A prayer for Owen Meany (44 page)

"THEREFORE, I HAVE A RIGHT TO SIT HERE," Owen always
said; no one, of course, ever challenged our being there. Even though the girls
ignored us that summer, that was when I noticed that Owen was attractive to
women-not only to my mother. It is difficult to say how he was attractive, or
why; but even when he was sixteen, even when he was especially shy or awkward,
he looked like someone who had earned what grasp of the world he had. I might
have been particularly conscious of this aspect of him because he had truly
earned so much more than / had. It was not just that he was a better student, or
a better driver, or so philosophically sure of himself; here was someone I had
grown up with, and had grown used to teasing-I had picked him up over my head
and passed him back and forth, I had derided his smallness as surely as the
other children had-and yet, suddenly, by the time he was sixteen, he appeared
in command. He was more in command of himself than the rest of us, he was more
in command of us than the rest of us-and with women, even with those girls who
giggled when they looked at him, you sensed how compelled they were to touch
him. And by the end of the summer of ', he had something astonishing for a
sixteen-year-old-in those days before all this ardent and cosmetic
weightlifting, he had muscles! To be sure, he was tiny, but he was fiercely strong,
and his sinewy strength was as visible as the strength of a whippet; although
he was frighteningly lean, there was already something very adult about his
muscular development-and why not? After all, he'd spent the summer working with
granite. I hadn't even been working. In June, he'd started as a stonecutter; he
spent most of the working day in the monument shop, cutting with the grain,

        
 
WITH THE RIFT, as he called it-using the
wedge and feathers. By the middle of the month, his father had taught him how
to saw against the grain; the sawyers cut up the bigger slabs, and they
finished the gravestones with what was called a diamond wheel-a circular blade,
impregnated with diamonds. By July, he was working in the quarries-he was often
the signalman, but his father apprenticed him to the other quarrymen: the
channel bar drillers, the derrickman, the dynamiters. It seemed to me that he
spent most of the month of August in a single, remote pit-one hundred and
seventy-five feet deep, a football field in diameter. He and the other men were
lowered to work in a grout bucket-"grout" is waste, the rubble of
broken rock that is raised from the pit all day long. At the end of the day,
they bring up the men in the bucket. Granite is a dense, heavy stone; it weighs
close to two hundred pounds per cubic foot. Ironically-even though they worked
with the diamond wheel-most of the sawyers had all their fingers; but none of
the quarrymen had all their fingers; only Mr. Meany had all his.

"I'LL KEEP ALL MINE, TOO," Owen said. "YOU'VE GOT
TO BE MORE THAN QUICK, YOU'VE GOT TO FEEL WHEN THE ROCK'S GOING TO MOVE BEFORE
IT MOVES-YOU'VE GOT TO MOVE BEFORE THE ROCK MOVES."

Just the slightest fuzz grew on his upper lip; nowhere else did
his face show traces of a beard, and the faint moustache was so downy and such
a pale-gray color that I first mistook it for pulverized granite, the familiar
rock dust that clung to him. Yet his face-his nose, the sockets for his eyes,
his cheekbones, and the contours of his jaw-had the gaunt definition that one
sees in the faces of sixteen-year-olds only when they are starving. By
September, he was smoking a pack of Camels a day. In the yellow glow of the
dashboard lights, when we went out driving in the pickup at night, I would
catch a glimpse of his profile with the cigarette dangling from his lips; his
face had a permanent adult quality. Those mothers' breasts he'd once
unfavorably compared to my mother's breasts were beneath his interest now,
although Barb Wiggin's were still TOO BIG, Mrs. Webster's were still TOO LOW,
and Mrs. Merrill's only VERY FUNNY. While Ginger Brinker-Smith, as a younger
mother, had claimed our attention, we now (for the most part) coolly assessed
our peers. THE TWO CAROLINES-Caroline Perkins and Caroline O'Day-appealed to
us, although the breasts of Caroline O'Day were devalued, in Owen's view, by
her Catholicism. Maureen Early's bosom was judged to be PERKY; Hannah Abbot's
breasts were SMALL BUT SHAPELY; Irene Babson, who had given Owen the shivers as
long ago as when my mother's bosom was under review, was now so out of control
as to be SIMPLY SCARY. Deborah Perry, Lucy Dearborn, Betsy Bickford, Sarah
Tilton, Polly Famum-to their names, and to the contours of their young breasts,
Owen Meany would inhale a Camel deeply. The summer wind rushed through the
rolled-down window of the pickup; when he exhaled, slowly, through his
nostrils, the cigarette smoke was swept away from his face-dramatically
exposing him as if he were a man miraculously emerging from a fire.

