A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
ed inside. The heat off the sidewalk still radiated up at you; on hot summer nights, in Gravesend, the heat hit your crotch first. Hester took my hand as we walked.
"It's only the second time I've seen you in a dress," I said.
"I know," she said.
It was an especially dark night, cloudy and starless; the moon was just an opaque sliver in the fog.
"Just remember," she said, "your friend Owen feels worse than you."
"I know," I said; but I felt no small surge of jealousy at my admission--and at the knowledge that Hester was thinking about Owen, too.
We left Front Street at the Gravesend Inn; I hesitated before crossing Pine Street, but Hester seemed to know our destination--her hand tugged me along. Once we were on Linden Street, passing the dark high school, it was clear to both of us where we were going. There was a police car in the high-school parking lot--on the lookout for vandals, I suppose, or else to prevent the high-school students from using the parking lot and the athletic fields for illicit purposes at night.
We could hear a motor running; it seemed too deep and throaty a motor to be the squad car, and after we passed the high school, the engine noise grew louder. I didn't believe that a motor was required to run the cemetery, but that's where the sound was coming from. I think now that I must have wanted to see her grave at night, knowing how she hated the darkness; I believe I wanted to reassure myself that some light penetrated even the cemetery at night.
The streetlights on Linden Street shone some distance into the cemetery and clearly illuminated the Meany Granite Company truck, which was parked and idling at the main gate; Hester and I could observe Mr. Meany's solemn face behind the steering wheel, his face illuminated by the long drags he took from his cigarette. He was alone in the cab of the truck, but I knew where Owen was.
Mr. Meany seemed unsurprised to see me, although Hester made him nervous. Hester made everyone nervous: in good light, in close-up, she looked her age--like a large, overly mature twelve-year-old. But from any distance, with any assistance from the shadows, she looked eighteen--and like a lot of trouble, too.
"Owen had some more to say," Mr. Meany confided to us. "But he's been at it a while. I'm sure he's about finished."
I felt another rush of jealousy, to think that Owen's concerns for my mother's first night underground had preceded my own. In the humid air, the diesel exhaust was heavy and foul, but I was sure that Mr. Meany could not be prevailed upon to turn the engine off; probably he was keeping the engine running in an effort to hurry up Owen's prayers.
"I want you to know somethin'," Mr. Meany said. "I'm gonna listen to what your mother said. She told me not to interfere if Owen wanted to go to the academy. And I won't," he said. "I promised her," he added.
It would take me years to realize that from the moment Owen hit that ball, Mr. Meany wouldn't "interfere" with anything Owen wanted.
"She told me not to worry about the money, too," Mr. Meany said. "I don't know what happens about that--now," he added.
"Owen will get a full scholarship," I said.
"I don't know about that," Mr. Meany said. "I guess so, if he wants one," he added. "Your mother was speakin' about his clothes," Mr. Meany said. "All them coats and ties."
"Don't worry," I told him.
"Oh, I ain't worryin'!" he said. "I'm just promisin' you I ain't interferin'--that's the point."
A light blinked from the cemetery, and Mr. Meany saw Hester and me look in its direction.
"He's got a light with him," Mr. Meany said. "I don't know what's takin' him so long," he said. "He's been in there long enough." He stepped on the accelerator then, as if a little rev would hurry Owen along. But after a while, he said, "Maybe you better go see what's keepin' him."
The light in the cemetery was faint and Hester and I walked toward it cautiously, not wanting to tread on other people's flowers or bark our shins on one of the smaller graves. The farther we walked from the Meany Granite Company truck, the more the engine noise receded--but it seemed deeper, too, as if it were the motor at the core of the earth, the one that turned the earth and changed day to night. We could hear snatches of Owen's prayers; I thought he must have brought the flashlight so he could read The Book of Common Prayer--perhaps he was reading every prayer in it.
"'INTO PARADISE MAY THE ANGELS LEAD YOU,'" he read.
Hester and I stopped; she stood behind me and locked her arms around my waist. I could feel her breasts against my shoulder blades, and--because she was a little taller--I could feel her throat against the back of my head; her chin pushed my head down.
