A Prayer for Owen Meany

by John Irving

  “What wretched ghosts!” Mr. Fish whined.

  The first ghost, Marley’s Ghost, was a terrible ham from the Gravesend Academy English Department; Mr. Early embraced every part that Dan gave him as if he were King Lear—madness and tragedy fueled his every action, a wild melancholy spilled from him in disgusting fits and seizures. “‘I am here tonight to warn you,’” Mr. Early tells Mr. Fish, “‘that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate …’” all the while unwrapping the bandage that dead men wear to keep their lower jaws from dropping on their chests.

  “‘You were always a good friend to me,’” Mr. Fish tells Mr. Early, but Mr. Early has become entangled in his jaw bandage, the unwinding of which has caused him to forget his lines.

  “‘You will be haunted by … Four Spirits,’” Mr. Early says; Mr. Fish shuts his eyes.

  “Three, not Four!” Dan cries.

  “But aren’t I the fourth?” Mr. Early asks.

  “You’re the first!” Mr. Fish tells him.

  “But there are three others,” Mr. Early says.

  “Jesus Christ!” Dan says.

  But Marley’s Ghost was not as bad as the Ghost of Christmas Past, an irritating young woman who was a member of the Town Library Board and who wore men’s clothes and chain-smoked, aggressively; and she was not as bad as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Mr. Kenmore, a butcher at our local A&P, who (Mr. Fish said) smelled like raw chicken and shut his eyes whenever Mr. Fish spoke—Mr. Kenmore needed to concentrate with such fervor on his own role that he found Scrooge’s presence a distraction. And none of them was as bad as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come—Mr. Morrison, our mailman, who had looked so perfect for the part. He was a tall, thin, lugubrious presence; a sourness radiated from him—dogs not only refrained from biting him, they slunk away from him; they must have known that the taste of him was as toxic as a toad’s. He had a gloomy, detached quality that Dan had imagined would be perfect for the grim, final phantom—but when Mr. Morrison discovered that he had no lines, that the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come never speaks, he became contemptuous of the part; he threatened to quit, but then remained in the role with a vengeance, sneering and scoffing at poor Scrooge’s questions, and leering at the audience, attempting to seize their attention from Mr. Fish (as if to accuse Dan, and Dickens, of idiocy—for denying this most important spirit the power of speech).

  No one could remember Mr. Morrison ever speaking—as a mailman—and yet, as a harbinger of doom, the poor man clearly felt he had much to say. But the deepest failure was that none of these ghosts was frightening. “How can I be Scrooge if I’m not frightened?” Mr. Fish asked Dan.

  “You’re an actor, you gotta fake it,” Dan said. To my thinking, which was silent, Mrs. Walker’s legs were again wasted—in the part of Tiny Tim’s mother.

  Poor Mr. Fish. I never knew what he did for a living. He was Sagamore’s master, he was the good guy in Angel Street—at the end, he took my mother by the arm—he was the unfaithful husband in The Constant Wife, he was Scrooge. But what did he do? I never knew. I could have asked Dan; I still could. But Mr. Fish was the quintessential neighbor; he was all neighbors—all dog owners, all the friendly faces from familiar backyards, all the hands on your shoulders at your mother’s funeral. I don’t remember if he had a wife. I don’t even remember what he looked like, but he manifested the fussy concentration of a man about to pick up a fallen leaf; he was all rakers of all lawns, all snow-shovelers of all sidewalks. And although he began the Christmas season as an unfrightened Scrooge, I saw Mr. Fish when he was frightened, too.

  I also saw him when he was young and carefree, which is how he appeared to me before the death of Sagamore. I remember a brilliant September afternoon when the maples on Front Street were starting to turn yellow and red; above the crisp, white clapboards and the slate rooflines of the houses, the redder maples appeared to be drawing blood from the ground. Mr. Fish had no children but he enjoyed throwing and kicking a football, and on those blue-sky, fall afternoons, he cajoled Owen and me to play football with him; Owen and I didn’t care for the sport—except for those times when we could include Sagamore in the game. Sagamore, like many a Labrador, was a mindless retriever of balls, and it was fun to watch him try to pick up the football in his mouth; he would straddle the ball with his forepaws, pin it to the ground with his chest, but he never quite succeeded in fitting the ball in his mouth. He would coat the ball with slobber, making it exceedingly difficult to pass and catch, and ruining what Mr. Fish referred to as the aesthetics of the game. But the game had no aesthetics that were available to Owen Meany and me; I could not master the spiral pass, and Owen’s hand was so small that he refused to throw the ball at all—he only kicked it. The ferocity with which Sagamore tried to contain the ball in his mouth and the efforts we made to keep the ball away from him were the most interesting aspects of the sport to Owen and me—but Mr. Fish took the perfection of passing and catching quite seriously.

