The Lord's Work 29 page

Homer studied the silhouettes that Olive had on the refrigerator.

I could learn all those, he was thinking. And I can learn everything there is to know about apple farming. But what he already knew, he knew, was near-perfect obstetrical procedure and the far easier procedure—the one that was against the rules.

He thought about rules. That sailor with the slashed hand had not been in a knife fight that was according to anyone's rules. In a fight with Mr. Rose, there would be Mr. Rose's own rules, whatever they were. A knife fight with Mr. Rose would be like being pecked to death by a small bird, thought Homer Wells. Mr. Rose was an artist —he would take just the tip of a nose, just a button or a nipple. The real cider house rules were Mr. Rose's.

And what were the rules at St. Cloud's? What were Larch's rules? Which rules did Dr. Larch observe, which ones did he break, or replace—and with what confidence? Clearly Candy was observing some rules, but whose? And did Wally know what the rules were? And Melony—did Melony obey any rules? wondered Homer Wells.

'Look,' said Lorna. 'There's a war, have you noticed?' \'7b470\'7d

'So what?' said Melony.

'Because he's probably in it, that's so what!' Lorna said. 'Because he either enlisted or he's gonna get drafted.'

Melony shook her head. 'I can't see him in a war, not him. He just doesn't belong there.'

'For Christ's sake,' Lorna said. 'You think everyone in a war belongs there?'

'If he goes, then he'll come back,' Melony said. The ice on the Kennebec in December was not secure; it was a tidal river, it was brackish, and there was open water, gray and choppy, in the middle. But not even Melony could throw a beer bottle as far as the middle of that river in Bath. Her bottle, bouncing off the creaky ice, made a hollow sound and rolled toward the open water it couldn't reach. It disturbed a gull, who got up and walked a short way along the ice, like an old woman holding up a number of cumbersome petticoats above a puddle.

'Not everyone's comin' back from this war—that's all I'm sayin',' Lorna replied.

Wally had trouble coming back from Texas. There were a series of delays, and bad weather; the landing field was closed—when Homer and Candy picked him up in Boston, the first thing he told them was that he had only forty-eight hours. He was still happy, however—'He was still Wally,' Candy would say later—and especially pleased that he'd received his commission.

'Second Lieutenant Worthington!' Wally announced to Olive. Everyone cried, even Ray.

With the gas rationing, they couldn't manage the usual driving around and around. Homer wondered when Wally would want to be alone with Candy and how they would manage it. Surely he wants to manage it, Homer thought. Does she want to, too? he wondered.

For Christmas Eve everyone was together. And Christmas Day there was nowhere to go; Olive was \'7b471\'7d home, and Ray wasn't building torpedoes or pulling lobster traps. And the day after Christmas, Candy and Homer would have to take Wally back to Boston.

Oh, Candy and Wally did plenty of hugging and kissing —everyone could see that. On Christmas night, in Wally's bedroom, Homer realized that he'd been so glad to see Wally that he'd forgotten to notice very much about his second Christmas away from St. Cloud's. He also realized he'd forgotten to send Dr. Larch anything —not even a Christmas card.

'I've got more flying school to get through,' Wally was saying, 'but I think it's going to be India for me.'

'India,' said Homer Wells.

'The Burma run,' said Wally. 'To go from India to China, you got to go over Burma. The Japs are in Burma.'

Homer Wells had studied the maps at Cape Kenneth High. He knew that Burma was mountains, that Burma was jungles. When they shot your plane down, there would be quite a wide range of possible things to land on.

'How are things with Candy?' Homer asked.

'Great!' Wally said. 'Well, I'll see tomorrow,' he added.

Ray went early to build the torpedoes, and Homer observed that Wally left Ocean View at about the same time Ray would be leaving for Kittery. Homer spent the early morning being of little comfort to Olive, 'Forty-eight hours is not what I'd call coming home,' she said. 'He hasn't been here for a year—does he call this a proper visit? Does the Army call it a proper visit?'

Candy and Wally came to pick up Homer before noon. Homer imagined that they had 'managed it.' But how does one know such things, short of asking?

