by John Irving
“You find a woman here, I’ll pay for the motel,” Rawls said to me. “I’ve been working this scene for two nights—this is my third. I tell you, there’s not one woman you’d dare to put a move on—not here. The best thing I’ve seen is the pregnant sister—imagine that!”
Dutifully, I imagined it: the pregnant sister was the only one who tried to be nice to us; she tried to be especially nice to Owen.
“It’s a very hard job you have,” she told him.
“IT’S NOT AS HARD AS BEING IN VIETNAM,” he said politely.
The pregnant sister had a hard job, too, I thought; she looked as if she needed to make a nearly constant effort not to be beaten by her mother or her father, or raped by the latter, or raped and beaten by her younger half brother—or some combination of, or all of, the above.
Owen said to her: “I’M WORRIED ABOUT YOUR BROTHER—I MEAN YOUR HALF BROTHER, THE TALL BOY. I’LL HAVE A WORD WITH HIM. WHERE IS HE?”
The girl looked too frightened to speak.
Then she said: “I know you have to give my mother the flag—at the funeral. I know what my mother’s gonna do—when you give her the flag. She said she’s gonna spit on you,” the pregnant sister told Owen. “And I know her—she will!” the girl said. “She’ll spit in your face!”
“IT HAPPENS, SOMETIMES,” Owen said. “WHERE’S THE TALL BOY—YOUR HALF BROTHER? WHAT’S HIS NAME?”
“If Vietnam hadn’t killed that bastard, somethin’ else would have—that’s what I say!” said the pregnant sister, who quickly looked around, fearful that someone in the family might have overheard her.
“DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE FUNERAL,” Owen told her. “WHERE’S THE TALL BOY? WHAT’S HIS NAME?” There was a closed door off a narrow hall, and the girl cautiously pointed to it.
“Don’t tell him I told you,” she whispered.
“WHAT’S HIS NAME?” Owen asked her.
She looked around, to make sure no one was watching her; there was a gob of mustard on the swollen belly of her wrinkled dress. “Dick!” she said; then she moved away.
Owen knocked on the door.
“Watch yourself, Meany,” Major Rawls said. “I know the police, at the airport—they never take their eyes off this guy.”
Owen knocked on the door a little more insistently.
“Fuck you!” Dick shouted through the closed door.
“YOU’RE TALKING TO AN OFFICER!” said Owen Meany.
“Fuck you, sir!” Dick said.
“THAT’S BETTER,” Owen said. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE—BEATING OFF?”
Major Rawls pushed Owen and me out of the path of the door; we were all standing clear of the door when Dick opened it. He was wearing a different pair of fatigue pants, he was barefoot and bare-chested, and he’d blackened his face with something like shoe polish—as if, after the merrymakers all settled down, he planned to engage in undercover activities in the dangerous neighborhood. With the same black marker, he had drawn circles around his nipples—like twin bull’s-eyes on his chest.
“Come on in,” he said, stepping back into his room, where—no doubt—he dreamed without cease of butchering the Viet Cong.
The room reeked of marijuana; Dick finished the small nub of a roach he held with a pair of tweezers—not offering us the last toke. The dead helicopter pilot, the warrant officer, was named Frank Jarvits—but Dick preferred to call him by his “Cong killer name,” the name his buddies in ’Nam had given him, which was “Hubcap.” Dick showed us, proudly, all the souvenirs that Hubcap had managed to smuggle home from Vietnam. There were several bayonets, several machetes, a collection of plastic-encased “water beetles,” and one helmet with an overripe sweatband—with the possessive “Hubcap’s Hat” written on the band in what appeared to be blood. There was an AK-47 assault rifle that Dick broke down into the stock group, the barrel, the receiver, the bolt—and so forth. Then he quickly reassembled the Soviet-made weapon. His stoned eyes flickered with a passing, brief excitement in gaining our approval; he’d wanted to show us how Hubcap had broken down the rifle in order to smuggle it home. There were two Chicom grenades, too—those bottle-shaped grenades, with the fat part serrated and the fuse cord at the pipelike end of the bottleneck.
