A prayer for Owen Meany: a novel

THE DREAM

/"~"\WEN AND I were nineteen-year-old seniors at Gravesend V_x Academy-at least a year older than the other members of our class-when Owen told me, point-blank, what he had expressed to me, symbolically, when he was eleven and had mutilated my armadillo.

"GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER," he said to me, when I was complaining about practicing the shot; I thought he would never slam-dunk the ball in under four seconds, and I was bored with all our trying.' 'MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT," he said. "GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD'S INSTRUMENT."

That he might have thought such a thing when he was eleven- when the astonishing results of that foul ball were such a shock to us both, and when whatever UNSPEAKABLE OUTRAGE his parents had suffered had plunged his religious upbringing into confusion and rebellion-I could understand him thinking anything then. But not when we were nineteen! I was so surprised by the matter-of-fact way he simply announced his insane belief-"GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS"-that when he jumped into my hands, I dropped him. The basketball rolled out of bounds. Owen didn't look much like GOD'S INSTRUMENT in his fallen position-holding his knee, which he'd twisted in his fall, and writhing around on the gym floor under the basket.

"If you're God's instrument, Owen," I said, "how come you need my help to stuff a basketball?"

It was Christmas vacation, , and we were alone in the gym-except for our old friend (and our only audience) the retarded janitor, who operated the official scorer's clock whenever Owen was in the mood to get serious about timing the shot. I wish I could remember his name; he was often the only janitor on duty during school holidays and summer weekends, and there was a universal understanding that he was retarded or "brain damaged"-and Owen had heard that the janitor had suffered "shell shock" in the war. We didn't even know which war-we didn't know what "shell shock" even was. Owen sat on the basketball court, rubbing his knee.

"I SUPPOSE YOU HEARD THAT FAITH CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS," he said. "THE TROUBLE WITH YOU IS, YOU DON'T HAVE ANY FAITH."

"The trouble with you is, you're crazy," I told him; but I retrieved the basketball. "It's simply irresponsible," I said- "for someone your age, and of your education, to go around thinking he's God's instrument!"

"I FORGOT I WAS TALKING TO MISTER RESPONSIBILITY," he said. He'd started calling me Mr. Responsibility in the fall of ', when we were engaged in that senior-year agony commonly called college-entrance applications and interviews; because I'd applied to only the state university, Owen said I'd taken zero responsibility for my own self-improvement. Naturally, he'd applied to Harvard and Yale; as for the state university, the University of New Hampshire had offered him a so-called Honor Society Scholarship-and Owen hadn't even applied for admission there. The New Hampshire Honor Society gave a special scholarship each year to someone they selected as the state's best high-school or prep-school student. You had to be a bona fide resident of the state, and the prize scholarship was usually awarded to a public-school kid who was at the top of his or her graduating class; but Owen was at the top of our Gravesend Academy graduating class, the first time a New Hampshire resident had achieved such distinction- "Competing Against the Nation's Best, Gravesend Native Wins!" was the headline in The Gravesend News-Letter: the story appeared in many of New Hampshire's papers. The University of New Hampshire never imagined that Owen would accept the scholarship; indeed, the Honor Society Scholarship was offered every year to New Hampshire's ' 'best''-with the tragic understanding that the recipient would probably go to Harvard or Yale, or to some other "better" school. It was obvious to me that Owen would be accepted- and orfered full scholarships-at Harvard and Yale; Hester was the only reason he might accept the scholarship to the University of New Hampshire-and what would be the point of that? Owen would begin his university career in the fall of ' and Hester would graduate in the spring of '.

"YOU MIGHT AT LEAST TRY TO GET INTO A BETTER UNIVERSITY," Owen told me. I was not asking him to give up Harvard or Yale to keep me company at the University of New Hampshire. I thought it was unfair of him to expect me to go through the motions of applying to Harvard and Yale-just to experience the rejections. Although Owen had substantially improved my abilities as a student, he could do little to improve my mediocre college-board scores; I simply wasn't Harvard or Yale material. I had become a good student in English and History courses; I was a slow but thorough reader, and I could write a readable, well-organized paper; but Owen was still holding my hand through the Math and Science courses, and I still plodded my dim way through foreign languages-as a student, I would never be what Owen was: a natural. Yet he was cross with me for accepting that I could do no better than the University of New Hampshire; in truth, I liked the University of New Hampshire. Durham, the town, was no more threatening than Gravesend; and it was near enough to Gravesend so that I could continue to see a lot of Dan and Grandmother-I could even continue to live with them.

"I'M SURE I'LL END UP IN DURHAM, TOO," Owen said-with just the smallest touch of self-pity in his voice; but it infuriated me. "I DON'T SEE HOW I CAN LET YOU FEND FOR YOURSELF," he added.

"I'm perfectly capable offending for myself," I said. "And I'll come visit you at Harvard or Yale."

"NO, WE'LL BOTH MAKE OTHER FRIENDS, WE'LL DRIFT APART-THAT'S THE WAY IT HAPPENS," he said philosophically. "AND YOU'RE NO LETTER-WRITER-YOU DON'T EVEN KEEP A DIARY,'' he added.

"If you lower your standards and come to the University of New Hampshire for my sake, I'll kill you," I told him.

"THERE ARE ALSO MY PARENTS TO CONSIDER," he said. "IF I WERE IN SCHOOL AT DURHAM, I COULD STILL LIVE AT HOME-AND LOOK AFTER THEM."

"What do you need to look after them for?" I asked him. It appeared to me that he spent as little time with his parents as possible!

"AND THERE'S ALSO HESTER TO CONSIDER," he added.

"Let me get one thing straight," I said to him. "You and Hester-it seems to be the most on-again, off-again thing. Are you even sleeping with her-have you ever slept with her?"

"FOR SOMEONE YOUR AGE, AND OF YOUR EDUCATION, YOU'RE AWFULLY CRUDE," Owen said. When he got up off the basketball court, he was limping. I passed him the basketball; he passed it back. The idiot janitor reset the scorer's clock: the numbers were brightly lit and huge.

:

That's what the clock said. I was so sick of it! I held the ball; he held out his hands.

"READY?" Owen said. On that word, the janitor started the clock. I passed Owen the ball; he jumped into my hands; I lifted him; he reached higher and higher, and-pivoting in the air-stuffed the stupid basketball through the hoop. He was so precise, he never touched the rim. He was midair, returning to earth-his hands still above his head but empty, his eyes on the scorer's clock at midcourt-when he shouted, "TIME!" The janitor stopped the clock. That was when I would turn to look; usually, our time had expired.

:

But this time, when I looked, there was one second left on the clock.

:

He had sunk the shot in under four seconds!

"YOU SEE WHAT A LITTLE FAITH CAN DO?" said Owen Meany. The brain-damaged janitor was applauding. "SET THE CLOCK TO THREE SECONDS!" Owen told him.

"Jesus Christ!" I said.

"IF WE CAN DO IT IN UNDER FOUR SECONDS, WE CAN DO IT IN UNDER THREE," he said. "IT JUST TAKES A LITTLE MORE FAITH."

"It takes more practice," I told him irritably.

"FAITH TAKES PRACTICE," said Owen Meany. Nineteen sixty-one was the first year of our friendship that was marred by unfriendly criticism and quarreling. Our most basic dispute began in the fall when we returned to the academy for our senior year, and one of the privileges extended to seniors at Gravesend was responsible for an argument that left Owen and me feeling especially uneasy. As seniors, we were permitted to take the train to Boston on either Wednesday or Saturday afternoon; we had no classes on those afternoons; and if we told the Dean's Office where we were going, we were allowed to return to Gravesend on the Boston & Maine-as late as : P.M. on the same day. As day boys, Owen and I didn't really have to be back to school until the Thursday morning meeting-or the Sunday service at Kurd's Church, if we chose to go to Boston on a Saturday. Even on a Saturday, Dan and my grandmother frowned upon the idea of our spending most of the night in the "dreaded" city; there was a so-called milk train that left Boston at two o'clock in the morning-it stopped at every town between Boston and Gravesend, and it didn't get us home until : A.M. (about the time the school dining hall opened for breakfast)-but Dan and my grandmother said that Owen and I should live this "wildly" on only the most special occasions. Mr. and Mrs. Meany didn't make any rules for Owen, at all; Owen was content to abide by the rules Dan and Grandmother made for me. But he was not content to spend his time in the dreaded city in the manner that most Gravesend seniors spent their time. Many Gravesend graduates attended Harvard. A typical outing for a Gravesend senior began with a subway ride to Harvard Square; there-with the use of a fake draft card, or with the assistance of an older Gravesend graduate (now attending Harvard)-booze was purchased in abundance and consumed with abandon. Sometimes-albeit, rarely-girls were met. Fortified by the former (and never in the company of the latter), our senior class then rode the subway back to Boston, where-once again, falsifying our age-we gained

admission to the striptease performances that were much admired by our age group at an establishment known as Old Freddy's. I saw nothing that was morally offensive in this rite of passage. At nineteen, I was a virgin. Caroline O'Day had not permitted the advance of even so much as my hand-at least not more than an inch or so above the hem of her pleated skirt or her matching burgundy knee socks. And although Owen had told me that it was only Caroline's Catholicism that prevented me access to her favors-"ESPECIALLY IN HER SAINT MICHAEL'S UNIFORM!"-I had been no more successful with Police Chief Ben Pike's daughter, Lorna, who was not Catholic, and not wearing a uniform of any kind when I snagged my lip on her braces. Apparently, it was either my blood or my pain-or both-that disgusted her with me. At nineteen, to experience lust-even in its shabbiest forms at Old Freddy's-was at least to experience something; and if Owen and I had at first imagined what love was at The Idaho, I saw nothing wrong in lusting at a burlesque show. Owen, I imagined, was not a virgin; how could he have remained a virgin with Hester? So I found it sheer hypocrisy for him to label Old Freddy's DISGUSTING and DEGRADING. At nineteen, I drank infrequently-and entirely for the maturing thrill of becoming drunk. But Owen Meany didn't drink; he disapproved of losing control. Furthermore, he had interpreted Kennedy's inaugural charge-to do something for his country-in a typically single-minded and literal fashion. He would falsify no more draft cards; he would produce no more fake identification to assist the illegal drinking and burlesque-show attendance of his peers-and he was loudly self-righteous about his decision, too. Fake draft cards were WRONG, he had decided. Therefore, we walked soberly around Harvard Square-a part of Cambridge that is not necessarily enhanced by sobriety. Soberly, we looked up our former Gravesend schoolmates- and, soberly, I imagined the Harvard community (and how it might be morally altered) with Owen Meany in residence. One of our former schoolmates even told us that Harvard was a depressing experience-when sober. But Owen insisted that our journeys to the dreaded city be conducted as joyless research; and so they were. To maintain sobriety and to attend the striptease perfor- mances at Old Freddy's was a form of unusual torture; the women at Old Freddy's were only watchable to the blind drunk. Since Owen had made fake draft cards for himself and me before his lofty, Kennedy-inspired resolution not to break the law, we used the cards to be admitted to Old Freddy's.

"THIS IS DISGUSTING!" Owen said. We watched a heavy-breasted woman in her forties remove her pasties with her teeth; she then spat them into the eager audience.

"THIS IS DEGRADING!" Owen said. We watched another unfortunate pick up a tangerine from the dirty floor of the stage; she lifted the tangerine almost to knee level by picking it up from the floor with the labia of her vulva-but she could raise it no higher. She lost her grip on the tangerine, and it rolled off the stage and into the crowd-where two or three of our schoolmates fought over it. Of course it was DISGUSTING and DEGRADING-we were sober I

"LET'S FIND A NICE PART OF TOWN," Owen said.

"And do what" I asked him.

"LOOK AT IT," Owen said. It occurs to me now that most of the seniors at Gravesend Academy had grown up looking at the nice parts of towns; but quite apart from stronger motives, Owen Meany was interested in what that was like. That was how we ended up on Newbury Street-one Wednesday afternoon in the fall of '. know now that it was NO ACCIDENT that we ended up there. There were some art galleries on Newbury Street-and some very posh stores selling pricey antiques, and some very fancy clothing stores. There was a movie theater around the corner, on Exeter Street, where they were showing a foreign film-not the kind of thing that was regularly shown in the vicinity of Old Freddy's; at The Exeter, they were showing movies you had to read, the kind with subtitles.

"Jesus!" I said. "What are we going to do here?"

"YOU'RE SO UNOBSERVANT," Owen said. He was looking at a mannequin in a storefront window-a disturbingly faceless mannequin, severely modern for the period in that she was bald. The mannequin wore a hip-length, silky blouse; the blouse was fire-engine red and it was cut along the sexy lines of a camisole. The mannequin wore nothing else; Owen stared at her.

A PRAYER FOR OWEN ME ANY

"This is really great," I said to him. "We come two hours on the train - we're going to ride two more hours to get back - and here you are, staring at another dressmaker's dummy! If that's all you want to do, you don't even have to leave your own bedroom\"

"NOTICE ANYTHING FAMILIAR?" he asked me. The name of the store, "Jerrold's," was painted in vivid-red letters across the window - in a flourishing, handwritten style.

"Jerrold's," I said. "So what's 'familiar'?" He put his little hand in his pocket and brought out the label he had removed from my mother's old red dress; it was the dummy's red dress, really, because my mother had hated it. It was FAMILIAR - what the label said. Everything I could see in the store's interior was the same vivid shade of fire-engine noinsettia red.

"She said the store burned down, didn't she?" I asked Owen.

"SHE ALSO SAID SHE COULDN'T REMEMBER THE STORE'S NAME, THAT SHE HAD TO ASK PEOPLE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD," Owen said. "BUT THE NAME WAS ON THE LABEL-IT WAS ALWAYS ON THE BACK OF THE DRESS."

With a shudder, I thought again about my Aunt Martha's assertion that my mother was a little simple; no one had ever said she was a liar.

"She said there was a lawyer who told her she could keep the dress," I said. "She said that everything burned, didn't she?"

"BILLS OF SALE WERE BURNED, INVENTORY WAS BURNED, STOCK WAS BURNED-THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID," Owen said.

"The telephone melted-remember that part?" I asked him.

"THE CASH REGISTER MELTED-REMEMBER THAT!" he asked me.

"Maybe they rebuilt the place-after the fire," I said. "Maybe there was another store-maybe there's a chain of stores."

He didn't say anything; we both knew it was unlikely that the public's interest in the color red would support a chain of stores like Jerrold's.

"How'd you know the store was here?" I asked Owen.

"I SAW AN ADVERTISEMENT IN THE SUNDAY BOSTON HERALD," he said. "I WAS LOOKING FOR THE FUNNIES AND I RECOGNIZED THE HANDWRITING- IT WAS THE SAME STYLE AS THE LABEL."

Leave it to Owen to recognize the handwriting; he had probably studied the label in my mother's red dress for so many years that he could have written "Jerrold's" in the exact same style himself!

"WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?" Owen asked me. "WHY DON'T WE GO INSIDE AND ASK THEM IF THEY EVER HAD A FIRE?"

Inside the place, we were confronted by a spareness as eccentric as the glaring color of every article of clothing in sight; if Jerrold's could be said to have a theme, it appeared to be-stated, and overstated-that there was only one of everything: one bra, one nightgown, one half-slip, one little cocktail dress, one long evening dress, one long skirt, one short skirt, the one blouse on the one mannequin we had seen in the window, and one counter of four-sided glass that contained a single pair of red leather gloves, a pair of red high heels, a garnet necklace (with a matching pair of earrings), and one very thin belt (also red, and probably alligator or lizard). The walls were white, the hoods of the indirect lights were black, and the one man behind the one counter was about the age my mother would have been if she'd been alive. The man regarded Owen and me disdainfully: he saw two teenage boys, not dressed for Newbury Street, possibly (if so, pathetically) shopping for a mother or for a girlfriend; I doubt that we could have afforded even the cheapest version of the color red available in Jerrold's.

"DID YOU EVER HAVE A FIRE?" Owen asked the man. Now the man looked less sure about us; he thought we were too young to be selling insurance, but Owen's question-not to mention Owen's voice-hud disarmed him.

"It would have been a fire in the forties," I said.

"OR THE EARLY FIFTIES," said Owen Meany.

"Perhaps you haven't been here-at this location-for that long?" I asked the man.

"ARE YOU JERROLD?" Owen asked the man; like a miniature policeman, Owen Meany pushed the wrinkled label from my mother's dress across the glass-topped counter.

"That's our label," the man said, fingering the evidence cautiously. "We've been here since before the war-but don't think we've ever had a fire. What sorta fire do you mean?" he asked Owen-because, naturally, Owen appeared to be in charge.

"ARE YOU JERROLD?" Owen repeated.

"That's my father-Giordano," the man said. "He was Giovanni Giordano, but they fucked around with his name when he got off the boat."

This was an immigration story, and not the story Owen and I were interested in, so I asked the man, politely: "Is your father alive?"

"Hey, Poppa!" the man shouted. "You alive?"

A white door, fitted so flush to the white wall that Owen and I had not noticed it was there, opened. An old man with a tailor's measuring tape around his neck, and a tailor's many pins adorning the lapels of his vest, came into the storeroom.

"Of course I'm alive!" he said. "You waitin' for some miracle? You in a hurry for your inheritance?" He had a mostly-Boston, somewhat-Italian accent.

"Poppa, these young men want to talk to 'Jerrold' about some fire," the son said; he spoke laconically and with a more virulent Boston accent than his father's.

"What fire?" Mr. Giordano asked us.

"We were told that your store burned down-sometime in the forties, or the fifties," I said.

"This is big news to me!" said Mr. Giordano.

"My mother must have made a mistake," I explained. I showed the old label to Mr. Giordano. "She bought a dress in your store-sometime in the forties, or the fifties." I didn't know what else to say. "It was a red dress," I added.

"No kiddin'," said the son. I said: "I wish I had a picture of her-perhaps I could come back, with a photograph. You might remember something about her if I showed you a picture," I said.

"Does she want the dress altered!" the old man asked me.

"I don't mind makin' alterations-but she's got to come into the store herself. I don't do alterations from pictures!"

"SHE'S DEAD," said Owen Meany. His tiny hand went into his pocket again. He brought out a neatly folded envelope; in the envelope was the picture my mother had given him-it was a wedding picture, very pretty of her and not bad of Dan. My mother had included the photo with a thank-you note to Owen and his father for their unusual wedding present. "I JUST HAPPEN TO HAVE BROUGHT A PICTURE," Owen said, handing the sacred object to Mr. Giordano.

"Frank Sinatra!" the old man cried; his son took the picture from him.

"That don't look like Frank Sinatra to me," the son said.

"No! No!" the old man cried; he grabbed the photo back. "She loved those Sinatra songs-she sang 'em real good, too. We used to talk about 'Frankie Boy'-your mother said he shoulda been a woman, he had such a pretty voice," Mr. Giordano said.

"DO YOU KNOW WHY SHE BOUGHT THE DRESS?" Owen asked.

