He was true to his word. Except when writing his first name on an envelope, or when she annually noted it in his Christmas card ('Happy Holidays, Arthur!'), Olive Worthington never called him Arthur; no one else called him Arthur, either. For reasons that were never explained to Homer Wells but perhaps for a presence of authority that was necessary for a good crew boss to maintain, he was Mister Rose to everybody.
When Olive introduced him to Homer Wells, that measure of respect was made clear. 'Homer,' Olive said, 'this is Mister Rose. And this is Homer Wells,' Olive added.
'Glad, to know you, Homer,' said Mr. Rose.
'Homer has become my good right hand,' Olive said afffectionately. {388}
'Glad to hear that, Homer!' said Mr. Rose. He shook Homer's hand strongly, although he let go of the hand with unusual quickness. He was no better dressed than the rest of thepickingcrew, and he was slender, like most of them; yet he managed a certain style with shabbiness. If his jacket was dirty and torn, it was a pinstriped suit jacket, a doubled-breasted model that had, in its history, given someone a degree of sharpness, and Mr. Rose wore a real silk necktie for a belt. His shoes were also good, and good shoes were vital for farm work; they were old, but well oiled, resoled, comfortable-looking and in good condition. His socks matched. His suit jacket had a watch pocket, and in it was a gold watch that worked; he regarded the watch naturally and often, as if time were very important to him. He was so clean-shaven helooked as if he might never have needed a shave; his face was a smooth brick of the darkest, unsweetened, bitter chocolate, and in his mouth he expertly moved around a small, bright-white mint, which always surrounded him with a fresh and alert fragrance.
He spoke and moved slowly-modestly, yet deliberately; in both speech and gesture he gave the impression of being humble and contained. Yet, when one observed him standing still and not speaking, he looked extraordinarily fast and sure of himself.
It was a hot, Indian-summer day, and the apple mart was inland enough to miss what little sea breeze there was. Mr. Rose and Mrs. Worthington stood talking among the parked and movingf arm vehicles in the apple-mart lot; the rest of the picking crew waited in their cars-the windows rolled down, an orchestra of black fingers strumming the sides of the cars. There were seventeen pickers and a cook-no women or children this year, to Olive's relief.
'Very nice,'Mr. Rose said, about the flowers in the cider house.
Mrs. Worthington touched the rules she'd tacked to the wall by the kitchen light switch as she was leaving. 'And {389} you'll point out these to everyone, won't you, please?' Olive asked.
'Oh yes, I'm good at rules,' said Mr. Rose, smiling. 'You all come back and watch the first press, Homer,' Mr. Rose said, as Homer held open the van door for Olive. 'I'm sure you got better things to watch-movies and stuff-but if you ever got some time on your hands, you come watch us make a little cider. About a thousand gallons,' he added shyly; he scuffed his feet, as if he were ashamed that he might be bragging. 'All we need is eight hours, and about three hundred bushels of apples,' said Mr. Rose. 'A thousand gallons,' he repeated proudly. On the way back to the apple mart, Olive Worthington said to Homer, 'Mister Rose is a real worker. If the rest of them were like him, they could improve themselves.' Homer didn't understand her tone. Certainly he had heard in her voice admiration, sympathy-and even affection-but there was also in her voice the ice that encases a long-ago and immovable point of view.
Fortunately, for Melony, the picking crew at York Farm included two women and a child; Melony felt safe to stay in the cider house. One of the women was a wiiFe and the other woman was the first woman's mother and the cook; the wife picked with the crew, while the old lady looked after the food and the child-who was silent to the point of nonexistence. There was only one shower, and it was outdoors-installed behind the cider house, on a cinder-block platform, under a former grape arbor whose trellises were rotted by the weather. The women showered first, every evening, and they permitted no peeking. The York Farm crew boss was a mild man-it was his wife who came along-and he raised no objections to Melony's sharing the cider house with his crew.
His name was Rather; it was a nickname, stemming from the man's laconic habit of remarking during each activity that he'd rather be doing something else. His {390} authority seemed less certain, or at least less electrical, than the authority commanded by Mr. Rose; no one called him Mister Rather. He was a steady but not an exceptionally fast picker, yet he always accounted for over a hundred bushels a day; it took Melony just one day to observe that his fellow workers paid Rather a commission. They gave him one bushel for every twenty bushels they picked.
'After all,' Rather explained to Melony, 'I get them the job.' He was fond of saying that his commission, under the circumstances, was 'rather small,' but Rather never suggested that Melony owed him anything. 'After all, I didn't get you your job!' he told her cheerfully.
By her third day in the field, she was managing eighty bushels; she also assisted as a bottler with the first cider press. Yet Melony was disappointed; she'd found the time to ask if anyone had heard of Ocean View, and no one had.
Perhaps because he viewed everything with slightly less cynicism than Melony brought to each of her experiences, Homer Wells needed a few days to notice the commission Mr. Rose exacted from his crew. He was the fastest picker among them, without ever appearing to rush-and he never dropped fruit; he never bruised the apples by bumping his canvas picking bucket against the ladder rungs. Mr. Rose could have managed a hundred and ten bushels a day on his own, but-even with his speed- Homer realized that his regular hundred and fifty or hundred and sixty bushels a day were very high. He took as his commission only one bushel out of every forty, but he had a crew of fifteen and no one picked fewer than eighty bushels a day. Mr. Rose would pick a very fast half dozen bushels, then he'd just rest for a while, or else he'd supervise the picking technique of his crew.
'A little slower, George,'he'd say. 'You bruise that fruit, what's it gonna be good for?'
'Just cider,' George would say.
'That's right,' Mr. Rose would say. 'Cider apples is only a nickel a bushel.' {391}
'Okay,' George would say.
'Sure,'Mr. Rose wouldsay, 'everything gonna be okay.' The third day it rained and no one picked; both apples and pickers slip in the rain, and the fruit is more sensitive to bruising.
Homer went to watch Meany Hyde and Mr. Rose conduct the first cider press, which they directed out of range of the splatter. They put two men on the press, and two bottling, and they shifted fresh men into the rotation almost every hour. Meany watched only one thing: whether the racks were stacked crookedly or whether they were right. When the press boards are stacked crookedly, you can lose the press-three bushels of apples in one rness, eight or ten gallons of cider and the pomace flying everywhere. The men at the press won? rubber aprons; the bottlers wore rubber boots. The whine of the grinder reminded Homer Wells of the sounds he had only imagined at St. Cloud's-the saw-mill blades that were ear-splitting in his dreams, and in his insomnia. The pump sucked, the spout disgorged a pulp of seeds and skin and mashed apples, and even worms (if there were worms). It looked like what Nurse Angela calmly called upchuck. From the big tub under the press, the cider whirred through a rotary screen, which strained it into the thousand-gallon vat where, only recently, Grace Lynch had exposed herself to Homer.