“They don’t blow as good as ours, but you can get sent to Leaven-worth for sneakin’ home an M-sixty-seven—Hubcap told me,” Dick said. He stared sadly at the two Chinese-made grenades; then he picked up one. “Fuckin’ Chink Commie shit,” he said, “but it’ll still do a job on ya.” He showed us how the warrant officer had taped up the end of the grenade, where the firing-pin cord is; then Hubcap had taped up the whole grenades in cardboard, placing one of them in a shaving kit and the other in a combat boot. “They just come home like carry-on luggage,” Dick told us.
Apparently, various “buddies” had been involved in bringing home the AK-47 assault rifle; different guys brought home different parts. “That’s how it’s done,” Dick said wisely—his head still nodding to whatever tune the pot was playing to him. “It got tough after sixty-six, ’cause of the drug traffickin’—everyone’s gear got inspected more, you know,” he said.
The walls of the room were festooned with hanging cartridge belts and an assortment of fatigues and unmatching parts of uniforms. The ungainly boy lived for reaching the legal age for legal slaughter.
“How come you ain’t in ’Nam?” Dick asked Owen. “You too small—or what?”
Owen chose to ignore him, but Major Rawls said: “Lieutenant Meany has requested transfer to Vietnam—he’s scheduled to go there.”
“How come you ain’t over there?” Dick asked the major.
“‘HOW COME YOU AIN’T OVER THERE,’ SIR!” said Owen Meany.
Dick shut his eyes and smiled; he dozed off, or dreamed away, for a second or two. Then he said to Major Rawls: “How come you ain’t over there, sir?”
“I’ve already been there,” Rawls said.
“How come you ain’t back there?” Dick asked him. “Sir…” he added nastily.
“I’ve got a better job here,” Major Rawls told the boy.
“Well, someone’s got to have the dirty jobs—ain’t that how it is?” Dick said.
“WHEN YOU GET IN THE ARMY, WHAT KIND OF JOB DO YOU THINK YOU’LL HAVE?” Owen asked the boy. “WITH YOUR ATTITUDE, YOU WON’T GET TO VIETNAM—YOU WON’T GO TO WAR, YOU’LL GO TO JAIL. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE SMART TO GO TO WAR,” said Owen Meany. “BUT YOU HAVE TO BE SMARTER THAN YOU.”
The boy closed his eyes and smiled again; his head nodded a little. Major Rawls picked up a pencil and tapped it on the barrel of the assault rifle. That brought Dick, momentarily, back to life.
“You better not bring this baby to the airport, pal,” Major Rawls said. “You better never show up there with the rifle, or with the grenades,” the major said. When the boy shut his eyes again, Rawls tapped him on his forehead with the pencil. The boy’s eyes blinked open; hatred came and went in them—a drifting, passing hatred, like clouds or smoke. “I’m not even sure those bayonets or machetes are legal—you understand me?” Major Rawls said. “You better be sure you keep them in their sheaths,” he said.
“Sometimes the cops take ’em from me—sometimes they give ’em back the same day,” Dick said. I could count each of his ribs, and his stomach muscles. He saw me staring at him and he said: “Who’s the guy outta uniform?”
“HE’S IN INTELLIGENCE,” Owen said. Dick appeared impressed, but—like his hatred—the feeling drifted and passed.
“You carry a gun?” Dick asked me.
“NOT THAT KIND OF INTELLIGENCE,” said Owen Meany, and Dick closed his eyes again—there being, in his view, clearly no intelligence that didn’t carry a gun.
“I’M SORRY ABOUT YOUR BROTHER,” Owen said—as we were leaving.
“See you at the funeral,” Major Rawls said to the boy.
“I don’t go to fuckin’ funerals!” Dick snapped. “Close the door, Mister Intelligence Man,” he said to me, and I closed it behin
d me.
