A prayer for Owen Meany (89 page)

"I'M NOT AFRAID, BUT I'M VERY NERVOUS. AT FIRST, I DIDN'T
LIKE KNOWING-NOW I DON'T LIKE NOT KNOWING! GOD IS TESTING ME," wrote Owen
Meany. There was much more; he was confused. He'd cut off my finger to keep me
out of Vietnam; in his view, he'd attempted to physically remove me from his
dream. But although he'd kept me out of the war, it was apparent-from his
diary-that I'd remained in the dream. He could keep me out of Vietnam, he could
cut off my finger; but he couldn't get me out of his dream, and that worried
him. If he was going to die, he knew I had to be there-he didn't know why. But
if he'd cut off my finger to save my life, it was a contradiction that he'd
invited me to Arizona. God had promised him that nothing bad would happen to
me; Owen Meany clung to that belief.

"MAYBE IT REALLY IS 'JUST A DREAM'!" he repeated.
"MAYBE THE DATE IS JUST A FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION! BUT IT WAS WRITTEN IN
STONE-IT IS 'WRITTEN IN STONE'!" he added; he meant, of course, that he'd
already carved the date of his death on his own gravestone. But now he was
confused; now he wasn't so sure.

"HOW COULD THERE BE VIETNAMESE CHILDREN IN ARIZONA!"
Owen asked himself; he even asked God a question. "MY GOD-IF I DON'T SAVE
ALL THOSE CHILDREN, HOW COULD YOU HAVE PUT ME THROUGH ALL THIS?" Later, he
added: "I MUST TRUST IN THE LORD."

        
 
And just before the plane touched down in
Phoenix, he made this hasty observation from the air: "HERE I AM AGAIN-
I'M ABOVE EVERYTHING. THE PALM TREES ARE VERY STRAIGHT AND TALL-I'M HIGH ABOVE
THE PALM TREES. THE SKY AND THE PALM TREES ARE SO BEAUTIFUL."

He was the first off the plane, his uniform a startlingly crisp
challenge to the heat, his black armband identifying his mission, his green
duffel bag in one hand-the triangular cardboard box in the other. He walked
straight to the baggage compartment of the plane; although I couldn't hear his
voice, I could see he was giving orders to the baggage handlers and the
forklift operator-I'm sure he was telling them to keep the head of the body
higher than the feet, so that fluid would not escape through the orifices. Owen
rendered a salute as the body in the plywood box was lowered from the plane.
When the forklift driver had the crate secured, Owen hopped on one of the tines
of the fork-he rode thus, the short distance across the runway to the waiting
hearse, like the figurehead on the prow of a ship. I walked across the tarmac
toward the family, who had not moved-only their eyes followed Owen Meany and
the body in the box. They stood paralyzed by their anger; but the major stepped
smartly forward to greet Owen; the chauffeur opened the tailgate of the long,
silver-gray hearse; and the mortician became the unctuous delegate of death-the
busybody it was his nature to be. Owen hopped lightly off the forklift; he
dropped his duffel bag to the tarmac and cracked open the triangular cardboard
box. With the major's help, Owen unfolded the flag-it was difficult to manage
in the strong wind. Suddenly, more runway lights were turned on, and the flag swelled
and snapped brightly against the dark sky; rather clumsily, Owen and the major
finally covered the crate with the flag. Once the body was slid into the
hearse, the flag on top of the container lay still, and the family-like a
large, ungainly animal- approached the hearse and Owen Meany. That was when I
noticed that the hugely tall boy was not wearing a pair of workmen's
overalls-he was wearing jungle fatigues-and what I had mistaken for splotches
of grease or oil were in fact the camouflage markings. The fatigues looked
authentic, but the boy was clearly not old enough to "serve"

and he was hardly in a proper uniform-on his big feet, he wore a
scuffed and filthy pair of basketball shoes, "high tops"; and his
matted, shoulder-length hair certainly wasn't Army regulation. It was not a
carpenter's belt he wore; it was a kind of cartridge belt, with what appeared
to be live ammo, actual loaded shells-at least, some of the cartridge sleeves
in the belt were stuffed with bullets-and from various loops and hooks and
straps, attached to this belt, certain things were hanging ... neither a
mechanic's tools, nor the equipment that is standard for a telephone repairman.
The towering boy carried some authentic-looking Army equipment: an entrenching
tool, a machete, a bayonet-although the sheath for the bayonet did not look
like Army issue, not to me; it was made of a shiny material in a Day-Glo-green
color, and embossed upon it was the traditional skull and crossbones in Day-Glo
orange. The pregnant girl, whom I took to be the tall monster's sister, could
not have been older than sixteen or seventeen; she began to sob-then she made a
fist and bit into the big knuckle at the base of her index finger, to stop
herself from crying.

