by John Irving
Then there was the column that challenged the coat-and-tie dress code, arguing that it was "INCONSISTENT TO DRESS US LIKE GROWN-UPS AND TREAT US LIKE CHILDREN." And there was the column about required church-attendance, arguing that "IT RUINS THE PROPER ATMOSPHERE FOR PRAYER AND WORSHIP TO HAVE THE CHURCH-AW CHURCH-FULL OF RESTLESS ADOLESCENTS WHO WOULD RATHER BE SLEEPING LATE OR INDULGING IN SEXUAL FANTASIES OR PLAYING SQUASH. FURTHERMORE, REQUIRING ATTENDANCE AT CHURCH-FORCING YOUNG PEOPLE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE RITUALS OF A BELIEF THEY DON'T SHARE-SERVES MERELY TO PREJUDICE THOSE SAME YOUNG PEOPLE AGAINST ALL RELIGIONS, AND AGAINST SINCERELY RELIGIOUS BELIEVERS. I BELIEVE THAT IT IS NOT THE PURPOSE OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION TO BROADEN AND EXPAND OUR PREJUDICES."
And on and on. You should have heard him on the subject of required athletics: "BORN OF A BROWN-SHIRT MENTALITY, A CONCEPT EMBRACED BY THE HITLER YOUTH!" And on the regulation that boarders were not allowed to enjoy more than three weekends off-campus in a single term: "ARE WE SO SIMPLE, IN THE ADMINISTRATION'S VIEW, THAT WE ARE CHARACTERIZED AS CONTENT TO SPEND OUR WEEKENDS AS ATHLETIC HEROES OR FANS OF SPECTATOR SPORTS; IS IT NOT POSSIBLE THAT SOME OF US MIGHT FIND MORE STIMULATION AT HOME, OR AT THE HOME OF A FRIEND-OR (EVEN) AT A GIRLS' SCHOOL? AND I DON'T MEAN AT ONE OF THOSE OVERORGANIZED AND CHARMLESSLY CHAPERONED DANCESl"
The Voice was our voice; he championed our causes; he made us proud of ourselves in an atmosphere mat belittled and intimidated us. But his was also a voice that could criticize us. When a boy was thrown out of school for killing cats-he was ritualistically lynching cats that were pets of faculty families- we were quick to say how "sick" he was; it was Owen who reminded us that all boys (himself included) were touched by that same sickness. "WHO ARE WE TO BE RIGHTEOUS?" he asked us. "I HAVE MURDERED TADPOLES AND TOADS-I'VE BEEN A MASS-MURDERER OF INNOCENT WILDLIFE!" He described his mutilations in a self-condemnatory, regretful tone; although he also confessed his slight vandalism of the sainted Mary Magdalene, I was amused to see that he offered no apologies to the nuns of St. Michael's-it was the tadpoles and toads he was sorry about. "WHAT BOY HASN'T KILLED LIVE THINGS? OF COURSE, IT'S 'SICK' TO BE A HANGMAN OF POOR CATS-BUT HOW IS IT WORSE THAN WHAT MOST OF US HAVE DONE? I HOPE WE'VE OUTGROWN IT, BUT DOES THAT MEAN WE FORGET THAT WE WERE LIKE THAT? DO THE FACULTY REMEMBER BEING BOYS? HOW CAN THEY PRESUME TO TEACH US ABOUT OURSELVES IF THEY DON'T REMEMBER BEING LIKE US? IF THIS IS A PLACE WHERE WE THINK THE TEACHING IS SO GREAT, WHY NOT TEACH THE KID THAT KILLING CATS IS 'SICK'-WHY THROW HIM OUT?"
