A prayer for Owen Meany (32 page)

But I was just a Joseph; I felt that Owen Meany had already
chosen me for the only part I could play. It snowed overnight, not a major
storm; then the temperature kept dropping, until it was too cold to snow. A new
coat of flat-white, flatter than church-white, lay spread over Gravesend that
Sunday morning; the wind, which is the crudest kind of cold, kicked up wisps
and kite tails of the dry powder and made the empty rain gutters at  Front
Street rattle and moan; the gutters were empty because the new snow was too
cold to cling. The snowplows were in no hurry to be early on Sunday mornings,
and the only vehicle that didn't slip and skid as it made its way up Front
Street was the heavy truck from the Meany Granite Company. Owen had so many
clothes on, he had difficulty bending his knees as he trudged up the
driveway-and his arms did not swing close to his sides, but protruded stiffly,
like the limbs of a scarecrow. He was so

        
 
muffled up in a long, dark-green scarf that I
couldn't see his face at all-but who could ever mistake Owen Meany for anyone
else? It was a scarf my mother had given him-when she'd discovered, one winter,
that he didn't own one. Owen called it his LUCKY scarf, and he saved it for
important occasions or for when it was especially cold. The last Sunday before
Christmas called for my mother's scarf-on both counts. As Owen and I tramped
down Front Street toward Christ Church, the birds took flight at Owen's barking
cough; there was a phlegmy rattle in his chest, loud enough for me to hear
through his many layers of winter clothes.

"You don't sound very well, Owen," I pointed out to
him.

"IF JESUS HAD TO BE BORN ON A DAY LIKE THIS, I DON'T THINK
HE'D HAVE LASTED LONG ENOUGH TO BE CRUCIFIED," Owen said. On Front
Street's almost-virgin sidewalk, only one set of footprints had broken the snow
before us; except for the clumsy peeing of dogs, the sidewalk was an unmarred
path of white. The figure who had made the morning's first human tracks in the
snow was too bundled up and too far ahead of Owen and me for us to recognize
him.

"YOUR GRANDMOTHER ISN'T COMING TO THE PAGEANT?" Owen
asked me.

"She's a Congregationalist," I reminded him.

"BUT IS SHE SO INFLEXIBLE THAT SHE CAN'T SWITCH CHURCHES
FOR ONE SUNDAY OF THE YEAR? THE CONGREGATIONALISTS DON'T HAVE A PAGEANT."

"I know, I know," I said; but I knew more than that: I
knew the Congregationalists didn't even have the conventional morning service
on the last Sunday before Christmas-they had Vespers instead. It was a special
event, largely for caroling. It wasn't that my grandmother's church service was
in conflict with our pageant; it was that Grandmother was not enticed to see
Owen play the Christ Child. She had remarked that she found the idea
"repulsive." Also, she made such a fuss about the weather's potential
for breaking her hip that she announced her intention to skip the Vespers at
the Congregational Church. By the later afternoon, when the light was gone, it
was even easier, she reasoned, to break your hip on the ice in the dark. The
man on the sidewalk ahead of us was Mr. Fish, whom we rather quickly caught up
to-Mr. Fish was making his unreckless way with absurdly great care; he must
have feared breaking his hip, too. He was startled by the sight of Owen Meany,
wrapped up so tightly in my mother's scarf that only Owen's eyes were showing;
but Mr. Fish was often startled to see Owen.

"Why aren't you already at the church, getting into your
costumes?" he asked us. We pointed out that we would be almost an hour
early. Even at the rate Mr. Fish was walking, he would be half an hour early;
but Owen and I were surprised that Mr. Fish was attending the pageant.

"YOU'RE NOT A CHURCHGOER," Owen said accusingly-

"Why no, I'm not, that's true," Mr. Fish admitted.
"But I wouldn't miss this for the world!"

Owen eyed his costar in A Christmas Carol cautiously. Mr. Fish
seemed both so depressed and impressed by Owen's success that his attendance at
the Christ Church Christmas Pageant was suspicious. I suspect that Mr. Fish
enjoyed depressing himself; also, he was so slavishly devoted to amateur acting
that he desperately sought to pick up as many pointers as he could by observing
Owen's genius.

"I MAY NOT BE AT MY BEST TODAY," Owen warned Mr. Fish;
he then demonstrated his barking cough, dramatically.

"A trouper like you is surely undaunted by a little
illness, Owen," Mr. Fish observed. We three trudged through the snow
together-Mr. Fish corning halfway to meet us, on the matter of pace. He
confided to Owen and me that he was a little nervous about attending church;
that he'd never once been forced to go to church when he was a child-his
parents had not been religious, either-and that he'd only "set foot'' in
churches for weddings and funerals. Mr. Fish wasn't even sure how much of
Christ's story a Christmas pageant "covered."

