A prayer for Owen Meany (86 page)

        
 
we not cast it out?" And he said to
them, "This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer."

When he finished reading this passage, Pastor Merrill lifted his
face to us and cried out, " 'I believe; help my unbelief!' Owen Meany
helped my 'unbelief,' " my father said. "Compared to Owen Meany, I am
an amateur-in my faith," Mr. Merrill said. "Owen was not just a hero
to the United States Army-he was my hero,'' my father said. "He was our
hero- over and over again, he was our hero; he was always our hero. And we will
always miss him," the Rev. Lewis Merrill said.

"As often as I feel certain that God exists, I feel as
often at a loss to say what difference it makes-that He exists-or even: that to
believe in God, which I do, raises more questions than it presents answers.
Thus, when I am feeling my most faithful, I also feel full of a few hard
questions that I would like to put to God-I mean, critical questions of the
How-Can-He, How-CoM/rf-He, Rovf-Dare-Yoa variety.

' 'For example, I would like to ask God to give us back Owen
Meany," Mr. Merrill said; when he spread his arms wide, the fingers of his
right hand were dancing again in the beam of light. "O God-give him back,
give him back to us!" Pastor Merrill asked. It was so quiet in Hurd's
Church, while we waited to see what God would do. I heard a tear fall-it was
one of my grandmother's tears, and I heard it patter upon the cover of the Pilgrim
Hymnal, which she held in her lap. "Please give us back Owen Meany,"
Mr. Merrill said. When nothing happened, my father said: "O God-I shall
keep asking You!" Then he once more turned to The Book of Common Prayer;
it was unusual for a Congregationalist- especially, in a nondenominational
church-to be using the prayer book so scrupulously, but I was sure that my
father respected that Owen had been an Episcopalian. Lewis Merrill took the
prayer book with him when he left die pulpit; he approached the flag-draped casket
and stood so close to Owen's medal that the shaft of sunlight that shone
through the hole the baseball had made flickered on the prayer book, which Mr.
Merrill raised. Then he said, "Let us pray," and he faced Owen's
body.

" 'Into thy hands, O merciful Savior, we commend thy
servant Owen Meany,' " my father said. " 'Acknowledge, we humbly
beseech thee, a sheep of thine own fold, a lamb of thine own flock, a sinner of
thine own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of thy mercy, into the blessed
rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in
light,' " he prayed-the light from the hole in the stained-glass window
still playing tricks with the medal and The Book of Common Prayer.

"Amen," the Rev. Mr. Merrill said. Then he nodded to
Colonel Eiger and the young, frightened-looking first lieutenant; they matched
their steps to the casket, they removed the American flag and snapped it
taut-the medal bouncing like a coin, but it was pinned fast to the flag and
couldn't fall. Then the colonel and the first lieutenant walked haltingly
toward each other, folding the flag- triangulating it, very exactly, so that
the medal ended up on top of the package, which Colonel Eiger handed completely
into the care of the frightened first lieutenant. Then Colonel Eiger saluted
the folded flag, and the medal. The young man about-faced so sharply that my
grandmother was startled; I felt her flinch against me. Then the first
lieutenant mumbled something indistinct to Mr. and Mrs. Meany, who appeared surprised
that he was speaking to them. He was saying something about the medal-"For
heroism that involves the voluntary risk of life." After that, the first
lieutenant cleared his throat and the congregation could hear him more
distinctly. He spoke directly to Mrs. Meany; he handed her the flag, with the
medal on top, and he said-too loudly: "Missus Meany, it is my privilege to
present you with our country's flag in grateful appreciation for the service
rendered to this nation by your son."

At first, she didn't want to take the flag; she didn't appear to
understand that she was supposed to take it-Mr. Meany had to take it from her,
or she might have let it fall. The whole time, they had sat like stones. Then
the organ startled my grandmother, who flinched again, and the Rev. Lewis
Merrill led us through the recessional hymn-the same hymn he had chosen for the
recessional at my mother's funeral. Crown him with man-y crowns, The Lamb up-on
his throne; Hark! how the heavenly an-them drowns All mu-sic but its own;

A-wake, my soul, and sing Of him who died for thee, And hail him
as thy match-less king Through all e-ter-nity.