'Do you want me to drive?' Homer asked; he had the window seat, and Candy sat between them.

'Why?'Wally asked.

'Maybe you want to hold hands,' Homer said; Candy looked at him. \'7b472\'7d

'We've already held hands,' Wally said, laughing. 'But thank you, anyway!'

Candy did not look amused, Homer thought.

'So you've done it, you mean?' Homer Wells asked them both.

Candy stared straight ahead, and Wally didn't laugh this time.

'What's that, old boy?' he asked.

'I said, “So you've done it?”—had sex, I mean,' said Homer Wells.

'Jesus, Homer,' said Wally. 'That's a fine thing to ask.'

'Yes, we've done it—had sex,' Candy said, still looking straight ahead.

'I hope you were careful,' Homer said, to both of them. 'I hope you took some precautions.'

'Jesus, Homer!' Wally said.

'Yes, we were careful,' Candy said. Now she stared at him, her look as neutral as possible.

'Well, I'm glad you were careful,' Homer said, speaking directly to Candy. 'You should be careful—having sex with someone who's about to fly over Burma.'

'Burma?' Candy turned to Wally. 'You didn't say where you were going,' she said. 'Is it Burma?'

'I don't know where I'm going,' Wally said irritably. 'Jesus, Homer, what's the matter with you?'

'I love you both,' said Homer Wells. 'If I love you, I've got a right to ask anything I want—I've got a right to know anything I want to know.'

It was, as they say in Maine, a real conversation stopper. They rode almost all the way to Boston in silence, except that Wally said—trying to be funny—'I don't know about you, Homer. You're becoming very philosophical.'

It was a rough good-bye. I love you both, too—you know,' Wally said, in parting.

'I know you do,' Homer said.

On the way home, Candy said to Homer Wells: 'I \'7b473\'7d wouldn't say “philosophical”; I would say eccentric. You're becoming very eccentric, in my opinion. And you don't have a right to know everything about me, whether you love me or not.'

'All you've got to know is, do you really love him?' Homer said. 'Do you love Wally?'

'I've grown up loving Wally,' Candy said. 'I have always loved Wally, and I always will.'

'Fine,' Homer said. That's all there is to it, then.'

'But I don't even know Wally, anymore,' Candy said. 'I know you better, and I love you, too.'

Homer Wells sighed. So we're in for more waiting and seeing, he thought. His feelings were hurt: Wally hadn't once asked him about his heart. What would he have answered, anyway?

Wilbur Larch, who knew that there was absolutely nothing wrong with Homer's heart, wondered where Homer's heart was. Not in St. Cloud's, he feared.

And Wally went to Victorville, California—advanced flying school. U.S. ARMY AIR FORCES—that is what his stationery said. Wally spent several months in Victorville —all the pruning months, as Homer Wells would remember them. Shortly after apple blossom time, when Ira Titcomb's bees had spread their marvelous life energies through the orchards of Ocean View, Wally was sent to India.

The Japanese held Mandalay. Wally dropped his first bombs on the railroad bridge in Myitnge. Tracks and the embankment of the south approach were badly smashed, and the south span of the bridge was destroyed. All aircraft and crews returned safely. Wally also dropped his bombs on the industrial area of Myingyan, but heavy clouds prevented adequate observation of the destruction. In that summer, when Homer Wells was painting the cider house white again, Wally bombed the jetty at Akyab and the Shweli bridge in northern Burma; later he hit the railroad yards at Prome. He contributed to the ten tons of bombs that were dropped on the railroad \'7b474\'7d yards at Shwebo, and to the fires that were left burning in the warehouses at Kawlin and Thanbyuzayat. The most spectacular hits he would remember were in the oil fields in Yenangyat—the sight of those oil derricks ablaze would stay with Wally on his return flight, across the jungles, across the mountains. All aircraft and crews returned safely.

They made him a captain and gave him what he called 'easy work.'

'Always be suspicious of easy work,' Dr. Wilbur Larch once said to Homer Wells.