"'FATHER OF ALL,'" Owen read. "'WE PRAY TO YOU FOR THOSE WE LOVE, BUT SEE NO LONGER.'" Hester squeezed me, she kissed my ears. Mr. Meany revved the truck, but Owen did not appear to notice; he knelt in front of the first bank of flowers, at the foot of the mound of new earth, in front of my mother's gravestone. He had the prayer book flat upon the ground in front of him, the flashlight pinched between his knees.
"Owen?" I said, but he didn't hear me. "Owen!" I said more loudly. He looked up, but not at me; I mean, he looked up--he'd heard his name called, but he hadn't recognized my voice.
"I HEAR YOU!" he shouted angrily. "WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT DO YOU WANT OF ME?"
"Owen, it's me," I said; I felt Hester gasp behind me. It had suddenly occurred to her--Whom Owen thought he was speaking to.
"It's me, and Hester," I added, because it occurred to me that the figure of Hester standing behind me, and appearing to loom over me, might also be misunderstood by Owen Meany, who was ever-watchful for that angel he had frightened from my mother's room.
"OH, IT'S YOU," Owen said; he sounded disappointed. "HELLO, HESTER. I DIDN'T RECOGNIZE YOU--YOU LOOK SO GROWN UP IN A DRESS. I'M SORRY," Owen said.
"It's okay, Owen," I said.
"HOW'S DAN?" he asked.
I told him that Dan was okay, but that he'd gone to his dormitory, alone, for the night; this news made Owen very businesslike.
"I SUPPOSE THE DUMMY'S STILL THERE? IN THE DINING ROOM?" he asked.
"Of course," I said.
"WELL, THAT'S VERY BAD," Owen said. "DAN SHOULDN'T BE ALONE WITH THAT DUMMY. WHAT IF HE JUST SITS AROUND AND STARES AT IT? WHAT IF HE WAKES UP IN THE NIGHT AND HE SEES IT STANDING THERE ON HIS WAY TO THE REFRIGERATOR? WE SHOULD GO GET IT--RIGHT NOW."
He arranged his flashlight in the flowers, so that the shiny body of the light was completely blanketed by the flowers and the light itself shone upon the mound. Then he stood up and brushed the dirt off the knees of his pants. He closed his prayer book and looked at how the light fell over my mother's grave; he seemed pleased. I was not the only one who knew how my mother had hated the darkness.
We couldn't all fit in the cab of the granite truck, so Owen sat with Hester and me on the dusty floor of the flatbed trailer while Mr. Meany drove us to Dan's dorm. The senior students were up; we passed them on the stairwell and in the hall--some of them were in their pajamas, and all of them ogled Hester. I could hear the ice cubes rattling in Dan's glass before he opened the door.
"WE'VE COME FOR THE DUMMY, DAN," Owen said, immediately taking charge.
"The dummy?" Dan said.
"YOU'RE NOT GOING TO SIT AROUND AND STARE AT IT," Owen told him. He marched into the dining room where the dressmaker's dummy maintained its sentinel position over my mother's sewing machine; a few dressmaking materials were still spread out on the dining-room table; a drawing of a new pattern was pinned down flat on the table by a pair of shears. The dummy, however, was not newly attired. The dummy wore my mother's hated red dress. Owen had been the last person to dress the dummy; this time, he had tried a wide, black belt--one of Mother's favorites--to try to make the dress more tempting.
He took the belt off and put it on the table--as if Dan might have use for the belt!--and he picked the dummy up by her hips. When they were standing side by side, Owen came up only to the dummy's breasts; when he lifted her, her breasts were above his head--pointing the way.
"YOU DO WHAT YOU WANT, DAN," Owen told him, "BUT YOU'RE NOT GOING TO STARE AT THIS DUMMY AND MAKE YOURSELF MORE UNHAPPY."
"Okay," Dan said; he took another drink of his whiskey. "Thank you, Owen," he added, but Owen was already marching out.
"COME ON," he said to Hester and me, and we followed him.
We drove out Court Street, and the entire length of Pine Street, with the trees blowing overhead and the granite dust stinging our faces on the flatbed. Owen whacked the truck cab once. "FASTER!" he shouted to his father, and Mr. Meany drove faster.
