by John Irving
What else do we sing at an untimely death, what else but that catchy number that is categorized in The Pilgrim Hymnal as a favorite hymn of "ascension and reign"-the popular "Crown Him with Many Crowns," a real organ-breaker? For when else, if not at the death of a loved one, do we most need to hear about the resurrection, about eternal life-about him who has risen! Crown him with man-y crowns, The Lamb up-on his throne; Hark! how the heaven-ly an-them drowns All mu-sic but its own;
A-wake, my soul, and sing Of him who died for thee, And hail him as thy match-less king Through all e-ter-ni-ty. Crown him the Lord of love; Be-hold his hands and side, Rich wounds, yet vis-i-ble above, In beau-ty glo-ri-fied; No an-gel in the sky Can ful-ly bear that sight, But down-ward bends his burn-ing eye At mys-ter-ies so bright.
But it was the third verse that especially inspired Owen. CROWN HIM THE LORD OF LIFE, WHO TRI-UMPHED O'ER THE GRAVE, AND ROSE VIC-TO-RIOUS IN THE STRIFE FOR THOSE HE CAME TO SAVE; HIS GLO-RIES NOW WE SING WHO DIED AND ROSE ON HIGH, WHO DIED, E-TER-NAL LIFE TO BRING, AND LIVES THAT DEATH MAY DIE. Even later, at the committal, I could hear Owen's awful voice ringing, when Mr. Wiggin said, " 'In the midst of life we are in death.' " But it was as if Owen were still humming the tune to "Crown Him with Many Crowns," because I seemed to hear nothing else; I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them, and repeat them; they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable. Certainly, the burial is unacceptable; doubly so, in my mother's case, because-after the reassuring numbness of Kurd's Church-we were standing exposed, outside, on a typical Gravesend summer day, muggy and hot, with the inappropriate sounds of children's voices coming from the nearby high-school athletic fields. The cemetery, at the end of Linden Street, was within sight of the high school and the junior high school. I would attend the latter for only two years, but that was long enough to hear-many times-the remarks most frequently made by those students who were trapped in the study hall and seated nearest the windows that faced the cemetery: something to the effect that they would be less bored out there, in the graveyard.
"In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our sister Tabitha, and we commit her body to the ground," Pastor Merrill said. That was when I noticed that Mr. Merrill's wife was holding her ears. She was terribly pale, except for the plump backs of her upper arms, which were painful to look at because her sunburn there was so intense; she wore a loose, sleeveless dress, more gray than black-but maybe she didn't have a proper black dress that was sleeveless, and she could not have been expected to force such a sunburn into sleeves. She swayed slightly, squinting her eyes. At first I thought that she held her ears due to some near-blinding pain inside her head; her dry blond hair looked ready to burst into flames, and one of her feet had strayed out of the straps of her sandals. One of her sickly children leaned against her hip. " 'Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' " said her husband, but Mrs. Merrill couldn't have heard him; she not only held her ears, she appeared to be pressing them into her skull. Hester had noticed. She stared at Mrs. Merrill as intently as I stared at her; all at once Hester's tough face was constricted by pain-or by some sudden, painful memory-and she, too, covered her ears. But the tune to "Crown Him with Many Crowns" was still in my head; I didn't hear what Mrs. Merrill and Hester heard. I thought they were both guilty of extraordinary rudeness toward Pastor Merrill, who was doing his best with the benediction-although he was rushing now, and even the usually unflappable Captain Wiggin was shaking his head, as if to rid his ears of water or an unpleasant sound.