Wally had won the best-name-for-a plane competition at Fort Meade; now he finally got to use it; he got to name his own plane Opportunity Knocks, he called it. The painted fist under the inscription looked very authoritative. It would later puzzle Candy and Homer Wells that thename was not Knocks Once (or Twice), but just Knocks.

He flew the India-China route, over the Himalayas— over Burma. He carried gasoline and bombs and artillery and rifles and ammunition and clothing and aircraft engines and spare parts and food to China; he brought military personnel back to India. It was a seven-hour, round-trip flight—about five hundred miles. For six of the hours he wore an oxygen mask—they had to fly so high. Over the mountains they flew high because of the mountains; over the jungles they flew high because of the Japanese. The Himalayas have the most vicious air currents in the world.

When he left Assam, the temperature was a hundred and ten degrees, Fahrenheit. It was like Texas, Wally would think. They wore just their shorts and socks.

The heavily loaded transports needed to climb to fifteen thousand feet in thirty-five minutes; that was when they reached the first mountain pass.

At nine thousand feet, Wally put on his pants. At fourteen thousand, he put on the fleece-lined suit. It was twenty degrees below zero up there. In the monsoon weather, they flew mostly on instruments. \'7b475\'7d

They called that aerial route 'the lifeline'; they called it flying 'over the hump.'

Here were the headlines on the Fourth of July:

YANKS WRECK RAIL BRIDGE IN BURMA

CHINESE ROUT JAPS IN HUPEH PROVINCE

Here is what Wally wrote to Candy, and to Homer. Wally was getting lazy; he sent the same limerick to both:

There was a young man of Bombay

Who fashioned a cunt out of clay,

But the heat of his prick

Turned it into a brick,

And chafed all his foreskin away.

That summer of 194-the public interest in keeping use of the shore lights to a minimum forced the temporary closing of the Cape Kenneth Drive-In Theater, which Homer Wells did not feel as a tragic loss. Since he would have had no choice but to attend the movies with Candy and Debra Pettigrew, he was grateful to the war effort for sparing him that awkwardness.

Mr. Rose informed Olive that he would be unable to provide a worthwhile picking crew for the harvest. 'Considering the men who are gone,' he wrote. 'And the travel. I mean the gas rationing.'

'Then we've spruced up the cider house for nothing,' Homer said to Olive.

'Nothing is ever improved for nothing, Homer,' she said. The Yankee justification for hard work in the summer months is both desperate and undone by the rare pleasure of that fleeting season.

Homer Wells—nurses' aide and orchardman—was mowing in the rows between the trees when the news came to him. On a sweltering June day, he was driving the International Harvester and he had his eye on the sickle bar; he didn't want to snag a stump or a fallen branch; for that reason he didn't see the green van, \'7b476\'7d which was trying to head him off. He almost ran into it. Because the tractor was running—and the mower blades, too—he didn't hear what Candy was yelling when she jumped out of the van and ran to him. Olive was driving, her face a stone.

'Shot down!' Candy was screaming, when Homer finally shut off the ignition. 'He was shot down—over Burma!'

'Over Burma,' said Homer Wells. He dismounted from the tractor and held the sobbing girl in his arms. The tractor was shut off but the engine still knocked, and then shuddered, and then throbbed; its heat made the air shimmer. Maybe, thought Homer Wells, the air is always shimmering over Burma. \'7b477\'7d

9. Over Burma

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Two weeks after Wally's plane was shot down, Captain Worthington and the crew of Opportunity Knocks were still listed as missing. A plane making the same run had noted that approximately one square mile of the Burmese jungle, roughly halfway between India and China, had been consumed by fire—presumably caused by the exploding plane; the cargo was identified as jeep engines, spare parts, and gasoline. There was no evidence of the crew; the jungle was dense in that area and believed to be unpopulated.

A spokesman for the U.S. Army Air Forces paid a personal visit to Olive and told her that there was some reason to be optimistic. That the plane obviouslj'- had not exploded in the air meant that the crew rnüght have had time to bail out. What would have happened afterward was anyone's guess.

