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But where was Wally? The co-pilot had landed in a grove of ironwood; and the canes of bamboo that he had to hack his way through were as stout as a man's thigh. The edge of his machete was as dull and round as the back of the blade.
The Burmese let them know they were not safe to stay and wait for Wally where they were; some of the villagers would lead the co-pilot, the crew chief, and the radioman into China. For that trip, they darkened their skin with mashed peepul berries and tied orchids in their hair; they didn't want to look like white men.
The trip took twenty days, walking. They traveled two hundred twenty-five miles. They cooked no food; at the end of the journey, their rice was moldy--there was so much rain. The crew chief claimed he was terminally constipated; the co-pilot claimed he was dying of diarrhea. The radioman shat rabbit pellets and carried a low-grade fever for fifteen of the twenty days; he grew a helmet of ringworm. Each man lost about forty pounds.
When they reached their base in China, they were hospitalized for a week. Then they were flown back to India, where the co-pilot was retained in the hospital for diagnosis and treatment of an amoeba--no one could say what amoeba it was. The crew chief had a colon problem; he was also retained. The radioman (and his ringworm) went back to work. "They took all our gear when they put us in the hospital in China," he wrote to Olive. "When they gave it back to us, it was all lumped together. There was four compasses. There was just three of us, but there was four compasses. One of us jumped out of the plane with Captain Worthington's compass." In the radioman's opinion, it was better to have crashed with the plane than to have landed in that part of Burma without a compass.
In August of 194_, Burma officially declared war against Great Britain and the United States. Candy told Homer that she needed a new place to sit, to be left alone. The dock made her want to jump off; she'd sat too many times on that dock with Wally. It didn't help that Homer would sit there with her now.
"I know a place," Homer told her.
Maybe Olive was right, he thought; maybe they hadn't cleaned the cider house for nothing. When it rained, Candy sat inside and listened to the drops on the tin roof. She wondered if the jungle sounded as loud as that, or louder, and if the sweet rot smell of the cider apples was anything like the stifling decay-in-progress smell of the jungle floor. When the weather was clear, Candy sat on the roof. Some nights she allowed Homer Wells to tell her stories there. Perhaps it was the absence of the Ferris wheel and of Mr. Rose's interpretations of the darkness that prompted Homer Wells to tell Candy everything.
That summer, Wilbur Larch wrote to the Roosevelts again. He had written to them both so many times under the constellations of ether that he was unsure whether he had actually written to them or had only imagined doing it. He never wrote to one without writing to the other.
He usually began, "Dear Mr. President," and, "Dear Mrs. Roosevelt," but occasionally he felt more informal and began, "Dear Franklin Delano Roosevelt"; once he even began, "Dear Eleanor."
That summer he addressed the President quite plainly. "Mr. Roosevelt," he wrote, dispensing with the endearment, "I know that you must be terribly busy with the war, yet I feel such confidence in your humanitarianism--and in your commitment to the poor, to the forgotten, and especially to children . . ." To Mrs. Roosevelt, he wrote: "I know your husband must be very busy, but perhaps you could point out to him a matter of the utmost urgency--for it concerns the rights of women and the plight of the unwanted child . . ."
The confusing configurations of light that dazzled t
he dispensary ceiling contributed to the strident and incomprehensible manner of the letter.
"These same people who tell us we must defend the lives of the unborn--they are the same people who seem not so interested in defending anyone but themselves after the accident of birth is complete! These same people who profess their love of the unborn's soul--they don't care to make much of a contribution to the poor, they don't care to offer much assistance to the unwanted or the oppressed! How do they justify such a concern for the fetus and such a lack of concern for unwanted and abused children? They condemn others for the accident of conception; they condemn the poor--as if the poor can help being poor. One way the poor could help themselves would be to be in control of the size of their families. I thought that freedom of choice was obviously democratic--was obviously American!
"You Roosevelts are national heroes! You are my heroes, anyway. How can you tolerate this country's anti-American, anti-democratic abortion laws?"
By now Dr. Larch had stopped writing and was ranting in the dispensary. Nurse Edna went to the dispensary door and rattled the frosted-glass panels.
"Is it a democratic society that condemns people to the accident of conception?" roared Wilbur Larch. "What are we--monkeys? If you expect people to be responsible for their children, you have to give them the right to choose whether or not to have children. What are you people thinking of? You're not only crazy! You're ogres!" Wilbur Larch was yelling so loudly that Nurse Edna went into the dispensary and shook him.
"Wilbur, the children can hear you," she told him. "And the mothers. Everyone can hear you."
"No one hears me," said Dr. Larch. Nurse Edna recognized the involuntary twitching in Wilbur Larch's cheeks and the slackness in his lower lip; the doctor was just emerging from ether. "The President doesn't answer my letters," Larch complained to Nurse Edna.
"He's very busy," Nurse Edna said. "He may not even get to read your letters."
"What about Eleanor?" Wilbur Larch asked.
"What about Eleanor?" Nurse Edna asked.
"Doesn't she get to read her letters?" Wilbur Larch's tone of voice was whiny, like a child's, and Nurse Edna patted the back of his hand, which was spotted with brown freckles.
"Missus Roosevelt is very busy, too," Nurse Edna said. "But I'm sure she'll get around to answering you."
"It's been years," Dr. Larch said quietly, turning his face to the wall. Nurse Edna let him doze in that position for a while. She restrained herself from touching him; she was inclined to brush his hair back from his forehead, in the manner that she often soothed any number of the little ones. Were they all becoming children again? And were they, as Nurse Angela claimed, all becoming the same, all resembling each other, even physically? Anyone visiting St. Cloud's for the first time might suspect that they were all members of the same family.
Suddenly Nurse Angela surprised her in the dispensary.
"Well, are we out of it?" she asked Nurse Edna. "What's the trouble? I was sure I ordered a whole case."
"A case of what?" Nurse Edna asked.
"Merthiolate--red," Nurse Angela said crossly. "I asked you to get me some red Merthiolate--there's not a drop left in the delivery room."
"Oh, I forgot!" said Nurse Edna, bursting into tears.
Wilbur Larch woke up.