" 'The Lord bless her and keep her,' " Lewis Merrill said. That was when I looked at Owen. His eyes were shut, his lips were moving; he appeared to be growling, but it was the best he could do at humming-it was "Crown Him with Many Crowns" that I heard; it was not my imagination. But Owen held his hands over his ears, too. Then I saw Simon raise his hands; Noah's hands were already in place-and my Uncle Alfred and my Aunt Martha:
they held their ears, too. Even Lydia held her ears in her hands. My grandmother glowered, but she would not raise her hands; she made herself listen, although I could tell it was painful for her to hear it-and that was when / heard it: the children on the high-school athletic fields. They were playing baseball. There were the usual shouts, the occasional arguments, the voices coming all at once; and then the quiet, or almost quiet, was punctuated-as baseball games always are--by the crack of the bat. There it went, a pretty solid-sounding hit, and I watched even the rocklike face of Mr. Meany wince, his fingers close on Owen's shoulders. And Mr. Merrill, stuttering worse than usual, said, " 'The Lord make his face to shine upon her and be gracious unto her, the Lord lift up his countenance upon her and give her peace. Amen.' "
He immediately bent down and took some loose dirt in his hand; he was the first to cast earth upon my mother's coffin, where I knew she wore a black dress-the one she'd copied from the red dress, which she'd hated. The white copy, Dan had said, did not look so good on her; I guessed that her death had ill-affected her tan. I'd already been told that the swelling at her temple, and the surrounding discoloration, had made an open coffin inadvisable-not that we Wheelwrights were much for open coffins, under any circumstances; Yankees believe in closed doors. One by one, the mourners threw dirt on the coffin; then it was awkward to return their hands to their ears-although Hester did, before she thought better of it. The heel of her dirty hand put a smudge on her ear and on the side of her face. Owen would not throw a handful of dirt; I also saw that he would not take his hands from his ears. He would not open his eyes, either, and his father had to walk him out of the cemetery. Twice, I heard him say, "I'M SORRY!"
I heard a few more cracks of the bat before Dan Needham took me to Front Street. At Grandmother's, there was just "family." My Aunt Martha led me up to my old room and we sat on my old bed together. She told me that I could come live with her and Uncle Alfred and Noah and Simon and Hester, "up north," where I would always be welcome; she hugged me and kissed me and told me to never forget that there was always that option. Then my grandmother came to my room: she shooed Aunt Martha away and she sat beside me. She told me that if I didn't mind living with an old woman, I was certainly welcome to have my room back-that it would always be my room, that no one else would ever have any claim to it. She hugged me and kissed me, too; she said that we both had to be sure that we gave a lot of love and attention to Dan. Dan was next. He sat on my bed, too. He reminded me that he had legally adopted me; that although I was Johnny Wheelwright to everyone in Gravesend, I was as good as a Johnny Needham, to the school, and that meant that I could go to Graveseriti Academy-when the time came, and just as my mother had wanted me to-as a legitimate faculty child, just as if I were Dan's actual son. Dan said he thought of me as his son, anyway, and he would never take a job that took him away from Gravesend Academy until I'd had the chance to graduate. He said he'd understand if I found Front Street more comfortable than his dormitory apartment, but that he liked having me live in his apartment, with him, if I wasn't too bored with the confinement of the place. Maybe I'd prefer to spend some nights every week with him, and some nights at Front Street-any nights I wished, in either place. I said I thought that would be fine, and I asked him to tell Aunt Martha-in a way that wouldn't hurt her feelings-that I really was a Gravesend boy and I didn't want to move "up north." Actually, the very thought of living with my cousins exhausted and terrified me, and I was convinced I should be consumed by sinful longing for unnatural acts with Hester if I permitted myself to move in with the Eastmans. (I did not tell Dan that he should tell Aunt Martha that.) When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time-the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes-when there's a
particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever- there comes another day, and another specifically missing part. The evening after her funeral, I felt she was gone when it was time for Dan to go home to the dorm. I realized that Dan had choices-he could return to his dormitory apartment, alone, or I could offer to go back with him; or he could stay at Front Street, he could even stay in the other twin bed in my room because I'd already told my grandmother that I didn't want Noah or Simon sleeping there that night. But as soon as I realized what Dan's choices were, I also knew they were-
each of them-imperfect in their own way. I realized that the choices available to Dan, regarding where he would sleep, would be imperfect, forever; and that, forever, there would be something unsatisfying about thinking of him alone-and something also incomplete about him being with me.
"Do you want me to come back to the dorm with you?" I asked him.
"Would you like me to stay with you?" he asked me. But what did it matter? I watched him walk down Front Street toward the lights of the academy buildings. It was a warm night, with the frequent banging of screen doors and the sounds of rocking chairs on the screened-in porches. The neighborhood kids were playing some game with a flashlight; fortunately, it was too dark for even the most American of kids to be hitting a baseball. My cousins were uncharacteristically subdued by the tragedy. Noah kept saying "I can't believe it!" Then he'd put his hand on my shoulder. And Simon rather tactlessly, but innocently, added: "Who would have thought he could hit a ball hard enough?"
