A prayer for Owen Meany (64 page)

"He looks like he saw every minute of it," Simon would
say-and I had. I saw eveiry minute of every movie I took every girl to. And
more's the shame: Noah and Simon created countless opportunities for me to be
alone with various dates at the Eastman boathouse. At night, that boathouse had
the reputation of a cheap motel; but all I ever managed was a long game of
darts, or sometimes my date and I would sit on the dock, withholding any comment
on the spectacle of the hard and distant stars until (finally) Noah or Simon
would arrive to rescue us from our awkward torment. I started feeling
afraid-for no reason I could understand. Georgian Bay: July , -it's a shame you
can buy The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star in Pointe au Baril Station;
but, thank God, they don't carry The New York Times! The island in Georgian Bay
that has been in Katherine Reeling's family since -when Ratherine's grandfather
reputedly won it in a poker game-is about a fifteen-minute boat ride from
Pointe au Baril Station; the island is in the vicinity of Burnt Island and
Hearts Content Island and Peesay Point. I think it's called Gibson Island or
Ormsby Island- there are both Gibsons and Ormsbys in Ratherine's family; I believe
that Gibson was Ratherine's maiden name, but I forget. Anyway, there are a
bunch of notched cedarwood cottages on the island, which is not served by
electric power but is comfortably and efficiently supplied with propane gas-the
refrigerators, the hot-water heater, the stoves, and the lamps are all run on
propane; the tanks of gas are delivered to the island by boat. The island has
its own septic system, which is a subject often discussed by the hordes of
Reelings and Gibsons and Ormsbys who empty themselves into it-and who are
fearful of the system's eventual rebellion. I would not have wanted to visit
the Reelings-or the Gibsons, or the Ormsbys-on their island before the septic
system was installed; but that period of unlighted encounters with spiders in
outhouses, and various late-night frights in the privy-world, is another
favorite topic of discussion among the families who share the island each
summer. I have heard, many times, the story of Uncle Bulwer Ormsby who was
attacked by an owl in the privy-which had no door, "the better to air it
out!" the Reelings and the Gibsons and the Ormsbys all claimed. Uncle
Bulwer was pecked on top of his head during

        
 
a fortunate hiatus in what should have been a
most private action, and he was so fearful of the attacking owl that he fled
the privy with his pants down at his ankles, and did even greater injury to
himself-greater than the owl's injury-by running headfirst into a pine tree.
And every year that I've visited the island, there are the familiar disputes
regarding what kind of owl it was-or even if it was an owl. Katherine's
husband, Charlie Keeling, says it was probably a horsefly or a moth. Others say
it was surely a screech owl-for they are known to be fierce in the defense of
their nests, even to the extent of attacking humans. Others say that a screech
owl's range does not extend to Georgian Bay, and that it was surely a merlin-a
pigeon hawk; they are very aggressive and are often mistaken for the smaller
owls at night. The company of Katherine's large and friendly family is
comforting to me. The conversations tend toward legendary occurrences on the
island-many of which include acts of bravery or cowardice from the old outhouse
or privy period of their lives. Disputed encounters with nature are also
popular; my days here are most enjoyably spent in identifying species of bird
and mammal and fish and reptile and, unfortunately, insect-almost none of which
is well known to me. Was that an otter or a mink or a muskrat? Was that a loon
or a duck or a scoter? Does it sting or bite, or is it poisonous? These
distinctions are punctuated by more direct questions to the children. Did you
flush, turn off the gas, close the screen door, leave the water running (the
pump is run by a gasoline engine)-and did you hang up your bathing suit and
towel where they will dry? It is remindful to me of my Loveless Lake
days-without the agony of dating; and Loveless Lake is a dinky pond compared to
Georgian Bay. Even in the summer of ', Loveless Lake was overrun by motorboats-and
in those days, many summer cottages flushed their toilets directly into the
lake. The so-called great outdoors is so much greater and so much nicer in
Canada than it ever was-in my time-in New Hampshire. But pine pitch on your
fingers is the same everywhere; and the kids with their hair damp all day, and
their wet bathing suits, and someone always with a skinned knee, or a splinter,
and the sound of bare feet on a dock . . . and the quarreling, all the
quarreling. I love it; for a short time, it is very soothing. I can almost
imagine that I have had a life very different from the life I have had. One can
learn much through the thin walls of summer houses. For example, I once heard
Charlie Keeling tell Katherine that I was a "nonpracticing homosexual."

"What does that mean?" Katherine asked him. I held my
breath, I strained to hear Charlie's answer-for years I've wanted to know what
it means to be a "nonpracticing homosexual."

"You know what I mean, Katherine," Charlie said.

"You mean he doesn't do it," Katherine said.

"I believe he doesn't," Charlie said.

"But when he thinks about doing it, he thinks about doing
it with men?" Katherine asked.