"Sure, I know!" the old man told us. "It was the dress she always sung in! 'I need somethin' to sing in!'-that's what she said when she walked in here. 'I need somethin' not like me\'-that's what she said. I'll never forget her. But I didn't know who she was-not when she come in here, not thenl" Mr. Giordano said.

"Who the fuck was she?" the son asked. I shuddered to hear him ask; it had just occurred to me that I didn't know who my mother was, either.

"She was 'The Lady in Red'-don't you remember her?" Mr. Giordano asked his son. "She was still singin' in that place when you got home from the war. What was that place?"

The son grabbed the photo back.

"It's feer!" he cried.

" 'The Lady in Red'!" the Giordanos cried together. I was trembling. My mother was a singer-in some joint] She was someone called "The Lady in Red"! She'd had a career-in nightlifel I looked at Owen; he appeared strangely at ease-he was almost calm, and he was smiling. "ISN'T THIS MORE INTERESTING THAN OLD FREDDY'S?" Owen asked me. What the Giordanos told us was that my mother had been a

female vocalist at a supper club on Beacon Street-"a perfectly proper sorta place!" the old man assured us. There was a black pianist-he played an old-fashioned piano, which (the Gior-danos explained) meant that he played the old tunes, and quietly, "so's you could hear the singer!"

It was not a place where single men or women went; it was not a bar; it was a supper club, and a supper club, the Giordanos assured us, was a restaurant with live entertainment-'' somethin' relaxed enough to digest to!" About ten o'clock, the singer and pianist served up music more suitable for dancing than for dinner-table conversation-and there was dancing, then, until midnight; men with their wives, or at least with "serious" dates. It was "no place to take a floozy-or to find one." And most nights there was "a sorta famous female vocalist, someone you woulda heard of; although Owen Meany and I had never heard of anyone the Giordanos mentioned. "The Lady in Red" sang only one night a week; the Giordanos had forgotten which night, but Owen and I could provide that information. It would have been Wednesday- always Wednesday. Supposedly, the singing teacher my mother was studying with was so famous that he had time for her only on Thursday mornings-and so early that she had to spend the previous night in the "dreaded" city. Why she never sang under her own name-why she was always "The Lady in Red"-the Giordanos didn't know. Nor could they recall the name of the supper club; they just knew it wasn't there anymore. It had always had the look of a private home; now it had, in fact, become one-"some-wheres on Beacon Street," that was all they could remember. It was either a private home or doctors' offices. As for the owner of the club, he was a Jewish fellow from Miami. The Giordanos had heard that the man had gone back to Miami. "I guess they still have supper clubs down there," old Mr. Giordano said. He was sad and shocked to hear that my mother was dead; "The Lady in Red" had become quite popular among the local patrons of the club-"not famous, not like some of them others, but a kinda regular feature of the place."

The Giordanos remembered that she had come, and that she had gone away-for a while-and then she'd come back. Later, she had gone away for good; but people didn't believe it and they would say, for years, that she was coming back again. When she'd been away-"for a while"-that was when she'd been having me, of course. The Giordanos could almost remember the name of the black pianist; "he was there as long as the place was there," they said. But the closest they could come to the man's name was "Buster."

"Big Black Buster!" Mr. Giordano said.

"I don't think he was from Miami," the son said.

"CLEARLY," said Owen Meany, when we were once more out on Newbury Street, " 'BIG BLACK BUSTER' IS NOT YOUR FATHER!"

I wanted to ask Owen if he still had the name and address-and even the phone number-of my mother's singing and voice teacher; I knew Mother had given the particulars to Owen, and I doubted that Owen would have discarded anything she gave him. But I didn't have to ask. Once more, his tiny hand shot into his pocket. "THE ADDRESS IS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD," he told me. "I MADE AN APPOINTMENT, TO HAVE MY VOICE 'ANALYZED'; WHEN THE GUY HEARD MY VOICE-OVER THE PHONE-HE SAID HE'D GIVE ME AN APPOINTMENT WHENEVER I WANTED ONE."

Thus had Owen Meany come to Boston, the dreaded city; he had come prepared. There were some elegant town houses along the most densely tree-lined part of Commonwealth Avenue where Graham McSwiney, the voice and singing teacher, lived; but Mr. McSwiney had a small and cluttered walk-up apartment in one of the less-restored old houses that had been divided and subdivided almost as many times as the collective rent of the various tenants had been withheld, or paid late. Since we were early for Owen's appointment, we sat in a corridor outside Mr. McSwiney's apartment door, on which was posted (by a thumbtack) a hand-lettered sign. Don't! ! ! ! Knock Or Ring Bell If You Hear Singing! ! ! !

"Singing" was not quite what we heard, but some sort of exercise was in progress behind Mr. McSwiney's closed door, and so Owen and I didn't knock or ring the bell; we sat on a

comfortable but odd piece of furniture-not a couch, but what appeared to be a seat removed from a public bus-and listened to the singing or voice lesson we were forbidden to disturb. A man's powerful, resonant voice said: "Me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me!'' A woman's absolutely thrilling voice repeated: "Me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me!'' Then the man said: "No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no!"

And the woman answered: "No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no!"

And then the man sang just a line from a song-it was a song from My Fair Lady, the one that goes, "All I want is a room somewhere ..."

And the woman sang: "Far away from the cold night air . . ."

And together they sang: "With one enormous chair ..."

And the woman took it by herself: "Oh, wouldn't it be lov-er-ly!"

"Me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me!" said the man again; now, a piano was involved-just one key. Their voices, even in this silly exercise, were the most wonderful voices Owen Meany and I had heard; even when she sang "No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no!" the woman's voice was much more beautiful than my mother's. I was glad that Owen and I had to wait, because it gave me time to be grateful for at least this part of our discovery: that Mr. McSwiney really was a voice and singing teacher, and that he seemed to have a perfectly wonderful voice-and that he had a pupil with an even better voice than my mother's . . . this at least meant that something I thought I knew about my mother was true. The shock of our discovery in Jerrold's needed time to sink in. It did not strike me that my mother's lie about the red dress was a devastating sort of untruth; even that she had been an actual singer-an actual performer!-didn't strike me as such an awful thing for her to have hidden from me, or even from Dan (if she'd kept Dan in the dark, too). What struck me was my memory of how easily and gracefully she had told that little lie about the store burning down, how she had fretted so convincingly about the red dress. Quite probably, it occurred to me, she had been a better liar than a singer. And if she'd lied about the dress-and had never told anyone in her life in Gravesend about "The Lady in Red"-what else had she lied about? In addition to not knowing who my father was, what else didn't I know? Owen Meany, who thought much more quickly than I did, put it very simply; he whispered, so that he wouldn't disturb Mr. McSwiney's lesson. "NOW YOU DON'T KNOW WHO YOUR MOTHER IS, EITHER," Owen said. Following the exit of a small, flamboyantly dressed woman from Mr. McSwiney's apartment, Owen and I were admitted to the teacher's untidy hovel; the disappointingly small size of the departing singer's bosom was a contradiction to the power we had heard in her voice-but we were impressed by the air of professional disorder that greeted us in Graham McSwiney's studio. There was no door on the cubicle bathroom, in which the bathtub appeared to be hastily, even comically placed; it was detached from the plumbing and full of the elbow joints of pipes and their fittings-a plumbing project was clearly in progress there; and progressing at no great pace. There was no wall (or the wall had been taken down) between the cubicle kitchen and the living room, and there were no doors on the kitchen cabinets, which revealed little besides coffee cups and mugs-suggesting that Mr. McSwiney either restricted himself to an all-caffeine diet or that he took his meals elsewhere. And there was no bed in the living room-the only real room in the tiny, crowded apartment-suggesting that the couch, which was covered with sheet music, concealed a foldaway bed. But the placement of the sheet music had the look of meticulous specificity, and the sheer volume of it argued that the couch was never sat upon-not to mention, unfolded-and this evidence suggested that Mr. McSwiney slept elsewhere, too. Everywhere, there were mementos-playbills from opera houses and concert halls; newspaper clippings of people singing; and framed citations and medals hung on ribbons, suggesting golden-throat awards of an almost athletic order of recognition. Everywhere, too, were framed, poster-sized drawings of the chest and throat, as clinical in detail as the drawings in Gray' Anatomy, and as simplistic in their arrangement around the apartment as the educational diagrams in certain doctors' offices. Beneath these anatomical drawings were the kind of optimistic slogans that gung-ho coaches hang in gyms:

Begin With The Breastbone! Keep Upper Chest Filled With Air All The Time\ The Diaphragm Is A One-Way Muscle-It Can Only Inhale! Practice Your Breathing Separately From Your Singing! Never Lift Your Shoulders! Never Hold Your Breath! One whole wall was devoted to instructive commands regarding vowels; over the doorway of the bathroom was the single exclamation: Gently! Dominating the apartment, from the center stage of the living room-big and black and perfectly polished, and conceivably worth twice the annual rent on Mr. McSwiney's place of business-was the piano. Mr. McSwiney was completely bald. Wild, white tufts of hair sprang from his ears-as if to protect him from the volume of his own huge voice. He was hearty-looking, in his sixties (or even in his seventies), a short, muscular man whose chest descended to his belt-or whose round, hard belly consumed his chest and rested under his chin, like a beer-drinker's boulder.

"So! Which one of you's got the voice!" Mr. McSwiney asked us.

"/ HAVE!" said Owen Meany.

"You certainly have!" cried Mr. McSwiney, who paid little attention to me, even when Owen took special pains to introduce me by putting unmistakable emphasis on my last name, which we thought might be familiar to the singing and voice teacher.

"THIS IS MY FRIEND, JOHN WHEELWRIGHT," Owen said, but Mr. McSwiney couldn't wait to have a look at Owen's Adam's apple; the name "Wheelwright" appeared to ring no bells for him.

"It's all the same thing, whatever you call it," Mr. McSwiney said. "An Adam's apple, a larynx, a voice box- it's the most important part of the vocal apparatus," he explained, sitting Owen in what he called "the singer's seat," which was a plain, straight-backed chair directly in front of the piano. Mr. McSwiney put his thumb and index finger on either side of Owen's Adam's apple. "Swallow!" he instructed. Owen swallowed. When I held my own Adam's apple and swallowed, I could feel my Adam's apple jump higher up my neck; but Owen's Adam's apple hardly moved.

"Yawn!" said Mr. McSwiney. When I yawned, my Adam's apple moved down my neck, but Owen Meany's Adam's apple stayed almost exactly where it was.

"Scream!" said Mr. McSwiney.

"AAAAAHHHHHH!" said Owen Meany; again, his Adam's apple hardly moved.

"Amazing!" said Mr. McSwiney. "You've got a permanently fixed larynx," he told Owen. "I've rarely seen such a thing," he said. "Your voice box is never in repose-your Adam's apple sits up there in the position of a permanent scream. I could try giving you some exercises, but you might want to see a throat doctor; you might have to have surgery."

"I DON'T WANT TO HAVE SURGERY, I DON'T NEED ANY EXERCISES," said Owen Meany. "IF GOD GAVE ME THIS VOICE, HE HAD A REASON," Owen said.

"How come his voice doesn't change!" I asked Mr. McSwiney, who seemed on the verge of a satirical remark- regarding God's role in the position of Owen's voice box. "I thought every boy's voice changed-at puberty," I said.

"If his voice hasn't changed already, it's probably never going to change," Mr. McSwiney said. "Vocal cords don't make words-they just vibrate. Vocal cords aren't really 'cords'-they're just lips. It's the opening between those lips that's called the 'glottis.' It's nothing but the act of breathing on the closed lips that makes a sound. When a male voice changes, it's just a part of puberty-it's called a 'secondary sexual development.' But I don't think your voice is going to change," Mr. McSwiney told Owen. "If it was going to change, it would have."

"THAT DOESN'T EXPLAIN WHY IT ALREADY HASN'T," said Owen Meany.

"I can't explain that," Mr. McSwiney admitted. "I can give you some exercises," he repeated, "or I can recommend a doctor.''

"I DON'T EXPECT MY VOICE TO CHANGE," said Owen Meany. I could see that Mr. McSwiney was learning how exasperating Owen's belief in God's plans could be.

"Why'd you come to see me, kid?" Mr. McSwiney asked him.

"BECAUSE YOU KNOW HIS MOTHER," Owen said, pointing to me. Graham McSwiney assessed me, as if he feared I might represent an elderly paternity suit.

"Tabitha Wheelwright," I said. "She was called Tabby. She was from New Hampshire, and she studied with you in the forties and the fifties-from before I was born until I was eight or nine."

"OR TEN," said Owen Meany; into his pocket went his hand, again-he handed Mr. McSwiney the photograph.

" 'The Lady in Red'!" Mr. McSwiney said. "I'm sorry, I forgot her name," he told me.

"But you remember her?" I asked.

"Oh sure, I remember her," he said. "She was pretty, and Very pleasant-and I got her that silly job. It wasn't much of a gig, but she had fun doing it; she had this idea that someone might 'discover' her if she kept singing there-but I told her no one ever got discovered in Boston. And certainly not in that supper clubV Mr. McSwiney explained that the club often called him and raided his students for local talent; as the Giordanos had told us, the club hired more established female vocalists for gigs that lasted for a month or more-but on Wednesdays, the club rested their stars; that's when they called upon "local talent." In my mother's case, she had gained a small, neighborhood reputation and the club had made a habit of her. She'd not wanted to use her name-a form of shyness, or provincialism, that Mr. McSwiney found as silly as her idea that anyone might "discover" her.

"But she was charming," he said. "As a singer, she was all 'head'-she had no 'chest'-and she was lazy. She liked to perform simple, popular songs; she wasn't very ambitious. And she wouldn't practice."

He explained the two sets of muscles involved in a "head voice" and in a "chest voice"; although this was not what interested Owen and me about my mother, we were polite and allowed Mr. McSwiney to elaborate on his teacher's opinion of her. Most women sing with the larynx in a high position, or with only what Mr. McSwiney called a "head voice"; they experience a lack of power from the E above middle C, downward-and when they try to hit their high notes loudly, they hit them shrilly. The development of a "chest voice" in women is very important. For men, it is the "head voice" that needs the development. For both, they must be willing to devote hours. My mother, a once-a-week singer, was what Mr. McSwiney called "the vocal equivalent of a weekend tennis player." She had ^pretty voice-as I've described it-but Mr. McSwiney's assessment of her voice was consistent with my memory of her; she did not have a strong voice, she was not ever as powerful as Mr. McSwiney's previous pupil had sounded to Owen and me through a closed door.

' 'Who thought of the name 'The Lady in Red' ?'' I asked the old teacher-in an effort to steer him back to what interested us.

"She found a red dress in a store," Mr. McSwiney said. "She told me she wanted to be 'wholly out of character-but only once a week'!" He laughed. "I never went to hear her perform," he said. "It was just a supper club," he explained. "Really, no one who sang there was very good. Some of the better ones would work with me, so I heard them here-but I never set foot in the place. I knew Meyerson on the telephone; I don't remember that I actually met him. I think Meyerson called her 'The Lady in Red.' "

"Meyerson?" I asked.

"He owned the club, he was a nice old guy-from Miami, I think. He was honest, and unpretentious. The singers I sent to him all liked him-they said he treated them respectfully," Mr. McSwiney said.

"DO YOU REMEMBER THE NAME OF THE CLUB?" Owen asked him. It had been called The Orange Grove; my mother had joked to Mr. McSwiney about the decor, which she said was dotted everywhere with potted orange trees and tanks full of tropical fish-and husr>ands and wives celebrating their anniversaries. Yet she had imagined she might be "discovered" there!

"DID SHE HAVE A BOYFRIEND?" Owen asked Mr. McSwiney, who shrugged.

"She wasn't interested in me-that's all I know!" he said. He smiled at me fondly. "I know, because I made a pass at her," he explained. "She handled it very nicely and I never tried it again," he said.

"There was a pianist, a black pianist-at The Orange Grove," I said.

"You bet there was, but he was all over-he played all over town, for years, before he ended up there. And after he left there, he played all over town again," Mr. McSwiney said. "Big Black Buster Freebody!" he said, and laughed..

"Freebody," I said.

"It was as made-up a name as 'The Lady in Red,' " said Mr. McSwiney. "And he wouldn't have been your mother's boyfriend, either-Buster was as queer as a cat fart."

Graham McSwiney also told us that Meyerson had gone back to Miami; but Mr. McSwiney added that Meyerson was old-even in the forties and fifties, he'd been old; he was so old that he'd have to be dead now, "or at least lying down on a shuffleboard court." As for Buster Freebody, Mr. McSwiney couldn't remember where the big black man had played after The Orange Grove had seen its days. "I used to run into him in so many places," Mr. McSwiney said. "I was as used to seeing Buster as a light fixture." Buster Freebody had played what Mr. McSwiney called a "real soft" piano; singers liked him because they could be heard over him.

"She had some trouble-your mother," Mr. McSwiney remembered. "She went away-for a while-and then she came back again. And then she went away for good."

"HE WAS THE TROUBLE," said Owen Meany, pointing to me.

"Are you looking for your father?" the singing teacher asked me. "Is that it?"

"Yes," I said.

"Don't bother, kid," said Mr. McSwiney. "If he was looking for you, he would have found you."

"GOD WILL TELL HIM WHO HIS FATHER IS," Owen said; Graham McSwiney shrugged.

"I'm not God," Mr. McSwiney said. "This God you know," he told Owen-"this God must be pretty busy."

I gave him my phone number in Gravesend-in case he ever remembered the last place he'd heard Buster Freebody play the piano. Buster Freebody, Mr. McSwiney warned me, was old enough to be "lying down on a shuffleboard court," too. Mr. McSwiney asked Owen Meany for his phone number-in case he ever heard a theory regarding why Owen's voice hadn't already changed.

"IT DOESN'T MATTER," Owen said, but he gave Mr. McSwiney his number.

"Your mother was a nice woman, a good person-a respectable woman," Mr. McSwiney told me.

"Thank you," I said.

"The Orange Grove was a stupid place," he told me, "but it wasn't a dive-nothing cheap would have happened to her there," he said.

"Thank you," I said again.

"All she ever sang was Sinatra stuff-it used to bore me to tears," Mr. McSwiney admitted.