It would grow to be a theme of Owen's: "WHY THROW HIM OUT?" he would ask, repeatedly. When he agreed that someone should have been thrown out, he said so. Drinking was punishable by dismissal, but Owen argued that getting other students drunk should be a more punishable offense than solitary drinking; also, that most forms of drinking were' 'NOT AS DESTRUCTIVE AS THE ALMOST-ROUTINE HARASSMENT OF STUDENTS WHO ARE NOT 'COOL' BY STUDENTS WHO THINK IT IS 'COOL' TO BE HARSHLY ABUSIVE-BOTH VERBALLY ABUSIVE AND PHYSICALLY INTIMIDATING. CRUEL AND DELIBERATE MOCKERY IS WORSE THAN DRINKING; STUDENTS WHO BAIT AND MERCILESSLY TEASE THEIR FELLOW STUDENTS ARE GUILTY OF WHAT SHOULD BE A MORE 'PUNISHABLE OFFENSE' THAN GETTING DRUNK-ESPECIALLY IN THOSE INSTANCES WHEN YOUR DRUNKENNESS HURTS NO ONE BUT YOURSELF."
It was well known that The Voice didn't drink; he was "black-coffee Meany," and "pack-a-day Meany"; he believed in his own alertness-he was sharp, he wanted to stay sharp. His column on "THE PERILS OF DRINK AND DRUGS" must have appealed even to his critics; if he was not afraid of the faculty, he was also not afraid of his peers. It was still only our first, our ninth-grade year, when Owen invited Hester to
the Senior Dance-in Noah and Simon's graduating year, Owen Meany dared to invite their dreaded sister to their senior-class dance!
"She'll just use you to meet other guys," Noah warned him.
"She'll fuck our whole class and leave you looking at the chandelier," Simon told Owen. I was furious with him. I wished I'd had the nerve to ask Hester to be my date; but how do you ' 'date" your first cousin? Noah and Simon and I commiserated; as much as Owen had captured our admiration, he had risked embarrassing himself- and all of us-by being the instrument of Hester's debut at Gravesend Academy.
"Hester the Molester," Simon repeated and repeated.
"She's just a Sawyer Depot kind of girl," Noah said condescendingly. But Hester knew much more about Gravesend Academy than any of us knew she knew; on that balmy, spring weekend in , Hester arrived prepared. After all, Owen had sent her every issue of The Grave; if she had once regarded Owen with distaste-she had called him queer and crazy, and a creep- Hester was no fool. She could tell when a star had risen. And Hester was committed to irreverence; it should have been no surprise to Noah and Simon and me that The Voice had won her heart. Whatever had been her actual experience with the black boatman from Tortola, the encounter had lent to Hester's recklessly blooming young womanhood a measure of restraint that women gain from only the most tragic entanglements with love; in addition to her dark and primitive beauty, and a substantial loss of weight that drew one's attention to her full, imposing bosom and to the hardness of the bones in her somber face, Hester now held herself back just enough to make her dangerousness both more subtle and more absolute. Her wariness matured her; she had always known how to dress-I think it ran in the family. In Hester's case, she wore simple, expensive clothes-but more casually than the designer had intended, and the fit was never quite right; her body belonged in the jungle, covered only essentially, possibly with fur or grass. For the Senior Dance, she wore a short black dress with spaghetti straps as thin as string; the dress had a full skirt, a fitted waist, and a deeply plunging neckline that exposed a broad expanse of Hester's throat and chest-a fetching background for the necklace of rose-gray pearls my Aunt Martha had given her for her seventeenth birthday. She wore no stockings and danced barefoot; around one ankle was a black rawhide thong, from which a turquoise bauble dangled- touching the top of her foot. Its value could have been only sentimental; Noah implied that the Tortola boatman had given it to her. At the Senior Dance, the faculty chaperones-and their wives-never took their eyes off her. We were all enthralled. When Owen Meany danced with Hester, the sharp bridge of his nose fit perfectly in her cleavage; no one even "cut in."
