COMMON MISUSES OF THE PROPHYLACTIC

He wrote as if he were writing for children; in some cases, he was. \'7b496\'7d

1. SOME MEN PUT THE PROPHYLACTIC ON JUST THE TIP OF THE PENIS: THIS IS A MISTAKE, BECAUSE THE PROPHYLACTIC WILL COME OFF. IT MUST BE PUT OVER THE WHOLE PENIS, AND IT MUST BE PUT ON WHEN THE PENIS IS ERECT.

2. SOME MEN TRY TO USE THE PROPHYLACTIC A SECOND TIME: THIS IS ALSO A MISTAKE. ONCE YOU REMOVE A PROPHYLACTIC, THROW IT AWAY! AND WASH YOUR GENITAL AREA THOROUGHLY BEFORE ALLOWING YOURSELF FURTHER CONTACT WITH YOUR PARTNER—SPERM ARE LIVING THINGS (AT LEAST, FOR A SHORT TIME), AND THEY CAN SWIM!

3. SOME MEN TAKE THE PROPHYLACTIC OUT OF ITS WRAPPER: THEY EXPOSE THE RUBBER TO LIGHT AND AIR FOR TOO LONG A TIME BEFORE USING IT: CONSEQUENTLY, THE RUBBER DRIES OUT AND IT DEVELOPS CRACKS AND HOLES. THIS IS A MISTAKE! SPERM ARE VERY TINY—THEY CAN SWIM THROUGH CRACKS AND HOLES!

4. SOME MEN STAY INSIDE THEIR PARTNERS FOR A LONG TIME AFTER THEY HAVE EJACULATED; WHAT A MISTAKE THIS IS! THE PENIS SHRINKS! WHEN THE PENIS IS NO LONGER ERECT, AND WHEN THE MAN FINALLY PULLS HIS PENIS OUT OF HIS PARTNER, THE PROPHYLACTIC CAN SLIDE COMPLETELY OFF. MOST MEN CAN'I EVEN FEEL THIS HAPPENING, BUT WHAT A MESS! INSIDE THE WOMAN YOU HAVE JUST DEPOSITED A WHOLE PROPHYLACTIC, AND ALL THOSE SPERM!

And some men, Homer Wells could have added— \'7b497\'7d thinking of Herb Fowler—distribute prophylactics with holes in them to their fellow man.

In the cider house at Ocean View, huddled with the huddled mice, Homer Wells and Candy Kendall could not move from their embrace. For one thing, the mattress was so narrow—it was only possible to share that mattress if they remained joined together—and for another, they had waited so long; they had anticipated so much. And, to both of them, so much was meant by having allowed themselves to come together. They shared both a love and a grief, for neither of them would have permitted each other this moment if there were not at least parts of each of them that had accepted Wally's death. And, after lovemaking, those parts of them that felt Wally's loss were forced to acknowledge the moment with reverence and with solemnity; therefore, their expressions were not so full of rapture and not so void of worry as the expressions of most lovers after lovemaking.

Homer Wells, with his face pressed into Candy's hair, lay dreaming that he was only now arriving at the white Cadillac's original destination; he felt as if Wally were still driving him and Candy away from St. Cloud's—as if Wally were still in charge; surely Wally was a true benefactor to have driven him safely to this resting place. The pulse in Candy's temple, which lightly touched his own pulse, was as soothing to Homer as the tire hum when the great white Cadillac had rescued him from the prison into which he was born. There was a tear on Homer's face; he would have thanked Wally, if he could.

And if, in the darkness, he could have seen Candy's face, he would have known that a part of her was still over Burma.

They lay still for so long—the first mouse bold enough to run across their bare legs surprised them. Homer Wells jerked up to a kneeling position; a moment passed before he realized that he had left a whole prophylactic, and all those sperm inside Candy. It was number 4 on Wilbur \'7b498\'7d Larch's list of the COMMON MISUSES OF THE PROPHYLACTIC.

'Oh-oh,' said Homer Wells, whose fingers were quick, and sensitive, and trained; he needed only the index and middle fingers of his right hand to retrieve the lost rubber; although he was very fast, he doubted he'd been fast enough.

Despite the careful detail of Homer's instructions to Candy, she cut him off. 'I think I know how to douche myself, Homer,' she said.

And so their first night of passion, which had been so slowly building between them, ended in the haste typical of the measures taken to avoid an unwanted pregnancy —the possible cause of which was fairly typical, too.

'I love you,' Homer repeated, kissing her good night. There were both fervor and anger in Candy's good-night kiss, both ferocity and resignation in the way she clutched his hands. Homer stood for a while in the parking lot behind the lobster pound; the only sound was the aeration device that circulated fresh oxygen through the water tank that kept the lobsters alive. The quality of the air in the parking lot was divided between brine and motor oil. The night's heat was gone. A cool, damp fog rolled in from the sea; there was no more heat lightning to illuminate, however slightly, the view across the Atlantic.

It seemed to Homer Wells that there had been so much waiting and seeing to his life, and now there was something else to wait and see about.

Wilbur Larch, who was seventy-something and the grand master of Maine in the field of waiting and seeing, gazed once again upon the starry ceiling of the dispensary. One of ether's pleasures was its occasional transportation of the inhaler to a position that afforded him a bird's eye view of himself; Wilbur Larch was thus permitted to smile from afar upon a vision of himself. It was the night that he blessed the adoption of young Copperfield, the lisper. \'7b499\'7d

'Let us be happy for young Copperfield,' Dr. Larch had said. 'Young Copperfield has found a family. Good night, Copperfield!'

Only this time, in ether's memory, it was a joyous occasion. There was even unison in the responses, as if Larch conducted a choir of angels—all singing Copperfield merrily on his way. It hadn't been like that. Copperfield had been especially popular with the littlest orphans; he was what Nurse Angela called a 'binder'—in his good-natured, lisping presence, the spirits of the other orphans rose and held together. That night no one had joined Larch in wishing Copperfield good night and good-bye. But Copperfield's departure had been especially hard for Dr. Larch, because with Copperfield's passing there went from St. Cloud's not only the last orphan to be named by Homer Wells but also the last orphan to have known Homer. With Copperfield's leaving, a little more of Homer Wells left, too. Little Steerforth—second-born and second-named—had been adopted first.

