by John Irving
for to all to whom I send you you
shall go,
and whatever I command you you
shall speak.
Be not afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
says the Lord.
Then the Lord touches Jeremiah’s mouth, and says,
Behold, I have put my words in
your mouth.
See, I have set you this day over
nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.
It is on red-letter days, especially, that I think about Owen; sometimes I think about him too intensely, and that’s usually when I skip a Sunday service, or two—and I try not to pick up my prayer book for a while. I suppose the conversion of St. Paul has a special effect on a convert like me.
And how can I not think of Owen—when I read Paul’s letter to the Galatians, that part where Paul says, “And I was still not known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea; they only heard it said, ‘He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.’ And they glorified God because of me.”
How well I know that feeling! I trust in God because of Owen Meany.
It was because I trusted Dan Needham that I gave the armadillo to Owen. I put it in a brown paper bag, which I put inside another brown paper bag, and although I had no doubt that Owen would know exactly what it was, before he opened the bags, I gave brief consideration to how shocked his mother might be if she opened the bags; but it was not her business to open the bags, I figured.
Owen and I were eleven; we had no other way to articulate what we felt about what had happened to my mother. He gave me his baseball cards, but he really wanted them back, and I gave him my stuffed armadillo, which I certainly hoped he’d give back to me—all because it was impossible for us to say to each other how we really felt. How did it feel to hit a ball that hard—and then realize that the ball had killed your best friend’s mother? How did it feel to see my mother sprawled in the grass, and to have the moronic chief of police complain about the missing baseball—and calling that stupid ball “the instrument of death” and “the murder weapon”? Owen and I couldn’t have talked about those things—at least, not then. So we gave each other our best-loved possessions, and hoped to get them back. When you think of it, that’s not so silly.
By my calculations, Owen was a day late returning the armadillo; he kept it overnight for two nights, which in my view was one night too many. But he did return it. Once again I heard the lowest-possible gear of the granite truck; once again, there was an early-morning drop-off at 80 Front Street, before Mr. Meany went ahead with the rest of the day’s heavy business. And there were the same brown paper bags that I had used on the step by the back door; it was a little dangerous to leave the armadillo outside on the step, I thought, given the indiscriminate appetites of that certain Labrador retriever belonging to our neighbor Mr. Fish. Then I remembered that Sagamore was dead.
But my greatest indignation was to follow: missing from the armadillo were the little animal’s front claws—the most useful and impressive parts of its curious body. Owen had returned the armadillo, but he’d kept the claws!
Well—friendship being one thing, and the armadillo quite another—I was so outraged by this discovery that I needed to talk to Dan Needham. As always, Dan made himself available. He sat on the edge of my bed while I sniveled; without its claws, the beast could no longer stand upright—not without pitching forward and resting on its snout. There was virtually no position I could find for the armadillo that did not make the creature resemble a supplicant—not to mention, a wretched amputee. I was quite upset at how my best friend could have done this to me, until Dan Needham informed me that this was precisely what Owen felt he had done to me, and to himself: that we were both maimed and mutilated by what had happened to us.
“Your friend is most original,” Dan Needham said, with the greatest respect. “Don’t you see, Johnny? If he could, he would cut off his hands for you—that’s how it makes him feel, to have touched that baseball bat, to have swung that bat with those results. It’s how we all feel—you and me and Owen. We’ve lost a part of ourselves.” And Dan picked up the wrecked armadillo and began to experiment with it on my night table, trying—as I had tried—to find a position that allowed the beast to stand, or even to lie down, with any semblance of comfort or dignity; it was quite impossible. The thing had been crippled; it was rendered an invalid. And how had Owen arranged the claws? I wondered. What sort of terrible altarpiece had he constructed? Were the claws gripping the murderous baseball?
And so Dan and I became quite emotional, while we struggled to find a way to make the armadillo’s appearance acceptable—but that was the point, Dan concluded: there was no way that any or all of this was acceptable. What had happened was unacceptable! Yet we still had to live with it.
