A prayer for Owen Meany (66 page)

What he meant was that he believed he "knew" what
would happen to him; that it wasn't missiles that would get him- neither the
Soviets' nor ours-and that, whatever "it" was, it didn't happen in
October, .

"How do you know nothing's going to happen?" someone
asked him. It was the guy who hung around Hester's apartment as if he were
waiting for Owen Meany to drop dead. He kept encouraging Hester to read The
Alexandria Quartet-especially Justine and Clea, which this guy claimed he had
read four or five times. Hester wasn't much of a reader, and I had read only
Justine. Owen Meany had read the whole quartet and had told Hester and me not
to bother with the last three novels.

"IT'S JUST MORE OF THE SAME, AND NOT SO WELL DONE,"
Owen said. "ONE BOOK ABOUT HAVING SEX IN A FOREIGN ATMOSPHERE IS
ENOUGH."

"What do you know about 'sex in a foreign
atmosphere'?" the quartet-lover had asked Owen. Owen had not answered the
guy. He surely knew the guy was a rival for Hester's affections; he also knew
that rivals are best unmanned by being ignored.

"Hey!" the guy shouted at Owen. "I'm talking to
you. What makes you think you know there's not going to be a war?"

"OH, THERE'S GOING TO BE A WAR, ALL RIGHT," said Owen
Meany. "BUT NOT NOW-NOT OVER CUBA. EITHER KHRUSHCHEV WILL PULL THE
MISSILES OUT OF CUBA OR KENNEDY WILL OFFER HIM SOMETHING TO HELP HIM SAVE
FACE."

"This little man knows everything," the guy said.

"Don't you call him 'little,' " Hester said.
"He's got the biggest penis ever. If there's a bigger one, I don't want to
know about it," Hester said.

"THERE'S NO NEED TO BE CRUDE," said Owen Meany. That
was the last we ever saw of the guy who wanted Hester to read The Alexandria
Quartet. I will confess that in the showers in the Gravesend Academy gym-after
practicing the shot-I had noticed that Owen's doink was especially large; at
least, it was disproportionately large. Compared to the rest of him, it was
huge\ My cousin Simon, whose doink was rather small-perhaps owing to Hester's
childhood violence upon it-once claimed that small doinks grew much, much
bigger when they were erect; big doinks, Simon said, never grew much when they
got hard. I confess: I don't know-I have no doink theory as adamant or hopeful
as Simon's. The only time I saw Owen Meany with an erection, he was wrapped in
swaddling clothes-he was only an eleven-year-old Baby Jesus; and although his
hard-on was highly inappropriate, it didn't strike me as astonishing. As for
the shot, Owen and I were guilty of lack of practice; by the end of our
freshman year, by the summer of - when we were twenty-one, the legal drinking
age at last!-we had trouble sinking the shot in under five seconds. We had to
work at it all summer-just to get back to where we had been, just to break four
seconds again. It was the summer the Buddhists in Vietnam were
demonstrating-they were setting themselves on fire. It was the summer when Owen
said, "WHAT'S A CATHOLIC DOING AS PRESIDENT OF A COUNTRY OF BUDDHISTS?"
It was the summer when President Diem was not long for this world; President
John F. Kennedy was not long for this world, either. And it was the first
summer I went to work for Meany Granite. It was my illusion that I worked for
Mr. Meany; it was his illusion, too. It had been amply demonstrated to me-who
bossed whom, in that family. I should have known, from the start, that Owen was
in charge.

"MY FATHER WANTS TO START YOU OUT IN THE

        
 
MONUMENT SHOP," he told me. "YOU
BEGIN WITH AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE FINISHED PRODUCT-IN THIS BUSINESS, IT'S
EASIER TO BEGIN WITH THE FINE-TUNING. IT'S GETTING THE STUFF OUT OF THE GROUND
THAT CAN BE TRICKY. I HOPE YOU DON'T THINK I'M CONDESCENDING, BUT WORKING WITH
GRANITE IS A LOT LIKE WRITING A TERM PAPER-IT'S THE FIRST DRAFT THAT CAN KILL
YOU. ONCE YOU GET THE GOOD STUFF INTO THE SHOP, THE FINE WORK IS EASY: CUTTING
THE STONE, EDGING THE LETTERS-YOU'VE JUST GOT TO BE FUSSY. IT'S ALL SMOOTHING
AND POLISHING-YOU'VE GOT TO GO SLOWLY.

"DON'T BE IN A HURRY TO WORK IN THE QUARRIES. AT THE
MONUMENT-END, AT LEAST THE SIZE AND WEIGHT OF THE STONE ARE MANAGEABLE- YOU'RE
WORKING WITH SMALLER TOOLS AND A SMALLER PRODUCT. AND IN THE SHOP, EVERY DAY IS
DIFFERENT; YOU NEVER KNOW HOW BUSY YOU'LL BE-MOST PEOPLE DON'T DIE ON SCHEDULE,
MOST FAMILIES DON'T ORDER GRAVESTONES IN ADVANCE."