"I THINK WE CAN ASSUME THAT SOMEBODY LIKED TO LISTEN TO IT," said Owen Meany. Toronto: May , -I should know better than to read even as much as a headline in The New York Times; although, as I've often pointed out to my students at Bishop Strachan, this newspaper's use of the semicolon is exemplary. Reagan Declares Firmness on Gulf; Plans Are Unclear Isn't that a classic? I don't mean the semicolon; I mean, isn't that just what the world needs? Unclear firmness! That is typical American policy: don't be clear, but be firm! In November, -after Owen Meany and I learned that his voice box was never in repose, and that my mother had enjoyed (or suffered) a more secret life than we knew-Gen. Maxwell Taylor reported to President Kennedy that U.S. military, economic, and political support could secure a victory for the South Vietnamese without the United States taking over the war. (Privately, the general recommended sending eight thousand U.S. combat troops to Vietnam.) That New Year's Eve, which Owen and Hester and I celebrated at Front Street-in the desultory manner that describes the partying habits of the late teen years (Hester was twenty), and in a relatively quiet manner (because Grandmother had gone to bed)-there were only , U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. Hester would usher in the New Year more emphatically than Owen or I could manage; she greeted the New Year on her knees-in the snow, in the rose garden, where Grandmother would not hear her retching up her rum and Coke (a concoction she had learned to fancy in the budding days of her romance in Tortola). I was less enthusiastic about the watershed changing

of the year; I fell asleep watching Charlton Heston's agonies in Ben-Hur-somewhere between the chariot race and the leper colony, I nodded off. Owen watched the whole movie; during the commercials, he turned his detached attention to the window that overlooked the rose garden, where Hester's pale figure could be discerned in the ghostly glow of the moonlight against the snow. It is a wonder to me that the changing of the year had so little effect on Owen Meany-when I consider that he thought he' 'knew," at the time, exactly how many years he had left. Yet he appeared content to watch Ben-Hur, and Hester throwing up; maybe that's what faith is-exactly that contentment, even facing the future. By our next New Year's Eve together, in , there would be , U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. And once again, on the morning of New Year's Day, my grandmother would notice the frozen splatter of Hester's vomit in the snow-defacing that usually pristine area surrounding the birdbath in the center of the rose garden.

"Merciful Heavens!" Grandmother would say. "What's all that mess around the birdbath?"

And just as he'd said the year before, Owen Meany said, "DIDN'T YOU HEAR THE BIRDS LAST NIGHT, MISSUS WHEELWRIGHT? I'D BETTER HAVE A LOOK AT WHAT ETHEL'S PUTTING IN YOUR BIRD FEEDERS."

Owen would have respected a book I read only two years ago: Vietnam War Almanac, by Col. Harry G. Summers, Jr. Colonel Summers is a combat infantry veteran of Korea and Vietnam; he doesn't beat around the bush, as we used to say in Gravesend. Here is the first sentence of his very fine book: ' 'One of the great tragedies of the Vietnam war is that although American armed forces defeated the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in every major battle, the United States still suffered the greatest defeat in its history." Imagine that! On the first page of his book, Colonel Summers tells a story about President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference in , when the Allied powers were trying to decide the composition of the postwar world. President Roosevelt wanted to give Indo-China to China's leader, General Chiang Kai-shek, but the general knew a little Vietnamese history and tradition; Chiang Kai-shek understood that the Vietnamese were not Chinese, and that they would never allow themselves to be comfortably absorbed by the Chinese people. To Roosevelt's generous offer-to give him Indo-China-Chiang replied: "We don't want it." Colonel Summers points out that it took the United States thirty years-and a war that cost them nearly fifty thousand American lives-to find out what Chiang Kai-shek explained to President Roosevelt in . Imagine that\ Is it any surprise that President Reagan is promising "firmness" in the Persian Gulf, and that his "plans are unclear"? Soon the school year will be over; soon the BSS girls will be gone. It is hot and humid in the summer in Toronto, but I like to watch the sprinklers wetting down the grass on the St. Clair Reservoir; they keep Winston Churchill Park as green as a jungle-all summer long. And the Rev. Katherine Reeling's family owns an island in Georgian Bay; Katherine always invites me to visit her-I usually go there at least once every summer-and so I get my annual fix of swimming in fresh water and fooling around with someone else's kids. Lots of wet life vests, lots of leaky canoes, and the smell of pine needles and wood preservative-a little of that lasts a long time for a fussy old bachelor like me. And in the summers I go to Gravesend and visit with Dan, too. It would hurt Dan's feelings if I didn't come to see a theatrical performance of his Gravesend summer-school students; he understands why I decline to see the performances of The Gravesend Players. Mr. Fish is quite old, but still acting; many of the town's older amateurs are still acting for Dan, but I'd just as soon not see them anymore. And I don't care for the view of the audience that, for a period of time, more than twenty years ago, intrigued Owen Meany and me.

"IS HE OUT THERE TONIGHT?" Owen would whisper to me. "DO YOU SEE HIM?"

In , Owen and I searched the audience for that special face in the bleacher seats-maybe a familiar face; and maybe not. We were looking for the man who responded-or did not respond-to my mother's wave. It was a face, we were sure, that would have registered some expression-upon witnessing the results of Owen Meany making contact with that ball. It was a face, we suspected, that my mother would have seen in many audiences before-not just at Little League games, but staring out at her from the potted orange trees and the tanks full

of tropical fish at The Orange Grove. We were looking for a face that "The Lady in Red" would have sung to ... at least once, if not many times.

" you see him?" I would ask Owen Meany.

"NOT TONIGHT," Owen would say. "EITHER HE'S NOT HERE, OR HE'S NOT THINKING ABOUT YOUR MOTHER," he said one night.

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"SUPPOSE DAN DIRECTED A PLAY ABOUT MIAMI!" said Owen Meany. "SUPPOSE THE GRAVESEND PLAYERS PUT ON A PLAY ABOUT A SUPPER CLUB IN MIAMI, AND IT WAS CALLED THE ORANGE GROVE, AND THERE WAS A SINGER CALLED 'THE LADY IN RED,' AND SHE SANG ONLY THE OLD SINATRA SONGS."

"But there is no play like that," I said.

"JUST SUPPOSE'" Owen said. "USE YOUR IMAGINATION. GOD CAN TELL YOU WHO YOUR FATHER IS, BUT YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE IT-YOU'VE GOT TO GIVE GOD A LITTLE HELP! JUST SUPPOSE THERE WAS SUCH A PLAY!"

"Okay," I said. "I'm supposing."

"AND WE CALLED THE PLAY EITHER THE ORANGE GROVE OR THE LADY IN RED-DON'T YOU SUPPOSE THAT YOUR FATHER WOULD COME TO SEE THAT PLAY? AND DON'T YOU SUPPOSE WE COULD RECOGNIZE HIM THEN!" asked Owen Meany.

"I suppose so," I said. The problem was, Owen and I didn't dare tell Dan about The Orange Grove and "The Lady in Red"; we weren't sure that Dan didn't already know. I thought it would hurt Dan to know that he wasn't enough of a father to me-for wouldn't he interpret my curiosity regarding my biological father as an indication that he (Dan) was less than adequate in his adoptive role? And if Dan didn't know about The Orange Grove and "The Lady in Red," wouldn't that hurt him, too? It made my mother's past-before Dan-appear more romantic than / ever thought it had been. Why would Dan Needham want to dwell on my mother's romantic past? Owen suggested that there was a way to get The Gravesend Players to perform a play alxmt a female vocalist in a Miami supper club without involving Dan in our discovery.

" COULD WRITE THE PLAY," said Owen Meany. "I COULD SUBMIT IT TO DAN AS THE FIRST ORIGINAL PRODUCTION OF THE GRAVESEND PLAYERS. I COULD TELL IN ONE SECOND IF DAN ALREADY KNEW THE STORY."

"But you don't know the story," I pointed out to Owen. "You don't have a story, you just have a setting-and a very sketchy cast of characters."

"IT CAN'T BE VERY HARD TO MAKE UP A GOOD STORY," said Owen Meany. "CLEARLY, YOUR MOTHER HAD A TALENT FOR IT-AND SHE WASN'T EVEN A WRITER."

"I suppose you're a writer," I said; Owen shrugged.

"IT CAN'T BE VERY HARD," Owen repeated. But I said I didn't want him to try it and take a chance of hurting Dan; if Dan already knew the story-even if he knew only the "setting"-he would be hurt, I said.

"I DON'T THINK IT'S DAN YOU'RE WORRIED ABOUT," said Owen Meany.

"What do you mean, Owen?" I asked him; he shrugged- sometimes I think that Owen Meany invented shrugging.

"I THINK YOU'RE AFRAID TO FIND OUT WHO YOUR FATHER IS," he said.

"Fuck you, Owen," I said; he shrugged again.

"LOOK AT IT THIS WAY," said Owen Meany. "YOU'VE BEEN GIVEN A CLUE. NO EFFORT FROM YOU WAS REQUIRED. GOD HAS GIVEN YOU A CLUE. NOW YOU HAVE A CHOICE: EITHER YOU USE GOD'S GIFT OR YOU WASTE IT. I THINK A LITTLE EFFORT FROM YOU IS REQUIRED."

"I think you care more about who my father is than / do," I told him; he nodded. It was the day of New Year's Eve, December , , about two o'clock in the afternoon, and we were sitting in the grubby living room of Hester's apartment in Durham, New Hampshire; it was a living room we routinely shared with Hester's roommates-two university girls who were almost Hester's equal in slovenliness, but sadly no match for Hester in sex appeal. The girls were not there; they had gone to their parents' homes for Christmas vacation. Hester was not there, either; Owen and I would never have discussed

my mother's secret life in Hester's presence. Although it was only two o'clock in the afternoon, Hester had already consumed several rum and Cokes; she was sound asleep in her bedroom-as oblivious to Owen's and my discussion as my mother was.

"LET'S DRIVE TO THE GYM AND PRACTICE THE SHOT," said Owen Meany.

"I don't feel like it," I said.

"TOMORROW IS NEW YEAR'S DAY," Owen reminded me. "THE GYM WILL BE CLOSED TOMORROW."

From Hester's bedroom-even though the door was closed-we could hear her breathing; Hester's breathing, when she'd been drinking, was something between a snore and a moan.

"Why does she drink so much?" I asked Owen.

"HESTER'S AHEAD OF HER TIME," he said.

"What's that mean?" I asked him. "Do we have a generation of drunks to look forward to?"

"WE HAVE A GENERATION OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ANGRY TO LOOK FORWARD TO," Owen said. "AND MAYBE TWO GENERATIONS OF PEOPLE WHO DON'T GIVE A SHIT," he added.

"How do you know?" I asked him.

"I DON'T KNOW HOW I KNOW," said Owen Meany. "I JUST KNOW THAT I KNOW," he said. Toronto: June , -after a weekend of wonderful weather here, sunny and clear-skyed and as cool as it is in the fall, I broke down and bought The New York Times; thank God, no one I know saw me. One of the Brocklebank daughters got married on the weekend in the Bishop Strachan chapel; the BSS girls tend to do that-they come back to the old school to tie the knot, even the ones who were miserable when they were students here. Sometimes, I'm invited to the weddings-Mrs. Brocklebank invited me to this one-but this particular daughter had managed to escape ever being a student of mine, and I felt that Mrs. Brocklebank invited me only because I ran into her while she was fiercely trimming her hedge. No one sent me a formal invitation. I like to stand on a little ceremony; I felt it wasn't my place to attend. And besides: the Brocklebank daughter was marrying an American. I think it's because I ran into a carload of Americans on Russell Hill Road that I broke down and bought The New York Times. The Americans were lost; they couldn't rind The Bishop Strachan School or the chapel-they had a New York license plate and no understanding of how to pronounce Strachan.

"Where's Bishop Sfray-chen?" a woman asked me.

"Bishop Strawn," I corrected her.

"What?" she said. "I can't understand him," she told her husband, the driver. "I think he's speaking French."

"I was speaking English," I informed the idiot woman. "They speak French in Montreal. You're in Toronto. We speak English here."

"Do you know where Bishop Sfray-chen is?" her husband shouted.

"It's Bishop Strawn\" I shouted back.

"No, Sfray-chen!" shouted the wife. One of the kids in the back seat spoke up.

"I think he's telling you how to pronounce it," the kid told his parents.

"I don't want to know how to pronounce it," his father said, "I just want to know where it is."

"Do you know where it is?" the woman asked me.

"No," I said. "I've never heard of it."

"He's never heard of it!" the wife repeated. She took a letter out of her purse, and opened k. "Do you know where Lonsdale Road is?" she asked me.

"Somewhere around here," I said. "I think I've heard of that."

They drove off-in the direction of St. Clair, and the reservoir; they went the wrong way, of course. Their plans were certainly unclear, but they exhibited an exemplary American firmness. And so I must have been feeling a little homesick; I get that way from time to time. And what a day it was to buy The New York Times! I don't suppose there's ever a good day to buy it. But what a story I read! Nancy Reagan Says Hearings Have Not Affected President Oh, boy. Mrs. Reagan said that the congressional hearings on the Iran-contra deals had not affected the president. Mrs. Reagan was in Sweden to observe a drug-abuse program in a high school in a Stockholm suburb; I guess she's one of those many American adults of a certain advanced age who believe that the root of all evil lies in the area of young people's

self-abuse. Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people-even young people on drugs-are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world! The wives of American presidents have always been active in eradicating their pet peeves; Mrs. Reagan is all upset about drug abuse. I think it was Mrs. Johnson who wanted to rid the nation of junk cars; those cars that no longer could be driven anywhere, but simply sat-rusting into the landscape . . . they made her absolutely passionate about their removal. And there was another president's wife, or maybe it was a vice-president's wife, who thought it was a disgrace how the nation, as a whole, paid so little attention to "art"; I forget what it was that she wanted to do about it. But it doesn't surprise me that the president is "not affected" by the congressional hearings; he hasn't been too "affected" by what the Congress tells him he can and can't do, either. I doubt that these hearings are going to "affect" him very greatly. Who cares if he "knew"-exactly, or inexactly-that money raised by secret arms sales to Iran was being diverted to the support of the Nicaraguan rebels? I don't think most Americans care. Americans got bored with hearing about Vietnam before they got out of Vietnam; Americans got bored with hearing about Watergate, and what Nixon did or didn't do-even before the evidence was all in. Americans are already bored with Nicaragua; by the time these congressional hearings on the Iran-contra affair are over, Americans won't know (or care) what they think-except that they'll be sick and tired of it. After a while, they'll be tired of the Persian Gulf, too. They're already sick to death of Iran. This syndrome is as familiar to me as Hester throwing up on New Year's Eve. It was New Year's Eve, ; Hester was vomiting in the rose garden, and Owen and I were watching TV. There were , U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. On New Year's Eve in ', a total of , Americans were there; Hester was barfing her brains out again, I think the January thaw was early that year; I think that was the year Hester was puking in the rain, but maybe the early thaw was New Year's Eve in , when there were , U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. Hester just threw up; she was nonstop. She was violently opposed to the Vietnam War; she was radically opposed to it. Hester was so ferociously antiwar that Owen Meany used to say that he knew of only one good way to get all those Americans out of Vietnam.

"WE SHOULD SEND HESTER INSTEAD," he used to say. "HESTER SHOULD DRINK HER WAY THROUGH NORTH VIETNAM," Owen would say. "WE SHOULD SEND HESTER TO HANOI," he told me. "HESTER, I'VE GOT A GREAT IDEA," Owen said to her. "WHY DON'T YOU GO THROW UP ON HANOI INSTEAD?"

On New Year's Eve, , there were , U.S. military personnel in Vietnam; , had been killed in action. Hester and Owen and I weren't together for New Year's Eve that year. I watched the television at Front Street by myself. Somewhere, I was sure, Hester was throwing up; but I didn't know where. In ', there were , Americans in Vietnam; , had been killed there. I watched television at Front Street, alone again. I'd had a little too much to drink myself; I was trying to remember when Grandmother had purchased a color television set, but I couldn't. I'd had enough to drink so that / was sick in the rose garden; it was cold enough to make me hope, for Hester's sake, that she was throwing up in a warmer climate. Owen was in a warmer climate. I don't remember where I was or what I did for New Year's Eve in . There were , U.S. military personnel in Vietnam; that was still about , short of what our peak number would be. Only , Americans had been killed in action, about , short of the number of Americans who would die there. Wherever I was for New Year's Eve, , I'm sure I was drunk and throwing up; wherever Hester was, I'm sure she was drunk and throwing up, too. As I've said, Owen didn't show me what he wrote in his diary; it was much later-after everything, after almost everything-when I saw what he'd written there. There is one particular entry I wish I could have read when he wrote it; it is a very early entry, not far from his excited optimism following Kennedy's inauguration, not all that far from his thanking my grandmother for the gift of the diary and his announced intention to make her proud of him. This entry strikes me as important; it is dated January , , and it reads as follows:

I KNOW THREE THINGS. I KNOW THAT MY VOICE DOESN'T CHANGE, AND I KNOW WHEN I'M GOING TO DIE. I WISH I KNEW WHY MY VOICE NEVER CHANGES, I WISH I KNEW HOW I WAS GOING TO DIE; BUT GOD HAS ALLOWED ME TO KNOW MORE THAN MOST PEOPLE KNOW-SO I'M NOT COMPLAINING. THE THIRD THING I KNOW IS THAT I AM GOD'S INSTRUMENT; I HAVE FAITH THAT GOD WILL LET ME KNOW WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO, AND WHEN I'M SUPPOSED TO DO IT. HAPPY NEW YEAR! That was the January of our senior year at Gravesend Academy; if I had understood then that this was his fatalistic acceptance of what he' 'knew,'' I could have better understood why he behaved as he did-when the world appeared to turn against him, and he hardly raised a hand in his own defense. We were hanging around the editorial offices of The Grave-that year was also editor-in-chief-when a totally unlikable senior named Larry Lish told Owen and me that President Kennedy was "diddling" Marilyn Monroe. Larry Lish-Herbert Lawrence Lish, Jr. (his father was the movie producer Herb Lish)-was arguably Gravesend's most cynical and decadent student. In his junior year, he'd gotten a town girl pregnant, and his mother-only recently divorced from his father-had so skillfully and swiftly arranged for the girl's abortion that not even Owen and I knew who the girl was; Larry Lish had spoiled a lot of girls' good times. His mother was said to be ready to fly his girlfriends to Sweden at the drop of a hat; it was rumored that she accompanied the girls, too-just to make sure they went through with it. And after these return trips from Sweden, the girls never wanted to see Larry again. He was a charming sociopath, the kind of creep who makes a good first impression on those poor, sad people who are dazzled by top-drawer accents and custom-made dress shirts. He was witty-even Owen was impressed by Lish's editorial cleverness for The Grave-and he was cordially loathed by students and faculty alike; I say "cordially," in the case of the students, because no one would have refused an invitation to one of his father's or his mother's parties. In the case of the faculty, they exercised a "cordial" hatred of Lish because his father was so famous that many faculty members were afraid of him-and Lish's mother, the divorcee, was a beauty and a whorish flirt. I'm sure that some of the faculty lived for the glimpse they might get of her on Parents' Day; many of the students felt that way about Larry Lish's mother, too. Owen and I had never been invited to one of Mr. or Mrs. Lish's parties; New Hampshire natives are not regularly within striking distance of New York City-not to mention Beverly Hills. Herb Lish lived in Beverly Hills; those were Hollywood parties, and Larry Lish's Gravesend acquaintances who were fortunate enough to come from the Los Angeles area claimed to have met actual "starlets" at those lavish affairs. Mrs. Lish's Fifth Avenue parties were no less provocative; the seduction and intimidation of young people was an activity both Lishes enjoyed. And the New York girls-although they weren't always aspiring actresses-were reputed to "do it" with even less resistance than the marginal protestations offered by the California variety. Mr. and Mrs. Lish, following their divorce, were in competition for young Larry's doubtful affection; they had chosen a route to his heart that was strewn with excessive partying and expensive sex. Larry divided his vacations between New York City and Beverly Hills. On both coasts, the segment of society that Mr. and Mrs. Lish "knew" was comprised of the kind of people who struck many Gravesend Academy seniors as the most fascinating people alive; Owen and I, however, had never heard of most of these people. But we had certainly heard of President John F. Kennedy; and we had certainly seen every movie that starred Marilyn Monroe.

