A prayer for Owen Meany (62 page)

"And was that all you wanted to see me about-the
prayer?" Mr. Merrill asked Owen, who appeared to consider the question
very carefully-or else he was waiting for Dan and me to leave. We were outside
the vestry office, in the dark corridor where two rows of wooden pegs-for
coats-extended for the entire length of two walls; off in the darkness, several
lost or left-behind overcoats hung there, like old churchgoers who had loitered
so long that they had fallen asleep, slumped against the walls. And there were
a few pairs of galoshes in the corridor; but they were not directly beneath the
abandoned overcoats, so that the churchgoers in the darkness appeared to have
been separated from their feet. On the wooden peg nearest the door to the
vestry office was the Rev. Mr. Merrill's double-breasted and oddly youthful
Navy pea jacket-and, on the peg next to it, his seaman's watch cap. Dan and I,
passing these, heard Pastor Merrill say: "Owen? Is it the dream? Have you
had that dream again?"

"YES," said Owen Meany, who began to cry-he started to
sob, like a child. I had not heard him sound like that since the Thanksgiving
vacation when he'd peed in his pants-when he'd peed on Hester.

"Owen? Owen, listen to me," Mr. Merrill said.
"Owen? It's just a dream-do you hear me? It's just a dream."

"NO!" said Owen Meany. Then Dan and I were outside in
the February cold and gray; the old footprints in the rutted slush were
frozen-fossils of the many souls who had traveled to and from Kurd's Church. It
was still early morning; although Dan and I had seen the sun rise, the sun had
been absorbed by the low, uniformly ice-gray sky.

"What dream?" Dan Needham asked me.

"I don't know," I said. Owen hadn't told me about the
dream; not yet. He would tell me-and I would tell him what the Rev. Mr. Merrill
had told him: that it was "just a dream."

I have learned that the consequences of our past actions are
always interesting; I have learned to view the present with a forward-looking
eye. But not then; at that moment, Dan and I were not imagining very much
beyond Randy White's reaction to the headless, armless Mary Magdalene-whose
steely embrace of the podium on the stage of The Great Hall would force the
headmaster to address the school from a new and more naked position.

        
 
Directly opposite the Main Academy Building,
the headmaster was getting into his camelhair overcoat; his wife, Sam, was
brushing the nap of that pretty coat for him, and kissing her husband good-bye
for the day. It would be a bad day for the headmaster-a FATED day, Owen Meany
might have called it-but I'm sure Randy White didn't have his eyes on the
future that morning. He thought he was finished with Owen Meany. He didn't know
that, in the end, Owen Meany would defeat him; he didn't know about the vote of
"no confidence" the faculty would give him-or the decision of the
Board of Trustees to not renew his appointment as headmaster. He couldn't have
imagined what a travesty Owen Meany's absence would make of the commencement
exercises that year-how such a timid, rather plain, and much-ignored student,
who was the replacement valedictorian of our class, would find the courage to
offer as a valedictory only these words: "I am not the head of this class.
The head of this class is Owen Meany; he is of our class-and the only voice we
want to listen to." Then that good, frightened boy would sit down-to
tumultuous pandemonium: our classmates raising their voices for The Voice,
bedsheets and more artful banners displaying bis name in capital letters (of
course), and the chanting that drowned out the headmaster's attempts to bring
us to order.

"Owen Meany! Owen Meany! Owen Meany!" cried the Class
of '. But that February morning when the headmaster was outfitting himself in
his camelhair coat, he couldn't have known that Owen Meany would be his
undoing. How frustrated and powerless Randy White would appear at our
commencement, when he threatened to withhold our diplomas if we didn't stop our
uproar; he must have known then that he had lost . . . because Dan Needham and
Mr. Early, and a solid one third or one half of the faculty stood up to applaud
our riotous support of Owen; and we were joined by several informed members of
the Board of Trustees as well, not to mention all those parents who had written
angry letters to the headmaster regarding that illiberal business of
confiscating our wallets. I wish Owen could have been there to see the
headmaster then; but, of course, Owen wasn't there-he wasn't graduating. And he
was not at morning meeting on that February day, just before spring vacation;
but the surrogate he had left onstage was grotesquely capable of holding our
attention. It was a packed house-so many of the faculty had turned out for the
occasion. And Mary Magdalene was there to greet us: armless, but reaching out
to us; headless, but eloquent-with the clean-cut stump of her neck, which was
slashed at her Adam's apple, expressing so dramatically that she had much to
say to us. We sat in a hush in The Great Hall, waiting for the headmaster. What
a horrible man Randy White was! There is a tradition among "good"
schools: when you throw out a senior-only months before he's scheduled to
graduate-you make as little trouble for that student's college admission as you
have to. Yes, you tell the colleges what they need to know; but you have
already done your damage-you've fired the kid, you don't try to keep him out of
college, too! But not Randy White; the headmaster would do his damnedest to put
an end to Owen Meany's university life before it began! Owen was accepted at
Harvard; he was accepted at Yale- and he was offered full scholarships by both.
But in addition to what Owen's record said: that he was expelled from Gravesend
Academy for printing fake draft cards, and selling them to other students ...
in addition to that, the headmaster told Harvard and Yale (and the University
of New Hampshire) much more. He said that Owen Meany was "so virulently
antireligious" that he had "desecrated the statue of a saint at a
Roman Catholic school"; that he had launched a "deeply anti-Catholic
campaign" on the Gravesend campus, under the demand of not wanting a
fish-only menu in the school dining hall on Fridays; and that there were
"charges against him for being anti-Semitic, too."