        
 
While we sang, the honor guard lifted Owen's
small, gray casket and proceeded up the aisle with him; thus his body was borne
from the church, about the time we were singing the third verse of the hymn-it
was the verse that had meant the most to Owen Meany. CROWN HIM THE LORD OF
LIFE, WHO TRI-UMPHED O'ER THE GRAVE, AND ROSE VIC-TO-RIOUS IN THE STRIFE FOR
THOSE HE CAME TO SAVE; HIS GLO-RIES NOW WE SING WHO DIED AND ROSE ON HIGH, WHO
DEED, E-TER-NAL LIFE TO BRING, AND LIVES THAT DEATH MAY DIE. There's not much
to add about the committal. The weather was hot and sticky, and from the
cemetery, at the end of Linden Street, we could once again hear the kids
playing baseball on the high-school athletic fields-the sounds of their fun,
and their arguing, and that good old American crack of the bat drifted to us
while we stood at Owen Meany's grave and listened to the Rev. Lewis Merrill say
the usual.

" 'In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal
life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother Owen
. . .' " my father said. If I listened with special care, it was because I
knew I was listening to Pastor Merrill for the last time; what more could he
ever have to say to me? Now that he had found his lost faith, what need did he
have of a lost son? And what need did I have of him? I stood at Owen's grave,
holding Dan Needham's hand, with my grandmother leaning against the two of us.

" '. . . earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,'
"Pastor Merrill was saying, and I was thinking that my father was quite a
fake; after all, he had met the miracle of Owen Meany, face to face, and still
hadn't believed in him-and now he believed everything, not because of Owen
Meany but because I had tricked him. I had fooled him with a dressmaker's
dummy; Owen Meany had been the real miracle, but my father's faith was restored
by an encounter with a dummy, which the poor fool had believed was my
mother-reaching out to him from beyond her grave.

"GOD WORKS IN STRANGE WAYS!" Owen might have said.

" '. . . the Lord lift up his countenance upon him, and
give him peace,' " Lewis Merrill said-while clods of earth fell upon the
small, gray casket. Then the stem, sawed-off soldier, whom Colonel Eiger had
referred to as a master sergeant, played taps for Owen Meany. I was leaving the
cemetery when she came up to me. She might have been a farmer's wife, or a
woman who worked outdoors; she was my age, but she looked so much older-I
didn't recognize her. She had three children with her; she carried one of
them-a pouting boy who was too heavy to be carried easily, or far. She had two
daughters, one of whom hung on her hip and tugged at her and continued to wipe
her runny nose on the woman's faded black dress. The second daughter-the eldest
child, who was possibly seven or eight- lagged behind and eyed me with a gawky
shyness that was painful to endure. She was a pretty girl, with straw-colored
hair, but she could not keep her hands away from a raspberry-colored birthmark
on her forehead, which was about the size of a passport photo and which she
tried to hide with her hair. I stared into the woman's weary, red-eyed face;
she was struggling not to burst into tears.

"Do you remember how we used to lift him up?" she
asked me. Then I knew her: she was Mary Bern Baird, our old Sunday school
colleague and the girl Owen had selected for the role of the Virgin Mary.
"MARY BETH BAIRD HAS NEVER BEEN MARY," Owen had said. "THAT WAY,
MARY WOULD BE MARY."

I'd heard she'd gotten pregnant and had dropped out of high
school; she'd married the boy, who was from a big family of dairy farmers-and
now she lived on a dairy farm in Stratham. I hadn't seen her since her staggering
performance in the Nativity of -when, in addition to her efforts as the Virgin
Mother to Owen's Christ Child, she had contributed those striking cow costumes,
the ones with floppy antlers that made the cows resemble damaged reindeer. I
suppose that she had not been an expert on dairy cows-or on cows of any
kind-back then.

"He was so easy to lift up!" Mary Beth Baird said to
me. "He was so light-he weighed nothing at all! How could he have been so
light?" she asked me. That was when I discovered that I couldn't speak. I
had lost my voice. It occurs to me now that it wasn't my voice that I wanted to
hear. If I

        
 
couldn't hear Owen's voice, I didn't want to
hear anyone's. It was only Owen's voice that I wanted to hear; and when Mary
Beth Baird spoke to me, that was when I knew that Owen Meany was gone. There's
not much to add about coming to Canada. As Owen and I had discovered: at the
New Hampshire-Quebec 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 so-called
customs house, which I remembered as just a cabin, was not exactly as I'd
remembered it; and I thought there'd been a gate that was raised-like a gate
guarding a railroad crossing-but that was different, too. I was sure I
remembered sitting on the tailgate of the tomato-red pickup, watching the fir
trees on both sides of the border-but then I wondered if everything I'd done
with Owen Meany was not as exact in my memory as I imagined. Perhaps Owen had
even changed my memory. Anyway, I crossed the border without incident. A
Canadian customs officer asked me about the granite doorstop-JULY, . He seemed
surprised when I told him it was a wedding present. The customs officer also
asked me if I was a draft dodger; although I might have appeared-to him-too old
to be dodging the draft, they had been drafting people over twenty-six for more
than a year. I answered the question by showing the officer my missing finger.