"You know what my mother told me over the vacation?" Larry Lish asked Owen and me.

"Let me guess," I said. "She's going to buy you an airplane."

"AND WHEN YOUR FATHER HEARD ABOUT IT," said Owen Meany, "HE SAID HE'D BUY YOU A VILLA IN FRANCE-ON THE RIVIERA!"

"Not this year," Larry Lish said slyly. "My mother told me that JFK was diddling Marilyn Monroe-and countless others," he added.

"THAT IS A TRULY TASTELESS LIE!" said Owen Meany.

"It's the truth," Larry Lish said, smirking.

"SOMEONE WHO SPREADS THAT KIND OF RUMOR OUGHT TO BE IN JA/L!" Owen said.

"Can you see my mother in jail?" Lish asked. "This is no rumor. The truth is, the prez makes Ladies' Man Meany look like a virgin-the prez gets any woman he wants."

"HOW DOES YOUR MOTHER KNOW THIS?" Owen asked Lish.

"She knows all the Kennedys," Lish said, after a moderately tense silence. "And my dad knows Marilyn Monroe," he said.

"I SUPPOSE THEY 'DO IT' IN THE WHITE HOUSE?" Owen asked.

"I know they've done it in New York," Lish said. "I don't know where else they've done it-all I know is, they've been doing it for years. And when the prez isn't interested in her anymore, I hear that Bobby's going to get her."

"YOU'RE DISGUSTING!" said Owen Meany.

"The world's disgusting!" Larry Lish said cheerfully. "Do you think I'm lying?"

"YES, I DO," Owen said.

"My mother's going to pick me up and take me skiing- next weekend," Lish said. "You can ask her yourself."

Owen shrugged.

"Do you think she's lying?" Lish asked; Owen shrugged again. He hated Lish-and Lish's mother; or, at least, he hated the kind of woman he imagined Larry Lish's mother was. But Owen Meany wouldn't have called anyone's mother a liar.

"Let me tell you, Sarcasm Master," Larry Lish said, "My mother's a gossip, and she's a bitch, but she's not a liar; she doesn't have enough imagination to make anything up!"

It was one of the more painful things about our peers at Gravesend Academy; it hurt Owen and me to hear how many of our schoolmates commonly put their parents down. They took their parents' money, and they abused their parents' summer houses and weekend retreats-when their parents weren't even aware that the kids had their own keys! And they frequently spoke of their parents as if they thought their parents were trash-or, at least, ignorant beyond saving.

"DOES JACKIE KNOW ABOUT MARILYN MONROE?" Owen asked Larry Lish.

"You can ask my mother," Lish said. The prospect of conversation with Larry Lish's mother was not relaxing to Owen Meany. He brooded all week. He avoided the editorial offices of The Grave, a hangout in which Owen was regularly king. Owen, after all, had been inspired by JFK; although the subject of the president's personal (or sexual) morality would not have dampened everyone's enthusiasm for his political ideals and his political goals, Owen Meany was not "everyone"-nor was he sophisticated enough to separate public and private morality. I doubt that Owen ever would have become "sophisticated" enough to make that separation-not even today, when it seems that the only people who are adamant in their claim that public and private morality are inseparable are those creep-evangelists who profess to "know" that God prefers capitalists to communists, and nuclear power to long hair. Where would Owen fit in today? He was shocked that JFK-a married man!-could have been "diddling" Marilyn Monroe; not to mention "countless others." But Owen would never have claimed that he "knew" what God wanted; he always hated the sermon part of the service-of any service. He hated anyone who claimed to "know" God's opinion of current events. Today, the fact that President Kennedy enjoyed carnal knowledge of Marilyn Monroe and "countless others"-even during his presidency-seems only moderately improper, and even stylish, in comparison to the willful secrecy and deception, and the unlawful policies, so broadly practiced by the entire Reagan administration. The idea of President Reagan getting laid, at all-by anyone!-comes only as welcome and comic relief alongside all his other mischief! But was not today; and Owen Meany's expectations for the Kennedy administration were ripe with the hopefulness and optimism of a nineteen-year-old who desired to serve his country-to be of use. In the previous spring, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba had upset Owen; but although that was a disturbing error, it was not adultery.

"IF KENNEDY CAN RATIONALIZE ADULTERY, WHAT ELSE CAN HE RATIONALIZE?" Owen asked me. Then he got angry and said: "I'M FORGETTING HE'S A MACKEREL-SNAPPER! IF CATHOLICS CAN CONFESS ANYTHING, THEY CAN FORGIVE THEMSELVES ANYTHING, TOO! CATHOLICS CAN'T EVEN GET DIVORCED; MAYBE THAT'S THE PROBLEM. IT'S SICK NOT TO LET PEOPLE GET DIVORCED!"

"Look at it this way," I told him. "You're president of the

United States; you're very good-looking. Countless women want to sleep with you-countless and beautiful women will do anything you ask. They'll even come to the linen-service entrance of the White House after midnight!"

"THE LINEN-SERVICE ENTRANCE?" said Owen Meany.

"You know what I mean," I said. "If you could fuck absolutely any woman you wanted to fuck, would you-or wouldn't you?"

"I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT YOUR UPBRINGING AND YOUR EDUCATION HAVE BEEN WASTED ON YOU," he said. "WHY STUDY HISTORY OR LITERATURE-NOT TO MENTION RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE AND SCRIPTURE AND ETHICS? WHY NOT DO ANYTHING-IF THE ONLY REASON NOT TO IS NOT TO GET CAUGHT?" he asked. "DO YOU CALL THAT MORALITY? DO YOU CALL THAT RESPONSIBLE! THE PRESIDENT IS ELECTED TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION; TO PUT THAT MORE BROADLY, HE'S CHOSEN TO UPHOLD THE LAW-HE'S NOT GIVEN A LICENSE TO OPERATE ABOVE THE LAW, HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE OUR EXAMPLE]"

Remember that? Remember then! I remember what Owen said about "Project ,," too-remember that? That was a draft program outlined by the secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, in . Of the first , taken into the military between and , percent read below sixth-grade level, percent were black, percent came from low-income families, percent had dropped out of high school. "The poor of America have not had the opportunity to earn their fair share of this nation's abundance," Secretary McNamara said, "but they can be given an opportunity to serve in their country's defense."

That made Owen Meany hopping mad.

"DOES HE THINK HE'S DOING 'THE POOR OF AMERICA' SOME FAVOR?" Owen cried. "WHAT HE'S SAYING IS, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE WHITE-OR A GOOD READER-TO DIE I THAT'S SOME 'OPPORTUNITY'! I'LL BET 'THE POOR OF AMERICA' ARE REALLY GOING TO BE GRATEFUL FOR THIS!"

Toronto: July , -it's been so hot, I wish Katherine would invite me up to her family's island in Georgian Bay; but she has such a large family, I'm sure she's suffered her share of houseguests. I have fallen into a bad habit here: I buy The New York Times almost every day. I don't exactly know why I want or need to know anything more. According to The New York Times, a new poll has revealed that most Americans believe that President Reagan is lying; what they should be asked is, Do they care? I wrote Katherine and asked her when she was going to invite me to Georgian Bay. "When are you going to rescue me from my own bad habits?" I asked her. I wonder if you can buy The New York Times in Pointe au Baril Station; I hope not. Larry's mother, Mitzy Lish, had honey-colored, slightly sticky-looking hair-it was coiffed in a bouffant style-and her complexion was much improved by a suntan; in the winter months, when she'd not just returned from her annual pilgrimage to Round Hill, Jamaica, her skin turned a shade sallow. Because her complexion was further wrecked by blotchiness in the extreme cold, and because her excessive smoking had ill-influenced her circulation, a weekend of winter skiing in New England-even to forward the cause of her competition for her son's affection-did not favor either Mrs. Lish's appearance or her disposition. Yet it was impossible not to see her as an attractive "older" woman; she was not quite up to President Kennedy's standards, but Mitzy Lish was a beauty by any standard Owen and I had to compare her to. Hester's early-blooming eroticism, for example, had not been improved by her carelessness or by alcohol; even though Mrs. Lish smoked up a storm, and her amber hair was dyed (because she was graying at her roots), Mrs. Lish looked sexier than Hester. She wore too much gold and silver for New Hampshire; in New York, I'm sure, she was certainly in vogue-but her clothes and her jewelry, and her bouffant, were more suited to the kind of hotels and cities where ' 'evening" or formal clothes are standard. In Gravesend, she stood out; and it is hard to imagine that there was a small skiers' lodge in New Hampshire, or in Vermont, that ever could have pleased her. She had ambitions beyond the simple luxury of a private bath; she was a woman who needed room service-who wanted her first

cigarette and her coffee and her New York Times before she got out of bed. And then she would need sufficient light and a proper makeup mirror, in front of which she would require a decent amount of time; she would be snappish if ever she was rushed. Her days in New York, before lunch, consisted only of cigarettes and coffee and The New York Times-and the patient, loving task of making herself up. She was an impatient woman, but never when applying her makeup. Lunch with a fellow gossip, then; or, these days, following her divorce, with her lawyer or a potential lover. In the afternoon, she'd have her hair done or she'd do a little shopping; at the very least, she'd buy a few new magazines or see a movie. She might meet someone for a drink, later. She possessed all the up-to-date information that often passes for intelligence among people who make a daily and extensive habit of The New York Times-and the available, softer gossip-and she had oodles of time to consume all this contemporary news. She had never worked. She took quite a lot of time for her evening bath, too, and then there was the evening makeup to apply; it irritated her to make any dinner plans that required her presence before eight o'clock-but it irritated her more to have no dinner plans. She didn't cook-not even eggs. She was too lazy to make real coffee; the instant stuff went well enough with her cigarettes and her newspaper. She would have been an early supporter of those sugar-free, diet soft drinks-because she was obsessed with losing weight (and opposed to exercise). She blamed her troublesome complexion on her ex-husband, who had been stressful to live with; and their divorce had cut her out of California-where she preferred to spend the winter months, where it was better for her skin. She swore her pores were actually larger in New York. But she maintained the Fifth Avenue apartment with a vengeance; and included in her alimony was the expense of her annual pilgrimage to Round Hill, Jamaica-always at a time in the winter when her complexion had become intolerable to her-and a summer rental in the Hamptons (because not even Fifth Avenue was any fun in July and August). A woman of her sophistication- and used to the standard of living she'd grown accustomed to, as Herb Lish's wife and the mother of his only child-simply needed the sun and the salt air. She would be a popular divorcee for quite a number of years; she would appear in no hurry to remarry-in fact, she'd turn down a few proposals. But, one year, she would either anticipate that her looks were going, or she would notice that her looks had gone; it would take her more and more time in front of the makeup mirror-simply to salvage what used to be there. Then she would change; she would become quite aggressive on the subject of her second marriage; she realized it was time. Pity whatever boyfriend was with her at this time; he would be blamed for leading her on-and worse, for never allowing her to develop a proper career. There was no honorable course left to him but to marry the woman he had made so dependent on him-whoever he was. She would say he was the reason she'd never stopped smoking, too; by not marrying her, he had made her too nervous to stop smoking. And her oily complexion, formerly the responsibility of her ex-husband, was now the present boyfriend's fault, too; if she was sallow, she was sallow because of him. ^ He was also the cause of her announced depression. Were he to leave her-were he to abandon her, to not marry her-he could at the very least assume the financial burden of maintaining her psychiatrist. Without his aggravation, after all, she would never have needed a psychiatrist. How-you may ask-do I, or did I, "know" so much about my classmate's unfortunate mother, Mitzy Lish? I told you that Gravesend Academy students were-many of them-very sophisticated; and none of them was more "sophisticated" than Larry Lish. Larry told everyone everything he knew about his mother; imagine that! Larry thought his mother was a joke. But in January of , Owen Meany and I were terrified of Mrs. Lish. She wore a fur coat that was responsible for the death of countless small mammals, she wore sunglasses that completely concealed her opinion of Owen and me-although we were sure, somehow, that Mrs. Lish thought we were rusticated to a degree that defied our eventual education; we were sure that Mrs. Lish would rather suffer the agonies of giving up smoking than suffer such boredom as an evening in our company.

"HELLO, MISSUS LISH," said Owen Meany. "IT'S NICE TO SEE YOU AGAIN."

"Hello!" I said. "How are you?"

She was the kind of woman who drank nothing but vodka-

tonics, because she cared about her breath; because of her smoking, she was extremely self-conscious about her breath. Nowadays, she'd be the kind of woman who'd carry one of those breath-freshening atomizers in her purse-gassing herself with the atomizer, all day long, just in case someone might be moved to spontaneously kiss her.

"Go on, tell him," Larry Lish said to his mother.

"My son says you doubt that the president fools around," Mrs. Lish said to Owen. When she said "fools around," she opened her fur-her perfume rushed out at us, and we breathed her in. "Well, let me tell you," said Mitzy Lish, "he fools around-plenty."

"WITH MARILYN MONROE?" Owen asked Mrs. Lish.

"With her-and with countless others," Mrs. Lish said; she wore a little too much lipstick-even for -and when she smiled at Owen Meany, we could see a smear of lipstick on one of her big, upper-front teeth.

"DOES JACKIE KNOW?" Owen asked Mrs. Lish.

"She must be used to it," Mrs. Lish said; she appeared to relish Owen's distress. "What do you think of that!" she asked Owen; Mitzy Lish was the kind of woman who bullied young men, too.

"I THINK IT'S WRONG," said Owen Meany.

"Is he for real?" Mrs. Lish asked her son. Remember that? Remember when people used to ask if you were "for real"?

"Isn't he a classic!" Larry Lish asked his mother.

"This is the editor-in-chief of your school newspaper?" Mrs. Lish asked her son; he was laughing.

"That's right," Larry Lish said; his mother really cracked him up.

"This is the valedictorian of your class!" Mitzy Lish asked Larry.

"Yes!" Larry said; he couldn't stop laughing. Owen was so serious about being the valedictorian of our class that he was already writing his commencement speech-and it was only January. In many schools, they don't even know who the class valedictorian is until the spring term; but Owen Meany's grade-point average was perfect-no other student was even close.

"Let me ask you something," Mrs. Lish said to Owen. "If Marilyn Monroe wanted to sleep with you, would you let her?'' I thought that Larry Lish was going to fall down-he was laughing so hard. Owen looked fairly calm. He offered Mrs. Lish a cigarette, but she preferred her own brand; he lit her cigarette for her, and then he lit one for himself. He appeared to be thinking over the question very carefully.

"Well? Come on," Mrs. Lish said seductively. "We're talking Marilyn Monroe-we're talking the most perfect piece of ass you can imagine \ Or don't you like Marilyn Monroe?" She took off her sunglasses; she had very pretty eyes, and she knew it. "Would you or wouldn't you?" she asked Owen Meany. She winked at him; and then, with the painted nail of her long index finger, she touched him on the tip of his nose.

"NOT IF I WERE THE PRESIDENT," Owen said. "AND CERTAINLY NOT IF I WERE MARRIED!"

Mrs. Lish laughed; it was something between a hyena and the sounds Hester made in her sleep when she'd been drinking.

"This is the/Htare?" Mitzy Lish asked. "This is the head of the class of the country's most prestigious fucking school- and this is what we can expect of our future leaders!"

No, Mrs. Lish-I can answer you now. This was not what we could expect of our future leaders. This was not where our future would lead us; our future would lead us elsewhere-and to leaders who bear little resemblance to Owen Meany. But, at the trine, I was not bold enough to answer her. Owen, however, was no one anyone could bully-Owen Meany accepted what he thought was his fate, but he would not tolerate being treated lightly.

"OF COURSE, I'M NOT THE PRESIDENT," Owen said shyly. "AND I'M NOT MARRIED, EITHER. I DON'T EVEN KNOW MARILYN MONROE, OF COURSE," he said. "AND SHE PROBABLY WOULDN'T EVER WANT TO SLEEP WITH ME. BUT-YOU KNOW WHAT?" he asked Mrs. Lish, who was-with her son-overcome with laughter. "IF YOU WANTED TO SLEEP WITH ME-I MEAN NOW, WHEN I'M NOT THE PRESIDENT, AND I'M NOT MARRIED-WHAT THE HELL," Owen said to Mitzy Lish, "I SUPPOSE I'D TRY IT."

Have you ever seen dogs choke on their food? Dogs inhale their food-they're quite dramatic chokers. I never saw anyone stop laughing as quickly as Mrs. Lish and her son-they stopped cold.

"What did you say to me?" Mrs. Lish asked Owen.

"WELL? COME ON," said Owen Meany. "WOULD YOU OR WOULDN'T YOU?" He didn't wait for an answer; he shrugged. We were standing in the dry, dusty stink of

cigarettes that was the commonplace air in the editorial offices of The Grave, and Owen simply walked over to the coat tree and removed his red-and-black-checkered hunter's cap and his jacket of the same well-worn material; then he walked out in the cold, which so ill-affected Mrs. Lish's troublesome complexion. Larry Lish was such a coward, he never said a word to Owen-nor did he jump on Owen's back and pound Owen's head into the nearest snowbank. Either Larry was a coward or he knew that his mother's "honor" was not worth such a robust defense; in my opinion, Mitzy Lish was not worth a defense of any kind. But our headmaster, Randy White, was a chivalrous man- he was a gallant of the old school, when it came to defending the weaker sex. Naturally, he was outraged to hear of Owen's insulting remarks to Mrs. Lish; naturally, he was grateful for the Lishes' support of the Capital Fund Drive, too. "Naturally," Randy White assured Mrs. Lish, he would "do something" about the indignity she had suffered. When Owen and I were summoned to the headmaster's office, we did not know everything that Mitzy Lish had said about the "incident"-that was how Randy White referred to it.

"I intend to get to the bottom of this disgraceful incident," the headmaster told Owen and me. "Did you or did you not proposition Missus Lish in the editorial offices of The Grave T' Randy White asked Owen.

"IT WAS A JOKE," said Owen Meany. "SHE WAS LAUGHING AT ME, AT THE TIME-SHE MADE IT CLEAR THAT SHE THOUGHT / WAS A JOKE," he said, "AND SO I SAID SOMETHING THAT I THOUGHT WAS APPROPRIATE."

