A prayer for Owen Meany (50 page)

        
 
It was Owen Meany who taught me that any good
book is always in motion-from the general to the specific, from the particular
to the whole, and back again. Good reading-and good writing about reading-moves
the same way. It was Owen, using Tess of the d'Urbervilles as an example, who
showed me how to write a term paper, describing the incidents that determine
Tess's fate by relating them to that portentous sentence that concludes Chapter
Thirty-six-"new growths insensibly bud upward to fill each vacated place;
unforeseen accidents hinder intentions, and old plans are forgotten." It
was a triumph for me: by writing my first successful term paper about a book
I'd read, I also learned to read. Most mechanically, Owen helped my reading by
another means: he determined that my eyes wandered to both the left and to the
right of where I was in a sentence, and that-instead of following the elusive
next word with my finger-I should highlight a spot on the page by reading
through a hole cut in a piece of paper. It was a small rectangle, a window to
read through; I moved the window over the page-it was a window that opened no
higher than two or three lines. I read more quickly and more comfortably than I
ever had read with my finger; to this day, I read through such a window. As for
my spelling, Owen was more helpful than Dr. Bolder. It was Owen who encouraged
me to learn how to type; a typewriter doesn't cure the problem, but I often can
recognize that a typewritten word looks wrong-in longhand, I was (and am) a
disaster. And Owen made me read the poems of Robert Frost aloud to him-"IN
MY VOICE, THEY DON'T SOUND SO GOOD." And so I memorized "Nothing Gold
Can Stay" and "Fire and Ice" and "Stopping by Woods on a
Snowy Evening"; Owen memorized "Birches," but that one was too
long for me. That summer of , when we swam in the abandoned quarry lake, we no
longer tied a rope around ourselves or swam one-at-a-time-Mr. Meany had either
lost interest in the rule, or in enforcing it; or he had acknowledged that Owen
and I were no longer children. That was the summer we were eighteen. When we
swam in the quarry, it didn't seem dangerous; nothing seemed dangerous. That
was the summer we registered for the draft, too; it was no big deal. When we
were sixteen, we got our driver's licenses; when we were eighteen, we
registered for the draft. At the time, it seemed no more perilous than buying
an ice-cream cone at Hampton Beach. On Sunday-when it was not a good beach
day-Owen and I played basketball in the Gravesend Academy gym; the
summer-school kids had an outdoor sports program, and they were so stir-crazy
on weekends that they went to the beach even when it rained. We had the
basketball court to ourselves, and it was cool in the gym. There was an old janitor
who worked the weekends and who knew us from the regular school-year; he got us
the best basketballs and clean towels out of the stock room, and sometimes he
even let us swim in the indoor pool-I think he was a trifle retarded. He must
have been damaged in some fashion because he actually enjoyed watching Owen and
me practice our idiotic stunt with the basketball-the leaping, lift-him-up,
slam-dunk shot.

"LET'S PRACTICE THE SHOT," Owen would say; that was
all we ever called it-"the shot." We'd go over it again and again. He
would grasp the ball in both hands and leap into my arms (but he never took his
eyes from the rim of the basket); sometimes he would twist in the air and slam
the ball into the hoop backward-sometimes he would dunk it with one hand. I
would turn in time to see the ball in the net and Owen Meany descending-his
hands still higher than the rim of the basket but his head already below the
net, his feet kicking the air. He always landed gracefully. Sometimes we could
entice the old janitor to time us with the official scorer's clock. "SET
IT TO EIGHT SECONDS," Owen would instruct him. Over the summer, we twice
managed "the shot" in under five seconds. "SET IT TO FOUR,"
Owen would say, and we'd keep practicing; under four seconds was tough. When
I'd get bored, Owen would quote me a little Robert Frost. " 'ONE COULD DO
WORSE THAN BE A SWINGER OF BIRCHES.' "

In our wallets, in our pockets, the draft cards weighed nothing
at all; we never looked at them. It wasn't until the fall term of -with Headmaster
White at the helm-that Gravesend Academy students found an interesting use for
draft cards. Naturally, it was Owen Meany who made the discovery. He was in the
office of The Grave, experimenting with a brand-new photocopier; he found that
he could copy his draft card-then he found a way to make a blank draft card,
one without a name and without a date of birth. The drinking age in New
Hampshire was twenty-one; although Owen Meany didn't drink, he knew there were
a lot of students at Gravesend Academy who liked to drink themselves silly-and
none of them was twenty-one.

