A prayer for Owen Meany (90 page)

"Your friend's the funniest little fucker in the
Army," the major said. It actually was a kind of shopping-mall mortuary,
surrounded by an unfathomable inappropriateness for a funeral home. In the
style of a Mexican hacienda, the mortuary-and its chapel with die changeable
crosses-formed one of several L-joints in a long, interconnected series of
pink- and white-stuccoed buildings. Immediately adjacent to the mortuary itself
was an ice-cream shop; adjoined to the chapel was a pet shop-die windowfront
displayed an arrangement of snakes, which were on sale.

"It's no fucking wonder the warrant officer wanted to go
back to 'Nam," Major Rawls said. Before the oily mortician could inquire
who / was-or ask on whose authority / was permitted to view the contents of the
plywood container-Owen Meany introduced me.

"THIS IS MISTER WHEELWRIGHT-OUR BODY EXPERT," Owen
said. "THIS IS INTELLIGENCE BUSINESS," Owen told the mortician.
"I MUST ASK YOU NOT TO DISCUSS THIS."

"Oh no-never!" the mortician said; clearly, he didn't
know what there was-or might be-to DISCUSS. Major Rawls rolled his eyes and
concealed a dry laughter by pretending to cough. A carpeted hall led to a room
that smelled like a chemistry lab, where two inappropriately cheerful
attendants were loosening the screws on the transfer case- another man stacked
the plywood against a far wall. He was finishing an ice-cream cone, so he
clumsily stacked the wood with his free hand. It took four people to lift the
heavy coffin-perhaps twenty-gauge steel-onto the mortuary's chrome dolly. Major
Rawls spun three catches that looked like those fancy wheel locks on certain
sports cars. Owen Meany opened the lid and peered inside. After a while, he
turned to Rawls. "IS IT HIM?" he asked the major. Major Rawls looked
into the coffin for a long time. The mortician knew enough to wait his turn.
Finally, Major Rawls turned away. "I think it's him," Rawls said. "It's
close enough," he added. The mortician started for the coffin, but Owen
stopped him.

"PLEASE LET MISTER WHEELWRIGHT LOOK FIRST," he said.

"Oh yes-of course!" the mortician said, backing away.
To his attendants, the mortician whispered: "This is intelligence
business-there will be no discussion of this." The two attendants, and
even the mild-looking fellow who was handling the plywood and eating ice cream,
glanced nervously at one another.

"What was the cause of death?" the mortician asked
Major Rawls.

"THAT'S PRECISELY WHAT'S UNDER INVESTIGATION," Owen
snapped at him. "THAT'S WHAT WE'RE NOT DISCUSSING!"

"Oh yes-of course!" the idiot mortician said. Major
Rawls again tried not to laugh; he coughed. I avoided looking too closely at
the body of the warrant officer. I was so prepared for something not even
recognizably human that, at first, I felt enormously relieved; almost nothing
appeared to be wrong with the man-he was a whole soldier in his greens and
aviator wings and warrant officer brass. He had a makeup tan, and the skin on
his face appeared to be stretched too tightly over his bones, which were
prominent. There was an unreal element to his hair, which resembled a kind of
wig-in-progress. Then certain, specific things began to go a little wrong with
my perception of the warrant officer's face-his ears were as dark and shriveled
as prunes, as if a set of headphones had caught fire when he'd been listening
to something; and there were perfectly goggle-shaped circles burned into the
skin around his eyes, as if he were part raccoon. I realized that his
sunglasses had melted against his face, and that the tautness of his skin was,
in fact, the result of his whole face being swollen-his whole face was a tight,
smooth blister, which gave me the impression that the terrific heat he'd been
exposed to had been generated from inside his head. I felt a little ill, but
more ashamed than sick-I felt I was being indecent, invading the warrant
officer's privacy ... to the degree that a thrill-seeker who's pressed too
close to the wreckage of an automobile accident might feel guilty for catching
a glimpse of the bloody hair protruding through the fractured windshield. Owen
Meany knew that I couldn't speak.

"IT'S WHAT YOU EXPECTED-ISN'T IT?" Owen asked me; I
nodded, and moved away. Quickly the mortician darted to the coffin. "Oh,
really- you'd think they'd make a better effort than thisl" he said.
Fussily, he took a tissue and wiped some leakage-some fluid-from the corner of
the warrant officer's mouth. ' 'I don't believe in open caskets, anyway,"
the mortician said. "That last look can be the heartbreaker."