On Front Street, just as Mr. Meany was slowing down, Hester said, "I could drive like this all night. I could drive to the beach and back. It feels so good. It's the only way to feel cool."
Owen whacked the truck cab again. "DRIVE TO THE BEACH!" he said. "DRIVE TO LITTLE BOAR'S HEAD AND BACK!"
We were off. "FASTER!" Owen shouted once, out on the empty road to Rye. It was a fast eight or ten miles; soon the granite dust was gone from the floor of the flatbed, and the only thing to sting our faces was an occasional insect, pelting by. Hester's hair was wild. The wind rushed around us too forcefully for us to talk. Sweat instantly dried; tears, too. The red dress on my mother's dummy clung and flapped in the wind; Owen sat with his back against the cab of the truck, the dummy outstretched in his lap--as if the two of them were engaged in a half-successful levitation experiment.
At the beach, at Little Boar's Head, we took off our shoes and walked in the surf, while Mr. Meany dutifully waited--the engine still idling. Owen carried the dummy the whole time, careful not to go very far into the waves; the red dress never got wet.
"I'LL KEEP THE DUMMY WITH ME," he said. "YOUR GRANDMOTHER SHOULDN'T HAVE THIS AROUND TO LOOK AT, EITHER--NOT TO MENTION, YOU," he added.
"Not to mention, you," Hester said, but Owen ignored this, high-stepping through the surf.
When Mr. Meany dropped Hester and me at 80 Front Street, the downstairs lights in the houses along the street were off--except for the lights in Grandmother's house--but a few people were still upstairs, in their beds, reading. On very hot nights, Mr. Fish slept in the hammock on his screened-in porch, so Hester and I kept our voices down, saying good night to Owen and his father; Owen told his father to not turn around in our driveway. Because the dressmaker's dummy wouldn't fit in the cab--because it couldn't bend--Owen stood on the flatbed with his arm around the hips of the red dress as the truck pulled away. With his free hand, he held fast to one of the loading chains--they were the chains for fastening down the curbstones or the monuments.
If Mr. Fish had been in his hammock, and if he had woken up, he would have seen something unforgettable passing under the Front Street lamplights. The dark and massive truck, lumbering into the night, and the woman in the red dress--a headless woman with a stunning figure, but with no arms--held around her hips by a child attached to a chain, or a dwarf.
"I hope you know he's crazy," said Hester tiredly.
But I looked at Owen's departing image with wonder: he had managed to orchestrate my mourning on the evening of my mother's funeral. And, like my armadillo's claws, he'd taken what he wanted--in this case, my mother's double, her shy dressmaker's dummy in that unloved dress. Later, I thought that Owen must have known the dummy was important; he must have foreseen that even that unwanted dress would have a use--that it had a purpose. But then, that night, I was inclined to agree with Hester; I thought the red dress was merely Owen's idea of a talisman--an amulet, to ward off the evil powers of that "angel" Owen thought he'd seen. I didn't believe in angels then.
Toronto: February 1, 1987--the Fourth Sunday After Epiphany. I believe in angels now. I don't necessarily claim that this is an advantage; for example, it was of no particular help to me during last night's Vestry elections--I wasn't even nominated. I've been a parish officer so many times, for so many years, I shouldn't complain; perhaps my fellow parishioners thought they were being kind to me--to give me a year off. Indeed, had I been nominated for warden or deputy warden, I might have declined to accept the nomination. I admit, I'm tired of it; I've done more than my share for Grace Church on-the-Hill. Still, I was surprised I wasn't nominated for a single office; out of politeness--if not out of recognition of my faithfulness and my devotion--I thought I should have been nominated for something.
I shouldn't have let the insult--if it even is an insult--distract me from the Sunday service; that was not good. Once I was rector's warden to Canon Campbell--back when Canon Campbell was our rector; when he was alive, I admit I felt a little better-treated. But since Canon Mackie has been rector, I've been deputy rector's warden once--and people's warden, too. And one year I was chairman of sidesmen; I've also been parish council chairman. It's not the fault of Canon Mackie that he'll never replace Canon Campbell in my heart; Canon Mackie is warm and kind--and his loquaciousness doesn't offend me. It is simply that Canon Campbell was special, and those early days were special, too.
