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Carmen? Cecelia? Charity? Claudia? Constance? Cookie? Cordelia? Angel Wells cocked the Red Sox cap at the correct angle; although it was cool in the early morning, he elected not to wear a shirt. Dagmar? he thought. Daisy? Dolores? Dotty?
"Where are you going in my hat?" Candy asked him; she was picking up the breakfast dishes.
"It's my hat," Angel said, going out the door.
"Love is blind," Wally said, pushing his wheelchair away from the table.
Does he mean me or Angel? Candy wondered. Homer and Wally were worried about Angel's puppylike infatuation with Rose Rose, but that is all it seemed to Candy: puppylike. Candy knew that Rose Rose had too much experience to allow Angel to get carried away. That wasn't the point, Homer had said. Candy imagined that Rose Rose had more experience in her little finger than . . . but that wasn't the point, either, Wally had said.
"Well, I hope the point isn't that she's colored," Candy had said.
"The point is Mister Rose," Wally had said. The word "Right!" had been almost visible on Homer's lips. Men want to control everything, Candy thought.
Homer Wells was in the apple-mart office. In the mail there was a letter for him from Dr. Larch, but Homer didn't look through the mail. That was Wally's job; besides, the picking crew had arrived. The harvest would be starting as soon as Homer could get it organized. He looked out the office window and saw his son not wearing any shirt and talking to Big Dot Taft. He opened the screen door and hollered at Angel. "Hey, it's cold this morning--put on a shirt!" Angel was already walking toward the barns beyond the apple mart.
"I got to warm up the tractor!" he told his father.
"Warm yourself up first!" Homer told him, but the boy was already very warm this morning.
Edith? Angel asked himself. Ernestine? Esmeralda? Eve! he thought.
He bumped into Vernon Lynch, who was glowering over a cup of hot coffee.
"Watch where yer goin'," Vernon told Angel.
"Faith!" Angel said to him. "Felicia! Francesca! Frederica!"
"Asshole," said Vernon Lynch.
"No, that's you," Big Dot Taft told him. "You're the asshole, Vernon."
"God, I love the harvest!" Wally said, cruising around the kitchen table, while Candy washed the dishes. "It's my favorite time."
"Mine, too," Candy said, smiling. What she thought was: I have six more weeks to live.
Black Pan, the cook, was back; Candy had to hurry--she had to take Black Pan shopping. A man named Peaches had picked for them before, but not for several years; he was called Peaches because his beard never grew. Also, a man named Muddy was back; no one had seen Muddy for years. He'd been badly knifed at the cider house one night, and Homer had driven him to the hospital in Cape Kenneth. Muddy had taken one hundred twenty-three stitches; Homer Wells thought he'd looked like a kind of experimental sausage.
The man who'd cut him was long gone. That was one of Mr. Rose's rules; Homer guessed it might have been the dominant rule of the cider house. No hurting each other. You cut people to scare them, to show them who's boss, but you don't send people to the hospital. Then the law comes, and everyone at the cider house feels small. The man who'd cut Muddy hadn't been thinking about the community.
"He was really tryin' to cut my ass off, man," Muddy had said, as if he were surprised.
"He was an amateur," Mr. Rose had said. "He long gone now, anyway."
The rest of the crew, except for Mr. Rose's daughter, hadn't been to Ocean View before. Mr. Rose arranged, with Angel, how Rose Rose and her daughter would spend the day.
"She gonna ride around with you and help you out," Mr. Rose told Angel. "She can sit on the fender, or stand behind the seat. She can ride on the trailer, before it full."
"Sure!" Angel said.
"If she need to take the baby back to the cider house, she can walk," Mr. Rose said. "She don't need no special favors."
"No," Angel said; it surprised him that Mr. Rose would speak this way about his daughter when she was standing beside him, looking a little embarrassed. Baby Rose--pacifier in place--rode her hip.
"Sometimes Black Pan can look after the baby," Mr. Rose said, and Rose Rose nodded.
"Candy said she'd look after her, too," Angel offered.
"No need botherin' Missus Worthington," said Mr. Rose, and Rose Rose shook her head.