But good for ether! How it allowed Dr. Larch to revise his history. Perhaps it had been the ether, all along, that had provided Dr. Larch with the impulse to be a revisionist with Fuzzy Stone. And in Larch's ether dreams he had many times rescued Wally Worthington—the exploding plane had reassembled itself and returned to the sky; the parachute had opened, and the gentle currents of the Burmese air had borne Wally all the way to China. Safely above the Japanese, above the tigers and the snakes, and above the dread diseases of Asia—how peacefully Wilbur Larch had seen Wally fly. And how the Chinese had been impressed with W ally's noble good looks—with those patrician bones in that handsome face. In time, the Chinese would help Wally to find his base, and he would come home to his girlfriend—this was what Wilbur Larch wanted most: he wanted Wally back with Candy, for only then would there be any hope of Homer Wells returning to St. Cloud's. \'7b500\'7d

Nearly three months after Wally's plane was shot down, the harvest at Ocean View began and Candy Kendall knew she was pregnant. After all, she was familiar with the symptoms; so was Homer Wells.

A ragtag crew of pickers mauled the orchards that year; there were housewives and war brides falling out of trees, and students dismissed from the local schools so that they might contribute to the harvest. Even the apple harvest in 194-was considered a part of the war effort. Olive made Homer a crew boss of the high school kids, whose methods of bruising the fruit were so various that Homer was kept very busy.

Candy worked in the mart; she told Olive that her frequent bouts of nausea were probably caused by the smell of diesel fuel and exhaust that was constant around the farm vehicles. Olive remarked that she thought the daughter of a mechanic and lobsterman would be less sensitive to strong odors, and when she suggested that Candy might be more comfortable working in the fields, Candy admitted that climbing trees also made her feel queasy.

'I never knew you were so delicate,' Olive said. Olive had never been more active in a harvest, or more grateful for there being one. But the harvest that year reminded Homer Wells of learning to tread water; both Candy and Olive had taught him how. ('Swimming in place,' Olive had called it.)

'I'm just swimming in place,' Homer told Candy. 'We can't leave Olive during the harvest.'

'If I work as hard as I can,' Candy told him, 'it's possible that I'll miscarry.'

It was not very possible, Homer Wells knew.

'What if I don't want you to miscarry?' Homer asked her.

'What if?' Candy asked.

'What if I want you to marry me, and to have the baby?' Homer asked. \'7b501\'7d

They stood at one end of the conveyor belt in the packinghouse; Candy was at the head of the line of women who sized and sorted the apples—who either packaged them or banished them to cider. Candy was retching, even though she had chosen the head of the line because that put her nearest the open door.

'We have to wait and see,' Candy said between retches.

'We don't have long to wait,' said Homer Wells. 'We don't have long to see.'

'I shouldn't marry you for a year, or more,' Candy said.

'I really want to marry you, but what about Olive? We have to wait.'

'The baby won't wait,' Homer said.

'We both know where to go—to not have the baby,' Candy said.

'Or to have it,'said Homer Wells. 'It's my baby, too.'

'How do I have a baby without anyone knowing I've had it?' Candy asked; she retched again, and Big Dot Taft came up the packing line to see what was the matter.

'Homer, ain't you got no better manners than to watch a young lady puke?' Big Dot asked him. She put her huge arm around Candy's shoulder. 'You get away from the door, darlin',' Big Dot Taft said to Candy. 'You come on and work down the line—there's only apples to smell down there. The tractor exhaust comes in the door,'

'I'll see you soon,' Homer mumbled, to both Candy and Big Dot.

'No one likes to be sick around the opposite sex, Homer,' Big Dot informed him.

'Right,' said Homer Wells, orphan and would-be father.

In Maine, it is considered wiser just to know something than to talk about it; that no one said Candy Kendall was pregnant didn't necessarily mean that they didn't know she was. In Maine, it is a given that any boy can get any girl in trouble. What they do about it is their business; if they want advice, they should ask.

'If you were an orphan, what would you have?' \'7b502\'7d Wilbur Larch once wrote in A Brief History oj St. Cloud's. 'An orphan, or an abortion?'

'An abortion, definitely,' Melony had said once, when Homer Wells had asked her. 'How about you?'

'I'd have the orphan,' Homer had said.

'You're just a dreamer, Sunshine,' Melony had told him.

Now he supposed it was true; he was just a dreamer. He confused the high school kids with each other, and gave some of them credit for picking bushels that other kids had picked. He stopped two of the boys from throwing apples at each other, and felt that he had to make an example of them—in order to protect the fruit and establish his authority. But while he was driving the boys back to the apple mart, where he forced them to wait without getting in any'trouble—and to miss a morning's picking—a full-scale apple fight broke out among the other high school kids, and when Homer returned to the field, he interrupted a war. The crates that were already loaded on the flatbed were splattered with apple seeds, and the hot parts of the tractor gave off a burned-apple stench (someone must have tried to use the tractor for 'cover'). Perhaps Vernon Lynch would have made a better foreman for the high school kids, Homer thought. All Homer wanted to do was to make things right with Candy.

When they sat on Ray Kendall's dock now, they sat close together, and they didn't sit for long — it was getting cold. They sat huddled against one of the posts at the dock's end, where Ray had seen Candy sit with Wally—so many times—and in somewhat the same position (although, Ray noted, Wally had always sat up straighter, as if he were already fastened to the pilot's seat).

Ray Kendall understood why it was necessary for them to brood about the process of falling in love, but he felt sorry for them; he knew that falling in love was never meant to be such a morose moment. Yet Ray had every \'7b503\'7d respect for Olive, and it was for Olive, he knew, that Homer and Candy were forced to be mourners at their own love story. 'You should just go away' Ray said out the window to Homer and Candy; he spoke very softly and the window was closed.

Homer was afraid that if he insisted to Candy that she marry him—insisted that she have their baby—that he would force her to reject him completely. He also knew that Candy was afraid of Olive; it was not that Candy was so eager to have a second abortion—Homer knew that Candy would marry him, and have their baby on the same day, if she thought she could avoid telling Olive the truth. Candy was not ashamed that Olive would judge her harshly for her insufficient feelings for Wally —Candy's faith (in Wally being alive) had not been as strong as Olive's. It is not unusual for the mother of an only son and the young woman who is the son's lover to envision themselves as competitors.

More shocking (to Homer's mind) was what he could gather of his own feelings. He already knew that he loved Candy, and wanted her; now he discovered that:—more than wanting her—he wanted her child.

They were just another trapped couple, more comfortable with their illusions than they were with the reality of their situation.

'After the harvest,' Homer said to Candy, 'we'll go to Saint Cloud's. I'll say that they need me there. It's probably true, anyway. And because of the war, no one else is paying attention to them. You could tell your dad it's just another kind of war effort. We could both tell Olive that we feel an obligation—to be where we're really needed; to be of more use.'

'You want me to have the baby?' Candy asked him.