“That was a nice try, Meany,” Major Rawls said, putting his hand on Owen’s shoulder. “But that fucking kid is beyond saving.”
Owen said, “IT’S NOT UP TO YOU OR ME, SIR—IT’S NOT UP TO US: WHO’S ‘BEYOND SAVING.’”
Major Rawls put his hand on my shoulder. “I tell you,” the major said, “Owen’s too good for this world.”
As we left the turquoise house, the pregnant daughter was trying to revive her mother, who was lying on the kitchen floor. Major Rawls looked at his watch. “She’s right on schedule,” he said. “Same as last night, same as the night before. I tell you, picnics aren’t what they used to be—not to mention, ‘picnic wakes,’” the major said.
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY?” Owen Meany asked. “WE SHOULD ALL BE AT HOME, LOOKING AFTER PEOPLE LIKE THIS. INSTEAD, WE’RE SENDING PEOPLE LIKE THIS TO VIETNAM!”
Major Rawls drove us to our motel—a modestly pretty place of the hacienda-type—where a swimming pool with underwater lights had the disturbing effect of substantially enlarging and misshaping the swimmers. But there weren’t many swimmers, and after Rawls had invited himself to a painfully late dinner—and he’d finally gone home—Owen Meany and I were alone. We sat underwater, in the shallow end of the swimming pool, drinking more and more beer and looking up at the vast, southwestern sky.
“SOMETIMES I WISH I WAS A STAR,” Owen said. “YOU KNOW THAT STUPID SONG—‘ WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR, MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WHO YOU ARE’—I HATE THAT SONG!” he said. “I DON’T WANT TO ‘WISH UPON A STAR,’ I WISH I WAS A STAR—THERE OUGHT TO BE A SONG ABOUT THAT,” said Owen Meany, who was drinking what I estimated to be his sixth or seventh beer.
Major Rawls woke us up with an early-morning telephone call.
“Don’t come to the fucking funeral—the family is raising hell about the service. They want no military to be there, they’re telling us we can keep the American flag—they don’t want it,” the major said.
“THAT’S OKAY WITH ME,” said Owen Meany.
“So you guys can just go back to sleep,” the major said.
“THAT’S OKAY WITH ME, TOO,” Owen told him.
So I never got to meet the famous “asshole minister,” the so-called “traveling Baptist.” Major Rawls told me, later, that the mother had spit on the minister and on the mortician—perhaps regretting that she’d given up her opportunity to spit on Owen when he handed her the American flag.
It was Sunday, July 7, 1968.
After the major called, I went back to sleep; but Owen wrote in his diary.
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY?” he wrote. “THERE IS SUCH A STUPID ‘GET EVEN’ MENTALITY—THERE IS SUCH A SADISTIC ANGER.” He turned on the TV, keeping the volume off; when I woke up, much later, he was still writing in the diary and watching one of those television evangelists—without the sound.
“IT’S BETTER WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO WHAT THEY’RE SAYING,” he said.
In the diary, he wrote: “IS THIS COUNTRY JUST SO HUGE THAT IT NEEDS TO OVERSIMPLIFY EVERYTHING? LOOK AT THE WAR: EITHER WE HAVE A STRATEGY TO ‘WIN’ IT, WHICH MAKES US—IN THE WORLD’S VIEW—MURDERERS; OR ELSE WE ARE DYING, WITHOUT FIGHTING TO WIN. LOOK AT WHAT WE CALL ‘FOREIGN POLICY’: OUR ‘FOREIGN POLICY’ IS A EUPHEMISM FOR PUBLIC RELATIONS, AND OUR PUBLIC RELATIONS GET WORSE AND WORSE. WE’RE BEING DEFEATED AND WE’RE NOT GOOD LOSERS.
