A prayer for Owen Meany (12 page)

"Jesus, Hester!" Noah said. "What did you do to
him?"

"I didn't mean to," came her voice from the dark
closet.

"No fair pulling the doink and the balls!" Simon
cried, still doubled up on the floor.

"I didn't mean to," she repeated sweetly.

"You bitch!" Simon said.

"You're always rough with me, Simon," Hester said.

"You can't be rough with balls and doinksV Noah said. But
Hester was not talking; we could hear her positioning herself for her next
attack, and Noah whispered to Owen and me that since there were two doors to
the closet, we should surprise Hester by entering from the other door.

"WHO IS WE?" Owen whispered. Noah pointed to him,
silently, and I shone the flashlight into Owen's wide and darting eyes, which
gave his face the sudden anxiety of a cornered mouse.

"No fair grabbing so hard, Hester!" Noah called, but
Hester didn't answer.

"SHE'S JUST TRYING TO CONCEAL HER HIDING PLACE," Owen
whispered-to reassure himself. Then Noah and I flung Owen into the closet
through the other door: the closet was L-shaped, and by Owen's entering on the
short arm of the L, Noah and I figured that he would not encounter Hester
before the first corner-and only then if Hester managed to move, because her
hiding place would surely be nearer the top of the L.

"No fair using the other door!" Hester promptly
called, which Noah and I felt was further to Owen's advantage, since she must
have given away her position in the closet-at least, to some general degree.
Then there was silence. I knew what Owen was doing: he was hoping that his eyes
would grow used to the dark before Hester found him, and he wasn't going to
begin to move-to try to find her-until he could see a little.

"What in hell's going on in there?" Simon asked, but
there was no sound. Then we detected the occasional bumping of one of
Grandfather's hundreds of shoes. Then silence. Then another slight movement of
shoes. As I learned later, Owen was crawling on all fours, because he most
feared-and expected-an attack from one of the large, overhead shelves. He had
no way of knowing that Hester had stretched herself out on the floor of the
closet, and that she had covered herself with one of Grandfather's topcoats,
over which she'd positioned the usual number of shoes. She lay motionless, and-except
for her head and her hands-invisible. But her head was pointed the wrong way;
that is, she had to roll her eyes up into the top of her head and watch Owen
Meany approaching her by staring at him upside down, looking over her own
forehead and her considerable head of hair. What Owen touched first, as he
approached her on all fours, was that live and kinky tangle of Hester's hair,
which suddenly moved under his little hand-and Hester's arms reached up over
her head, seizing Owen around his waist. To her credit, Hester never had any
intention of grabbing Owen's "doink"; but finding it so easy to hold
Owen around the waist, Hester decided to run her hands up his ribs and tickle
him. Owen looked extremely susceptible to tickling, which he was, and Hester's
gesture was of the friendliest of intentions-especially for Hester-but the
combination of putting his hand on live hair, in the dark, coupled with being
tickled by a girl who, Owen thought, was merely tickling him en route to
grabbing his doink, was too much for him; he wet his pants. The instant
recognition of Owen's accident surprised Hester so much that she dropped him.
He fell on top of her-and he wriggled free of her, and out of the closet, and
through the trapdoor and down the stairs. Owen ran through the house so fast
and noiselessly that even my grandmother failed to notice him; and if my mother
hadn't happened to be looking out the kitchen window, she would not have seen
him-with his jacket unzipped, and his boots unlaced, and his hat on crooked-mounting
his bicycle with some difficulty in the icy wind.

"Jesus, Hester!" Noah said. "What did you do to
him?"

"I know what she did to him!" Simon said.

"It wasn't that," Hester said simply. "I just
tickled him, and he wet his pants." She did not report this to mock Owen,
and-as a testimony to my cousins' basically decent natures-the news was not
greeted with their usual rowdiness, which I associated with Sawyer Depot as
firmly as various forms of skiing and collision.

"The poor little guy]" Simon said.