“It’s brilliant, really—it’s absolutely original,” Dan kept muttering, until he fell asleep on the other twin bed in my room, where Owen had spent so many nights, and I covered him up and let him sleep. When my grandmother came to kiss me good night, she kissed Dan good night, too. Then, in the weak glow from the night-light, I discovered that by opening the shallow drawer under the top of the night table, I could position the armadillo in such a way that it was possible for me to imagine it was something else. Half in and half out of the drawer, the armadillo resembled a kind of aquatic creature—it was all head and torso; I could imagine that those were some sort of stunted flippers protruding where its claws had been.
Just before I fell asleep, I realized that everything Dan had said about Owen’s intentions was correct. How much it has meant to my life that Dan Needham was almost never wrong! I was not as familiar with Wall’s History of Gravesend as I became when I was eighteen and read the whole thing for myself; but I was familiar with those parts of it that Owen Meany considered “important.” And just before I fell asleep, I also recognized my armadillo for what it was—in addition to all those things Dan had told me. My armadillo had been amputated to resemble Watahantowet’s totem, the tragic and mysterious armless man—for weren’t the Indians wise enough to understand that everything had its own soul, its own spirit?
It was Owen Meany who told me that only white men are vain enough to believe that human beings are unique because we have souls. According to Owen, Watahantowet knew better. Watahantowet believed that animals had souls, and that even the much-abused Squamscott River had a soul—Watahantowet knew that the land he sold to my ancestors was absolutely full of spirits. The rocks they had to move to plant a field—they were, forever after, restless and displaced spirits. And the trees they cut down to build their homes—they had a different spirit from the spirits that escaped those houses as the smoke from firewood. Watahantowet may have been the last resident of Gravesend, New Hampshire, who really understood what everything cost. Here, take my land! There go my arms!
It would take me years to learn everything that Owen Meany was thinking, and I didn’t understand him very well that night. Now I know that the armadillo told me what Owen was thinking although Owen himself would not until we were both students at Gravesend Academy; it wasn’t until then that I realized Owen had already conveyed his message to me—via the armadillo. Here is what Owen Meany (and the armadillo) said: “GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER. MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT. GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD’S INSTRUMENT.”
How could it ever have occurred to me that a fellow eleven-year-old was thinking any such thing? That Owen Meany was a Chosen One was the furthest thing from my mind; that Owen could even consider himself one of God’s Appointed would have been a surprise to me. To have seen him up in the air, at Sunday school, you would not have thought he was at work on God’s Assignment. And you must remember—forgetting about Owen—that at the age of eleven I did not believe there were “chosen ones,” or that God “appointed”
anyone, or that God gave “assignments.” As for Owen’s belief that he was “God’s instrument,” I didn’t know that there was other evidence upon which Owen was basing his conviction that he’d been specially selected to carry out the work of the Lord; but Owen’s idea—that God’s reasoning was somehow predetermining Owen’s every move—came from much more than that one unlucky swing and crack of the bat. As you shall see.
Today—January 30, 1987—it is snowing in Toronto; in the dog’s opinion, Toronto is improved by snow. I enjoy walking the dog when it’s snowing, because the dog’s enthusiasm is infectious; in the snow, the dog establishes his territorial rights to the St. Clair Reservoir as if he were the first dog to relieve himself there—an illusion that is made possible by the fresh snow covering the legion of dog turds for which the St. Clair Reservoir is famous.
In the snow, the clock tower of Upper Canada College appears to preside over a preparatory school in a small New England town; when it’s not snowing, the cars and buses on the surrounding roads are more numerous, the sounds of traffic are less muted, and the presence of downtown Toronto seems closer. In the snow, the view of the clock tower of Upper Canada College—especially from the distance of Kilbarry Road, or, closer, from the end of Frybrook Road—reminds me of the clock tower of the Main Academy Building in Gravesend; fastidious, sepulchral.
