A prayer for Owen Meany: a novel

by John Irving

  "What's happened to The Voice, Owen?" Mr. Early asked him.

  "THE VOICE HAS LEARNED TO KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT," Owen said.

  "Owen," Dan Needham said, "don't piss off your friends."

  "THE VOICE HAS BEEN CENSORED," said Owen Meany. "JUST TELL THE FACULTY AND THE HEADMASTER THAT THE VOICE IS BUSY-REVISING HIS VALEDICTORY! I GUESS NO ONE CAN THROW ME OUT OF SCHOOL FOR WHAT I SAY AT COMMENCEMENT*"

  Thus did Owen Meany respond to his punishment, by threatening the headmaster and the faculty with The Voice- only momentarily silenced, we all knew; but full of rage, we all were sure. It was that numbskull from Zurich, Dr. Dolder, who proposed to the faculty that Owen Meany should be required to talk with him.

  "Such hostility!" Dr. Dolder said. "He has a talent for speaking out-yes? And now he is withholding his talent from us, he is denying himself the pleasure of speaking his mind- why? Without expression, his hostility will only increase- no?'' Dr. Dolder said.' 'Better I should give him the opportunity to vent his hostility-on me!" the doctor said. "After all, we would not want a repeated incident with another older woman. Maybe this time, it's a faculty wife-yes?" he said. And so they told Owen Meany that he had to see the school psychiatrist.

  " 'FATHER, FORGIVE THEM; FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO,' " he said. Toronto: July , - still waiting for my invitation to Georgian Bay; it can't come soon enough. The New York Times appears to have reduced the Iran-contra affair to the single issue of whether or not President Reagan "knew" that profits from the secret arms sales to Iran were being diverted to support the Nicaraguan contras. Jesus Christ! Isn't it enough to "know" that the president wanted and intended to continue his support of the contras after Congress told him what was enough! It makes me sick to hear the lectures delivered to Lt. Col. Oliver North. What are they lecturing him for? The colonel wants to support the contras- "for the love of God and for the love of country"; he's already testified that he'd do anything his commander-in-chief wanted him to do. And now we get to listen to the senators and the representatives who are running for office again; they tell the colonel all he doesn't know about the U.S. Constitution; they point out to him that patriotism is not necessarily defined as blind devotion to a president's particular agenda-and that to dispute a

  presidential policy is not necessarily anti-American. They might add that God is not a proven right-winger! Why are they pontificating the obvious to Colonel North? Why don't they have the balls to say this to their blessed commander-in-chief? If Hester has been paying attention to any of this, I'll bet she's throwing up; I'll bet she's barring her brains out. She would remember, of course, those charmless bumper stickers from the Vietnam era-those cunning American flags and the red, white, and blue lettering of the name of our beloved nation. I'll bet Colonel North remembers them. America! said the bumper stickers. Love It or Leave It! That made a lot of sense, didn't it? Remember that? And now we have to hear a civics lecture-the country's elected officials are instructing a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps on the subject that love of country and love of God (and hatred of communism) can conceivably be represented, in a democracy, by differing points of view. The colonel shows no signs of being converted; why are these pillars of self-righteousness wasting their breath on him! I doubt that President Reagan could be converted to democracy, either. I know what my grandmother used to say, whenever she saw or read anything that was just a lot of bullshit. Owen picked up the phrase from her; he was quite lethal in its application, our senior year at Gravesend. Whenever anyone said anything that was a lot of bullshit to him, Owen Meany used to say,"YOU KNOW WHAT THAT IS? THAT'S MADE FOR TELEVISION-THAT'S WHAT THAT IS." And that's what Owen would have said about the Iran-contra hearings-concerning what President Reagan did or didn't "know."

  "MADE FOR TELEVISION," he would have said. That's how he referred to his sessions with Dr. Dolder; the school made him see Dr. Dolder twice a week, and when I asked him to describe his dialogue with the Swiss idiot, Owen said, "MADE FOR TELEVISION." He wouldn't tell me much else about the sessions, but he liked to mock some of the questions Dr. Dolder had asked him by exaggerating the doctor's accent.

  "ZO! YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO ZE OLDER VIMMEN-VY IS DAT?"

  I wondered if he answered by saying he'd always been fond of my mother-maybe, he'd even been in love with her. That would have caused Dr. Dolder great excitement, I'm sure.

  "ZO! ZE VOOMIN YOU KILT MIT ZE BASEBALL-SHE MADE YOU VANT TO PROP-O-SI-TION PEOPLE'S MUDDERS, YES?"

  "Come on," I said to Owen. "He's not that stupid!"

  "ZO! vrrcH FACULTY VIFE HAF YOU GOT YOUR EYES ON?"

  "Come on!" I said. "What kind of stuff does he ask you, really!"

  "ZO! YOU BELIEF IN GOT-DATS FERRY IN-TER-EST-INK!"

  Owen would never tell me what really went on in those sessions. I knew Dr. Dolder was a moron; but I also knew that even a moron would have discovered some disturbing things about Owen Meany. For example, Dr. Dolder-dolt though he was-would have heard at least a little of the GOD'S INSTRUMENT theme; even Dr. Dolder would have uncovered Owen's perplexing and troubling anti-Catholicism. And Owen's particular brand of fatalism would have been challenging for a good psychiatrist; I'm sure Dr. Dolder was scared to death about it. And would Owen have gone so far as to tell Dr. Dolder about Scrooge's grave? Would Owen have suggested that he KNEW how much time he had left on our earth?