'I want you to have our baby,' said Homer Wells. 'And after the baby's born, and you're both recovered, we'll come back here. We'll tell your dad, and Olive—or we'll write them—that we've fallen in love, and that we've gotten married.' \'7b504\'7d

'And that we conceived a child before we did any of that?' Candy asked.

Homer Wells, who saw the real stars above the blackened coast of Maine—bright and cold—envisioned the whole story very clearly. 'We'll say the baby is adopted,' he said. 'We'll say we felt a further obligation—to the orphanage. I do feel that, in a way, anyway,' he added.

'Our baby is adopted?' Candy asked. 'So we have a baby who thinks it's an orphan?'

'No,' Homer said. 'We have our own baby, and it knows it's all ours. We just say it's adopted—just for Olive's sake, and just for a while.'

'That's lying,' Candy said.

'Right,' said Homer Wells. That's lying for a while.'

'Maybe—when we came back, with the baby—maybe we wouldn't have to say it was adopted. Maybe we could tell the truth then,' Candy said.

'Maybe,' Homer said. Maybe everything is waiting and seeing, he thought. He put his mouth on the back of her neck; he nuzzled into her hair.

'If we thought that Olive could accept it, if we thought that she could accept—about Wally,' Candy added, 'then we wouldn't have to lie about the baby being adopted, would we?'

'Right,' said Homer Wells. What is all this worrying about lying? he wondered, holding Candy tightly as she softly cried. Was it true that Wilbur Larch had no memory of Homer's mother? Was it true that Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna had no memory of his mother, either? Maybe it was true, but Homer Wells would never have blamed them if they had lied; they would have lied only to protect him. And if they'd remembered his mother, and his mother was a monster, wasn't it better that they'd lied? To orphans, not every truth is wanted.

And if Homer had discovered that Wally had died in terrible pain or with prolonged suffering—if Wally had been tortured, or had burned to death, or had been eaten by an animal—Homer certainly would have lied about \'7b505\'7d that. If Homer Wells had been an amateur historian, he would have been as much of a revisionist as Wilbur Larch—he would have tried to make everything come out all right in the end. Homer Wells, who always said to Wilbur Larch that he (Larch) was the doctor, was more of a doctor than he knew.

The first night of cider making he shared the work of the press and grinder with Meany Hyde and Everett Taft; Big Dot and her kid sister, Debra Pettigrew, were the bottlers. Debra was sullen at the prospect of messy work; she complained about the slopping and the spilling, and her irritation was further enhanced by the presence of Homer Wells, to whom she had not been speaking— Debra's understanding that Candy and Homer had become partners in a certain grief was markedly colored by her suspicion that Candy and Homer had become partners in a certain pleasure, too. At least Debra had not reacted generously to Homer's suggestion that they just be friends. Homer was puzzled by Debra's hostility, and assumed that his years in the orphanage had deprived him of some perfectly sensible explanation for her behavior. It seemed to Homer that Debra had always denied him access to anything more than her friendship. Why was she now incensed that he asked no more of her than that?

Meany Hyde announced to Homer and Everett Taft that this would be his first and last night press of the harvest because he wanted to stay home with Florence —'Now that her time is approachin',' Meany said.

When Mr. Rose pressed cider, there was a very different feeling in the fermented air. For one thing, everything went more quickly; the pressing was a kind of contest. For another, there was a tension that Mr. Rose's authority created—and the knowledge of those tired men asleep, or trying to sleep, in the next room, lent to the working of the grinder and the press a sense of hurry (and of perfection) that one feels only on the edge of exhaustion. \'7b506\'7d

Debra Pettigrew's future heaviness grew more and more apparent the wetter she got; there was a matching slope in the sisters' shoulders, and even a slackness in the backs of Debra's arms that would one day yield the massive jiggles that shivered through Big Dot. In sisterly imitation, they wiped the sweat from their eyes with their biceps—not wanting to touch their faces with their cider-sweet and sticky hands.

After midnight, Olive brought them cold beer and hot coffee. When she had gone, Meany Hyde said, 'That Missus Worthington is a thoughtful woman—here she is not only bringin' us somethin' but givin' us a choice.'

'And her with Wally gone,' said Everett Taft. 'It's a wonder she even thought of us.'

Whatever is brought to me, whatever is coming, Homer thought, I will not move out of its way. Life was finally about to happen to him—the journey he proposed making, back to St. Cloud's, was actually going to give him his freedom from St. Cloud's. He would have a baby (if not a wife, too); he would need a job.

Of course I'll take the baby trees, and plant them, he was thinking—as if apple trees would satisfy St. Cloud's, as if his planting them would satisfy what Wilbur Larch wanted from him.

By the end of the harvest, the light grew grayer and the orchards were darker in the daytime, although more light passed through the empty trees. The picking crew's inexperience was visible in the shriveled apples still clinging to the hard-to-reach limbs. The ground was already frozen in St. Cloud's. Homer would have to make a special trip for the baby trees. He would plant them in the spring; it would be a spring baby.

Homer and Candy worked only the night shifts at Cape Kenneth Hospital now. The days when Ray was building the torpedoes were the days Homer could spend with Candy, in her room above the lobster pound.

There was a freedom about their lovemaking, now that Candy was already pregnant. Although she could \'7b507\'7d not tell him—not yet—Candy loved making love to Homer Wells; she enjoyed herself much more than she had been able to with Wally. But she could not bring herself to say aloud that anything was better than with Wally; although making love was better with Homer, she doubted that this was Wally's fault. She arid Wally had never had the time to feel so free.

'The girl and I are coming,' Homer wrote to Dr. Larch. 'She's going to have my baby—neither an abortion nor an orphan.'

'A wanted baby!' Nurse Angela said. 'We're going to have a wanted baby!'

'If not a planned one,' said Wilbur Larch, who stared out the window of Nurse Angela's office as if the hill that rose outside the window had personally risen against him. 'And I suppose he's going to plant the damn trees,' said Dr Larch. 'What does he want a baby for? How can he have a baby and go to college—or to medical school?'

'When was he ever going to go to medical school, Wilbur?' Nurse Edna asked.

'I knew he'd be back!' Nurse Angela shouted. 'He belongs with us!'

'Yes, he does,' said Wilbur Larch. Involuntarily, and somewhat stiffly, his back straightened, his knees braced, his arms reached out and the fingers of his hands partially opened—as if he were preparing to receive a heavy package. Nurse Edna shuddered to see him in such a pose, which reminded her of the fetus from Three Mile Falls, that dead baby whose posture of such extreme supplication had been arranged by Homer Wells.

