A prayer for Owen Meany (80 page)

"Confidentially," she whispered to me, "what does
a grown-up person do here?" I suppose she meant, in all of Toronto-in all
of Canada . . . this wilderness, so to speak. Yet she keenly desired to banish
her daughter, lest the daughter be exposed to the eye-opening wisdom that had
rendered the mother a prisoner of New York! She was quite concerned at how many
Canadian authors were on our reading lists; because she'd not read them, she
suspected them of the gravest parochialism. I never met the daughter; she might
have been nice-a little fearful of how homesick she would be, I'm sure, but
possibly nice. The mother never enrolled her, although the girl's application
was accepted. Perhaps the mother had come to Canada on a whim-I cannot claim to
have come here for entirely sound reasons myself! Maybe the mother never
enrolled her daughter because she (the mother) could not endure the
deprivations she (the mother) would suffer while she visited her daughter in
this wilderness. I have my own idea regarding why the child was never enrolled.
The mother made a pass at me! It had been quite a while since anyone had done
that; I was beginning to think that this danger was behind me, but suddenly the
mother said: "What does one do here-for a good time? Perhaps you'd like to
show me?"

The school had made some rather unusual, if not altogether
extraordinary, arrangements for the daughter to spend a night in one of the
dormitory rooms-she would get to know a few of the girls, a few of the other
Americans . . . that sort of thing. The mother inquired if I might be available
for a "night on the town"!

"I'm divorced," she added hastily-and unnecessarily; I
should hope she was divorced! But even so! Well, I don't pretend to possess any
skill whatsoever at wriggling myself free from such bold invitations; I haven't
had much practice. I suppose I behaved as an absolute humbler; I no doubt gave
the woman yet another stunning example of the "parochialism" she was
doomed to encounter outside New York. Anyway, our encounter ended bitterly. The
woman had been, in her view, courageous enough to present herself to me; that I
hadn't the courage to accept her generous gift clearly marked me as the
fiendish essence of cowardice. Having honored me with her seductive charms, she
then felt justified in heaping upon me her considerable contempt. She told
Kather-ine Keeling that our English reading lists were "even more
parochial" than she had feared. Believe me: it was not the reading lists
that she found "parochial"-it was me\ I was not savvy enough to
recognize a good tryst when I saw one. And now-in my very own English Department-I
must endure a woman of an apparently similar temperament, a woman whose prickly
disposition is also upheaved in a sea of sexual contradictions . . . Eleanor
Pribst! She even quarreled with my choice of teaching Tempest-Tost; she
suggested that perhaps it was because I failed to recognize that Fifth Business
was "better." Naturally, I have taught both novels, and many other
works by Robertson Davies, with great-no, with the greatest-pleasure. I stated
that I'd had good luck teaching Tempest-Tost in the past. "Students feel
so much like amateurs themselves," I said. "I think they find all the
intrigues of the local drama league both extremely funny and extremely
familiar." But Ms. Pribst wanted to know if I knew Kingston; surely I at
least knew that the fictional town of Salterton is easily identified as
Kingston. I had heard that this was true, I said, although-personally-I had not
been in Kingston.

"Not beenl" she cried. "I suppose that this is
what comes of having Americans teaching Can Lit!" she said.

"I detest the term 'Can Lit,' " I told Ms. Pribst.
"We do not call American Literature 'Am Lit,' I see no reason to shrivel
this country's most interesting literature to a derogatory abbreviation.
Furthermore," I said, "I consider Mister Davies an author of such
universal importance that I choose not to teach what is 'Canadian' about his
books, but what is wonderful about them."

After that, it was simple warfare. She challenged my
substitution-in Grade -of Orwell's Burmese Days for Orwell's Animal Farm. In
terms of "lasting importance," it was Nineteen Eighty-four or Animal
Farm; Burmese Days, she said, was "a poor substitute."

"Orwell is Orwell," I said, "and Burmese Days is
a good novel."

But Ms. Pribst-a graduate of Queens (hence, her vast knowledge of
Kingston)-is writing her doctorate at the University of Toronto on something
related to "politics in fiction." Wasn't it Hardy  had written
about? she asked- implying "merely" Hardy!-and wasn't it only my
Master's I had written? And so I asked my old Mend Katherine Keeling: "Do
you suppose that God created Eleanor Pribst just to test me?"

