'A-ha!' Larch said, surprising the ladies, who were unused to see him making an appearance in the girls' division except for the evening dose of Jane Eyre-and even more unused to see him waving marked prophylactics in their faces.

'Doctor Gingrich and Missus Goodhall, I presume!' Larch said, bowing to everyone. Whereupon he took a scalpel and popped the prophylactics. On the floor above them, Mary Agnes Cork heard the noise and sat up in her bed where she had been lying in a sullen depression. Mrs. Grogan was too stunned to speak.

When Dr. Larch left the ladies with their tea and returned to the hospital, Nurse Edna was the first to say something. 'Wilbur works so hard,' she said cautiously. 'Isn't it a wonder that he can find the time to be playful?' {1}

Mrs. Grogan was still struck speechless, but Nurse Angela said, 'I think the old man is losing his marbles.'

Nurse Edna appeared to be personally wounded by {371} this remark; she returned her teacup to her saucer very steadily before she spoke. 'I think it's the ether,' she said quietly.

'Yes and no,' said Nurse Angela.

'Do you think it's Homer Wells, too?' Mrs. Grogan

asked.

'Yes,' Nurse Angela said. 'It's ether and it's Homer Wells, and it's old age, and it's those new members on the board. It's just everything. It's Saint Cloud's.'

'It's what happened to Melony, too,' Mrs. Grogan said, but she burst into tears when she said Melony's name. Upstair, Mary Agnes Cork heard Melony's name and cried.

'Homer Wells will be back, I just know it.,' Nurse Angela said, but this so dissolved her in tears that Nurse Edna was obliged to comfort both her and Mrs. Grogan. 'There, there,' Nurse Edna said to them, but she wondered: where is the young man or the young woman who's going to take care of us all?

'Oh, Lord,' began Mrs. Grogan. Upstairs, Mary Agnes Cork bowed her head and clasped her hands; by pressing the heels of her hands together at a certain angle, she could revive a little of the pain from her old collarbone injury. 'Oh Lord,' Mrs. Grogan prayed, 'support us all day long, until the shadows lengthen arid the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.'

That night, in the darkness, in keeping with the moan of an owl, Nurse Edna whispered 'Amen' to herself while she listened to Dr. Larch making his rounds, kissing each of the boys-even Smoky Fields, who hoarded his food and hid it in his bed, which smelled, and who only pretended to be asleep.

On the Ferris wheel, high above the carnival grounds and the beach at Cape Kenneth, Homer Wells was trying to spot the roof of the cider house, but it was dark and there were no lights on in the cider house-and even if {372} the cider house had been lit, or there had been the clearest daylight imaginable, the house was too far away. Only the brightest carnival lights, especially the distinctive lights of the Ferris wheel, were visible from the cider house roof; the visibility didn't exist the other way around.

'I want to be a pilot,' Wally said. 'I want to fly, I really do. If I had my pilot's licence, and my own plane, I could do all the spraying at the orchards-I'd get a crop duster, but I'd paint it like a fighter. It's so clumsy, driving those dumb sprayers around behind those dumb tractors, up and down those dumb hills.'

It was what Candy's father, Ray, was doing at the moment; Meany Hyde was sick, and Everett Taft, the foreman, had asked Ray if he'd mind driving a night spray-Ray knew the equipment so well. It was the last spray before harvest, and somewhere in the blackened inland greenery that lay below the Ferris wheel, Raymond Kendall and Vernon Lynch were spraying their way through Ocean View.

Sometimes Wally sprayed; Homer was learning how. And sometimes Herb Fowler sprayed, but Herb protested against night spraying. ('I have better things to do at night,' he'd say.) It was better to spray at night because the wind dropped in the evenings, especially along the coast.

Wally wasn't spraying tonight because it was his last night home; he was going back to college in the morning.

'You'll look after Candy for me, won't you, Homer?' Wally asked, as they loomed above the rocky coast and Cape Kenneth's crowded beach; the scarce bonfires from the summer's-end beach parties winked; the wheel descended.

Candy would finish her senior year at the girls' academy in Camden; she'd get home most weekends, but Wally would stay in Orono except for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the longer vacations.

'Right,' said Homer Wells.{373}

'If I were flying-in the war,' Wally said. 'If I joined, and if I flew, I mean, if I were in a bomber, I'd rather be in the B-24 than the B-25. I'd rather be strategic than tactical, bomb things not people. And I wouldn't want to fly a fighter in the war. That's shooting people, too.'

Homer Wells didn't know what Wally was talking about; Homer didn't follow the war-he didn't know the news. A B-24 was a four-engine, heavy bomber that was used for strategic bombing-bridges, oil refineries, fuel depots, railroad tracks. It hit industry, it didn't drop its bombs on armies. That was the work of the B-25-a medium, tactical bomber. Wally had studied the war- with more interest than he pursued his botany (or his other course;;) at the University of Maine. But the war, which was called-in Maine, in those days-'the war in Europe,' was very far from Homer's mind. People with families are the people who worry about wars.

Do Bedouins have wars? wondered Homer Wells. And if they do, do they much care?

He was eager for the harvest to start; he was curious about meeting the migrants, about seeing the Negroes. He didn't know why. Were they like orphans? Did they not quite belong? Were they not quite of sufficient use?

Because he loved Wally, he resolved to keep his mind off Candy. It was the kind of bold resolve that his sense of elevation, on the Ferris wheel, enhanced. And this evening there was a plan; Homer Wells-an orphan attached to routine-liked for every evening to have a plan, even if he was not that excited about this one.

He drove Wally, in Senior's Cadillac, to Kendall's Lobster Pound, where Candy was waiting. Fie left Candy and Wally there. Ray would be out spraying for several hours, and Candy and Wally wanted a private good-bye together before Ray came home. Homer would go pick up Debra Pettigrew and take her to the drive-in in Cape Kenneth; it would be their first drive-in without Candy and Wally, and Homer wondered if the touch-this-but-not-that rules would vary when he and {374} Debra were alone. As he navigated an exact path through the Pettigrews' violent dogs, he was disappointed in himself that he wasn't dying to find out whether Debra would or wouldn't. A particularly athletic dog snapped very loudly, near his face, but the chain around the dog's neck appeared to strangle the beast in midair; it landed solidly on its rib cage, with a sharp groan, and was slow getting to its feet. Why do people want to keep dogs? Homer wondered.

It was a Western movie, from which Homer could only conclude that crossing the country in a wagon train was an exercise in lunacy and sorrow; at the very least, he thought, one should make some arrangements with the Indians before starting out. The film was void of arrangements, and Homer was unable to arrange for the use of Herb Fowler's rubbers, which he kept in his pocket-'in case.' Debra Pettigrew was substantially freer than she had ever been before, but her ultimate restraint was no less firm.

'No!' she yelled once.

'There's no need to shout,' said Homer Wells, removing his hand from the forbidden place.

'Well, that's the second time you did that particular thing,' Debra pointed out-a mathematical certainty (and other certainties) apparent in her voice. In Maine, in 194-, Homer Wells was forced to accept that what they called 'neckinG' was permitted; what they called 'making out' was within the rules; but that what he had done with Melony-what Grace Lynch appeared to be offering him, and what Candy and Wally did (or had done, at least once)-to all of that, the answer was 'No!'