People in Heart's Haven and in Heart's Rock always said that Wally had everything: money, looks, goodness, charm, the girl of his dreams-but he had courage, too, and he had in abundance youth's most dangerous qualities: optimism and restlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.

Wally enlisted in the Army Air Corps before Christmas, but they allowed him to spend Christmas at home. It would take the Army Air Corps more than a year to teach Wally the grim arts of aerial warfare.

'By that time,' he told Olive and Candy in the kitchen at Ocean View, 'all the fighting will probably be over. That would be just my luck.'

'That would be lucky,' Olive said. Candy nodded her head.

'Right!' said Homer Wells, from the other room. He was still thinking about being excused from his physical; Dr. Larch's account of Homer's heart history had sufficed. Physical examinations were given only to people who were Class I. Homer Wells was Class IV. According to his family physician, Homer had congenital pulmonic stenosis; Homer's 'family physician' was Dr. Larch, whose letter to the local medical advisory board had been accepted as evidence enough for Homer's deferment- Larch was also a member of the local board.

'I asked her to marry me, but she wouldn't,' Wally told Homer in their shared bedroom. 'She said she'd wait for me, but she wouldn't marry rne. She said she'd be my wife, but not my widow.'

'Is that what you call waiting and seeing?' Homer asked Candy the next day.

'Yes,' Candy said. 'For years I've expected to be married {450} to Wally. You came along second. I have to wait and see about you. And now conies the war. I have to wait and see about the war, too.'

'But you made him a promise,' said Homer Wells.

'Yes,' Candy said. 'Isn't a promise like waiting and seeing? Did you ever make a promise, and mean it-and break it?' Homer Wells's reaction was an involuntary cringe, as sudden and uncontrollable as if Candy had called him 'Sunshine.'

During Christmas dinner, Raymond Kendall, trying to relieve the silence, said, 'I would have chosen submarines.'

'You'd end up feeding lobsters,' Wally said.

'That's okay,' said Ray. They been feeding me.'

'You got a better chance in a plane,' Wally said.

'Yes, a chance,' Candy said scornfully. 'Why would you want to be anywhere where all you get is a chance?'

'Good question,' Olive said crossly. She let the silver serving fork fall to the meat platter with such force that the goose appeared to flinch.

'A chance is enough,' said Homer Wells, who did not immediately recognize the tone in his own voice. 'A chance is all we get, right? In the air, or underwater, or right here, from the minute we're born.' Or from the minute we're not born, he thought; now he recognized his tone of voice-it was Dr. Larch's.

'That's a rather grim philosophy,' Olive said.

'I thought you were studying anatomy,' Wally said to Homer, who looked at Candy, who looked away.

They sent Wally to Fort Meade, Maryland, for the month of January. He was a faithful but terrible letter writer; he wrote his mother, he wrote to Homer and to Candy, and even to Ray, but he never explained anything; if there was a plan to what they were teaching him, Wally either didn't know it or couldn't describe it. He simply wrote in tedious detail about the last thing that had occupied his mind before beginning the letter; this included the pouch he had devised to hang from his bunk bed to separate his shoe polish from his toothpaste {451} and the best-name-for-a-plane competition that dominated the imaginative life of Company A. He was also delighted that a cook sergeant had taught him more limericks than Senior, in his last years, had been able to remember. Every letter Wally wrote, to anyone, included a limerick; Ray liked them, and Homer liked them, but they made Candy angry and Olive was appalled. Candy and Homer showed each other the limericks Wally sent them, until Homer realized that this made Candy even angrier: the limericks Wally chose to send Candy were very mild-mannered compared to the ones Wally sent to Homer. For example, he sent this to Candy:

There was a young lady of Exeter,

So pretty that men craned their necks at her.

One was even so brave

As to take out and wave

The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.

He sent this to Homer Wells:

There was a young lady named Brent

With a cunt of enormous extent

And so deep and so wide,

The acoustics inside

Were so good you could hear when you spent.

Wally sent Ray limericks of a similar kind:

There's an unbroken babe from Toronto

Exceedingly hard to get onto

Rut when you get there

And have parted the hair,

You can fuck her as much as you want to.

God knows what limericks Wally sent to Olive- where does Wally find ones that are decent enough? wondered Homer, who, in the evening after Wally had gone and Candy had gone back to school, lay listening to his heart. It would help, he thought, if he knew what to listen for. {452}

Wally was sent to St. Louis-the Jefferson Barracks, Flight 17, 28th School Squadron. It struck Homer Wells that the Army Air Corps might have modeled itself on Gray's Anatomy-manifesting a steadfast belief in categories and in everything having a name. It was reassuring to Homer Wells; in his mind, this endless categorizing made Wally safer, but Homer couldn't convince Candy of this.

'He's safe one minute, and in another minute he's not safe,' she said, shrugging.

'Look after Homer, look after his heart,' Wally had written her.

'And who's looking after my heart? Yes, I'm still angry,' she wrote him, although he hadn't asked.

But if she was angry with Wally, she was also loyal; she was keeping her promise, about the waiting and seeing. She kissed Homer when she saw him, and when they said good-bye, but she wouldn't encourage him.

'We're just good pals,' she told her father; Ray hadn't asked.

'I can see that,' Ray said.

The work in the orchards was light that winter; pruning was the main job. The men took turns teaching Homer how to prune. 'You make your big cuts in the subfreezing weather,' Meany Hyde told him.

'A tree don't bleed so much when it's cold,' was how Vernon Lynch put it, hacking away.

'There's less chance of an infection when it's cold,' said Herb Fowler, who was not so free with the prophylactics in the winter months, perhaps because he would have needed to take his gloves off to get at them; but Homer felt sure that Herb was being wary ever since Homer had asked him about the holes.

'Are there holes?' Herb had replied. 'Manufacturer's defect, I suppose.'

But later he'd come up to Homer and whispered to him, 'Not all of them's got holes.' {453}

'You have a system?' Homer asked. 'Which ones have holes and which don't?'

'It's not my system,' Herb Fowler said. 'Some got holes, some don't. Manufacturer's defect.'

'Right,' said Homer Wells, but rubbers were rarely flung his way now.

Meany Hyde's wife, Florence, was pregnant again, and all winter Big Dot Taft and Irene Titcomb made jokes about Meany's potency.

'You keep away from me, Meany,' Big Dot would say. I'm not even lettin' you sip my coffee. I think all you gotta do is breathe on somebody and they're pregnant.'

'Well, that's all he did to me!' Florence would say, and Big Dot Taft would roar.

'Dontcha go givin' the men any breathin' lessons, Meany,' Irene Titcomb said.

'Meany can knock you up just by kissin' your ears,' Florence Hyde said proudly, glorying in her pregnancy.

'Gimme some earmuffs,' said Squeeze Louise Tobey. 'Gimme one of them ski hats.'

'Gimme a dozen of Herb's rubbers!' said Irene Titcomb.