That would have been a better name for the plane, thought Homer Wells: 'Anyone's Guess.' But Homer was supportive of Olive and Candy's view that Wally was not dead, that he was 'just missing.' Privately, Homer and Ray Kendall agreed that there wasn't much hope for Wally.

'Just suppose he didn't go down with the plane,' Ray said to Homer, when they were pulling lobster pots. 'So then he's in the middle of the jungle, and what does he do there? He can't let the Japs find him, and there's got to be Japs around—they shot down the plane, didn't they?'

'There could be natives,' said Homer Wells. 'Friendly Burmese villagers,' he suggested. \'7b478\'7d

'Or nobody at all,' Ray Kendall said. 'Some tigers, and lots of snakes,' he added. 'Aw, shit. He shoulda been in a submarine.'

'If your friend survived all the rest,' wrote Wilbur Larch to Homer Wells, 'he's got all the diseases of Asia to worry about—lots of diseases.'

It was horrible to imagine Wally suffering, and not even Homer's longing for Candy could allow him any comfort with the idea that Wally was already dead; in that case, Homer knew, Candy would always imagine that she loved Wally best. Reality, for orphans, is so often outdistanced by their ideals; if Homer wanted Candy, he wanted her ideally. In order for Candy to choose Homer, Wally had to be alive; and because Homer loved Wally, he also wanted Wally's blessing. Wouldn't any other way be compromising to them all?

Wilbur Larch was flattered that Homer asked his advice—and on a matter of romantic love, of all things! ('How should I behave with Candy?' Homer had asked.) The old man was used to being such an authority that he found it natural to assume an authoritative voice—'Even regarding a subject he knows nothing about!' Nurse Angela said to Nurse Edna indignantly. Larch was so proud of what he had written Homer that he showed his letter to his old nurses before sending it along.

'Have you forgotten what life is like at St. Cloud's?' Dr. Larch asked Homer. 'Have you drifted so far away from us that you find a life of compromise to be unacceptable? And you, an orphan—of all people. Have you forgotten how to be of use? Don't think so badly of compromises; we don't always get to choose the ways we can be of use. You say you love her—then lether use you. It may not be the way you had in mind, but if you love her, you have to give her what she needs—and when she needs it, not necessarily when you think the time is right. And what can she give you of herself? Only what she has left—and if that's not everything you had in mind, whose fault is that? Are you not going to accept her because she \'7b479\'7d hasn't got 100 percent of herself to give? Some of her is over Burma—are you going to reject the rest? Are you going to hold out for all or nothing? And do you call that being of use?'

'It's not very romantic,' Nurse Angela said to Nurse Edna.

'When was Wilbur ever romantic?' Nurse Edna asked.

'Your advice is awfully utilitarian,' Nurse Angela said to Dr. Larch.

'Well, I should hope so!' Dr. Larch said, sealing the letter.

Now Homer had a companion in sleeplessness. He and Candy preferred the night shift at Cape Kenneth Hospital. When there was a lull in their work, they were allowed to doze on the beds in the children's noncommunicable ward. Homer found that the music of the restless children soothed him—their troubles and pains familiar, their whimpers and outcries and night terrors transporting him beyond his own anxieties. And Candy felt that the drawn, black curtains in the nighttime hospital were suitable for mourning. The prevailing blackout conditions—which she and Homer had to observe in driving to and from the hospital, if it was after dark— were also to Candy's liking. They used Wally's Cadillac for these occasions—they were permitted to travel with only parking lights on, and the Cadillac's parking lights were the brightest. Even so, the dark coastal roads seemed barely lit; they drove at funeral speed. If the stationmaster at St. Cloud's (formerly, the stationmaster's assistant) had ever seen them passing, he would have thought again that they were driving a white hearse.

Meany Hyde, whose wife, Florence, was expecting, told Homer that he was sure his new baby would share something of Wally's soul (if Wally was truly dead) —and if Wally was alive, Meany said, the appearance of the new baby would signify Wally's escape from Burma. Everett Taft told Homer that his wife, Big Dot, \'7b480\'7d had been plagued by dreams that could only mean that Wally was struggling to communicate with Ocean View. Even Ray Kendall, dividing his underwater attention between his lobsters and his torpedoes, said that he was 'readinG' his lobster pots, by which he meant that he found the content of the traps hauled from the deep to be worthy of interpretation. Untouched bait was a special sign; if the lobsters (which prefer food that's truly dead) wouldn't take the bait, it must mean that the bait was manifesting a living spirit.