Homer said to Olive Worthington: 'I have to leave, especially with Christmas coming, and all those memories —but the:re is something, and someone, I've been neglecting. It's really all of them at Saint Cloud's—nothing changes there. They always need the same things, and now that there's a war, and everyone is making; an effort \'7b508\'7d for the war, I think Saint Cloud's is more forgotten than ever. And Doctor Larch isn't getting any younger. should be of more use than I am here. With the harvest over, I don't feel I have enough to do. At Saint Cloud's, there's always too much to do.'

'You're a fine young man,' said Olive Worthington, but Homer hung his head. He remembered what Mr Rochester said to Jane Eyre:

'Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre: remorse is the poison of life.'

It was an early November morning in the kitchen at Ocean View; Olive had not done her hair or put her makeup on. The gray in the light, and in her face and in her hair, made Mrs. Worthington look older to Homer. She was using the string of her tea bag to wring the last of the tea from the bag, and Homer could not raise his eyes from the ropy, knotted veins in the backs of her hands. She had always smoked too much, and in the morning she always coughed.

'Candy is coming with me,' said Homer Wells.

'Candy is a fine young woman,' Olive said. 'It is most unselfish of you both—when you could be enjoying yourselves —to give comfort and companionship to unwanted children.' The string across the belly of the tea bag was so taut that Homer thought it would slice through the bag. Olive's voice was so formal that she might have been speaking at an awards ceremony, describing the heroism that was worthy of prizes. She was trying her hardest not to cough. When the string tore the tea bag, some of the wet leaves stuck to the yolk of her uneaten soft-boiled egg, which was perched in a china egg cup that Homer Wells had once mistaken for a candlestick holder.

'I could never thank you enough for everything you've done for me,' Homer said. Olive Worthington just shook her head; her shoulders were squared, her chin up, the straightness of her back was formidable. 'I'm so sorry about Wally,' said Homer Wells. There was the slightest \'7b509\'7d movement in Olive's throat, but the muscles of her neck were rigid.

'He's just missing,' Olive said.

'Right,' said Homer Wells. He put his hand on Olive's shoulder. She gave no indication that the presence of his hand was either a burden or a comfort, but after they remained like that for a while, she turned her face enough to rest her cheek on top of his hand; there they remained for a while longer, as if posing for a painter of the old school—or for a photographer who was waiting for the unlikely; for the November sun to come out.

Olive insisted that he take the white Cadillac.

'Well,' Ray said to Candy and to Homer, 'I think it's good for you both that you stick together.' Ray was disappointed that neither Homer nor Candy acknowledged his observation with any enthusiasm; as the Cadillac was leaving the lobster pound parking lot, Ray called out to them: 'And try havin' some fun together!' Somehow, he doubted that they had heard him.

Who goes to St. Cloud's to have fun?

I have not really been adopted, thought Homer Wells. I am not really betraying Mrs. Worthington; she never said she was my mother. Even so, Homer and Candy did not talk a lot on the drive.

On their journey inland, the farther north they drove, the more the leaves had abandoned the trees; there was a little snow in Skowhegan, where the ground resembled an old man's face in need of a shave. There was more snow in Rlanchard and in East Moxie and in Moxie Gore, and they had to wait an hour in Ten Thousand Acre Tract where a tree was down—across the road. The snow had drifted over the tree, the smashed shape of which resembled a toppled dinosaur. In Moose River and in Misery Gore, and in Tomhegan, too, the snow had come to stay. The drifts along the roadside were shorn so sharply by the plow—and they stood so hig,h—that Candy and Homer could detect the presence of a house only by chimney smoke, or by the narrow paths chopped \'7b510\'7d through the drifts that were here and there stained by the territorial pissing of dogs.

Olive and Ray and Meany Hyde had given them extra gas coupons. They had decided to take the car because they thought that it would be nice to have a means to get away from St. Cloud's—if only for short drives—but by the time they reached Black Rapids and Homer had put the chains on the rear tires, they realized that the winter roads (and this was only the beginning of the winter) ! would make most driving impossible.

If they had asked him, Dr Larch would have saved them the trouble of bringing the car. He would have said that no one comes to St. Cloud's for the purpose of taking little trips away from it; he would have suggested, for fun, that they could always take the train to Three Mile Falls.

With the bad roads and the failing light and the snow that began to fall after Ellenville, it was already dark when they reached St. Cloud's. The headlights of the white Cadillac, climbing the hill past the girls' division, illuminated two women walking down the hill toward the railroad station—their faces turning away from the light. Their footing looked unsure; one of them didn't have a scarf; the other one didn't have a hat; the snow winked in the headlights as if the women were throwing diamonds in the air.

Homer Wells stopped the car and rolled down the window. 'May I give you a ride?' he asked the women.

'You're goin' the wrong way,' one of them said.

'I could turn around!' he called to them. When they walked on without answering him, he drove ahead to the hospital entrance of the boys' division and turned out the headlights. The snow falling in front of the light in the dispensary was the same kind of snow that had been falling the night that he arrived in St. Cloud's after his escape from the Drapers in Waterville.

There had been something of a brouhaha between Larch and his nurses about where Homer and Candy \'7b511\'7d ! would sleep. Larch assumed that Candy would sleep in the girls' division and that Homer would sleep where he used to sleep, with the other boys, but the women reacted strongly to this suggestion.

'They're lovers!' Nurse Edna pointed out. 'Surely they sleep together!'

'Well, surely they have,' Larch said. That doesn't mean that they have to sleep together here.'

'Homer said he was going to marry her,' Nurse Edna pointed out.

'Going to,' grumbled Wilbur Larch.

'I think it would be nice to have someone sleeping with someone else here,' Nurse Angela said.

'It seems to me,' said Wilbur Larch, 'that we're in business because there's entirely too much sleeping together.'

'They're lovers!' Nurse Edna repeated indignantly.

And so the women decided it. Candy and Homer would share a room with two beds on the ground floor of the girls' division; how they arranged the beds was their own business. Mrs. Grogan said that she liked the idea of having a man in the girls' division; occasionally, the girls complained of a prowler or a peeping torn; having a man around at night was a good idea.

'Besides,' Mrs. Grogan said, 'I'm all alone over there—you three have each other.'

'We all sleep alone over here,' Dr Larch said.

'Well, Wilbur,' Nurse Edna said, 'don't be so proud of it.'

Olive Worthington, alone in Wally's room, regarded the two beds, Homer's and Wally's—both beds were freshly made up, both pillows were without a crease. On the night table between their beds was a photograph of Candy teaching Homer how to swim. Because there was no ashtray in the boys' room, Olive held her free hand in a cupped position under the long, dangling ash of her cigarette.