"I believe he doesn't think about it, at all," Charlie
answered.

"Then in what way is he 'homosexual,' Charlie?"
Katherine asked. Charlie sighed; in summer houses, one can even hear the sighs.

"He's not unattractive," Charlie said. "He
doesn't have a girlfriend. Has he ever had a girlfriend?"

"I fail to see how this makes him gay," Katherine
said. "He doesn't seem gay, not to me."

"I didn't say he was gay," Charlie said. "A
nonpracticing homosexual doesn't always know what he is."

So that's what it means to be a "nonpracticing
homosexual," I thought: it means I don't know what I am! Every day there
is a discussion of what we will eat-and who will take the boat, or one of the
boats, to the station to fetch the food and the vitals. The shopping list is
profoundly basic. gasoline

batteries Band-Aids

corn (if any) insect repellent hamburg and buns (lots) eggs

milk flour

butter beer (lots) fruit (if any)

 
 
bacon tomatoes
clothespins (for Prue) N   lemons live bait I let the younger
children show me how they have learned to drive the boat. I let Charlie Keeling
take me fishing; I really enjoy fishing for smallmouth bass-one day a year. I
lend a hand to whatever the most pressing project on the island is: the Ormsbys
need to rebuild their deck; the Gibsons are replacing shingles on the boathouse
roof. Every day, I volunteer to be the one to go to the station; shopping for a
large family is a treat for me-for such a short time. I take a kid or two with
me-for the pleasure of driving the boat would be wasted on me. And I always
share my room with one of the Keeling children-or, rather, the child is
required to share his room with me. I fall asleep listening to the astonishing
complexity of a child breathing in his sleep-of a loon crying out on the dark
water, of the waves lapping the rocks onshore. And in the morning, long before
the child stirs, I hear the gulls and I think about the tomato-red pickup
cruising the coastal road between Hampton Beach and Rye Harbor; I hear the
raucous, embattled crows, whose shrill disputations and harangues remind me
that I have awakened in the real world-in the world I know-after all. For a
moment, until the crows commence their harsh bickering, I can imagine that
here, on Georgian Bay, I have found what was once called The New World-all over
again, I have stumbled ashore on the undamaged land that Watahan-towet sold to
my ancestor. For in Georgian Bay it is possible to imagine North America as it
was-before the United States began the murderous deceptions and the unthinking
carelessness that have all but spoiled it! Then I hear the crows. They bring me
back to the world with their sounds of mayhem. I try not to think about Owen. I
try to talk with Charlie Keeling about otters.

"They have a long, flattened tail-the tail lies
horizontally on the water," Charlie told me.

"I see," I said. We were sitting on the rocks, on that
part of the shoreline where one of the children said he'd seen a muskrat.

"It was an otter," Charlie told the child.

"You didn't see it, Dad," another of the children
said. So Charlie and I decided to wait the creature out. A lot of freshwater
clamshells marked the entrance to the animal's cave in the rocks onshore.

"An otter is a lot faster in the water than a
muskrat," Charlie told me.

"I see," I said. We sat for an hour or two, and
Charlie told me how the water level of Georgian Bay-and of all of Lake
Huron-was changing; every year, it changes. He said he was worried that the
acid rain-from the United States-was starting to kill the lake, beginning, as
it always does (he said), with the bottom of the food chain.

"I see," I said.

"The weeds have changed, the algae have changed, you can't
catch the pike you used to-and one otter hasn't killed all these clams!"
he said, indicating the shells.

"I see," I said. Then, when Charlie was peeing-in
"the bush," as Canadians say-an animal about the size of a small
beagle, with a flattened sort of head and dark-brown fur, swam out from the
shore.

"Charlie!" I called. The animal dove; it did not come
up again. One of the children was instantly beside me.

"What was it?" the child asked.

"I don't know,"  said.

"Did it have a flattened tail?" Charlie called from
the bush.

"It had a flattened sort of head," I said.

"That's a muskrat," one of the children said.

"You didn't see it," said his sister.

"What kind of tail did it have?" Charlie called.

"I didn't see its tail," I admitted.

"It was that fast, huh?" Charlie asked me-emerging
from the bush, zipping up his fly.

"It was pretty fast, I guess," I said.

"It was an otter," he said. (I am tempted to say it
was a "nonpracticing homosexual," but I don't).

"See the duck?" a little girl asked me.

"That was no duck, you fool," her brother said.

"You didn't see it-it dove!" the girl said.

"It was a female something," someone else said.

"Oh, what do you know?" another child said.

"I didn't see anything," I said.