'And you know I ain't religious,' Ray said to Homer.

'Right,' Homer said.

Because Homer Wells had spent many years wondering if his mother would ever return to claim him, if she even thought about him, if she was alive or dead, he was better at accepting Wally's undefined status than the rest of them were. An orphan understands what it means that someone important is 'just missing.' Olive and Candy, mistaking Homer's composure for indifference, were occasionally short-tempered with him.

'I'm only doing what we all have to do,' he said—reserving special emphasis for Candy. I'm just waiting and seeing.'

There were few fireworks that Fourth of July; for one thing, they would have violated the blackout conditions, and for another, any simulation of bombs and gunfire would have been disrespectful to those among 'our boys' who were facing the real music. In the nighttime hospital at Cape Kenneth, the nurses' aides conducted a quiet Independence Day celebration, which was interrupted by the hysterics of a woman who demanded an abortion from the young and imperious Dr. Harlow, who believed in obeying the law. 'But there is a war!' the woman countered. Her husband was dead; he'd been killed in the Pacific; she had the wire from the War Department to prove it. She was nineteen, and not quite three months pregnant.

'I'll be glad to speak with her again, when she's \'7b481\'7d behaving reasonably,' Dr. Harlow told Nurse Caroline.

'Why should she behave reasonably?' Nurse Caroline asked him.

Homer Wells had to trust his instincts regardi ng Nurse Caroline; besides, she had told him and Candy that she was a socialist. 'And I'm not pretty,' she added truthfully. 'Therefore, I'm not interested in marriage. In my case, I'd be expected to appear grateful—or, at least, to consider myself lucky.'

The hysterical woman would not be calmed, perhaps because Nurse Caroline's heart wasn't in it. I'm not asking for anything secretY the woman shouted. 'Why should have to have this baby?'

Homer Wells found a piece of paper with columns for laboratory analysis. He wrote the following across the columns:

YOU GO TO ST. CLOUD'S, YOU ASK FOR THE ORPHANAGE.

He gave the piece of paper to Candy, who gave it to Nurse Caroline—who looked at it before she gave it to the woman, who instantly stopped protesting.

When the woman had gone, Nurse Caroline made Homer and Candy accompany her to the dispensary.

'I'll tell you what I usually do,' Nurse Caroline said, as if she were furious with them. 'I perform a perfectly safe dilatation without the curettage. I just dilate the cervix. do this in my kitchen, and I'm very careful. They have to come to the hospital for a completion, of course. Someone might think they tried to do it themselves, but there's no infection and nothing's damaged; they've just miscarried. They've had the D without the C. All they need is a good scraping. And the bastards have to be accommodating— there's all the bleeding, and it's clear the woman's already lost it.' She paused, and glared at Homer Wells. 'You're an expert about this, too, aren't you?'

'Right,'Homer said.

'And you know a better way than my way?' she asked. \'7b482\'7d

'Not that much better,' he said. 'It's a complete D and C, and the doctor is a gentleman.'

'A gentleman,' Nurse Caroline said doubtfully.

'What's the gentleman cost?'

'He's free,' Homer said.

'I'm free, too,' Nurse Caroline said.

'He asks you to make a donation to the orphanage, if you can afford it,' said Homer Wells.

'Why hasn't he been caught?' Nurse Caroline asked.

'I don't know,' Homer said. 'Maybe people are grateful.'

'People are people,' Nurse Caroline said, in her socialist voice. 'You took a stupid chance, telling me. And a more stupid chance telling that woman—you don't even know her.'

'Yes,' Homer agreed.

'Your doctor isn't going to last if you keep that up,' Nurse Caroline said.

'Right,' Homer said.

Dr. Harlow found them all in the dispensary; only Candy looked guilty, and therefore he stared at her.

