The Lord's Work 28 page

'I heard your heart's not as strong as the rest of you,' Ira said.

On Mother's Day, Vernon Lynch taught him how to operate the sprayers by himself. He insisted on giving Homer another lecture on the use of the respirator. 'You of all people,' Vernon told him, 'better keep this thing on, and keep it clean.'

'Me of all people,' said Homer Wells.

Even Debra Pettigrew forgave him for his seemingly undefined friendship with Candy. As the weather warmed up, they went parking again, and one night they managed some lingering kisses in the Pettigrews' unoccupied summer house on Drinkwater Lake; the shut-up, cold smell of the house reminded Homer of his first days in the cider house. When his kisses seemed to calm, Debra grew restless; when his kisses seemed too passionate, Debra said, 'Careful! Don't get too excited.' He was a young man with unusual kindness, or else he might have suggested to Debra that nothing she allowed him to do would ever endanger his heart.

It was spring. Wally was sent to Kelly Field—San Antonio, Texas—for Air Corps cadet training (Squadron 2, Flight C), and Melony thought that the time was right for her to hit the road again. \'7b455\'7d

'You're crazy,' Lorna told her. 'The more of a war there is, the more good jobs there are for us. The country needs to build stuff—it don't need to eat more apples.'

So will I see you next winter?' Lorna asked her friend.

'If I don't find Ocean View or Homer Wells,' Melony said.

'So I'll see you next winter, ' Lorna said. 'You're lettin' a man make an asshole out of you.'

That's just what I'm not lettin' him do,' Melony said.

Mrs. Grogan's coat had seen better days, but the bundle of belongings contained within the grasp of Charley's belt had grown substantially. Melony had made money in the shipyards, and she'd treated herself to a few sturdy articles of a workingman's clothing, including a good pair of boots. Lorna gave her a present as she was leaving.

'I used to knit,' Lorna explained. It was a child's woolen mitten — just the left-hand mitten — and too small for Melony, but the colors were very pretty. 'It was gonna be for a baby I never had, 'cause I didn't stay married long enough. I never got the right hand finished.' Melony stared at the mitten, which she held in her hand — the mitten was very heavy; it was full of ball bearings that Lorna had swiped from the shipyards. 'It's a super weapon,' Lorria explained, 'in case you meet anyone who's a bigger asshole than you are!'

The gift brought tears to Melony's eyes, and the women hugged each other good-bye. Melony left EJath without saying good-bye to young Mary Agnes Cork, who would have done anything to please her, who asked all her school friends — and everyone who appeared at Ted and Patty Callahan's to browse the antiques — if any of them had ever heard of an apple orchard called Ocean View. If this knowledge might make Melony her friend, \'7b456\'7d Mary Agnes Cork would never stop inquiring. After Melony left Bath, Lorna realized how much she missed her friend; Lorna discovered that she was asking about Ocean View all the time—as if this inquiry was as necessary and loyal a part of her friendship with Melony as the gift of that woolen weapon.

This meant that now there were three of them, all looking for Homer Wells.

That summer they moved Wally from San Antonio to Coleman, Texas. 'I wish someone would declare war on Texas,' he wrote Homer. That might be some justification for being here.' He claimed he was flying in his undershorts and socks—that was all any of them could stand to wear in such unrelenting heat.

'Where does he think he's going?' Candy complained to Homer. 'Does he expect a perfect climate? He's going to a if or!' Homer sat opposite her on Ray Kendall's dock, the snail population forever influenced by their conversation.

In the cool cement-floor classroom at Cape Kenneth High, Homer would unroll the map of the world; there would rarely be anyone present besides the janitor, who was no better informed about geography than Homer Wells. Homer used the summer solitude to study the places of the world where he thought it would be likely that Wally would go.

Once Mr. Hood surprised him in his studies. Perhaps Mr. Hood was visiting his old classroom out of nostalgia, or perhaps it was time to place an order for the next year's rabbits.

'I suppose you'll be enlisting,' Mr. Hood said to Homer.

'No, sir,' Homer said. 'I've got a bad heart—pulmonary valve stenosis.'

