A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
ed 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 this!" 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 the 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 fucking '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 ideas!"
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 their 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 spiderwebs 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--when you give her the flag. She said she's gonna spit on you," the pregnant sister told Owen. "And I know her--she will!" the girl said. "She'll spit in your face!"
"IT HAPPENS, SOMETIMES," Owen said. "WHERE'S THE TALL BOY--YOUR HALF BROTHER? WHAT'S HIS NAME?"
"If Vietnam hadn't killed that bastard, somethin' else would have--that's what I say!" said the pregnant sister, who quickly looked around, fearful that someone in the family might have overheard her.
"DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE FUNERAL," Owen told her. "WHERE'S THE TALL BOY? WHAT'S HIS NAME?" There was a closed door off a narrow hall, and the girl cautiously pointed to it.
"Don't tell him I told you," she whispered.
"WHAT'S HIS NAME?" Owen asked her.
She looked around, to make sure no one was watching her; there was a gob of mustard on the swollen belly of her wrinkled dress. "Dick!" she said; then she moved away.
Owen knocked on the door.
"Watch yourself, Meany," Major Rawls said. "I know the police, at the airport--they never take their eyes off this guy."
Owen knocked on the door a little more insistently.
"Fuck you!" Dick shouted through the closed door.
"YOU'RE TALKING TO AN OFFICER!" said Owen Meany.
"Fuck you, sir!" Dick said.
"THAT'S BETTER," Owen said. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE--BEATING OFF?"
Major Rawls pushed Owen and me out of the path of the door; we were all standing clear of the door when Dick opened it. He was wearing a different pair of fatigue pants, he was barefoot and bare-chested, and he'd blackened his face with something like shoe polish--as if, after the merrymakers all settled down, he planned to engage in undercover activities in the dangerous neighborhood. With the same black marker, he had drawn circles around his nipples--like twin bull's-eyes on his chest.
"Come on in," he said, stepping back into his room, where--no doubt--he dreamed without cease of butchering the Viet Cong.
The room reeked of marijuana; Dick finished the small nub of a roach he held with a pair of tweezers--not offering us the last toke. The dead helicopter pilot, the warrant officer, was named Frank Jarvits--but Dick preferred to call him by his "Cong killer name," the name his buddies in 'Nam had given him, which was "Hubcap." Dick showed us, proudly, all the souvenirs that Hubcap had managed to smuggle home from Vietnam. There were several bayonets, several machetes, a collection of plastic-encased "water beetles," and one helmet with an overripe sweatband--with the possessive "Hubcap's Hat" written on the band in what appeared to be blood. There was an AK-47 assault rifle that Dick broke down into the stock group, the barrel, the receiver, the bolt--and so forth. Then he quickly reassembled the Soviet-made weapon. His stoned eyes flickered with a passing, brief excitement in gaining our approval; he'd wanted to show us how Hubcap had broken down the rifle in order to smuggle it home. There were two Chicom grenades, too--those bottle-shaped grenades, with the fat part serrated and the fuse cord at the pipelike end of the bottleneck.
"They don't blow as good as ours, but you can get sent to Leaven-worth for sneakin' home an M-sixty-seven--Hubcap told me," Dick said. He stared sadly at the two Chinese-made grenades; then he picked up one. "Fuckin' Chink Commie shit," he said, "but it'll still do a job on ya." He showed us how the warrant officer had taped up the end of the grenade, where the firing-pin cord is; then Hubcap had taped up the whole grenades in cardboard, placing one of them in a shaving kit and the other in a combat boot. "They just come home like carry-on luggage," Dick told us.
Apparently, various "buddies" had been involved in bringing home the AK-47 assault rifle; different guys brought home different parts. "That's how it's done," Dick said wisely--his head still nodding to whatever tune the pot was playing to him. "It got tough after sixty-six, 'cause of the drug traffickin'--everyone's gear got inspected more, you know," he said.
The walls of the room were festooned with hanging cartridge belts and an assortment of fatigues and unmatching parts of uniforms. The ungainly boy lived for reaching the legal age for legal slaughter.
"How come you ain't in 'Nam?" Dick asked Owen. "You too small--or what?"
Owen chose to ignore him, but Major Rawls said: "Lieutenant Meany has requested transfer to Vietnam--he's scheduled to go there."
"How come you ain't over there?" Dick asked the major.
"'HOW COME YOU AIN'T OVER THERE,' SIR!" said Owen Meany.
