The Lord's Work 27 page

Melony put her big hands heavily on Mary Agnes's shoulders; Mary Agnes felt the weight pressing her into the floor. 'What are you talking about?' Melony asked.

'I saw an old car, but it had that apple on it,' Mary Agnes said. 'I thought they was at the movie, those pretty people—and Homer, too. And when I saw you, I thought he would be here for sure.' \'7b440\'7d

'Where was the car?' Melony asked, her strong thumbs bearing down on both of Mary Agnes's collarbones. 'Show me the car!'

'Is something wrong?' Ted Callahan asked.

'Mind your own business,' Melony said.

But the van was gone. In the damp cold, on the slushy sidewalk, staring at the empty curbstone, Melony said, 'Are you sure it was that apple? It had a double W, and it said Ocean View.'

'That's it,' Mary Agnes said. 'It just wasn't the same car, it was an old van, but I'd know that apple anywhere. You don't forget a thing like that.'

'Oh, shut up,' Melony said tiredly. She stood on the curb, her hands on her hips, her nostrils flared; she was trying to pick up a scent, the way a dog guesses in the air for the history of intrusions upon its territory.

'What is it?' Lorna asked Melony. 'Was your fella here with his rich cunt?'

Ted and Patty Callahan were anxious to take Mary Agnes home, but Melony stopped them as they were leaving. She reached into her tight pocket and produced the horn-rimmed barrette that Mary Agnes had stolen from Candy, which Melony had taken for herself. Melony gave the barrette to Mary Agnes.

'Keep it,' Melony said. 'You took it, it's yours.'

Mary Agnes clutched the barrette as if it were a medal for bravery, for valorous conduct in the only arena that Melony respected.

'I hope I see ya!' Mary Agnes called after Melony, who was stalking away—the escaping Homer Wells might be around the next corner.

'What color was the van?' Melony called.

'Green!' said Mary Agnes. 'I hope I see ya!' she repeated.

'You ever hear of an Ocean View?' Melony yelled back at the Callahans; they hadn't. What are apples to antiques dealers?

'Can I see ya sometime?' Mary Agnes asked Melony. \'7b441\'7d

'I'm at the shipyards,' Melony told the girl. 'If you ever hear of an Ocean View, you can see me.'

'You don't know it was him,' Lorna said to Melony later. They were drinking beer. Melony wasn't talking. 'And you don't know if the rich cunt is still with him.'

They stood on the bank of the foggy Kennebec, near the boardinghouse where Lorna lived; when they'd finish a beer, they'd throw the bottle into the river. Melony was good at throwing things into rivers. She kept her face turned up; she was still smelling the wind—as if even that wisp of Candy's pubic hair could not escape her powers of detection.

Homer Wells was also making a deposit in the water. Ploink! said the snails he threw off Ray Kendall's dock; the sea made just the smallest sound in swallowing snails. Ploink! Ploink!

Candy and Homer sat with their backs against opposite corner posts at the end of the dock. If they'd both stretched out their legs to each other, the soles of their feet could have touched, but Candy sat with her knees slightly bent—in a position familiar to Homer Wells from his many views of women in stirrups.

'Is it okay?' Candy asked quietly.

'Is what okay?' he asked.

Tour heart,' she whispered.

How could he tell? 'I guess so,' he said.

'It'll be okay,' she said.

'What will be okay?' asked Homer Wells.

'Everything,' Candy said hurriedly.

'Everything,' repeated Homer Wells. 'Me loving you —that's okay. And you loving me, and Wally—that's okay, too? Right,' he said.

'You have to wait and see,' Candy said. 'For everything —you have to wait and see.'

'Right.'

'I don't know what to do, either,' said Candy helplessly.

'We have to do the right thing,' Homer Wells said. Wally would want to do the right thing, and Dr. Larch \'7b442\'7d was doing what he thought was the right thing, too. If you could be patient enough to wait and see, the right thing must present itself—mustn't it? What else does an orphan do, anyway, but wait and see?