Raymond Kendall, alone above the lobster pound, \'7b512\'7d viewed the triptych of photographs that stood like an altarpiece on his night table, next to his socket wrench set. The middle photograph was of himself as a young man; he was seated in an uncomfortable-looking chair, his wife was in his lap; she was pregnant with Candy; the chair was in apparent danger. The left-hand photograph was Candy's graduation picture, the right-hand photograph was of Candy with Wally—their tennis racquets pointed at each other, like guns. Ray had no picture of Homer Wells; he needed only to look out the window at his dock in order to imagine Homer clearly; Ray could not look at his dock and think of Homer Wells without hearing the snails rain upon the water.

Nurse Edna had tried to keep a little supper warm for Homer and Candy; she had put the disappointing pot roast in the instrument sterilizer, which she checked from time to time. Mrs. Grogan, who was praying in the girls' division, did not see the Cadillac come up the hill. Nurse Angela was in the delivery room, shaving a woman who had already broken her bag of waters.

Homer and Candy passed by the empty and brightly lit dispensary; they peeked into Nurse Angela's empty office. Homer knew better than to peek into the delivery room when the light was on. From the dormitory, they could hear Dr. Larch's reading voice. Although Candy held tightly to his hand, Homer Wells was inclined to hurry—in order not to miss the bedtime story.

Meany Hyde's wife, Florence, was delivered of a healthy baby boy—nine pounds, two ounces—shortly after Thanksgiving, which Olive Worthington and Raymond Kendall celebrated in a fairly formal and quiet fashion at Ocean View. Olive invited all her apple workers for an open house; she asked Ray to help her host the occasion. Meany Hyde insisted to Olive that his new baby was a definite sign that Wally was alive.

'Yes, I know he's alive,' Olive told Meany calmly.

It was not too trying a day for her, but she did find \'7b513\'7d Debra Pettigrew sitting on Homer's bed in Wally's room, staring at the photograph of Candy teaching Homer how to swim. And not long after ushering Debra from the room, Olive discovered Grace Lynch sitting in the same dent Debra had made on Homer's bed. Grace, however, was staring at the questionnaire from the board of trustees at St. Cloud's, the one that Homer had never filled out and had left tacked to the wall of Wally's room as if they were unwritten rules.

And Big Dot Taft broke down in the kitchen while telling Olive about one of her dreams. Everett had found her, in her sleep, dragging herself across the bedroom floor toward the bathroom. 'I didn't have noi legs,' Big Dot told Olive. 'It was the night Florence's boy was born, and I woke up without no legs—only I didn't really wake up, I was just dreamin' that there was nothin' left of me, below the waist.'

'Except that you had to go to the bathroom,' Everett Taft pointed out. 'Otherwise, why was you crawlin' on the floor?'

'The important thing was that I was injured,' Big Dot told her husband crossly.

'Oh,' said Everett Taft.

'The point is,' Meany Hyde said to Olive, 'my baby was born just fine but Big Dot had a dream that she couldn't walk. Don'tcha see, Olive?' Meany asked. 'I think God is tellin' us that Wally is okay—that he's alive—but that he's been hurt.'

'He's injured, or somethin',' Big Dot said, bursting into tears.

'Of course,' Olive said abruptly. 'It's what I've always thought.' Her words startled them all—even Ray Kendall. 'If he weren't injured, we would have heard from him by now. And if he weren't alive, I'd know it,' Olive said. She handed her handkerchief to Big Dot Taft and lit a fresh cigarette from the butt end of the cigarette she had almost finished.

Thanksgiving at St. Cloud's was not nearly so mys-\'7b514\'7d tical, and the food wasn't as good, but everyone had a good time. In lieu of balloons, Dr. Larch distributed prophylactics to Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna, who— despite their distaste for the job—inflated the rubbers and dipped them in bowls of green and red food coloring. When the coloring dried, Mrs. Grogan painted the orphans' names on the rubbers, and Homer and Candy hid the brightly colored prophylactics all over the orphanage.

'It's a rubber hunt,' said Wilbur Larch. 'We should have saved the idea for Easter. Eggs are expensive.'

'We'll not give up eggs for Easter, Wilbur,' Nurse Edna said indignantly.

'I suppose not,' Dr. Larch said tiredly.

Olive Worthington had sent a case of champagne. Wilbur Larch had never drunk a drop of champagne before—he was not a drinker—but the way the bubbles tightened the roof of his mouth, opened his nasal passages and made his eyes feel dry but clear reminded him of that lightest of vapors, of that famous inhalation he was addicted to. He drank and drank. He even sang for the children—something he'd heard the French soldiers sing in World War I. That song was no more suitable for children than those prophylactics were, but—because of an ignorance of French and an innocence of sex—the French song (which was filthier than any limerick Wally Worthington would ever know) was mistaken for a pleasing ditty and the green and red rubbers were mistaken for balloons.

Even Nurse Edna got a little drunk; champagne was new to her, too, although she sometimes put sherry in hot soup. Nurse Angela didn't drink, but she became emotional —to the degree that she threw her arms around Homer's neck and kissed him mightily, all the while proclaiming that the spirit of St. Cloud's had been in a noticeable slump during Homer's absence and that Homer had been sent by a clearly sympathetic God to revive them. \'7b515\'7d

'But Homer's not staying,' Wilbur Larch said, hiccuping.

They had all been impressed with Candy, whom even Dr. Larch referred to as 'our angelic volunteer,' and over whom Mrs. Grogan daily fussed as if Candy were her daughter. Nurse Edna busied herself around the young lovers the way a moth flaps around a light.

On Thanksgiving Day, Dr. Larch even flirted with Candy—a little. I never saw such a pretty girl who was willing to give enemas,' Larch said, patting Candy's knee.

'I'm not squeamish,' Candy told him.

'There's no room for squeamishness here,' Larch said, burping.

'There's still a little room for sensitivity, I hope,' Nurse Angela complained. Larch had never praised her or Nurse Edna for their willingness to give enemas.

'Of course, I wanted him to go to medical school, to be a doctor, to come back and relieve me here,' Wilbur Larch told Candy in a loud voice—as if Homer weren't sitting right across the table. Larch patted Candy's knee again. 'But that's all right!' he said. 'Who wouldn't rather get a girl like you pregnant—and grow apples!' He said something in French and drank another glass of champagne. 'Of course,' he whispered to Candy, 'he doesn't need to go to medical school to be a doctor here. There's just a few more procedures he ought to be familiar with. Hell!' Larch said, indicating the orphans eating their turkey—each with a colored rubber, like a name tag, stationed in front of his or her plate, 'this isn't a bad place to raise a family. And if Ktomer ever gets around to planting the damn hillside, then you'll get to grow apples here, too.'