Dick shut his eyes and smiled; he dozed off, or dreamed away, for a second or two. Then he said to Major Rawls: "How come you ain't over there, sir?"
"I've already been there," Rawls said.
"How come you ain't back there?" Dick asked him. "Sir..." he added nastily.
"I've got a better job here," Major Rawls told the boy.
"Well, someone's got to have the dirty jobs--ain't that how it is?" Dick said.
"WHEN YOU GET IN THE ARMY, WHAT KIND OF JOB DO YOU THINK YOU'LL HAVE?" Owen asked the boy. "WITH YOUR ATTITUDE, YOU WON'T GET TO VIETNAM--YOU WON'T GO TO WAR, YOU'LL GO TO JAIL. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE SMART TO GO TO WAR," said Owen Meany. "BUT YOU HAVE TO BE SMARTER THAN YOU."
The boy closed his eyes and smiled again; his head nodded a little. Major Rawls picked up a pencil and tapped it on the barrel of the assault rifle. That brought Dick, momentarily, back to life.
"You better not bring this baby to the airport, pal," Major Rawls said. "You better never show up there with the rifle, or with the grenades," the major said. When the boy shut his eyes again, Rawls tapped him on his forehead with the pencil. The boy's eyes blinked open; hatred came and went in them--a drifting, passing hatred, like clouds or smoke. "I'm not even sure those bayonets or machetes are legal--you understand me?" Major Rawls said. "You better be sure you keep them in their sheaths," he said.
"Sometimes the cops take 'em from me--sometimes they give 'em back the same day," Dick said. I could count each of his ribs, and his stomach muscles. He saw me staring at him and he said: "Who's the guy outta uniform?"
"HE'S IN INTELLIGENCE," Owen said. Dick appeared impressed, but--like his hatred--the feeling drifted and passed.
"You carry a gun?" Dick asked me.
"NOT THAT KIND OF INTELLIGENCE," said Owen Meany, and Dick closed his eyes again--there being, in his view, clearly no intelligence that didn't carry a gun.
"I'M SORRY ABOUT YOUR BROTHER," Owen said--as we were leaving.
"See you at the funeral," Major Rawls said to the boy.
"I don't go to fuckin' funerals!" Dick snapped. "Close the
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 this!" 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 the 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 fucking '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 ideas!"
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 their 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 spiderwebs 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--when you give her the flag. She said she's gonna spit on you," the pregnant sister told Owen. "And I know her--she will!" the girl said. "She'll spit in your face!"
"IT HAPPENS, SOMETIMES," Owen said. "WHERE'S THE TALL BOY--YOUR HALF BROTHER? WHAT'S HIS NAME?"
"If Vietnam hadn't killed that bastard, somethin' else would have--that's what I say!" said the pregnant sister, who quickly looked around, fearful that someone in the family might have overheard her.
"DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE FUNERAL," Owen told her. "WHERE'S THE TALL BOY? WHAT'S HIS NAME?" There was a closed door off a narrow hall, and the girl cautiously pointed to it.
"Don't tell him I told you," she whispered.
"WHAT'S HIS NAME?" Owen asked her.
She looked around, to make sure no one was watching her; there was a gob of mustard on the swollen belly of her wrinkled dress. "Dick!" she said; then she moved away.
Owen knocked on the door.
"Watch yourself, Meany," Major Rawls said. "I know the police, at the airport--they never take their eyes off this guy."
Owen knocked on the door a little more insistently.
"Fuck you!" Dick shouted through the closed door.
"YOU'RE TALKING TO AN OFFICER!" said Owen Meany.
"Fuck you, sir!" Dick said.
"THAT'S BETTER," Owen said. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE--BEATING OFF?"
Major Rawls pushed Owen and me out of the path of the door; we were all standing clear of the door when Dick opened it. He was wearing a different pair of fatigue pants, he was barefoot and bare-chested, and he'd blackened his face with something like shoe polish--as if, after the merrymakers all settled down, he planned to engage in undercover activities in the dangerous neighborhood. With the same black marker, he had drawn circles around his nipples--like twin bull's-eyes on his chest.
"Come on in," he said, stepping back into his room, where--no doubt--he dreamed without cease of butchering the Viet Cong.