  “This will be more fun when you boys get a little older,” he used to say, as the ball rolled under the privet, or wobbled into my grandmother’s rose beds, and Owen and I purposely fumbled in front of Sagamore—such was our pleasure in watching the dog lunge and drool, lunge and drool.

  Poor Mr. Fish. Owen and I dropped so many perfect passes. Owen liked to run with the ball until Sagamore ran him down; and then Owen would kick the ball in no particular or planned direction. It was dogball, not football, that we played on those afternoons, but Mr. Fish was ever optimistic that Owen and I would, miraculously—one day—grow up and play pass-and-catch as it was meant to be played.

  A few houses down Front Street lived a young couple with a new baby; Front Street was not much of a street for young couples, and the street had only one new baby. The couple cruised the neighborhood with the air of an entirely novel species—as if they were the first couple in New Hampshire to have given birth. Owen shrieked so loudly when we played football with Mr. Fish that the young father or mother from down the street would fretfully appear, popping up over a hedge to ask us if we would keep our voices down “… because of the baby.”

  His years in The Gravesend Players would exercise Mr. Fish’s natural ability at rolling his eyes; and after the young parent had returned to guard the precious newborn, Mr. Fish would commence rolling his eyes with abandon.

  “STUPID BABY,” Owen complained, “WHO EVER HEARD OF TRYING TO CONTROL THE NOISE OUTDOORS?”

  That had just happened—for about the hundredth time—the day Owen managed to punt the football out of the yard … out of my grandmother’s yard, and beyond Mr. Fish’s yard, too; the ball floated over the roof of my grandmother’s garage and rolled end-over-end down the driveway, toward Front Street, with Owen and me and Sagamore chasing after it. Mr. Fish stood sighing, with his hands on his hips; he did not chase after errant passes and kicks—these were imperfections that he sought to eliminate from our game—but on this day he was impressed by the unusual power of Owen Meany’s kick (if not the kick’s direction).

  “That’s getting your foot into the ball, Owen!” Mr. Fish called. As the ball rolled into Front Street with Sagamore in close pursuit, the baby-rattle tinkle of the odd bell of the diaper truck dinged persistently, even at the moment of the truck’s sudden confluence with Sagamore’s unlucky head.

  Poor Mr. Fish; Owen ran to get him, but Mr. Fish had heard the squealing tires—and even the dull thud—and he was halfway down the driveway when Owen met him. “I DON’T THINK YOU WANT TO SEE IT,” Owen said to him. “WHY DON’T YOU GO SIT DOWN AND LET US TAKE CARE OF THINGS?”

  Mr. Fish was on his porch when the young parents came up Front Street, to complain again about the noise—or to investigate the delay of the diaper truck, because their baby was the sole reason the truck was there.

  The diaper truck driver sat on the running board of the cab. “Shit,” he said. Up close, the odor of urine radiated from the truck in waves. My grandmother had her kindling delivered in burlap sacks, an
d my mother helped me empty one; I helped Owen get Sagamore into the sack. The football, still smeared with saliva, had gathered some gravel and a candy-bar wrapper; it lay uninvitingly at the curb.