I shouldn't brood about such a silly business as the annual installation of parish officers; especially, I shouldn't allow such thoughts to distract me from the choral Eucharist and the sermon. I confess to a certain childishness.
The visiting preacher distracted me, too. Canon Mackie is keen on having guest ministers deliver the sermon--which does spare us the canon's loquacity--but whoever the preacher was today, he was some sort of "reformed" Anglican, and his thesis seemed to be that everything that first appears to be different is actually the same. I couldn't help thinking what Owen Meany would say about that.
In the Protestant tradition, we turn to the Bible; when we want an answer, that's where we look. But even the Bible distracted me today. For the Fourth Sunday After Epiphany, Canon Mackie chose Matthew--those troublesome Beatitudes; at least, they always troubled Owen and me.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
It's just so hard to imagine "the poor in spirit" achieving very much.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.
I was eleven years old when my mother was killed; I mourn her still. I mourn for more than her, too. I don't feel "comforted"; not yet.
Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth.
"BUT THERE'S NO EVIDENCE FOR THAT," Owen told Mrs. Walker in Sunday school.
And on and on:
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God.
"BUT WILL IT HELP THEM--TO SEE GOD?" Owen Meany asked Mrs. Walker.
Did it help Owen--to see God?
"Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account," Jesus says. "Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you."
That was always something Owen and I found hard to take--a reward in heaven.
"GOODNESS AS BRIBERY," Owen called it--an argument that eluded Mrs. Walker.
And then--after the Beatitudes, and the sermon by the stranger--the Nicene Creed felt forced to me. Canon Campbell used to explain everything to me--the part about believing in "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church" bothered me; Canon Campbell helped me see beyond the words, he made me see in what sense "Catholic," in what way "Apostolic." Canon Mackie says I worry about "mere words" too much. Mere words?
And then there was the business about "all nations," and--specifically--"our Queen"; I'm not an American anymore, but I still have trouble with the part that goes "grant unto thy servant ELIZABETH our Queen"; and to think that it is possible "to lead all nations in the way of righteousness" is utterly ridiculous!
And before I received Holy Communion, I balked at the general Confession.
"We acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness." Some Sundays, this is so hard to say; Canon Campbell indulged me when I confessed to him that this confession was difficult for me, but Canon Mackie employs the "mere words" thesis with me until I am seeing him in a most unforgiving light. And when Canon Mackie proceeded with the Holy Eucharist, to the Thanksgiving and Consecration, which he sang, I even judged him unfairly for his singing voice, which is not and never will be the equal of Canon Campbell's--God Rest His Soul.
In the entire service, only the psalm struck me as true, and properly shamed me. It was the Thirty-seventh Psalm, and the choir appeared to sing it directly to me:
Leave off from wrath, and let go displeasure:
fret not thyself, else shalt thou be moved to do evil.
Yes, it's true: I should "leave off from wrath, and let go displeasure." What good is anger? I have been angry before. I have been "moved to do evil," too--as you shall see.
4
The Little Lord Jesus
* * *
The first Christmas following my mother's death was the first Christmas I didn't spend in Sawyer Depot. My grandmother told Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred that if the family were all together, my mother's absence would be too apparent. If Dan and Grandmother and I were alone in Gravesend, and if the Eastmans were alone in Sawyer Depot, my grandmother argued that we would all miss each other; then, she reasoned, we wouldn't miss my mother so much. Ever since the Christmas of '53, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving--Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.
Dividing my time between my grandmother's house on 80 Front Street and the abandoned dormitory where Dan had his small apartment also gave me my first impressions of Gravesend Academy at Christmas, when all the boarders had gone home. The bleak brick and stone, the ivy frosted with snow, the dormitories and classroom buildings with their windows all closed--with a penitentiary sameness--gave the campus the aura of a prison enduring a hunger strike; and without the students hurrying on the quadrangle paths, the bare, bone-colored birches stood out in black-and-white against the snow, like charcoal drawings of themselves, or skeletons of the alumni.