"IT'S TOO SOON TO TELL-WITH MOST SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLDS,"
Owen said, sounding already worldly enough for any conversation he might
encounter at Gravesend Academy-although we both knew that the problem with the
sixteen-year-old girls who interested us was that they dated eighteen-year-olds.
"BY THE TIME WE'RE EIGHTEEN, WE'LL GET THEM BACK," Owen said.
"AND WE'LL GET ALL THE SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLDS, TOO-THE ONES WE WANT," he
added, inhaling again and squinting into the oncoming headlights. By the fall
of ', when we entered Gravesend Academy, Owen seemed very sophisticated to me;
the wardrobe my grandmother had acquired for him was more stylish than anything
you could buy in New Hampshire. My clothes all came from Gravesend, but
Grandmother took Owen shopping in Boston; it was his first time on a train,
and-since they were both smokers-they rode in the smoking coach together and
shared their nearly constant (and critical) comments on the attire of their
fellow passengers on the Boston & Maine, and on the comparative courtesy (or
lack thereof) of the conductors. Grandmother outfitted Owen almost entirely at
Filene's and Jordan Marsh, one of which had a Small Gentlemen's Department,
which the other called A Small Man's Special Needs. Jordan Marsh and Filene's
were pretty flashy labels by New Hampshire standards-"THIS IS NOT
BARGAIN-BASEMENT STUFF!" Owen said proudly. For our first day of classes,
Owen showed up looking like a small Harvard lawyer.

        
 
He was not intimidated by the bigger boys
because he had always been smaller; and he was not intimidated by the older
boys because he was smarter. He saw immediately a crucial difference between
Gravesend, the town, and Gravesend, the academy: the town paper, The Gravesend
News-Letter, reported all the news that was decent and believed that all things
decent were important; the school newspaper, which was called The Grave,
reported every indecency that could escape the censorship of the paper's
faculty adviser and believed that all things decent were boring. Gravesend
Academy embraced a cynical tone of voice, savored a criticism of everything
that anyone took seriously; the students hallowed, above everyone else, that
boy who saw himself as born to break the rules, as destined to change the laws.
And to the students of Gravesend who thus chafed against their bonds, the only
accepted tone was caustic-was biting, mordant, bitter, scathing sarcasm, the
juicy vocabulary of which Owen Meany had already learned from my grandmother.
He had mastered sarcasm in much the same way he had become a smoker; he was a
pack-a-day man in a month. In his first fall term at Gravesend, the other boys
nicknamed him "Sarcasm Master." In the lingo of those times, everyone
was a something "master"; Dan Needham tells me that this is one of those
examples of student language that endures-at Graves-end Academy, the term is
still in use. I have never heard it at Bishop Strachan. But Owen Meany was
Sarcasm Master in the way that big Buster York was Barf Master, that Skipper
Hilton was Zit Master, that Morris West was Nose Master, that DufFy Swain (who
was prematurely bald) was Hair Master, that George Fogg (the hockey player) was
Ice Master, that Horace Brigham (a lady's man) was Snatch Master. No one found
a name for me. Among the editors of The Grave, in which Owen published the
first essay he was assigned in English class, Owen was known as "The
Voice." His essay was a satire on the source of food in the school dining
hall-"MYSTERY MEAT," Owen titled the essay and the unrecognizable,
gray steaks we were served weekly; the essay, which was published as an
editorial, described the slaughter and refrigeration of an unidentified,
possibly prehistoric beast that was dragged to the underground kitchen of the
school in chains, "IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT."