Mr. Hood stared at Homer's chest; Homer knew that the man had eyes for rabbits only—and not very sharp eyes, at that. 'You had a heart murmur, from birth?' Mr. Hood asked. \'7b457\'7d

'Yes, sir,' Homer said.

'And do you still have a murmur?' Mr. Hood asked.

'Not much of one, not anymore,' Homer said.

'That's not such a bad heart, then,' Mr. Hood said encouragingly.

But why would Homer Wells feel that Mr. Hood was an authority? He couldn't keep his uteri straight; he didn't know rabbits from sheep.

Even the migrants were different that harvest—they were both older and younger; the men in their prime had enlisted, except for Mr. Rose.

'Slim pickin's for pickers this year,' he told Olive. 'There's too many fools think the war's more interestin' than pickin' apples.'

'Yes, I know,' Olive said. 'You don't have to tell me about it.'

That harvest there was a woman Mr. Rose called Mama, although she wasn't old enough to be any of their mothers. Her allegiance seemed quite exclusively assigned to Mr. Rose; Homer knew this because the woman did what she wanted to do—she picked a little, when she felt like it or when Mr. Rose suggested it; she cooked a little, but she was not the cook every night, and she was not everyone's cook. Some nights she even sat on the roof, but only when Mr. Rose sat there with her. She was a tall, heavy young woman with a deliberate slowness that made her movements seem copied from Mr. Rose, and she wore a nearly constant smile that was not quite relaxed and not quite smirking—also copied from Mr. Rose.

It surprised Homer that no special sleeping arrangements w ere made regarding the woman; she had her own bed, next to Mr. Rose, but no attempt was made to curtain-off their beds or otherwise construct a little privacy. There was only this: every once in a while, when Homer would drive by the cider house, he would note that everyone except Mr. Rose and his woman was either standing outside the house or sitting on the roof. That \'7b458\'7d must have been their time together, and Mr. Rose must have orchestrated those meetings as deliberately as he appeared to direct everything else.

There was a ban on shore lights by the end of that summer; there was no Ferris wheel to watch at night, no magic lights to call by other names, but these blackout conditions didn't keep the pickers off the roof. They would sit in the dark, looking at the dark, and Mr. Rose would say, 'It used to be over there—it was much higher than this roof, and brighter than all the stars if you hitched the stars all together. It went'round and'round,'Mr. Rose would say, the tall, heavy woman leaning against him, the dark heads above the roofline nodding. 'Now there's stuff out there, under the ocean—stuff with bombs, underwater guns. That stuff knows when there's a light on, and the bombs get drawn to the lights—like metal to them magnets. It happens automatically.'

'There's no people, holding no triggers?' someone asked.

'There's no triggers,' said Mr. Rose. 'Everything automatic. But there's people. They just there to look the stuff over, make sure it work right.'

'There's people out there, under the ocean?' someone asked.

'Sure,' said Mr. Rose. 'Lots of people. They real smart. They got this stuff so they can see you.'

'On land?'

'Sure,' said Mr. Rose. 'They can see you anywhere.'

A kind of communal sighing made the sitters on the roof resemble a chorus resting between numbers. In Wally's bedroom Homer marveled how the world was simultaneously being invented and destroyed.

Nothing marvelous about that, Dr. Larch would have assured him. At St. Cloud's, except for the irritation about sugar stamps and other aspects of the rationing, very little was changed by the war. (Or by what other people once singled out as the Depression, thought Wilbur Larch.) \'7b459\'7d

We are an orphanage; we provide these services; we stay the same—if we're allowed to stay the same, he thought. When he would almost despair, when the ether was too overpowering, when his own age seemed like the last obstacle and the vulnerability of his illegal enterprise was as apparent to him as the silhouettes of the Br trees against the sharp night skies of autumn, Wilbur Larch would save himself with this one thought: I love Homer Wells, and I have saved him from the war.

Homer Wells did not feel saved. Did anyone who was in love and was unsatisfied with how he was loved in return ever feel saved? On the contrary, Homer W ells felt that he'd been singled out for special persecution. What young man—even an orphan—is patient enough to wait and see about love? And if Wilbur Larch had saved Homer Wells from the war, even Dr. Larch was powerless to interfere with Melony.