The ringing of the chapel bell, and the bell for class hours, was suspended; and so my mother's absence was underlined
"It's only the second time I've seen you in a dress," I said.
"I know," she said.
It was an especially dark night, cloudy and starless; the moon was just an opaque sliver in the fog.
"Just remember," she said, "your friend Owen feels worse than you."
"I know," I said; but I felt no small surge of jealousy at my admission--and at the knowledge that Hester was thinking about Owen, too.
We left Front Street at the Gravesend Inn; I hesitated before crossing Pine Street, but Hester seemed to know our destination--her hand tugged me along. Once we were on Linden Street, passing the dark high school, it was clear to both of us where we were going. There was a police car in the high-school parking lot--on the lookout for vandals, I suppose, or else to prevent the high-school students from using the parking lot and the athletic fields for illicit purposes at night.
We could hear a motor running; it seemed too deep and throaty a motor to be the squad car, and after we passed the high school, the engine noise grew louder. I didn't believe that a motor was required to run the cemetery, but that's where the sound was coming from. I think now that I must have wanted to see her grave at night, knowing how she hated the darkness; I believe I wanted to reassure myself that some light penetrated even the cemetery at night.
The streetlights on Linden Street shone some distance into the cemetery and clearly illuminated the Meany Granite Company truck, which was parked and idling at the main gate; Hester and I could observe Mr. Meany's solemn face behind the steering wheel, his face illuminated by the long drags he took from his cigarette. He was alone in the cab of the truck, but I knew where Owen was.
Mr. Meany seemed unsurprised to see me, although Hester made him nervous. Hester made everyone nervous: in good light, in close-up, she looked her age--like a large, overly mature twelve-year-old. But from any distance, with any assistance from the shadows, she looked eighteen--and like a lot of trouble, too.
"Owen had some more to say," Mr. Meany confided to us. "But he's been at it a while. I'm sure he's about finished."
I felt another rush of jealousy, to think that Owen's concerns for my mother's first night underground had preceded my own. In the humid air, the diesel exhaust was heavy and foul, but I was sure that Mr. Meany could not be prevailed upon to turn the engine off; probably he was keeping the engine running in an effort to hurry up Owen's prayers.
"I want you to know somethin'," Mr. Meany said. "I'm gonna listen to what your mother said. She told me not to interfere if Owen wanted to go to the academy. And I won't," he said. "I promised her," he added.
It would take me years to realize that from the moment Owen hit that ball, Mr. Meany wouldn't "interfere" with anything Owen wanted.
"She told me not to worry about the money, too," Mr. Meany said. "I don't know what happens about that--now," he added.
"Owen will get a full scholarship," I said.
"I don't know about that," Mr. Meany said. "I guess so, if he wants one," he added. "Your mother was speakin' about his clothes," Mr. Meany said. "All them coats and ties."
"Don't worry," I told him.
"Oh, I ain't worryin'!" he said. "I'm just promisin' you I ain't interferin'--that's the point."
A light blinked from the cemetery, and Mr. Meany saw Hester and me look in its direction.
"He's got a light with him," Mr. Meany said. "I don't know what's takin' him so long," he said. "He's been in there long enough." He stepped on the accelerator then, as if a little rev would hurry Owen along. But after a while, he said, "Maybe you better go see what's keepin' him."
The light in the cemetery was faint and Hester and I walked toward it cautiously, not wanting to tread on other people's flowers or bark our shins on one of the smaller graves. The farther we walked from the Meany Granite Company truck, the more the engine noise receded--but it seemed deeper, too, as if it were the motor at the core of the earth, the one that turned the earth and changed day to night. We could hear snatches of Owen's prayers; I thought he must have brought the flashlight so he could read The Book of Common Prayer--perhaps he was reading every prayer in it.
"'INTO PARADISE MAY THE ANGELS LEAD YOU,'" he read.
Hester and I stopped; she stood behind me and locked her arms around my waist. I could feel her breasts against my shoulder blades, and--because she was a little taller--I could feel her throat against the back of my head; her chin pushed my head down.