"I'm not worried about the war," I told him, and he
let me into Canada without any more questions. I might have ended up in
Montreal; but too many people were pissy to me there, because I couldn't speak
French. And I arrived in Ottawa on a rainy day; I just kept driving until I got
to Toronto. I'd never seen a lake as large as Lake Ontario; I knew I was going
to miss the view of the Atlantic Ocean from the breakwater at Rye Harbor, so
the idea of a lake that looked as big as the sea was appealing to me. Not much
else has happened to me. I'm a churchgoer and a schoolteacher. Those two
devotions need not necessarily yield an unexciting life, but my life has been
determinedly unexciting; my life is a reading list. I'm not complaining; I've
had enough excitement. Owen Meany was enough excitement for a lifetime. How it
must have disappointed Owen ... to discover that my father was such an insipid
soup of a man. Lewis Merrill was so innocuous, how could I have remembered
seeing him in those bleacher seats? Only Mr. Merrill could have escaped my
attention. As many times as I searched the audience at the performances of The
Gravesend Players (and the Rev. Mr. Merrill was always there), I always missed
him, I never remembered him as he was in those bleacher seats, I simply
overlooked him. In any gathering, not only did Mr. Merrill not stand out-he
didn't even show up! How it has disappointed me ... to discover that my father
was just another Joseph. I never dared tell Owen, but once I dreamed that JFK was
my father; after all, my mother was just as beautiful as Marilyn Monroe! How it
has disappointed me ... to discover that my father is just another man like me.
As for my faith: I've become my father's son-that is, I've become the kind of
believer that Pastor Merrill used to be. Doubt one minute, faith the
next-sometimes inspired, sometimes in despair. Canon Campbell taught me to ask
myself a question when the latter state settles upon me. Whom do I know who's
alive whom I love? Good question-one that can bring you back to life. These
days, I love Dan Needham and the Rev. Katherine Keeling; I know I love them
because I worry about them-Dan should lose some weight, Katherine should gain
some! What I feel for Hester isn't exactly love; I admire her-she's certainly
been a more heroic survivor than I've been, and her kind of survival is
admirable. And then there are those distant, family ties that pass for love-I'm
talking about Noah and Simon, about Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred. I look
forward to seeing them every Christmas. I don't hate my father, I just don't
think about him very much-and I haven't seen him since that day he committed
Owen Meany's body to the ground. I hear from Dan that he's a whale of a
preacher, and that there's not a trace of the slight stutter that once marred
his speech. At times I envy Lewis Merrill; I wish someone could trick me the
way I tricked him into having such absolute and unshakable faith. For although
I believe I know what the real miracles are, my belief in God disturbs and unsettles
me much more than not believing ever did; unbelief seems vastly harder to me
now than belief does-but belief poses so many unanswerable questions'. How
could Owen Meany have known what he "knew"? It's no answer, of
course, to believe in accidents, or in coincidences; but is God really a better
answer? If God had a hand in

        
 
what Owen "knew," what a horrible
question that poses! For how could God have let that happen to Owen Meany?
Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what
they mean-make sure they know what they mean! It was more than a year after I
came to Canada, when the town churches of Gravesend-and Hurd's Church, upon the
urging of Lewis Merrill-organized a so-called Vietnam Moratorium. On a given
day in October, all the church bells were rung at : A.M.-I'm sure that pissed
some people off!-and services were held as early as :. Following the services,
a parade then commenced from the town bandstand, marching up Front Street to
assemble on the lawn in front of the Main Academy Building on the Gravesend
campus; there followed a peaceful demonstration, so-called, and a few of the
standard antiwar speeches. Typically, the town newspaper, The Gravesend
News-Letter, did not editorialize on the event, except to say that a march
against mayhem on the nation's highways would be a more significant use of such
civilian zeal; as for the academy newspaper, The Grave reported that it was
"about time" the school and the town combined forces to demonstrate
against the evil war. The News-Letter estimated the crowd was less than four
hundred people-"and almost as many dogs." The Grave claimed that the
crowd swelled to at least six hundred "well-behaved" people. Both
papers reported the only counterdemonstration. As the parade swung up Front
Street--just past the old Town Hall, where The Graves-end Players had for so
long been entertaining both young and old-a former American Legion commander
stepped off the sidewalk and waved a North Vietnamese flag in the face of a
young tuba player in the Gravesend Academy marching band. Dan told me that the
former American Legion commander was none other than Mr. Morrison, the cowardly
mailman.