"I didn't mean to," Hester said. My mother called to
me and I had to go tell her what had happened to Owen, whereupon she made me
put on my outdoor clothes while she started the car. I thought I knew the route
Owen would take home, but he must have been pedaling very hard because we did
not overtake him by the Gas Works on Water Street, and when we passed Dewey
Street without

 
 
sighting him-and
there was no sign of him at Salem Street, either-I began to think he had taken
the Swasey Parkway out of town. And so we doubled back, along the Squamscott,
but he wasn't there. We finally found him, already out of town, laboring up
Maiden Hill; we slowed down when we saw his red-and-black wool hunter's jacket
and the matching checkered cap with the earflaps protruding, and by the time we
pulled alongside him, he had run out of steam and had gotten off to walk his
bicycle. He knew it was us without looking at us but he wouldn't stop
walking-so my mother drove slowly beside him, and  rolled down the window.

"IT WAS AN ACCIDENT, I JUST GOT TOO EXCITED, I HAD TOO MUCH
ORANGE JUICE FOR BREAKFAST-AND YOU KNOW I CAN'T STAND BEING TICKLED," Owen
said. "NOBODY SAID ANYTHING ABOUT TICKLING."

"Please don't go home, Owen," my mother said.

"Everything's all right," I told him. "My cousins
are very sorry."

"I PEED ON HESTER!" Owen said. "AND I'M GOING TO
GET IN TROUBLE AT HOME," he said-still walking his bike at a good pace.
"MY FATHER GETS MAD ABOUT PEEING. HE SAYS I'M NOT A BABY ANYMORE, BUT
SOMETIMES I GET EXCITED."

"Owen, I'll wash and dry your clothes at our house,"
my mother told him. "You can wear something of Johnny's while yours are
drying."

"NOTHING OF JOHNNY'S WILL FIT ME," Owen said.
"AND I HAVE TO TAKE A BATH."

"You can take a bath at our house, Owen," I told him.
"Please come back."

"I have some outgrown things of Johnny's that will fit you,
Owen," my mother said.

"BABY CLOTHES, I SUPPOSE," Owen said, but he stopped
walking; he leaned his head on his bike's handlebars.

"Please get in the car, Owen," my mother said. I got
out and helped him put his bicycle in the back, and then he slid into the front
seat, between my mother and me.

"I WANTED TO MAKE A GOOD IMPRESSION BECAUSE I WANTED TO GO
TO SAWYER DEPOT," he said. "NOW YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME."

I found it incredible that he still wanted to go, but my mother
said, "Owen, you can come with us to Sawyer Depot, anytime."

"JOHNNY DOESN'T WANT ME TO COME," he told Mother-as if
I weren't there in the car with them.

"It's not that, Owen," I said. "It's that I
thought my cousins would be too much for you." And on the evidence of him
wetting his pants, I did not say, it struck me that my cousins were too much
for him. "That was a very mild game for my cousins, Owen," I added.

"DO YOU THINK I CARE WHAT THEY DO TO ME?" he shouted;
he stamped his little foot on the drive-shaft hump.

"DO YOU THINK I CARE IF THEY START AN AVALANCHE WITH
ME?" he screamed. "WHEN DO I GET TO GO ANYWHERE! IF I DIDN'T GO TO
SCHOOL OR TO CHURCH OR TO EIGHTY FRONT STREET, I'D NEVER GET OUT OF MY
HOUSE!" he cried. "IF YOUR MOTHER DIDN'T TAKE ME TO THE BEACH, I'D
NEVER GET OUT OF TOWN. AND I'VE NEVER BEEN TO THE MOUNTAINS," he said.
"I'VE NEVER EVEN BEEN ON A TRAIN! DON'T YOU THINK I MIGHT LIKE GOING ON A
TRAIN-TO THE MOUNTAINS?" he yelled. My mother stopped the car and hugged
him, and kissed him, and told him he was always welcome to come with us,
anywhere we went; and I rather awkwardly put my arm around him, and we just sat
that way in the car, until he had composed himself sufficiently for his return
to  Front Street, where he marched in the back door, past Lydia's room and
the maids fussing in the kitchen, up the back stairs past the maids' rooms, to
my room and my bathroom, where he closed himself in and drew a deep bath. He handed
me his sodden clothes, and I brought the clothes to the maids, who began their
work on them. My mother knocked on the bathroom door, and, looking the other
way, she extended her arm into the room, where Owen took a stack of my outgrown
clothes from her-they were not baby clothes, as he had feared; they were just
extremely small clothes.

