'It's for the colored folks,' said Big Dot Taft, plopping down the mops and pails. 'Every year, we make it nice for them. We wash everythin' and we give everythin' a fresh coat of paint.'

'I gotta wax the press boards,' Meany Hyde said, sliding away from what he thought was the women's work -although Homer and Wally would perform it regularly most rainy days of the summer.

'Negroes?' Homer Wells asked. 'The pickers are Negroes?'

'Black as night, some of them,' said Florence Hyde. 'They're okay.'

'They're nice!' called Meany Hyde.

'Some of them are nicer than others,' said Big Dot Taft.

'Like other people I know,' Irene Titcomb said, giggling, hiding her scar.

'They're nice because Mrs. Worthington is nice to them!' Meany Hyde yelled from the spattered vicinity of the cider press.

The building smelled like vinegar-old cider that had turned. It was a strong smell, but there was nothing stifling or unclean about it.

Debra Pettigrew smiled at Homer over the bucket they were sharing; he cautiously returned her smile while wondering where Wally was working today, in the rain, and imagining Ray Kendall at work. Ray would either be out on the choppy sea in his glistening sou'wester or else working on the wiring of the International Harvester in the building called Number Two.

Grace Lynch was scrubbing the linoleum counters in the kitchen of the cider house; Homer marveled that he had not noticed her there before, that he hadn't even {311} known she was part of their crew. Louise Tobey, sucking a cigarette down to its nub and flicking the butt out the picking crew-quarters' door, remarked that her mop wringer was 'out of joint.'

'It's jammed, or somethin',' Squeeze Louise said crossly.

'Louise's mop wringer is out of joint,' Big Dot Taft said mockingly.

'Poor Louise-jammed your mop wringer, huh?' said Florence Hyde, who laughed, which caused Big Dot Taft to roar.

'Oh, cut it out!' Louise said. She kicked her mop wringer.

'What's going on out there?' called Meany Hyde.

'Louise has got an overworked wringer! said Big Dot Taft. Homer looked at Louise, who was cross; then he looked at Debra Pettigrew, who blushed.

'Are you overusin' your poor wringer, Louise?' Irene Titcomb asked.

'Louise, you must be stickin' too many mops in your wringer, darlin',' said Florence Hyde.

'Be nice, all of you!' cried Meany Hyde.

'Too much of one mop, that's for sure,' said Big Dot Taft. Elven Louise found that funny. When she looked at Homer Wells, he looked away; Debra Pettigrew was watching him, so he looked away from her, too.

When Herb Fowler came by, at the lunch break, he walked into the cider house and said, 'Whew! You can smell niggers in here a whole year later.'

'I think it's just vinegar,' Meany Hyde said.

'You tellin' me you can't smell niggers?' Herb Fowler asked. 'You smell 'em?' Herb asked Louise. She shrugged. 'How about you?' Herb asked Homer. 'Can't you smell 'em?'

'I can smell vinegar, old apples, old cider,' Homer said.

He saw the rubber sailing toward him in time to catch it.

'You know what niggers do with those?' Herb asked him. He flipped another rubber to Louise Tobey, who {312} caught it without the slightest effort-she expected prophylactics to be flying in her direction hourly. 'Show him what a nigger does with it, Louise,' Herb said. The other women were bored; they'd seen this demonstration all their lives; Debra Pettigrew looked nervously at Homer Wells and deliberately away from Louise; Louise herself seemed nervous and bored at the same time. She ripped the rubber out of its wrapper and stuck her index finger in it-her fingernail poked out the rubber, her nail's fine edge next to the nipplelike end.

'One year I told the niggers that they should just stick their joints into these rubbers if they didn't want to be catchin' diseases or havin' any new babies,' Herb said. He grabbed Louise's finger in the rubber sheath and held it out for everyone to see. 'And the next year, all the niggers told me that the rubbers didn't work. They said they stuck their fingers in there, like I showed 'em, and they still got diseases and new babies every time they turned around!'

No one laughed; no one believed it; it was an old joke to all of them, except to Homer Wells; and the idea of people having babies every time they turned around was not especially funny to Homer.

When Herb Fowler offered to drive them all to the diner on Drinkwater Road for a hot lunch, Homer said he didn't want to go; Mrs. Worthington made his lunch, and Wally's, every morning, and Homer felt obliged to eat his-he always enjoyed it. He also knew the crew was not supposed to leave the orchards for a lunch break, especially not in any of the Ocean View vehicles, and Herb Fowler was driving the green van that Olive used most often. It wasn't a hard rule, but Homer knew that if Wally had been working in the cider house Herb wouldn't have suggested it.

Homer ate his lunch, appropriately, in the cider house kitchen; when he glanced into the long room with the two rows of narrow beds, he thought how much the rolled mattresses and blankets resembled people sleeping {313} there-except the shapes upon the iron beds were too still to be sleepers. They are like bodies waiting to be identified, thought Homer Wells.

Even though it was raining, he went outside to look at the collection of dead cars and junked tractor-and-trailer parts that festooned the dirt driveway in front of the cider house. In the back was a churned-up area of discolored weeds where the mash, or the pornace, was flung after the press. A pig farmer from Waldoboro drove all the way just to have it, Meany Hyde had told Homer; the mash was great for pigs.

Some of the dead cars had South Carolina plates. Homer Wells had never looked at a map of the United States; he had seen a globe, but it was crude one-the states weren't marked. He knew South Carolina was; a long way south; the Negroes came from there in trucks, Meany Hyde had said, or they drove their own oars, but some of their cars were so old and beaten up that they died here; Meany wasn't sure how all the Negroes got back to South Carolina.

'They pick grapefruits down in Florida, I think,' Meany said, 'and peaches when it's peach time somewhere else, and apples here. They travel around, just pickin'things.'

Homer watched a sea gull that was watching him from the roof of the cider house; the gull was so drawn in upon itself that Homer was reminded it was raining arid went back inside.

He rolled down one of the mattresses and stretched out on it, placing both the pillow and the blanket under his head. Something invited him to smell the blanket and the pillow, but he could detect nothing more than the aura of vinegar and a scent he categorized as simply old. The blanket and pillow felt more human than they:;melled, but the deeper he pushed his face into them, the more human their smell became. He thought about the strain on Louise Tobey's face, and how her finger had stretched itself out in the rubber, and the way her nail had looked {314} ready to slice through. He recalled the mattress in the sawyers' lodge in St. Cloud's, where Melony had introduced him to the way he felt now. He took himself out of his work jeans and masturbated quickly, the springs of the old iron bed creaking sharply. Something in his vision seemed clearer after he had finished. When he sat up on the bed, he spotted the other body that had taken the liberty of resting in the cider house. Even with her body curled so tightly in upon itself-like the gull in the rain or like a fetus or like a woman with cramps-Homer had no trouble recognizing Grace Lynch.

Even if she hadn't been watching him, even if she'd never been turned in his direction, she surely could not have mistaken the rhythm of the old bed springs-or even, Homer thought, the detectable sharpness of the odor of the semen he cupped in his hand. He stepped quietly outdoors and held his hand out in the rain. The sea gull, still huddled on the cider house roof, took a sudden interest in him-there was a history of successful scavenging associated with this place. When Homer went back in the cider house, he saw that Grace Lynch had fixed her mattress the way it had been and was standing by the window with her face pressed into the curtain. You had to look twice to see Grace Lynch; he wouldn't have seen her standing there if he hadn't already known she was in the room.