When everyone else was asleep, Melony turned her reading light back on; whatever failure Jane Eyre might be for someone else, it had always worked for Melony-it had helped her-and she felt in need of its help, now. She read another twenty pages, or so, but Homer Wells would not leave her mind. 'I must part with you for my whole life,' she read, with horror. 'I must begin a new existence amongst strange faces and strange scenes.' The truth of that closed the book for her, forever. She slid the book under her bed in the bunkroom in the cider house at York Farm, where she would leave it. Had she just read the passage from David Copperfield that Homer Wells so loved and repeated to himself as if it were a hopeful prayer, she would have discarded David Copperfield, too. 'I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me.' Fat chance! Melony would have thought. She knew that all the phantoms of those days were attached to her and Homer more securely than their shadows. And so Melony cried herself to sleep-she was not hopeful, yet she was determined, her mind's eye searching the darkness for Homer Wells.

She could not have seen him that night-he was so well hidden beyond the range of the lights shining from the mill room at Ocean View. Even if he'd sneezed or fallen down, the sound of the grinder and the pump would have concealed his presence. He watched the redeyed glow of the cigarettes that darted and paused above {401} the roof of the cider house. When he got cold, he went to watch them pressing and to have a little cider and rum.

Mr. Rose seemed glad to see him; he gave Homer a drink with very little cider in it, and together they watched the orchestra of the pump and grinder. A man named Jack, who had a terrible scar across his throat -a hard-to-survive kind of scar-aimed the spout. A man named Orange slapped the racks in place and received the splatter with a wild kind of pride; his name was Orange because he had tried to dye his hair once, and orange was how it turned out-there was no evidence of that color on him now. The rum had made Jack and Orange both savage about their business and defiantly unwary of the flying mess, yet Homer felt that Mr. Rose, who seemed sober, was still in control-the conductor of both the men and the machinery and operating them both at full throttle.

'Let's try to get out of here by midnight, Mr. Rose said calmly. Jack choked the flow of pomace to the top rack; Orange levered the press into place.

In the other corner of the mill room, two men whom Homer Wells didn't know were bottling at high, speed. One of the men began to laugh, and his partner started to laugh with him so loudly that Mr. Rose called out to them, 'What's so funny?'

One of the men explained that his cigarette had fallen out of his mouth, into the vat; at this announcement, even Jack and Orange began to laugh, and Homer Wells smiled, but Mr. Rose said quietly, 'Then you better fish it out. Nobody wants that muckin' up the cider.'

The men were quiet, now; just the machinery went on with its sluicing and screaming. 'Go on,' Mr. Rose repeated. 'Go fish.'

The man with the lost cigarette stared into the thousand-gallon vat; it was only half full, but it was still a swimming pool. He took off his rubber boots, but Mr. Rose said, 'Not just the boots. Take off all your clothes, {402} and then go take a shower-and be quick about it. We got work to do.'

'What?' the man said. 'I ain't gonna strip and go wash just to go swimmin' in there!'

'You're filthy all over,' said Mr. Rose. 'Be quick about it.'

'Hey, you can be quick about it,' the man said to Mr. Rose. 'You want that butt out of there, you can fish it out yourself.'

It was Orange who spoke to the man.

'What business you in?' Orange asked him.

'Hey, what?' the man asked.

'What business you in, man?' Orange asked.

'Say you in the apple business, man,' Jack advised the man.

'Say what?' the man asked.

'Just say you in the apple business, man,' Orange said.

It was at that moment that Mr. Rose took Homer's arm and said to him, 'You got to see the view from the roof, my friend.' The tug at his elbow was firm but gentle. Mr. Rose very gracefully led Homer out of the mill room, then outside by the kitchen door.

'You know what business Mistuh Rose is in, man?' Homer heard Orange asking.

'He in the knife business, man,' he heard Jack say.

'You don't wanna go in the knife business with Mistuh Rose,' Homer heard Orange say.

'You just stay in the apple business, you do fine, man,' Jack said.

Homer was following Mr. Rose up the ladder to the roof when he heard the shower turn on; it was an inside shower-more private than the shower at York Farm. Except for their cigarettes, the men on the roof were hard to see, but Homer held Mr. Rose's hand and followed him along the plank on the rooftop until they found two good seats.

'You all know Homer,' Mr. Rose said to the men on the roof. There was a blur of greetings. The man called Hero {403} was up there, and the man called Branches; there was someone named Willy, and two or three people Homer didn't know, and the old cook whose name was Black Pan. The cook was the shape of a stew pot; it had required some effort for him to gain his perch on the roof.

Someone handed Homer a bottle of beer, but the bottle was warm and full of rum.

'It's stopped again,' Branches said, and everyone stared toward the sea.

The night-life lights of Cape Kenneth were so low along the horizon that some of the lights themselves were not visible-only the reflections from them, especially when the lights were cast out over the ocean-but the high Ferris wheel blazed brightly. It was holding still, loading new riders, letting off the old.

'Maybe it stop to breathe,' Branches said, and everyone laughed at that.

Someone suggested that it stopped to fart, and everyone laughed louder.

Then Willy said, 'When it gets too close to the ground, it has to stop, I think,' and everyone appeared to consider this seriously.

Then the Ferris wheel started again, and the men on the roof of the cider house released a reverential rnoan.

'There it go again!' Hero said.

'It like a star,' Black Pan, the old cook, said. 'It look real cool, but you get too close, it burn you-it hotter than aflame!'

'It's a Ferris wheel,' said Homer Wells.

'It a what?' Willy said.

'A what wheel?' Branches asked.

'A Ferris wheel,' said Homer Wells. 'That's the Cape Kenneth Carnival, and that's the Ferris wheel.' Mr. Rose nudged him in the ribs, but Homer didn't understand. No one spoke for a long time, and when Homer looked at Mr. Rose, Mr. Rose softly shook his head.

'I heard of somethin' like that,' Black Pan said. 'I think they had one in Charleston.' {404}

'It's stopped again,' Hero observed.

'It's letting off passengers-riders,' said Homer Wells. 'It's taking on new riders.'

'People ride that fuckin' thing?' Branches asked.

'Don't shit me, Homer,' Hero said.

Again, Homer felt the nudge in his ribs, and Mr. Rose said, mildly, 'You all so uneducated-Homer's havin' a little fun with you.'

When the bottle of rum passed from man to man, Mr. Rose just passed it along.

'Don't the name Homer mean nothin' to you?' Mr. Rose asked the men.

'I think I heard of it,' the cook Black Pan said.

'Homer was the world's first storyteller!' Mr. Rose announced. The nudge at Homer's ribs was back, and Mr. Rose said, 'Our Homer knows a good story, too.'

'Shit,' someone said after a while.

'What kind of wheel you call it, Homer?' Branches asked.

'A Ferris wheel,' said Homer Wells.

'Yeah!' someone said. Everyone laughed.

'A fuckin' Ferris wheel!' Hero said. 'That's pretty good.'