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Poor Melony, he thought. She now listened to Jane Eyre as if it were her life story being told to her, and the only thing she ever said to Homer Wells was to remind him of his promise. ("You won't leave here before I do, remember? You promised.")
"Where is he?" Homer asked Dr. Larch. "Where's Fuzzy?"
Dr. Larch was at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office, where he was--very late--almost every night.
"I was thinking of a way to tell you," Larch said.
"You said I was your apprentice, right?" Homer asked him. "If that's what I am, I should be told. If you're teaching me, you can't leave anything out. Right?"
"That's right, Homer," Dr. Larch agreed. How the boy had changed! How does one mark the passage of time in an orphanage? Why hadn't Larch noticed that Homer Wells needed a shave? Why hadn't Larch taught him to do that? I am responsible for everything--if I am going to be responsible at all, Larch reminded himself.
"Fuzzy's lungs weren't strong enough, Homer," Dr. Larch said. "They never developed properly. He was susceptible to every respiratory infection that I ever saw."
Homer Wells let it pass. He regretted that Fuzzy had seen the photograph. Homer was growing up; he was starting the process of holding himself responsible for things. That photograph had upset Fuzzy Stone; there was nothing Homer, or even Dr. Larch, could have done for Fuzzy's lungs, but the photograph hadn't been necessary.
"What are you going to tell the little ones?" Homer asked Dr. Larch.
Wilbur Larch looked at Homer; God, how he loved what he saw! Proud as a father, he had trouble speaking. His affection for Homer Wells had virtually etherized him. "What do you think I should say, Homer?" Dr. Larch asked.
It was Homer's first decision as an adult. He thought about it very carefully. In 193_, he was almost sixteen. He was beginning the process of learning how to be a doctor at a time when most boys his age were learning how to drive a car. Homer had not yet learned how to drive a car; Wilbur Larch had never learned how to drive a car.
"I think," said Homer Wells, "that you should tell the little ones what you usually tell them. You should tell them that Fuzzy has been adopted."
Wilbur Larch watched Homer carefully. In A Brief History of St. Cloud's, he would write, "How I resent fatherhood! The feelings it gives one: they completely ruin one's objectivity, they wreck one's sense of fair play. I worry that I have caused Homer Wells to skip his childhood--I worry that he has absolutely skipped being a child! But many orphans find it easier to skip childhood altogether than to indulge themselves as children when they are orphans. If I helped Homer Wells to skip his childhood, did I help him skip a bad thing? Damn the confusion of feeling like a father! Loving someone as a parent can produce a cloud that conceals from one's vision what correct behavior is." When he wrote that line, Wilbur Larch saw the cloud created in the photographer's studio, the cloud that so falsely edged the photograph of Mrs. Eames's daughter with the pony; he launched off into a paragraph on "clouds." (The terrible weather in inland Maine; "the clouds of St. Cloud's," and so forth.)
When Homer Wells suggested to Dr. Larch that he tell the little ones that Fuzzy Stone had been adopted, Larch knew that Homer was right; there were no clouds around that decision. The next night, Wilbur Larch followed the advice of his young apprentice. Perhaps because he was lying, he forgot the proper routine. Instead of beginning with the announcement about Fuzzy Stone, he gave the usual benediction; he got the whole business out of order.
"Good night, you Princes of Maine--you Kings of New England!" Dr. Larch addressed them in the darkness. Then he remembered what he was supposed to say. "Oh!" he said aloud, in a startled voice that caused one of the little orphans to leap in his bed in fright.
"What's wrong?" cried Snowy Meadows, who was always throwing up; he did not throw up only when confronted with the image of a woman with what he thought was a pony's intestines in her mouth.
"Nothing's wrong!" Dr. Larch said heartily, but the whole room of boys was charged with anxiety. Into this jumpy atmosphere, Larch tried to say the usual about the unusual. "Let us be happy for Fuzzy Stone," Dr. Larch said. Homer Wells knew what was meant when it was said that you could hear a pin drop. "Fuzzy Stone has found a family," Dr. Larch said. "Good night, Fuzzy."
"Good night, Fuzzy!" someone said. But Homer Wells heard a pause in the air; it had all been done out of order, and not everyone was completely convinced.
"Good night, Fuzzy!" Homer Wells said with authority, and a few of the little voices followed him.
"Good night, Fuzzy!"
"Good night, Fuzzy Stone!"
Homer Wells also knew what was meant when it was said that silence could be deafening. After Dr. Larch had left them, little Snowy Meadows was the first to speak.
"Homer?" Snowy said.
"Right here," said Homer
Wells in the darkness.
"How could anyone adopt Fuzzy Stone, Homer?" Snowy Meadows asked.
"Who could do it?" said little Wilbur Walsh.
"Someone with a better machine," said Homer Wells. "Someone who had a better breathing machine than the one Doctor Larch built for Fuzzy. It's a family that knows all about breathing machines. It's the family business," he added. "Breathing machines."
"Lucky Fuzzy!" someone said in a wondering voice.
Homer knew he had convinced them when Snowy Meadows said, "Good night, Fuzzy."