"I don't think this guy had a gift for breaking
hearts," Major Rawls said. But I could think of one heart that the warrant
officer had broken; his tall younger brother was heartbroken-he was much worse
than heartbroken, I thought. Owen and I had an ice-cream cone, next door, while
Major Rawls and the mortician argued about the "asshole minister."

        
 
It was a Saturday. Because tomorrow was a
Sunday, the service couldn't be held in the Baptist Church-it would conflict
with the Sunday services. There was a Baptist minister who "traveled"
to the mortuary and performed die service in the mortuary's flexible chapel.

"You mean he travels because he's such an asshole that he
doesn't have a church of his own!" said Major Rawls; he accused the
mortician and the minister of frequently working together-"for the
money."

"It costs money in a church, too-wherever you die and have
a service, it costs money," the mortician said.

"MAJOR RAWLS IS JUST TIRED OF LISTENING TO THIS PARTICULAR
BAPTIST," Owen explained to me. Back in the car, Rawls said: "I don't
believe anyone in this family ever went to church-not ever! That fucking
funeral director-I know he talked the family into being Baptists. He probably
told them they had to say they were something-then he told them to be Baptists.
He and that fucking minister- they're a match made in hell!"

"THE CATHOLICS REALLY DO THIS SORT OF THING BETTER THAN
ANYBODY," said Owen Meany.

"The fucking Catholics!" said Major Rawls.

"NO, THEY REALLY DO THIS SORT OF THING THE BEST-THEY HAVE
THE PROPER SOLEMNITY, THE PROPER SORT OF RITUALS, AND PROPER PACING," Owen
said. I was amazed to find that Owen Meany had praised the Catholics; but he
was absolutely serious. Even Major Rawls didn't wish to argue with him.

"No one does 'this sort of thing' well-that's all I
know," the major said.

"I DIDN'T SAY ANYONE DID IT 'WELL,' SIR-I SAID THE
CATHOLICS DID IT 'BETTER'; THEY DO IT BEST," said Owen Meany. I asked Owen
what had been the stuff I'd seen leaking from the warrant officer's mouth.

"That's just phenol," said Major Rawls.

"IT'S ALSO CALLED CARBOLIC ACID," Owen said.

"I call it 'phenol,' " Rawls said. Then I asked them
how the warrant officer had died.

"He was such a dumb asshole," Major Rawls said.
"He was refueling a helicopter-he just made some stupid-asshole
mistake."

"YOU AGGRAVATE HIGH OCTANE-THAT'LL DO IT," said Owen
Meany.

"I can't wait to show you guys this rucking 'picnic wake,'
" Major Rawls said. Apparently, that was where we were driving next-to the
"picnic wake" that was now in its third, merrymaking day. Major Rawls
blew his horn at someone who he thought was possibly inching out of a driveway
into the path of our car; actually, it was my impression that the person was waiting
in the driveway for us to pass. "Look at that asshole!" Major Rawls
said. On we drove through nighttime Phoenix. Owen Meany patted the back of my
hand. "DON'T WORRY," he said to me. "WE JUST HAVE TO MAKE AN
APPEARANCE AT THE WAKE-WE DON'T HAVE TO STAY LONG."

"You won't be able to tear yourselves away!" the major
said excitedly. "I'm telling you, these people are on the verge of killing
each other-it's the kind of scene where mass-murderers get all their
ideasl"

Major Rawls had been exaggerating. The "tribe," as
he'd called the family, did not live (as he'd said) in a trailer park, but in a
one-story tract house with turquoise aluminum siding; but for the daring choice
of turquoise, the house was identical to all the others in what I suppose is
still called a low-income housing development. The neighborhood was
distinguished by a large population of dismantled automobiles-indeed, there
were more cars on cinder blocks, with their wheels off or then-engines ripped
out from under their hoods, than there were live cars parked at the curbs or in
driveways. And since the houses were nearly all constructed of cheap,
uninsulated materials- and the residents could not afford or did not choose to
trouble themselves with air conditioning-the neighborhood (even in the evening)
teemed with outdoor activities of the kind that are usually conducted indoors.
Televisions had been dragged outside, folding card tables and folding chairs
gave the crowded suburb the atmosphere of a shabby sidewalk cafe- and block
after block of outdoor barbecue pits and charcoal grills, which darkly smoked
and sizzled with grease, gave the newcomer the impression that this part of
Phoenix was recovering from an air raid that had set the ground on fire and
driven the residents from their homes with only their most cherished and
salvageable belongings. Some of the older people swayed in hammocks.

