as sure as snow,” Nurse Angela said.
He did almost everything right, Wilbur Larch was thinking; it was amazing. Larch thought that it was a small error that Homer hadn't recorded the exact number of convulsions during the childbirth. It was minor criticism. But Wilbur Larch was a good teacher; Homer Wells had performed all the hard parts correctly; his procedure had been perfect.
“He's not even twenty, is he?” Larch asked. But Nurse Edna had gone to bed, she was exhausted. Nurse Angela was still awake, in her office, and when Dr Larch asked her why the baby had not been named, she told Larch that it was Nurse Edna's turn and Nurse Edna had been too tired.
“Well, it doesn't matter,” said Wilbur Larch. “You name it, then.”
But Nurse Angela had a better idea. It was Homer's baby – he had saved it, and the mother. Homer Wells should name this one, Nurse Angela said.
“Yes, you're right, he should,” Dr Larch replied, filling with pride in his wonderful creation.
He had slept almost through the night. He woke only once on the dispensary bed; Larch was in the room probably looking at him, but Homer kept his eyes closed. He felt that Larch was there because of the sweet scent of ether, and because of Larch's breathing. Then he felt Larch's hand, passing very lightly over his forehead. Homer Wells, not yet twenty years old and as knowledgeable as almost any doctor lay very still, pretending to sleep.
Dr Larch bent over him and kissed him, very lightly, on his lips. Homer heard Larch whisper, “Good work, Homer.” He felt a second, even lighter kiss. “Good work, my boy,” the doctor said, and then left him.
Homer Wells felt his tears coming silently; he cried more than the last time when Fuzzy Stone had died and Homer had lied about Fuzzy to Snowy and the others. He cried and cried, but he didn't make a sound. He cried because he had received his first fatherly kisses.
Of course Melony had kissed him; Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela had kissed him, but they kissed everyone. Dr Larch had never kissed him before, and now he had kissed him twice.
Homer Wells cried because he'd never known how nice a father's kisses could be.
Dr Larch went to look at the eclampsia patient and at her tiny child. Then Larch went to the familiar typewriter in Nurse Angela's office, but he couldn't write anything. “Oh God,” thought Wilbur Larch, “what will happen to me when Homer has to go?”
The next day Homer Wells gave names to body number three and his first orphan. He named the new body Clara, and the baby boy David Copperfield. It was an easy decision.
Young Wally Worthington thought that he'd been in love twice before he was twenty years old, and once when he was twenty-one; now, in 194— (he was just three years older than Homer Wells), Wally fell deeply in love for the fourth time. He didn't know that this time would be for life.
The girl, whom Wally loved, was a lobsterman's daughter. Her father, Raymond Kendall, wasn't an ordinary lobsterman, he was the best lobsterman. Other lobstermen watched him through binoculars. When he changed his mooring lines, they changed theirs; when he didn't go to sea but stayed at home, other lobstermen stayed home, too. But they couldn't match him.
He was not just an artist with lobster; he also was an expert at fixing things – at keeping everything that anyone else would throw away. Raymond Kendall didn't like to introduce himself as a lobsterman; he was prouder of his qualities as a mechanic.
There was a rumor that Kendall had more money than Senior Worthington; there was almost no evidence of his spending any – except on his daughter. Like the children of the Haven Club members, she went to a private boarding school; and Raymond Kendall paid a lot for a Haven Club membership – not for himself (he went to the club only on request: to fix things) but for his daughter, who'd learned to swim in the heated pool there, and who'd taken her tennis lessons on the same courts visited by young Wally Worthington. Kendall's daughter had her own car, too – it looked out of place in the Haven Club parking lot. It was a mishmash of the parts from other cars; it had a Ford symbol on its hood and a Chrysler emblem on the trunk, and the passenger-side door was sealed completely shut. However, its battery never went dead in the Haven Club lot.
Some of Raymond Kendall's fabulous money was paid him as salary by Olive Worthington; in addition to his lobstering, Ray Kendall looked after the vehicles and machinery of the Ocean View Orchards. Olive Worthington paid him a full foreman's salary because he knew almost as much about apples as he knew about lobsters (and he was the best farm's mechanic), but Ray refused to work more than two hours a day. Despite the fact that Ray Kendall worked two hours every day at Ocean View, he was never seen to eat an apple.
His beautiful daughter – Candice, or Candy – was named after her mother, who had died in childbirth. She was a great and natural beauty; she was at once friendly and practical; she was well-mannered and energetic. Everyone liked her.
Even Olive Worthington liked her, and Olive was suspicious of the girls who went out with Wally; she questioned what they wanted from him. She was afraid of girls who were more interested in the Ocean View life than they were interested in Wally. Olive knew that Candy wasn't looking for money. In truth, Olive Worthington thought that Candy Kendall might be too good for her son.
In her own bedroom, Candy kept the picture of her mother when her mother had been Candy's age. She looked just like Candy. The picture was taken the summer she met Ray (an older boy, strong and determined to fix everything).
Candy had her mother's blondness; it was darker than Wally's blondness. She had her father's dark skin and dark brown eyes, and her father's height. Ray Kendall was a tall man.
Candy Kendall and Wally Worthington fell in love with each other in the summer of 194—. Everyone in Heart's Haven and in Heart's Rock thought that they were perfect for each other. Even grumpy Raymond Kendall approved. Ray thought that Wally wasn't lazy, and he could see that the boy was good-hearted. Ray also approved of Wally's mother.
And Candy thought that Olive Worthington would be a perfect mother-in-law.
It was understood that Wally would finish college first, and that Candy would finish college before they got married. However, there were possible causes for a change of plans. After all, it was 194—; there was a war in Europe; there were many people who thought that America would be involved soon. But Olive had a mother's wish to keep war out of her mind.
Wilbur Larch had the war in Europe very much in his mind. He had been in the last war, and he foresaw that if there was another war, Homer Well could go to the army. But the good doctor had already taken some steps to save Homer Wells from going to a war.
Larch was, after all, the historian of St. Cloud's; he wrote the only records that were kept there; he wrote fiction, too. In the case of Fuzzy Stone and in the other, very few cases of orphans who had died Wilbur Larch hadn't liked the actual endings of those small lives. Wasn't it fair if Larch invented happy endings? In the case of the few who had died, Wilbur Larch made up a longer life for them. For example, the history of F. Stone was like the history that Wilbur Larch wished for Homer Wells. After Fuzzy's most successful adoption (every member of the adoptive family was scrupulously described) and successful treatment and cure of Fuzzy's respiratory disease, the young man got an education at Bowdoin College (Wilbur Larch's own alma mater) and then studied medicine at Harvard Medical School, following Larch's footsteps to internships at the Boston Lying-in. Larch intended to make a devoted and skilled obstetrician out of Fuzzy Stone; the orphan's fictional history was as carefully done as everything Wilbur Larch did.
He had also made a slight modification in the history of Homer Wells. He was very pleased with himself for this slight fiction that he had so skillfully blended with the actual history of Homer Wells. Wilbur Larch had written about Homer Wells that the boy had a heart defect, a heart that was damaged and weakened from birth. Larch was thinking of war, the so called war in Europe; Larch, and many others, feared that the war wouldn't stay there. (“I'm sorry, Homer,” Larch imagined telling the boy. “I don't want to worry you, but you have a bad heart; it just wouldn't stand up to a war.”) In fact, the doctor's own heart would never stand up to Homer Wells's going to war.
In an earlier entry in the