My Aunt Martha curled up on the living-room couch with her head in Uncle Alfred's lap; she lay there not moving, like a little girl with an earache. My grandmother sat in her usual thronelike chair in the same room; she and Alfred would occasionally exchange glances and shake their heads. Once Aunt Martha sat up with her hair a mess and pounded her fist on the coffee table. "It doesn't make any sense I" she shouted; then she put her head back down in Uncle Alfred's lap, and cried for a while. To this outburst, my grandmother neither shook nor nodded her head; she looked at the ceiling, ambiguously-either seeking restraint or patience there, or seeking some possible sense, which Martha had found to be lacking. Hester had not changed out of her funeral dress; it was black linen, of a simplicity and good fit that my mother might have favored, and Hester looked especially grown-up in it, although it was badly wrinkled. She kept pinning her hair up on top of her head, because of the heat, but wild strands of it would fall down on her face and neck until, exasperated, she would let it all down again. The fine beads of sweat on her upper lip gave her skin the smoothness and the shine of glass.
"Want to take a walk?" she asked me.
"Sure," I said.
"Want Noah and me to go with you?" Simon asked.
"No," Hester said. Most of the houses on Front Street still had their downstairs lights on; dogs were still outside, and barking; but the kids who'd been playing the flashlight game had been called inside. The heat off the sidewalk still radiated up at you; on hot summer nights, in Gravesend, the heat hit your crotch first. Hester took my hand as we walked.
"It's only the second time I've seen you in a dress," I said.
"I know," she said. It was an especially dark night, cloudy and starless; the moon was just an opaque sliver in the fog.
"Just remember," she said, "your friend Owen feels worse than you."
"I know," I said; but I felt no small surge of jealousy at my admission-and at the knowledge that Hester was thinking about Owen, too. We left Front Street at the Gravesend Inn; I hesitated before crossing Pine Street, but Hester seemed to know our destination-her hand tugged me along. Once we were on Linden Street, passing the dark high school, it was clear to both of us where we were going. There was a police car in the high-school parking lot-on the lookout for vandals, I suppose, or else to prevent the high-school students from using the parking lot and the athletic fields for illicit purposes at night. We could hear a motor running; it seemed too deep and throaty a motor to be the squad car, and after we passed the high school, the engine noise grew louder. I didn't believe that a motor was required to run the cemetery, but that's where the sound was coming from. I think now that I must have wanted to see her grave at night, knowing how she hated the darkness; I believe I wanted to reassure myself that some light penetrated even the cemetery at night. The streetlights on Linden Street shone some distance into the cemetery and clearly illuminated the Meany Granite Company truck, which was parked and idling at the main gate; Hester and I could observe Mr. Meany's solemn face behind the steering wheel, his face illuminated by the long drags he took from his cigarette. He was alone in the cab of the truck, but I knew where Owen was. Mr. Meany seemed unsurprised to see me, although Hester made him nervous. Hester made everyone nervous: in good light, in close-up, she looked her age-like a large, overly
mature twelve-year-old. But from any distance, with any assistance from the shadows, she looked eighteen-and like a lot of trouble, too.
"Owen had some more to say," Mr. Meany confided to us. "But he's been at it a while. I'm sure he's about finished."
I felt another rush of jealousy, to think that Owen's concerns for my mother's first night underground had preceded my own. In the humid air, the diesel exhaust was heavy and foul, but I was sure that Mr. Meany could not be prevailed upon to turn the engine off; probably he was keeping the engine running in an effort to hurry up Owen's prayers.
"I want you to know somethin'," Mr. Meany said. "I'm gonna listen to what your mother said. She told me not to interfere if Owen wanted to go to the academy. And I won't," he said. "I promised her," he added. It would take me years to realize that from the moment Owen hit that ball, Mr. Meany wouldn't "interfere" with anything Owen wanted.
"She told me not to worry about the money, too," Mr. Meany said. "I don't know what happens about that-now," he added.