When Dr. Larch fell asleep at the table, Homer Wells carried him back to the dispensary. In his time away from St. Cloud's, Homer wondered, had Dr. Larch gone completely crazy? There was no one to ask. Mrs Grogan, Nurse Edna, and especially Nurse Angela might agree \'7b516\'7d that Larch had traveled around the bend—that he had one oar out of the water, as Ray Kendall would say; that he had one wheel in the sand, as Wally used to say—but Mrs. Grogan and the nurses would most emphatically defend Dr. Larch. Their view, Homer could tell, was that Homer had left them for too long, that his judgment was rusty. Fortunately, Homer's obstetrical procedure had not suffered from his absence.

Pregnant women have no respect for holidays. The trains run at different times, but they run. It was after six in the evening when the woman arrived in St. Cloud's; although it was not his usual practice, the stationmaster escorted her to the hospital entrance because the woman was already engaged in the second stage of labor—her membranes were ruptured, and her bearing-down pains were at regular intervals. Homer Wells was palpating the baby's head through the perineum when Nurse Angela informed him that Dr. Larch was too drunk to be aroused, and Nurse Edna had also fallen asleep. Homer was concerned that the perineum showed signs of bulging, and the woman's response to a rather heavy ether sedation was quite slow.

Homer was obliged to hold back the infant's head in order to protect the perineum from tearing; the mediolateral incision, which Homer elected to perform, was made at a point corresponding to seven on the face of a clock. It was a safer episiotomy, in Homer's view, because the cut could, if necessary, be carried back considerably farther than the midline type of operation.

Immediately after the birth of the head, Homer slipped his finger around the neck of the child to see if the umbilical cord was coiled there, but it was an easy birth, both shoulders emerging spontaneously. He applied two ligatures to the umbilical and cut the cord between the two. He still had his surgical gown on when he went to the dispensary to see how Dr. Larch was recovering from his Thanksgiving Day champagne. If Larch was familiar with the transitions he encountered in moving from a \'7b517\'7d world of ether to a world without anesthesia, he was unfamiliar with the transition between drunkenness and hangover. Seeing Homer Wells in the bloody smock of his business, Wilbur Larch imagined he was saved.

'Ah, Doctor Stone,' he said, extending his hand to Homer with a self-congratulatory formality famous among colleagues in the medical profession.

'Doctor Who?' said Homer Wells.

'Doctor Stone,' said Wilbur Larch, withdrawing his hand, his hangover settling on him—a dust so thick on the roof of his mouth that he could only repeat himself. 'Fuzzy Stone, Fuzzy Stone, Fuzzy Stone.'

'Homer?' Candy asked, when they lay together in one of the twin beds given them in their room in the girls' division. 'Why would Doctor Larch say that you don't need to go to medical school to be a doctor here?'

'Maybe he means that half the work here is illegal, anyway,' said Homer Wells. 'So what's the point of being a legitimate doctor?'

'But no one would hire you if you weren't a legitimate doctor, would they?' Candy asked.

'Maybe Doctor Larch would,' said Homer Wells. 'I know some things.'

'You don't want to be a doctor here, anyway—do you?' Candy asked.

'That's right, I don't want to,' he said. What is all this about Fuzzy Stone? he was wondering as he fell asleep.

Homer was still asleep when Dr. Larch bent over the Thanksgiving woman and examined the episiotomy. Nurse Angela was telling him about it, stitch by stitch, but although Larch appreciated the description, it wasn't really necessary; the look and feel of the woman's healthy tissue told him everything he wanted to know. Homer Wells had not lost his confidence; he still had the correct touch.

He also possessed the self-righteousness of the young and wounded; Homer Wells had no doubts to soften his contempt for people who'd bungled their lives so badly \'7b518\'7d that they didn't want the children they'd conceived. Wilbur Larch would have told him that he was simply an arrogant, young doctor who'd never been sick—that he was guilty of a young doctor's disease, manifesting a sick superiority toward all patients. But Homer was wielding an ideal of marriage and family like a club; he was more sure of the Tightness of his goal than a couple celebrating their sixty-fifth wedding anniversary.

He must have imagined that the sacredness with which he viewed his union with Candy would hover like a halo above the young couple and shed a conspicuously forgiving light upon them and their child when they returned to Heart's Haven and Heart's Rock. He must have thought that the goodness of his and Candy's intentions would glow with such a powerful radiance that Olive and Ray and the rest of that all-knowing, say-nothing community would be blinded. Homer and Candy must have envisioned that their child—conceived in a moment of love that overshadowed Wally's being lost or dead or 'just missinG'—would be greeted as a descending angel.

And so they enjoyed the life of a young married couple that winter in St. Cloud's. Never had being of use been such good fun. There was no chore the lovely and growingly pregnant young woman thought herself to be above; her beauty and her physical energy were inspiring to the girls in the girls' division. Dr. Larch devoted himself to teaching Homer more about pediatrics—since he could find no fault with Homer's obstetrical procedure and since Homer was emphatic about his refusal to participate in the abortions. The rigidity of this latter position perplexed even Candy, who was fond of saying to Homer, 'Just explain it to me again—how you're not disapproving of the procedure, but that you will not yourself be party to what you feel is wrong.'

'Right,' said Homer Wells; he had no doubts. 'You've got it. There's nothing else to explain. I think an abortion should be available to anyone who wants one, but I never \'7b519\'7d want to perform one. What's hard to understand about that?'

'Nothing,' Candy said, but she would keep asking him about it. 'You think it's wrong, yet you think it should be legal—right?'

'Right,' said Homer Wells. 'I think it's wrong, but also think it should be everyone's personal choice. What could be more personal than deciding whether you want a child or not?'

'I don't know,' Candy said, although it occurred to her that she and Homer Wells had 'decided' that Wally was dead—which seemed especially personal to her.

In her fifth month, they began sleeping in separate beds, but they drew the beds together and attempted to make them up as if they were one big bed—a problem, since there were no double-bed sheets at St. Cloud's.

Mrs. Grogan wanted to make a present of double-bed sheets to Homer and Candy, but she had no money of her own to buy them and she wondered if purchasing them for the orphanage would seem strange. 'Very strange,' Larch said, vetoing the idea.

'In other parts of the world, they have double-bed sheets,' wrote Wilbur Larch in A Brief History oj St. Cloud's. 'Here in St. Cloud's we do without—we just do without.'

Yet it was the best Christmas ever in St. Cloud's. Olive sent so many presents, and Candy's example—as the first happily pregnant woman in any of their memories —was a present to them all. They had a turkey and a ham, and Dr. Larch and Homer Wells had a carving contest, which everyone said Homer won. He finished carving the turkey before Larch finished carving the ham.