 
 
He charged
twenty-one dollars a card. "THAT'S THE MAGIC NUMBER," he said.
"JUST MAKE UP YOUR OWN BIRTHDAY. DON'T TELL ANYONE WHERE YOU GOT THIS. IF
YOU GET CAUGHT, I DON'T KNOW YOU."

It was the first time he'd broken the law-unless you count the
business with the tadpoles and toads, and Mary Magdalene in her goal. Toronto:
May , -another sunny morning, but rain developing. President Reagan is now
taking the tack that he's proud of every effort he's made for the contras, whom
he calls "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers." The
president confirmed that he had "discussed" the matter of aid with
King Fahd of Saudi Arabia; he's changed his story from only two days ago. The
Globe and Mail pointed out that "the king had brought up the
subject"; does it matter who brought it up? "My diary shows I never
brought it up," the president said. "I expressed pleasure that he was
doing that.'' I never thought the president could do anything that would make
me feel at all close to him; but Mr. Reagan keeps a diary, too! Owen kept a
diary. The first entry was as follows: "THIS DIARY WAS GIVEN TO ME FOR
CHRISTMAS, , BY MY BENEFACTOR, MRS. HARRIET WHEELWRIGHT; IT IS MY INTENTION TO
MAKE MRS. WHEELWRIGHT PROUD OF ME."

I don't believe that Dan Needham and I thought of my grandmother
as Owen's BENEFACTOR, although-quite literally-that is what she'd become; but
that Christmas of , Dan and I-and Grandmother-had reason-to be especially proud
of Owen Meany. He'd had a busy fall. Randy White, our new headmaster, had also
been busy; he'd been making decisions, left and right, and The Voice riad not
allowed a single headmasterly move to pass unchallenged. The first decision had
actually been Mrs. White's; she'd not liked the Thorndikes' old home-it was,
traditionally, the headmaster's house, it had already housed three headmasters
(two of them had died there; old Thorny, when he retired, had moved to his
former summer home in Rye, where he planned to live year 'round). But the
traditional house was not up to the Lake Forest standards that the Whites were
used to; it was a well-kept, colonial house on Pine Street, but it was
"too old"

for the Whites-and "too dark," she said, and "too
far from the main campus," he said; and a "poor place to
entertain," they both agreed. Apparently, Sam White liked to '
'entertain.''

"WHOM ARE THEY GOING TO ENTERTAIN?" asked The Voice,
who was critical of what he called "THE WHITES' SOCIAL PRIORITIES.''
Indeed, it was an expensive decision, too; a new house was built for the
headmaster-so central in its location that its ongoing construction was a
campus eyesore throughout Owen's and my eleventh-grade year. There had been
some problems with the architect-or else Mrs. White had changed her mind about
a few of the interior particulars- after the construction was in progress;
hence the delay. It was a rather plain saltbox-"NOT IN KEEPING WITH THE
OLDER FACULTY HOUSES," as Owen pointed out; also, its positioning
interrupted a broad, beautiful expanse of lawn between the old library and the
Main Academy Building.

"There's going to be a new library one day soon,
anyway," the headmaster said; he was working up an expanded building
proposal that included a new library, two new dormitories, a new dining hall,
and-"down the road"-a new gym with coeducational facilities.
"Coeducation," the headmaster said, "is a part of the future of
any progressive school."

said: "IT IS IRONIC AND SELF-SERVING THAT THE SO-CALLED
'EXPANDED BUILDING PROPOSAL' SHOULD BEGIN WITH A NEW HOUSE FOR THE HEADMASTER.
IS HE GOING TO 'ENTERTAIN' ENOUGH HIGH-INCOME ALUMNI IN THAT HOUSE TO GET THE
SO-CALLED 'CAPITAL FUND DRIVE' OFF THE GROUND? IS THIS THE HOUSE THAT PAYS FOR
EVERYTHING-FROM THE GYM ON DOWN?"

When the headmaster's house was finally ready for occupancy, the
Rev. Mr. Merrill and his family were moved out of a rather crowded dormitory
apartment and into the former headmaster's house on Pine Street. It was,
unpractically, at some distance from Kurd's Church; but the Rev. Lewis Merrill,
as a newcomer to the school, must have been grateful to have been given such a
nice, old home. As soon as Randy White had done Mr. Merrill this favor, the
headmaster made another decision. Morning chapel, which was daily, had always
been held in Kurd's Church; it was not really a religious service, except for
the ritual of singing an opening and closing hymn-and concluding the morning
remarks or announcements with a prayer. The school minister did not usually
officiate