'I can be patient,' said Homer Wells.

Melony could be patient, too. And Ray Kendall, at his window above his dock—he could be patient, too. A mechanic is also patient; a mechanic has to wait for something to break before he can fix it. Ray stared at the distance between his daughter's feet and the feet of Homer Wells; it was not much of a distance, and he had observed his daughter on his dock many times in Wally's arms, and, before that, when Candy and Wally had also sat on that dock with their feet not touching.

They were three good kids, Ray was thinking. But he was a mechanic; he knew better than to interfere. When it breaks, then he would fix it; he felt sorry for them all.

'I can drive you back to school tomorrow,' Homer said.

'My dad can drive me back,' Candy said. 'I think he likes to.'

Olive Worthington looked at the clock on her night table and turned out her reading lamp; Homer never stayed out this late with Debra Pettigrew, she was thinking. Olive had no trouble imagining Candy's attraction to Homer Wells; Olive had the greatest respect for Homer's diligence. She had seen him be a better student —and of the rabbit, of all things!—than Wally had ever been, and she knew he was a reliable and friendly companion, too. Olive fumed to herself. She felt that typical contradiction a parent so often feels: completely on her son's side—she even wanted to warn him, to help his cause—but at the same time Wally could stand to be taught a lesson. Just maybe not this lesson, Olive thought.

'Well, thank goodness, they are three nice people!' she said aloud, her own voice in the empty house surprising her and thoroughly waking her up. Some hot chocolate \'7b443\'7d would be soothing, she thought; and when Homer comes home, he can have some with me.

But in the kitchen Olive was struck by how the fog, shot through with a cloudy moonlight, made the raft in the swimming pool look quite ghostly. The raft was poised at the side of the pool, half in the water and half out, like a very gray and shadowy photograph of itself. The image disturbed her, and Olive decided she'd had enough of that raft. She put on a pair of boots and a long winter coat over her nightgown. It bothered her that the outdoor patio light was not working; only the underwater lights would turn on, and she was surprised to see that the water in the pool had finally frozen. That was the reason for the raft's arrested position. It was trapped as rigidly as a statue, like a ship seized in an ice floe. Being careful to hold tight to the pool curb, she kicked tentatively at the ice with the heel of her boot, but when she tugged the raft, it would not come free. If I walk out there, I'll fall right through, she thought.

That was when Homer came home. She heard the van in the driveway and she called to him.

'What do you want done with it?' Homer asked Olive about the raft.

'Just get it out,' Olive said to him.

'And then what?' he asked.

'Throw it away,' she said. 'Meanwhile, I'll make you some hot chocolate.'

Homer struggled with the raft. The ice, which would not support all his weight, was hard enough to have a firm grip on the raft. Very cleverly, he eased himself onto the raft, hoping it still had enough air in it so that it wouldn't sink once he broke the bond with the ice. He rocked back and forth on his knees on the raft until he could feel the ice breaking. Then he rocked his way through more of the ice and climbed up on the pool curb and pulled the raft out of the pool after him. Ice still clung to it; it was so heavy, he had to drag it. When he got to the trash barrels, he needed to deflate the raft in \'7b444\'7d order to stuff it in a barrel. The nozzle was rusted shut, and even by jumping with both feet, he couldn't break the tough canvas hide.

He went into the garden shed and found a pair of hedge shears; with the thinner blade, he stabbed a gash in the raft and snipped upward—the stale, rubbery air blasting into his face. It was moist and fetid, and when he tore the hole wider, the smell washed over him— strangely warm in the cold night air, and strangely foul. It was not only the smell of someone's old sneakers left out in the rain; there was also something putrid about it and he couldn't help viewing the slashed object as he might have viewed a ripped intestine. He stuffed the raft into a trash barrel, but when he went into the house for his hot-chocolate reward, the smell remained on his hands even after he had washed them. He stuck his nose into the hollow in the palm of his hand,-the smell was still there. Then he recognized the smell: it was what was left on his hands after he removed the rubber gloves.

