A prayer for Owen Meany (74 page)

"SUPPOSING THAT WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY-THAT WE WANT SOUTH
VIETNAM TO BE FREE TO GOVERN ITSELF-WE SHOULD BE PROTECTING SOUTH VIETNAM FROM
ATTACK. BUT IT APPEARS THAT WE ARE ATTACKING THE WHOLE COUNTRY- FROM THE AIR!
IF WE BOMB THE WHOLE COUNTRY TO BITS-TO PROTECT IT FROM COMMUNISM- WHAT KIND OF
PROTECTION IS THAT?

"I THINK THAT'S THE PROBLEM," said Owen Meany,
"BUT I'D LIKE TO SEE THE SITUATION FOR MYSELF."

My Uncle Alfred was speechless. My Aunt Martha said: "Yes,
I see!" Both of them were impressed. I realized that a part of the reason
why Owen had wanted to come to Sawyer Depot was to give himself an opportunity
to impress Hester's parents. I'd heard Owen's Vietnam thesis before; it was not
very original-I think it was borrowed from something Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,
had written or said-but Owen's delivery was impressive. I thought it was sad
that Hester made so little effort to impress Uncle Alfred and Aunt Martha, and
that she was so unimpressed by them.

        
 
At bedtime, I could hear Owen babbling away
to Aunt Martha-she had put him in Hester's room. Owen was inquiring about the
specific teddy bears and dolls and figurines.

"AND HOW OLD WAS SHE WHEN SHE LIKED THIS ONE?'' he would
ask Aunt Martha. "AND I SUPPOSE THAT THIS ONE DATES BACK TO THE FIREWATER
ERA," he would say. Before I went to bed, Simon said to me appreciatively:
"Owen's just as weird as ever! Isn't he great!"

I fell asleep remembering how Owen had first appeared to my
cousins-that day in the attic at  Front Street when we were contending
over the sewing machine and Owen stood in the sun from the skylight that blazed
through his ears. I remembered how he had appeared to all of us: like a
descending angel-a tiny but fiery god, sent to adjudicate the errors of our
ways. In the morning, Owen suggested that we move on to Loveless Lake. Simon
advised us to use the boathouse as a base camp. When he got off work at the sawmill,
Simon said, he would come take us waterskiing; we could sleep in the boathouse
at night. There were a couple of comfortable couches that unfolded to make
beds, and the boathouse had new screens on the windows. There were some
kerosene lamps; there was an outhouse nearby, and a hand pump drew the lake
water into a sink by the bar; there was a propane-gas stove, and some kettles
for boiling water-for drinking. In those days, we were allowed to bathe (with
soap!) in the lake. Owen and I agreed that it was cozier than camping in our
tent; also, for me it was relaxing to get away from Uncle Alfred and Aunt
Martha-and the effort that Owen made to impress them. At the lake, we were left
alone; Simon appeared only at the end of the day to take us waterskiing-he had
a steady girlfriend, so we rarely saw him at night. We cooked hamburgers on a
charcoal grill on the boatslip; we caught sunfish and perch off the dock-and
smallmouth bass when we went out in the canoe. At night, Owen and I sat on the
dock until the mosquitoes bothered us. Then we went into the boathouse and
turned on the kerosene lamps and talked for a while, or read our books. I was
trying to read Parade's End; I was just beginning it. Graduate students have
serious reading ambitions, but they don't finish a lot of books they start; I
wouldn't finish Parade's End until I was in my forties-when I tried it again.
Owen was reading a Department of the Army field manual called Survival,
Evasion, and Escape.

"I'LL READ YOU SOME OF MINE IF YOU READ ME SOME OF
YOURS," Owen said.

"Okay," I said.

" 'SURVIVAL IS LARGELY A MATTER OF MENTAL OUTLOOK,' "
he read.

"Sounds reasonable," I said.

"BUT LISTEN TO THIS," he said. "THIS IS ABOUT HOW
TO GET ALONG WITH THE NATIVES." I couldn't help but imagine that the only
"natives" Owen was going to have to ge.t along with were the
residents of Indiana and Arizona. " 'RESPECT PERSONAL PROPERTY, ESPECIALLY
THEIR WOMEN,' " he read.

"It doesn't say that!" I said.

"LISTEN TO THIS!" he said. " 'AVOID PHYSICAL
CONTACT WITHOUT SEEMING TO DO SO.' "

We both thought that was a scream-although I didn't tell him
that I was laughing, in part, because I was thinking about the
"natives" of Indiana and Arizona.

"WANT TO HEAR HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR FEET?" Owen
asked me.

"Not really, "I said.

"HOW ABOUT 'PRECAUTION AGAINST MOSQUITO BITES'?" he
asked. " 'SMEAR MUD ON YOUR FACE, ESPECIALLY BEFORE GOING TO BED,' "
he read. We laughed hysterically for a while.

"HERE'S A PART ABOUT FOOD AND WATER," he said. "
'DO NOT DRINK URINE.' "

"This sounds like a field manual for children]" I
said.

"THAT'S WHO MOST OF THE PEOPLE IN THE ARMY ARE," said
Owen Meany.