During the harvest that year, Wally moved again— to Perrin Field in Sherman, Texas (basic training, Company D)—but Melony moved five times. She had enough money; she didn't need to work. She took a job in one orchard after another, leaving as soon as she discovered that no one working there had ever heard of an Ocean View. She worked in an orchard in Harpswell, and in another in Arrowsic; she worked as far north as Rockport, and as far inland as Appleton and Lisbon. She took a side trip to Wiscasset because someone told her there was an Ocean View there; there was, but it was a rooming house. An icecream vendor told her he'd seen an Ocean View in Friendship; it turned out to be the name of a resident sailboat. Melony got in a fistfight with a head waiter in a seafood restaurant in South Thomaston because she insisted on asking each of the patrons about Ocean View; she won the fight, but she was fined for creating a disturbance; she was a little low on money when she passed through Boothbay Harbor in early November. The sea was slate gray and white-capped, the pretty boats of summer were in dry dock, the wind had \'7b460\'7d plenty of the coming winter in it; Melony's own pores, as well as the earth's, were closing as tightly as her disappointed heart.

She did not recognize the sallow-faced, sulky juvenile who served the icecream sodas to the candy-counter customers in Rinfret's Pharmacy, but young Roy Rinfret— the former (and deeply disappointed) Curly Day— recognized Melony in an instant.

'I used to be Curly Day! Remember me?' Curly asked Melony excitedly. He thrust a lot of free candy and chewing gum at her and insisted on treating her to an icecream soda. 'A double scooper, on me,' Curly said; his adoptive parents would have disapproved.

'Boy, you didn't turn out so good,' Melony told him. She meant nothing insulting by this remark; it was a reference to his color, which was pasty, and to his size—he hadn't grown very much. She meant nothing more, but the remark triggered everything that was morose and waiting to be fired in Curly Day.

'You're not kidding; I didn't turn out so good,' he said angrily. 'I got ditched. Homer Wells stole the people I was meant for.'

Melony's teeth were too weak for chewing gum, but she pocketed it, anyway; it would make a nice gift for Lorna. Melony's cavities howled when she sucked hard candy, but she liked it occasionally in spite of this pain —or perhaps because of it—and she had never had an icecream soda before.

To demonstrate his loathing for his environment, Curly Day squirted a runny glob of strawberry syrup on the floor—checking, first, to be sure that only Melony could see. He did this as if he were exercising the nozzle before he squirted the stuff on Melony's soda. 'It draws ants,' he explained; Melony doubted there were many ants left in November. 'That's what they're always telling me,' Curly said.' “Don't spill, it draws ants.” ' He squirted the floor a few more times. I'm tryin' to get the ants to carry this place away.' \'7b461\'7d

'You still pissed at Homer Wells?' Melony asked him slyly.

She explained that Curly should simply inquire—of every customer—about Ocean View. Curly had never thought concretely about what he would do or say to Homer Wells if he ever encountered him again; he was resentful, but he was not a vengeful boy and he had a sudden, clear memory of Melony's violence. He became suspicious.

'What do you want to find Homer for?' Curly asked.

'What for?' Melony asked sweetly; it wasn't clear if she had considered it. 'Well, what would you like to find him for, Curly?' she asked.

'Well,' Curly said, struggling. 'I guess I'd just like to see him, and tell him that I was really fucked up by his going off and leaving me there—when I thought I was the one who should be going, instead of him.' When Curly thought about it, he realized he'd just like to see Homer Wells—maybe be his friend, maybe do stuff together. He'd always admired Homer. If he felt a little deserted by him, that was all he felt. He started to cry. Melony used the paper napkin that went with her icecream soda to wipe Curly's tears for him.

'Hey, I know what you mean,' she said nicely, 'I know how you feel. I got left, too, you know. Really, I just miss the guy. I just want to see him.'

Curly's weeping attracted the attention of one of his adoptive parents, Mr. Rinfret, the pharmacist, who was stationed in that end of the store where the serious drugs were dispensed.

I'm from Saint Cloud's,' Melony explained to Mr. Rinfret. 'We were all so close there—whenever we run into each other, it takes a little gettin' used to.' She hugged Curly in a motherly, if somewhat burly way, and Mr. Rinfret allowed them their privacy.