"How could you ever think it was 'appropriate' to proposition a fellow student's mother!" Randy White asked him. "On school property!" the headmaster added. Owen and I found out, later, that the business about the proposition occurring "on school property" had especially incensed Mrs. Lish; she'd told the headmaster that this was surely "grounds for dismissal." It was Larry Lish who told us that; he didn't like us, but Larry was a trifle ashamed that his mother was so intent on having Owen Meany thrown out of school.

"How could you think it 'appropriate' to proposition a fellow student's mother!" Randy White repeated to Owen.

"I MEANT THAT MY REMARKS WERE 'APPROPRIATE' TO HER BEHAVIOR," Owen said.

"She was rude to him," I pointed out to the headmaster.

"SHE MADE FUN OF ME BEING THE CLASS VALEDICTORIAN," said Owen Meany.

"She laughed out loud at Owen," I said to Randy White. "She laughed in his face-she bullied him," I added.

"SHE WAS SEXY WITH ME!" Owen said. At the time, neither Owen nor I were capable of putting into words the correct description of the kind of sexual bully Mrs. Lish was; maybe even Randy White would have understood our animosity toward a woman who lorded her sexual sophistication over us so cruelly-over Owen, in particular. She had flirted with him, she had taunted him, she had humiliated him-or she had tried to. What right did she have to be insulted by his rudeness to her, in return? But I couldn't articulate this when I was nineteen and fidgeting in the headmaster's office.

"You asked another student's mother if she would sleep with you-in the presence of her own son!'' said Randy White.

"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT," said Owen Meany.

"Tell me the 'context,' " said Randy White. Owen looked stricken.

"MISSUS LISH REVEALED TO US SOME PARTICULARLY DAMNING AND UNPLEASANT GOSSIP," Owen said. "SHE SEEMED PLEASED AT HOW THE NATURE OF THE GOSSIP UPSET ME."

"That's true, sir," I said.

"What was the gossip?" asked Randy White. Owen was silent.

"Owen-in your own defense, for God's sake!" I said.

"SHUT UP!" he told me.

"Tell me what she said to you, Owen," the headmaster said.

"IT WAS VERY UGLY," said Owen Meany, who actually thought he was protecting the president of the United States! Owen Meany was protecting the reputation of his commander-in-chief!

"Tell him, Owen!" I said.

"IT IS CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION," Owen said.

"YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO BELIEVE ME-SHE WAS UGLY. SHE DESERVED A JOKE-AT HER OWN EXPENSE," Owen said.

"Missus Lish says that you crudely propositioned her in front of her son-I repeat, 'crudely,' " said Randy White. "She says you were insulting, you were lewd, you were obscene-and you were anti-Semitic," the headmaster said.

"IS MISSUS LISH JEW/SH?" Owen asked me. "I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW SHE WAS JEWISH!"

"She says you were anti-Semitic," the headmaster said.

"BECAUSE I PROPOSmONED HER?" Owen asked.

"Then you admit that you 'propositioned' her?" Randy White asked him. "Suppose she'd said 'Yes'?"

Owen Meany shrugged. "I DON'T KNOW," he said thoughtfully. "I SUPPOSE I WOULD HAVE-WOULDN'T YOUT' he asked me. I nodded. "I KNOW YOU WOULDN'T!" Owen said to the headmaster-"BECAUSE YOU'RE MARRIED," he added. "THAT WAS SORT OF THE POINT I WAS MAKING-WHEN SHE BEGAN TO MAKE FUN OF ME," he told Randy White. "SHE ASKED ME IF I'D 'DO IT' WITH MARILYN MONROE," Owen explained, "AND I SAID, 'NOT IF I WERE MARRIED,' AND SHE STARTED LAUGHING AT ME."

"Marilyn Monroe?" the headmaster said. "How did Marilyn Monroe get involved in this?"

But Owen would say no more. Later, he told me, "THINK OF THE SCANDAL! THINK OF SUCH A RUMOR LEAKING TO THE NEWSPAPERS!"

Did he think that the downfall of President Kennedy might come from an editorial in The Gravel

"Do you want to get kicked out of school for protecting the president?" I asked him.

"HE'S MORE IMPORTANT THAN I AM," said Owen Meany. Nowadays, I'm not sure that Owen was right about that; he was right about most things-but I'm inclined to think that Owen Meany was as worthy of protection as JFK. Look at what assholes are trying to protect the president these days! But Owen Meany could not be persuaded to protect himself; he told Dan Needham that the nature of Mrs. Lish's incitement constituted "A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY"; not even to save himself from Randy White's wrath would Owen Meany repeat what a slanderous rumor he had heard. In faculty meeting, the headmaster argued that this kind of disrespect to adults-to school parents!-could not be tolerated. Mr. Early argued that there was no school rule against propositioning mothers; Owen, Mr. Early argued, had not broken a rule. The headmaster attempted to have the matter turned over to the Executive Committee; but Dan Needham knew that Owen's chances of survival would be poor among that group of (largely) the headmaster's henchmen-at least, they comprised the majority in any vote, as had pointed out. It was not a matter for the Executive Committee, Dan argued; Owen had not committed an offense in any category that the school considered "grounds for dismissal."

Not so! said the headmaster. What about "reprehensible conduct with girls"? Several faculty members hastened to point out that Mitzy Lish was "no girl." The headmaster then read a telegram that had been sent to him from Mrs. Lish's ex-husband, Herb. The Hollywood producer said that he hoped the insult suffered by his ex-wife-and the embarrassment caused his son-would not go unpunished.

"So put Owen on disciplinary probation," Dan Needham said. "That's punishment; that's more than enough."

But Randy White said there was a more serious charge against Owen than the mere propositioning of someone's mother; did the faculty not consider anti-Semitism "serious"? Could a school of such a broadly based ethnic population tolerate this kind of "discrimination"? But Mrs. Lish had never substantiated the charge that Owen had been anti-Semitic. Even Larry Lish, when questioned, couldn't remember anything in Owen's remarks that could be construed as anti-Semitic; Larry, in fact, admitted that his mother had a habit of labeling everyone who treated her with less than complete reverence as an anti-Semite-as if, in Mrs. Lish's view, the only possible reason to dislike her was that she was Jewish. Owen, Dan Needham pointed out, hadn't even known that the Lishes were Jewish.

"How could he not knowT" Headmaster White cried. Dan suggested that the headmaster's remark was more anti-Semitic than any remark attributed to Owen Meany. And so he was spared; he was put on disciplinary pro-

bation-for the remainder of the winter term-with the warning, understood by all, that any offense of any kind would be considered "grounds for dismissal"; in such a case, he would be judged by the Executive Committee and nor - of his friends on the faculty could save him. The headmaster proposed-in addition to Owen's probation-that he be removed from his position as editor-in-chief of The Grave, or that should be silenced until the end of the winter term; or both. But this was not approved by the faculty. In truth, Mrs. Lish's charge of anti-Semitism had backfired with a number of the faculty, who were quite belligerently anti-Semitic themselves. As for Randy White: Dan and Owen and I suspected that the headmaster was about as anti-Semitic as anyone we knew. And so the incident rested with Owen Meany receiving the punishment of disciplinary probation for the duration of the winter term; aside from the jeopardy this put him in-in regard to any other trouble he might get into- disciplinary probation was no great imposition, especially for a day boy. Basically, he lost the senior privilege to go to Boston on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons; if he'd been a boarder, he would have lost the right to spend any weekend away from school, but since he was a day boy, he spent every weekend at home-or with me-anyway. Yet Owen was not grateful for the leniency shown to him by the school; he was outraged that he had been punished at all. His hostility, in turn, was not appreciated by the faculty- including many of his supporters. They wanted to be congratulated for their generosity, and for standing up to the headmaster; instead, Owen cut them dead on the quadrangle paths. He greeted no one; he wouldn't even look up. He wouldn't speak-not even in class!-unless spoken to; and when forced to speak, his responses were uncharacteristically brief. As for his duties as editor-in-chief of The Grave, he simply stopped contributing the column that had given his name and his fame.

"What's happened to The Voice, Owen?" Mr. Early asked him.

"THE VOICE HAS LEARNED TO KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT," Owen said.

"Owen," Dan Needham said, "don't piss off your friends."

"THE VOICE HAS BEEN CENSORED," said Owen Meany. "JUST TELL THE FACULTY AND THE HEADMASTER THAT THE VOICE IS BUSY-REVISING HIS VALEDICTORY! I GUESS NO ONE CAN THROW ME OUT OF SCHOOL FOR WHAT I SAY AT COMMENCEMENT*"

Thus did Owen Meany respond to his punishment, by threatening the headmaster and the faculty with The Voice- only momentarily silenced, we all knew; but full of rage, we all were sure. It was that numbskull from Zurich, Dr. Dolder, who proposed to the faculty that Owen Meany should be required to talk with him.

"Such hostility!" Dr. Dolder said. "He has a talent for speaking out-yes? And now he is withholding his talent from us, he is denying himself the pleasure of speaking his mind- why? Without expression, his hostility will only increase- no?'' Dr. Dolder said.' 'Better I should give him the opportunity to vent his hostility-on me!" the doctor said. "After all, we would not want a repeated incident with another older woman. Maybe this time, it's a faculty wife-yes?" he said. And so they told Owen Meany that he had to see the school psychiatrist.

" 'FATHER, FORGIVE THEM; FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO,' " he said. Toronto: July , - still waiting for my invitation to Georgian Bay; it can't come soon enough. The New York Times appears to have reduced the Iran-contra affair to the single issue of whether or not President Reagan "knew" that profits from the secret arms sales to Iran were being diverted to support the Nicaraguan contras. Jesus Christ! Isn't it enough to "know" that the president wanted and intended to continue his support of the contras after Congress told him what was enough! It makes me sick to hear the lectures delivered to Lt. Col. Oliver North. What are they lecturing him for? The colonel wants to support the contras- "for the love of God and for the love of country"; he's already testified that he'd do anything his commander-in-chief wanted him to do. And now we get to listen to the senators and the representatives who are running for office again; they tell the colonel all he doesn't know about the U.S. Constitution; they point out to him that patriotism is not necessarily defined as blind devotion to a president's particular agenda-and that to dispute a

presidential policy is not necessarily anti-American. They might add that God is not a proven right-winger! Why are they pontificating the obvious to Colonel North? Why don't they have the balls to say this to their blessed commander-in-chief? If Hester has been paying attention to any of this, I'll bet she's throwing up; I'll bet she's barring her brains out. She would remember, of course, those charmless bumper stickers from the Vietnam era-those cunning American flags and the red, white, and blue lettering of the name of our beloved nation. I'll bet Colonel North remembers them. America! said the bumper stickers. Love It or Leave It! That made a lot of sense, didn't it? Remember that? And now we have to hear a civics lecture-the country's elected officials are instructing a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps on the subject that love of country and love of God (and hatred of communism) can conceivably be represented, in a democracy, by differing points of view. The colonel shows no signs of being converted; why are these pillars of self-righteousness wasting their breath on him! I doubt that President Reagan could be converted to democracy, either. I know what my grandmother used to say, whenever she saw or read anything that was just a lot of bullshit. Owen picked up the phrase from her; he was quite lethal in its application, our senior year at Gravesend. Whenever anyone said anything that was a lot of bullshit to him, Owen Meany used to say,"YOU KNOW WHAT THAT IS? THAT'S MADE FOR TELEVISION-THAT'S WHAT THAT IS." And that's what Owen would have said about the Iran-contra hearings-concerning what President Reagan did or didn't "know."

"MADE FOR TELEVISION," he would have said. That's how he referred to his sessions with Dr. Dolder; the school made him see Dr. Dolder twice a week, and when I asked him to describe his dialogue with the Swiss idiot, Owen said, "MADE FOR TELEVISION." He wouldn't tell me much else about the sessions, but he liked to mock some of the questions Dr. Dolder had asked him by exaggerating the doctor's accent.

"ZO! YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO ZE OLDER VIMMEN-VY IS DAT?"

I wondered if he answered by saying he'd always been fond of my mother-maybe, he'd even been in love with her. That would have caused Dr. Dolder great excitement, I'm sure.

"ZO! ZE VOOMIN YOU KILT MIT ZE BASEBALL-SHE MADE YOU VANT TO PROP-O-SI-TION PEOPLE'S MUDDERS, YES?"

"Come on," I said to Owen. "He's not that stupid!"

"ZO! vrrcH FACULTY VIFE HAF YOU GOT YOUR EYES ON?"

"Come on!" I said. "What kind of stuff does he ask you, really!"

"ZO! YOU BELIEF IN GOT-DATS FERRY IN-TER-EST-INK!"

Owen would never tell me what really went on in those sessions. I knew Dr. Dolder was a moron; but I also knew that even a moron would have discovered some disturbing things about Owen Meany. For example, Dr. Dolder-dolt though he was-would have heard at least a little of the GOD'S INSTRUMENT theme; even Dr. Dolder would have uncovered Owen's perplexing and troubling anti-Catholicism. And Owen's particular brand of fatalism would have been challenging for a good psychiatrist; I'm sure Dr. Dolder was scared to death about it. And would Owen have gone so far as to tell Dr. Dolder about Scrooge's grave? Would Owen have suggested that he KNEW how much time he had left on our earth?

"What do you tell him?" I asked Owen.

"THETRUTH," said Owen Meany. "I ANSWER EVERY QUESTION HE ASKS TRUTHFULLY, AND WITHOUT HUMOR," he added.

"My God!" I said. "You could really get yourself in trouble!"

"VERY FUNNY," he said.

"But, Owen," I said. "You tell him everything you think about, and everything you believe! Not everything you believe, right?" I said.

"EVERYTHING," said Owen Meany. "EVERYTHING HE ASKS."

"Jesus Christ!" I said. "And what has he got to say? What's he told you?"

"HE TOLD ME TO TALK WITH PASTOR MERRILL- SO I HAVE TO SEE HIM TWICE A WEEK, TOO," Owen said. "AND WITH EACH OF THEM, I SIT THERE AND TALK ABOUT WHAT I TALKED ABOUT TO THE OTHER ONE. I GUESS THEY'RE FINDING OUT A LOT ABOUT EACH OTHER."

"I see," I said; but I didn't. Owen had taken all the Rev. Lewis Merrill's courses at the academy; he had consumed all the Religion and Scripture courses so voraciously that there weren't any left for him in his senior year, and Mr. Merrill had permitted him to pursue some independent study in the field. Owen was particularly interested in the miracle of the resurrection; he was interested in miracles in general, and life after death in particular, and he was writing an interminable term paper that related these subjects to that old theme from Isaiah :, which he loved. "Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil." Owen's opinion of Pastor Merrill had improved considerably from those earlier years when the issue of the minister's doubt had bothered Owen's dogmatic side; Mr. Merrill had to be aware- awkwardly so-of the role had played in securing his appointment as school minister. When they sat together in Pastor Merrill's vestry office, I couldn't imagine them-not either of them-as being quite at ease; yet there appeared to be much respect between them. Owen did not have a relaxing effect on anyone, and no one I knew was ever less relaxed than the Rev. Lewis Merrill; and so I imagined that Kurd's Church would be creaking excessively during their interviews-or whatever they called them. They would both be fidgeting away in the vestry office, Mr. Merrill opening and closing the old desk drawers, and sliding that old chair on the casters from one end of the desk to the other-while Owen Meany cracked his knuckles, crossed and uncrossed his little legs, and shrugged and sighed and reached out his hands to the Rev. Mr. Merrill's desk, if only to pick up a paperweight or a prayer book and put it down again.

"What do you talk about with Mister Merrill?" I asked him.

"I TALK ABOUT DOCTOR DOLDER WITH PASTOR MERRILL, AND I TALK ABOUT PASTOR MERRILL WITH DOCTOR DOLDER," Owen said.

"No, but I know you like Pastor Merrill-I mean, sort of. Don't you?" I asked him.

"WE TALK ABOUT LIFE AFTER DEATH," said Owen Meany.

"I see," I said; but I didn't. I didn't realize the degree to which Owen Meany never got tired of talking about that. Toronto: July ,-it is a scorcher in town today. I was getting my hair cut in my usual place, near the corner of Bathurst and St. Clair, and the girl-barber (something I'll never get used to!) asked me the usual: "How short?"

"As short as Oliver North's," I said.

"Who?" she said. O Canada! But I'm sure there are young girls cutting hair in the United States who don't know who Colonel North is, either; and in a few years, almost no one will remember him. How many people remember Melvin Laird? How many people remember Gen. Creighton Abrams or Gen. William Westmoreland-not to mention, which one replaced the other? And who replaced Gen. Maxwell Taylor? Who replaced Gen. Curtis LeMay? And whom did Ellsworth Bunker replace? Remember that? Of course you don't! There was a terrible din of construction going on outside the barbershop at the corner of Bathurst and St. Clair, but I was sure that my girl-barber had heard me.

"Oliver North," I repeated. "Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, United States Marine Corps," I said.

"I guess you want it really short," she said.

"Yes, please," I said; I've simply got to stop reading The New York Times] There's nothing in the news that's worth remembering. Why, then, do I have such a hard time forgetting it? No one had a memory like Owen Meany. By the end of the winter term of ', I'll bet he never once confused what he'd said to Dr. Dolder with what he'd said to the Rev. Lewis Merrill-but I'll bet they were confused! By the end of the winter term, I'll bet they thought that either he should have been thrown out of school or he should have been made the new headmaster. By the end of every winter term at Gravesend Academy, the New Hampshire weather had driven everyone half crazy. Who doesn't get tired of getting up in the dark? And in Owen's case, he had to get up earlier than most; because of his

scholarship job, as a faculty waiter, he had to arrive in the dining-hall kitchen at least one hour before breakfast-on those mornings he waited on tables. The waiters had to set the tables-and eat their own breakfasts, in the kitchen-before the other students and the faculty arrived; then they had to clear the tables between the official end of breakfast and the beginning of morning meeting-as the new headmaster had so successfully called what used to be our morning chapel. That Saturday morning in February, the tomato-red pickup was dead and he'd had to jump-start the Meany Granite Company trailer-truck and get it rolling down Maiden Hill before it would start-it was so cold. He did not like to have dining-hall duty, as it was called, on the weekend; and there was the added problem of him being a day boy and having to drive himself that extra distance to school. I guess he was cross when he got there; and there was another car parked in the circular driveway by the Main Academy Building, where he always parked. The trailer-truck was so big that the presence of only one other car in the circular driveway would force him to park the truck out on Front Street-and in the winter months, there was a ban regarding parking on Front Street, a snow-removal restriction that the town imposed, and Owen was hopping mad about that, too. The car that kept Owen from parking his truck in the circular driveway adjacent to the Main Academy Building was Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen Beetle. In keeping with the lovable and exasperating tidiness of his countrymen, Dr. Dolder was exact and predictable about his little VW. His bachelor apartment was in Quincy Hall-a dormitory on the far side of the Gravesend campus; it seemed to be ' 'the far side'' from everywhere, but it was as far from the Main Academy Building as you could get and still be on the Gravesend campus. Dr. Dolder parked his VW by the Main Academy Building only when he'd been drinking. He was a frequent dinner guest of Randy and Sam White's; he parked by the Main Academy Building when he ate with the Whites-and when he drank too much, he left his car there and walked home. The campus was not so large that he couldn't (or shouldn't) have walked both ways-to dinner and back-but Dr. Dolder was one of those Europeans who had fallen in love with a most American peculiarity: how Americans will walk nowhere if they can drive there. In Zurich, I'm sure, Dr. Dolder walked everywhere; but he drove his little VW across the Gravesend campus, as if he were touring the New England states. Whenever Dr. Bolder's VW was parked in the circular driveway by the Main Academy Building, everyone knew that the doctor was simply exercising his especially Swiss prudence; he was not a drunk, and the few small roads he might have traveled on to drive himself from dinner at the Whites' to Quincy Hall would not have given him much opportunity to maim many of the sober and innocent residents of Gravesend. There's a good chance he would never have encountered anyone; but Dr. Dolder loved his Beetle, and he was a cautious man. Once-in the fresh snow upon his Volkswagen's windshield-a first-year German student had written with his ringer: Herr Doktor Dolder hat zu viel betrunken! I could usually tell-when I saw Owen, either at breakfast or at morning meeting-if Dr. Dolder had had too much to drink the night before; if it was winter, and if Owen was surly-looking, I knew he'd faced an early-morning parking problem. I knew when the pickup had failed to start-and there was no room for him to park the trailer-truck-just by looking at him.

