by John Irving
Then I climbed out along the breakwater with the dummy in the red dress; the tide was high, and going out. I waded into the harbor channel, off the tip of the breakwater; I was quickly submerged, up to my chest, and I had to retreat to the last slab of granite on the breakwater—so that I could throw the dummy as far into the ocean as I could. I wanted to be sure that the dummy reached into the channel, which I knew was very, very deep. For a moment, I hugged the body of the dummy to my face; but whatever scent had once clung to the red dress had long ago departed. Then I threw the dummy into the channel.
For a horrible moment, it floated. There was air trapped under the hollow wire-mesh of the body. The dummy rolled over on its back in the water. I saw my mother’s wonderful bosom above the surface of the water—THE BEST BREASTS OF ALL THE MOTHERS! as Owen Meany had said. Then the dummy rolled again; bubbles of air escaped from the body, and “The Lady in Red” sank into the channel off the breakwater at Rye Harbor, where Owen Meany had firmly believed he had a right to sit and watch the sea.
I saw the sun come up, like a bright marble on the granite-gray surface of the Atlantic. I drove to the apartment I shared with Hester in Durham and took a shower and dressed for Owen’s funeral. I didn’t know where Hester was, but I didn’t care; I already knew how she felt about his funeral. I’d last seen Hester at 80 Front Street; with my grandmother, Hester and I had watched Bobby Kennedy be killed in Los Angeles—over and over again. That was when Hester had said: “Television gives good disaster.”
Owen had never said a word to me about Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. That had happened in June 1968, when time was running out on Owen Meany. I’m sure that Owen was too preoccupied with his own death to have anything to say about Bobby Kennedy’s.
It was early in the morning, and I kept so few things in Hester’s apartment, it was no trouble to pack up what I wanted; mostly books. Owen had kept some books at Hester’s, too, and I packed one of them—C. S. Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms. Owen had circled a favorite sentence: “I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself.” After I finished packing—and I’d left Hester a check for my share of the rent for the rest of the summer—I still had time to kill, so I read parts of Owen’s diary; I looked at the more disjointed entries, which were composed in a grocery-list style, as if he’d been making notes to himself. I learned that huachuca—as in Fort Huachuca—means “mountain of the winds.” And there were several pages of Vietnamese vocabulary and expressions—Owen had paid special attention to “COMMAND FORMS OF VERBS.” Two commands were written out several times—the pronunciation was emphasized; Owen had spelled the Vietnamese phonetically.
“NAM SOON—‘LIE DOWN’! DOONG SA—‘DON’T BE AFRAID’!”
I read that part over and over again, until I felt I had the pronunciation right. There was quite a good pencil drawing of a phoenix, that mythical bird that was supposed to burn itself on a funeral pyre and then rise up from its own ashes. Under the drawing, Owen had written: “OFTEN A SYMBOL OF REBORN IDEALISM, OR HOPE—OR AN EMBLEM OF IMMORTALITY.” And on another page, jotted hastily in the margin—with no connection to anything else on the page—he had scrawled: “THIRD DRAWER, RIGHT-HAND SIDE.” This marginalia was not emphasized; in no way had he indicated that this was a message for me—but certainly, I thought, he must have remembered that time when he’d sat at Mr. Merrill’s desk, talking to Dan and me and opening and closing the desk drawers, without appearing to notice the contents.
Of course, he had seen the baseball—he had known then who my father was—but Owen Meany’s faith was huge; he had also known that God would tell me who my father was. Owen believed it was unnecessary to tell me himself. Besides: he knew it would only disappoint me.
Then I flipped to one of the parts of the diary where he’d mentioned me.
“THE HARDEST THING I EVER HAD TO DO WAS TO CUT OFF MY BEST FRIEND’S FINGER! WHEN THIS IS OVER, MY BEST FRIEND SHOULD MAKE A CLEAN BREAK FROM THE PAST—HE SHOULD SIMPLY START OVER AGAIN. JOHN SHOULD GO TO CANADA. I’M SURE IT’S A NICE COUNTRY TO LIVE IN—AND THIS COUNTRY IS MORALLY EXHAUSTED.”
Then I flipped to the end of the diary and reread his last entry.
