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"Doctor Larch is dead," he told Wally, who held Homer while he cried. He cried a very short time; in Homer's memory, Curly Day had been the only orphan who ever cried for a long time. When Homer stopped crying, he said to Angel, "I've got a little story for you--and I'm going to need your help."
They went outside to the shed where the garden things were kept, and Homer opened one of the quarter-pound ether cans with a safety pin. The fumes made his eyes tear a little; he'd never understood how Larch could like the stuff.
"He got addicted to it," Homer told his son. "But he used to have the lightest touch. I've seen patients talking back to him while they were under, and still they didn't feel a thing."
They took the ether upstairs and Homer told Angel to make up the extra bed in his room--first with the rubber sheet they'd used when Angel had still been in diapers; then the usual sheets (but clean ones) over that.
"For Baby Rose?" Angel asked his father.
"No, not for Baby Rose," Homer said. When he unpacked the instruments, Angel sat down on the other bed and watched him.
"The water's boiling!" Wally called upstairs.
"You remember how I used to tell you that I was Doctor Larch's helper?" Homer asked Angel.
"Right," said Angel Wells.
"Well, I got very good--at helping him," Homer said. "Very good. I'm not an amateur," he told his son. "That's really it--that's the little story," Homer said, when he'd arranged everything he needed where he could see it; everything looked timeless, everything looked perfect.
"Go on," Angel Wells told his father. "Go on with the story."
Downstairs, in the quiet house, they heard Wally in his wheelchair, rolling from room to room; he was still flying.
Upstairs, Homer Wells was talking to his son while he changed the gauze on the Yankauer mask. He began with that old business about the Lord's work and the Devil's--how, to Wilbur Larch, it was all the work of the Lord.
It startled Candy: how the headlights from her Jeep caught all the men in the starkest silhouettes against the sky; how they were perched in a row, like huge birds, along the cider house roof. She thought that everyone must be up there--but not everyone was. Mr. Rose and his daughter were inside the cider house, and the men were waiting where they'd been told to wait.
When Candy got out of the Jeep, no one spoke to her. There were no lights on in the cider house; if her headlights hadn't exposed the men on the roof, Candy would have thought that everyone had gone to bed.
"Hello!" Candy called up to the roof. "One day, that whole roof is going to cave in." It suddenly frightened her: how they wouldn't speak to her. But the men were more frightened than Candy was; the men didn't know what to say--they knew only that what Mr. Rose was doing to his daughter was wrong, and that they were too afraid to do anything about it.
"Muddy?" Candy asked in the darkness.
"Yes, Missus Worthington!" Muddy called down to her. She went over to the corner of the cider house where the roof dipped closest to the ground; it was where everyone climbed up; an old picking ladder was leaned up against the roof there, but no one on the roof moved to hold the ladder steady for her.
"Peaches?" Candy said.
"Yes, ma'am," Peaches said.
"Please, someone hold the ladder," she said. Muddy and Peaches held the ladder, and Black Pan held her hand when she climbed up on the roof. The men made room for her, and she sat down with them.
She could not see very clearly, but she would have known if Rose Rose was there; and if Mr. Rose had been there, Candy knew he would have spoken to her.
The first time she heard the sound from the cider house--it came from directly under her--Candy thought it was the baby, just babbling or maybe beginning to cry.
"When your Wally was a boy, it was different--out there," Black Pan said to her. "It look like another country then." His gaze was fixed upon the twinkling coast.
The noise under the cider house roof grew more distinct, and Peaches said, "Ain't it a pretty night, ma'am?" It was decidedly not a pretty night; it was a darker night than usual, and the sound from the cider house was now comprehensible to her. For a second, she thought she was going to be sick.
"Careful when you stand up, Missus Worthington," Muddy said to her, but Candy stamped her feet on the roof; then she knelt down and began to beat on the tin with both her hands.
"It's so old a roof, Missus Worthington," Black Pan said to her. "You best be careful you don't fall through it."
"Get me down, get me off," Candy said to them. Muddy and Peaches took her arms and Black Pan preceded them to the ladder. Even walking down the roof, Candy tried to keep stamping her feet.
Going down the ladder, she called, "Rose!" She could not say the ridiculous name of "Rose Rose," and she couldn't make herself say "Mister Rose," either. "Rose!" she called ambiguously. She wasn't even sure which one she was summoning, but it was Mr. Rose who met her at the cider house door. He was still getting dressed--he was tucking his shirt in and buttoning his trousers. He looked thinner and older to her than he'd looked before, and although he smiled at her, he didn't look into her eyes with his usual confidence--with his usual, polite indifference.
"Don't you speak to me," Candy told him, but what would he have said? "Your daughter and her baby are coming with me." Candy walked by him into the cider house; she felt the tattered rules with her fingers as she found the light.