'Try to remember, Curly,' Melony whispered, rocking the boy in her arms as if she were telling him a bedtime story. 'Ocean View, just keep asking about Ocean View.' \'7b462\'7d When she had calmed him down, she gave him Lorna's address in Bath.

On her way back to Bath, Melony hoped that the shipyards would hire her back and that the so-called war effort would keep the stuff on the assembly line changing —that she might look forward to a task somewhat different from the insertion of those ball bearings into that hamlike sprocket. With that thought she removed Lorna's gift mitten from the pocket of Mrs. Grogan's overcoat; she had not yet needed it as a weapon but many nights its presence had comforted her. And it's not been a thoroughly wasted year, Melony reflected warmly, socking the heavy mitten with a painful smack into the palm of her big hand. Now there are four of us looking for you, Sunshine.

They kept Wally in Texas, yet they moved him once more—to Lubbock Flying School (Barracks 12, D3). He would spend November and most of December there, but the Army Air Corps had promised to send him home for Christmas.

'Soon to be in the bosom of my family!' he wrote to Candy, and Homer, and Olive—and even to Ray, who had contributed to the war effort by joining the force of mechanics at the Navy Yard in Kittery; Ray was building torpedoes. He had hired some local boys who were still in school to help him keep his lobster business from sinking, and he worked on the vehicles at Ocean View on the weekends. He enthusiastically demonstrated the gyroscope on Olive's kitchen table to Olive and Homer Wells.

'Before a fella can fathom the torpedo,' Ray liked to say, 'he has to understand the gyroscope.' Homer was interested, Olive was polite—and what's more, thoroughly dependent on Ray; if he didn't fix all the machinery at Ocean View, Olive was convinced that the apples would stop growing.

Candy was cross much of the time—everyone's war \'7b463\'7d effort seen.ed to depress her, although she had volunteered to pitch in herself and had worked some very long hours at Cape Kenneth Hospital as a nurse's aide. She agreed it would be 'indulgent' to go to college, and she'd had no trouble convincing Homer that he should pitch in, too—with his background, he could be a more useful nurse's aide than most.

'Right,' Homer said.

But if Homer had returned to a semi-hospital life against his will, he soon found he felt comfortable there; however, it was at times difficult to withhold his expert opinion on certain subjects and to play the beginner in a role he was disquietingly born to. Even the nurses were condescending to the nurse's aides, and Homer was irritated to see that the doctors were condescending to everyone —most of all, to their patients.

Candy and Homer were not allowed to give shots or medication, but they had more to do than make beds, empty bedpans, give back rubs and baths, and run those errands of friendliness that gave the modern hospital such a constant scuff of feet. They were given deliveryroom duties, for example; Homer was unimpressed with the obstetrical procedure he witnessed. It could not hold a candle to Dr. Larch's work, and in some cases it could not hold a candle to his own. If Dr. Larch had often criticized Homer for his heavy touch with ether, Homer could not imagine how the old man would react to the heavy-handedness that was applied to that inhalation at Cape Kenneth Hospital. In St. Cloud's, Homer had seen many patients who were so lightly etherized that they could converse throughout their own operations; in Cape Kenneth's recovery rooms, the patients struggling to emerge from their ether doses looked bludgeoned—they snored gap-mouthed, with their hands hanging deadweight and the muscles in their cheeks so slack that at times their eyes were pulled half open.

It especially angered Homer to see how they dosed the children—as if the doctors or the anesthetists were so \'7b464\'7d uninformed that they didn't pause to consider the patient's body weight.

One day he sat with Candy on either side of a fiveyear-old boy who was recovering from a tonsillectomy. That was nurses'-aide work: you sat with the patient coming out of ether, especially the children, especially the tonsillectomies—they were often frightened and in pain and nauseous when they woke. Homer claimed they wouldn't be nearly so nauseous if they'd been given a little less ether.

One of the nurses was in the recovery room with them; it was the one they liked—a young, homely girl about their age. Her name was Caroline, and she was nice to the patients and tough to the doctors.

'You know a lot about ether, Homer,' Nurse Caroline said.