"You're very naughty," Katherine said. "Don't you
be wicked, too."

When I want to be "wicked," I show the finger;
correction-I show what's missing, I show not the finger. I shall save the
missing finger for my next encounter with Ms. Pribst. I am grateful to Owen
Meany for so many things; not only did he keep me out of Vietnam-he created for
me a perfect teaching tool, he gave me a terrific attention-getter for whenever
the class is lagging behind. I simply raise my hand; I point. It is the absence
of my pointer that makes pointing an interesting and riveting thing for me to
do. Instantly, I have everyone's attention. It works very well in department
meetings, too.

"Don't you point that thing at me!" Hester was fond of
saying. But it was not "that thing," it-was not anything that upset
her; it was what was missing! The amputation was very clean-it was the cleanest
cut imaginable. There's nothing grotesque, or mangled-or even raw-looking-
about the stump. The only thing wrong with me is what's missing. Owen Meany is
missing. It was after Owen cut off my finger-at the end of the summer of ',
when he was home in Gravesend for a few days' leave-when Hester told Owen that
she wouldn't attend his funeral; she absolutely refused.

"I'll marry you, I'll move to Arizona-I'll go anywhere with
you, Owen," Hester said. "Can you see me as a bride on an Army base?
Can you see us entertaining another couple of young marrieds-when you're not off
escorting a body? Just call me Hester Huachuca!" she cried. "I'll
even get pregnant-if you'd like that, Owen. Do you want babies? I'll give you
babies!" Hester cried.' 'I'd do anything for you-you know that. But I
won't go to your fucking funeral."

She was true to her word; Hester was not in attendance at

 
 
Owen Meany's
funeral-Kurd's Church was packed, but Hester wasn't a part of the crowd. He'd
never asked her to marry him; he'd never made her move to Arizona, or anywhere.
"IT WOULDN'T BE FAIR-I MEAN, IT WOULDN'T BE FAIR TO HER;' Owen had told
me. In the fall of ', Owen Meany made a deal with Major General LaHoad; he was
not appointed LaHoad's aide-decamp-LaHoad was too proud of the commendations
that Owen received as a casualty assistance officer. The major general was
scheduled for a transfer in eighteen months; if Owen remained at Fort
Huachuca-as the casualty branch's "best" body escort-LaHoad promised
Owen "a good job in Vietnam." Eighteen months was a long wait, but
First Lieutenant Meany felt the wait was worth it.

"Doesn't he know there are no 'good jobs' in Vietnam?"
Hester asked me. It was October; we were in Washington with fifty thousand
other antiwar demonstrators. We assembled opposite the Lincoln Memorial and
marched to the Pentagon, where we were met by lines of U.S. marshals and
military police; there were even marshals and police on the roof of the
Pentagon. Hester carried a sign:

Support the GI's Bring Our Boys Home Now! I was carrying
nothing; I was still a little self-conscious about my missing finger. The scar
tissue was new enough so that any exertion caused the stump to look inflamed.
But I tried to feel I was part of the demonstration; sadly, I didn't feel I was
a part of it-I didn't feel I was part of anything. I had a -F deferment; I
would never have to go to war, or to Canada. By the simple act of removing the
first two joints of my right index finger, Owen Meany had enabled me to feel
completely detached from my generation.

"If he was half as smart as he thinks he is," Hester said
to me as we approached the Pentagon,' 'he would have cut off his own finger
when he cut off yours-he would have cut off as many fingers as he needed to. So
he saved you-lucky you\" she said. "How come he isn't smart enough to
save himself?"