"'FATHER OF ALL,'" Owen read. "'WE PRAY TO YOU FOR THOSE WE LOVE, BUT SEE NO LONGER.'" Hester squeezed me, she kissed my ears. Mr. Meany revved the truck, but Owen did not appear to notice; he knelt in front of the first bank of flowers, at the foot of the mound of new earth, in front of my mother's gravestone. He had the prayer book flat upon the ground in front of him, the flashlight pinched between his knees.
"Owen?" I said, but he didn't hear me. "Owen!" I said more loudly. He looked up, but not at me; I mean, he looked up--he'd heard his name called, but he hadn't recognized my voice.
"I HEAR YOU!" he shouted angrily. "WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT DO YOU WANT OF ME?"
"Owen, it's me," I said; I felt Hester gasp behind me. It had suddenly occurred to her--Whom Owen thought he was speaking to.
"It's me, and Hester," I added, because it occurred to me that the figure of Hester standing behind me, and appearing to loom over me, might also be misunderstood by Owen Meany, who was ever-watchful for that angel he had frightened from my mother's room.
"OH, IT'S YOU," Owen said; he sounded disappointed. "HELLO, HESTER. I DIDN'T RECOGNIZE YOU--YOU LOOK SO GROWN UP IN A DRESS. I'M SORRY," Owen said.
"It's okay, Owen," I said.
"HOW'S DAN?" he asked.
I told him that Dan was okay, but that he'd gone to his dormitory, alone, for the night; this news made Owen very businesslike.
"I SUPPOSE THE DUMMY'S STILL THERE? IN THE DINING ROOM?" he asked.
"Of course," I said.
"WELL, THAT'S VERY BAD," Owen said. "DAN SHOULDN'T BE ALONE WITH THAT DUMMY. WHAT IF HE JUST SITS AROUND AND STARES AT IT? WHAT IF HE WAKES UP IN THE NIGHT AND HE SEES IT STANDING THERE ON HIS WAY TO THE REFRIGERATOR? WE SHOULD GO GET IT--RIGHT NOW."
He arranged his flashlight in the flowers, so that the shiny body of the light was completely blanketed by the flowers and the light itself shone upon the mound. Then he stood up and brushed the dirt off the knees of his pants. He closed his prayer book and looked at how the light fell over my mother's grave; he seemed pleased. I was not the only one who knew how my mother had hated the darkness.
We couldn't all fit in the cab of the granite truck, so Owen sat with Hester and me on the dusty floor of the flatbed trailer while Mr. Meany drove us to Dan's dorm. The senior students were up; we passed them on the stairwell and in the hall--some of them were in their pajamas, and all of them ogled Hester. I could hear the ice cubes rattling in Dan's glass before he opened the door.
"WE'VE COME FOR THE DUMMY, DAN," Owen said, immediately taking charge.
"The dummy?" Dan said.
"YOU'RE NOT GOING TO SIT AROUND AND STARE AT IT," Owen told him. He marched into the dining room where the dressmaker's dummy maintained its sentinel position over my mother's sewing machine; a few dressmaking materials were still spread out on the dining-room table; a drawing of a new pattern was pinned down flat on the table by a pair of shears. The dummy, however, was not newly attired. The dummy wore my mother's hated red dress. Owen had been the last person to dress the dummy; this time, he had tried a wide, black belt--one of Mother's favorites--to try to make the dress more tempting.
He took the belt off and put it on the table--as if Dan might have use for the belt!--and he picked the dummy up by her hips. When they were standing side by side, Owen came up only to the dummy's breasts; when he lifted her, her breasts were above his head--pointing the way.
"YOU DO WHAT YOU WANT, DAN," Owen told him, "BUT YOU'RE NOT GOING TO STARE AT THIS DUMMY AND MAKE YOURSELF MORE UNHAPPY."
"Okay," Dan said; he took another drink of his whiskey. "Thank you, Owen," he added, but Owen was already marching out.
"COME ON," he said to Hester and me, and we followed him.
We drove out Court Street, and the entire length of Pine Street, with the trees blowing overhead and the granite dust stinging our faces on the flatbed. Owen whacked the truck cab once. "FASTER!" he shouted to his father, and Mr. Meany drove faster.