"NOT THE WHOLE THING," Owen told him.

"Not the bit on the cross?" Mr. Fish asked.

"THEY DIDN'T NAIL HIM TO THE CROSS WHEN HE WAS A
BABY\" Owen said.

"How about the bit when he does all the healing-and all the
lecturing to the disciples?" Mr. Fish asked

"IT DOESN'T GO PAST CHRISTMAS!" Owen said, with
exasperation. "IT'S JUST THE BIRTHDAY SCENE!"

"It's not a speaking part," I reminded Mr. Fish.

"Oh, of course, I forgot about that," Mr. Fish said.
Christ Church was on Elliot Street, at the edge of the Gravesend Academy
campus; at the comer of Elliot and Front streets, Dan Needham was waiting for
us. Apparently the director intended to pick up a few pointers, too.

"My, my, look who's here!" Dan said to Mr. Fish, who
blushed. Owen was cheered to see that Dan was coming.

"IT'S A GOOD THING YOU'RE HERE, DAN," Owen told him,
"BECAUSE THIS IS MISTER FISH'S FIRST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT, AND HE'S A LITTLE
NERVOUS."

"I'm just not sure when to genuflect, and all that
nonsense!" Mr. Fisri said, chuckling.

"NOT ALL EPISCOPALIANS GENUFLECT," Owen announced.

"I don't," I said.

"I DO," said Owen Meany.

"Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't,'' Dan said.' 'When
I'm in church, I watch the other people-I do what they do."

Thus did our eclectic foursome arrive at Christ Church. Despite
the cold, the Rev. Dudley Wiggin was standing outdoors on the church steps to
greet the early arrivals; he was not wearing a hat, and his scalp glowed a
howling red under his thin, gray hair-his ears looked frozen bloodless enough
to break off. Barb Wiggin stood in a silver-fur coat beside him, wearing a
matching fur hat.

"SHE LOOKS LIKE A STEWARDESS ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN
RAILROAD," Owen observed. I got quite a shock to see the Rev. Lewis
Merrill and his California wife standing next to the Wiggins; Owen was
surprised, too.

"HAVE YOU CHANGED CHURCHES?" Owen asked them. The
long-suffering Merrills appeared not to possess the imaginative capacity to know
what Owen meant; it was a question that raised havoc with Mr. MerrilFs usually
slight stutter.

"W-w-w-w-e have Ves-p-p-p-pers today!" Mr. Merrill
told Owen, who didn't understand.

"The Congregationalists have a vesper service today,"
I told Owen. "Instead of the regular morning service," I added.
"Vespers are in the late afternoon."

"I KNOW WHAT TIME VESPERS ARE!" Owen answered
irritably. The Rev. Mr. Wiggin put his arm around his fellow clergyman's
shoulder, giving the Rev. Mr. Merrill such a squeeze that the smaller, paler
man looked alarmed. I believe that Episcopalians are generally heartier than
Congregational-ists.

"Barb and I go to the Vespers, for the caroling-every
year," Rector Wiggin announced. "And the Merrills come to our
pageant!"

"Every year," Mrs. Merrill added neutrally; she looked
miserably envious of Owen's face-concealing scarf. The Rev. Mr. Merrill
composed himself, I'd not seen him so tongue-tied since Sagamore's spontaneous
funeral, and it occurred to me that it might be Owen who so effectively
crippled his speech.

"We really go in for the caroling, we celebrate the songs
of Christmas-we've always put great emphasis on our choir," Pastor Merrill
said. He appeared to single me out for a heartfelt look when he said '
'choir," as if the mere mention of these trained angels was certain to
remind me of my mother's lost voice.

"We go in more for the miracle itself!" said Mr.
Wiggin joyfully. "And this year," the rector added, suddenly taking a
grip of Owen's shoulder with his steady pilot's hand, "this year we've got
a little Lord Jesus who's gonna take your breath away!" The Rev. Dudley
Wiggin mauled Owen's head in his big paw, managing to push down the visor of
Owen's red-and-black-checkered hunter's cap; at the same time, he effectively blinded
Owen by scrunching up my mother's LUCKY scarf.

"Yes, sir!" said Rector Wiggin, who now lifted the
hunter's cap off Owen's head, so quickly that static electricity caused Owen's
silky-thin, babylike hair to stand up and wave in all directions. "This year,"
Captain Wiggin warned, "there's not gonna be a dry eye in the house!"

Owen, who appeared to be strangling in his scarf, sneezed.