'What are these two experts telling you?' Dr. Harlow asked. He spent a lot of time looking at Candy when he thought no one saw him, but Homer Wells saw him and Nurse Caroline was very sensitive to the longings other women inspired. Candy was tongue-tied, which made her seem more guilty, and Dr. Harlow turned to Nurse Caroline. 'You got rid of the hysteric?' he asked her.

'No problem,' Nurse Caroline said.

I know that you disapprove,' Dr. Harlow told her, 'but rules exist for reasons.'

'Rules exist for reasons,' said Homer Wells, uncontrollably; it was such a stupid thing to say, he felt compelled to repeat it. Dr. Harlow stared at him.

'No doubt you're an abortion expert, too, Wells,' Dr. Harlow said.

'It's not very hard to be an abortion expert,' Homer \'7b483\'7d Wells said. 'It's a pretty easy thing to do.'

'You think so?' Dr. Harlow asked aggressively.

'Well, what do I know?' Homer Wells said, shrugging.

'Yes, what do you know?' Dr. Harlow said.

'Not much,' Nurse Caroline said gruffly; even Dr. Harlow appreciated this. Even Candy smiled. Homer Wells smiled sheepishly, too. You see? I'm getting smarter! That is what he smiled to Nurse Caroline, who viewed him with an expression of condescension that was proper for nurses to exhibit only to nurses' aides. Dr. Harlow seemed to feel that the pecking order he revered was being treated with the reverence that was mandatory from them all. A kind of glaze appeared to coat his face, a texture composed of righteousness and adrenaline. Homer Wells gave himself a brief sensation of pleasure by imagining something that could wake up Dr. Harlow, and humble him. Mr. Rose's knife work might have that effect on Dr. Harlow—Homer imagined Mr. Rose undressing Dr. Harlow with his knife; eveiy article of clothing would be gathered around the doctor's ankles, in strips and tatters, yet on the doctor's naked body there wouldn't be a scratch.

A month after Wally's plane was shot down, they heard from the crew of Opportunity Knocks.

'We were halfway to China,' the co-pilot wrote,' when the Nips took some potshots. Captain Worthington ordered the crew to bail out.'

The crew chief and the radioman jumped close together; the co-pilot jumped third. The roof of the jungle was so dense that when the first man crashed through it, he could not see the other parachutes. The jungle itself was so thick that the crew had to search for the others —it took him seven hours to find the radioman. The rain was so heavy—it made such a din against the broad palm leaves—none of the men heard the plane explode. The atmosphere was so rich with its own scents that the smell of the burning gasoline and the smoke from the fire \'7b484\'7d never reached them. They wondered if the plane had not miraculously recovered itself and flown on. When they looked up, they could not see through the treetops (which everywhere glittered with bright green pigeons).

In seven hours, the crew chief contacted thirteen leeches of various sizes—which the radioman thoughtfully removed; the crew chief plucked fifteen leeches off the radioman. They found that the best way to remove the leeches was to touch the lighted end of a cigarette to their posterior ends; that way, they would release their contact with the flesh. If you just pulled them, they kept breaking; their strong sucking mouths would remain attached.

The radioman and the crew chief ate nothing for five days. When it rained—which it did, most of the time— they drank the rainwater that gathered in puddles in the big palm leaves. They were afraid to drink the other water they encountered. In some of the water they thought they saw crocodiles. Because the radioman was afraid of snakes, the crew chief did not point out the snakes he saw; the crew chief was afraid of tigers, and he thought he saw one, once, but the radioman maintained that they only heard a tiger, or several tigers—or the same tiger, several times. The crew chief said that the same tiger followed them for five days.

The leeches tired them out, they said. Although the roof of the jungle made the pelting rain louder, it did keep the rain from falling directly on the two men; yet the jungle was so saturated that the rain almost constantly dripped on them—and when, for brief intervals, the rain stopped, the roof of the jungle allowed no sunlight to penetrate to the jungle floor, and the raucous birds, silent in the rain, were louder than the rain when they had their opportunities to protest the monsoon.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 676