A prayer for Owen Meany (71 page)

"Johnny Wheelwright, you listen to me!" she said; she
got me on the telephone at  Front Street, and I was afraid of her. Even my
grandmother thought that Mrs. Hoyt should be conducting herself "in a
manner more suitable to mourning"; but Mrs. Hoyt was as mad as a hornet.
She'd given Owen a lecture at the monument shop when she was picking out a
stone for Harry!

"I don't want a cross," she told Owen. "A lot of
good God ever did him!"

"YES, MA'AM," said Owen Meany.

"And I don't want one of those things that look like a
stepping-stone-that's just like the military, to give you a grave that people
can walk on!" Mrs. Hoyt said.

"I UNDERSTAND," Owen told her. Then she lit into him
about his ROTC "obligation," about how he should do everything he
could to end up with a "desk job"-if he knew what was good for him.

"And I don't mean a desk job in Saigonl" she said to
him. "Don't you dare be a participant in that genocide]" she told
him. "Do you want to set fire to small Asian women and children?" she
asked him.

"NO, MA'AM!" said Owen Meany.

        
 
To me, she said: "They're not going to
let you be a graduate student in English. What do they care about English*?
They barely speak it!"

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"You can't hide in graduate school-believe me, it won't
work," said Mrs. Hoyt. "And unless you've got something wrong with
you-I mean, physically-you're going to die in a rice paddy. Is there anything
wrong with you?" she asked me.

"Not that I know of, ma'am," I said.

"Well, you ought to think of something," Mrs. Hoyt
told me. "I know someone who does psychiatric counseling; he can coach
you-he can make you seem crazy. But that's risky, and you've got to start
now-you need time to develop a history, if you're going to convince anybody
you're insane. It's no good just getting drunk and smearing dog shit in your
hair the night before your physical-if you don't develop a mental history, it
won't work to try to fake it."

That, however, is what Buzzy Thurston tried-and it worked. It
worked a little too well. He didn't develop a "history" that was one
day longer than two weeks; but even in that short time, he managed to force
enough alcohol and drugs into his body to convince his body that it liked this
form of abuse. To Mrs. Hoyt, Buzzy would be as much a victim of the war as her
Harry; Buzzy would kill himself trying to stay out of Vietnam.

"Have you thought about the Peace Corps?" Mrs. Hoyt
asked me. She said she'd counseled one young man-also an English major-to apply
to the Peace Corps. He'd been accepted as an English teacher in Tanzania. It
was a pity, she admitted, that the Red Chinese had sent about four hundred '
'advisers'' to Tanzania in the summer of '; the Peace Corps, naturally, had
withdrawn in a hurry. "Just think about it," Mrs. Hoyt said to me.
"Even Tanzania is a better idea than Vietnam!"

I told her I'd think about it; but I thought I had so much time!
Imagine this: you're a university senior, you're a virgin-do you believe it
when someone tells you that you have to make up your mind between Vietnam and
Tanzania?

"You better believe it," Hester told me. That was the
year-, in February-when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began televised
hearings on the war.

"I think you better talk to Mrs. Hoyt," my grandmother
told me. "I don't want any grandson of mine to have anything to do with
this mess."

"Listen to me, John," Dan Needham said., "This is
not the time to do what Owen Meany does. This time Owen is making a
mistake."

I told Dan that I was afraid I might be responsible for
sabotaging Owen's desire for a "combat arms designator"; I confessed
that I'd told Colonel Eiger that Owen's "emotional stability" was
questionable, and that I'd agreed with the colonel that Owen was not suitable
for a combat branch. I told Dan I felt guilty that I'd said these things
"behind Owen's back."

"How can you feel 'guilty' for trying to save his
life?" Dan asked me. Hester said the same thing, when I confessed to her
that I had betrayed Owen to Colonel Eiger.

"How can you say you 'betrayed' him? If you love him, how
could you want what he wants? He's crazy!'' Hester cried. "If the Army
insists that he's not 'fit' for combat, I could even learn to love the fucking
Army!"

But everyone was beginning to seem "crazy" to me. My
grandmother just muttered away at the television-all day and all night. She was
beginning to forget things and people-if she hadn't seen them on TV-and more
appalling, she remembered everything she'd seen on television with a mindless,
automatic accuracy. Even Dan Needham seemed crazy to me; for how many years
could anyone maintain enthusiasm for amateur theatricals, in general-and for
the question of which role in A Christmas Carol best suited Mr. Fish, in
particular? And although I did not sympathize with the Gravesend Gas Works for
firing Mrs. Hoyt as their receptionist, I thought Mrs. Hoyt was crazy, too. And
those town "patriots" who were apprehended in the act of vandalizing
Mrs. Hoyt's car and garage were even crazier than she was. And Rector Wiggin,
and his wife, Barbara . . . they had always been crazy; now they were claiming
that God "supported" the U.S. troops in Vietnam-their implication
being mat to not support the presence of those troops was both anti-American
and ungodly. Although the Rev. Lewis Merrill was-with Dan Needham- the
principal spokesman for what amounted to the antiwar movement within Gravesend
Academy, even Mr. Merrill looked crazy to me; for all his talk about peace, he
wasn't making any progress with Owen Meany.