        
 
morning chapel; the most frequent officiant
was the headmaster himself. Sometimes a faculty member gave us a mini-lecture
in his field, or one of the students delivered an impassioned plea for a new
club. Occasionally, something exciting happened: I remember a fencing
demonstration; another time, one of the alumni-who was a famous magician-gave
us a magic show, and one of the rabbits escaped in Kurd's Church and was never
found. What Mr. White decided was that Kurd's Church was too gloomy a place for
us to start our mornings; he moved our daily assembly to the theater in the
Main Academy Building-The Great Hall, it was called. Although the morning light
was more evident there and the room had a high-ceilinged loftiness to it, it
was, at the same time, austere-the towering portraits of former headmasters and
faculty frowned grimly down upon us in their deep-black academic regalia. The
faculty who chose to attend morning chapel (they were not required to be there,
as we were) now sat on the elevated stage and looked down upon us, too. When
the stage was set for a school play, the curtain was drawn and there was little
room for the faculty on the narrow front of the stage. That was the first thing
that Owen criticized about the decision: in Kurd's Church, the faculty had sat
in pews with the students-the faculty felt encouraged to attend. But in The
Great Hall, when one of Dan's plays was set on the stage, there was room for so
few chairs that faculty attendance was discouraged. In addition, Owen felt that
"THE ELEVATION OF THE STAGE AND THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE MORNING LIGHT
PROVIDE THE HEADMASTER WITH SUCH AN EXAGGERATED PLATFORM FROM WHICH TO SPEAK;
AND OFTEN, THERE'S A KIND OF SPOTLIGHT, PROVIDED BY THE SUN, THAT GIVES US ALL
THE FEELING THAT WE'RE IN THE PRESENCE OF AN EXALTED PERSONAGE. I WONDER IF
THIS IS THE INTENDED EFFECT," wrote The Voice. I confess, I rather liked
the change, which was popular with most students. The Great Hall was on the
second floor of the Main Academy Building; it could be approached from two directions-up
two wide and sweeping marble staircases, through two high and wide double
doors. There was no lining up to enter or leave; and many of us were already in
the building for our first morning class. In the winter, especially, it was a
tramp to Hurd's Church, which was set off from all the classroom buildings. But
Owen insisted that the headmaster was GRANDSTANDING-and that Randy White had
skillfully manipulated the Rev. Mr. Merrill into a position where the minister
would have felt ungrateful if he complained; after all, he had a good house to
live in. If taking morning chapel from Kurd's Church was a move away from the
Rev. Mr. Merrill's territory-and if the minister resented the change- we did
not hear a word of protest from the quiet Congrega-tionalist about it; only
complained. But Randy White was just warming up; his next decision was to
abolish the Latin requirement-a requirement that everyone (except the members
of the Latin Department) had moaned about for years. The old logic that Latin
helped one's understanding of all languages was not a song that was often sung
outside the Latin Department. There were six members in the Latin Department
and three of them were within a year or two of retirement. White anticipated
that enrollment in Latin would drop to half of what it was (three years of the
language had been a graduation requirement); in a year or two, there would be
the correctly reduced number of teachers in the department to teach Latin, and
new faculty could be hired in the more popular Romance languages-French and
Spanish. There were cheers in morning meeting when White announced the
change-in quite a short time, we had begun to call "morning chapel"
by another name; White called it "morning meeting," and the new name
stuck. It was the way he had scrapped the Latin that was wrong, Owen pointed
out.

"IT IS SHREWD OF THE NEW HEADMASTER TO MAKE SUCH A POPULAR
DECISION-AND WHAT COULD BE MORE POPULAR WITH STUDENTS THAN ABOLISHING A
REQUIREMENT? LATIN, ESPECIALLY! BUT THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN ACCOMPLISHED BY A
VOTE-IN FACULTY MEETING. I'M SURE THAT IF THE HEADMASTER HAD PROPOSED THE
CHANGE, THE FACULTY WOULD HAVE ENDORSED IT. THE HEADMASTER HAS A CERTAIN
SINGULAR POWER: BUT WAS IT NECESSARY FOR HIM TO DEMONSTRATE HIS POWER SO
WHIMSICALLY? HE COULD HAVE ACHIEVED THIS GOAL MORE DEMOCRATICALLY; WAS IT
NECESSARY TO SHOW THE FACULTY THAT HE DIDN'T NEED THEIR APPROVAL? AND WAS IT
ACTUALLY LEGAL, UNDER OUR CHARTER OR OUR CONSTITUTION, FOR THE HEADMASTER TO
CHANGE

        
 
A GRADUATION REQUIREMENT ALL BY HIMSELF?"