A prayer for Owen Meany (45 page)

It was well known that The Voice didn't drink; he was
"black-coffee Meany," and "pack-a-day Meany"; he believed
in his own alertness-he was sharp, he wanted to stay sharp. His column on
"THE PERILS OF DRINK AND DRUGS" must have appealed even to his
critics; if he was not afraid of the faculty, he was also not afraid of his
peers. It was still only our first, our ninth-grade year, when Owen invited
Hester to

        
 
the Senior Dance-in Noah and Simon's
graduating year, Owen Meany dared to invite their dreaded sister to their
senior-class dance!

"She'll just use you to meet other guys," Noah warned
him.

"She'll fuck our whole class and leave you looking at the
chandelier," Simon told Owen. I was furious with him. I wished I'd had the
nerve to ask Hester to be my date; but how do you ' 'date" your first
cousin? Noah and Simon and I commiserated; as much as Owen had captured our
admiration, he had risked embarrassing himself- and all of us-by being the
instrument of Hester's debut at Gravesend Academy.

"Hester the Molester," Simon repeated and repeated.

"She's just a Sawyer Depot kind of girl," Noah said
condescendingly. But Hester knew much more about Gravesend Academy than any of
us knew she knew; on that balmy, spring weekend in , Hester arrived prepared.
After all, Owen had sent her every issue of The Grave; if she had once regarded
Owen with distaste-she had called him queer and crazy, and a creep- Hester was
no fool. She could tell when a star had risen. And Hester was committed to
irreverence; it should have been no surprise to Noah and Simon and me that The
Voice had won her heart. Whatever had been her actual experience with the black
boatman from Tortola, the encounter had lent to Hester's recklessly blooming
young womanhood a measure of restraint that women gain from only the most
tragic entanglements with love; in addition to her dark and primitive beauty,
and a substantial loss of weight that drew one's attention to her full,
imposing bosom and to the hardness of the bones in her somber face, Hester now
held herself back just enough to make her dangerousness both more subtle and
more absolute. Her wariness matured her; she had always known how to dress-I
think it ran in the family. In Hester's case, she wore simple, expensive
clothes-but more casually than the designer had intended, and the fit was never
quite right; her body belonged in the jungle, covered only essentially,
possibly with fur or grass. For the Senior Dance, she wore a short black dress
with spaghetti straps as thin as string; the dress had a full skirt, a fitted
waist, and a deeply plunging neckline that exposed a broad expanse of Hester's
throat and chest-a fetching background for the necklace of rose-gray pearls my
Aunt Martha had given her for her seventeenth birthday. She wore no stockings
and danced barefoot; around one ankle was a black rawhide thong, from which a
turquoise bauble dangled- touching the top of her foot. Its value could have
been only sentimental; Noah implied that the Tortola boatman had given it to
her. At the Senior Dance, the faculty chaperones-and their wives-never took
their eyes off her. We were all enthralled. When Owen Meany danced with Hester,
the sharp bridge of his nose fit perfectly in her cleavage; no one even
"cut in."

There we were, in our rented tuxedos, boys more afraid of
pimples than of war; but Owen's tux was not rented-my grandmother had bought it
for him-and in its tailoring, in its lack of shine, in its touch of satin on
its slim lapels, it eloquently spoke to the matter that was so obvious to us
all: how The Voice expressed what we were unable to say. Like all dances at the
academy, this one ended under extreme supervision; no one could leave the dance
early; and when one left, and had escorted one's date to the visitor's dorm,
one returned to one's own dorm and "checked in" precisely fifteen
minutes after having "checked out" of the dance. But Hester was
staying at  Front Street. I was too mortified to spend that weekend at my
grandmother's-with Hester as Owen's date-and so I returned to Dan's dorm with
the other boys who marched to the school's rules. Owen, who had the day boy's
standing permission to drive himself to and from the academy, drove Hester back
to  Front Street. Once in the cab of the tomato-red pickup, Hester and
Owen were freed from the regulations of the Dance Committee; they lit up, the
smoke from their cigarettes concealed the assumed complacency of their
expressions, and each of them lolled an arm out a rolled-down window as Owen
turned up the volume of the radio and drove artfully away. With his cigarette,
with Hester beside him-in his tux, in the high cab of that tomato-red
pickup-Owen Meany looked almost tall, Other boys claimed that they "did
it" in the bushes- between leaving the dance and arriving at their dorms.
Other boys displayed kissing techniques in lobbies, risked "copping a
feel" in coat rooms, defied the chaperones' quick censure of anything as
vulgar as sticking a tongue in a girl's ear. But beyond the indisputable fact
of his nose embedded in Hester's cleavage, Owen and Hester did not resort to
either common or

        
 
gross forms of public affection. And how he
later rebuked our childishness by refusing to talk about her; if he "did
it" with her, The Voice was not bragging about it. He took Hester back
to  Front Street and they watched The Late Show together; he drove himself
back to the quarry-"IT WAS RATHER LATE," he admitted.