There we were, in our rented tuxedos, boys more afraid of pimples than of war; but Owen's tux was not rented-my grandmother had bought it for him-and in its tailoring, in its lack of shine, in its touch of satin on its slim lapels, it eloquently spoke to the matter that was so obvious to us all: how The Voice expressed what we were unable to say. Like all dances at the academy, this one ended under extreme supervision; no one could leave the dance early; and when one left, and had escorted one's date to the visitor's dorm, one returned to one's own dorm and "checked in" precisely fifteen minutes after having "checked out" of the dance. But Hester was staying at Front Street. I was too mortified to spend that weekend at my grandmother's-with Hester as Owen's date-and so I returned to Dan's dorm with the other boys who marched to the school's rules. Owen, who had the day boy's standing permission to drive himself to and from the academy, drove Hester back to Front Street. Once in the cab of the tomato-red pickup, Hester and Owen were freed from the regulations of the Dance Committee; they lit up, the smoke from their cigarettes concealed the assumed complacency of their expressions, and each of them lolled an arm out a rolled-down window as Owen turned up the volume of the radio and drove artfully away. With his cigarette, with Hester beside him-in his tux, in the high cab of that tomato-red pickup-Owen Meany looked almost tall, Other boys claimed that they "did it" in the bushes- between leaving the dance and arriving at their dorms. Other boys displayed kissing techniques in lobbies, risked "copping a feel" in coat rooms, defied the chaperones' quick censure of anything as vulgar as sticking a tongue in a girl's ear. But beyond the indisputable fact of his nose embedded in Hester's cleavage, Owen and Hester did not resort to either common or
gross forms of public affection. And how he later rebuked our childishness by
refusing to talk about her; if he "did it" with her, The Voice was not bragging about it. He took Hester back to Front Street and they watched The Late Show together; he drove himself back to the quarry-"IT WAS RATHER LATE," he admitted.
"What was the movie?" I asked.
"WHAT MOVIE?"
"On The Late Show!"
"OH, I FORGET ..."
"Hester must have fucked his brains out," Simon said morosely; Noah hit him. "Since when does Owen 'forget' a movie?" Simon cried; but Noah hit him again. "Owen even remembers The Robe I" Simon said; Noah hit him in the mouth, and Simon started swinging. "It doesn't matter!" Simon yelled. "Hester fucks everybody!"
Noah had his brother by the throat. "We don't know that," he said to Simon.
"We think it!" Simon cried.
"It's okay to think it," Noah told his brother; he rubbed his forearm back and forth across Simon's nose, which began to bleed. "But if we don't know it, we don't say it."
"Hester fucked Owen's brains out!" Simon screamed; Noah drove the point of his elbow into the hollow between Simon's eyes.
"We don't know that," he repeated; but I had grown accustomed to their savage fights-they no longer frightened me. Their brutality seemed plain and safe alongside my conflicted feelings for Hester, my crushing envy of Owen. Once again, The Voice put us in our places. "IT IS HARD TO KNOW, IN THE WAKE OF THE DISTURBING DANCE-WEEKEND, WHETHER OUR ESTEEMED PEERS OR OUR ESTEEMED FACULTY CHAPERONES SHOULD BE MORE ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES. IT IS PUERILE FOR YOUNG MEN TO DISCUSS WHAT DEGREE OF ADVANTAGE THEY TOOK OF THEIR DATES; IT IS DISRESPECTFUL OF WOMEN-ALL THIS CHEAP BRAGGING-AND IT GIVES MEN A BAD REPUTATION. WHY SHOULD WOMEN TRUST US? BUT IT IS HARD TO SAY WHETHER THIS BOORISH BEHAVIOR IS WORSE OR BETTER THAN THE GESTAPO TACTICS OF OUR PURITAN CHAPERONES. THE DEAN'S OFFICE TELLS ME THAT TWO SENIORS HAVE RECEIVED NOTICE OF DISCIPLINARY PROBATION-FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE TERM!-FOR THEIR ALLEGED 'OVERT INDISCRETIONS'; I BELIEVE THE TWO INCIDENTS FALL UNDER THE PUNISHABLE OFFENSE OF 'MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE CONDUCT WITH GIRLS,'
"AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING PRURIENT, I SHALL REVEAL THE SHOCKING NATURE OF THESE TWO SINS AGAINST THE SCHOOL AND WOMANKIND. ONE! A BOY WAS FOUND 'FONDLING' HIS DATE IN THE TROPHY ROOM OF THE GYM: AS THE COUPLE WAS FULLY DRESSED-AND STANDING-AT THE TIME, IT SEEMS UNLIKELY THAT A PREGNANCY COULD HAVE RESULTED FROM THEIR EXCHANGE; AND ALTHOUGH THE GYM IS NOTORIOUS FOR IT, I'M SURE THEY HADN'T EVEN EXPOSED THEMSELVES SUFFICIENTLY TO RISK AN ATHLETE'S FOOT INFECTION. TWO! A BOY WAS SEEN LEAVING THE BUTT ROOM IN BANCROFT HALL WITH HIS TONGUE IN HIS DATE'S EAR-AN ODD AND OSTENTATIOUS MANNER IN WHICH TO EXIT A SMOKING LOUNGE, I WILL AGREE, BUT THIS DEGREE OF PHYSICAL CONTACT IS ALSO NOT KNOWN TO RESULT IN A PREGNANCY. TO MY KNOWLEDGE, IT IS EVEN DIFFICULT TO COMMUNICATE THE COMMON COLD BY THIS METHOD."