I don't doubt that he was genuinely concerned for my safety, and
I know he knew everything about granite; it was wise to develop a feeling for
the stone-on a smaller, more refined scale-before one encountered the
intimidating size and weight of it in the quarry. All the quarrymen-the
signalman, the derrickman, the channel bar drillers, and the dynamiters-and
even the sawyers who had to handle the rock before it was cut down to monument
size ... a// the men who worked at the quarries were afforded a less generous
margin for error than those of us who worked in the monument shop. Even so, I
thought there was more than caution motivating Owen to keep me working in the
monument shop for the entire summer of '. For one thing, I wanted muscles; and
the physical work in the monument shop was a lot less strenuous than being a
logger for my Uncle Alfred. For another thing, I envied Owen his tan-he worked
in the quarries, unless it was raining; on rainy days, he worked in the shop
with me. And we called him in from the quarries whenever there was a customer
placing an order for a gravestone; Owen insisted that he be the one to handle
that-and when the order was not placed by a funeral home, when the customer was
a family member or a close Mend of the deceased, we were all grateful that Owen
wanted to handle it. He was very good at that part of it-very respectful of
grief, very tactful (while at the same time he managed to be very specific). I
don't mean that this was simply a matter of spelling the name correctly and
double-checking the date of birth, and the date of death; I mean that the
personality of the deceased was discussed, in depth-Owen sought nothing less
than a PROPER monument, a COMPATIBLE monument. The aesthetics of the deceased
were taken into consideration; the size, shape, and color of the stone were
only the rough drafts of the business; Owen wanted to know the tastes of those
mourners who would be viewing the gravestone more than once. I never saw a customer
who was displeased with the final product; unfortunately-for the enterprises of
Meany Granite-I never saw very many customers, either.

"DON'T BE VAIN," Owen told me, when I complained about
the length of my apprenticeship in the monument shop. "IF YOU'RE STANDING
IN THE BOTTOM OF A QUARRY, THINKING ABOUT WHAT KIND OF TAN YOU'RE GETTING-OR
YOUR STUPID MUSCLES- YOU'RE GOING TO END UP UNDER TEN TONS OF GRANITE. BESIDES,
MY FATHER THINKS YOU'RE DOING A GREAT JOB WITH THE GRAVESTONES."

But I don't think Mr. Meany ever noticed the work I was doing
with the monuments; it was August before I even saw Mr. Meany in the shop, and
he looked surprised to see me-but he always said the same thing, whenever and
wherever he saw me. "Why, it's Johnny Wheelwright!" he'd always say.
And when it wasn't raining-or when Owen wasn't talking directly to a
customer-the only other time that Owen was in the shop was when there was an
especially difficult piece of stonecutting assigned, a particularly complicated
gravestone, a demanding shape, lots of tight curves and sharp angles, and so
forth. And the typical Gravesend families were plain and dour in the face of
death; we had few calls for elaborate coping, even fewer for archways with
dosserets, and not one for angels sliding down barber poles. That was too bad,
because to see Owen at work with the diamond wheel was to witness
state-of-the-art monument-making. There was no one as precise with the diamond
wheel as Owen Meany.

        
 
A diamond wheel is similar to a radial-arm saw,
a wood saw familiar to me from my uncle's mill; a diamond wheel is a table saw
but the blade is not part of the table-the blade, which is a
diamond-impregnated wheel, is lowered to the table in a gantry. The wheel blade
is about two feet in diameter and studded (or "tipped") with diamond
segments-these are pieces of diamond, only a half inch long, only a quarter
inch wide. When the blade is lowered onto the granite, it cuts through the
stone at a preset angle into a waiting block of wood. It is a very sharp blade,
it makes a very exact and smooth cut; it is perfect for making the precise,
polished edges on the tops and sides of gravestones-like a scalpel, it makes no
mistakes, or only the user's mistakes. By comparison to other saws in the
granite business, it is so fine and delicate a tool that it isn't even called a
saw-it is always called "the diamond wheel." It passes through
granite with so little resistance that its sound is far less snarly than many
wood saws of the power type; a diamond wheel makes a single, high-pitched
scream-very plaintive. Owen Meany said: "A DIAMOND WHEEL MAKES A
GRAVESTONE SOUND AS IF THE STONE ITSELF IS MOURNING."

Think of how much time he spent in that creepy monument shop on
Water Street, the unfinished lettering of the names of the dead surrounding
him-is it any wonder that he SAW his own name and the date of his death on
Scrooge's grave? No; it's a wonder he didn't SEE such horrors every day! And
when he put on those crazy-looking safety goggles and lowered the diamond wheel
into cutting position, the terribly consistent scream of that blade must have
reminded him of the "permanent scream," which was his own unchanging
voice-to use Mr. McSwiney's term for it. After my summer in the monument shop,
I could appreciate what might have appealed to Owen Meany about the quiet of
churches, the peace of prayer, the easy cadence of hymns and litanies-and even
the simplistic, athletic ritual of practicing the shot. As for the rest of the
summer of -when the Buddhists in Vietnam were torching themselves, and time was
running out on the Kennedys-Hester was working as a lobster-house waitress
again.