On Front Street, just as Mr. Meany was slowing down, Hester said, "I could drive like this all night. I could drive to the beach and back. It feels so good. It's the only way to feel cool."
Owen whacked the truck cab again. "DRIVE TO THE BEACH!" he said. "DRIVE TO LITTLE BOAR'S HEAD AND BACK!"
We were off. "FASTER!" Owen shouted once, out on the empty road to Rye. It was a fast eight or ten miles; soon the granite dust was gone from the floor of the flatbed, and the only thing to sting our faces was an occasional insect, pelting by. Hester's hair was wild. The wind rushed around us too forcefully for us to talk. Sweat instantly dried; tears, too. The red dress on my mother's dummy clung and flapped in the wind; Owen sat with his back against the cab of the truck, the dummy outstretched in his lap--as if the two of them were engaged in a half-successful levitation experiment.
At the beach, at Little Boar's Head, we took off our shoes and walked in the surf, while Mr. Meany dutifully waited--the engine still idling. Owen carried the dummy the whole time, careful not to go very far into the waves; the red dress never got wet.
"I'LL KEEP THE DUMMY WITH ME," he said. "YOUR GRANDMOTHER SHOULDN'T HAVE THIS AROUND TO LOOK AT, EITHER--NOT TO MENTION, YOU," he added.
"Not to mention, you," Hester said, but Owen ignored this, high-stepping through the surf.
When Mr. Meany dropped Hester and me at 80 Front Street, the downstairs lights in the houses along the street were off--except for the lights in Grandmother's house--but a few people were still upstairs, in their beds, reading. On very hot nights, Mr. Fish slept in the hammock on his screened-in porch, so Hester and I kept our voices down, saying good night to Owen and his father; Owen told his father to not turn around in our driveway. Because the dressmaker's dummy wouldn't fit in the cab--because it couldn't bend--Owen stood on the flatbed with his arm around the hips of the red dress as the truck pulled away. With his free hand, he held fast to one of the loading chains--they were the chains for fastening down the curbstones or the monuments.
If Mr. Fish had been in his hammock, and if he had woken up, he would have seen something unforgettable passing under the Front Street lamplights. The dark and massive truck, lumbering into the night, and the woman in the red dress--a headless woman with a stunning figure, but with no arms--held around her hips by a child attached to a chain, or a dwarf.
"I hope you know he's crazy," said Hester tiredly.
But I looked at Owen's departing image with wonder: he had managed to orchestrate my mourning on the evening of my mother's funeral. And, like my armadillo's claws, he'd taken what he wanted--in this case, my mother's double, her shy dressmaker's dummy in that unloved dress. Later, I thought that Owen must have known the dummy was important; he must have foreseen that even that unwanted dress would have a use--that it had a purpose. But then, that night, I was inclined to agree with Hester; I thought the red dress was merely Owen's idea of a talisman--an amulet, to ward off the evil powers of that "angel" Owen thought he'd seen. I didn't believe in angels then.
Toronto: February 1, 1987--the Fourth Sunday After Epiphany. I believe in angels now. I don't necessarily claim that this is an advantage; for example, it was of no particular help to me during last night's Vestry elections--I wasn't even nominated. I've been a parish officer so many times, for so many years, I shouldn't complain; perhaps my fellow parishioners thought they were being kind to me--to give me a year off. Indeed, had I been nominated for warden or deputy warden, I might have declined to accept the nomination. I admit, I'm tired of it; I've done more than my share for Grace Church on-the-Hill. Still, I was surprised I wasn't nominated for a single office; out of politeness--if not out of recognition of my faithfulness and my devotion--I thought I should have been nominated for something.
I shouldn't have let the insult--if it even is an insult--distract me from the Sunday service; that was not good. Once I was rector's warden to Canon Campbell--back when Canon Campbell was our rector; when he was alive, I admit I felt a little better-treated. But since Canon Mackie has been rector, I've been deputy rector's warden once--and people's warden, too. And one year I was chairman of sidesmen; I've also been parish council chairman. It's not the fault of Canon Mackie that he'll never replace Canon Campbell in my heart; Canon Mackie is warm and kind--and his loquaciousness doesn't offend me. It is simply that Canon Campbell was special, and those early days were special, too.