"What a world!" I said.

"HERE'S SOME GOOD ADVICE ABOUT ESCAPING FROM A MOVING
TRAIN," Owen said. " 'BEFORE JUMPING, MAKE SURE YOUR EXIT WILL BE
MADE FROM THE APPROPRIATE SIDE, OR YOU MAY JUMP INTO THE PATH OF AN ONCOMING
TRAIN.' "

"No shit!" I cried.

"LISTEN TO THIS," he said. " 'STRYCHNINE PLANTS
GROW WILD THROUGHOUT THE TROPICS. THE LUSCIOUS-LOOKING WHITE OR YELLOW FRUIT IS
ABUNDANT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. THE FRUIT HAS AN

        
 
EXCEEDINGLY BITTER PULP, AND THE SEEDS
CONTAIN A POWERFUL POISON.' "

I restrained myself from saying that I doubted any strychnine
grew in Indiana or Arizona.

"HERE'S ANOTHER ENTRY IN THE 'NO KIDDING!' CATEGORY,"
Owen said. "THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT 'EVASION TECHNIQUES WHEN THERE IS LITTLE
DISTINCTION BETWEEN FRIENDLY AND HOSTILE TERRITORY'-GET THIS: TT IS DIFFICULT
TO DISTINGUISH THE INSURGENT FROM THE FRIENDLY POPULACE.' "

I couldn't help myself; I said: "I hope you don't run into
that problem in Indiana or Arizona."

"LET'S HEAR SOMETHING FROM YOUR BOOK," he said,
closing his field manual. I tried to explain about Mrs. Satterthwaite's
daughter-that she was a woman who'd left her husband and child to run off with
another man, and now she wanted her husband to take her back, although she
hated him and intended to make him miserable. A friend of the family-a
priest-is confiding to Mrs. Satterthwaite his opinion of how her daughter will,
one day, respond to an infidelity of her husband's, which the priest believes
is only to be expected. The priest believes that the daughter will "tear
the house down"; that "the world will echo with her wrongs."

Here is the scene I read to Owen Meany:

" 'Do you mean to say,' Mrs. Satterthwaite said, 'that
Sylvia would do anything vulgar?'

" 'Doesn't every woman who's had a man to torture for years
when she loses him?' the priest asked. 'The more she's made an occupation of
torturing him the less right she thinks she has to lose him.' "

"WHAT A WORLD!" said Owen Meany. There were more
motorboats than loons on Loveless Lake; even at night, we heard more noise from
engines than we heard from wildlife. We decided to drive north, through
Dixville Notch, to Lake Francis; that was "real wilderness," Simon
had told us. Indeed, the camping on Lake Francis, which is one of New
Hampshire's northernmost lakes, was spectacular; but Owen Meany and I were not
campers. On Lake Francis, the cries of the loons were so mournful that they
frightened us; and the utter blackness of that empty lakeshore at night was
terrifying. There was so much noise at night-insect, bird, and animal
hoopla-that we couldn't sleep. One morning, we saw a moose.

"LET'S GO HOME, BEFORE WE SEE A BEAR," said Owen
Meany. "BESIDES," he said, "I SHOULD SPEND A LITTLE TIME WITH
HESTER."

But when we left Lake Francis, he turned the pickup north-toward
Quebec.

"WE'RE VERY CLOSE TO CANADA," he said. "I WANT TO
SEE IT."

At that particular border, there's little to see-just forests,
for miles, and a thin road so beaten by the winter that it is bruised to the
color of pencil lead and pockmarked with frost heaves. The border outpost-the
customs house-was a cabin; the gate across the road was as flimsy and innocent-looking
as the gate guarding a railroad crossing-in fact, it was raised. The Canadian
customs officers at the border didn't pay any attention to us-although we
parked the pickup truck about a hundred yards from the border, facing back
toward the United States; then we lowered the tailgate of the truck and sat on
it for a while, facing Canada. We sat there for half an hour before one of the
Canadian customs officers walked a short distance in our direction and stood
there, staring back at us. No traffic passed us in either direction, and the
dark fir trees that towered on either side of the border indicated no special
respect for national boundaries.

"I'M SURE IT'S A NICE COUNTRY TO LIVE IN," said Owen
Meany, and we drove home to Gravesend. We had a modest going-away party for him
at  Front Street; Hester and Grandmother were a trifle teary, but the
overall tone of our celebration was jolly. Dan Needham-our historian-delivered
a lengthy and unresolved meditation on whether Fort Benjamin Harrison was named
after William Henry Harrison's father or grandson; Dan offered a similarly
unresolved speculation on the origins of "Hoosier," which we all knew
was a nickname for a native of Indiana-but no one knew what else, if anything,
a "Hoosier" was. Then we made Owen Meany stand in the dark inside the
secret passageway, while Mr. Fish recited, too loudly, the passage that Owen
had always admired from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

" 'Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant
never taste of death but once,' " Mr. Fish intoned.

"I KNOW! I KNOW! OPEN THE DOOR!" cried Owen Meany.