The room reeked of marijuana; Dick finished the small nub of a roach he held with a pair of tweezers--not offering us the last toke. The dead helicopter pilot, the warrant officer, was named Frank Jarvits--but Dick preferred to call him by his "Cong killer name," the name his buddies in 'Nam had given him, which was "Hubcap." Dick showed us, proudly, all the souvenirs that Hubcap had managed to smuggle home from Vietnam. There were several bayonets, several machetes, a collection of plastic-encased "water beetles," and one helmet with an overripe sweatband--with the possessive "Hubcap's Hat" written on the band in what appeared to be blood. There was an AK-47 assault rifle that Dick broke down into the stock group, the barrel, the receiver, the bolt--and so forth. Then he quickly reassembled the Soviet-made weapon. His stoned eyes flickered with a passing, brief excitement in gaining our approval; he'd wanted to show us how Hubcap had broken down the rifle in order to smuggle it home. There were two Chicom grenades, too--those bottle-shaped grenades, with the fat part serrated and the fuse cord at the pipelike end of the bottleneck.
"They don't blow as good as ours, but you can get sent to Leaven-worth for sneakin' home an M-sixty-seven--Hubcap told me," Dick said. He stared sadly at the two Chinese-made grenades; then he picked up one. "Fuckin' Chink Commie shit," he said, "but it'll still do a job on ya." He showed us how the warrant officer had taped up the end of the grenade, where the firing-pin cord is; then Hubcap had taped up the whole grenades in cardboard, placing one of them in a shaving kit and the other in a combat boot. "They just come home like carry-on luggage," Dick told us.
Apparently, various "buddies" had been involved in bringing home the AK-47 assault rifle; different guys brought home different parts. "That's how it's done," Dick said wisely--his head still nodding to whatever tune the pot was playing to him. "It got tough after sixty-six, 'cause of the drug traffickin'--everyone's gear got inspected more, you know," he said.
The walls of the room were festooned with hanging cartridge belts and an assortment of fatigues and unmatching parts of uniforms. The ungainly boy lived for reaching the legal age for legal slaughter.
"How come you ain't in 'Nam?" Dick asked Owen. "You too small--or what?"
Owen chose to ignore him, but Major Rawls said: "Lieutenant Meany has requested transfer to Vietnam--he's scheduled to go there."
"How come you ain't over there?" Dick asked the major.
"'HOW COME YOU AIN'T OVER THERE,' SIR!" said Owen Meany.
Dick shut his eyes and smiled; he dozed off, or dreamed away, for a second or two. Then he said to Major Rawls: "How come you ain't over there, sir?"
"I've already been there," Rawls said.
"How come you ain't back there?" Dick asked him. "Sir..." he added nastily.
"I've got a better job here," Major Rawls told the boy.
"Well, someone's got to have the dirty jobs--ain't that how it is?" Dick said.
"WHEN YOU GET IN THE ARMY, WHAT KIND OF JOB DO YOU THINK YOU'LL HAVE?" Owen asked the boy. "WITH YOUR ATTITUDE, YOU WON'T GET TO VIETNAM--YOU WON'T GO TO WAR, YOU'LL GO TO JAIL. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE SMART TO GO TO WAR," said Owen Meany. "BUT YOU HAVE TO BE SMARTER THAN YOU."
The boy closed his eyes and smiled again; his head nodded a little. Major Rawls picked up a pencil and tapped it on the barrel of the assault rifle. That brought Dick, momentarily, back to life.
"You better not bring this baby to the airport, pal," Major Rawls said. "You better never show up there with the rifle, or with the grenades," the major said. When the boy shut his eyes again, Rawls tapped him on his forehead with the pencil. The boy's eyes blinked open; hatred came and went in them--a drifting, passing hatred, like clouds or smoke. "I'm not even sure those bayonets or machetes are legal--you understand me?" Major Rawls said. "You better be sure you keep them in their sheaths," he said.
"Sometimes the cops take 'em from me--sometimes they give 'em back the same day," Dick said. I could count each of his ribs, and his stomach muscles. He saw me staring at him and he said: "Who's the guy outta uniform?"
"HE'S IN INTELLIGENCE," Owen said. Dick appeared impressed, but--like his hatred--the feeling drifted and passed.
"You carry a gun?" Dick asked me.
"NOT THAT KIND OF INTELLIGENCE," said Owen Meany, and Dick closed his eyes again--there being, in his view, clearly no intelligence that didn't carry a gun.
"I'M SORRY ABOUT YOUR BROTHER," Owen said--as we were leaving.
"See you at the funeral," Major Rawls said to the boy.
"I don't go to fuckin' funerals!" Dick snapped. "Close the