A prayer for Owen Meany (22 page)

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 FT," 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  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
,-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 mat 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 shall 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. 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 ', 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  Front Street
and the abandoned dormitory where Dan had his small apartment also gave me my
first impressions of Graves-end 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 by the absence of Gravesend's most routine music, the
academy chimes I'd taken for granted-until I couldn't hear them. There was only
the solemn, hourly bonging of the great clock in the bell tower of Kurd's
Church; especially on the most brittle-cold days of December, and against the
landscape of old snow-thawed and refrozen to the dull, silver-gray sheen of
pewter-the clock-bell of Kurd's Church tolled the time like a death knell.

'Twas not the season to be jolly-although dear Dan Needham
tried. Dan drank too much, and he filled the empty, echoing dormitory with his
strident caroling; his rendition of the Christmas carols was quite painfully a
far cry from my mother's singing. And whenever Owen would join Dan for a verse
of' 'God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen," or-worse-' 'It Came Upon the Midnight
Clear," the old stone stairwells of Dan's dorm resounded with a dirgeful
music that was not at all Christmasy but strictly mournful; they were the
voices of the ghosts of those Gravesend boys unable to go home for Christmas,
singing to their faraway families. The Gravesend dormitories were named after
the long-ago, dead-and-buried faculty and headmasters of the school: Abbot,
Amen, Bancroft, Dunbar, Oilman, Gorham, Hooper, Lambert, Perkins, Porter,
Quincy, Scott. Dan Needham lived in Water-house Hall, so named for some
deceased curmudgeon of a classicist, a Latin teacher named Amos Waterhouse,
whose rendering of Christmas carols in Latin-I was sure-could not have been
worse than the gloomy muddle made of them by Dan and Owen Meany. Grandmother's
response to my mother being dead for Christmas was to refuse to participate in
the seasonal decoration of  Front Street; the wreaths were nailed too low
on the doors, and the bottom half of the Christmas tree was overhung with
tinsel and ornaments-the result of Lydia applying her heavy-handed touch at
wheelchair level.