The Voice
 
The editorial and
the subsequent weekly essays that Owen published in The Grave were ascribed not
to Owen Meany by name, but to "The Voice"; and the text was printed
in uniform upper-case letters. "I'M ALWAYS GOING TO BE PUBLISHED IN
CAPITALS," Owen explained to Dan and me, "BECAUSE IT WILL INSTANTLY
GRAB THE READER'S ATTENTION, ESPECIALLY AFTER 'THE VOICE' GETS TO BE A KIND OF
INSTITUTION."

By the Christmas of , in our first year at the academy, that is
what Owen Meany had become: The Voice-A KIND OF INSTITUTION. Even the Search
Committee-appointed to find a new headmaster-was interested in what The Voice
had to say. Applicants for the position were given a subscription to The Grave;
the snide, sneering precocity of the student body was well represented in its
pages-and best represented by the capitals mat commanded one's gaze to Owen
Meany. There were some old curmudgeons on the faculty-and some young
fuddy-duddies, too-who objected to Owen's style; and I don't mean that they
objected only to his outrageous capitalization. Dan Needham told me that
there'd been more than one heated debate in faculty meeting concerning the
"marginal taste" of Owen's blanket criticism of the school; granted,
it was well within a long-established tradition for Gravesend students to
complain about the academy, but Owen's sarcasm suggested, to some, a total and
threatening irreverence. Dan defended Owen; but The Voice was a proven irritant
to many of the more insecure members of the Gravesend community- including
those faraway but important subscribers to The Grave: "concerned"
parents and alumni. The subject of "concerned" parents and alumni
yielded an especially lively and controversial column for The Voice.

"WHAT ARE THEY 'CONCERNED' ABOUT?" Owen pondered.
"ARE THEY 'CONCERNED' WITH OUR EDUCATION-THAT IT BE BOTH 'CLASSICAL' AND
'TIMELY'-OR ARE THEY 'CONCERNED' THAT WE MIGHT POSSIBLY LEARN MORE THAN THEY
HAVE LEARNED; THAT WE MIGHT INFORM OURSELVES SUFFICIENTLY TO CHALLENGE A FEW OF
THEIR MORE HARDENED AND IDIOTIC OPINIONS? ARE THEY 'CONCERNED' ABOUT THE
QUALITY AND VIG-OROUSNESS OF OUR EDUCATION; OR ARE THEY MORE SUPERFICIALLY
'CONCERNED' THAT WE MIGHT FAIL TO GET INTO THE UNIVERSITY OR COLLEGE OF THEIR
CHOICE?"

Then there was the column that challenged the coat-and-tie dress
code, arguing that it was "INCONSISTENT TO DRESS US LIKE GROWN-UPS AND
TREAT US LIKE CHILDREN." And there was the column about required
church-attendance, arguing that "IT RUINS THE PROPER ATMOSPHERE FOR PRAYER
AND WORSHIP TO HAVE THE CHURCH-AW CHURCH-FULL OF RESTLESS ADOLESCENTS WHO WOULD
RATHER BE SLEEPING LATE OR INDULGING IN SEXUAL FANTASIES OR PLAYING SQUASH.
FURTHERMORE, REQUIRING ATTENDANCE AT CHURCH-FORCING YOUNG PEOPLE TO PARTICIPATE
IN THE RITUALS OF A BELIEF THEY DON'T SHARE-SERVES MERELY TO PREJUDICE THOSE
SAME YOUNG PEOPLE AGAINST ALL RELIGIONS, AND AGAINST SINCERELY RELIGIOUS
BELIEVERS. I BELIEVE THAT IT IS NOT THE PURPOSE OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION TO
BROADEN AND EXPAND OUR PREJUDICES."