"What was the movie?" I asked.

"WHAT MOVIE?"

"On The Late Show!"

"OH, I FORGET ..."

"Hester must have fucked his brains out," Simon said
morosely; Noah hit him. "Since when does Owen 'forget' a movie?"
Simon cried; but Noah hit him again. "Owen even remembers The Robe I"
Simon said; Noah hit him in the mouth, and Simon started swinging. "It
doesn't matter!" Simon yelled. "Hester fucks everybody!"

Noah had his brother by the throat. "We don't know
that," he said to Simon.

"We think it!" Simon cried.

"It's okay to think it," Noah told his brother; he
rubbed his forearm back and forth across Simon's nose, which began to bleed.
"But if we don't know it, we don't say it."

"Hester fucked Owen's brains out!" Simon screamed;
Noah drove the point of his elbow into the hollow between Simon's eyes.

"We don't know that," he repeated; but I had grown
accustomed to their savage fights-they no longer frightened me. Their brutality
seemed plain and safe alongside my conflicted feelings for Hester, my crushing
envy of Owen. Once again, The Voice put us in our places. "IT IS HARD TO
KNOW, IN THE WAKE OF THE DISTURBING DANCE-WEEKEND, WHETHER OUR ESTEEMED PEERS
OR OUR ESTEEMED FACULTY CHAPERONES SHOULD BE MORE ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES. IT IS
PUERILE FOR YOUNG MEN TO DISCUSS WHAT DEGREE OF ADVANTAGE THEY TOOK OF THEIR
DATES; IT IS DISRESPECTFUL OF WOMEN-ALL THIS CHEAP BRAGGING-AND IT GIVES MEN A
BAD REPUTATION. WHY SHOULD WOMEN TRUST US? BUT IT IS HARD TO SAY WHETHER THIS
BOORISH BEHAVIOR IS WORSE OR BETTER THAN THE GESTAPO TACTICS OF OUR PURITAN
CHAPERONES. THE DEAN'S OFFICE TELLS ME THAT TWO SENIORS HAVE RECEIVED NOTICE OF
DISCIPLINARY PROBATION-FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE TERM!-FOR THEIR ALLEGED 'OVERT
INDISCRETIONS'; I BELIEVE THE TWO INCIDENTS FALL UNDER THE PUNISHABLE OFFENSE
OF 'MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE CONDUCT WITH GIRLS,'

"AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING PRURIENT, I SHALL REVEAL THE
SHOCKING NATURE OF THESE TWO SINS AGAINST THE SCHOOL AND WOMANKIND. ONE! A BOY
WAS FOUND 'FONDLING' HIS DATE IN THE TROPHY ROOM OF THE GYM: AS THE COUPLE WAS
FULLY DRESSED-AND STANDING-AT THE TIME, IT SEEMS UNLIKELY THAT A PREGNANCY COULD
HAVE RESULTED FROM THEIR EXCHANGE; AND ALTHOUGH THE GYM IS NOTORIOUS FOR IT,
I'M SURE THEY HADN'T EVEN EXPOSED THEMSELVES SUFFICIENTLY TO RISK AN ATHLETE'S
FOOT INFECTION. TWO! A BOY WAS SEEN LEAVING THE BUTT ROOM IN BANCROFT HALL WITH
HIS TONGUE IN HIS DATE'S EAR-AN ODD AND OSTENTATIOUS MANNER IN WHICH TO EXIT A
SMOKING LOUNGE, I WILL AGREE, BUT THIS DEGREE OF PHYSICAL CONTACT IS ALSO NOT
KNOWN TO RESULT IN A PREGNANCY. TO MY KNOWLEDGE, IT IS EVEN DIFFICULT TO
COMMUNICATE THE COMMON COLD BY THIS METHOD."