'It seems overused to me, in certain cases,' Homer mumbled.

'Hospitals aren't perfect, they're just expected to be,' Nurse Caroline said. 'And doctors aren't perfect, either; they just think they are.'

'Right,' said Homer Wells.

The fiveyear-old's throat was very sore when he finally woke up, and he went on retching for quite some time before any ice cream would slide down his throat, and stay down. One of the things the nurses' aides did was to be sure that the children, in such condition, didn't choke on their own vomit. Homer explained to Candy that it was very important that the child, in a semietherized state, not aspirate, or inhale, any fluid such as vomit into the lungs.

'Aspirate,' Nurse Caroline said. 'Was your father a doctor, Homer?'

'Not exactly,' said Homer Wells.

It was Nurse Caroline who introduced Homer to young Dr. Harlow, who was in the throes of growing out his bangs; a cowlick persisted in making his forehead look meager; a floppy shelf of straw-colored hair gave Dr. \'7b465\'7d Harlow's eyes the constant anxiousness of someone peering from under the brim of a hat.

'Oh, yes, Wells—our ether expert,' Dr. Efarlow said snidely.

'I grew up in an orphanage,' said Homer Wells. 'I did a lot of helping out around the hospital.'

'But surely you never administered any ether?' said Dr. Harlow.

'Surely not,' lied Homer Wells. As Dr. Larch had discovered with the board of trustees, it was especially gratifying to lie to unlikeable people.

'Don't show off,' Candy told Homer when they were driving back to Heart's Haven together. 'It doesn't become you, and it could get your Doctor Larch in trouble.'

'When did I show off?' Homer asked.

'You really haven't, yet, 'Candy said. 'Just don't, okay?'

Homer sulked.

'And don't sulk,' Candy told him. That doesn't become you, either.'

I'm just waiting and seeing,' said Homer Wells. 'You know how that is.' He let her out at the lobster pound; he usually came in with her and chatted with Ray. But Homer was mistaken to confuse Candy's irritability either with coldness toward him or with anything but the profoundest confusion of her own.

She slammed the door and walked around to his side of the van before he could drive away. She indicated he should roll down his window. Then she leaned inside and kissed him on the mouth, she yanked his hair, hard—-with both hands, tilting his head back—and then she bit him, quite sharply, in the throat. She banged her head on the window frame when she pulled herself back from him; her eyes were watery; but no tears spilled to her face.

'Do you think I'm having a good time?' she asked him. 'Do you think I'm teasing you? Do you think I know whether I want you or Wally?' \'7b466\'7d

He drove back to Cape Kenneth Hospital; he needed work more substantial than mousing. It was the Goddamn mousing season again—how he hated handling the poison!

He arrived simultaneously with a sailor slashed up in a knife fight; it had happened where Ray worked—in Kittery Navy Yard—and the sailor's buddies had driven him around in a makeshift tourniquet, running out of gas coupons and getting lost on the way to several hospitals much nearer to the scene of the fight than the one in Cape Kenneth. The gash, into the fleshy web between the sailor's thumb and forefinger, extended nearly to the sailor's wrist. Homer helped Nurse Caroline wash the wound with ordinary white soap and sterile water. Homer could not help himself—he was accustomed to speaking to Nurse Angela and to Nurse Edna in the voice of an authority.

'Take his blood pressure, opposite arm,' he said to Nurse Caroline, 'and put the blood-pressure cuff on over a bandage—to protect the skin,' he added, because Nurse Caroline was staring at him curiously. 'The cuff might have to be on there for a half hour or more,' said Homer Wells.

'I think I can give instructions to Nurse Caroline, if you don't mind,' Dr. Harlow said to Homer; both the doctor and his nurse stared at Homer Wells as if they had witnessed an ordinary animal touched with divine powers —as if they half expected Homer to pass his hand over the profusely bleeding sailor and stop the flow of blood as quickly as the tourniquet stopped it.

'Very neat job, Wells,' Dr. Harlow said. Homer observed the injection of the 0.5 percent Procaine into the wound and the subsequent probing of Dr. Harlow. The knife had entered on the palmar side of the hand, observed Homer Wells. He remembered his Gray's, and he remembered the movie he had seen with Debra Pettigrew: the cavalry officer with the arrow in his hand, the arrow that fortunately missed the branch of the median \'7b467\'7d nerve that goes to the muscles of the thumb. He watched the sailor move his thumb.