'How's Candy?' Olive asked.

'Fine,' said Homer Wells.

They sipped their hot chocolate—like mother and son, both of them were thinking; and, at the same time, not like mother and son, they both thought.

'And how are you?' Olive asked him, after a while.

'Just fine,' said Homer Wells, but what he thought was: I'm going to wait and see.

Wilbur Larch, inhaling and seeing the stars race across the ceiling of the dispensary, knew what a luxury it was; to be able to wait and see. Even if I last, he thought, might get caught; an abortionist believes in odds. He had been in the business too long. What are the odds that someone will blow the whistle before I'm through? the Old man wondered.

Only yesterday he had made a new enemy—a woman in her eighth month who said it was only her fourth. He had to refuse her. When the women were hysterical, he \'7b445\'7d usually could wait them out; if they required firmness, he gave them Nurse Angela; Nurse Edna was better at handholding. In time, they calmed down. If, in his opinion, a woman was simply too late—if he felt he had to refuse to perform the abortion—he usually could convince the woman she would be safe at St. Cloud's; that he would deliver the baby and find it a home, and that this was preferable to the risk involved in a late abortion.

But not this woman. There had been no hysterics. The peacefuiness of a long-standing hatred made the woman almost serene.

'So that's it—you won't do it,' she said.

'I'm sorry,' Dr. Larch said.

'How much do you want?' the woman asked him. 'I can get it.'

'Whatever you can afford to donate to the orpihanage would be appreciated,' Larch said. If you can't afford anything, then everything is free. An abortion is free, delivery is free. A donation is appreciated. If you have nowhere to go, you're welcome to stay here. You don't have long to wait.'

'Just tell me what I have to do,' the woman said. 'Do fuck you? Okay, I'll fuck you.'

'I want you to have this baby and let me find it a home,' Wilbur Larch said. 'That's all I want you to do.'

But the woman had stared right through him. She struggled out of the overstuffed chair in Nurse Angela's office. She regarded the paperweight on Larch's desk; it was a weighted vaginal speculum, but it held down a lot of paper and most of the would-be foster families didn't know what it was. The woman who wanted the late abortion clearly knew what it was; she stared at it as if the sight of it gave her cramps. Then she looked out the window., where (Dr. Larch imagined) she intended to hurl the paperweight.

She picked up the weighted speculum and pointed the jaw of the thing at Larch, as if it were a gun. \'7b446\'7d

'You'll be sorry,' the woman said.

In his ether haze, Wilbur Larch saw the woman point the speculum at him again. How will I be sorry? he wondered.

'I'm sorry,' he said aloud. Nurse Edna, passing in the hall—ever passing—thought, You're forgiven; I forgive you.

It was Sunday, and overcast—as usual. The same Fred Astaire movie that was entertaining the residents of Bath was playing in Orono, and the students at the University of Maine in 194-were not yet so cynical that they failed to enjoy it. Wally went to the movie with some of his friends. During the afternoon matinee, they didn't interrupt the show with the news that interrupted the rest of the world. They allowed Fred Astaire to dance on, and on, and the moviegoers heard the news after the show, when they stepped out of the comforting dark of the theater into the late-afternoon daylight of downtown Orono.

Candy was returning to Camden with her father. Raymond Kendall was especially proud of the radio reception he had engineered for his Chevrolet; it was much clearer reception than was possible, at the time, in a standard car radio, and Ray had made the whiplash antenna himself. Candy and her father heard the news as soon as anyone in Maine heard it, and they heard it loud and clear.

Olive always had the radio on, and so she was one of those people who needed to hear things several times before she really heard them at all. She was baking an apple pie, and simmering applesauce, and only the unusual urgency in the announcer's voice caused her to pay attention to the radio at all.

Homer Wells was in Wally's room, reading David Copperfield and thinking about Heaven—'…that sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I might yet love her with a love unknown on earth, and tell her what \'7b447\'7d the strife had been within me when I loved her here.' think I would prefer to love Candy here, 'on earth,' Homer Wells was thinking—when Olive interrupted him.

