'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, {476} 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. {477}

9. Over Burma

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 rniight 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. {478}

'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 {479} 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, {480} 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.