As for the New Hampshire Honor Society, they withdrew their
offer of an Honor Society Scholarship; a student of Owen Meany's academic
achievements was welcome to attend the University of New Hampshire, but the
Honor Society-' 'in the light of this distressing and distasteful
information"-could not favor him with a scholarship; if he attended the
University of New Hampshire, he would do so at his own expense. Harvard and
Yale were more forgiving; but they were also more complicated. Yale wanted to
interview him again; they quickly saw the anti-Semitic "charges" for
what they were-a lie-but Owen was undoubtedly too frank about his feelings for
(or, rather, against) the Catholic Church. Yale wanted to delay his acceptance
for a year. In that time, their admissions

        
 
director suggested, Owen should "find
some meaningful employment"; and his employer should write to Yale
periodically and report on Owen's "character and commitment." Dan
Needham told Owen that this was reasonable, fair-minded, and not uncommon
behavior-on the part of a university as good as Yale. Owen didn't disagree with
Dan; he simply refused to do it.

"IT'S LIKE BEING ON PAROLE," he said. Harvard was also
fair-minded and reasonable-and slightly more demanding and creative than Yale.
Harvard said they wanted to delay his acceptance, too; but they were more
specific about the kind of "meaningful employment" they wanted him to
take. They wanted him to work for the Catholic Church-in some capacity; he
could volunteer his time for Catholic Relief Services, he could be a kind of
social worker for one of the Catholic charities, or he could even work for the
very same parochial school whose statue of Mary Magdalene he had ruined. Father
Findley, at St. Michael's, turned out to be a nice man; not only did he not
press charges against Owen Meany-after talking to Dan Needham, Father Findley
agreed to help Owen's cause (regarding his college admission) in any way he
could. Even some parochial students had spoken up for Owen. Buzzy Thurston-who
hit that easy ground ball, the one that should have been the last out, the one
that should have kept Owen Meany from ever coming to bat-even Buzzy Thurston
spoke up for Owen, saying that Owen had had "a tough time''; Owen
"had his reasons" for being upset, Buzzy said. Headmaster White and
Chief Ben Pike were all for "throwing the book" at Owen Meany for the
theft and mutilation of Mary Magdalene. But St. Michael's School, and Father
Findley, were very forgiving. Dan said that Father Findley "knew the
family" and was most sympathetic when he realized who Owen's parents
were-he'd had dealings with the Meanys; and although he wouldn't go into any
detail regarding what those "dealings" had been, Father Findley said
he would do anything he could to help Owen. "I certainly won't lift a
finger to hurt him!" Father Findley said. Dan Needham told Owen that
Harvard had a good idea. "Lots of Catholics do lots of good things,
Owen," Dan said. "Why not see what some of the good things are?"

For a while, I thought Owen was going to accept the Harvard
proposal-"THE CATHOLIC DEAL," he called it. He even went to see
Father Findley; but it seemed to confuse him-how genuinely concerned for Owen's
welfare Father Findley was. Maybe Owen liked Father Findley; that might have
confused him, too. In the end, he would turn THE CATHOLIC DEAL down.

"MY PARENTS WOULD NEVER UNDERSTAND IT," he said.'
'BESIDES, I WANT TO GO TO THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE-I WANT TO STICK WITH
YOU, I WANT TO GO WHERE YOU GO," he told me.

"But they're not offering you a scholarship," I
reminded him.