In the snow, there is something almost like New England about where I live on Russell Hill Road; granted, Torontonians do not favor white clapboard houses with dark-green or black shutters, but my grandmother’s house, at 80 Front Street, was brick—Torontonians prefer brick and stone. Inexplicably, Torontonians clutter their brick and stone houses with too much trim, or with window trim and shutters—and they also carve their shutters with hearts or maple leaves—but the snow conceals these frills; and on some days, like today, when the snow is especially wet and heavy, the snow turns even the brick houses white. Toronto is sober, but not austere; Gravesend is austere, but also pretty; Toronto is not pretty, but in the snow Toronto can look like Gravesend—both pretty and austere.
And from my bedroom window on Russell Hill Road, I can see both Grace Church on-the-Hill and the Bishop Strachan chapel; how fitting that a boy whose childhood was divided by two churches should live out his present life in view of two more! But this suits me now; both churches are Anglican. The cold, gray stones of both Grace Church and The Bishop Strachan School are also improved by snow.
My grandmother liked to say that snow was “healing”—that it healed everything. A typical Yankee point of view: if it snows a lot, snow must be good for you. In Toronto, it’s good for me. And the little children sledding at the St. Clair Reservoir: they remind me of Owen, too—because I have fixed Owen at a permanent size, which is the size he was when he was eleven, which was the size of an average five-year-old. But I should be careful not to give too much credit to the snow; there are so many things that remind me of Owen.
I avoid American newspapers and magazines, and American television—and other Americans in Toronto. But Toronto is not far enough away. Just the day before yesterday—January 28, 1987—the front page of The Globe and Mail gave us a full account of President Ronald Reagan’s State of the Union Message. Will I ever learn? When I see such things, I know I should simply not read them; I should pick up The Book of Common Prayer, instead. I should not give in to anger; but, God forgive me, I read the State of the Union Message. After almost twenty years in Canada, there are certain American lunatics who still fascinate me.
“There must be no Soviet beachhead in Central America,” President Reagan said. He also insisted that he would not sacrifice his proposed nuclear missiles in space—his beloved Star Wars plan—to a nuclear arms agreement with the Soviet Union. He even said that “a key element of the U.S.-Soviet agenda” is “more responsible Soviet conduct around the world”—as if the United States were a bastion of “responsible conduct around the world”!
I believe that President Reagan can say these things only because he knows that the American people will never hold him accountable for what he says; it is history that holds you accountable, and I’ve already expressed my opinion that Americans are not big on history. How many of them even remember their own, recent history? Was twenty years ago so long ago for Americans? Do they remember October 21, 1967? Fifty thousand antiwar demonstrators were in Washington; I was there; that was the “March on the Pentagon”—remember? And two years later—in October of ’69—there were fifty thousand people in Washington again; they were carrying flashlights, they were asking for peace. There were a hundred thousand asking for peace in Boston Common; there were two hundred fifty thousand in New York. Ronald Reagan had not yet numbed the United States, but he had succeeded in putting California to sleep; he described the Vietnam protests as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” As president, he still didn’t know who the enemy was.
I now believe that Owen Meany always knew; he knew everything.
We were seniors at Gravesend Academy in February of 1962; we watched a lot of TV at 80 Front Street. President Kennedy said that U.S. advisers in Vietnam would return fire if fired upon.
“I HOPE WE’RE ADVISING THE RIGHT GUYS,” Owen Meany said.
That spring, less than a month before Gravesend Academy’s graduation exercises, the TV showed us a map of Thailand; five thousand U.S. Marines and fifty jet fighters were being sent there—“in response to Communist expansion in Laos,” President Kennedy said.
“I HOPE WE KNOW WHAT WE’RE DOING,” said Owen Meany.
In the summer of ’63, the summer following our first year at the university, the Buddhists in Vietnam were demonstrating; there were revolts. Owen and I saw our first self-immolation—on television. South Vietnamese government forces, led by Ngo Dinh Diem—the elected president—attacked several Buddhist pagodas; that was in August. In May, Diem’s brother—Ngo Dinh Nhu, who ran the secret police force—had broken up a Buddhist celebration by killing eight children and one woman.