"What's up?" I would ask him.

"THAT TIGHT-ASS TIPSY SWISS DINK!'' Owen Meany would say.

"I see," I would say. And this particular February morning, I can imagine how the Swiss psychiatrist's Beetle would have affected him. I guess Owen must have been sitting in the frigid cab of the truck-you could drive that big hauler for an hour before you'd even notice that the heater was on-and I'll bet he was smoking, and probably talking to himself, too, when he looked into the path of his headlights and saw about three quarters of the basketball team walking his way. In the cold air, their breathing must have made him think that they were smoking, too-although he knew all of them, and knew they didn't smoke; he entertained them at least two or three times a week by his devotion to practicing the shot. He told me later that there were about eight or ten basketball players-not quite the whole team. All of them lived in the same dorm-it was one of the traditional jock dorms on the campus; and because the basketball team was playing at some faraway school, they were on their way to the dining hall for an early breakfast with the waiters who had dining-hall duty. They

were big, happy guys with goofy strides, and they didn't mind being out of bed before it was light-they were going to miss their Saturday morning classes, and they saw the whole day as an adventure. Owen Meany was not quite in such a cheerful mood; he rolled down the window of the big truck's frosty cab and called them over. They were friendly, and-as always-extremely glad to see him, and they jumped onto the flatbed of the trailer and roughhoused with each other, pushing each other off the flatbed, and so forth.

"YOU GUYS LOOK VERY STRONG TODAY," said Owen Meany, and they hooted in agreement. In the path of the truck's headlights, the innocent shape of Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen Beetle stood encased in ice and dusted very lightly with last night's snow. "I'LL BET YOU GUYS AREN'T STRONG ENOUGH TO PICK UP THAT VOLKSWAGEN," said Owen Meany. But, of course, they were strong enough; they were not only strong enough to lift Dr. Dolder's Beetle-they were strong enough to carry it out of town. The captain of the basketball team was an agreeable giant; when Owen practiced the shot with this guy, the captain lifted Owen with one hand.

"No problem," the captain said to Owen. "Where do you want it?"

Owen swore to me that it wasn't until that moment that he got THE IDEA. It's clear to me that Owen never overcame his irritation with Randy White for moving morning chapel from Kurd's Church to the Main Academy Building and calling it morning meeting, that he still thought of that as the headmaster's GRANDSTANDING. The sets for Dan's winter-term play had already been dismantled; the stage of The Great Hall, as it was called, was bare. And that broad, sweeping, marble stairway that led up to The Great Hall's triumphant double doors ... all of that, Owen was sure, was big enough to permit the easy entrance of Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen. And wouldn't that be something: to have that perky little automobile parked on center stage-a kind of cheerful, harmless message to greet the headmaster and the entire student body; a little something to make them smile, as the dog days of March bore down upon us and the long-awaited break for spring vacation could not come soon enough to save us all.

"CARRY IT INTO THE MAIN ACADEMY BUILDING," Owen Meany told the captain of the basketball team. "TAKE IT UPSTAIRS TO THE GREAT HALL AND CARRY IT UP ON THE STAGE," said The Voice. "PUT IT RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STAGE, FACING FORWARD-RIGHT NEXT TO THE HEADMASTER'S PODIUM. BUT BE CAREFUL YOU DON'T SCRATCH IT-AND FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T DROP IT! DON'T PUT A MARK ON ANYTHING," he cautioned the basketball players. "DON'T DO THE SLIGHTEST DAMAGE-NOT TO THE CAR AND NOT TO THE STAIRS, NOT TO THE DOORS OF THE GREAT HALL, NOT TO THE STAGE," he said. "MAKE IT LOOK LIKE IT FLEW UP THERE," he told them. "MAKE FT LOOK LIKE AN ANGEL DROVE IT ONSTAGE!" said Owen Meany. When the basketball players carried off Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen, Owen thought very carefully about using the available parking space; he decided it was wiser to drive all the way over to Waterhouse Hall and park next to Dan's car, instead. Not even Dan saw him park the truck there; and if anyone had seen him running across the campus, as it was growing light, that would not have seemed strange-he was just a faculty waiter with dining-hall duty, hurrying so he wouldn't be late. He ate his breakfast in the dining-hall kitchen with the other waiters and with an extraordinarily hungry and jolly bunch of basketball players. Owen was setting the head faculty table when the captain of the basketball team said good-bye to him.

"There wasn't the slightest damage-not to anything," the captain assured him.

"HAVE A GOOD GAME!" said Owen Meany. It was one of the janitors in the Main Academy Building who discovered the Beetle onstage-when he was raising the blinds on the high windows that welcomed so much morning light into The Great Hall. Naturally, the janitor called the headmaster. From the kitchen window of his obtrusive house, directly across from the Main Academy Building, Headmaster White could see the small rectangle of bare ground where Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen had spent the night. According to Dan Needham, the headmaster called him while he was getting out of the shower; most of the faculty made breakfast for themselves at home, or they skipped breakfast rather than eat in the school dining hall. The

headmaster told Dan that he was rounding up all able-bodied faculty for the purpose of removing Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen from the stage of The Great Hall-before morning meeting. The students, the headmaster told Dan, were not going to have "the last laugh." Dan said he didn't feel particularly able-bodied himself, but he'd certainly try to help out. When he hung up the phone, he was laughing to himself-until he looked out the window of Waterhouse Hall and saw the Meany Granite Company trailer-truck parked next to his own car. Dan suddenly thought that THE IDEA of putting Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen on the stage of The Great Hall had Owen Meany's name written all over it. That was exactly what the headmaster said, when he and about a dozen, not-very-able-bodied faculty members, along with a few hefty faculty wives, were struggling with Dr. Dolder's Beetle.

"This has Owen Meany's name written all over it!" the headmaster said.

"I don't think Owen could lift a Volkswagen," Dan Needham ventured cautiously.

"I mean, the ideal" the headmaster said. As Dan describes it, the faculty were ill-trained for lifting anything; even the athletic types were neither as strong nor as flexible as young basketball players-and they should have considered something basic to their task: it is much easier to carry something heavy and awkward upstairs than it is to lug it down. Mr. Tubulari, the track-and-field coach, was overzealous in his descent of the stairs from the stage; he fell off and landed on the hard, wooden bench in the front row of assembled seats-a hymnal fortunately cushioned the blow to his head, or he might have been knocked senseless. Dan Needham described Mr. Tubulari as "already senseless, before his fall," but the track-and-field coach severely sprained his ankle in the mishap and had to be carried to the Hubbard Infirmary. That left even fewer less-than-able-bodied faculty-and some beefy wives-to deal with the unfortunate wreck of Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen, which now stood on its rear end, which is a Beetle's heavy end, where its engine is. The little car, standing so oddly upright, appeared to be saluting or applauding the weary faculty who had so ungracefully dropped it offstage.

"It's a good thing Dr. Dolder isn't here," Dan observed. Because the headmaster was so riled up, no one wished to point out the obvious: that they would have been better off to let the students have "the last laugh"-then the faculty could have ordered a strong, healthy bunch of students to carry the car safely offstage. If the students wrecked the car in the course of its removal from the Main Academy Building, then the students would have been responsible. As it was, things went from bad to worse, as they often will when amateurs are involved in an activity that they perform in bad temper-and in a hurry. The students would be arriving for morning meeting in another ten or fifteen minutes; a smashed Volkswagen sitting on its rear end in the front of The Great Hall might very well produce a louder and longer laugh than a natty, well-cared-for car facing them, undamaged, onstage. But there was brief discussion, if any, of this; the headmaster, bright-red in the face with the strain of lifting the solid little German marvel of the highways, urged the faculty to put their muscles into the chore and spare him their comments. But there had been ice, and a little snow, on the VW; this was melted now. The car was wet and slippery; puddles of water were underfoot. One of the faculty wives-one especially prolific with progeny, and one whose maternal girth was more substantial than well coordinated-slipped under the Volkswagen as it was being returned to its wheels; although she was not hurt, she was wedged quite securely under the stubborn automobile. Volkswagens were pioneers in sealing the bottoms of their cars, and the poor faculty wife discovered that there was no gap beneath die car that would allow her to wriggle free. This presented-with less than ten minutes before morning meeting-a new humiliation for the headmaster: Dr. Dolder's damaged Volkswagen, leaking its engine and transmission oil upon the prostrate body of a trapped faculty wife; she was not an especially popular faculty wife among the students, either.

"Jesus Fucking Christ!" said Randy White. Some of the "early nerds" were already arriving. "Early nerds" were students who were so eager for the school day to begin that they got to morning meeting long before the time they were required to be there. I don't know what they are called today; but I'm sure that such students are never called anything nice.

Some of these "early nerds" were quite startled to be shouted at by the headmaster, telling them to "come back at the proper time!" Meanwhile, in tilting the VW to its side- enough to allow the safe deliverance of the rotund faculty wife-the inexperienced car handlers tilted the Beetle too far; it fell flat on the driver's side (there went that window and that sideview mirror; the debris, together with the taillight glass from the VW's inexpert fall from the stage, was hastily swept under the front-row wooden bench where the injured Mr. Tubulari had fallen). Someone suggested getting Dr. Dolder; if the doctor unlocked the car, the stalwart vehicle could be rolled, if not driven, to the head of the broad and sweeping marble stairway. Perhaps it would be easier to navigate the staircase with someone inside, behind the wheel?

"Nobody's calling Dolder!" the headmaster cried. Someone pointed out that-since the window was broken-it was, in any case, an unnecessary step. Also, someone else pointed out, the Volkswagen could not be driven, or rolled, on its side; better to solve that problem. But according to Dan, the untrained faculty were unaware of their own strength; in attempting to right the car upon its wheels, they heaved too hard and tossed it from the driver's side to the passenger side-flattening the front-row wooden bench (and there went the passenger-side window, and the other sideview mirror).

"Perhaps we should cancel morning meeting?" Dan Need-ham cautiously suggested. But the headmaster-to everyone's astonishment-actually righted the Volkswagen, upon its wheels, by himselfl I guess his adrenal glands were pumping! Randy White then seized his lower back with both hands and dropped, cursing, to his knees.

"Don't touch me!" the headmaster cried. "I'm fine!" he said, grimacing-and coming unsteadily to his feet. He sharply kicked the rear fender of Dr. Dolder's car. Then he reached through the hole where the driver's-side window had been and unlocked the door. He sat behind the wheel-with apparent jolts of extreme discomfort assailing him from the region of his lower back-and commanded the faculty to push him.

"Where?" Dan Needham asked the headmaster.

"Down the Jesus Fucking Christly stairs!" Headmaster White cried. And so they pushed him; there was little point in trying to reason with him,~Dan Needham later explained. The bell for morning meeting was already ringing when Randy White began his bumpy descent of the broad and sweeping marble stairway; several students-normal students, in addition to the "early nerds"-were milling around in the foyer of the Main Academy Building, at the foot of the staircase. Who can really piece together all the details of such a case-I mean, who can ever get straight what happened exactly! It was an emotional moment for the headmaster. And there is no overestimating the pain in his lower back; he had lifted the car all by himself-whether his back muscles went into spasms while he was attempting to steer the VW downstairs, or whether he suffered the spasms after his spectacular accident . . . well, this is academic, isn't it? Suffice it to say that the students in the foyer fled from the wildly approaching little vehicle. No doubt, the melted snow and ice were on the Beetle's tires, too-and marble, as everyone knows, is slippery. This way and that way, the dynamic little car hopped down the staircase; great slabs of marble appeared to leap off the polished handrails of the stairway-the result of the Volkswagen's gouging out hunks of marble as it skidded from side to side. There's an old New Hampshire phrase that is meant to express extreme fragility-and damage: "Like a robin's egg rollin' down the spout of a rain gutter!"

Thus did the headmaster descend the marble staircase from The Great Hall to the foyer of the Main Academy Building- except that he didn't quite arrive at his destination. The car nipped and landed on its roof, and jammed itself sideways- and upside down-in the middle of the stairway. The doors could not be opened-nor could the headmaster be removed from the wreckage; such spasms assailed his lower back that he could not contort himself into the necessary posture to make an exit from the car through the space where the windshield had been. Randy White, sitting upside down and holding fast to the steering wheel, cried out that there was a "conspiracy of students and faculty" who were-clearly- "against" him. He said numerous, unprintable things about Dr. Dolder's "fussy-fucking drinking habits," about all German-manufactured cars, about what "wimps and pussys" were masquerading as "able-bodied" among the faculty-and their wives!-and he shouted and screamed that his back was "killing" him, until his wife, Sam, could be brought to the scene, where she knelt on the chipped marble stairs and gave

her upside-down husband what comfort she could. Professionals were summoned to extricate him from the destroyed Volkswagen; later-long after morning meeting was over-they finally rescued the headmaster by removing the driver's-side door of Dr. Dolder's poor car with a torch. The headmaster was confined to the Hubbard Infirmary for the remainder of the day; the nurses, and the school doctor, wanted to keep him-for observation-overnight, but the headmaster threatened to fire all of them if he was not released. Over and over again, Randy White was heard to shout or cry out or mutter to his wife: "This has Owen Meany's name written all over it!"

It was an interesting morning meeting, that morning. We were more than twice as long being seated, because only one staircase ascending to The Great Hall was available for our passage-and then there was the problem of the front-row bench being smashed; the boys who regularly sat there had to' find places for themselves on the floor, or onstage. There were crushed beads of glass, and chipped paint, and puddles of engine and transmission oil everywhere-and except for the opening and closing hymn, which drowned out the cries of the trapped headmaster, we were forced to listen to the ongoing drama on the stairway. I'm afraid this distracted us from the Rev. Mr. MerriU's prayer, and from Mr. Early's annual pep talk to the seniors. We should not allow our anxieties about our pending college admission (or our rejection) to keep us from having a good spring holiday, Mr. Early advised us.

"Goddamn Jesus Fucking Christ-keep that blowtorch away from my/ace!" we all heard the headmaster cry. And at the end of morning meeting, the headmaster's wife, Sam, shouted at those students who attempted to descend the blocked staircase by climbing over the ruined Volkswagen-in which the headmaster was still imprisoned.

"Where are your manners!" Mrs. White shouted. It was after morning meeting before I had a chance to speak to Owen Meany.

"I don't suppose you had anything to do with all of that?" I asked him.

"FAITH AND PRAYER," he said. "FAITH AND PRAYER-THEY WORK, THEY REALLY DO."

Toronto: July , -Katherine invited me to her island; no more stupid newspapers; I'm going to Georgian Bay! Another stinking-hot day. Meanwhile-on the front page of The Globe and Mail (it must be a slow day)-there's a story about Sweden's Supreme Court making "legal history"; the Supreme Court is hearing an appeal in a custody case involving a dead cat. What a world! MADE FOR TELEVISION! I haven't been to church in more than a month; too many newspapers. Newspapers are a bad habit, the reading equivalent of junk food. What happens to me is that I seize upon an issue in the news-the issue is the moral/philosophical, political/intellectual equivalent of a cheeseburger with everything on it; but for the duration of my interest in it, all my other interests are consumed by it, and whatever appetites and capacities I may have had for detachment and reflection are suddenly subordinate to this cheeseburger in my life! I offer this as self-criticism; but what it means to be "political" is that you welcome these obsessions with cheeseburgers-at great cost to the rest of your life. I remember the independent study that Owen Meany was conducting with the Rev. Lewis Merrill in the winter term of . I wonder if those cheeseburgers in the Reagan administration are familiar with Isaiah :. As would say: "WOE UNTO THEM THAT CALL EVIL GOOD AND GOOD EVIL."

After me, Pastor Merrill was the first to ask Owen if he'd had anything to do with the "accident" to Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen; the unfortunate little car would spend our entire spring vacation in the body shop.

"DO I UNDERSTAND CORRECTLY THAT THE SUBJECT OF OUR CONVERSATION IS CONFIDENTIAL?" Owen asked Pastor Merrill.' 'YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN-LIKE YOU'RE THE PRIEST AND I'M THE CONFESSOR; AND, SHORT OF MURDER, YOU WON'T REPEAT WHAT I TELL YOU?" Owen Meany asked him.

"You understand correctly, Owen," the Rev. Mr. Merrill said.

"IT WAS MY IDEA!" Owen said. "BUT I DIDN'T LIFT A FINGER, I DIDN'T EVEN SET FOOT IN THE BUILDING-NOT EVEN TO WATCH THEM DO IT!"

"Who did it?" Mr. Merrill asked.

"MOST OF THE BASKETBALL TEAM," said Owen Meany. "THEY JUST HAPPENED ALONG."

"It was completely spur-of-the-moment?" asked Mr. Merrill.

"OUT OF THE BLUE-IT HAPPENED IN A FLASH. YOU KNOW, LIKE THE BURNING BUSH," Owen said.

"Well, not quite like that, I think," said the Rev. Mr. Merrill, who assured Owen that he only wanted to know the particulars so that he could make every effort to steer the headmaster away from Owen, who was Randy White's prime suspect. "It helps," said Pastor Merrill, "if I can tell the headmaster that I know, for a fact, that you didn't touch Doctor Dolder's car, or set foot in the building-as you say."

"DON'T RAT ON THE BASKETBALL TEAM, EITHER," Owen said.

"Of course not!'' said Mr. Merrill, who added that he didn't think Owen should be as candid with Dr. Dolder-should the doctor inquire if Owen knew anything about the "accident." As much as it was understood that the subject of conversation between a psychiatrist and his patient was also "confidential," Owen should understand the degree to which the fastidious Swiss gentleman had cared for his car.

"I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN," said Owen Meany. Dan Needham, who said to Owen that he didn't want to hear a word about what Owen did or didn't know about Dr. Dolder's car, told us that the headmaster was screaming to the faculty about "disrespect for personal property" and "vandalism"; both categories of crimes fell under the rubric of "punishable by dismissal."