I shouldn't brood about such a silly business as the annual installation of parish officers; especially, I shouldn't allow such thoughts to distract me from the choral Eucharist and the sermon. I confess to a certain childishness.
The visiting preacher distracted me, too. Canon Mackie is keen on having guest ministers deliver the sermon--which does spare us the canon's loquacity--but whoever the preacher was today, he was some sort of "reformed" Anglican, and his thesis seemed to be that everything that first appears to be different is actually the same. I couldn't help thinking what Owen Meany would say about that.
In the Protestant tradition, we turn to the Bible; when we want an answer, that's where we look. But even the Bible distracted me today. For the Fourth Sunday After Epiphany, Canon Mackie chose Matthew--those troublesome Beatitudes; at least, they always troubled Owen and me.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
It's just so hard to imagine "the poor in spirit" achieving very much.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.
I was eleven years old when my mother was killed; I mourn her still. I mourn for more than her, too. I don't feel "comforted"; not yet.
Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth.
"BUT THERE'S NO EVIDENCE FOR THAT," Owen told Mrs. Walker in Sunday school.
And on and on:
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God.
"BUT WILL IT HELP THEM--TO SEE GOD?" Owen Meany asked Mrs. Walker.
Did it help Owen--to see God?
"Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account," Jesus says. "Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you."
That was always something Owen and I found hard to take--a reward in heaven.
"GOODNESS AS BRIBERY," Owen called it--an argument that eluded Mrs. Walker.
And then--after the Beatitudes, and the sermon by the stranger--the Nicene Creed felt forced to me. Canon Campbell used to explain everything to me--the part about believing in "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church" bothered me; Canon Campbell helped me see beyond the words, he made me see in what sense "Catholic," in what way "Apostolic." Canon Mackie says I worry about "mere words" too much. Mere words?
And then there was the business about "all nations," and--specifically--"our Queen"; I'm not an American anymore, but I still have trouble with the part that goes "grant unto thy servant ELIZABETH our Queen"; and to think that it is possible "to lead all nations in the way of righteousness" is utterly ridiculous!
And before I received Holy Communion, I balked at the general Confession.
"We acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness." Some Sundays, this is so hard to say; Canon Campbell indulged me when I confessed to him that this confession was difficult for me, but Canon Mackie employs the "mere words" thesis with me until I am seeing him in a most unforgiving light. And when Canon Mackie proceeded with the Holy Eucharist, to the Thanksgiving and Consecration, which he sang, I even judged him unfairly for his singing voice, which is not and never will be the equal of Canon Campbell's--God Rest His Soul.
In the entire service, only the psalm struck me as true, and properly shamed me. It was the Thirty-seventh Psalm, and the choir appeared to sing it directly to me:
Leave off from wrath, and let go displeasure:
fret not thyself, else shalt thou be moved to do evil.
Yes, it's true: I should "leave off from wrath, and let go displeasure." What good is anger? I have been angry before. I have been "moved to do evil," too--as you shall see.
4
The Little Lord Jesus
* * *
The first Christmas following my mother's death was the first Christmas I didn't spend in Sawyer Depot. My grandmother told Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred that if the family were all together, my mother's absence would be too apparent. If Dan and Grandmother and I were alone in Gravesend, and if the Eastmans were alone in Sawyer Depot, my grandmother argued that we would all miss each other; then, she reasoned, we wouldn't miss my mother so much. Ever since the Christmas of '53, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving--Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.
Dividing my time between my grandmother's house on 80 Front Street and the abandoned dormitory where Dan had his small apartment also gave me my first impressions of Gravesend Academy at Christmas, when all the boarders had gone home. The bleak brick and stone, the ivy frosted with snow, the dormitories and classroom buildings with their windows all closed--with a penitentiary sameness--gave the campus the aura of a prison enduring a hunger strike; and without the students hurrying on the quadrangle paths, the bare, bone-colored birches stood out in black-and-white against the snow, like charcoal drawings of themselves, or skeletons of the alumni.
The ringing of the chapel bell, and the bell for class hours, was suspended; and so my mother's absence was underlined