“DIEM IS A CATHOLIC,” Owen Meany announced. “WHAT’S A CATHOLIC DOING AS PRESIDENT OF A COUNTRY OF BUDDHISTS?”
That was the summer that Henry Cabot Lodge became the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam; that was the summer that Lodge received a State Department cable advising him that the United States would “no longer tolerate” Ngo Dinh Nhu’s “influence” on President Diem’s regime. In two months, a military coup toppled Diem’s South Vietnamese government; the next day, Diem and his brother, Nhu, were assassinated.
“IT LOOKS LIKE WE’VE BEEN ADVISING THE WRONG GUYS,” Owen said.
And the next summer, when we saw on TV the North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Tonkin Gulf—within two days, they attacked two U.S. destroyers—Owen said: “DO WE THINK THIS IS A MOVIE?”
President Johnson asked Congress to give him the power to “take all necessary measures to repel an armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was approved by the House by a unanimous vote of 416 to 0; it passed the Senate by a vote of 88 to 2. But Owen Meany asked my grandmother’s television set a question: “DOES THAT MEAN THE PRESIDENT CAN DECLARE A WAR WITHOUT DECLARING IT?”
That New Year’s Eve—I remember that Hester drank too much; she was throwing up—there were barely more than twenty thousand U.S. military personnel in Vietnam, and only a dozen (or so) had been killed. By the time the Congress put an end to the Tonkin Gulf Resolution—in May of 1970—there had been more than half a million U.S. military personnel in Vietnam; and more than forty thousand of them were dead.
As early as 1965, Owen Meany detected a problem of strategy.
In March, the U.S. Air Force began Operation Rolling Thunder—to strike targets in North Vietnam; to stop the flow of supplies to the South—and the first American combat troops landed in Vietnam.
“THERE’S NO END TO THIS,” Owen said. “THERE’S NO GOOD WAY TO END IT.”
On Christmas Day, President Johnson suspended Operation
Rolling Thunder; he stopped the bombing. In a month, the bombing began again, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opened their televised hearings on the war. That was when my grandmother started paying attention.
In the fall of 1966, Operation Rolling Thunder was said to be “closing in on Hanoi”; but Owen Meany said, “I THINK HANOI CAN HANDLE IT.”
Do you remember Operation Tiger Hound? How about Operation Masher/WhiteWing/Than Phong II? That one produced 2,389 “known enemy casualties.” And then there was Operation Paul Revere/Than Phong 14—not quite so successful, only 546 “known enemy casualties.” And how about Operation Maeng Ho 6? There were 6,161 “known enemy casualties.”
By New Year’s Eve, 1966, a total of 6,644 U.S. military had been killed in action; it was Owen Meany who remembered that was 483 more casualties than the enemy had suffered in Operation Maeng Ho.
“How do you remember such things, Owen?” my grandmother asked him.
From Saigon, General Westmoreland was asking for “fresh manpower”; Owen remembered that, too. According to the State Department, according to Dean Rusk—remember him?—we were “winning a war of attrition.”
“THAT’S NOT THE KIND OF WAR WE WIN,” said Owen Meany.
By the end of ’67, there were five hundred thousand U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. That was when General Westmoreland said, “We have reached an important point where the end begins to come into view.”
“WHAT END?” Owen Meany asked the general. “WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ‘FRESH MANPOWER’? REMEMBER THE ‘FRESH MANPOWER’?”
I now believe that Owen remembered everything; a part of knowing everything is remembering everything.
Do you remember the Tet Offensive? That was in January of ’68; “Tet” is a traditional Vietnamese holiday—the equivalent of our Christmas and New Year’s—and it was usual, during the Vietnam War, to observe a cease-fire for the holiday season. But that year the North Vietnamese attacked more than a hundred South Vietnamese towns—more than thirty provincial capitals. That was the year President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection—remember? That was the year Robert Kennedy was assassinated; you might recall that. That was the year Richard Nixon was elected president; maybe you remember him. In the following year, in 1969—the year when Ronald Reagan described the Vietnam protests as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy”—there were still half a million Americans in Vietnam. I was never one of them.