After that one, it became customary for the applicants-for the position of headmaster-to request to meet him when they were interviewed. The Search Committee had a student subcommittee available to interview each candidate; but when the candidates asked to meet The Voice, Owen insisted that he be given A PRIVATE AUDIENCE. The issue of Owen being granted this privilege was the subject of a special faculty meeting where tempers flared; Dan said there was a movement to replace the faculty adviser to The Grave-there were those who said that the "pregnancy humor" in Owen's column about the Senior Dance should not have escaped the adviser's censorship. But the faculty adviser to The Grave was an Owen Meany supporter; Mr. Early-that deeply flawed thespian who brought to every role he was given in The Gravesend Players an overblown and befuddled sense of Learlike doom-cried that he would defend the "unsullied genius" of The Voice, if necessary, "to the death." That would not be necessary, Dan Needham was sure; but that
Owen was supported by such a boob as Mr. Early was conceivably worse than no defense at all. Several applicants for the headmaster position admitted that their interviews with The Voice had been ' 'daunting"; I'm sure that they were unprepared for his size, and when they heard him speak, I'm sure they got the shivers and were troubled by the absurdity of that voice communicating strictly in uppercase letters. One of the favored candidates withdrew his application; although there was no direct evidence that Owen had contributed to the candidate's retreat, the man admitted there was a certain quality of "accepted cynicism" among the students that had "depressed" him. The man added that these students demonstrated an "attitude of superiority''-and' 'such a degree of freedom of speech as to make their liberal education too liberal."
"Nonsense!" Dan Needham had cried in the faculty meeting. "Owen Meany isn't cynical! If this guy was referring to Owen, he was referring to him incorrectly. Good riddance!"
But not all the faculty felt that way. The Search Committee would need another year to satisfy their search; the present headmaster cheerfully agreed-for the good of the school-to stall his retirement. He was all "for the good of the school," the old headmaster; and it was his support of Owen Meany that-for a while-kept Owen's enemies from his throat.
"He's a delightful little fella!" the headmaster said. "I wouldn't miss reading The Voice-not for all the world!"
His name was Archibald Thorndike, and he'd been headmaster forever; he'd married the daughter of the headmaster before him, and he was about as "old school" as a headmaster could get. Although the newer, more progressive-minded faculty complained about Archie Thomdike's reluctance to change a single course requirement-not to mention his views of "the whole boy"-the headmaster had no enemies. Old "Thorny," as he was called-and he encouraged even the boys to address him as "Thorny"-was so headmasterly in every pleasing, comfortable, superficial way that no one could feel unfriendly toward him. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, white-haired man with a face as serviceable as an oar; in fact, he was an oarsman, and an outdoorsman-a man who preferred soft, unironed trousers, maybe khakis or corduroys, and a tweed jacket with the elbow patches in need of a thread here or there. He went hatless in our New Hampshire winters, and was such a supporter of our teams-in the rawest weather-that he wore a scar from an errant hockey puck as proudly as a merit badge; the puck had struck him above the eye while he'd tended the goal during the annual Alumni-Varsity game. Thorny was an honorary member of several of Gravesend's graduating classes. He played every alumni game in the goal.
