The Cider House Rules (44 page)

He went outside with all the others, thinking that Grace Lynch might assume he'd gone with them, and then he told Herb Fowler out in the driveway that he was going to stay. He felt a finger hook him in his blue jeans pocket, one of the front ones, and when Herb and the others had gone, he looked in his pocket and discovered the rubber. The prophylactic's presence in his pocket urged him up on the cider house roof in a hurry.

His appearance there surprised the gulls, whose sudden and raucous flight surprised
him;
he had not noticed them huddled on the slope of the roof that faced away from him—and away from the wind. The roof was slippery in the rain; he had to grip the corrugated grooves with both hands and place his feet very close to each other as he climbed. The pitch of the roof was not too steep, or he wouldn't have been able to climb it at all. To his surprise, he found a number of planks—old two-byfours —nailed to the seaward side of the roof's apex. Benches! he thought. Even at an angle, they were; at least more comfortable to sit on than the tin. He sat there in the rain and tried to imagine the pleasure of the view, but the weather was much too stormy for him to be able to see the farthest orchards; the ocean was completely obscured, and he had to imagine where, on a clear night, the Ferris wheel and the carnival lights in Cape Kenneth would be.

He was getting soaked and was about to climb down when he saw the knife. It was a big switchblade, the blade end stuck into the two-by-four at the top of the roof alongside him; the handle, which was fake horn, was cracked in two places, and when Homer Wells tried to extract the blade from the wood, the handle broke in two {356} in his hands. That was why it had been left there, apparently. With the handle broken, the knife wouldn't close properly; it wasn't safe to carry that way—and, besides, the blade was rusted. The whole roof was rusted, Homer noticed; there was no single spot shiny enough to have reflected the moonlight back to Wally's window. Then he noticed the broken glass; some larger pieces were caught in the corrugated grooves in the tin. It must have been one of those pieces of glass that caught the moon, Homer thought.

Beer bottle glass and rum bottle glass, whiskey bottle glass and gin bottle glass, he supposed. He tried to imagine the black men drinking at night on the roof; but the rain had soaked him through, and the wind now thoroughly chilled him. Inching his way back down the roof —to the edge where the ground was the safest jump—he cut his hand, just a small cut, on a piece of glass he didn't see. By the time he went back inside the cider house, the cut was bleeding freely—quite a lot of blood for such a small cut, he thought, and he wondered if perhaps there was a tiny piece of glass still inside the cut. Grace Lynch must have heard him rinsing the wound in the kitchen sink (if she hadn't heard him on the roof). To Homer's surprise, Grace was still in the thousand-gallon vat.

'Help me,' she called to him. 'I can't get out.'

It was a lie; she was just trying to draw him to the edge of the tank. But orphans have a gullible nature; orphanage life is plain; by comparison, every lie is sophisticated. Homer Wells, although he approached the rim of the cider vat with trepidation, approached steadily. The quickness of her thin hands, and the wiry strength with which they gripped his wrists, surprised him; he nearly lost his balance—he was almost pulled into the tank, on top of her. Grace Lynch had taken all her clothes off, but the extreme definition of her bones struck Homer more powerfully than anything forbidden in her nakedness. She looked like a starved animal contained in a more or {357} less humane trap; humane, except that it was evident, from her bruises, that her captor beat her regularly and hard. The bruises on her hips and thighs were the largest; the thumbprint bruises on the backs of her arms were the deepest purple hue and there was a yellow-to-green bruise on one of her small breasts that looked especially angry.

'Let me go,' said Homer Wells.

'I know what they do where you come from!' Grace Lynch cried, tugging on his wrists.

'Right,' said Homer Wells. Systematically, he began to peel back her fingers, but she scrambled nimbly up the side of the vat and bit him sharply on the back of his hand. He had to push her, then, and he might have hurt her if they both hadn't heard the splashy arrival of Wally in the green van. Grace Lynch let Homer go and scurried to put on her clothes. Wally sat in the van in the drenching rain and pumped the horn; Homer ran outside to see what he wanted.

'Get in!' Wally shouted. 'We've got to go rescue: my stupid father—he's in some kind of trouble at Sanborn's.'