"IT WAS THE HEADMASTER AND THE FACULTY WHO TRASHED THE VOLKSWAGEN," Owen pointed out. "THERE WASN'T ANYTHING THE MATTER WITH THAT CAR UNTIL THE HEADMASTER AND THOSE OAFS GOT THEIR HANDS ON IT."

"As one of 'those oafs,' I don't want to know how you know that, Owen," Dan told him. "I want you to be very careful what you say-to anybody!"

There were only a few days left before the end of the winter term, which would also mark the end of Owen Meany's "disciplinary probation." Once the spring term started, Owen could afford a few, small lapses in his adherence to school rules; he wasn't much of a rule-breaker, anyway. Dr. Dolder, naturally, saw what had happened to his car as a crowning example of the "hostility" he often felt from the students. Dr. Dolder was extremely sensitive to both real and imagined hostility because not a single student at Gravesend Academy was known to seek the psychiatrist's advice willingly; Dr. Dolder's only patients were either required (by the school) or forced (by their parents) to see him. In their first session together following the destruction of his VW, Dr. Dolder began with Owen by saying to him, "I know you hate me-yes? But why do you hate me?"

"I HATE HAVING TO TALK WITH YOU," Owen admitted, "BUT I DON'T HATE YOU-NOBODY HATES YOU, DOCTOR DOLDER!"

"And what did he say when you said that!" I asked Owen Meany.

"HE WAS QUIET FOR A LONG TIME-I THINK HE WAS CRYING," Owen said.

"Jesus!" I said.

"I THINK THAT THE ACADEMY IS AT A LOW POINT IN ITS HISTORY," Owen observed. That was so typical of him; that in the midst of a precarious situation, he would suggest-as a subject for criticism-something far removed from himself! But there was no hard evidence against him; not even the zeal of the headmaster could put the blame for the demolished Beetle on Owen Meany. Then, as soon as that scare was behind him, there was a worse problem. Larry Lish was "busted" while trying to buy beer at a local grocery store; the manager of the store had confiscated Lish's fake identification-the phony draft card that falsified his age-and called the police. Lish admitted that the draft card had been created from a blank card in the editorial offices of The Grave-his illegal identification had been invented on the photocopier. According to Lish, "countless" Gravesend Academy students had acquired fake draft cards in this fashion.

"And whose idea was that?" the headmaster asked him.

"Not mine," said Larry Lish. "I bought my card-like everyone else."

I can only imagine that the headmaster was trembling with excitement; this interrogation took place in the Police Depart-

ment offices of Gravesend's own chief of police-our old "murder weapon" and "instrument of death" man, Chief Ben Pike! Chief Pike had already informed Larry Lish that falsifying a draft card carried "criminal charges."

"Who was selling and making these fake draft cards, Larry?" Randy White asked. Larry Lish would make his mother proud of him-I have no doubt about that.

"Owen Meany," said Larry Lish. And so the spring vacation of did not come quite soon enough. The headmaster made a deal with Police Chief Pike: no "criminal charges" would be brought against anyone at the academy if the headmaster could turn over to Chief Pike all the fake draft cards at the school. That was pretty easy. The headmaster told every boy at morning meeting to leave his wallet on the stage before he left The Great Hall; boys without their wallets would return immediately to their dormitory rooms and hand them over to an attendant faculty member. Every boy's wallet would be returned to him in his post-office box. There were no morning classes; the faculty was too busy looking through each boy's wallet and removing his fake draft card. In the emergency faculty meeting that Randy White called, Dan Needham said: "What you're doing isn't even legall Every parent of every boy at this school should sue you!"

But the headmaster argued that he was sparing the school the disgrace of having "criminal charges" brought against Graves-end students. The academy's reputation as a good school would not suffer by this action of confiscation as much as that reputation would suffer from "criminal charges." And as for the criminal who had actually manufactured and sold these false identification cards-' 'for a profit!''-naturally, the headmaster said, that student's fate would be decided by the Executive Committee. And so they crucified him-it happened that quickly. It didn't matter that he told them he had given up his illegal enterprise; it didn't matter to them that he said he had been inspired to correct his behavior by JFK's inaugural speech-or that he knew the fake draft cards were being used to illegally purchase alcohol, and that he didn't approve of drinking; it didn't matter to them that he didn't even drink! Larry Lish, and everyone in possession of a fake draft card, was put on disciplinary probation-for the duration of the spring term. But the Executive Committee crucified Owen Meany-they axed him; they gave him the boot; they threw him out. Dan tried to block Owen's dismissal by calling for a special vote among the faculty; but the headmaster said that the Executive Committee decision was final-"vote or no vote." Mr. Early telephoned each member of the Board of Trustees; but there were only two days remaining in the winter term-the trustees could not possibly be assembled before the spring vacation, and they would not overrule an Executive Committee decision without a proper meeting. The decision to throw Owen Meany out of school was so unpopular that the former headmaster, old Archibald Thorndike, emerged from his retirement to express his disapproval; old Archie told one of the students who wrote for The Grave-and a reporter from the town paper, The Gravesend News-Letter-that "Owen Meany is one of the best citizens the academy has ever produced; I expect great things from that little fella," the former headmaster said. Old Thorny also disapproved of what he called' 'the Gestapo methods of seizing the students' billfolds," and he questioned Randy White's tactics on the grounds that they "did little to teach respect for personal property."

"That old fart," Dan Needham said. "I know he means well, but no one listened to him when he was headmaster; no one's going to listen to him now." In Dan's opinion, it was self-serving to credit the academy with "producing" students; least of all, Dan said, could the academy claim to have "produced" Owen Meany. And regarding the merits of teaching "respect for personal property," that was an old-fashioned idea; and the word "billfolds," in Dan's opinion, was outdated-although Dan agreed with old Archibald Thorndike that Randy White's tactics were pure "Gestapo."

All this talk did nothing for Owen. The Rev. Lewis Merrill called Dan and me and asked us if we knew where Owen was-Pastor Merrill had been trying to reach him. But whenever anyone called the Meanys' house, either the line was busy-probably the receiver was off the hook- or else Mr. Meany answered the phone and said that he thought Owen was "in Durham." That meant he was with Hester; but when I called her, she wouldn't admit he was there.

"Have you got some good news for him?" she asked me. "Is that rucking creep school going to let him graduate?"

"No," I said. "I don't have any good news."

"Then just leave him alone," she suggested. Later, I heard Dan on the telephone, talking to the headmaster.

"You're the worst thing that ever happened to this school," Dan told Randy White.' 'If you survive this disaster, / won't be staying here-and I won't leave alone. You've permitted yourself a fatal and childish indulgence, you've done something one of the boys might do, you've engaged-in a kind of combat with a student-you've been competing with one of the kids. You're such a kid yourself, you let Owen Meany get to you. Because a kid took a dislike to you, you decided to pay him back-that's just the way a kid thinks! You're not grown-up enough to run a school.

"And this was a scholarship boy!" Dan Needham yelled in the telephone. "This is a boy who's going to go to college on a scholarship, too-or else he won't go. If Owen Meany doesn't get the best deal possible, from the best college around-you're responsible for that, too!"

Then I think the headmaster hung up on him; at least, it appeared to me that Dan Needham had much more to say, but he suddenly stopped talking and, slowly, he returned the receiver to its cradle. "Shit," he said. Later that night, my grandmother called Dan and me to say that she had heard from Owen.

"MISSUS WHEELWRIGHT?" Owen had said to her, over the phone.

"Where are you, Owen?" she asked him.

"IT DOESN'T MATTER," he told her. "I JUST WANTED TO SAY I WAS SORRY THAT I LET YOU DOWN. I DON'T WANT YOU TO THINK I'M NOT GRATEFUL FOR THE OPPORTUNITY YOU GAVE ME- TO GO TO A GOOD SCHOOL."

"It doesn't sound like such a good school to me-not anymore, Owen," my grandmother told him. "And you didn't let me down."

"I PROMISE TO MAKE YOU PROUD OF ME," Owen told her.

"I am proud of you, Owen!" she told him.

"I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU PROUDER!" Owen said; then-almost as an afterthought-he said, "PLEASE TELL DAN AND JOHN TO BE SURE TO GO TO CHAPEL IN THE MORNING."

That was just like him, to call it "chapel" after everyone else had been converted to calling it morning meeting.

"Whatever he's going to do, we should try to stop him," Dan told me. "He shouldn't do anything that might make it worse-he's got to concentrate on getting into college and getting a scholarship. I'm sure that Gravesend High School will give him a diploma-but he shouldn' t do anything crazy.'' Naturally, we still couldn't locate him. Mr. Meany said he was "in Durham"; Hester said she didn't know where he was-she thought he was doing some job for his father because he had been driving the big truck, not the pickup, and he was carrying a lot of equipment on the flatbed.

"What sort of equipment?" I asked her.

"How would I know?" she said. "It was just a lot of heavy-looking stuff."

"Jesus Christ!" said Dan. "He's probably going to dynamite the headmaster's house!"

We drove all around the town and the campus, but there was no sign of him or the big truck. We drove in and out of town a couple of times-and up Maiden Hill, to the quarries, just to see if the hauler was safely back at home; it wasn't. We drove around all night.

"Think!" Dan instructed me. "What will he do?"

"I don't know," I said. We were coming back into town, passing the gas station next to St. Michael's School. The predawn light had a flattering effect on the shabby, parochial playground; the early light bathed the ruts in the ruptured macadam and made the surface of the playground appear as smooth as the surface of a lake unruffled by any wind. The house where the nuns lived was completely dark, and then the sun rose-a pink sliver of light lay flat upon the playground; and the newly whitewashed stone archway that sheltered the statue of the sainted Mary Magdalene reflected the pink light brightly back to me. The only problem was, the holy goalie was not in her goal.

"Stop the car," I said to Dan. He stopped; he turned around. We drove into the parking lot behind St. Michael's, and Dan inched the car out onto the ratted surface of the playground; he drove right up to the empty stone archway.

Owen had done a very neat job. At the time, I wasn't sure of the equipment he would have used-maybe those funny little chisels and spreaders, the things he called wedges and feathers; but the tap-tap-tap of metal on stone would have awakened the ever-vigilant nuns. Maybe he used one of those special granite saws; the blade is diamond-studded; I'm sure it would have done a faultless job of taking Mary Magdalene clean off her feet-actually, he'd taken her feet clean off her pedestal. It's even possible that he used a touch of dynamite- artfully placed, of course. I wouldn't put it past him to have devised a way to blast the sainted Mary Magdalene off her pedestal-I'm sure he could have muffled the explosion so skillfully that the nuns would have slept right through it. Later, when I asked him how he did it, he would give me his usual answer.

"FAITH AND PRAYER. FAITH AND PRAYER-THEY WORK, THEY REALLY DO."

"That statue's got to weigh three or four hundred pounds!" Dan Needham said. Surely the heavy equipment that Hester had seen would have included some kind of hydraulic hoist or crane, although that wouldn't have helped him get Mary Magdalene up the long staircase in the Main Academy Building-or up on the stage of The Great Hall. He would have had to use a hand dolly for that; and it wouldn't have been easy.

"I'VE MOVED HEAVIER GRAVESTONES," he would say, later; but I don't imagine he was in the habit of moving gravestones upstairs. When Dan and I got to the Main Academy Building and climbed to The Great Hall, the janitor was already sitting on one of the front-row benches, just staring up at the saintly figure; it was as if the janitor thought that Mary Magdalene would speak to him, if he would be patient enough-even though Dan and I immediately noticed that Mary was not her usual self.

"It's him who did it-that little fella they threw out, don't you suppose?" the janitor asked Dan, who was speechless. We sat beside the janitor on the front-row bench in the early light. As always, with Owen Meany, there was the necessary consideration of the symbols involved. He had removed Mary Magdalene's arms, above the elbows, so that her gesture of beseeching the assembled audience would seem all the more an act of supplication-and all the more helpless. Dan and I both knew that Owen suffered an obsession with armlessness-this was Watahantowet's familiar totem, this was what Owen had done to my armadillo. My mother's dressmaker's dummy was armless, too. But neither Dan nor I was prepared for Mary Magdalene being headless-for her head was cleanly sawed or chiseled or blasted off. Because my mother's dummy was also headless, I thought that Mary Magdalene bore her a stony three- or four-hundred-pound resemblance; my mother had the better figure, but Mary Magdalene was taller. She was also taller than the headmaster, even without her head; compared to Randy White, the decapitated Mary Magdalene was a little bigger than life-sized-her shoulders and the stump of her neck stood taller " above the podium onstage than the headmaster would. And Owen had placed the holy goalie on no pedestal. He had bolted her to the stage floor. And he had strapped her with those same steel bands the quarrymen used to hold the granite slabs on the flatbed; he had bound her to the podium and fastened her to the floor, making quite certain that she would not be as easily removed from the stage as Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen.

"I suppose," Dan said to the janitor, "that those metal bands are pretty securely attached."

"Yup!" the janitor said.

"I suppose those bolts go right through the podium, and right through the stage," Dan said, "and I'll bet he put those nuts on pretty tight."

"Nope!" the janitor said. "He welded everything together."

"That's pretty tight," said Dan Needham.

"Yup!" the janitor said. I had forgotten: Owen had learned welding-Mr. Meany had wanted at least one of his quarrymen to be a welder, and Owen, who was such a natural at learning, had been the one to learn.

"Have you told the headmaster?" Dan asked the janitor.

"Nope!" the janitor said. "I ain't goin' to, either," he said-"not this time."

"I suppose it wouldn't do any good for him to know, anyway," Dan said.

"That's what I thought!" the janitor said. Dan and I went to the school dining hall, where we were unfamiliar faces at breakfast; but we were very hungry, after driving around all night-and besides, I wanted to pass the

word: "Tell everyone to get to morning meeting a little early," I told my Mends. I heard Dan passing the word to some of his friends on the faculty: "If you go to only one more morning meeting for the rest of your life, I think this should be the one."

Dan and I left the dining hall together. There wasn't time to return to Waterhouse Hall and take a shower before morning meeting, although we badly needed one. We were both anxious for Owen, and agitated-not knowing how his presentation of the mutilated Mary Magdalene might make his dismissal from the academy appear more justified than it was; we were worried how his desecration of the statue of a saint might give those colleges and universities that were sure to accept him a certain reluctance.

"Not to mention what the Catholic Church-I mean, Saint Michael's-is going to do to him," Dan said. "I better have a talk with the head guy over there-Father What's-His-Name.''

"Do you know him?" I asked Dan.

"No, not really," Dan said; "but I think he's a friendly sort of fellow-Father O'Somebody, I think. I wish I could remember his name-O'Malley, O'Leary, O'Rourke, O'Some," he said.

"I'll bet Pastor Merrill knows him," I said. And that was why Dan and I walked to Kurd's Church before morning meeting; sometimes the Rev. Lewis Merrill said his prayers there before walking to the Main Academy Building; sometimes he was up early, just biding his time in the vestry office. Dan and I saw the trailer-truck from the Meany Granite Company parked behind the vestry. Owen was sitting in the vestry office-in Mr. MerrilFs usual chair, behind Mr. Mer-rill's desk, tipping back in the creaky old chair and rolling the chair around on its squeaky casters. There was no sign of Pastor Merrill.

"I HAVE AN EARLY APPOINTMENT," Owen explained to Dan and me. "PASTOR MERRILL'S A LITTLE LATE."

He looked all right-a little tired, a little nervous, or just restless. He couldn't sit still in the chair, and he fiddled with the desk drawers, pulling them open and closing them-not appearing to pay any attention to what was inside the drawers, but just opening and closing them because they were there.

"You've had a busy night, Owen," Dan told him.

"PRETTY BUSY," said Owen Meany.

"How are you?" I asked him.

"I'M FINE," he said. "I BROKE THE LAW, I GOT CAUGHT, I'M GOING TO PAY-THAT'S HOW IT IS," he said.

"You got screwed!" I said.

"A LITTLE BIT," he nodded-then he shrugged. "IT'S NOT AS IF I'M ENTIRELY INNOCENT," he added.

"The important thing for you to think about is getting into college," Dan told him. "The important thing is that you get in, and that you get a scholarship."

"THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS," said Owen Meany. He opened, in rapid succession, the three drawers on the right-hand side of the Rev. Mr. Merrill's desk; then he closed them, just as rapidly. That was when Pastor Merrill walked into the vestry office.

"What are you doing?" Mr. Merrill asked Owen.

"NOTHING," said Owen Meany. "WAITING FOR YOU."

"I mean, at my desk-you're sitting at my desk," Mr. Merrill said. Owen looked surprised.

"I GOT HERE EARLY," he explained. "I WAS JUST SITTING IN YOUR CHAIR-I WASN'T DOING ANYTHING ." He got up and walked to the front of Pastor Merrill's desk, where he sat down in his usual chair-at least, I guess it was his "usual" chair; it reminded me of "the singer's seat" in Graham McSwiney's funny studio. I was disappointed that I hadn't heard from Mr. McSwiney; I guessed that he had no news about Big Black Buster Freebody.

"I'm sorry if I snapped at you, Owen," Pastor Merrill said. "I know how upset you must be."

"I'M FINE," Owen said.

"I was glad you called me," Mr. Merrill told Owen. Owen shrugged. I had not seen him sneer before, but it seemed to me that he almost sneered at the Rev. Mr. Merrill.

"Oh, well!" Mr. Merrill said, sitting down in his creaky desk chair. "Well, I'm very sorry, Owen-for everything," he said. He had a way of entering a room-a classroom, The Great Hall, Kurd's Church, or even his own vestry office-as if he were offering an apology to everyone. At the same time, he was struggling so sincerely that you didn't want to stop or interrupt him. You liked him and just wished that he could relax; yet he made you feel guilty for being irritated with him, because of how hard and unsuccessfully he was trying to put you at ease.

Dan said: "I came here to ask you if you knew the name of the head guy at Saint Michael's-it's the same guy, for the church and for the school, isn't it?"

"That's right," Pastor Merrill said. "It's Father Findley."

"I guess I don't know him," Dan said. " thought it was a Father O'Somebody."

"No, it's not an O'Anybody," said Mr. Merrill. "It's Father Findley." The Rev. Mr. Merrill did not yet know why Dan wanted to know who the Catholic "head guy" was. Owen, of course, knew what Dan was up to.

"YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING FOR ME, DAN," Owen said.

"I can try to keep you out of jail," Dan said. "I want you to get into college-and to have a scholarship. But, at the very least, I can try to keep you from getting charged with theft and vandalism," Dan said.

"What did you do, Owen?" the Rev. Mr. Merrill asked him. Owen bowed his head; for a moment, I thought he was going to cry-but then he shrugged off this moment, too. He looked directly into the Rev. Lewis Merrill's eyes.

"I WANT YOU TO SAY A PRAYER FOR ME," said Owen Meany.

"A p-p-p-prayer-for you?" the Rev. Mr. Merrill stuttered.