"Ice hockey's not a sissy sport!" he liked to say. In another vein, in defense of Owen Meany, he maintained: "It is the well educated who will improve society-and they will improve it, at first, by criticizing it, and we are giving them the tools to criticize it. Naturally, as students, the brighter of them will begin their improvements upon society by criticizing us." To Owen, old Archie Thorndike would sing a slightly different song: "It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don't expect me to change. I'm not going to change; I'm going to retire I Get the new headmaster to make the changes; that's when / made changes-when I was new."
"WHAT CHANGES DID YOU MAKE?" Owen Meany asked.
"That's another reason I'm retiring!" old Thorny told Owen amiably. "My memory's shot!"
Owen thought that Archibald Thorndike was a blithering, glad-handing fool; but everyone, even The Voice, thought that old Thorny was a nice guy. "NICE GUYS ARE THE TOUGHEST TO GET RID OF," Owen wrote for The Grave; but even Mr. Early was smart enough to censor that. Then it was summer; The Voice went back to work in the quarries-I don't think he said much down in the pits-and I had my first job. I was a guide for the Gravesend Academy Admissions Office; I showed the school to prospective students and their parents-it was boring, but it certainly wasn't hard. I had a ring of master keys, which amounted to the greatest responsibility anyone had given me, and I had freedom of choice regarding which typical classroom I would show, and which "typical" dormitory room. I chose rooms at random in Waterhouse Hall, in the vague hope that I might surprise Mr. and Mrs. Brinker-Smith at their game of musical beds; but the twins were older now, and maybe the Brinker-Smiths didn't "do it" with their former gusto. In the evenings, at Hampton Beach, Owen looked tired to me; I reported to the Admissions Office f
or my first guided tour at ten, but Owen was stepping into the grout bucket by seven every morning. His fingernails were cracked; his hands were cut and swollen; his arms were tanned and thin and hard. He
didn't talk about Hester. The summer of ' was the first summer that we met with any success in picking up girls; or, rather, Owen met with this success, and he introduced the girls he met to me. We didn't' 'do it'' that summer; at least, / didn't, and-to my knowledge-Owen never had a date alone.
"IT'S A DOUBLE DATE OR IT'S NOTHING," he'd tell one surprised girl after another. "ASK YOUR FRIEND OR FORGET IT."
And we were BO longer afraid to cruise the pinball arcades around the casino on foot; delinquent thugs would still pick on Owen, but he quickly established a reputation as an untouchable.
"YOU WANT TO BEAT ME UP?" he'd say to some punk. ' 'YOU WANT TO GO TO JAIL? YOU'RE SO UGLY-YOU THINK I'LL HAVE TROUBLE REMEMBERING YOUR FACE?'' Then he'd point to me. "YOU SEE HIM? ARE YOU SUCH AN ASSHOLE YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT A WITNESS IS? GO AHEAD-BEAT ME UP!" Only one guy did-or tried. It was like watching a dog go after a raccoon; the dog does all the work, but the raccoon gets the better of it. Owen just covered up; he grabbed for hands and feet, he went for the fingers first, but he was content to tear off a sho&and go for the toes. He took a pounding but he wrapped himself into a ball; he left no extremities showing. He broke the guy's pinky-he bent it so sharply that after the fight the guy's little finger pointed straight up off the back of his hand. He tore one of the guy's shoes off and bit his toes; there was a lot of blood, but the guy was wearing a sock-I couldn't see the actual damage, only that he had trouble walking. The guy was pulled off Owen by a cotton-candy vendor-he was arrested shortly thereafter for screaming obscenities, and we heard he was sent to reform school because he turned out to be driving a stolen car. We never saw him on the beachfront again, and the word about Owen-on the strip, around the casino, and along the boardwalk-was that he was dangerous to pick a fight with; the rumor was that he'd bitten off someone's ear. Another summer, I heard that he'd blinded a guy with a Popsicle stick. That these reports weren't exactly true did not matter at Hampton Beach. He was "that little dude in the red pickup," he was "the quarry-worker-he carries some kind of tool on him.'' He was "a mean little fucker-watch out for him."