"Fuck!" the mother cried out. The slow-moving man who
appeared to be her husband folded and unfolded his beefy arms,
and-spontaneously, upon the mother's utterance-the specter in jungle fatigues
tipped his head back and spat another sizable, mud-colored trajectory.

"Would you stop doing that?" the pregnant girl asked
him.

"Fuck you," he said. The slow-moving man was not as
slow as I thought. He lashed out at the boy-it was a solidly thrown right jab
that caught the kid flush on his cheek and dropped him, like Owen's duffel bag,
to the tarmac.

"Don't you speak to your sister that way," the man
said. The boy, not moving, said: "Fuck you-she's not my sister, she's just
my half sister!"

The mother said: "Don't speak to your father that
way."

"He's not my father-you asshole," the boy said.

"Don't you call your mother an 'asshole'!" the man
said; but when he stepped closer to the boy on the tarmac-as if he were
positioning himself near enough to kick the boy-the boy rose unsteadily to his
feet. He held the machete in one hand, the bayonet in the other.

"You're both assholes," the boy told the man and
woman- and when his half sister commenced to cry again, he once more

        
 
tipped back his head and spat the tobacco
juice; he did not spit on her, but he spat in her general direction. It was
Owen Meany who spoke to him. "I LIKE THAT SHEATH-FOR THE BAYONET,"
Owen said. "DID YOU MAKE IT YOURSELF?"

As I had seen it happen before-with strangers-the whole,
terrible family was frozen by Owen Meany's voice. The pregnant girl stopped
crying; the father-who was not the tall boy's father-backed away from Owen, as
if he were more afraid of than of either a bayonet or a machete, or both; the
mother nervously patted her sticky hair, as if Owen had caused her to worry
about her appearance. The top of Owen Meany's cap reached only as high as the
tall boy's chest. The boy said to him: "Who are you! You little
twit."

"This is the casualty assistance officer," the major
said. "This is Lieutenant Meany."

"I want to hear him say it," the boy said, not taking
his eyes off Owen.

"I'M LIEUTENANT MEANY," Owen said; he offered to shake
hands with the boy. "WHAT'S YOUR NAME?" But in order to shake hands
with Owen, the boy would have had to sheathe at least one of his weapons; he
appeared unwilling. He also didn't bother to tell Owen his name.

"What's the matter with your voice!" he asked Owen.

"NOTHING-WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU!" Owen asked him.
"YOU WANT TO DRESS UP AND PLAY SOLDIER-DON'T YOU KNOW HOW TO SPEAK TO AN
OFFICER!"

As a natural bully, the boy respected being bullied. "Yes,
sir," he said snidely to Owen.

"PUT THOSE WEAPONS AWAY," Owen told him. "IS THAT
YOUR BROTHER I JUST BROUGHT HOME?" Owen asked him.

"Yes, sir," the boy said.

"I'M SORRY YOUR BROTHER'S DEAD," said Owen Meany.
"DON'T YOU WANT TO PAY SOME ATTENTION TO MM?" Owen asked.

"Yes, sir," the boy said quietly; he looked at a loss
about how to PAY SOME ATTENTION to his dead brother, and so he stared forlornly
at the corner of the flag that was near enough to the open tailgate of the
hearse to be occasionally moved by the wind. Then Owen Meany circulated through
the family, shaking hands, saying he was sorry; such a range of feelings
flashed across the mother's face-she appeared contradictively stimulated to
flirt with him and to kill him. The impassive father seemed to me to be the
most disagreeably affected by Owen's unnatural size; the man's doughy
countenance wavered between brute stupidity and contempt. The pregnant girl was
stricken with shyness when Owen spoke to her.

"I'M SORRY ABOUT YOUR BROTHER," he said to her, he
came up to her chin.

"My half brother," she mumbled. "But I still
loved him!" she added. Her other half brother-the one who was alive-
needed to ferociously restrain himself from spitting again. So they were a
family torn in halves, or worse, I thought. In the major's car-where Owen and I
were first able to acknowledge each other, to hug each other, and to pat each
other on our backs-the major explained the family to us.

"They're a mess, of course-they may all be criminally
retarded," the major said. His name was Rawls-Hollywood would have loved
him. In close-up, he looked fifty, a gruff old type; but he was only
thirty-seven. He'd earned a battlefield commission during the final days of the
Korean War; he'd completed a tour of duty in Vietnam as an infantry battalion
executive officer. Major Rawls had enlisted in the Army in , when he'd been
eighteen. He'd served the Army for nineteen years; he'd fought in two wars;
he'd been passed over for promotion to lieutenant colonel, and-at a time when
all the good "field grade" officers were in Washington or
Vietnam-he'd ended up as a ROTC professor for his twilight tour of duty. If
Major Rawls had earned a battlefield commission, he had earned his measure of
cynicism, too; the major spoke in sustained, explosive bursts-like rounds of
fire from an automatic weapon.