"What shall we do with him?" Hester asked while we
were waiting for Owen to join us in the upstairs den-or so it had been called,
"the den," when my grandfather was alive; it was a children's room
whenever my cousins visited.

"We'll do whatever he wants," Noah said.

"That's what we did the last time!" Simon said.

"Not quite," Hester said.

"WELL, I'VE BEEN THINKING," Owen said when he walked
into the den-even pinker than usual; he was spanking clean, as they say, with
his hair slicked back. In his stocking feet, he was slipping a little on the
hardwood floor; and when he reached the old Oriental, he stood with one foot
balanced on top of the other, twisting his hips back and forth as he talked-his
hands, like butterflies, flitting up and down between his waist and his
shoulders. "I APOLOGIZE FOR BECOMING OVEREXCITED. I THINK I KNOW A GAME
THAT WOULD NOT BE QUITE AS EXCITING FOR ME, BUT AT THE SAME TIME I THINK IT
WOULD NOT BE BORING FOR YOU," he said. "YOU SEE, ONE OF YOU GETS TO
HIDE ME- SOMEWHERE, IT COULD BE ANYWHERE-AND THE OTHERS HAVE TO FIND ME. AND
WHOEVER CAN FIND A PLACE TO HIDE ME THAT TAKES THE LONGEST TIME FOR THE OTHERS
TO FIND ME-WHOEVER THAT IS WINS. YOU SEE, IT'S PRETTY EASY TO FIND PLACES IN
THIS HOUSE TO HIDE ME-BECAUSE THIS HOUSE IS HUGE AND I'M SMALL," Owen
added.

"I go first," Hester said. "I get to hide him
first." No one argued; wherever she hid him, we never found him. Noah and
Simon and I-we thought it would be easy to find him. I knew every inch of my
grandmother's house, and Noah and Simon knew almost everything about Hester's
diabolical mind; but we couldn't find him. Hester stretched out on the couch in
the den, looking at old issues of Life magazine, growing more and more content
as we searched and searched, and darkness fell; I even expressed to Hester my
concern that she had put Owen somewhere where he might have run out of air,
or-as the hours dragged on-where he would suffer severe cramps from having to
maintain an uncomfortable position. But Hester dismissed these concerns with a
wave of her hand, and when it was suppertime, we had to give up; Hester made us
wait in the downstairs front hall, and she went and got Owen, who was very
happy and walking without a limp, and breathing without difficulty-although his
hair looked slept on. He stayed for supper, and he told me after we'd eaten
that he wouldn't mind staying overnight, too-my mother invited him to stay,
because (she said) his clothes hadn't completely dried. And although I asked
him-"Where'd she hide you? Just give me a clue! Tell me what part of the
house, just tell me which floor\"-he wouldn't disclose his triumph. He was
wide awake, and in no mood to sleep, and he was irritatingly philosophic
regarding the true character of my cousins, whom he said I had failed to
present fairly to him.

"YOU HAVE REALLY MISJUDGED THEM," he lectured me.
"PERHAPS WHAT YOU CALL THEIR WILD-NESS IS JUST A MATTER OF LACK OF
DIRECTION. SOMEONE HAS TO GIVE ANY GROUP OF PEOPLE DIRECTION, YOU KNOW." I
lay there thinking I couldn't wait until he came to Sawyer Depot, and my
cousins got him on skis and simply pointed him downhill; that might shut him up
about providing adequate "direction." But there was no turning him off;
he just babbled on and on. I got drowsy, and turned my back to him, and
therefore I was confused when I heard him say, "IT'S HARD TO GO TO SLEEP
WITHOUT IT, ONCE YOU GET USED TO IT- ISN'T IT?"

"Without what?" I asked him. "Used to what,
Owen?"