“TODAY’S THE DAY! ‘… HE THAT BELIEVETH IN ME, THOUGH HE WERE DEAD, YET SHALL HE LIVE; AND WHOSOEVER LIVETH AND BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL NEVER DIE.’”
Then I closed Owen’s diary and packed it with the rest of my things. Grandmother was an early riser; there were a few photographs of her, and of my mother, that I wanted from 80 Front Street—and more of my clothes. I wanted to have breakfast in the rose garden with Grandmother; there was still a lot of time before Owen’s funeral—enough time to tell Grandmother where I was going.
Then I drove over to Waterhouse Hall and told Dan Needham what my plans were; also, Dan had something I wanted to take with me, and I knew he wouldn’t object—he’d been bashing his toes on it for years! I wanted the granite doorstop that Owen had made for Dan and my mother, his wedding present to them, the lettering in his famous, gravestone style—JULY 1952—and neatly beveled along the sides, and perfectly edged at the corners; it was crude, but it had been Owen’s earliest known work with the diamond wheel, and I wanted it. Dan told me that he understood everything, and that he loved me.
I told him: “You’re the best father a boy ever had—and the only father I ever needed.”
Then it was time for Owen Meany’s funeral.
Our own Gravesend chief of police, Ben Pike, stood at the heavy double doors of Hurd’s Church—as if he intended to frisk Owen Meany’s mourners for the “murder weapon,” the long-lost “instrument of death”; I was tempted to tell the bastard where he could find the fucking baseball. Fat Mr. Chickering was there, still grieving that he’d decided to let Owen Meany bat for me—that he’d told Owen to “swing away.” The Thurstons—Buzzy’s parents—were there, although they were Catholics and only recently had attended their own son’s funeral. And the Catholic priest—Father Findley—he was there, as was Mrs. Hoyt, despite how badly the town had treated her for her “anti-American” draft-counseling activities. Rector Wiggin and Barb Wiggin were not in attendance; they had so fervently sought to hold Owen’s service in Christ Church, no doubt they were miffed that they’d been rejected. Captain Wiggin, that crazed ex-pilot, had claimed that nothing could please him more than a bang-up funeral for a hero.
A unit of the New Hampshire National Guard provided a local funeral detail; they served as Owen’s so-called honor guard. Owen had once told me that they do this for money—they get one day’s pay. The casualty assistance officer—Owen’s body escort—was a young, frightened-looking first lieutenant who rendered a military salute more frequently than I thought was required of him; it was his first tour of duty in the Casualty Branch. The so-called survivor assistance officer was none other than Owen’s favorite professor of Military Science from the University of New Hampshire; Colonel Eiger greeted me most solemnly at the heavy double doors.
“I guess we were wrong about your little friend,” Colonel Eiger said to me.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“He proved he was quite suitable for combat,” Colonel Eiger said.
“Yes, sir,” I said. The colonel put his liver-spotted hand on my shoulder; then he stepped to one side of the heavy double doors and stood at attention, as if he meant to challenge Chief Ben Pike’s position of authority.
The honor guard, in white spats and white gloves, strode down the aisle in bridal cadence and smartly split to each side of the flag-draped casket, where Owen’s medal—pinned to the flag—brightly reflected the beam of sunlight that shone through the hole the baseball had made in the stained-glass window of the chancel. In the routine gloom of the old stone church, this unfamiliar beam of light appeared to be drawn to the bright gold of Owen’s medal—as if the light itself had burned a hole in the dark stained glass; as if the light had been searching for Owen Meany.
A stern, sawed-off soldier, whom Colonel Eiger had referred
to as a master sergeant, whispered something to the honor guard, who stood at parade rest and glanced anxiously at Colonel Eiger and the first lieutenant who was serving his first duty as a body escort. Colonel Eiger whispered something to the first lieutenant.
The congregation coughed; they creaked in the old, worn pews. The organ cranked out one dirge after another while the stragglers found their seats. Although Mr. Early was one of the ushers, and Dan Needham was another, most of the ushers were quarrymen—I recognized the derrickman and the dynamiters; I nodded to the signalman and the sawyers, and the channel bar drillers. These men looked like granite itself—its great strength can withstand a pressure of twenty thousand pounds per square inch. Granite, like lava, was once melted rock; but it did not rise to the earth’s surface—it hardened deep underground; and because it hardened slowly, it formed fairly large crystals.