And on and on. You should have heard him on the subject of
required athletics: "BORN OF A BROWN-SHIRT MENTALITY, A CONCEPT EMBRACED
BY THE HITLER YOUTH!" And on the regulation that boarders were not allowed
to enjoy more than three weekends off-campus in a single term: "ARE WE SO
SIMPLE, IN THE ADMINISTRATION'S VIEW, THAT WE ARE CHARACTERIZED AS CONTENT TO
SPEND OUR WEEKENDS AS ATHLETIC HEROES OR FANS OF SPECTATOR SPORTS; IS IT NOT
POSSIBLE THAT SOME OF US MIGHT FIND MORE STIMULATION AT HOME, OR AT THE HOME OF
A FRIEND-OR (EVEN) AT A GIRLS' SCHOOL? AND I DON'T MEAN AT ONE OF THOSE OVERORGANIZED
AND CHARMLESSLY CHAPERONED DANCESl"

The Voice was our voice; he championed our causes; he made us
proud of ourselves in an atmosphere mat belittled and intimidated us. But his
was also a voice that could criticize us. When a boy was thrown out of school
for killing cats-he was ritualistically lynching cats that were pets of faculty
families- we were quick to say how "sick" he was; it was Owen who
reminded us that all boys (himself included) were touched by that same
sickness. "WHO ARE WE TO BE RIGHTEOUS?" he asked us. "I HAVE
MURDERED TADPOLES AND TOADS-I'VE BEEN A MASS-MURDERER OF INNOCENT
WILDLIFE!" He described his mutilations in a self-condemnatory, regretful
tone; although he also confessed his slight vandalism of the sainted Mary
Magdalene, I was amused to see that he offered no apologies to the nuns of St.
Michael's-it was the tadpoles and toads he was sorry about. "WHAT BOY
HASN'T KILLED LIVE THINGS? OF COURSE, IT'S 'SICK' TO BE A HANGMAN OF POOR
CATS-BUT HOW IS IT WORSE THAN WHAT MOST OF US HAVE DONE? I HOPE WE'VE OUTGROWN
IT, BUT DOES THAT MEAN WE FORGET THAT WE WERE LIKE THAT? DO THE FACULTY
REMEMBER BEING BOYS? HOW CAN THEY PRESUME TO TEACH US ABOUT OURSELVES IF THEY
DON'T REMEMBER BEING LIKE US? IF THIS IS A PLACE WHERE WE THINK THE TEACHING IS
SO GREAT, WHY NOT TEACH THE KID THAT KILLING CATS IS 'SICK'-WHY THROW HIM
OUT?"

It would grow to be a theme of Owen's: "WHY THROW HIM
OUT?" he would ask, repeatedly. When he agreed that someone should have
been thrown out, he said so. Drinking was punishable by dismissal, but Owen
argued that getting other students drunk should be a more punishable offense
than solitary drinking; also, that most forms of drinking were' 'NOT AS
DESTRUCTIVE AS THE ALMOST-ROUTINE HARASSMENT OF STUDENTS WHO ARE NOT 'COOL' BY
STUDENTS WHO THINK IT IS 'COOL' TO BE HARSHLY ABUSIVE-BOTH VERBALLY ABUSIVE AND
PHYSICALLY INTIMIDATING. CRUEL AND DELIBERATE MOCKERY IS WORSE THAN DRINKING;
STUDENTS WHO BAIT AND MERCILESSLY TEASE THEIR FELLOW STUDENTS ARE GUILTY OF
WHAT SHOULD BE A MORE 'PUNISHABLE OFFENSE' THAN GETTING DRUNK-ESPECIALLY IN THOSE
INSTANCES WHEN YOUR DRUNKENNESS HURTS NO ONE BUT YOURSELF."