        
 
Of course, Owen was the craziest; I suppose
it was always a toss-up between Owen and Hester, but regarding the subject of
Owen wanting and actively seeking a combat-branch assignment, there was no
doubt in my mind that Owen was the craziest.

"Why do you want to be a hero?" I asked him.

"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND," he said.

"No, I don't," I admitted. It was the spring of our
senior year, ; I'd already been accepted into the graduate school at the
University of New Hampshire-for the next year, at least, I wouldn't be going
anywhere; I had my -S deferment and was hanging on to it. Owen had already
filled out his Officer Assignment Preference Statement-his DREAM SHEET, he
called it. On his Personnel Action Form, he'd noted that he was
"volunteering for oversea service." On both forms, he'd specified
that he wanted to go to Vietnam: Infantry, Armor, or Artillery-in that order.
He was not optimistic; with his number-two ranking in his ROTC unit, the Army
was under no obligation to honor his choice. He admitted that no one had been
very encouraging regarding his appeal to change his assignment from the
Adjutant General's Corps to a combat branch-not even Colonel Eiger had
encouraged him.

"THE ARMY OFFERS YOU THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE-THE SAME CHOICE
AS EVERYONE ELSE," Owen said. While he was hoping to be reassigned, he
would toss around all the bullshit phrases favored by the Department of the
Army Headquarters: RANGER TRAINING, AIRBORNE TRAINING, SPECIAL FORCES
TRAINING-one day when he said he wished he'd gone to JUMP SCHOOL, or to JUNGLE
SCHOOL, Hester threw up.

"Why do you want to go-at all?" I screamed at him.

"I KNOW THAT I DO GO," he said. "IT'S NOT NECESSARILY
A MATTER OF WANTING TO."

"Let me make sure I get this right," I said to him.
"You 'know' that you go whereT'

"TO VIETNAM," he said.

"I see," I said.

"No, you don't 'see,' " Hester said. "Ask him how
he 'knows' that he goes to Vietnam," she said.

"How do you know, Owen?" I asked him; I thought I knew
how he knew-it was the dream, and it gave me the shivers. Owen and I were
sitting in the wooden, straight-backed chairs in Hester's roach-infested
kitchen. Hester was making a tomato sauce; she was not an exciting cook, and
the kitchen retained the acidic, oniony odor of many of her previous tomato
sauces. She wilted an onion in cheap olive oil in a cast-iron skillet; then she
poured in a can of tomatoes. She added water-and basil, oregano, salt, red pepper,
and sometimes a leftover bone from a pork chop or a lamb chop or a steak. She
would reduce this mess to a volume that was less than the original can of
tomatoes, and the consistency of paste. This glop she would dump over pasta,
which had been boiled until it was much too soft. Occasionally, she would
surprise us with a salad-the dressing for which was composed of too much
vinegar and the same cheap olive oil she had employed in her assault of the
onion. Sometimes, after dinner, we would listen to music on the living-room
couch-or else Hester would sing something to Owen and me. But the couch was at
present uninviting, the result of Hester taking pity on one of Durham's stray
dogs; the mutt had demonstrated its gratitude by bestowing upon Hester's living-room
couch an infestation of fleas. This was the life that Hester and I thought Owen
valued too little.

"I DON'T WANT TO BE A HERO," said Owen Meany.
"IT'S NOT THAT I WANT TO BE-IT'S THAT I AM A HERO. I KNOW THAT'S WHAT I'M
SUPPOSED TO BE."

"How do you know?" I asked him.

"IT'S NOT THAT I WANT TO GO TO VIETNAM-IT'S WHERE I HAVE TO
GO. IT'S WHERE I'M A HERO. I'VE GOT TO BE THERE," he said.

"Tell him how you 'know' this, you asshole!" Hester
screamed at him.

"THE WAY YOU KNOW SOME THINGS-YOUR OBLIGATIONS, YOUR
DESTINY OR YOUR FATE," he said. "THE WAY YOU KNOW WHAT GOD WANTS YOU
TO DO."

"God wants you to go to Vietnam?" I asked him. Hester
ran out of the kitchen and shut herself in the bathroom; she started running
the water in the bathtub. "I'm not listening to this shit, Owen-not one
more time, I told you!" she cried. When Owen got up from the kitchen table
to turn the flame down under the tomato sauce, we could hear Hester being sick
in the bathroom.

"It's this dream, isn't it?" I asked him. He stirred
the tomato sauce as if he knew what he was doing. "Does Pastor

 
 
Merrill tell you
that God wants you to go to Vietnam?" I asked him. "Does Father
Findley tell you that?"