"Owen will get a full scholarship," I said.
"I don't know about that," Mr. Meany said. "I guess so, if he wants one," he added. "Your mother was speakin' about his clothes," Mr. Meany said. "All them coats and ties."
"Don't worry," I told him.
"Oh, I ain't worryin'!" he said. "I'm just promisin' you I ain't interferin'-that's the point."
A light blinked from the cemetery, and Mr. Meany saw Hester and me look in its direction.
"He's got a light with him," Mr. Meany said. "I don't know what's takin' him so long," he said. "He's been in there long enough." He stepped on the accelerator then, as if a little rev would hurry Owen along. But after a while, he said, "Maybe you better go see what's keepin' him."
The light in the cemetery was faint and Hester and I walked toward it cautiously, not wanting to tread on other people's flowers or bark our shins on one of the smaller graves. The farther we walked from the Meany Granite Company truck, the more the engine noise receded-but it seemed deeper, too, as if it were the motor at the core of the earth, the one that turned the earth and changed day to night. We could hear snatches of Owen's prayers; I thought he must have brought the flashlight so he could read The Book of Common Prayer-perhaps he was reading every prayer in it.
" 'INTO PARADISE MAY THE ANGELS LEAD YOU,' " he read. Hester and I stopped; she stood behind me and locked her arms around my waist. I could feel her breasts against my shoulder blades, and-because she was a little taller-I could feel her throat against the back of my head; her chin pushed my head down.
" 'FATHER OF ALL,' " Owen read. " 'WE PRAY TO YOU FOR THOSE WE LOVE, BUT SEE NO LONGER.' " Hester squeezed me, she kissed my ears. Mr. Meany revved the truck, but Owen did not appear to notice; he knelt in front of the first bank of flowers, at the foot of the mound of new earth, in front of my mother's gravestone. He had the prayer book flat upon the ground in front of him, the flashlight pinched between his knees.
"Owen?" I said, but he didn't hear me. "Owen!" I said more loudly. He looked up, but not at me; I mean, he looked up-he'd heard his name called, but he hadn't recognized my voice.
&
nbsp; "I HEAR YOU!" he shouted angrily. "WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT DO YOU WANT OF ME?"
"Owen, it's me," I said; I felt Hester gasp behind me. It had suddenly occurred to her-Whom Owen thought he was speaking to.
"It's me, and Hester," I added, because it occurred to me that the figure of Hester standing behind me, and appearing to loom over me, might also be misunderstood by Owen Meany, who was ever-watchful for that angel he had frightened from my mother's room.
"OH, IT'S YOU," Owen said; he sounded disappointed. "HELLO, HESTER. I DIDN'T RECOGNIZE YOU-YOU LOOK SO GROWN-UP IN A DRESS. I'M SORRY," Owen said.
"It's okay, Owen," I said.
"HOW'S DAN?" he asked. I told him that Dan was okay, but that he'd gone to his dormitory, alone, for the night; this news made Owen very businesslike.
"I SUPPOSE THE DUMMY'S STILL THERE? IN THE DINING ROOM?" he asked.
"Of course," I said.
"WELL, THAT'S VERY BAD," Owen said. "DAN SHOULDN'T BE ALONE WITH THAT DUMMY. WHAT IF HE JUST SITS AROUND AND STARES AT IT? WHAT IF HE WAKES UP IN THE NIGHT AND HE SEES IT STANDING THERE ON HIS WAY TO THE REFRIGERATOR? WE SHOULD GO GET IT-RIGHT NOW."
He arranged his flashlight in the flowers, so that the shiny body of the light was completely blanketed by the flowers and the light itself shone upon the mound. Then he stood up and brushed the dirt off the knees of his pants. He closed his prayer book and looked at how the light fell over my mother's grave; he seemed pleased. I was not the only one who knew how my mother had hated the darkness. We couldn't all fit in the cab of the granite truck, so Owen sat with Hester and me on the dusty floor of the flatbed trailer while Mr. Meany drove us to Dan's dorm. The senior students were up; we passed them on the stairwell and in the hall-some of them were in their pajamas, and all of them ogled Hester. I could hear the ice cubes rattling in Dan's glass before he opened the door.