Mr. and Mrs. Meany occupied the front right-center pew of Hurd’s Church all by themselves. They sat like upheaved slabs of granite, not moving, their eyes fixed upon the dazzling medal that winked in the beam of sunlight on top of Owen’s casket. The Meanys stared intently; they viewed their son’s casket with much the same strangled awe that had shone in their eyes when the little Lord Jesus had spotted them in the congregation at the Christ Church Christmas Pageant of 1953—when Owen had basked in the “pillar of light.” The alertness and anxiety in the Meanys’ expressions suggested to me that they remembered how Owen had reproached them for their uninvited attendance at that Nativity.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING HERE?” the angry Lord Jesus had screamed at them. “YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE!” Owen had shouted. “IT IS A SACRILEGE FOR YOU TO BE HERE!”
That is what I thought about Owen’s funeral: that it was a SACRILEGE for the Meanys to be there. And their nervous fixation upon Owen’s medal, pinned to the American flag, suggested that the Meanys quite possibly feared that Owen might rise up from his casket as he had risen up from the mountain of hay in the manger—and once again reproach his parents. They had actually told a ten- or eleven-year-old boy that he’d had a “virgin birth”—that he was “like the Christ Child”!
At Owen’s funeral in Hurd’s Church, I found myself praying that Owen would rise up from his closed casket and shout at his poor parents: “YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE!” But Owen Meany didn’t move, or speak.
Mr. Fish looked very frail; yet he sat beside my grandmother in the second row of right-center pews and fixed his gaze upon the shining medal on Owen Meany’s casket—as if Mr. Fish also hoped that Owen would give us one more performance; as if Mr. Fish could not believe that, in this production, Owen Meany had not been given a speaking part.
My Uncle Alfred and Aunt Martha also sat in Grandmother’s pew; none of us had mentioned Hester’s absence; even Simon—who was also seated in Grandmother’s pew—had restrained himself from speaking about Hester. The Eastmans more comfortably discussed how sorry they were that Noah couldn’t be there—Noah was still in Africa, teaching proper forestry to the Nigerians. I’ll never forget what Simon said to me when I told him I was going to Canada.
“Canada! That’s gonna be one of the biggest problems facing northeastern lumber mills—you wait and see!” Simon said. “Those Canadians are gonna export their lumber at a much lower cost than we’re gonna produce it here!”
Good old Simon: not a political bone in his body; I doubt it occurred to him that I wasn’t going to Canada for the lumber.
I recognized the Prelude, from Handel’s Messiah—“I know that my Redeemer liveth.” I also recognized the pudgy man across the aisle from me; he was about my age, and he’d been staring at me. But it wasn’t until he began to search the high, vaulted ceiling of Hurd’s Church—perhaps seeking angels in the shadowy buttresses—that I realized I was in the presence of Fat Harold Crosby, the former Announcing Angel who’d flubbed his lines and needed prompting, and who’d been abandoned in the heavens of Christ Church in the Nativity of ’53. I nodded to Harold, who smiled tearfully at me; I’d heard that Mrs. Hoyt had successfully coached him into acquiring a 4-F deferment from the draft—for psychological reasons.
I did not, at first, recognize our old Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Walker. She looked especially severe in black, and without her sharp criticisms of Owen Meany—to get back to his seat, to get down from up there!—I did not instantly remember her as the Sunday school tyrant who was stupid enough to think that Owen Meany had put himself up in the air.
The Dowlings were there, not seizing the opportunity to use this occasion to flaunt their much-embattled, sexual role reversals; they had—and probably this was for the best—never had a child. Larry O’Day, the Chevy dealer, was also there; he’d played Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol—in that notable year when Owen Meany had played the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. He was with his racy daughter, Caroline O’Day, who sat with her lifelong friend Maureen Early, who’d twice wet her pants while watching Owen Meany show Scrooge his future—it was Caroline who had many times rejected my advances, both while wearing and not wearing her St. Michael’s uniform. Even Mr. Kenmore, the A&P butcher, was there—with Mrs. Kenmore and their son Donny, such faithful fans that they had never missed a Little League game. Yes, they were all there—even Mr. Morrison, the cowardly mailman; even he was there! And the new headmaster of Gravesend Academy; he’d never met Owen Meany—yet he was there, perhaps acknowledging that he wouldn’t have been made the new headmaster if Owen Meany hadn’t lost the battle but won the war with Randy White. And if old Archie Thorndike had been alive, I know that he would have been there, too.