After that one, it became customary for the applicants-for the
position of headmaster-to request to meet him when they were interviewed. The
Search Committee had a student subcommittee available to interview each
candidate; but when the candidates asked to meet The Voice, Owen insisted that
he be given A PRIVATE AUDIENCE. The issue of Owen being granted this privilege
was the subject of a special faculty meeting where tempers flared; Dan said
there was a movement to replace the faculty adviser to The Grave-there were
those who said that the "pregnancy humor" in Owen's column about the
Senior Dance should not have escaped the adviser's censorship. But the faculty
adviser to The Grave was an Owen Meany supporter; Mr. Early-that deeply flawed
thespian who brought to every role he was given in The Gravesend Players an
overblown and befuddled sense of Learlike doom-cried that he would defend the
"unsullied genius" of The Voice, if necessary, "to the
death." That would not be necessary, Dan Needham was sure; but that

        
 
Owen was supported by such a boob as Mr.
Early was conceivably worse than no defense at all. Several applicants for the
headmaster position admitted that their interviews with The Voice had been '
'daunting"; I'm sure that they were unprepared for his size, and when they
heard him speak, I'm sure they got the shivers and were troubled by the
absurdity of that voice communicating strictly in uppercase letters. One of the
favored candidates withdrew his application; although there was no direct
evidence that Owen had contributed to the candidate's retreat, the man admitted
there was a certain quality of "accepted cynicism" among the students
that had "depressed" him. The man added that these students
demonstrated an "attitude of superiority''-and' 'such a degree of freedom
of speech as to make their liberal education too liberal."

"Nonsense!" Dan Needham had cried in the faculty
meeting. "Owen Meany isn't cynical! If this guy was referring to Owen, he
was referring to him incorrectly. Good riddance!"

But not all the faculty felt that way. The Search Committee
would need another year to satisfy their search; the present headmaster
cheerfully agreed-for the good of the school-to stall his retirement. He was
all "for the good of the school," the old headmaster; and it was his
support of Owen Meany that-for a while-kept Owen's enemies from his throat.

"He's a delightful little fella!" the headmaster said.
"I wouldn't miss reading The Voice-not for all the world!"

His name was Archibald Thorndike, and he'd been headmaster
forever; he'd married the daughter of the headmaster before him, and he was
about as "old school" as a headmaster could get. Although the newer,
more progressive-minded faculty complained about Archie Thomdike's reluctance to
change a single course requirement-not to mention his views of "the whole
boy"-the headmaster had no enemies. Old "Thorny," as he was
called-and he encouraged even the boys to address him as "Thorny"-was
so headmasterly in every pleasing, comfortable, superficial way that no one
could feel unfriendly toward him. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, white-haired
man with a face as serviceable as an oar; in fact, he was an oarsman, and an
outdoorsman-a man who preferred soft, unironed trousers, maybe khakis or
corduroys, and a tweed jacket with the elbow patches in need of a thread here
or there. He went hatless in our New Hampshire winters, and was such a
supporter of our teams-in the rawest weather-that he wore a scar from an errant
hockey puck as proudly as a merit badge; the puck had struck him above the eye
while he'd tended the goal during the annual Alumni-Varsity game. Thorny was an
honorary member of several of Gravesend's graduating classes. He played every
alumni game in the goal.

"Ice hockey's not a sissy sport!" he liked to say. In
another vein, in defense of Owen Meany, he maintained: "It is the well
educated who will improve society-and they will improve it, at first, by
criticizing it, and we are giving them the tools to criticize it. Naturally, as
students, the brighter of them will begin their improvements upon society by
criticizing us." To Owen, old Archie Thorndike would sing a slightly
different song: "It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is
mine to hear you out. But don't expect me to change. I'm not going to change;
I'm going to retire I Get the new headmaster to make the changes; that's when /
made changes-when I was new."

"WHAT CHANGES DID YOU MAKE?" Owen Meany asked.

"That's another reason I'm retiring!" old Thorny told
Owen amiably. "My memory's shot!"

Owen thought that Archibald Thorndike was a blithering,
glad-handing fool; but everyone, even The Voice, thought that old Thorny was a
nice guy. "NICE GUYS ARE THE TOUGHEST TO GET RID OF," Owen wrote for
The Grave; but even Mr. Early was smart enough to censor that. Then it was
summer; The Voice went back to work in the quarries-I don't think he said much
down in the pits-and I had my first job. I was a guide for the Gravesend Academy
Admissions Office; I showed the school to prospective students and their
parents-it was boring, but it certainly wasn't hard. I had a ring of master
keys, which amounted to the greatest responsibility anyone had given me, and I
had freedom of choice regarding which typical classroom I would show, and which
"typical" dormitory room. I chose rooms at random in Waterhouse Hall,
in the vague hope that I might surprise Mr. and Mrs. Brinker-Smith at their
game of musical beds; but the twins were older now, and maybe the
Brinker-Smiths didn't "do it" with their former gusto. In the
evenings, at Hampton Beach, Owen looked tired to me; I reported to the
Admissions Office for my first guided tour at ten, but Owen was stepping into
the grout bucket by seven every morning. His fingernails were cracked; his
hands were cut and swollen; his arms were tanned and thin and hard. He