  In late September, in Gravesend, it could feel like August or like November; by the time Owen and I had dragged Sagamore in the sack to Mr. Fish’s yard, the sun was clouded over, the vividness seemed muted in the maple trees, and the wind that stirred the dead leaves about the lawn had grown cold. Mr. Fish told my mother that he would make a “gift” of Sagamore’s body—to my grandmother’s roses. He implied that a dead dog was highly prized, among serious gardeners; my grandmother wished to be brought into the discussion, and it was quickly agreed which rosebushes would be temporarily uprooted, and replanted, and Mr. Fish began with the spade. The digging was much softer in the rose bed than it would have been in Mr. Fish’s yard, and the young couple and their baby from down the street were sufficiently moved to attend the burial, along with a scattering of Front Street’s other children; even my grandmother asked to be called when the hole was ready, and my mother—although the day had turned much colder—wouldn’t even go inside for a coat. She wore dark-gray flannel slacks and a black, V-necked sweater, and stood hugging herself, standing first on one foot, then on the other, while Owen gathered strange items to accompany Sagamore to the underworld. Owen was restrained from putting the football in the burlap sack, because Mr. Fish—while digging the grave—maintained that football was still a game that would give us some pleasure, when we were “a little older.” Owen found a few well-chewed tennis balls, and Sagamore’s food dish, and his dog blanket for trips in the car; these he included in the burlap sack, together with a scattering of the brightest maple leaves—and a leftover lamb chop that Lydia had been saving for Sagamore (from last night’s supper).

  The lights were turned on in some houses when Mr. Fish finished digging the grave, and Owen decided that the attendant mourners should hold candles, which Lydia was reluctant to provide; at my mother’s urging, Lydia produced the candles, and my grandmother was summoned.

  “HE WAS A GOOD DOG,” Owen said, to which there were murmurs of approval.

  “I’ll never have another one,” said Mr. Fish.

  “I’ll remind you of that,” my grandmother remarked; she must have found it ironic that her rosebushes, having suffered years of Sagamore’s blundering, were about to be the beneficiaries of his decomposition.

  The candlelit ritual must have looked striking from the Front Street sidewalk; that must be why the Rev. Lewis Merrill and his wife were drawn to our yard. Just as we were faced with a loss for words, the Rev. Mr. Merrill—who was already as pale as the winter months—appeared in the rose garden. His wife, red-nosed from the autumn’s first good dose of the common cold, was wearing her winter coat, looking prematurely sunk in deepest January. Taking their fragile constitutional, the Merrills had detected the presence of a religious ceremony.

  My mother, shivering, seemed quite startled by the Merrills’ appearance.

  “It makes me cold to look at you, Tabby,” Mrs. Merrill said, but Mr. Merrill glanced nervously from face to face, as if he were counting the living of the neighborhood in order to determine which poor soul was at rest in the burlap sack.

  “Thank you for coming, Pastor,” said Mr. Fish, who was born to be an amateur actor. “Perhaps you could say a few words appropriate to the passing away of man’s best friend?”

  But Mr. Merrill’s countenance was both stricken and uncomprehending. He looked at my mother, and at me; he stared at the burlap sack; he gazed into the hole in the rose bed as if it were his own grave—and no coincidence that a short walk with his wife had ended here.

  My grandmother, seeing her pastor so tense and tongue-tied, took his arm and whispered to him, “It’s just a dog. Just say a little something, for the children.”

  But Mr. Merrill began to stutter; the more my mother shivered, the more the Rev. Mr. Merrill shivered in response, the more his mouth trembled and he could not utter the simplest rite—he failed to form the first sentence. Mr. Fish, who was never a frequenter of any of the town churches, hoisted the burlap sack and dropped Sagamore into the underworld.

  It was Owen Meany who found the words: “‘I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE, SAITH THE LORD: HE THAT BELIEVETH IN ME, THOUGH HE WERE DEAD, YET SHALL HE LIVE; AND WHOSOEVER LIVETH AND BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL NEVER DIE.’”

  It seemed a lot to say—for a dog—and the Rev. Mr. Merrill, freed from his stutter, was struck silent.

  “‘… SHALL NEVER DIE,’” Owen repeated. The wind, gusting, covered my mother’s face with her hair as she reached for Owen’s hand.

  Over all rituals, over all services—over every rite of passage—Owen Meany would preside.

  That Christmas of ’53, whether rehearsing the Nativity, or testing Potter’s prophylactic on the third floor of Waterhouse Hall, I was only dimly aware of Owen as the conductor of an orchestra of events—and totally unaware that this orchestration would lead to a single sound. Not even in Owen’s odd room did I perceive enough, although no one could escape the feeling that—at the very least—an altar-in-progress was under construction there.

