A Prayer for Owen Meany

by John Irving

  I remember the independent study that Owen Meany was conducting with the Rev. Lewis Merrill in the winter term of 1962. I wonder if those cheeseburgers in the Reagan administration are familiar with Isaiah 5:20. As The Voice 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 Department 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 1962 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 legal! 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 Gravesend 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.

  Th
e 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 fucking 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, I 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 rutted 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 el
bows, 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.