For Homer Wells, who'd grown up in a world without fathers, it was a shock to hear that anyone who had a father would call his father stupid, even if it was true. There was a peck bag of Gravensteins in the passenger seat of the van; Homer held the apples in his lap as Wally drove down Drinkwater Road to Sanborn's General Store. The proprietors, Mildred and Bert Sanborn, were among Senior's oldest friends; he'd been a schoolboy with both of them and had once dated Milly (before he'd met Olive— and before Milly had married Bert).

Titus Hardware and Plumbing was next door to Sanborn's; Warren Titus, the plumber, was standing on the porch of the general store, not letting anyone inside, when Wally and Homer drove into Heart's Rock.

'It's a good thing you're here, Wally,' Warren said, when the boys ran up to the porch. 'Your Dad's got some wild hair across his ass.'

In the store, Homer and Wally saw that Mildred and {358} Bert Sanborn had—for the moment—cornered Senior in a niche of shelves reserved for baking goods; Senior appeared to have littered the floor and much of himself with all the flour and sugar within his reach. His trapped appearance reminded Homer of Grace Lynch.

'What's the trouble, Pop?' Wally asked his father. Mildred Sanborn gave a sigh of relief to see Wally, but Bert wouldn't take his eyes off Senior.

'Trouble Pop,' Senior said.

'He got in a rage when he couldn't find the dog food,' Bert said to Wally, without looking away from Senior; Bert thoroughly expected Senior to bolt, at any moment, to another part of the store and destroy it.

'What did you want with dog food, Pop?' Wally asked his father.

'Dog food Pop,' Senior repeated.

'It's like he don't remember, Wally,' Bert Sanborn said.

'We told him he didn't have a dog,' Mildred said.

'I remember doing it to you, Milly!' Senior shouted.

'There he goes again,' Bert said. 'Senior, Senior,' he said gently. 'We're all your friends here.'

'I have to feed Blinky,' Senior said.

'Blinky was his dog when he was a boy,' Milly Sanborn told Wally.

'If Blinky was still alive, Senior,' Bert Sanborn said, 'he'd be older than we are.'

'Older than we are,' Senior said.

'Let's go home, Pop,' Wally said.

'Home Pop,' Senior said, but he let Homer and Wally lead him to the van.

'I tell you, Wally, it's not booze,' said Warren Titus, who opened the side door of the van for them. 'It's not on his breath, not this time.'

'It's something else, Wally,' Bert Sanborn said.

'Who are you?' Senior asked Homer.

'I'm Homer Wells, Mister Worthington,' Homer said.

'Mister Worthington,' Senior said. {359}

When they'd driven for almost five minutes, in silence, Senior shouted, 'Everyone just shut up!'

When they got to Ocean View, Olive met the van in the driveway; she ignored Senior and spoke to Wally. 'I don't know what he's had this morning, unless it's vodka; it wasn't on his breath when he left. I wouldn't have let him take the van if I thought he'd been drinking.'

'I think it's something else, Mom,' Wally said. With Homer's help, he led Senior to the bedroom, got his shoes off, and coaxed him to lie down on the bed.

'You know, I drilled Milly once,' Senior told his son.

'Sure you did, Pop,' said Wally.

'I drilled Milly! I drilled Milly!' Senior said.

Wally tried to humor Senior with a limerick; Senior had taught Wally a lot of limericks, but Senior had difficulty remembering a limerick now, even if Wally talked him through it, line by line.

'Remember the Duchess of Kent, Pop?' W rally asked his father.

'Sure,' Senior said, but he didn't say anything more.

'Oh, pity the Duchess of Kent!' Wally began, but Senior just listened. 'Her cunt is so dreadfully bent,' Wally said.

'Bent?' Senior said.

'Wally tried again, two lines at a time.

Oh, pity the Duchess of Kent!

Her cunt is so dreadfully bent…

'Dreadfully bent!' Senior sang out.

Oh, pity the Duchess of Kent!

Her cunt is so dreadfully bent,

The poor wench doth stammer,

'I need a sledgehammer

To pound a man into my vent.'

My God, thought Homer Wells. But Senior appeared' to be baffled; he said nothing. Wally and Homer left him when they thought he'd fallen asleep. {360}

Downstairs, Homer Wells told Olive and Wally that he thought it was something neurological.

'Neurological?' Olive said.

'What's that mean?' Wally said.

They heard Senior cry out from upstairs. 'Vent!' he shouted.