“AND LOOK AT WHAT WE CALL ‘RELIGION’: TURN ON ANY TELEVISION ON ANY SUNDAY MORNING! SEE THE CHOIRS OF THE POOR AND UNEDUCATED—AND THESE TERRIBLE PREACHERS, SELLING OLD JESUS-STORIES LIKE JUNK FOOD. SOON THERE’LL BE AN EVANGELIST IN THE WHITE HOUSE; SOON THERE’LL BE A CARDINAL ON THE SUPREME COURT. ONE DAY THERE WILL COME AN EPIDEMIC—I’LL BET ON SOME HUMDINGER OF A SEXUAL DISEASE. AND WHAT WILL OUR PEERLESS LEADERS, OUR HEADS OF CHURCH AND STATE … WHAT WILL THEY SAY TO US? HOW WILL THEY HELP US? YOU CAN BE SURE THEY WON’T CURE US—BUT HOW WILL THEY COMFORT US? JUST TURN ON THE TV—AND HERE’S WHAT OUR PEERLESS LEADERS, OUR HEADS OF CHURCH AND STATE WILL SAY: THEY’LL SAY, ‘I TOLD YOU SO!’ THEY’LL SAY, ‘THAT’S WHAT YOU GET FOR FUCKING AROUND—I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO IT UNTIL YOU GOT MARRIED.’ DOESN’T ANYONE SEE WHAT THESE SIMPLETONS ARE UP TO? THESE SELF-RIGHTEOUS FANATICS ARE NOT ‘RELIGIOUS’—THEIR HOMEY WISDOM IS NOT ‘MORALITY.’
“THAT IS WHERE THIS COUNTRY IS HEADED—IT IS HEADED TOWARD OVERSIMPLIFICATION. YOU WANT TO SEE A PRESIDENT OF THE FUTURE? TURN ON ANY TELEVISION ON ANY SUNDAY MORNING—FIND ONE OF THOSE HOLY ROLLERS: THAT’S HIM, THAT’S THE NEW MISTER PRESIDENT! AND DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE FUTURE OF ALL THOSE KIDS WHO ARE GOING TO FALL IN THE CRACKS OF THIS GREAT, BIG, SLOPPY SOCIETY OF OURS? I JUST MET HIM; HE’S A TALL, SKINNY, FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY NAMED ‘DICK.’ HE’S PRETTY SCARY. WHAT’S WRONG WITH HIM IS NOT UNLIKE WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE TV EVANGELIST—OUR FUTURE PRESIDENT. WHAT’S WRONG WITH BOTH OF THEM IS THAT THEY’RE SO SURE THEY’RE RIGHT! THAT’S PRETTY SCARY—THE FUTURE, I THINK, IS PRETTY SCARY.”
That was when I woke up and saw him pause in his writing. He was staring at the TV preacher, whom he couldn’t hear—the preacher was talking on and on, waving his arms, while behind him stood a choir of men and women in silly robes … they weren’t singing, but they were swaying back and forth, and smiling; all their lips were so firmly and uniformly closed that they appeared to be humming; or else they’d eaten something that had entranced them; or else what the preacher was saying had entranced them.
“Owen, what are you doing?” I asked him.
That was when he said: “IT’S BETTER WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO WHAT THEY’RE SAYING.”
I ordered a big breakfast for us—we had never had room service before! While I took a shower, he wrote a little more in the diary.
“HE DOESN’T KNOW WHY HE’S HERE, AND I DON’T DARE TELL HIM,” Owen wrote. “I DON’T KNOW WHY HE’S HERE—I JUST KNOW HE HAS TO BE HERE! BUT I DON’T EVEN ‘KNOW’ THAT—NOT ANYMORE. IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE! WHERE IS VIETNAM—IN ALL OF THIS? WHERE ARE THOSE POOR CHILDREN? WAS IT JUST A TERRIBLE DREAM? AM I SIMPLY CRAZY? IS TOMORROW JUST ANOTHER DAY?”
“So,” I said—while we were eating breakfast. “What do you want to do today?”
He smiled at me. “IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT WE DO—LET’S JUST HAVE A GOOD TIME,” said Owen Meany.