"THE ARMADILLO," he said. And so that day after
Thanksgiving, when Owen Meany met my cousins, provided me with two very
powerful images of Owen-especially on the night I tried to get to sleep after
had killed my mother. I lay in bed knowing that Owen would be thinking about my
mother, too, and that he would be thinking not only of me but also of Dan
Needham-of how much we both would miss her-and if Owen was thinking of Dan, I
knew that he would be thinking about the armadillo, too. It was also important:
that day when my mother and I chased after Owen in the car-and I saw the
posture of his body jerking on his bicycle, trying to pedal up Maiden Hill; and
I saw how he faltered, and had to get off the bike and walk it the rest of the
way. That day provided me with a cold-weather picture of how Owen must have
looked on that warm, summer evening when he was struggling home after the
Little League game-with his baseball uniform plastered to his back. What was he
going to tell his parents about the game? It would take years for me to
remember the decision regarding whether I should spend the night after that
fatal game with Dan Needham, in the apartment that he and my mother had moved
into, with me, after they'd married-it was a faculty apartment in one of the
academy dormitories-or whether I would be more comfortable spending that
terrible night back in my old room in my grandmother's house at

 
 
Front Street. So
many of the details surrounding that game would take years to remember! Anyway,
Dan Needham and my grandmother agreed that it would be better for me to spend
the night at  Front Street, and so-in addition to the disorientation of
waking up the next morning, after very little sleep, and gradually realizing
that the dream of my mother being killed by a baseball that Owen Meany hit was
not a dream-I faced the further disorientation of not immediately knowing where
I was. It was very much like waking up as a kind of traveler in science
fiction, someone who had traveled "back in time"-because I had grown
used to waking up in my room in Dan Needham's apartment. And as if all this
weren't sufficiently bewildering, there was a noise I had never before
associated with  Front Street; it was a noise in the driveway, and my
bedroom windows didn't face the driveway, so I had to get out of bed and leave
my room to see what the noise was. I was pretty sure I knew. I had heard that
noise many times at the Meany Granite Quarry; it was the unmistakable, very
lowest gear of the huge, flatbed hauler-the truck Mr. Meany used to carry the granite
slabs, the curbstones and cornerstones, and the monuments. And sure enough, the
Meany Granite Company truck was in my grandmother's driveway-taking up the
whole driveway-and it was loaded with granite and gravestones. I could easily
imagine my grandmother's indignation-if she was up, and saw the truck there. I
could just hear her saying, "How incredibly tasteless of that man! My
daughter not dead a day and what is he doing-giving us a tombstone? I suppose
he's already carved the letters!" That is actually what / thought. But Mr.
Meany did not get out of the cab of his track. It was Owen who got out on the
passenger side, and he walked around to the rear of the flatbed and removed
several large cartons from the rest of the load; the cartons were Clearly not
full of granite or Owen would not have been able to lift them off by himself.
But he managed this, and brought all the cartons to the step by the back door,
where I was sure he was going to ring the bell. I could still hear his voice
saying "I'M SORRY!"-while my head was hidden under Mr. Chicker-ing's
warm-up jacket-and as much as I wanted to see Owen, I knew I would burst into
tears as soon as he spoke, or as soon as I had to speak to him. And therefore I
was relieved when he didn't ring the bell; he left the cartons at the back door
and ran quickly to the cab, and Mr. Meany drove the granite truck out of the
driveway, still in the very lowest gear. In the cartons were all of Owen's
baseball cards, his entire collection. My grandmother was appalled, but for
several years she didn't understand Owen or appreciate him; to her, he was
"that boy," or "that little guy," or "that
voice." I knew the baseball cards were Owen's favorite things, they were
what amounted to his treasure-I could instantly identify with how everything
connected to the game of baseball had changed for him, as it had changed for me
(although I'd never loved the game as Owen had loved it). I knew without
speaking to Owen that neither of us would ever play Little League ball again,
and that there was some necessary ritual ahead of us both-wherein we would need
to throw away our bats and gloves and uniforms, and every stray baseball there
was to be found around our houses and yards (except for that baseball, which I
suspected Owen had relegated to a museum-piece status). But I needed to talk to
Dan Needham about the baseball cards, because they were Owen's most prized
possessions -indeed, his only prized possessions-and since my mother's accident
had made baseball a game of death, what did Owen want me to do with his
baseball cards? Did they merely represent how he was washing his hands of the
great American pastime, or did he want me to assuage my grief by indulging in
the pleasure I would derive from burning all those baseball cards? On that day,
it would have been a pleasure to burn them.