'Well, turkeys are easier to cut than pigs,' Larch said. Secretly, he was very pleased with Homer's knife work. That Homer had learned his touch for cutting under circumstances different from Mr. Rose's was often on Homer's mind. Given certain advantages of education, \'7b520\'7d Homer thought, Mr. Rose might have made an excellent surgeon.

'Might have made,' Homer mumbled to himself. He had never been happier.

He was of use, he was in love—and was loved—and he was expecting a child. What more is there? he thought, making the daily rounds. Other people may look for a break from routine, but an orphan craves daily life.

In midwinter, in a blizzard, when the women were having tea in the girls' division with Mrs. Grogan and Dr. Larch was at the railroad station, personally accusing the stationmaster of losing an expected delivery of sulfa, a woman arrived at the hospital entrance, bent double with cramps and bleeding. She'd had the D without the C, as Nurse Caroline would have observed; whoever had managed the dilatation appeared to have managed it safely. What was required now was a completion curettage, which Homer performed alone. One very small piece of the products of conception was recognizable in the scraping, which caused Homer Wells a single, small thought. About four months, was what he estimated—looking quickly at the piece, and quickly throwing it away.

At night, when he touched Candy without waking her up, he marveled at how peacefully she slept; and he observed how life in St. Cloud's seemed timeless, placeless and constant, how it seemed grim but caring, how it seemed somehow safer than life in Heart's Rock or in Heart's Haven—certainly safer than life over Burma. That was the night he got up and went to the boys' division; perhaps he was looking for his history in the big room where all the boys slept, but what he found instead was Dr. Larch kissing every boy a late good night. Homer imagined then that Dr. Larch had kissed him like that, when he'd been small; Homer could not have imagined how those kisses, even now, were still \'7b521\'7d kisses meant for him. They were kisses seeking Homer Wells.

That was the same night that he saw the lynx on the barren, unplanted hillside—glazed with snow that had thawed and then refrozen into a thick crust. Homer had stepped outside for just a minute; after witnessing the kisses, he desired the bracing air. It was a Canada lynx—a dark, gunmetal gray against the lighter gray of the moonlit snow, its wildcat stench so strong Homer gagged to srnell the thing. Its wildcat sense was keen enough to keep it treading within a single leap's distance of the safety of the woods. The lynx was crossing the brow of the hill when it began to slide; its claws couldn't grip the crust of the snow, and the hill had suddenly grown steeper. The cat moved from the dull moonlight into the sharper light from Nurse Angela's office window; it could not help its sideways descent. It traveled closer to the orphanage than it would ever have chosen to come, its ferocious death smell clashing with the freezing cold. The lynx's helplessness on the ice had rendered its expression both terrified; and resigned; both madness and fatalism were caught in the cat's fierce, yellow eyes and in its involuntary, spitting cough as it slid on, actually bumping against the hospital before its claws could find a purchase on the crusted snow. It spit its rage at Homer Wells, as if Homer had caused its unwilling descent.

Its breath had frozen on its chin whiskers and its tufted ears were beaded with ice. The panicked animal tried to dash up the hill; it was less than halfway up when it began to slide down again, drawn toward the orphanage against its will. When it set out from the bottom of the hill a second time, the lynx was panting; it ran diagonally uphill, slipping but catching itself, and slipping again, finally escaping into the softer snow in the woods— nowhere near where it had meant to go; yet the lynx would accept any route of escape from the dark hospital.

Homer Wells, staring into the woods after the \'7b522\'7d departed lynx, did not imagine that he would ever leave St. Cloud's more easily.

There was a false spring very early that March; all over Maine the river ice buckled under the wet snow, the ponds split apart with gunshots sharp enough to put birds to wing, and the bigger, inland lakes groaned and sang and cracked like boxcars colliding in the station yards.

In the apartment she shared with Lorna in Bath, Melony was awakened by the Kennebec—its ice bending under a foot of slush and giving way with a deep, gonging alarm that caused one of the older women in the boardinghouse to sit up in her bed and howl. Melony was reminded of the nights in her bed in the girls' division in St. Cloud's when the March ice was grinding downriver from Three Mile Falls. She got out of bed and went into Lorna's room to talk, but Lorna was so sleepy that she wouldn't get up; Melony got in bed beside her friend. 'It's just the ice,' Lorna whispered. That was how she and Melony became lovers, listening to the false spring.

'There's just one thing,' Lorna said to Melony. 'If we're gonna be together, you gotta stop lookin' for this Homer character. Either you want me or you want him.'

'I want you,' Melony told Lorna. 'Just don't ever leave me.'

A permanent couple, an orphan's ideal; but Melony wondered where her rage would go. If she stopped looking for Homer Wells, would she stop thinking about him, too?

There was too much snow; the brief thaw never penetrated the frozen ground, and when the temperature dropped and it snowed again, the rivers hardened up fast. An old mill pond, behind the orphanage in St. Cloud's, became a trap for geese. Confused by the thaw, the geese landed on the slush that they mistook for open water; the slush refroze at night and the geese's paddle feet were caught in it. When Homer Wells found the \'7b523\'7d geese, they were frozen statues of their former selves —dusted with the new snow, they were stony guardians of the pond. There was nothing to do but chip them out of the ice and scald them; they were easier to pluck because they were partially frozen. When Mrs. Grogan roasted them—pricking them constantly, to bleed their fat—she retained the sense that she was only warming them up before sending them on their dangerous way.

It was already April by the time the ice broke free in Three Mile Falls and the river overran its banks in St. Cloud's; water filled the basement of the former whore hotel and exerted such a force against the underbeams that the saloon bar with its brass footrail fell through the floor and floated out and away through a bulkhead. The stationm aster saw it go; as obsessed with omens as he was, he slept two nights in a row in his office for fear that the station house was in danger.

Candy was so huge she hardly slept at all. The morning that the hill was bare, Homer Wells tested the ground; he could work a spade almost a foot down before he hit frozen earth—he needed another six inches of thawing before he could plant apple trees, but he dared not wait any longer before making the trip to Heart's Rock to get the trees. He didn't want to be away when Candy delivered.

Olive was surprised to see him, and by his request to trade the Cadillac for one of the pickup trucks to transport the baby trees.

'I want to plant a standard forty-by-forty,' Homer told Olive. 'Half Macs, about ten percent Red Delicious, another ten or fifteen percent Cortlands and Baldwins.'

Olive reminded him to throw in a few Northern Spies, and some Gravensteins—for apple pie. She asked him how Candy was and why she hadn't come with him; he told her Candy was too busy. (Everyone liked her, and the kids just: hung on her.) It would be hard to leave, when the time came, Homer confided to Olive; they were of so much use—they were so needed. And the con-\'7b524\'7d stancy of the demands—'Well, even a day off, like this, is hard to squeeze in,' Homer said.