" 'Of all the wonders that I have yet heard,' " said
Mr. Fish, " 'it seems to me the most strange that men should fear; seeing
that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.' "

"OKAY! OKAY! I'M NOT AFRAID-BUT THERE ARE COBWEBS IN HERE!
OPEN THE DOOR!" Owen cried. Perhaps the darkness inspired him to insist
that Hester and I follow him up to the attic. He wanted us to stand in the
closet of Grandfather's clothes with him; but this time we were not playing
game-we had no flashlight- and we were not in danger of having Hester grab our
doinks. Owen just wanted us all to stand there for a moment, in the dark.

"Why are we doing this?" Hester asked.

"SSSHHH! FORM A CIRCLE, HOLD HANDS!" he commanded. We
did as we were told; Hester's hand was much bigger than Owen's.

"Now what?" Hester asked.

"SSSHHH!" Owen said. We breathed in the mothballs; the
old clothes stirred against themselves-the mechanisms of the old umbrellas were
so rusty that the umbrellas, I was sure, could never be opened again; and the
brims of the old hats were so dry that they would crack if anyone attempted to
give shape to them. "DON'T BE AFRAID," said Owen Meany. That was all
he had to say to us before he left for Indiana. Several weeks went by before
Hester and I heard from him; I guess they kept him pretty busy at Fort Benjamin
Harrison. I would see Hester sometimes at night, along "the strip" at
Hampton Beach; usually, some guy was with her-rarely the same guy, and never
anyone she bothered to introduce me to.

"Have you heard anything from him?" I would ask her.

"Nothing yet," she'd say. "Have you?"

When we heard from him, we heard together; his first letters
weren't very special-he sounded more bored than overwhelmed. Hester and I
probably put more effort into talking about those first letters than Owen had
put into writing them. There was a major who'd taken a liking to him; Owen said
that his writing and editorial work for The Grave had provided him with a
better background for what the Army seemed to want of him than anything he'd
learned in ROTC, or in Basic Training. Hester and I agreed that Owen sounded
despondent. He said simply: "A GREAT DEAL HAS TO BE WRITTEN
EVERYDAY."

The second month he'd been away, or thereabouts, his letters
were perkier. He was more optimistic about his orders; he'd heard some good
things about Fort Huachuca, Arizona. All the talk at Fort Benjamin Harrison
told him that Fort Huachuca was a fortunate place to be; he'd be working in the
Adjutant's Office of the Strategic Communications Command- he'd been told that
the major general who was in charge was "flexible" on the subject of
reassignments; the major general had been known to assist his junior officers
with their requests for transfers. When I started graduate school in the fall
of ', was still looking for an apartment in Durham-or even in Newmarket,
between Durham and Gravesend. I was looking halfheartedly, but-at twenty-four-I
knew I had to admit to myself that what Owen had told me was true: that I was
too old to be living with my stepfather or my grandmother.

"Why don't you move in with me?" Hester said.
"You'd have your own bedroom," she added-unnecessarily. When her two
previous roommates had graduated, Hester had replaced only one of them; after
all, Owen was there much of the time-Hester having only one roommate made it
less awkward for Owen. When the one roommate had left to get married, Hester
hadn't replaced her. My first anxiety about sharing an apartment with Hester
was that Owen might disapprove.

"It was Owen's idea," Hester told me. "Didn't he
write you about it?"

That letter came along, after he'd settled into Fort Huachuca.

"IF HESTER STILL DOESN'T HAVE A ROOMMATE, WHY DON'T YOU
MOVE IN WITH HER?" he wrote. "THAT WAY, I COULD CALL YOU
BOTH-COLLECT!-AT THE SAME NUMBER.

"YOU SHOULD SEE FORT HUACHUCA! SEVENTY-THREE THOUSAND
ACRES! PRAIRIE GRASSLAND, ELEVATION ABOUT FIVE THOUSAND FEET- EVERYTHING IS
YELLOW AND TAN, EXCEPT THE MOUNTAINS IN THE DISTANCE ARE BLUE AND PURPLE AND
EVEN PINK. THERE'S A FISHING LAKE JUST BEHIND THE OFFICERS' CLUB! THERE ARE
ALMOST TWENTY THOUSAND PERSONNEL HERE, BUT THE

        
 
FORT IS SO SPREAD OUT, YOU'D NEVER KNOW THEY
WERE HERE-IT'S SIX MILES FROM THE WEST ENTRANCE OF THE FORT TO THE AIRFIELD,
AND ANOTHER MILE TO THE HEADQUARTERS BARRACKS, AND YOU CAN GO EAST ANOTHER SIX
MILES FROM THERE. I'M GOING TO START PLAYING TENNIS-I CAN TAKE FLYING LESSONS,
IF I WANT TO! AND MEXICO IS ONLY TWENTY MILES AWAY! THE PRAIRIE IS NOT LIKE THE
DESERT-BUT THERE ARE JOSHUA TREES AND PRICKLY PEAR, AND THERE ARE WILD PIGS
CALLED JAVELIN A, AND COYOTE. YOU KNOW WHAT COYOTES LIKE TO EAT BEST! HOUSE
CATS!