The Brinker-Smiths were not in attendance; I’m sure they would have come, had they not moved back to England—so firm was their opposition to the war in Vietnam that they hadn’t wanted their twins to be Americans. Wherever the Brinker-Smiths were, I hoped that they still loved each other as passionately as they once loved each other—on all the floors, in all the beds—in Waterhouse Hall.
And our old friend the retarded janitor from the Gravesend gym—the man who’d so faithfully timed the shot, who’d been our witness the first time we sank the shot in under three seconds!—had also come to pay his respects to the little Slam-Dunk Master!
Then a cloud passed over the hole the baseball had made in the stained-glass window of the chancel; Owen’s gold medal glowed a little less insistently. My grandmother, who was trembling, held my hand as we rose to join in the processional hymn—not meaning to, Grandmother squeezed the stump of my amputated finger. As Colonel Eiger and the young first lieutenant approached the casket from the center aisle, the honor guard came stiffly to attention. We sang the hymn we’d sung at morning meeting, the morning Owen had bolted the headless and armless Mary Magdalene to the podium on the stage of The Great Hall.
The Son of God goes forth to war, A king-ly crown to gain;
His blood-red ban-ner streams a-far; Who fol-lows in his train?
Who best can drink his cup of woe, Tri-um-phant o-ver pain,
Who pa-tient bears his cross be-low, He fol-lows in his train.
There is a note following “An Order for Burial” in The Book of Common Prayer—according to the use of the Episcopal Church. This note is very sensible. “The liturgy for the dead is an Easter liturgy,” the note says. “It finds all its meaning in the resurrection. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we, too, shall be raised. The liturgy, therefore, is characterized by joy …” the notes goes on. “This joy, however, does not make human grief unchristian …” the note concludes. And so we sang our hearts out for Owen Meany—aware that while the liturgy for the dead might be characterized by joy, our so-called “human grief” did not make us “unchristian.” When we managed to get through the hymn, we sat down and looked up—and there was the Rev. Lewis Merrill, already standing in the pulpit.
“‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord …’” my father began. There was something newly powerful and confident in his voice, and the mourners heard it; the congregation gave him
their complete attention. Of course, I knew what it was that had changed in him; he had found his lost faith—he spoke with absolute belief in every word he uttered; therefore, he never stuttered.
When he would look up from The Book of Common Prayer, he would gesture with his arms, like a swimmer exercising for the breaststroke, and the fingers of his right hand extended into the shaft of sunlight that plunged through the hole the baseball had made in the stained-glass window; Mr. Merrill’s fingers moving in and out of the beam of light caused Owen Meany’s medal to twinkle.
“‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted …’” Pastor Merrill read to us. “‘… he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,’” cried Mr. Merrill, who had no doubt—his doubt was gone; it had vanished, forever! He scarely paused for breath. “‘… to comfort all who mourn,’” he proclaimed.
But Mr. Merrill was not satisfied; he must have felt that we could not be comforted enough by only Isaiah. My father thought we should also be comforted by Lamentations, from which he read: “‘The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.’” And if that morsel could not satisfy our hunger to be comforted, Pastor Merrill led us further into Lamentations: “‘For the Lord will not cast off for ever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the sons of men.’”
The fingers of my father’s pale hand moved in and out of the shaft of sunlight, like minnows, and Owen’s medal blinked at us as rhythmically as a beacon from a lighthouse. Then Pastor Merrill exhorted us through that familiar psalm: “‘The Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in, from this time forth for evermore.’”
Thus he led us into the New Testament Lesson, beginning with that little bit of bravery from Romans: “‘I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us.’” But Lewis Merrill would not rest; for we missed Owen Meany so much that we ached for him, and Pastor Merrill would not rest until he’d assured us that Owen had left us for a better world. My father flung himself full-tilt into First Corinthians.