'Nothing's wrong!' Dr. Larch said heartily, but the whole room of boys was charged with anxiety. Into this jumpy atmosphere, Larch tried to say the usual about the unusual. 'Let us be happy for Fuzzy Stone,' Dr. Larch said. Homer Wells knew what was meant when it was said that you could hear a pin drop. 'Fuzzy Stone has found a family,' Dr. Larch said. 'Good night, Fuzzy.'

'Good night, Fuzzy!' someone said. But Homer Wells heard a pause in the air; it had all been done out of order, and not everyone was completely convinced.

'Good night, Fuzzy!' Homer Wells said with authority, and a few of the little voices followed him.

'Good night, Fuzzy!'

'Good night, Fuzzy Stone!'

Homer Wells also knew what was meant when it was said that silence could be deafening. After Dr. Larch had left them, little Snowy Meadows was the first to speak.

'Homer?' Snowy said.

'Right here,' said Homer Wells in the darkness.

'How could anyone adopt Fuzzy Stone, Homer?' Snowy Meadows asked.

'Who could do it?' said little Wilbur Walsh.

'Someone with a better machine,' said Homer Wells. 'Someone who had a better breathing machine than the one Doctor Larch built for Fuzzy. It's a family that {148} knows all about breathing machines. It's the family business,' he added. 'Breathing machines.'

'Lucky Fuzzy!' someone said in a wondering voice.

Homer knew he had convinced them when Snowy Meadows said, 'Good night, Fuzzy.'

Homer Wells, not yet sixteen-an apprentice surgeon, a veteran insomniac-walked down to the river that had carried away so many pieces of the history of St. Cloud's. The loudness of the river was a comfort to Homer, more comforting than the silence in the sleeping room that night. He stood on the riverbank where the porch to the sawyers' lodge had been, where he'd seen the hawk come from the sky more quickly than the snake could swim to shore-and the snake had been very fast.

If Wilbur Larch had seen Homer there, he would have worried that the boy was saying good-bye to his own childhood-too soon. But Dr. Larch had ether to help him sleep, and Homer Wells had no cure for his insomnia.

'Good night, Fuzzy,' Homer said over the river. The Maine woods, typically, let the remark pass, but Homer insisted that he be heard. 'Good night, Fuzzy!' he cried as loud as he could. And then louder, 'Good night, Fuzzy!' He yelled it and yelled it-the grown-up boy whose crying had once been a legend upriver in Three Mile Falls.

'Good night, Fuzzy Stone!' {149}

4. Young Dr. Wells

'In other parts of the world,' wrote Wilbur Larch, 'there is what the world calls “society.” Here in St. Cloud's we have no society-there are not the choices, the better-than or worse-than comparisons that are nearly constant in any society. It is less complicated here, because the choices and comparisons are either obvious or nonexistent. But having so few options is what makes an orphan so desperate to encounter society-any society, the more complex with intrigue, the more gossip-ridden, the better. Given the chance, an orphan throws himself into society-the way an otter takes to the water.'

What Wilbur Larch was thinking of, regarding 'options,' was that Homer Wells had no choice concerning either his apprenticeship or Melony. He and Melony were doomed to become a kind of couple because there was no one else for them to couple with. In society, it. would have mattered if they were suited for each other; that they were not suited for each other didn't matter in St. Cloud's. And since Homer had exhausted the resources of the dismal tutors employed at St. Cloud's, what else was there for him to learn if he didn't learn surgery? Specifically, obstetrical procedure. And what was far simpler for Dr. Larch to teach him: dilatation and curettage.

Homer Wells kept his notes in one of Dr. Larch's old medical school notebooks; Larch had been a cramped, sparse notetaker-there was plenty of room. In Larch's opinion, there was no need for Homer to have a notebook {150}of his own. Wilbur Larch had only to look around him to see what paper cost. The trees were gone; they had been replaced by orphans-all for paper.

Under the heading 'D &C,' Homer wrote: The woman is most secure in stirrups.' In Dr. Larch's procedure, she was also shaved.

The VAGINAL area is prepared with an ANTISEPTIC SOLUTION,' wrote Homer Wells; he did a lot of CAPITALIZING-it was related to his habit of repeating the ends of sentences, or key words. The UTERUS is examined to estimate its size. One hand is placed on the ABDOMINAL WALL; two or three fingers of the other hand are in the VAGINA. A VAGINAL SPECULUM, which looks like a duck's bill, is inserted in the VAGINA-through which the CERVIX is visible. (The CERVIX,' he wrote parenthetically, as if to remind himself, 'is the necklike part of the lower, constricted end of the UTERUS.) The hole in the middle of the CERVIX is the entrance of the UTERUS. It is like a cherry Life Saver. In PREGNANCY the CERVIX is swollen and shiny.

'With a series of METAL DILATORS, the CERVIX is dilated to admit entrance of the OVUM FORCEPS. These are tongs with which the doctor grabs at what's inside the UTERUS. He pulls what he can out.'

What this was (what Homer meant) was blood and slime. The products of conception,' he called it.

'With a CURETTE,' noted Homer, 'the WALL OF THE UTERUS is scraped clean. One knows when it's clean when one hears a gritty sound.'

And that's all that was entered in the notebook concerning dilatation and the process of curetting. As a footnote to this procedure, Homer added only this: The WOMB one reads about in literature is that portion of the GENITAL TRACT in which the FERTILIZED OVUM implants itself.' A page number was jotted in the margin of this notebook entry-the page in Gray's Anatomy that begins the section 'The Female Organs of {151} Generation,' where the most useful illustrations and descriptions can be found.

By 194-, Homer Wells (not yet twenty) had been a midwife to countless births and the surgical apprentice to about a quarter as many abortions; he had delivered many children himself, with Dr. Larch always present, but Larch had not allowed Homer to perform an abortion. It was understood by both Larch and Homer that Homer was completely able to perform one, but Larch believed that Homer should complete medical school-a real medical school-and serve an internship in ainother hospital before he undertook the operation. It was not that the operation was complicated; it was Larch's opinion that Homer's choice should be involved. What Larch meant was that Homer should know something of society before he made the decision, by himself, whether to perform abortions or not.

What Dr. Larch was looking for was someone to sponsor Homer Wells. Larch wanted someone to send the boy to college, not only in order for Homer to qualify for admission to medical school but also in order to expose Homer to the world outside St. Cloud's.

How to advertise for such a sponsor was a puzzle to Wilbur Larch. Should he ask his colleague and correspondent at The New England Home for Little Wanderers if he could make use of their large mailing list?

ACCOMPLISHED MIDWIFE & QUALIFIED

ABORTIONIST SEEKS SPONSOR FOR COLLEGE

YEARS-PLUS MEDICAL SCHOOL EXPENSES!

Where was the society where Homer Wells could fit in? wondered Wilbur Larch.

Mainly, Larch knew, he had to get his apprentice away from Melony. The two of them together: how they depressed Larch! They struck the doctor as a tired and loveless married couple. What sexual tensions Melony had managed to conduct between them in the earlier years of their angry courtship seemed absent now. If they {152} still practised a sexual exchange, they practised infrequently and without enthusiasm. Over lunch they sat together without speaking, in plain view of the girls' or of the boys' divisions; together they examined the wellworn copy of Gray's Anatomy as if it were the intricate map they had to follow if they were ever to find their way out of St. Cloud's.