A prayer for Owen Meany: a novel

by John Irving

  "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 QU
IET 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.