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The Boy Who Belonged to St Cloud's

In the hospital of the orphanage--the boys' division at St Cloud's, Maine--two nurses were in charge of na that their little penises were healing froatory circumcision In those days (in 192_), all boys born at St Cloud's were circue physician had experienced so uncircumcised soldiers, for this and for that, in World War I The doctor, as also the director of the boys' division, was not a religious man; circumcision was not a rite with hiienic reasons His name was Wilbur Larch, which, except for the scent of ether that always accoh, durable wood of the coniferous tree of that name She hated, however, the ridiculous na a word like Wilbur with so as substantial as a tree

The other nurse iined herself to be in love with Dr Larch, and when it was her turn to name a baby, she frequently named him John Larch, or John Wilbur (her father's name was John), or Wilbur Walsh (her mother's maiden name had been Walsh) Despite her love for Dr Larch, she could not iht of him, she did not think of trees at all For its flexibility as a first or as a last name, she loved the name of Wilbur--and when she tired of her use of John, or was criticized by her colleague for overusing it, she could rarely coinal than a Robert Larch or a Jack Wilbur (she seemed not to know that Jack was often a nickname for John)

If he had been named by this dull, love-struck nurse, he probably would have been a Larch or a Wilbur of one kind or another; and a John, a Jack, or a Robert--to make matters even duller Because it was the other nurse's turn, he was named Homer Wells

The other nurse's father was in the business of drilling wells, which was hard, harrowing, honest, precise work--to her thinking her father was composed of these qualities, which lent the word "wells" a certain deep, down-to-earth aura "Homer" had been the name of one of her family's umpteen cats

This other nurse--Nurse Angela, to almost everyone--rarely repeated the names of her babies, whereas poor Nurse Edna had named three John Wilbur Juniors, and two John Larch the Thirds Nurse Angela knew an inexhaustible nuently employed as last names--Maple, Fields, Stone, Hill, Knot, Day, Waters (to list a few)--and a slightly less impressive list of first names borrowed from a family history of many dead but cherished pets (Felix, Fuzzy, Smoky, Sam, Snowy, Joe, Curly, Ed and so forth)

For iven names were teirls' division at placing the orphans in ho ever to know the naiven theela or Nurse Edna, the first women in the world to fuss over them Dr Larch made it a firm policy that the orphans' adoptive faave with such zeal The feeling at St Cloud's was that a child, upon leaving the orphanage, should know the thrill of a fresh start--but (especially with the boys ere difficult to place and lived at St Cloud's the longest) it was hard for Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna, and even for Dr Larch, not to think of their John Wilburs and John Larches (their Felix Hills, Curly Maples, Joe Knots, Siven names forever

The reason Homer Wells kept his name was that he came back to St Cloud's so many tie was forced to acknowledge Homer's intention to make St Cloud's his hoela and Nurse Edna--and, finally, Dr Wilbur Larch--were forced to aded to St Cloud's The determined boy was not put up for adoption anymore

Nurse Angela, with her love of cats and orphans, once reave hiht so hard not to lose it

St Cloud's, Maine--the town--had been a logging caradually--the town, set up shop in the river valley, where the land was flat, which made the first roads easier to build and the heavy equip was a saw mill The first settlers were French Canadians--woodsmen, lumberjacks, sawyers; then caes, and (at last) there was a church The first logging camp had been called, simply, Clouds--because the valley was low and the clouds broke up reluctantly A fog hung over the violent river until , and the falls, which roared for three miles upstream from the site of the first camp, produced a constant mist When the first woodcutters went to work there, the only impediments to their rape of the forest were the black flies and the mosquitoes; these infernal insects preferred the nearly constant cover of clouds in the stagnant valleys of inland Maine to the sharp air of the ht Maine sea

Dr Wilbur Larch--as not only the doctor for the orphanage and the director of the boys' division (he had also founded the place)--was the self-appointed historian of the town According to Dr Larch, the logging camp called Clouds became St Clouds only because of "the fervent backwoods Catholic instinct to put a Saint before so race they could never quite acquire naturally" The logging camp remained St Clouds for nearly half a century before the apostrophe was inserted--probably by soin But by the time it beca cas jah ca froh, orderly stacks of fresh-cut boards drying out in the hazy sun Overall lay a silty sawdust occasionally too fine to see, but ever-present in the sneezes and wheezes of the town, in the town's perpetually itching noses and in its rasping lungs The toounded now sported stitches instead of bruises and broken bones; they wore gashes (and found ways to flaunt theirparts) from the mill's many saws The keen whine of those blades was as constant in St Cloud's as the fog, the s inland Maine in the da, wet, snowed-in winters and in the fetid, stifling heat of its drizzly summers--blessed, only occasionally, by violent thu

nderstorms

There was never any spring in that part of Maine, except that period of tibusiness was immobilized; the work of the town shut down The itime river was so swollen, and ran so fast, that no one dared to travel on it Spring in St Cloud'sand raping trouble Spring was the suicide season In spring, the seeds for an orphanage were planted and overplanted