'Does a guy named Homer Wells work here?' Melony asked Big Dot.

'He sure does,' Big Dot said cheerfully. 'Are you a pal of Homer's?'

'I used to be,' Melony said. 'I haven't seen him in a while,' she added coyly-at least coyly for Melon}', whose love affair with Lorna had made her occasionally self-conscious and shy with other women; her selfconfidence around men was as steadfast as ever.{599}

'Where's Homer?' Florence Hyde asked Meany. He was staring at Melony.

'He's puttin' out crates in the Frying Pan,' said Meany Hyde. Something made him shiver.

'You just come to say hello?' Big Dot asked Melony, whose fingers-Dot noticed-were instinctively opening and closing, making fists and then relaxing.

'I actually come for work,' Melony said. 'I done a lot of pickin'.'

'Homer hires the pickers,' Big Dot said. 'I guess you're in luck-you bein' old friends.'

'It's too early for hirin' pickers,' Vernon Lynch said. Something about the way Melony looked at him made him not insist on that point.

'Just go tell Homer there's someone to see him,' Big Dot told Vernon. 'Homer's the boss.'

'The boss?' Melony said.

Irene Titcomb giggled, and turned her burn scar away. 'It's actually a kind of secret-who's boss around here,'Irene said.

Vernon Lynch gunned the tractor so hard that an oily, black smoke barked out of the exhaust pipe and washed over the women in the mart.

'If you're gonna work here,' Big Dot told Melony, 'you might as well know it: that guy drivin' the tractor is the number one asshole.'

Melony shrugged. 'There's just one?' she asked, and Big Dot laughed.

'Oh, my pies!' said Irene Titcomb, who went running off. Florence Hyde sized Melony up, in a friendly way, and Big Dot put her meaty paw on Melony's shoulder as if they were lifelong pals. Irene Titcomb ran back to them and announced that the pies were saved.

'So tell us how you know Homer Wells,' Florence Hyde said to Melony.

'From where and since when?' asked Big Dot Taft.

'From Saint Cloud's, since forever,' Melony told them. 'He was my guy,' she told the women, her lips parting, {600} showing the damage done to her teeth.

'You don't say?' said Big Dot Taft.

Homer Wells and his son, Angel, were talking about masturbation-or, rather, Homer was talking. They were taking their lunch break under one of the old trees in the Frying Pan; they'd been putting crates out in the orchards all morning-taking turns driving the tractor and unloading the crates. They'd finished their sandwiches, and Angel had shaken up his soda and squirted his father with it, and Homer had tried to find a casual way to bring up the subject of masturbation. Candy had mentioned to Homer that the evidence on Angel's bedsheets suggested that this might be the time for a fatherand- son conversation regarding Angel's obviously emerging sexuality.

'Boy, when I was your age-in Saint Cloud's-it was really tough to beat off with any privacy,' Homer had begun (he thought, casually).

They'd been lying on their backs in the tall grass, under the fullest tree in the Frying Pan-the sun couldn't filter through the lush, bent branches and all the heavy apples.

'Really,' Angel said indifferently, after a while.

'Yup,' Homer said. 'You know, I was the oldest- about your age-and I was supposed to be in charge of all the other kids, more or less. I knew they weren't even old enough to have pubic hair, or they didn't even know what to make of their little hard-ons.'

Angel laughed. Homer laughed, too.

'So how'd you manage it?' Angel asked his father, after a while.

'I waited until I thought they were all asleep, and then I tried to keep the bed quiet,' Homer said. 'But you've got no idea how long it can take twelve or fifteen boys to fall asleep!'

They both laughed some more.

'There was one other kid who was old enough to know {601} about it,' Homer confided. 'I think he was fust beginning to experiment with playing with himself-I think the first time that he actually did it, he didn't have any idea what would happen. And when he actually squirted- when he ejaculated, you know-he thought he'd hurt himself. In the dark, he probably thought he was bleeding!'

This story was a complete fiction, but Angel Wells loved it; he laughed in a very worldly way, which encouraged his father to go on.

'Well, he was so worried-he kept asking rne to turn on the light, he said something had broken inside him,' Homer said.

'Broken?' Angel said, and they both howled.

'Yes!' Homer said. 'And when I turned on the light and he got a look at himself, he said, “Oh, God, it went off!”-as if he were talking about a gun, and he'd just shot himself with it!'

Father and son laughed over that for a while.

Then Homer said, more seriously, 'Of course I tried to explain it all to him. It was hard to make him understand that he hadn't done anything wrong-because it's natural; it's perfectly healthy and normal, but these things have a way of getting distorted.'

Angel was quiet now; perhaps he saw the reason for the story.

'But just imagine me trying to explain to this kid-he was quite a bit younger than you are-that it was only natural that he would have feelings about girls, and about sex, long before he would have the opportunity to have anything to do with girls. Or to actually have sex,' Homer added. He had truly labored the point into submission, and he paused to see how his son was taking it in; Angel, who had a long stalk of grass in his mouth, lay on his back staring at the sprawling trunk of the huge tree.

They were quiet for a while, and then Homer said: 'Is there anything you'd like to ask me-about anything?' {602}

Angel gave a short laugh; then he paused. 'Yes,' Angel said to his father. 'I wonder why you don't have a girlfriend -why you don't even seem interested.'

This was not the question Homer had expected, following his birds-and-bees invitation, but after a few seconds he realized that the question should have been anticipated and that some reasonable answer was doubtlessly pressing more on Angel's mind than any truths regarding masturbation.

'I had a girlfriend, in Saint Cloud's,' Homer said. 'She was kind of rough on me. She was something of a bully.

Older than me, and at the time, she was stronger than me!' he said, laughing.

'No kidding,' Angel said; he wasn't laughing; he had rolled over on his elbows and was watching his father intently.

'Well, we weren't very much alike,' Homer said.'It was one of those cases of the sex happening before there was a friendship, or there really being no friendship -and, after a short while, there wasn't any more sex, either. After that, I'm not sure what the relationship was.'

'It was a sort of bad way to start, you mean?' Angel asked.

'Right,' his father said.

'So what happened after that?' Angel asked.

'I met Wally and Candy,' Homer said carefully. 'I guess I would have married Candy-if she hadn't married Wally. She was almost my girlfriend, for about five minutes. That was when Wally was in the war, when we wondered if he was still alive,' Homer said quickly. 'I've always been so close to Wally and Candy, and then-once I had you-I started to feel that I already had everything I wanted.'

Angel Wells rolled over on his back, gazing up the trunk of the tree. 'So you still kind of like Candy?' he asked. 'You're not interested in anybody else?'

'Kind of,' said Homer Wells. 'Have you met anybody {603} you're interested in?' he asked, hoping to change the subject.

'Nobody who'd be interested in me,' his son said. 'I mean, the girls I think about are all too old to even look at me.'

'That will change,' Homer said, poking Angel in the ribs; the boy doubled up his knees and rolled on his side, poking back at his father. 'Pretty soon,' Homer said, 'the girls are going to stand in line to look at you.' He grabbed Angel in a headlock and they started wrestling. Wrestling with Angel was one way Homer could keep in close physical contact with the boy-long after Angel had grown self-conscious about being hugged and kissed, in public. A fifteen-year-old boy doesn't want his father draped all over him, but wrestling was perfectly respectable; that was still allowed. They were wrestling.so hard, and laughing-and breathing so heavily-that they did not hear Vernon Lynch approach them.