''Bout lots of things,' said Mr. Rose. ''Bout how much we can have to do with you, for one thing.'

'With me?' Homer said.

'With white people,' said Mr. Rose. 'We got our rules about that.'

'I see,' Homer said, but he didn't really see.

'And about fightin',' said Mr. Rose.

'Fighting,' said Homer Wells.{560}

'With each other,' said Mr. Rose. 'One rule is, we can't cut each other bad. Not bad enough for no hospital, not bad enough for no police. We can cut each other, but not bad.'

'I see,' Homer said.

'No, you don't,' said Mr. Rose. 'You don't see-that's the point. We can cut each other only so bad that you never see-you never know we was cut. You see?'

'Right,'said Homer Wells.

'When you gonna say somethin' else?' Mr. Rose asked, smiling.

'Just be careful on the roof,' Homer advised him.

'Nothin' too bad can happen up there,' Mr. Rose told him. 'Worse things can happen on the ground.'

Homer Wells was on the verge of saying 'Right,' again, when he discovered that he couldn't talk; Mr. Rose had seized his tongue between his blunt, square-ended index finger and his thumb. A vague taste, like dust, was in Homer's mouth; Mr. Rose's hand had been so fast, Homer had never seen it-he never knew before that someone could actually catch hold of someone's tongue.

'Caught ya,' said Mr. Rose, smiling; he let Homer's tongue go.

Homer managed to say, 'You're very fast.'

'Right,' said Mr. Rose alertly. 'Ain't no one faster.'

Wally complained to Homer about the yearly wear and tear on the cider house roof. Every two or three years, they had to re-tin the roof, or fix the flashing, or put up new gutters.

'What's having his own rules got to do with not paying attention to ours?' Wally asked Homer.

'I don't know,' Homer said. 'Write him a letter and ask him.'

But no one wanted to offend Mr. Rose; he was a reliable crew boss. He made the picking and the pressing go smoothly every harvest.

Candy, who managed the money at Ocean View, claimed that whatever costs they absorbed in repairs to {561} the cider house roof were more than compensated for by Mr. Rose's reliability.

There's something a little gangland style about the guy,' Wally said-not exactly complaining. 'I mean, I don't really want to know how he gets all those pickers to behave themselves.'

'But they do behave themselves,' Homer said.

'He does a good job,' Candy said. 'Let him have his own rules.'

Homer Wells looked away; he knew that rules, for Candy, were all private contracts.

Fifteen years ago, they had made their own rules-or, really, Candy had made them (before Wally came home). They stood in the cider house (after Angel was born, on a night when Olive was looking after Angel). They had just made love, but not happily; something was wrong. It would be wrong for fifteen years, but that night Candy had said, 'Let's agree to something.'

'Okay,' Homer said.

'Whatever happens, we share Angel.'

'Of course,' Homer said.

'I mean, you get to be his father-you get all the father time you want to have-and I get to have all the mother time I need,' Candy said.

'Always,' said Homer Wells, but something was wrong.

'I mean, regardless of what happens-whether I'm with you, or with Wally,' Candy said.

Homer was quiet for a while. 'So you're leaning toward Wally?' he asked.

Tm not leaning anywhere,' Candy said. Tm standing right here, and we're agreeing to certain rules.'

'I didn't know they were rules,' said Homer Wells.

'We share Angel,' Candy said. 'We both get to live with him. We get to be his family. Nobody ever moves out.'

'Even if you're with Wally?' Homer said, after a while.

'Remember what you told me when you wanted me to have Angel?' Candy asked him.{562}

Homer Wells was cautious, now. 'Remind me,' he said.

'You said that he was your baby, too-that he was ours. That I couldn't decide, all by myself, not to have him-that was the point,' Candy said.

'Yes,' Homer said. 'I remember.'

'Well, if he was ours then, he's ours now-whatever happens,' Candy repeated.

'In the same house?' asked Homer Wells. 'Even if you go with Wally?'

'Like a family,' Candy said.

'Like a family,' said Homer Wells. It was a word that took a strong grip of him. An orphan is a child, forever; an orphan detests change; an orphan hates to move; an orphan loves routine.

For fifteen years, Homer Wells knew that there were possibly as many cider house rules as there were people who had passed through the cider house. Even so, every year, he posted a fresh list.

For fifteen years, the board of trustees had tried and failed to replace Dr. Larch; they couldn't find anyone who wanted the job. There were people dying to throw themselves into unrewarded service of their fellow man, but there were more exotic places than St. Cloud's where their services were needed-and where they could also suffer. The board of trustees couldn't manage to entice a new nurse into service there, either; they couldn't hire even an administrative assistant.

When Dr. Gingrich retired-not from the board; he would never retire from the board-he mused about accepting the position in St. Cloud's, but Mrs. Goodhall pointed out to him that he wasn't an obstetrician. His psychiatric practice had never flourished in Maine, yet Dr. Gingrich was surprised and a little hurt to learn that Mrs. Goodhall enjoyed pointing this out to him. Mrs. Goodhall had reached retirement age herself, but nothing could have been farther from that woman's {563} zealous mind. Wilbur Larch was ninety-something, and Mrs. Goodhall was obsessed with retiring him before he died; she realized that to have Larch die, while still in service, would register as a kind of defeat for her.

Not long ago-perhaps in an effort to invigorate the board-Dr. Gingrich had proposed they hold a meeting in an off-season hotel in Ogunquit, simply to break the routine of meeting in their usual offices in Portland. 'Make it a kind of outing,' he proposed, 'The ocean air and all.'

But it rained. In the colder weather, the wood shrank; the sand got in the windows and doors and crunched underfoot; the drapes and the towels and the bedsheets were gritty. The wind was off the ocean; no one could sit on the veranda because the wind blew the rain under the roof. The hotel provided them with a long, dark, empty dining room; they held their meeting under a chandelier that no one could turn on-no one could find the right switch.

It was appropriate to their discussion of St. Cloud's that they attempted to conduct their business in a former ballroom that had seen better days, in a hotel so deeply in the off-season that anyone seeing them there would have suspected they'd been quarantined. In fact, when he got a glimpse of them, that is what Homer Wells thought; he and Candy were the hotel's only other off-season guests. They had taken a room for half the day; they were a long way from Ocean View, but they'd come this far to be sure that no one would recognize them.

It was time for them to leave. They stood outside on the veranda, Candy with her back against Homer's chest, his arms wrapped around her; they both faced out to sea. He appeared to like the way the wind whipped her hair in his face, and neither of them seemed to mind the rain.

Inside the hotel, Mrs. Goodhall looked through the streaked window, frowning at the weather and at the young couple braving the elements. In her opinion, noth- {564} ing could ever be normal enough. That was what was wrong with Larch; not everyone who is ninetysomething is senile, she would grant you, but Larch wasn't normal. And even if they were a young married couple, public displays of affection were not acceptable to Mrs. Goodhall-and they were calling all the more attention to themselves by their defiance of the rain.