Homer Wells, who had a habit of repeating the pigtails of sentences, knew that Senior's repetitions were insane. That habit was the first symptom he described in his letter about Senior Worthington to Dr. Larch. 'He repeats everything,' he wrote to Dr. Larch. Homer also noted that Senior appeared to forget the names of the most common things; he recalled how the man had become stuck asking Wally for a cigarette—he had just kept pointing at Wally's breast pocket. 'I think the word for cigarette had escaped him,' wrote Homer Wells. Homer had also observed that Senior could not operate the latch on the glove compartment the last time that Homer had driven him to Sanborn's for some simple shopping. And the man had the oddest habit of picking at his clothes all the time. 'It's as if he thinks he's got dirt, or hair, or lint on his clothes,' wrote Homer Wells. 'But there's nothing there.'

Olive Worthington assured Homer that the family doctor, a geezer even older than Dr. Larch, was quite certain that Senior's problem were entirely 'alcoholrelated.'

'Doc Perkins is too old to be a doctor anymore, Mom,' Wally said.

'Doc Perkins delivered you—I guess he knows what he's doing,' Olive said.

'I bet I was easy to deliver,' Wally said cheerfully.

I'll bet you were, imagined Homer Wells, who thought that Wally took everything in the world for granted— not in a selfish or spoiled way, but like a Prince of Maine, like a King of New England; Wally was just born to be in charge.

Dr. Larch's letter to Homer Wells was so impressive {361} that Homer immediately showed it to Mrs. Worthington.

'What you have described to me, Homer, sounds like some kind of evolving organic brain syndrome,' Dr. Larch wrote. 'In a man of this age, there aren't a lot of diagnoses to choose from. I'd say your best bet is Alzheimer's presenile dementia; it's pretty rare; I looked it up in one of my bound volumes of the
New England Journal of Medicine.

Ticking imaginary lint off one's clothes is what neurologists call
carphologia.
In the progress of deterioration common to Alzheimer's disease, a patient will frequently echo back what is said to him. This is called
echolalia.
The inability to name even familiar objects such as a cigarette is due to a failure to recognize the objects. This is called
anomia.
And the loss of the ability to do any type of skilled or learned movement such as opening the glove compartment is also typical. It is; called
apraxia.

'You should prevail upon Mrs. Worthington to have her husband examined by a neurologist. I know there is at least one in Maine. It's only my guess that it's Alzheimer's disease.'

'Alzheimer's
disease?' asked Olive Worthington,,

'You mean it's a
disease
—what's wrong with him?' Wally asked Homer.

Wally cried in the car on the way to the neurologist. 'I'm sorry, Pop,' he said. But Senior seemed delighted. When the neurologist confirmed Dr. Larch's diagnosis, Senior Worthington was exuberant.

'I have a disease!' he yelled proudly—even happily, It was almost as if someone had announced that he was cured; what he had was quite incurable. 'I have a
disease!'
He was euphoric about it.

What a relief it must have been to him—for a moment, anyway—to learn that he wasn't simply a drunk. It was such an enormous relief to Olive that she wept on Wally's shoulder; she hugged and kissed Htomer {362} with an energy Homer had not known since he left the arms of Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna. Mrs. Worthington thanked Homer over and over again. It meant a great deal to Olive (although she had long ago fallen out of love with Senior, if she had ever truly loved him) to know that this new information permitted her to renew her respect for Senior. She was overwhelmingly grateful to Homer and to Dr. Larch for restoring Senior's self-esteem—and for restoring some of her esteem for Senior, too.

All this contributed to the special atmosphere that surrounded Senior's death at the end of the summer, shortly before the harvest; a sense of relief was far more prevalent than was a sense of grief. That Senior Worthington was on his way to death had been certain for some time; that, in the nick of time, he had managed to die with some honor—'…of a bona fide disease)' Bert Sanborn said—was a welcome surprise.

Of course, the residents of Heart's Rock and Heart's Haven had some difficulty with the term—Alzheimer was not a name familiar to the coast of Maine in 194-. The workers at Ocean View had particular trouble with it; Ray Kendall, one day, made it easier for everyone to understand. 'Senior got
Al's Hammer
disease,' he announced. Al's Hammer! Now
there
was a disease anyone could understand.

'I just hope it ain't catchin',' said Big Dot Taft.