        
 
Screen doors whapped throughout the night,
cats fought and fucked without cease, a cacophony of dogs malingered in the
vicinity of each outdoor barbecue-in-progress, and an occasional flash of
heat-lightning lit up the night, casting into silhouette the tangled maze of
television antennas that towered over the low-level houses-as if a vast network
of giant spider webs threatened the smaller, human community below.

"I tell you, the only thing preventing a murder here is
that everyone would be a witness," said Major Rawls. Tents-for the
children-filled the small backyard of the dead warrant officer's home; there
were two cars on cinder blocks in the backyard, and for the duration of the
"picnic wake" some of the smaller children had been sleeping in
these; and there was also a great boat on cinder blocks-a fire-engine-red
racing boat with a gleaming chrome railing running around its jutting bow. The
boat appeared more comfortable to sleep in than the turquoise house, at every
orifice of which there popped into view the heads of children or adults staring
out at the night. One of the boat's big twin engines had been removed from the
stern and was fastened to the rim of a large iron barrel, full of water; in the
barrel, the noisy engine ran and ran-at least half a dozen grown men surrounded
this display of spilled gasoline and oil, and the powerful propellers that
churned and churned the water in the sloshing barrel. The men stood with such
reverence around this demonstration of the engine's power that Major Rawls and
Owen and I half expected the barrel to take flight-or at least drive itself
away. By the marvel of a long extension cord, a TV was placed in a prime
position on the dry, brown lawn; a circle of men were watching a baseball game,
of course. And where were the women? Clustered in their own groups, according
to age or marriage or divorce or degree of pregnancy, most of the women were
inside the sweltering house, where the ovenlike temperature appeared to have
wilted them, like the limp raw vegetables that were plunked in assorted bowls
alongside the assorted ' 'dips" that were now in their third day of
exposure to this fetid air. Inside, too, the sink was filled with ice, through
which one could search in vain for a cold beer. The mother with her high-piled,
sticky, pink hair slouched against the refrigerator, which she seemed to be
guarding from the others; occasionally, she flicked the ash from her cigarette
into what she vacantly assumed was an ashtray-rather, it was a small plate of
nuts that had been creatively mixed with a breakfast cereal.

"Here comes the fuckin' Army!" she said-when she saw
us. She was drinking what smelled like bourbon out of a highball glass-this one
was etched with a poor likeness of a pheasant or a grouse or a quail. It was
not necessary to introduce me, although-several times-Owen and Major Rawls
tried. Not everyone knew everyone else, anyway; it was hard to tell family from
neighbors, and specifics such as which children were the offspring of whose
previous or present marriage were not even considered. The relatives from Yuma
and Modesto-aside from the uncomfortable fact that their children, and perhaps
they themselves, were housed in tents and dismantled cars- simply blended in.
The father who'd struck his stepson at the airport was dead drunk and had
passed out in a bedroom with the door open; he was sprawled not on the bed but
on the floor at the foot of the bed, upon which four or five small children
were glued to a second television set, their attention riveted to a crime drama
that surely held no surprises for them.

"You find a woman here, I'll pay for the motel," Rawls
said to me. "I've been working this scene for two nights-this is my third.
I tell you, there's not one woman you'd dare to put a move on-not here. The
best thing I've seen is the pregnant sister-imagine that!"

Dutifully, I imagined it: the pregnant sister was the only one
who tried to be nice to us; she tried to be especially nice to Owen.

"It's a very hard job you have," she told him.

"IT'S NOT AS HARD AS BEING IN VIETNAM," he said
politely. The pregnant sister had a hard job, too, I thought; she looked as if
she needed to make a nearly constant effort not to be beaten by her mother or
her father, or raped by the latter, or raped and beaten by her younger half
brother-or some combination of, or all of, the above. Owen said to her:
"I'M WORRIED ABOUT YOUR BROTHER-I MEAN YOUR HALF BROTHER, THE TALL BOY.
I'LL HAVE A WORD WITH HIM. WHERE IS HE?"

The girl looked too frightened to speak. Then she said: "I
know you have to give my mother the flag-at the funeral. I know what my
mother's gonna do-