'Homer!' Olive called upstairs. 'Where is Pearl Harbor?'

He was the wrong person to ask; Homer Wells had seen the whole world only once, and briefly—and flat against the blackboard. He'd had difficulty locating South Carolina; not only did he not know where Pearl Harbor was, he also didn't know what it was.

'I don't know!' he called downstairs.

'Well, the Japanese have just bombed it!' Olive called to him.

'You mean, with planes?' asked Homer Wells. 'From the sky?'

'Of course from the sky!' Olive shouted. 'You better come listen to this.'

'Where is Pearl Harbor?' Candy asked her father.

'Ssshh!' said Raymond Kendall. 'If we just listen, maybe they'll say.'

'How could they get away with an attack?' Candy asked.

'Because someone wasn't doing his job,' Ray said.

The first reports were garbled. There was mention of California falling under attack, or even being invaded. Many listeners were confused from the beginning; they thought Pearl Harbor was in California.

'Where is Hawaii?' Mrs. Grogan asked. They were having tea and cookies and listening to the radio, for music, when they'd heard the news.

'Hawaii is in the Pacific,' said Wilbur Larch.

'Oh, that's very far away,' Nurse Edna said.

'Not far enough away,' Dr. Larch said.

'There's going to be another war, isn't there?' Nurse Angela asked.

'I guess it's already started,' said Wilbur Larch, while Wally—to whom this war would mean the most— \'7b448\'7d watched Fred Astaire; Fred just kept dancing and dancing, and Wally thought he could go on watching such a display of grace for hours.

Melony and Lorna were listening to the radio in the parlor of the boardinghouse where Lorna lived. It was a women-only boardinghouse; the women were either quite old or, like Lorna, only recently separated from their husbands. On this Sunday afternoon, most of the women listening to the radio were old.

'We should just bomb Japan,' Melony said. 'No messing around—just blow up the whole country.'

'You know how come Japs got squinty eyes?' Lorna asked. Melony, and all the old women, listened intently. 'Because they masturbate all the time—both the men and the women. They just do it all the time.'

There was either a polite or a stunned silence, or both. In Melony's case, her silence was polite.

'Is this a joke?' she asked her friend respectfully.

'Of course it's a joke!' Lorna cried.

'I don't get it, I guess,' Melony admitted.

'How come Japs got squinty eyes?' Lorna asked. 'Because they masturbate all the time.' She paused.

'That's what I thought you said,' Melony said.

'Because they shut their eyes every time they come!' Lorna said. 'Their eyes get tired from all that opening and closing. That's why they can't open their eyes all the way! Get it?' Lorna asked triumphantly.

Still self-conscious about her teeth, Melony managed a tight-lipped smile. Anyone seeing the old women in the boardinghouse parlor would not have known exactly what filled them with fear and trembling: the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor, or Lorna and Melony.

And young Wally Worthington, who was so itchy to be a hero, danced out on the streets of Orono, where he heard the news. President Roosevelt would call it a 'day of infamy,' but that day meant more than infamy to Wally, whose noble and adventurous heart longed to fly a B-24 Liberator: a heavy bomber, four engines, used for \'7b449\'7d bombing bridges, oil refineries, fuel depots, railroad tracks, and so forth. Somewhere, on that 'day of infamy,' there was a B-24 Liberator bomber waiting for young Wally Worthington to learn how to fly it.

People in Heart's Haven and in Heart's Rock always said that Wally had everything: money, looks, goodness, charm, the girl of his dreams—but he had courage, too, and he had in abundance youth's most dangerous qualities: optimism and restlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.

Wally enlisted in the Army Air Corps before Christmas, but they allowed him to spend Christmas at home. It would take the Army Air Corps more than a year to teach Wally the grim arts of aerial warfare.

'By that time,' he told Olive and Candy in the kitchen at Ocean View, 'all the fighting will probably be over. That would be just my luck.'