Dr. Harlow was looking. There's a rather important branch of the median nerve,' Dr. Harlow said slowly, to the cut-up sailor. 'You're lucky if that's not cut.'

'The knife missed it,' said Homer Wells.

'Yes, it did,' said Dr. Harlow, looking up from the wound. 'How do you know?' he asked Homer Wells, who held up the thumb of his right hand and wiggled it.

'Not only an ether expert, I see,' said Dr. Harlow, still snidely. 'Knows all about muscles, too!'

'Just about that one,' said Homer Wells. 'I used to read Gray's Anatomy—for fun,' he added.

'For fun?' said Dr. Harlow. 'I suppose you know all about blood vessels, then. Why not tell me where all this blood is coming from.'

Homer Wells felt Nurse Caroline brush his hand with her hip; it was surely sympathetic contact—Nurse Caroline didn't care for Dr. Harlow, either. Despite Candy's certain disapproval, Homer couldn't help himself. The blood vessel is a branch of the palmar arch,' he said.

'Very good,' said Dr. Harlow, disappointed. 'And what would you recommend I do about it?'

'Tie it,' said Homer Wells. Three-o chromic.'

'Precisely,' said Dr. Harlow. 'You didn't get that from Gray's.' He pointed out to Homer Wells that the knife had also cut the tendons of the flexor digitorum profundus and the flexor digitorum sublimis. 'And where might they go?' he asked Homer Wells.

'To the index finger,' Homer said.

'Is it necessary to repair both tendons?' asked Dr. Harlow.

'I don't know,' said Homer Wells. 'I don't know a lot about tendons,' he added.

'How surprising!' said Dr. Harlow. 'It is only necessary to repair the profundus,' he explained. 'I'm going to use \'7b468\'7d two-o silk. I'll need something finer to bring the edges of the tendon together.'

'Four-o silk,' recommended Homer Wells.

'Very good,' said Dr. Harlow. 'And something to close the palmar fascia?'

'Three-o chromic,' said Homer Wells.

'This boy knows his stitches!' Dr. Harlow said to Nurse Caroline, who was staring intently at Homer Wells.

'Close the skin with four-o silk,' Homer said. 'And then I'd recommend a pressure dressing on the palm—you'll want to curve the fingers a little bit around the dressing.'

'That's called “the position of function,”' Dr. Harlow said.

'I don't know what it's called,' Homer said.

'Were you ever in medical school, Wells?' Dr. Harlow asked him.

'Not exactly,' said Homer Wells.

'Do you plan to go?' Dr. Harlow asked.

'It's not likely,' Homer said. He tried to leave the operating room then, but Dr. Harlow called after him.

'Why aren't you in the service?' he called.

'I've got a heart problem,' Homer said.

'I don't suppose you know what it's called,' said Dr. Harlow.

'Right,' said Homer Wells.

He might have found out about his pulmonary valve stenosis on the spot, if he had only asked; he might have had an X-ray, and an expert reading—he could have learned the truth. But who seeks the truth from unlikable sources?

He went and read some stories to the tonsillectomy patients. They were all dumb stories—children's books didn't impress Homer Wells. But the tonsillectomy patients were not likely to be around long enough to hear David Copperfield or Great Expectations.

Nurse Caroline asked him if he would give a bath and a back rub to the large man recovering from the prostate operation. \'7b469\'7d

'Don't ever underestimate the pleasure of pissing,' the big man told Homer Wells.

'No, sir,' Homer said, rubbing the mountain of flesh until the big man shone a healthy pink.

Olive was not home when Homer returned to Ocean View; it was her time for plane spotting. They used what was called the yacht-watching tower at the Haven Club, but Homer didn't think any planes had been spotted. All the men spotters—most of them Senior's former drinking companions—had the silhouettes of the enemy planes tacked on their lockers; the women brought: the silhouettes home and stuck them on places like the refrigerator door. Olive was a plane spotter for two hours every day.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 577