"So much for a B.A. in Music," she said. At least I
could appreciate what Owen Meany meant, when he said of Randy White: "I'D
LIKE TO GET HIM UNDER THE DIAMOND WHEEL-ALL I'D NEED IS JUST A FEW SECONDS. I'D
LIKE TO PUT HIS DOINK UNDER THE DIAMOND WHEEL," Owen said. As for
doinks-as for mine, in particular-I had another slow summer. The Catholic
Church had reason to be proud of the insurmountable virtue of Caroline O'Day,
with or without her St. Michael's uniform-and of the virtue of countless
others, any church could be proud; they were all virtuous with me. I felt
someone's bare breast, briefly-only once, and it was an accident-one warm night
when we went swimming off the beach at Little Boar's Head and the
phosphorescence, in my opinion, was especially seductive. The girl was a
musical friend of Hester's, and in the tomato-red pickup, on the ride back to
Durham, Hester volunteered to be the one to sit on my lap, because my date was
so displeased by my awkward, amateurish advances.

"Here, you sit in the middle, I'll sit on him," Hester
told her friend. "I've felt his silly hard-on before, and it doesn't
bother me."

"THERE'S NO NEED TO BE CRUDE," said Owen Meany. And so
I rode from Little Boar's Head to Durham with Hester on my lap-once again,
humiliated by my hard-on. I thought that just a few seconds under the diamond
wheel would certainly suffice for me; and if someone were to put my doink under
the wheel, I considered that it would be no great loss. I was twenty-one and I
was still a Joseph; I was a Joseph then, and I'm just a Joseph now. Georgian
Bay: July , -why can't I just enjoy all the nature up here? I coaxed one of the
Keeling kids to take me in one of the boats to Pointe au Baril Station.
Miraculously, no one on the island needed anything from the station: not an
egg, not a scrap of meal, or a bar of soap; not even any live bait. I was the
only one who needed anything; I "needed" a newspaper, I'm ashamed to
say. Needing to know the news- it's such a weakness, it's worse than many other
addictions, it's an especially debilitating illness. The Toronto Star said the
White House was so frustrated by both Congress and the Pentagon that a small,
special-forces group within the military was established; and that actual,
active-duty American troops fired rockets and machine guns at Nicaraguan
soldiers-all this was unknown to the Congress or the Pentagon. Why aren't
Americans as disgusted by them-

        
 
selves-as fed up with themselves-as everyone
else is? All their lip service to democracy, all their blatantly undemocratic
behavior! I've got to stop reading about this whole silly business! All these
headlines can turn your mind to mush- headlines that within a year will seem
most unmemorable; and if memorable, merely quaint. I live in Canada, I have a
Canadian passport-why should I waste my time caring what the Americans are
doing, especially when they don't care themselves? I'm going to try to interest
myself in something more cosmic-in something more universal, although I suppose
that a total lack of integrity in government is "universal," isn't
it? There was another story in The Toronto Star, more appropriate to the
paradisiacal view of the universe one can enjoy from Georgian Bay. It was a
story about black holes: scientists say that black holes could engulf two whole
galaxies! The story was about the potential "collapse of the star
system"-what could be more important than that! Listen to this:
"Black holes are concentrations of matter so dense they have collapsed
upon themselves. Nothing, not even light, can escape their intense
gravitational pull." Imagine mat! Not even light-my God! I announced this
news to the Keeling family; but one of the middle children-a sort of
science-prize student-responded to me rather rudely.

"Yeah," he said, "but all the black holes are
about two million light-years away from Earth."

And I thought: That is about as far away from Earth as Owen
Meany is; that is about as far away from Earth as I would like to be. And where
is JFK today? How far away is he? On November , , Owen Meany and I were in my
room at  Front Street, studying for a Geology exam. I was angry with Owen
for manipulating me into taking Geology, the true nature of which was
concealed-at the University of New Hampshire-in the curriculum catalog under
the hippie-inspired title of Earth Science. Owen had misled me into thinking
that the course would be an easy means of satisfying a part of our science requirement-he
knew all about rocks, he assured me, and the rest of the course would concern
itself with fossils. "IT'LL BE NEAT TO KNOW ALL ABOUT THE DINOSAURS!"
Owen had said; he seduced me. We spent less than a week with the dinosaurs-and
far less time with fossils than we spent learning the horrible names of the
ages of the earth. And it turned out that Owen Meany didn't know a metamorphic
schist from an igneous intrusion-unless the latter was granite. On November , ,
had just confused the Paleocene epoch with the Pleistocene, and I was further
confused by the difference between an epoch and an era.