"Look over there-just keep looking," Charlie Keeling
said to me. "It has to come up for air," he explained. "It's
probably a pintail or a mallard or a blue-winged teal-if it's a female,"
he said. The pines smell wonderful, and the lichen on the rocks smell
wonderful, and even the smell of fresh water is wonderful-or is it, really, the
smell of some organic rot that is carrying on, just under the surface of all
that water? I don't know what makes a lake smell that way, but it's wonderful.
I could ask the Keeling family to tell me why the lake smells that way, but I
prefer the silence-just the breeze that's almost constant in the pines, the lap
of the waves, and the gulls' cries, and the shrieks of the terns.

"That's a Caspian tern," one of the Keeling boys said
to me. "See the long red bill, see the black feet?"

"I see," I said. But I wasn't paying attention to the
tern; I was remembering the letter I wrote to Owen Meany in the summer of . Dan
Needham had told me that he had seen Owen one Sunday in the Gravesend Academy
gym. Dan said that Owen had the basketball, but he wasn't shooting; he was
standing at the foul line, just looking up at the basket-he wasn't even
dribbling the ball, and he wouldn't take a shot. Dan said it was the strangest
thing.

"He was just standing there," Dan said. "I must
have watched him for five minutes, and he didn't move a muscle- he just held
the ball and stared at the basket. He's so small, you know, the basket must
look like it's a mile away."

"He was probably thinking about the shot," I told Dan.

"Well, I didn't bother him," Dan said. "Whatever
he was thinking about, he was concentrating so hard he didn't see me-I didn't
even say hello. I don't think he would have heard me, anyway," Dan said.
Hearing about him made me even miss practicing that stupid shot; and so I wrote
to him, just casually-since when would a twenty-year-old actually come out and
say he missed his best friend?

"Dear Owen," I wrote him. "What are you up to?
It's kind of boring here. I like the work in the woods best-I mean, the
logging. Except there are deer flies. The work at the sawmill, and in the
lumberyards, is much hotter-but there are no deer flies. Uncle Alfred insists
that Loveless Lake is 'potable'-he says we have swallowed so much of it, we
would be dead if it weren't. But Noah says there's much more piss and shit in
it than there is in the ocean. I miss the beach-how's the beach this summer?
Maybe next summer your father would give me a job in the quarries?"

He wrote back; he didn't bother to begin with the usual
"Dear John"- had his own style, nothing fancy, strictly capitals.

"ARE YOU CRAZY?" Owen wrote me. "YOU WANT TO WORK
IN THE QUARRIES? YOU THINK IT'S HOT IN A LUMBERYARD? MY FATHER DOESN'T DO A LOT
OF HIRING-AND I'M SURE HE WON'T PAY YOU AS MUCH AS YOUR UNCLE ALFRED. IT SOUNDS
TO ME LIKE YOU HAVEN'T MET THE RIGHT GIRL UP THERE."

"So how's Hester?" I asked him, when I wrote him back.
"Be sure to tell her that I love her room-that'll piss her off! I don't
suppose she's been helping you practice the shot-if you lose your touch,
that'll be too bad. You were so close to doing it in under three seconds."

He wrote back immediately. "UNDER THREE SECONDS IS
DEFINITELY POSSIBLE. I HAVEN'T BEEN PRACTICING BUT THINKING ABOUT IT IS ALMOST
AS GOOD. MY FATHER WILL HIRE YOU NEXT SUMMER-IT WON'T BE TOO BAD IF YOU START
OUT SLOWLY, MAYBE IN THE MONUMENT SHOP. BY THE WAY, THE BEACH HAS BEEN
GREAT-LOTS OF GOOD-LOOKING GIRLS AROUND, AND CAROLINE O'DAY HAS BEEN ASKING
ABOUT YOU. YOU OUGHT TO SEE HOW SHE LOOKS WHEN SHE'S NOT WEARING HER ST.
MICHAEL'S UNIFORM. SAW DAN ON HIS BICYCLE-HE SHOULD LOSE A LITTLE WEIGHT. AND
HESTER AND I SPENT AN EVENING WITH YOUR GRANDMOTHER; WE WATCHED THE IDIOT BOX,
OF COURSE, AND YOU SHOULD HAVE HEARD YOUR GRANDMOTHER ON THE SUBJECT OF THE
GENEVA CONFERENCE-SHE SAID SHE'D BELIEVE IN THE 'NEUTRALITY' OF LAOS WHEN THE
SOVIETS DECIDED TO RELOCATE ... ON THE MOON! SHE SAID SHE'D BELIEVE IN THE
GENEVA ACCORDS WHEN THERE WAS NOTHING BUT PARROTS AND MONKEYS MOVING ALONG THE
HO CHI MINH TRAIL! I WON'T REPEAT WHAT HESTER SAID ABOUT YOU USING HER
ROOM-IT'S THE SAME THING SHE SAYS ABOUT HER MOTHER AND FATHER AND NOAH AND
SIMON AND .       
 
ALL THE GIRLS ON LOVELESS LAKE, SO PERHAPS
YOU'RE FAMILIAR WITH THE EXPRESSION."