What I saw in Washington that October were a lot of Americans
who were genuinely dismayed by what their country was doing in Vietnam; I also
saw a lot of other Americans who were self-righteously attracted to a most
childish notion of heroism-namely, their own. They thought -that to force a
confrontation with soldiers and policemen would not only elevate themselves to
the status of heroes; this confrontation, they deluded themselves, would expose
the corruption of the political and social system they loftily thought they
opposed. These would t"e the same people who, in later years, would credit
the antiwar "movement" with eventually getting the U.S. armed forces
out of Vietnam. That was not what I saw. I saw that the righteousness of many
of these demonstrators simply helped to harden the attitudes of those poor
fools who supported the war. That is what makes what Ronald Reagan would
say-two years later, in -so ludicrous: that the Vietnam protests were'' giving
aid and comfort to the enemy.'' What I saw was that the protests did worse than
that; they gave aid and comfort to the idiots who endorsed the war-they made
that war last longer. That's what / saw. I took my missing finger home to New
Hampshire, and let Hester get arrested in Washington by herself; she was not exactly
alone-there were mass arrests that October. By the end of ', there was trouble
in California, there was trouble in New York; and there were five hundred
thousand U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. More than sixteen thousand
Americans had been killed there. That was when General Westmoreland said,
"We have reached an important point where the end begins to come into
view."

That was what prompted Owen Meany to ask: "WHAT END?"
The end of the war would not come soon enough to save Owen. They put him in a
closed casket, of course; the casket was draped with the U.S. flag, and his
medal was pinned to the flag. Like any first lieutenant on active duty, he
rated a full military funeral with honors, with escort officers, with taps-
with the works. He could have been buried at Arlington; but the Meanys wanted
him buried in Gravesend. Because of the medal, because the story of Owen's
heroism was in all the New Hampshire newspapers, that oaf-the Rev. Dudley
Wiggin- wanted Owen to have an Episcopal service; Rector Wiggin, who was a
virulent supporter of the Vietnam War, wanted to perform Owen's funeral in
Christ Church. I prevailed upon the Meanys to use Kurd's Church-and to let the
Rev. Lewis Merrill perform the service. Mr. Meany was still angry at Gravesend
Academy for expelling Owen, but I convinced him that Owen would be
"outraged in heaven" if the Wiggins ever got their hands on him.

"Owen hated them," I told Mr. and Mrs. Meany.
"And he had a rather special relationship with Pastor Merrill."

It was the summer of '; I was sick of hearing white people talk
about how Soul on Ice had changed their lives-I'll bet Eldridge Cleaver was
sick of hearing that, too-and Hester said that if she heard "Mrs.
Robinson" one more time, she would throw up. That spring-in the same
month-Martin Luther King had been assassinated and Hair had opened on Broadway;
the summer of ' suffered from what would become the society's commonplace blend
of the murderous and the trivial. It was stifling hot in the Meanys' sealed house-sealed
tight, I was always told, because Mrs. Meany was allergic to the rock dust. She
sat with her familiarly unfocused gaze, directed-as it often was-into the dead
ashes in the fireplace, above which the dismembered Nativity figures surrounded
the empty cradle in the creche. Mr. Meany prodded one of the andirons with the
dirty toe of his boot.

"They gave us fifty thousand dollars!" said Mr. Meany;
Mrs. Meany nodded her head-or she appeared to nod her head. "Where's the
government get that kind of money?" he asked me; I shook my head. I knew
the money came from us.

"I'm familiar with Owen's favorite hymns," I told the
Meanys. "I know Pastor Merrill will say a proper prayer."

"A lot of good all Owen's prayin' done him!" said Mr.
Meany; he kicked the andiron. Later, I went and sat on the bed in Owen's room.
The severed arms from the vandalized statue of Mary Magdalene were oddly
attached to my mother's dressmaker's dummy- formerly, as armless as she was
headless. The pale, whitewashed arms were too long for the smaller proportions
of my mother's figure; but I suppose that these overreaching arms had only
enhanced Owen's memory of the affection my mother had felt for him. His Army
duffel bag was on the bed beside me; the Meanys had not unpacked it.

"Would you like me to unpack his bag?" I asked the
Meanys.

"I'd be happy if you would," his father told me.
Later, he came into the room and said: "I'd be happy if there was aaythin'
of his you wanted-I know he'd have liked you to have it."

In the duffel bag was his diary, and his well-worn paperback
edition of Selections from the Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas-I took them both;
and his Bible. It was tough looking at his things. I was surprised that he had
never unpackaged all the baseball cards that he had so symbolically delivered
to me, and that I'd returned to him; I was surprised at how withered and
grotesque were my armadillo's amputated claws-they had once seemed such
treasures, and now, in addition to their ugliness, they even appeared much
smaller than I'd remembered them. But most of all I was surprised that I
couldn't find the baseball.