first. Now, DON'I BE: ALARMED! I would not even describe your heart as a condition, the condition is so slight; \'7b420\'7d you had a fairly substantial heart murmur as a small child, but this had almost entirely disappeared when I last checked you—in your sleep; you wouldn't remember—and I have delayed even mentioning your heart to you for fear of worrying you needlessly. (Such worrying might aggravate the condition.) You have (or had) a pulmonary valve stenosis, but PLEASE DON'I WORRY! It is nothing, or next to nothing. If you're interested in more details, I can provide them. For now, I just didn't want you being upset by some fool thing you might hear from that fool board of trustees. Aside from avoiding any situation of extreme stress or extreme exertion, I want you to know that you can almost certainly lead a normal life.

A normal life? thought Homer Wells. I am a Bedouin with a heart condition and Dr. Larch is telling me I can lead a normal life? I am in love with my best—and only—friend's girlfriend, but is that what Larch would call 'extreme stress'? And what was Melony to me if not 'extreme exertion'?

Whenever Homer Wells thought of Melony (which was not often), he missed her; then he was angry at himself. Why should I miss her? he wondered. He tried not to think about St. Cloud's; the longer he stayed away, the more extreme life there appeared to him—yet when he thought of it, he missed it, too. And Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna and Mrs. Grogan and Dr. Larch, he missed them all. He was angry at himself for that, too; there were absolutely no signals from his heart to tell him that the life at St. Cloud's was the life he wanted.

He liked the life at Ocean View. He wanted Candy, and some life with her. When she went back to Camden, he tried not to think about her; and since he could not think of Wally without thinking of Candy, he was relieved when Wally went back to Orono—although he had missed Wally all that fall.

'When an orphan is depressed,' wrote Wilbur Larch, \'7b421\'7d 'he is attracted to telling lies. A lie is at least a vigorous enterprise, it keeps you on your toes by making you suddenly responsible for what happens because of it. You must be alert to lie, and stay alert to keep your lie a secret. Orphans are not the masters of their fates; they are the last to believe you if you tell them that other people are also not in charge of theirs.

'When you lie, it makes you feel in charge of your life. Telling lies is very seductive to orphans. I know,' Dr. Larch wrote. 'I know because I tell them, too. I love to lie. When you lie, you feel as if you have cheated fate—your own, and everybody else's.'

And so Homer Wells answered the questionnaire; he sang a hymn of praise to St. Cloud's. He mentioned the 'restoration' of the abandoned buildings of St. Cloud's as one of the many attempts made 'to integrate the daily life of the orphanage with the life of the surrounding community.' He also lied to Nurse Angela, but it was just a little lie— one of those that are intended to make other people feel better. He wrote to her that he had lost the original questionnaire—which was the only reason he had been so tardy in returning it. Perhaps the board would be kind enough to send him another? (When he received the second questionnaire from the board, he would know it was time to send the one he had so arduously filled out—that way he would appear to have filled it out spontaneously, off the top of his head.)

He wrote with feigned calmness to Dr. Larch. He would appreciate further details regarding his pulmonary valve stenosis. Did Dr. Larch think it necessary, for example, for Homer to have monthly checkups? (Dr. Larch would think it unnecessary, of course.) And were there signs of trouble that Homer himself might detect; were there ways that he could listen for his perhapsreturning murmur? (Calm yourself, Dr. Larch would advise; that was the best thing—staying calm.)

In an effort to calm himself, Homer tacked the extra questionnaire—which he did not fill out—to the wall \'7b422\'7d of Wally's room, right by the light switch, so that the questions regarding life at St. Cloud's occupied a position of ignored authority quite similar to the page of rules that were yearly tacked up in the cider house. As Homer came and went, he regarded those questions he had answered with such able lies—for example, it was quite a kick for him to contemplate 'any possible improvements in the methods and management of St. Cloud's' each time he entered and left Wally's room.

At night, now, Homer's insomnia kept time to a new music; the winter branches of the picked apple trees rattling against each other in the early December wind made a brittle click-clack sound. Lying in his bed—a moonlight the color of bone starkly outlining his hands folded on his chest—Homer Wells thought the trees might be trying to shake the snow off their branches, in advance of the snow itself.

Perhaps the trees knew that a war was coming, too, but Olive Worthington didn't think about it. She had heard the orchard's winter rattle for many years; she had seen the winter branches bare, then lacy with snow, and then bare again. The coastal winds gave the brittle orchard such a shaking that the clashing trees resembled frozen soldiers in all the postures of saber-rattling, but Olive had heard so many years of this season that she never knew a war was coming. If the trees seemed especially naked to her that December, she thought it was because she faced her first winter without Senior.