'That would be lucky,' Olive said. Candy nodded her head.

'Right!' said Homer Wells, from the other room. He was still thinking about being excused from his physical; Dr. Larch's account of Homer's heart history had sufficed. Physical examinations were given only to people who were Class I. Homer Wells was Class IV. According to his family physician, Homer had congenital pulmonic stenosis; Homer's 'family physician' was Dr. Larch, whose letter to the local medical advisory board had been accepted as evidence enough for Homer's deferment— Larch was also a member of the local board.

'I asked her to marry me, but she wouldn't,' Wally told Homer in their shared bedroom. 'She said she'd wait for me, but she wouldn't marry rne. She said she'd be my wife, but not my widow.'

'Is that what you call waiting and seeing?' Homer asked Candy the next day.

'Yes,' Candy said. 'For years I've expected to be married \'7b450\'7d to Wally. You came along second. I have to wait and see about you. And now conies the war. I have to wait and see about the war, too.'

'But you made him a promise,' said Homer Wells.

'Yes,' Candy said. 'Isn't a promise like waiting and seeing? Did you ever make a promise, and mean it—and break it?' Homer Wells's reaction was an involuntary cringe, as sudden and uncontrollable as if Candy had called him 'Sunshine.'

During Christmas dinner, Raymond Kendall, trying to relieve the silence, said, 'I would have chosen submarines.'

'You'd end up feeding lobsters,' Wally said.

'That's okay,' said Ray. They been feeding me.'

'You got a better chance in a plane,' Wally said.

'Yes, a chance,' Candy said scornfully. 'Why would you want to be anywhere where all you get is a chance?'

'Good question,' Olive said crossly. She let the silver serving fork fall to the meat platter with such force that the goose appeared to flinch.

'A chance is enough,' said Homer Wells, who did not immediately recognize the tone in his own voice. 'A chance is all we get, right? In the air, or underwater, or right here, from the minute we're born.' Or from the minute we're not born, he thought; now he recognized his tone of voice—it was Dr. Larch's.

'That's a rather grim philosophy,' Olive said.

'I thought you were studying anatomy,' Wally said to Homer, who looked at Candy, who looked away.

They sent Wally to Fort Meade, Maryland, for the month of January. He was a faithful but terrible letter writer; he wrote his mother, he wrote to Homer and to Candy, and even to Ray, but he never explained anything; if there was a plan to what they were teaching him, Wally either didn't know it or couldn't describe it. He simply wrote in tedious detail about the last thing that had occupied his mind before beginning the letter; this included the pouch he had devised to hang from his bunk bed to separate his shoe polish from his toothpaste \'7b451\'7d and the best-name-for-a-plane competition that dominated the imaginative life of Company A. He was also delighted that a cook sergeant had taught him more limericks than Senior, in his last years, had been able to remember. Every letter Wally wrote, to anyone, included a limerick; Ray liked them, and Homer liked them, but they made Candy angry and Olive was appalled. Candy and Homer showed each other the limericks Wally sent them, until Homer realized that this made Candy even angrier: the limericks Wally chose to send Candy were very mild-mannered compared to the ones Wally sent to Homer. For example, he sent this to Candy:

There was a young lady of Exeter,

So pretty that men craned their necks at her.

One was even so brave

As to take out and wave

The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.

He sent this to Homer Wells:

There was a young lady named Brent

With a cunt of enormous extent

And so deep and so wide,

The acoustics inside

Were so good you could hear when you spent.

Wally sent Ray limericks of a similar kind:

There's an unbroken babe from Toronto

Exceedingly hard to get onto

Rut when you get there

And have parted the hair,

You can fuck her as much as you want to.

God knows what limericks Wally sent to Olive— where does Wally find ones that are decent enough? wondered Homer, who, in the evening after Wally had gone and Candy had gone back to school, lay listening to his heart. It would help, he thought, if he knew what to listen for. \'7b452\'7d

Wally was sent to St. Louis—the Jefferson Barracks, Flight 17, 28th School Squadron. It struck Homer Wells that the Army Air Corps might have modeled itself on Gray's Anatomy—manifesting a steadfast belief in categories and in everything having a name. It was reassuring to Homer Wells; in his mind, this endless categorizing made Wally safer, but Homer couldn't convince Candy of this.

