I wish he would kiss me, thought Nurse Edna, who had a very alert ear for unusual goings-on.

'I think it's nice,' Mrs. Grogan said to Nurse Angela, when Nurse Angela told her about it.

'I think it's senile,' Nurse Angela said.

But Homer Wells, at Wally's window, did not know that Dr. Larch's kisses were out in the world, in search of him.

He didn't know, either-he could never have imagined it!-that Candy was also awake, and also worried. If he does stay, if he doesn't go back to St. Cloud's, she was thinking, what will I do? The sea tugged all around her. Both the darkness and the moon were failing. {340}

There came that time when Homer Wells could make out the boundaries of the cider house, but the roof did not wink to him, no matter how he moved his head. With no signal flashing to him, Homer may have thought he was speaking to the dead when he whispered, 'Good night, Fuzzy.'

He did not know that Fuzzy Stone, like Melony, was looking for him. {341}

7. Before the War

One day that August a hazy sun hung over the coastal road between York Harbor and Ogunquit; it was not the staring sun of Marseilles, and not the cool, crisp sun that blinks on much of the coast of Maine at that time of year. It was a St. Cloud's sunlight, steamy and flat, and Meloriy was irritated by it and sweating when she accepted a ride in a milk truck that was heading; inland.

She knew she was south of Portland, and that there was relatively little of the Maine coast that lay south of Portland, yet it had taken her these months to search the apple orchards in this limited vicinity. She Avas not discouraged, she knew she'd had some bad luck, and that her luck was due to improve. She'd managed to pick the pockets of several citizens of Portland; this tided her over for a while. She'd gotten in trouble with some Navy men whose pockets she'd tried to pick in Kitteiy. She'd managed not to have sex with the men, but they had broken her nose, which had healed crookedly, and they had chipped her two front teeth-the big uppers. Not that she tended to smile a lot anyway, but she had since adopted a rather closemouthed and tight-lipped expression.

The first two orchards she'd visited were within view of the ocean, but they were not called Ocean View, and no one in either orchard had heard of the Ocean View Orchards. She then found an inland orchard, where someone told her he had heard of an Ocean Viiew, but that he was sure it was just a name; that the place wasn't {342} anywhere near the coast. She took a job washing bottles in a dairy in Biddeford, but she quit it as soon as she'd made some traveling money.

The orchard between York Harbour and Ogunquit turned out to be called York Farm, which looked as plain as its name, but Melony told the milk truck driver to let her out there, anyway; it was, at least, an apple orchard; someone might have heard of Ocean View.

The foreman at York Farm took one look at Melony and assumed she was a would-be picker, trying to get work ahead of the migrants.

'You're about three weeks early,' he told her. 'We're only pickin' the Gravensteins this month, and I don't need help pickin' them-there ain't that many.'

'You heard of an orchard called Ocean View?' Melony asked the foreman.

'You used to pick there?' the foreman asked.

'No. I'm just looking for it,' Melony said.

'It sounds like a rest home,' the foreman said, but when Melony didn't even smile, he stopped being friendly. 'You any idea how many places there must be in Maine called Ocean View?' he asked.

Melony shrugged. If they were hiring at York Farm in three weeks, she thought she wouldn't mind staying; some of the other pickers might have heard of the place where Homer Wells had gone.

'You got anything for me to do?' Melony asked the foreman.

'In three weeks-if you know how to pick,' he added.

'There can't be much to picking apples,' Melony said.

'You think it's easy?' the foreman asked. 'Come here,' he said, and walked her through the dingy apple mart; two older women were hand-lettering a wooden price list. In the first orchard behind the apple mart, the foreman proceeded to lecture Melony on the art of apple picking.

'You take an apple with its stem,' the foreman said. 'But just above the stem is the bud for next year's apple. {343} That's the spur,' he said. 'You pull the spur, you pull two years in one.' He demonstrated to Melony how to twist the apple. 'Twist, don't pull,' he told her,

Melony reached into the tree and twisted an apple free. She did it correctly; she looked at the foreman and shrugged. She took a bite of the apple, which wasn't ripe; she spit out the bite and threw the apple away.

'That's a Northern Spy,' the foreman explained. 'We pick them last-they're not ready before October.'

Melony was bored. She started back toward the apple mart.

'I'll give you ten cents a bushel!' the foreman called after her. 'Only a nickel a bushel for drops, or if you bruise the fruit! You look pretty strong!' he said, following after her. 'If you get the hang of it, you might pick ninety bushels a day. I've had guys here (loin' a hundred bushels. That's ten bucks a day,' he said. 'Come back in three weeks,' he added, stopping next to the women working on the sign in the apple mart; Melony was already back on the road.

'I'll be somewhere else in three weeks,' she said to the foreman.

'Too bad,' the foreman said. He watched her walk down the road, headed back toward the coast. 'She looks strong,' he said to one of the women in the mart. 'I'll bet she weighs about one-sixty.'

'She's just a tramp,' the woman said.

About a mile away from the apple mart, Melony walked by an orchard where two workers were: picking Gravensteins. One of the men waved to her; Melony started to wave back but thought better oiF it. She was not more than a hundred yards past the men when she heard their pickup truck coming after her. The truck pulled up next to her, off to the side of the road, and the driver said to her, 'You look like you lost your sweetheart. Good thing you found me.' The man in the passenger side of the truck opened the door before the truck stopped rolling.

'You better leave me alone, buster,' Melony said to the {344} driver, but the other man was already around the truck and coming closer. Melony hopped over the road ditch and ran into the orchard. The man pursued her, whooping. The driver killed the truck motor and joined the chase-he left his door open, he was in such a hurry.

There was nowhere to hide, but the orchards seemed endless. Melony ran down one row between the trees, then up another. The first man to chase her was gaining on her, but she noticed that the driver lagged farther and farther behind; he was a big, slow man, and he was huffing and puffing after he'd passed five or six trees. Melony was huffing and puffing herself, but she ran with a certain, even strength, and although the first, smaller man was gaining on her, she could hear him breathing harder and harder.

She crossed a dirt road into another orchard. Way behind her, maybe two to three hundred yards, she saw that the heavy driver had slowed to a determined walk. 'Get her, Charley!' he called to the faster man.

To Charley's surprise, Melony stopped and turned to face him. She caught her breath fairly quickly, then she ran at Charley-she moved low to the ground, a kind of animal whine in her throat, and the man called Charley did not have time to stop and catch his breath before she flung herself upon him. They fell together-when she felt her knee against his throat, she jounced on him. He made a choking sound and rolled on his side. Melony jumped up to her feet; she stamped twice on his face, and when Charley managed to turn over, on all fours, she jumped up as high as she could and landed with both feet in the small of his back. He was already unconscious when she pinned his arms behind him and bit his ear; she felt her teeth meet. She let him go and knelt beside him; she caught her breath again; then she spit on him. When she stood up, she saw that the heavy man had managed only to cross the dirt road into the second orchard.