"They may all be fucking each other-I wouldn't be surprised
about a family like this," Major Rawls said. "The brother is the
chief wacko-he hangs around the airport all day, watching the planes, talking
to the soldiers. He can't wait to be old enough to go to 'Nam. The only one in
the family who might have been wackier than him is the one who's dead-this was
his third fucking tour 'in country'! You should've seen him between tours-the
whole fucking tribe lives in a trailer park, and the warrant officer just spent
all his time looking in his neighbors' windows through a telescopic

        
 
sight. You know what I mean-lining up
everyone in the cross hairs! If he hadn't gone back to 'Nam, he'd have gone to
jail.

"Both brothers have a different father-a dead one, not this
clown," Major Rawls informed us. "This clown's the father of that
unfortunate girl-I can't tell you who knocked her up, but I've got a feeling it
was a family affair. My odds are on the warrant officer-I think he had sighted
her in his cross hairs, too. You know what I mean? Maybe both brothers were
banging her," Major Rawls said. "But I think the younger one is too
crazy to get it up-he just can't wait to be old enough to kill people,"
the major said.

"Now the mother-she's not just in space, she's in fucking
orbit" Major Rawls said. "And wait till you get to the wake-wait till
you meet the rest of the family! I tell you-they shouldn't've sent the brother
home from 'Nam, not even in a box. What they should've done is send his whole
fucking family over there] Might be the only way to win the fucking war-if you
know what I mean," Major Rawls said. We were following the silver-gray
hearse, which the chauffeur drove ploddingly along a highway called Black
Canyon. Then we turned onto something called Camelback Road. In the wind, the
palm trees sawed over us; on the Bermuda grass, in one neighborhood, some old
people sat in metal lawn chairs- as hot as it was, even at night, the old
people wore sweaters, and they waved to us. They must have been crazy. Owen
Meany had introduced me to Major Rawls as his BEST FRIEND.

"MAJOR RAWLS-THIS IS MY BEST FRIEND, JOHN WHEELWRIGHT. HE'S
COME ALL THE WAY FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE!" Owen had said.

"That's better than coming from Vietnam. It's nice to meet
you, John," Major Rawls had said; he had a crushing handshake and he drove
his car as if every other driver on the road had already done something to
offend him.

"Wait till you see the fucking funeral parlor!" the
major said to me.

"IT'S A KIND OF SHOPPING-MALL MORTUARY," Owen said,
and Major Rawls liked that-he laughed.

"It's a fucking 'shopping-mall' mortician}" Rawls
said.

"THEY HAVE REMOVABLE CROSSES IN THE CHAPEL," Owen
informed me. "THEY CAN SWITCH CROSSES, DEPENDING ON THE DENOMINATION OF
THE SERVICE-THEY'VE GOT A CRUCIFIX WITH AN ESPECIALLY LIFELIKE CHRIST HANGING
ON IT, FOR THE CATHOLICS. THEY'VE GOT A PLAIN WOODEN CROSS FOR THE PLAIN,
PROTESTANT TYPES. THEY'VE EVEN GOT A FANCY CROSS WITH JEWELS IN IT, FOR THE
IN-BETWEENS," Owen said.

"What are 'in-betweens'?" I asked Owen Meany.

"That's what we've got on our hands here," Major Rawls
said. "We've got fucking Baptists-they're fucking 'in-betweens,' all
right," he said. "You remember that asshole minister, Meany?"
Major Rawls asked Owen.

"YOU MEAN THE BAPTIST THE MORTUARY USES? OF COURSE I
DO!" Owen said.

"Just wait till you meet Aim!" Major Rawls said to me.

"I can't wait," I said. Owen made me put on the extra
black armband. "DON'T WORRY," he told me. "WE'LL HAVE A LOT OF
FREE TIME."

"Do you guys want datesT' Major Rawls asked us. "I
know some hot coeds," he said.

"I KNOW YOU DO," Owen said. "BUT NO THANKS- WE'RE
JUST GOING TO HANG OUT."

"I'll show you where the pom shop is," Major Rawls
offered.

"NO THANKS," Owen said. "WE JUST WANT TO
RELAX."

"What are you-a couple of fags?" the major asked-he
laughed at his joke.

' 'MAYBE WE ARE,'' said Owen Meany, and Major Rawls laughed
again.