'He's safe one minute, and in another minute he's not safe,' she said, shrugging.

'Look after Homer, look after his heart,' Wally had written her.

'And who's looking after my heart? Yes, I'm still angry,' she wrote him, although he hadn't asked.

But if she was angry with Wally, she was also loyal; she was keeping her promise, about the waiting and seeing. She kissed Homer when she saw him, and when they said good-bye, but she wouldn't encourage him.

'We're just good pals,' she told her father; Ray hadn't asked.

'I can see that,' Ray said.

The work in the orchards was light that winter; pruning was the main job. The men took turns teaching Homer how to prune. 'You make your big cuts in the subfreezing weather,' Meany Hyde told him.

'A tree don't bleed so much when it's cold,' was how Vernon Lynch put it, hacking away.

'There's less chance of an infection when it's cold,' said Herb Fowler, who was not so free with the prophylactics in the winter months, perhaps because he would have needed to take his gloves off to get at them; but Homer felt sure that Herb was being wary ever since Homer had asked him about the holes.

'Are there holes?' Herb had replied. 'Manufacturer's defect, I suppose.'

But later he'd come up to Homer and whispered to him, 'Not all of them's got holes.' \'7b453\'7d

'You have a system?' Homer asked. 'Which ones have holes and which don't?'

'It's not my system,' Herb Fowler said. 'Some got holes, some don't. Manufacturer's defect.'

'Right,' said Homer Wells, but rubbers were rarely flung his way now.

Meany Hyde's wife, Florence, was pregnant again, and all winter Big Dot Taft and Irene Titcomb made jokes about Meany's potency.

'You keep away from me, Meany,' Big Dot would say. I'm not even lettin' you sip my coffee. I think all you gotta do is breathe on somebody and they're pregnant.'

'Well, that's all he did to me!' Florence would say, and Big Dot Taft would roar.

'Dontcha go givin' the men any breathin' lessons, Meany,' Irene Titcomb said.

'Meany can knock you up just by kissin' your ears,' Florence Hyde said proudly, glorying in her pregnancy.

'Gimme some earmuffs,' said Squeeze Louise Tobey. 'Gimme one of them ski hats.'

'Gimme a dozen of Herb's rubbers!' said Irene Titcomb.

No, don't take any, thought Homer Wells. That's probably how she got that way. Homer was staring at Florence Hyde. It was riveting to him to see someone enjoying her pregnancy.

'Honestly, Homer,' said Big Dot Taft, 'ain't you ever seen anyone about to have a baby before?'

'Yes,' said Homer Wells, who looked away. Grace Lynch was staring at him, and he looked away from her, too.

'If I was your age,' Vernon Lynch told Homer, when they were pruning in an orchard called Cock Hill, 'I'd enlist. I'd do what Wally's doing.'

I can't.,' said Homer Wells.

'They don't take orphans?' Vernon asked.

'No,' Homer said. I have a heart defect. Something was born with.' \'7b454\'7d

Vernon Lynch was not a gossip, but that was all that Homer needed to say — the workers at Ocean View not only forgave Homer for not enlisting, they even began to take care of him. They treated him the way Dr. Larch would have liked to see him treated.

'You know, I didn't mean anything,' Herb Fowler told Homer. 'About the manufacturer's defect. I wouldn't have said that if I'd known about your heart.'

'That's okay,' Homer said.

And in the early spring, when it was time to mend the boxes for the beehives, Ira Titcomb rushed to assist Homer, who was struggling with a particularly heavy pallet.

'Don't strain yourself, Jesus!' Ira said.

'I can manage, Ira. I'm stronger than you are,' Homer said, not understanding—at first—Ira's concern.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 636