We inquired at the front desk about where we could play basketball; Owen wanted to practice the shot, of course, and—especially in the staggering midday heat—I thought that a gym would be a nice, cool place to spend a couple of hours. We were sure that Major Rawls could gain us access to the athletic facilities at Arizona State; but we didn’t want to spend the day with Rawls, and we didn’t want to rent our own car and look for a place to play basketball on our own. The guy at the front desk said: “This is a golf and tennis town.”
“IT DOESN’T MATTER,” Owen said. “I’M PRETTY SURE WE’VE PRACTICED THAT DUMB SHOT ENOUGH.”
We tried to take a walk, but I declared that the heat would kill us.
We ate a huge lunch on the patio by the swimming pool; we went in and out of the pool between courses, and when we finished the lunch, we kept drinking beer and cooling off in the pool. We had the place practically to ourselves; the waiters and the bartender kept looking at us—they must have thought we were crazy, or from another planet.
“WHERE ARE ALL THE PEOPLE?” Owen asked the bartender.
“We don’t do a lot of business this time of year,” the bartender said. “What business are you in?” he asked Owen.
“I’M IN THE DYING BUSINESS,” said Owen Meany. Then we sat in the pool, laughing about how the dying business was not a seasonal thing.
About the middle of the afternoon, Owen started playing what he called “THE REMEMBER GAME.”
Owen asked me: “DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU MET MISTER FISH?”
I said I couldn’t remember—it seemed to me that Mr. Fish had always been there.
“I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN,” Owen said. “DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOUR MOTHER WAS WEARING WHEN WE BURIED SAGAMO
RE?”
I couldn’t remember. “IT WAS THAT BLACK V-NECK SWEATER, AND THOSE GRAY FLANNEL SLACKS—OR MAYBE IT WAS A LONG, GRAY SKIRT,” he said.
“I don’t think she had a long, gray skirt,” I said.
“I THINK YOU’RE RIGHT,” he said. “DO YOU REMEMBER DAN’S OLD SPORTS JACKET—THE ONE THAT LOOKED LIKE IT WAS MADE OF CARROTS?”
“It was the color of his hair!” I said.
“THAT’S THE ONE!” said Owen Meany.
“Do you remember Mary Beth Baird’s cow costumes?” I asked him.
“THEY WERE AN IMPROVEMENT ON THE TURTLEDOVES,” he said. “DO YOU REMEMBER THOSE STUPID TURTLEDOVES?”
“Do you remember when Barb Wiggin gave you a hard-on?” I asked him.
“I REMEMBER WHEN GERMAINE GAVE YOU A HARD-ON!” he said.
“Do you remember your first hard-on?” I asked him. We were both silent. I imagined that Hester had given me my first hard-on, and I didn’t want to tell Owen that; and I imagined that my mother might have given Owen his first hard-on, which was probably why he wasn’t answering.
Finally, he said: “IT’S LIKE WHAT YOU SAY ABOUT MISTER FISH—I THINK I ALWAYS HAD A HARD-ON.”
“Do you remember Amanda Dowling?” I asked him.
“DON’T GIVE ME THE SHIVERS!” he said. “DO YOU REMEMBER THE GAME WITH THE ARMADILLO?”
“Of course!” I said. “Do you remember when Maureen Early wet her pants?”
“SHE WET THEM TWICE!” he said. “DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR GRANDMOTHER WAILING LIKE A BANSHEE?”
“I’ll never forget it,” I said. “Do you remember when you untied the rope in the quarry—when you hid yourself, when we were swimming?”
“YOU LET ME DROWN—YOU LET ME DIE,” he said.
We ate dinner by the pool; we drank beer in the pool until long after midnight—when the bartender informed us that he was not permitted to serve us anymore.
“You’re not supposed to be drinking while you’re actually in the pool, anyway,” he said. “You might drown. And I’m supposed to go home,” he said.
“EVERYTHING’S LIKE IN THE ARMY,” Owen said. “RULES, RULES, RULES.”