'Grown-ups don't look for signs in the familiar,' noted Dr. Wilbur Larch in A Brief History of St. Cloud's, 'but an orphan is always looking for signs.'

Homer Wells, at Wally's window, searched the skeletal orchard for the future—his own, mainly, but Candy's too, and Wally's. Dr. Larch's future was certainly out there, in those winter branches—even Melony's future. And what future would there be for the Lord's work? wondered Homer Wells. \'7b423\'7d

*

The war that was about to be did not announce itself in signs at St. Cloud's; both the familiar and the unfamiliar were muted there by ritual and by custom. A pregnancy terminated in a birth or in an abortion; an orphan was adopted or was waiting to be adopted. When there was a dry and snowless cold, the loose sawdust irritated the eyes and the noses and the throats of St. Cloud's; only briefly, when the snow lay newly fallen, was the sawdust gone from the air. When there was a thaw, the snow melted down and the matted sawdust srnelled like wet fur; when there was a freeze, the sawdust reappeared —dry again, somehow on top of the old snow—and again the eyes itched, the noses ran, and the throats could never quite clear themselves of it.

'Let us be happy for Smoky Fields,' Dr. Larch announced in the boys' division. 'Smoky Fields has found a family. Good night, Smoky.'

'Good night, Thmoky!' said David Copperfield.

'G'night!' young Steerforth cried.

Good night, you little food hoarder, Nurse Angela thought. Whoever took him, she knew, would soon learn to lock the refrigerator.

In the December morning, at the window where Melony once allowed the world to pass both with and without comment, Mary Agnes Cork watched the women walking uphill from the train station. They don't look pregnant, Mary Agnes thought.

On the bleak hill where Wally Worthington once imagined apple trees, young Copperfield attempted to steer a cardboard carton through the first, wet snow. The carton had once contained four hundred sterile vulval pads; Copperfield knew this because he had unpacked the carton—and he had placed young Steerforth in the carton, at the bottom of the hill. Near the top, he was beginning to realize his mistake. Not only had dragging Steerforth uphill been difficult, but also the boy's weight—in addition to the wetness of the snow—had turned the bottom of the carton soggy. Copperfield won-\'7b424\'7d dered if his make-do sled would even slide—if he ever managed to get the mess to the top.

'Good night, Smoky!' Steerforth was singing.

'Thut up, thupid,' David Copperfield said.

Dr. Larch was very tired. He was resting in the dispensary. The gray, winter light turned the white walls gray and for a moment Larch wondered what time of day it was—and what time of year. From now on, he was thinking, let everything I do be for a reason. Let me make no wasted moves.

In his mind's eye he saw the correct angle at which the vaginal speculum allowed him a perfect view of the cervix. Whose cervix? he wondered. Even in his ether sleep the thumb and index finger of his right hand tightened the screw that held the jaws of the speculum in place, and he saw the astonishing blondness of the little clump of pubic hair caught in the hairs of his own wrist. It was so blond he had nearly missed seeing it against his own pale skin. When he shook his wrist, the little clump was so light that it floated in the air. In his ether swoon his left hand reached for it, just missing it. Oh yes—her cervix, thought Wilbur Larch. What was her name?

'She has a toy name,' Larch said aloud. 'Candy!' he remembered. Then he laughed. Nurse Edna, passing the dispensary, held her breath and listened to the laughter. But even when she didn't breathe, the fumes made her old eyes water. That and the sawdust. That and the orphans—some of them made her eyes water, too.

She opened the door at the hospital entrance to let some fresh air into the hall. On the hill she watched a cardboard carton make an unsteady descent; she knew that sterile vulval pads had been in the carton, but she wasn't sure what was in the carton now. Something heavy, because the carton's descent was clumsy and irregular. At times it picked up speed, sliding almost smoothly, but always some rock or bare patch in the slushy snow would jar it off-course and slow it down. The first small body to roll out of the carton and make its \'7b425\'7d way downhill was Steerforth's; she recognized his overlarge mittens and the ski hat that always covered his eyes. For a while he tumbled almost as fast as the carton, but a large patch of bare, frozen ground finally stopped him. Nurse Edna watched him climb back uphill for one of his mittens.

The second, larger body to be propelled from the carton was obviously David Copperfield's; he rolled free with a large, soggy piece of the carton in both his; hands. The carton appeared to disintegrate in flight.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 586