"JUST A LITTLE SOMETHING-IF IT'S NOT TOO MUCH TO ASK," Owen said. "IT'S YOUR BUSINESS, ISN'T IT?"

The Rev. Mr. Merrill considered this. "Yes," he said cautiously. "At morning meeting?" he asked.

"TODAY-IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY," said Owen Meany.

"Yes, all right," the Rev. Lewis Merrill said; but he looked as if he might panic. Dan took my arm and steered me toward the door of the vestry office.

"We'll leave you alone, if you want to talk," Dan said to Mr. Merrill and Owen.

"Was there anything else you wanted?" Mr. Merrill asked Dan.

"No, just Father Findley-his name," Dan said.

"And was that all you wanted to see me about-the prayer?" Mr. Merrill asked Owen, who appeared to consider the question very carefully-or else he was waiting for Dan and me to leave. We were outside the vestry office, in the dark corridor where two rows of wooden pegs-for coats-extended for the entire length of two walls; off in the darkness, several lost or left-behind overcoats hung there, like old churchgoers who had loitered so long that they had fallen asleep, slumped against the walls. And there were a few pairs of galoshes in the corridor; but they were not directly beneath the abandoned overcoats, so that the churchgoers in the darkness appeared to have been separated from their feet. On the wooden peg nearest the door to the vestry office was the Rev. Mr. Merrill's double-breasted and oddly youthful Navy pea jacket-and, on the peg next to it, his seaman's watch cap. Dan and I, passing these, heard Pastor Merrill say: "Owen? Is it the dream? Have you had that dream again?"

"YES," said Owen Meany, who began to cry-he started to sob, like a child. I had not heard him sound like that since the Thanksgiving vacation when he'd peed in his pants-when he'd peed on Hester.

"Owen? Owen, listen to me," Mr. Merrill said. "Owen? It's just a dream-do you hear me? It's just a dream."

"NO!" said Owen Meany. Then Dan and I were outside in the February cold and gray; the old footprints in the rutted slush were frozen-fossils of the many souls who had traveled to and from Kurd's Church. It was still early morning; although Dan and I had seen the sun rise, the sun had been absorbed by the low, uniformly ice-gray sky.

"What dream?" Dan Needham asked me.

"I don't know," I said. Owen hadn't told me about the dream; not yet. He would tell me-and I would tell him what the Rev. Mr. Merrill had told him: that it was "just a dream."

I have learned that the consequences of our past actions are always interesting; I have learned to view the present with a forward-looking eye. But not then; at that moment, Dan and I were not imagining very much beyond Randy White's reaction to the headless, armless Mary Magdalene-whose steely embrace of the podium on the stage of The Great Hall would force the headmaster to address the school from a new and more naked position.

Directly opposite the Main Academy Building, the headmaster was getting into his camelhair overcoat; his wife, Sam, was brushing the nap of that pretty coat for him, and kissing her husband good-bye for the day. It would be a bad day for the headmaster-a FATED day, Owen Meany might have called it-but I'm sure Randy White didn't have his eyes on the future that morning. He thought he was finished with Owen Meany. He didn't know that, in the end, Owen Meany would defeat him; he didn't know about the vote of "no confidence" the faculty would give him-or the decision of the Board of Trustees to not renew his appointment as headmaster. He couldn't have imagined what a travesty Owen Meany's absence would make of the commencement exercises that year-how such a timid, rather plain, and much-ignored student, who was the replacement valedictorian of our class, would find the courage to offer as a valedictory only these words: "I am not the head of this class. The head of this class is Owen Meany; he is of our class-and the only voice we want to listen to." Then that good, frightened boy would sit down-to tumultuous pandemonium: our classmates raising their voices for The Voice, bedsheets and more artful banners displaying bis name in capital letters (of course), and the chanting that drowned out the headmaster's attempts to bring us to order.

"Owen Meany! Owen Meany! Owen Meany!" cried the Class of '. But that February morning when the headmaster was outfitting himself in his camelhair coat, he couldn't have known that Owen Meany would be his undoing. How frustrated and powerless Randy White would appear at our commencement, when he threatened to withhold our diplomas if we didn't stop our uproar; he must have known then that he had lost . . . because Dan Needham and Mr. Early, and a solid one third or one half of the faculty stood up to applaud our riotous support of Owen; and we were joined by several informed members of the Board of Trustees as well, not to mention all those parents who had written angry letters to the headmaster regarding that illiberal business of confiscating our wallets. I wish Owen could have been there to see the headmaster then; but, of course, Owen wasn't there-he wasn't graduating. And he was not at morning meeting on that February day, just before spring vacation; but the surrogate he had left onstage was grotesquely capable of holding our attention. It was a packed house-so many of the faculty had turned out for the occasion. And Mary Magdalene was there to greet us: armless, but reaching out to us; headless, but eloquent-with the clean-cut stump of her neck, which was slashed at her Adam's apple, expressing so dramatically that she had much to say to us. We sat in a hush in The Great Hall, waiting for the headmaster. What a horrible man Randy White was! There is a tradition among "good" schools: when you throw out a senior-only months before he's scheduled to graduate-you make as little trouble for that student's college admission as you have to. Yes, you tell the colleges what they need to know; but you have already done your damage-you've fired the kid, you don't try to keep him out of college, too! But not Randy White; the headmaster would do his damnedest to put an end to Owen Meany's university life before it began! Owen was accepted at Harvard; he was accepted at Yale- and he was offered full scholarships by both. But in addition to what Owen's record said: that he was expelled from Gravesend Academy for printing fake draft cards, and selling them to other students ... in addition to that, the headmaster told Harvard and Yale (and the University of New Hampshire) much more. He said that Owen Meany was "so virulently antireligious" that he had "desecrated the statue of a saint at a Roman Catholic school"; that he had launched a "deeply anti-Catholic campaign" on the Gravesend campus, under the demand of not wanting a fish-only menu in the school dining hall on Fridays; and that there were "charges against him for being anti-Semitic, too."

As for the New Hampshire Honor Society, they withdrew their offer of an Honor Society Scholarship; a student of Owen Meany's academic achievements was welcome to attend the University of New Hampshire, but the Honor Society-' 'in the light of this distressing and distasteful information"-could not favor him with a scholarship; if he attended the University of New Hampshire, he would do so at his own expense. Harvard and Yale were more forgiving; but they were also more complicated. Yale wanted to interview him again; they quickly saw the anti-Semitic "charges" for what they were-a lie-but Owen was undoubtedly too frank about his feelings for (or, rather, against) the Catholic Church. Yale wanted to delay his acceptance for a year. In that time, their admissions

director suggested, Owen should "find some meaningful employment"; and his employer should write to Yale periodically and report on Owen's "character and commitment." Dan Needham told Owen that this was reasonable, fair-minded, and not uncommon behavior-on the part of a university as good as Yale. Owen didn't disagree with Dan; he simply refused to do it.

"IT'S LIKE BEING ON PAROLE," he said. Harvard was also fair-minded and reasonable-and slightly more demanding and creative than Yale. Harvard said they wanted to delay his acceptance, too; but they were more specific about the kind of "meaningful employment" they wanted him to take. They wanted him to work for the Catholic Church-in some capacity; he could volunteer his time for Catholic Relief Services, he could be a kind of social worker for one of the Catholic charities, or he could even work for the very same parochial school whose statue of Mary Magdalene he had ruined. Father Findley, at St. Michael's, turned out to be a nice man; not only did he not press charges against Owen Meany-after talking to Dan Needham, Father Findley agreed to help Owen's cause (regarding his college admission) in any way he could. Even some parochial students had spoken up for Owen. Buzzy Thurston-who hit that easy ground ball, the one that should have been the last out, the one that should have kept Owen Meany from ever coming to bat-even Buzzy Thurston spoke up for Owen, saying that Owen had had "a tough time''; Owen "had his reasons" for being upset, Buzzy said. Headmaster White and Chief Ben Pike were all for "throwing the book" at Owen Meany for the theft and mutilation of Mary Magdalene. But St. Michael's School, and Father Findley, were very forgiving. Dan said that Father Findley "knew the family" and was most sympathetic when he realized who Owen's parents were-he'd had dealings with the Meanys; and although he wouldn't go into any detail regarding what those "dealings" had been, Father Findley said he would do anything he could to help Owen. "I certainly won't lift a finger to hurt him!" Father Findley said. Dan Needham told Owen that Harvard had a good idea. "Lots of Catholics do lots of good things, Owen," Dan said. "Why not see what some of the good things are?"

For a while, I thought Owen was going to accept the Harvard proposal-"THE CATHOLIC DEAL," he called it. He even went to see Father Findley; but it seemed to confuse him-how genuinely concerned for Owen's welfare Father Findley was. Maybe Owen liked Father Findley; that might have confused him, too. In the end, he would turn THE CATHOLIC DEAL down.

"MY PARENTS WOULD NEVER UNDERSTAND IT," he said.' 'BESIDES, I WANT TO GO TO THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE-I WANT TO STICK WITH YOU, I WANT TO GO WHERE YOU GO," he told me.

"But they're not offering you a scholarship," I reminded him.

"DON'T WORRY ABOUT THAT," he said. He wouldn't tell me, at first, how he'd already got a "scholarship" there. He went to the U.S. Army recruiting offices in Gravesend; it was arranged "in the family," as we used to say in New Hampshire. They already knew who he was-he was the best of his class at Gravesend Academy, even if he ended up just barely getting his diploma from Gravesend High School. He was admitted to the University of New Hampshire-they also knew that; they had read about it in The Gravesend News-Letter. What's more, he was a kind of local hero; even though he had been absent, he had disrupted the academy's commencement exercises. As for making and selling the fake draft cards, the U.S. Army recruiters knew what that was about: that was about drinking-no disrespect for the draft had been intended, they certainly knew that. And what red-blooded American young man didn't indulge in a little vandalism, from time to time? And that was how Owen Meany got his'' scholarship'' to the University of New Hampshire; he signed up for the Reserve Officers Training Corps-ROTC, we called it "rot-see"; remember that? You went to college at the expense of the U. S. Army, and while you were in college, you took a few courses that the U.S. Army offered-Military History and Small Unit Tactics; stuff like that, not terribly taxing. The summer following your junior year, you would be required to take a little Basic Training-the standard, six-week course. And upon your graduation you would receive your commission; you would graduate a second lieutenant in the United States Army-and you would owe your country four years of active duty, plus two years in the Army Reserve.

"WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE THE MATTER WITH THAT?" Owen Meany asked Dan and me. When he announced his plans to us, it was only ; a total of , U.S. military personnel were in Vietnam, but not a single one of them was in combat. Even so, Dan Needham was uncomfortable with Owen's decision. "I liked the Harvard deal better, Owen," Dan said.

"THIS WAY, I DON'T HAVE TO WAIT A YEAR," he said. "AND I GET TO BE WITH YOU-ISN'T THAT GREAT?" he asked me.

"Yeah, that's great," I said. "I'm just a little surprised, that's all," I told him. I was more than "a little surprised"-that the U.S. Army had accepted him was astonishing to me!

"Isn't there a height requirement?" Dan Needham whispered to me.

"I thought there was a weight requirement, too," I said.

"IF YOU'RE THINKING ABOUT THE HEIGHT AND WEIGHT REQUIREMENTS," Owen said, "IT'S FIVE FEET-EVEN-AND ONE HUNDRED POUNDS."

"Are you five feet tall, Owen?" Dan asked him.

"Since when do you weigh a hundred pounds?" I said.

"I'VE BEEN EATING A LOT OF BANANAS, AND ICE CREAM," said Owen Meany, "AND WHEN THEY MEASURED ME, I TOOK A DEEP BREATH AND STOOD ON MY TOES!"

Well, it was only proper to congratulate him; he was quite pleased with arranging his college "scholarship" in his own way. And, at the time, it appeared that he had defeated Randy White completely. Back then, neither Dan nor I knew about his ' 'dream''; I think we might have been a little worried about his involvement with the U.S. Army if we'd had that dream described to us. And that February morning, when the Rev. Lewis Merrill entered The Great Hall and stared with such horror at the decapitated and amputated Mary Magdalene, Dan Needham and I weren't thinking very far into the future; we were worried only that the Rev. Mr. Merrill might be too terrified to deliver his prayer-that the condition of Mary Magdalene might seize hold of his normally slight stutter and render him incomprehensible. He stood at the foot of the stage, staring up at her-for a long moment, he even forgot to remove his Navy pea jacket and his seaman's watch cap; and since Congrega-tionalists don't always wear the clerical collar, the Rev. Lewis Merrill looked less like our school minister than like a drunken sailor who had finally staggered up against the incentive for his own religious conversion. The Rev. Mr. Merrill was standing there, thus stricken, when the headmaster arrived in The Great Hall. If Randy White was surprised to see so many faculty faces at morning meeting, it did not alter his usual aggressive stride; he took the stairs up to the stage at his usual two-at-a-time pace. And the headmaster did not flinch-or even appear the slightest surprised-to see someone already standing at the podium. The Rev. Lewis Merrill often announced the opening hymn; Pastor Merrill often followed the opening hymn with his prayer. Then the headmaster would make his remarks-he also told us the page number for the closing hymn; and that would be that. It took the headmaster a few seconds to recognize Mr. Merrill, who was standing at the foot of the stage in his pea jacket and wearing his watch cap and gawking at the figure who beseeched us from the podium. Our headmaster was a man who was used to taking charge-he was used to making decisions, our Randy White. When he saw the monstrosity at the podium, he did the first and most headmasterly thing that came into his mind; he strode up to the saint and seized her around her modest robes-he grabbed her around her waist and attempted to lift her. I don't think he took any notice of the steel bands girdling her hips, or the four-inch bolts that penetrated her feet and were welded to their respective nuts under the stage. I suppose his back was still a trifle sore from his impressive effort with Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen; but the headmaster didn't pay any attention to his back, either. He simply seized Mary Magdalene around her middle; he gave a grunt-and nothing happened. Mary Magdalene, and all that she represented, was not as easy to throw around as a Volkswagen.

"I suppose you think this is funny \" the headmaster said to the assembled school; but nobody was laughing. "Well, I'll tell you what this is," said Randy White. "This is a crime," he said. "This is vandalism, this is theft-and desecration! This is willful abuse of personal, even sacred property."

One of the students yelled. "What's the hymn?" the student yelled.

"What did you say?" Randy White said.

"Tell us the number of the hymn!" someone shouted.

"What's the hymnT' said a few more students-in unison. I had not seen the Rev. Mr. Merrill climb-I suppose, shakily-to the stage; when I noticed him, he was standing beside the martyred Mary Magdalene. "The hymn is on page three-eighty-eight," Pastor Merrill said clearly. The headmaster spoke sharply to him, but we couldn't hear what the headmaster said-there was too much creaking of benches and bumping of hymnals as we rose to sing. I don't know what influenced Mr. Merrill's choice of the hymn. If Owen had told me about his dream, I might have found the hymn especially ominous; but as it was, it was simply familiar-a frequent choice, probably because it was victorious in tone, and squarely in that category of "pilgrimage and conflict," which is often so inspiring to young men. The Son of God goes forth to war, A king-ly crown to gain; His blood-red ban-ner streams a-far; Who follows in his train? Who best can drink his cup of woe, Tri-um-phant o-ver pain, Who pa-tient bears his cross be-low, He fol-lows in his train.

It was a hymn that Owen liked, and we belted it out; we sang much more heartily-much more defiantly-than usual. The headmaster had nowhere to stand; he occupied the center stage- but with nothing to stand behind, he looked exposed and unsure of himself. As we roared out the hymn, the Rev. Lewis Merrill appeared to gain in confidence-and even in stature. Although he didn't look exactly comfortable beside the headless Mary Magdalene, he stood so close to her that the podium light shone on him, too. When we finished the hymn, the Rev. Mr. Merrill said: "Let us pray. Let us pray for Owen Meany," he said. It was very quiet in The Great Hall, and although our heads were bowed, our eyes were on the headmaster. We waited for Mr. Merrill to begin. Perhaps he was trying to begin, I thought; then I realized that-awkward as ever-he had meant for us to pray for Owen. What he'd meant was that we were to offer our silent prayers for Owen Meany; and as the silence went on, and on, it became clear that the Rev. Lewis Merrill had no intention of hurrying us. He was not a brave man, I thought; but he was trying to be brave. On and on, we prayed and prayed; and if I had known about Owen's dream, I would have prayed much harder. Suddenly, the headmaster said, "That's enough."

"I'ms-s-s-sorry," Mr. Merrill stuttered, "but/'M say when it's 'enough.' "

I think that was when the headmaster realized he had lost; he realized then that he was finished. Because, what could he do? Was he going to tell us to stop praying? We kept our heads bowed; and we kept praying. Even as awkward as he was, the Rev. Mr. Merrill had made it clear to us that there was no end to praying for Owen Meany. After a while, Randy White left the stage; he had the good sense, if not the decency, to leave quietly-we could hear his careful footsteps on the marble staircase, and the morning ice was still so brittle that we could even hear him crunching his way on the path outside the Main Academy Building. When we could no longer hear his footsteps in our silent prayers for Owen Meany, Pastor Merrill said, "Amen."

Oh God, how often I have wished that I could relive that moment; I didn't know how to pray very well then-I didn't even believe in prayer. If I were given the opportunity to pray for Owen Meany now, I could do a better job of it; knowing what I know now, I might be able to pray hard enough. It would have helped me, of course, if I could have seen his diary; but he wasn't offering it-he was keeping his diary to himself. So often in its pages he had written his name-hisJuU name-in the big block letters he called MONUMENT STYLE or GRAVESEND LETTERING; so many times he had transcribed, in his diary, his name exactly the way he had seen it on Scrooge's grave. And I mean, before all the ROTC business- even before he was thrown out of school and knew that the U.S. Army would be his ticket through college. I mean, before he knew he was signing up-even then he had written his name in that way you see names inscribed on graves. LT PAUL O. MEANY, JR. That's how he wrote it; that was what the Ghost of the Future had seen on Scrooge's grave; that and the date-the date was written in the diary, too. He wrote the date in the diary many, many times, but he never told me what it was. Maybe I could have helped him, if I'd known that date. Owen believed he knew when he was going to die; he also believed he knew his rank-he would die a first lieutenant.

And after the dream, he believed he knew more. The certainty of his convictions was always a little scary, and his diary entry about the dream is no exception. YESTERDAY I WAS KICKED OUT OF SCHOOL. LAST NIGHT I HAD A DREAM. NOW I KNOW FOUR THINGS. I KNOW THAT MY VOICE DOESN'T CHANGE-BUT I STILL DON'T KNOW WHY. I KNOW THAT I AM GOD'S INSTRUMENT. I KNOW WHEN I'M GOING TO DIE-AND NOW A DREAM HAS SHOWN ME HOW I'M GOING TO DIE. I'M GOING TO BE A HERO\ I TRUST THAT GOD WILL HELP ME, BECAUSE WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO LOOKS VERY HARD.