  It was hard to tell if the Meanys celebrated Christmas. A clump of pine boughs had been crudely gathered and stuck to the front farmhouse door by a huge, ugly staple—the kind fired from a heavy-duty, industrial staple gun. The staple looked strong enough to bind granite to granite, or to hold Christ fast to the cross. But there was no particular arrangement to the pine boughs—it certainly did not resemble a wreath; it was as shapeless a mass as an animal’s nest, only hastily begun and abandoned in a panic. Inside the sealed house, there was no tree; there were no Christmas decorations, not even candles in the windows, not even a decrepit Santa leaning against a table lamp.

  On the mantel above the constantly smoldering fire—wherein the logs were either chronically wet, or else the coals had been left unstirred for hours—there was a crèche with cheaply painted wooden figures. The cow was three-legged—nearly as precarious as one of Mary Beth Baird’s cows; it was propped against a rather menacing chicken that was almost half the cow’s size, not unlike the proportions of Barb Wiggin’s turtledoves. A gouge through the flesh-toned paint of the Holy Mother’s face had rendered her obviously blind and so ghastly to behold that someone in the Meany family had thoughtfully turned her face away from the Christ Child’s crib—yes, there was a crib. Joseph had lost a hand—perhaps he had hacked it off himself, in a jealous rage, for there was something darkly smoldering in his expression, as if the smoky fire that left the mantel coated with soot had also colored Joseph’s mood. One angel’s harp was mangled, and from another angel’s O-shaped mouth it was easier to imagine the wail of a mourner than the sweetness of singing.

  But the crèche’s most ominous message was that the little Lord Jesus himself was missing; the crib was empty—that was why the Virgin Mary had turned her mutilated face away; why one angel dashed its harp, and another screamed in anguish; why Joseph had lost a hand, and the cow a leg. The Christ Child was gone—kidnapped, or run away. The very object of worship was absent from the conventional assembly.

  There appeared to be more order, more divine management in evidence in Owen’s room; still, there was nothing that represented anything as seasonal as Christmas—except the poinsettia-red dress that my mother’s dummy wore; but I knew that dress was all the dummy had to wear, year-round.

  The dummy had taken a position at the head of Owen’s bed—closer to his bed than my mother had formerly positioned it in relationship to her own bed. From where Owen lay at night, it was instantly clear to me that he could reach out and touch the familiar figure.

  “DON’T STARE AT THE DUMMY,” he advised me. “IT’S NOT GOOD FOR YOU.”

  Yet, apparently, it was good for him—for there she was, standing over him.

  The baseball cards, at one time so very much on display in Owen’s room, were not—I was sure—gone; but they were out of sigh
t. There was no baseball in evidence, either—although I was certain that the murderous ball was in the room. The foreclaws of my armadillo were surely there, but they were also not on display. And the Christ Child snatched from the crib … I was convinced that the Baby Jesus was somewhere in Owen’s room, perhaps in company with Potter’s prophylactic, which Owen had taken home with him but which was no more visible than the armadillo’s claws, the abducted Prince of Peace, and the so-called instrument of my mother’s death.

  It was not a room that invited a long visit; our appearances at the Meanys’ house were brief, sometimes only for Owen to change his clothes, because—during that Christmas vacation, especially—he stayed overnight with me more than he stayed at home.

  Mrs. Meany never spoke to me, or took any notice of me at all, when I came to the house; I could not remember the last time Owen had bothered to announce my presence—or, for that matter, his own presence—to his mother. But Mr. Meany was usually pleasant; I wouldn’t say he was cheerful, or even enthusiastic, and he was not a fellow for small talk, but he offered me his cautious version of humor. “Why, it’s Johnny Wheelwright!” he’d say, as if he were surprised I was there at all, or he hadn’t seen me for years. Perhaps this was his unsubtle way of announcing my presence to Mrs. Meany, but that lady was unchanged by her husband’s greeting; she remained in profile to both the window and to us. For variety, she would at times gaze into the fire, although nothing she saw there ever prompted her to tend to the logs or the coals; possibly she preferred smoke to flames.

  And one day, when he must have been feeling especially conversational, Mr. Meany said: “Why, it’s Johnny Wheelwright! How goes all that Christmas rehearsin’?”

  “Owen’s the star of the pageant,” I said. As soon as I spoke, I felt the knuckles of his tiny fist in my back.

  “You never said you was the star,” Mr. Meany said to Owen.