'You mean you won't spend the night?' Olive asked.

Too busy,' Homer said, 'but we'll both be back in time to put out the bees.'

'That'll be about Mother's Day,' Olive observed.

'Right,' said Homer Wells; he kissed Olive, whose skin was cool and smelled like ash.

Meany Hyde and Herb Fowler helped him load the pickup.

'You gonna plant a whole forty-by-forty by yourself?' Meany asked him. 'You better hope the ground unfreezes.'

'You better hope your back holds out,' Herb Fowler said. 'You better hope your pecker don't fall off.'

'How's Candy?' Big Dot Taft asked Homer. Almost as big as you are, Homer thought.

'Just fine,' he said. 'But busy.'

'I'll bet,' said Debra Pettigrew.

In the furnace room, under the lobster tank, Ray Kendall was building his own torpedo.

'What for?' Homer asked.

'Just to see if I can do it,' Ray said.

'But what will you fire it at?' Homer asked. 'And what will you fire it from?'

'The hard part is the gyroscope,' Ray said. 'It ain't hard to fire it—what's hard is guidin' it.'

'I don't understand,' said Homer Wells.

'Well, look at you,' Ray said. 'You're plantin' an apple orchard at an orphanage. You been there five months, but my daughter's too busy to visit me for a day. I don't understand everythin', either.'

'We'll be back about blossom time,' Homer said guiltily.

'That's a nice time of year,' said Ray.

On the drive back to St. Cloud's, Homer wondered if Ray's coolness, or evasiveness, was intentional. He \'7b525\'7d decided that Ray's message was clear: if you keep things from me, I won't explain myself to you.

'A torpedo!' Candy said to Homer, when he arrived with the baby trees. 'What for?'

'Wait and see,' said Homer Wells.

Dr Larch helped him unload the trees.

'They're kind of scrawny, aren't they?' Larch asked.

'They won't give much fruit for eight or ten years,' Homer said.

Then I doubt I'll get to eat any of it,' said Wilbur Larch.

'Well,' Homer said, 'even before there are apples on the trees, think how the trees will look on the hill.'

'They'll look scrawny,' said Wilbur Larch.

Near the top of the hill the ground was still frozen; Homer couldn't work his spade down far enough. And at the bottom, the holes he dug filled with water—the runoff from the snow that was still melting in the woods. Because he would have to wait to plant the trees, he worried about the roots mildewing, or getting savaged by mice—but mainly he was peeved that he could not control, exactly, the calendar of his life. He'd wanted to plant the trees before Candy delivered. He wanted the hillside entirely planted when the baby was born.

'What did I do to you to make you so compulsively neat?' asked Wilbur Larch.

'Surgery is neat,' said Homer Wells.

It was the middle of April before Homer could dig the holes and plant the forty-by-forty orchard—which he did in three days, his back so stiff at night that he slept as restlessly and uncomfortably as Candy, tossing and turning with her. It was the first warm night of the spring; they were much too hot under the winter-weight blanket; when Candy broke water, they both, for a second, confused the puddle with their sweat.

Homer helped her to the hospital entrance of the boys' division. Nurse Edna prepared Candy while Homer went \'7b526\'7d to talk to Dr. Larch, who was waiting in Nurse Angela's office.

'I deliver this one,' Larch said. 'There are certain advantages to detachment. Fathers are a bother in the delivery room. If you want to be there, just mind your own business.'

'Right,'said Homer Wells. He was fidgeting, uncharacteristically, and Dr. Larch smiled at him.

Nurse Edna was with Candy, while Nurse Angela scrubbed for Dr. Larch. Homer had already put his mask on when he heard a commotion from the boys' sleeping room. He left the mask on when he went to investigate. One of the John Larches or the Wilbur Walshes had got up and gone outside to pee against a trash barrel—with considerable noise. This in turn had disturbed a large raccoon, busy at the trash, and the coon had startled the peeing orphan into wetting his pajamas. Homer tried to sort this out, calmly; he wanted to get back to the delivery room.

Teeing indoors is better, at night,' he observed to the room at large. 'Candy's having her baby, now.'

'What's she havin'?' one of the boys asked.

'Either a boy or a girl,' said Homer Wells.

'What will you name it?' another one asked.

'Nurse Angela named me,' Homer said.

'Me, too!'several of them said.

If it's a girl, I'm naming her Angela,' said Homer Wells.

'And if it's a boy?'

'If it's a boy, I'll name him Angel,' Homer said. 'That's really just Angela without the last A.'

'Angel?' someone asked.

'Right,' said Homer Wells and kissed them all good night.

As he was leaving, someone asked him, 'And will you leave it here?'

'No,' mumbled Homer Wells, having pulled his mask

backup.

'What?'the orphans shouted. \'7b527\'7d

'No,' Homer said more clearly, pulling down the mask.

It was hot in the delivery room. The warm weather had been unexpected; because no one had put the screens on, Larch refused to open any windows.

At the knowledge that the child, one way or another, would be named after her, Nurse Angela wept so hard that Larch insisted that she change her mask. Nurse Edna was too short to reach the sweat on Larch's forehead; she missed some of it. As the baby's head emerged, a drop of Larch's sweat baptized the child squarely on its temple—literally before it was entirely born—and Homer Wells could not help thinking that this was not unlike David Copperfield being born with a caul.

When the shoulders did not follow quickly enough to please Larch, he took the chin and occupit: in both hands and drew the infant downward until, in a single, easy, upward motion, he delivered the posterior shoulder first. Homer Wells, biting his lip, nodded his approval as the anterior shoulder—and the rest of the child— followed.

'It's an Angel!' Nurse Edna announced to Candy, who was still smiling an ether smile. Nurse Angela, who had soaked through another mask, had to turn away.

Only after the placenta was born did Dr. Larch say, as he sometimes did, 'Perfect!' Then, as he never before had done, he kissed Candy—albeit through his mask— squarely between her wide-open, out-of-ether eyes.

The next day it snowed, and snowed—an angry April snowstorm, desperate not to relinquish the winter— and Homer looked at his newly planted apple orchard with concern; the frail, snow-covered trees reminded him of the luckless geese who'd made an ill-timed landing in the mill pond.

'Stop worrying about the trees,' said Wilbur Larch. 'They're on their own now.'

So was Angel Wells—eight pounds, seven ounces and neither an orphan nor an abortion. \'7b528\'7d

*

One week short of May, there was still too much snow in St. Cloud's for it to be mud se

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 588