"DON'T WORRY ABOUT THAT," he said. He wouldn't tell
me, at first, how he'd already got a "scholarship" there. He went to
the U.S. Army recruiting offices in Gravesend; it was arranged "in the
family," as we used to say in New Hampshire. They already knew who he
was-he was the best of his class at Gravesend Academy, even if he ended up just
barely getting his diploma from Gravesend High School. He was admitted to the
University of New Hampshire-they also knew that; they had read about it in The
Gravesend News-Letter. What's more, he was a kind of local hero; even though he
had been absent, he had disrupted the academy's commencement exercises. As for
making and selling the fake draft cards, the U.S. Army recruiters knew what
that was about: that was about drinking-no disrespect for the draft had been
intended, they certainly knew that. And what red-blooded American young man
didn't indulge in a little vandalism, from time to time? And that was how Owen
Meany got his'' scholarship'' to the University of New Hampshire; he signed up
for the Reserve Officers Training Corps-ROTC, we called it "rot-see";
remember that? You went to college at the expense of the U. S. Army, and while
you were in college, you took a few courses that the U.S. Army offered-Military
History and Small Unit Tactics; stuff like that, not terribly taxing. The
summer following your junior year, you would be required to take a little Basic
Training-the standard, six-week course. And upon your graduation you would
receive your commission; you would graduate a second lieutenant in the United
States Army-and you would owe your country four years of active duty, plus two
years in the Army Reserve.

"WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE THE MATTER WITH THAT?" Owen
Meany asked Dan and me. When he announced his plans to us, it was only ; a
total of , U.S. military personnel were in Vietnam, but not a single one of
them was in combat. Even so, Dan Needham was uncomfortable with Owen's
decision. "I liked the Harvard deal better, Owen," Dan said.

"THIS WAY, I DON'T HAVE TO WAIT A YEAR," he said.
"AND I GET TO BE WITH YOU-ISN'T THAT GREAT?" he asked me.

"Yeah, that's great," I said. "I'm just a little
surprised, that's all," I told him. I was more than "a little
surprised"-that the U.S. Army had accepted him was astonishing to me!

"Isn't there a height requirement?" Dan Needham
whispered to me.

"I thought there was a weight requirement, too," I
said.

"IF YOU'RE THINKING ABOUT THE HEIGHT AND WEIGHT REQUIREMENTS,"
Owen said, "IT'S FIVE FEET-EVEN-AND ONE HUNDRED POUNDS."

"Are you five feet tall, Owen?" Dan asked him.

"Since when do you weigh a hundred pounds?" I said.

"I'VE BEEN EATING A LOT OF BANANAS, AND ICE CREAM,"
said Owen Meany, "AND WHEN THEY MEASURED ME, I TOOK A DEEP BREATH AND
STOOD ON MY TOES!"

Well, it was only proper to congratulate him; he was quite
pleased with arranging his college "scholarship" in his own way. And,
at the time, it appeared that he had defeated Randy White completely. Back then,
neither Dan nor I knew about his ' 'dream''; I think we might have been a
little worried about his involvement with the U.S. Army if we'd had that dream
described to us. And that February morning, when the Rev. Lewis Merrill entered
The Great Hall and stared with such horror at the decapitated and amputated
Mary Magdalene, Dan Needham and I weren't thinking very far into the future; we
were worried only that the Rev. Mr. Merrill might be too terrified to deliver
his prayer-that the condition of Mary Magdalene might seize hold of his
normally slight stutter and render him incomprehensible. He stood at the foot
of the stage, staring up at her-for a long moment, he even forgot to remove his
Navy pea jacket and his seaman's watch cap; and since Congrega-tionalists don't
always wear the clerical collar, the Rev. Lewis Merrill looked less like our
school minister than like a drunken sailor who had finally staggered up against
the incentive for his own religious conversion. The Rev. Mr. Merrill was
standing there, thus stricken, when the headmaster arrived in The Great Hall.
If Randy White was surprised to see so many faculty faces at morning meeting,
it did not alter his usual aggressive stride; he took the stairs up to the
stage at his usual two-at-a-time pace. And the headmaster did not flinch-or
even appear the slightest surprised-to see someone already standing at the
podium. The Rev. Lewis Merrill often announced the opening hymn; Pastor Merrill
often followed the opening hymn with his prayer. Then the headmaster would make
his remarks-he also told us the page number for the closing hymn; and that
would be that. It took the headmaster a few seconds to recognize Mr. Merrill,
who was standing at the foot of the stage in his pea jacket and wearing his
watch cap and gawking at the figure who beseeched us from the podium. Our
headmaster was a man who was used to taking charge-he was used to making
decisions, our Randy White. When he saw the monstrosity at the podium, he did
the first and most headmasterly thing that came into his mind; he strode up to
the saint and seized her around her modest robes-he grabbed her around her
waist and attempted to lift her. I don't think he took any notice of the steel
bands girdling her hips, or the four-inch bolts that penetrated her feet and
were welded to their respective nuts under the stage. I suppose his back was
still a trifle sore from his impressive effort with Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen;
but the headmaster didn't pay any attention to his back, either. He simply
seized Mary Magdalene around her middle; he gave a grunt-and nothing happened.
Mary Magdalene, and all that she represented, was not as easy to throw around
as a Volkswagen.