"Owen, you come with me!" Barb Wiggin said sharply.
"I've got to wrap this poor child in his swaddling clothes- before he
catches cold!" she explained to the Merrills; but Mr. Merrill and his
shivering wife looked in need of being wrapped in swaddling clothes themselves.
They seemed aghast at the notion that Owen Meany was cast as the Prince of
Peace. The

 
 
Congregationalists
are a lot less miracle-oriented than the Episcopalians, I believe. In the
chilly vestibule of the parish house, Barb Wiggin proceeded to imprison Owen
Meany in the swaddling clothes; but however tightly or loosely she bound him in
the broad, cotton swathes, Owen complained.

"IT'S TOO TIGHT, I CAN'T BREATHE!" he would say,
coughing. Or else he would cry out, "I FEEL A DRAFT!"

Barb Wiggin worked over him with such a grim, humorless sense of
purpose that you would have thought she was embalming him; perhaps that's what
she thought of as she swaddled him-to calm herself. The combination of being so
roughly handled by Barb Wiggin and discovering that my grandmother had been
free to attend the pageant-but had chosen not to attend-was deleterious to
Owen's mood; he grew cranky and petulant. He insisted that he be unswaddled,
and then reswaddled, in my mother's LUCKY scarf; when this was accomplished,
the white cotton swathes could be wrapped over the scarf to conceal it. The
point being, he wanted the scarf next to his skin.

"FOR WARMTH AND FOR LUCK," he said.

"The Baby Jesus doesn't need 'luck,' Owen," Barb
Wiggin told him.

"ARE YOU TELLING ME CHRIST WAS LUCKY?" Owen asked her.
"I WOULD SAY HE COULD HAVE USED A LITTLE MORE LUCK THAN HE HAD. I WOULD
SAY HE RAN OUT OF LUCK, AT THE END."

"But Owen," Rector Wiggin said. "He was
crucified, yet he rose from the dead-he was resurrected. Isn't the point that
he was saved?"

"HE WAS USED," said Owen Meany, who was in a contrary
mood. The rector appeared to consider whether the time was right for
ecclesiastical debate; Barb Wiggin appeared to consider throttling Owen with my
mother's scarf. That Christ was lucky or unlucky, that he was saved or used,
seemed rather serious points of difference-even in the hurried-up atmosphere of
the parish-house vestibule, drafty from the opening and closing of the outside
door and at the same time smelling of steam from the wet woolen clothes that
dripped melting snow into the heat registers. Yet who was a mere rector of
Christ Church to argue with the babe in swaddling clothes about to lie in a
manger?

"Wrap him up the way he likes it," Mr. Wiggin
instructed his wife; but there was menace in his tone, as if the rector were
weighing the possibilities of Owen Meany being the Christ or the Antichrist.
With the fury of the strokes with which she unwrapped him, and rewrapped him,
Barb Wiggin demonstrated that Owen was no Prince of Peace to her. The cows-the
former turtledoves-were staggering around the crowded vestibule, as if made
restless by the absence of hay. Mary Beth Baird looked quite lush-like a
slightly plump starlet-in her white raiment; but both the Holy Mother effect,
and the Holy Virgin effect, were undermined by her long, rakish pigtail. As a
typical Joseph, I was attired in a dull brown robe, the biblical equivalent of
a three-piece suit. Harold Crosby, delaying his ascension in the often-faulty
angel-apparatus, had twice requested a "last" visit to the men's
room. Swaddled as he was, it was a good thing, I thought, that Owen didn't have
to pee. He couldn't stand; and even if he'd been propped up on his feet, he
couldn't have walked-Barb Wiggin had wrapped his legs too tightly together.
That was the first problem: how to get him to the creche. So that our creative
assembly could gather out of sight of the congregation, a tripartite screen had
been placed in front of the rude manger-a gold-brocade cross adorned each
purple panel of the triptych. We were supposed to take our places behind this
altarpiece-to freeze there, in photographic stillness. And as the Announcing
Angel began his harrowing descent to the shepherds, thus distracting the
congregation from us, the purple screen would be removed. The "pillar of
light," following the shepherds and kings, would lead the congregation's
rapt attention to our assembly in the stable. Naturally, Mary Beth Baird wanted
to carry Owen to the creche. "I can do it!" the Virgin Mother
proclaimed. "I've lifted him up before!"

"NO, JOSEPH CARRIES THE BABY JESUS!" Owen cried,
beseeching me; but Barb Wiggin wished to undertake the task herself. Observing
that the Christ Child's nose was running, she deftly wiped it; then she held
the handkerchief in place, while instructing him to "blow." He blew
an inhuman little honk. Mary Beth Baird was provided with a clean handkerchief,
in case the Baby Jesus's nose became offensive while he lay in view in the
manger; the Virgin Mother was delighted to have been given a physical
responsibility for Owen.