"THEY SAY IT'S JUST A DREAM," said Owen Meany.

"That's what / say-I don't even know what it is, but I say
it's just a dream," I said.

"BUT YOU HAVE NO FAITH," he said. "THAT'S YOUR
PROBLEM."

In the bathroom, Hester was sounding like New Year's Eve; the
tomato sauce just simmered. Owen Meany could manifest a certain calmness that I
had never quite liked; when he got like that when we were practicing the shot,
I didn't want to touch him-when I passed him the ball, I felt uneasy; and when
I had to put my hands on him, when I actually lifted him up, I always felt I
was handling a creature that was not exactly, human, or not quite real. I
wouldn't have been surprised if he had twisted in the air, in my hands, and
bitten me; or if-after I'd lifted him-he'd just kept on flying.

"It's only a dream," I repeated.

"IT'S NOT YOUR DREAM," said Owen Meany.

"Don't be coy, don't play around with me," I told him.

"I'M NOT PLAYING AROUND," he said. "WOULD I
REQUEST A COMBAT ASSIGNMENT IF I WERE PLAYING AROUND?"

I began again. "In this dream, you're a hero?" I asked
him.

"I SAVE THE CHILDREN," said Owen Meany. "I SAVE
LOTS OF CHILDREN."

"Children?" I said.

"IN THE DREAM," he said-"THEY'RE NOT SOLDIERS,
THEY'RE CHILDREN."

"Vietnamese children?" I asked.

"THAT'S HOW I KNOW WHERE I AM-THEY'RE DEFINITELY VIETNAMESE
CHILDREN, AND I SAVE THEM. I WOULDN'T GO TO ALL THIS TROUBLE IF I WAS SUPPOSED
TO SAVE SOLDIERS!" he added.

"Owen, this is so childish," I said. "You can't
believe that everything that pops into your head means something! You can't
have a dream and believe that you 'know' what you're supposed to do!"

"THAT ISN'T EXACTLY WHAT FAITH IS," he said, turning
his attention to the tomato sauce. ' 'I DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING THAT POPS INTO
MY HEAD-FAITH IS A LITTLE MORE SELECTIVE THAN THAT."

Some dreams, I suppose, are MORE SELECTIVE, too. Under the big
pot of water for the pasta, Owen turned the flame on-as if the sounds of
Hester's dry heaves in the bathroom were an indication to him that her appetite
would be returning soon. Then he went into Hester's bedroom and fetched his
diary. He didn't show it to me; he simply found the part he was looking for,
and he began to read to me. I didn't know I was hearing an edited version. The
word "dream" was never mentioned in his writing, as if it were not a
dream he was describing but rather something he had seen with much more
certainty and authority than anything appearing to him in his sleep-as if he
were describing an order of events he had absolutely witnessed. Yet he remained
removed from what he saw, like someone watching through a window, and the tone of
the writing was not at all as urgent as the tone so often employed by The
Voice; rather, the certainty and authority that I heard reminded me of the
plain, less-than-enthusiastic report of a documentary, which is the tone of
voice of those undoubting parts of the Bible.

"I NEVER HEAR THE EXPLOSION. WHAT I HEAR IS THE AFTERMATH
OF AN EXPLOSION. THERE IS A RINGING IN MY EARS, AND THOSE HIGH-PITCHED POPPING
AND TICKING SOUNDS THAT A HOT ENGINE MAKES AFTER YOU SHUT IT OFF; AND PIECES OF
THE SKY ARE FALLING, AND BITS OF WHITE-MAYBE PAPER, MAYBE PLASTER-ARE FLOATING
DOWN LIKE SNOW. THERE ARE SILVERY SPARKLES IN THE AIR, TOO-MAYBE IT'S SHATTERED
GLASS. THERE'S SMOKE, AND THE STINK OF BURNING; THERE'S NO FLAME, BUT
EVERYTHING IS SMOLDERING.

"WE'RE ALL LYING ON THE FLOOR. I KNOW THE CHILDREN ARE ALL
RIGHT BECAUSE-ONE BY ONE- THEY PICK THEMSELVES UP OFF THE FLOOR. IT MUST HAVE
BEEN A LOUD EXPLOSION BECAUSE SOME OF THE CHILDREN ARE STILL HOLDING THEIR
EARS; SOME OF THEIR EARS ARE BLEEDING. THE CHILDREN DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH, BUT
THEIR VOICES ARE THE FIRST HUMAN SOUNDS TO FOLLOW THE EXPLOSION. THE YOUNGER
ONES ARE CRYING; BUT THE OLDER ONES ARE DOING THEIR BEST TO BE COMFORTING
-THEY'RE CHATTERING AWAY, THEY'RE REALLY BABBLING, BUT THIS IS REASSURING.