  "What do you tell him?" I asked Owen.

  "THETRUTH," said Owen Meany. "I ANSWER EVERY QUESTION HE ASKS TRUTHFULLY, AND WITHOUT HUMOR," he added.

  "My God!" I said. "You could really get yourself in trouble!"

  "VERY FUNNY," he said.

  "But, Owen," I said. "You tell him everything you think about, and everything you believe! Not everything you believe, right?" I said.

  "EVERYTHING," said Owen Meany. "EVERYTHING HE ASKS."

  "Jesus Christ!" I said. "And what has he got to say? What's he told you?"

  "HE TOLD ME TO TALK WITH PASTOR MERRILL- SO I HAVE TO SEE HIM TWICE A WEEK, TOO," Owen said. "AND WITH EACH OF THEM, I SIT THERE AND TALK ABOUT WHAT I TALKED ABOUT TO THE OTHER ONE. I GUESS THEY'RE FINDING OUT A LOT ABOUT EACH OTHER."

  "I see," I said; but I didn't. Owen had taken all the Rev. Lewis Merrill's courses at the academy; he had consumed all the Religion and Scripture courses so voraciously that there weren't any left for him in his senior year, and Mr. Merrill had permitted him to pursue some independent study in the field. Owen was particularly interested in the miracle of the resurrection; he was interested in miracles in general, and life after death in particular, and he was writing an interminable term paper that related these subjects to that old theme from Isaiah :, which he loved. "Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil." Owen's opinion of Pastor Merrill had improved considerably from those earlier years when the issue of the minister's doubt had bothered Owen's dogmatic side; Mr. Merrill had to be aware- awkwardly so-of the role had played in securing his appointment as school minister. When they sat together in Pastor Merrill's vestry office, I couldn't imagine them-not either of them-as being quite at ease; yet there appeared to be much respect between them. Owen did not have a relaxing effect on anyone, and no one I knew was ever less relaxed than the Rev. Lewis Merrill; and so I imagined that Kurd's Church would be creaking excessively during their interviews-or whatever they called them. They would both be fidgeting away in the vestry office, Mr. Merrill opening and closing the old desk drawers, and sliding that old chair on the casters from one end of the desk to the other-while Owen Meany cracked his knuckles, crossed and uncrossed his little legs, and shrugged and sighed and reached out his hands to the Rev. Mr. Merrill's desk, if only to pick up a paperweight or a prayer book and put it down again.

  "What do you talk about with Mister Merrill?" I asked him.

  "I TALK ABOUT DOCTOR DOLDER WITH PASTOR MERRILL, AND I TALK ABOUT PASTOR MERRILL WITH DOCTOR DOLDER," Owen said.

  "No, but I know you like Pastor Merrill-I mean, sort of. Don't you?" I asked him.

  "WE TALK
ABOUT LIFE AFTER DEATH," said Owen Meany.

  "I see," I said; but I didn't. I didn't realize the degree to which Owen Meany never got tired of talking about that. Toronto: July ,-it is a scorcher in town today. I was getting my hair cut in my usual place, near the corner of Bathurst and St. Clair, and the girl-barber (something I'll never get used to!) asked me the usual: "How short?"

  "As short as Oliver North's," I said.

  "Who?" she said. O Canada! But I'm sure there are young girls cutting hair in the United States who don't know who Colonel North is, either; and in a few years, almost no one will remember him. How many people remember Melvin Laird? How many people remember Gen. Creighton Abrams or Gen. William Westmoreland-not to mention, which one replaced the other? And who replaced Gen. Maxwell Taylor? Who replaced Gen. Curtis LeMay? And whom did Ellsworth Bunker replace? Remember that? Of course you don't! There was a terrible din of construction going on outside the barbershop at the corner of Bathurst and St. Clair, but I was sure that my girl-barber had heard me.

  "Oliver North," I repeated. "Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, United States Marine Corps," I said.

  "I guess you want it really short," she said.

  "Yes, please," I said; I've simply got to stop reading The New York Times] There's nothing in the news that's worth remembering. Why, then, do I have such a hard time forgetting it? No one had a memory like Owen Meany. By the end of the winter term of ', I'll bet he never once confused what he'd said to Dr. Dolder with what he'd said to the Rev. Lewis Merrill-but I'll bet they were confused! By the end of the winter term, I'll bet they thought that either he should have been thrown out of school or he should have been made the new headmaster. By the end of every winter term at Gravesend Academy, the New Hampshire weather had driven everyone half crazy. Who doesn't get tired of getting up in the dark? And in Owen's case, he had to get up earlier than most; because of his

  scholarship job, as a faculty waiter, he had to arrive in the dining-hall kitchen at least one hour before breakfast-on those mornings he waited on tables. The waiters had to set the tables-and eat their own breakfasts, in the kitchen-before the other students and the faculty arrived; then they had to clear the tables between the official end of breakfast and the beginning of morning meeting-as the new headmaster had so successfully called what used to be our morning chapel. That Saturday morning in February, the tomato-red pickup was dead and he'd had to jump-start the Meany Granite Company trailer-truck and get it rolling down Maiden Hill before it would start-it was so cold. He did not like to have dining-hall duty, as it was called, on the weekend; and there was the added problem of him being a day boy and having to drive himself that extra distance to school. I guess he was cross when he got there; and there was another car parked in the circular driveway by the Main Academy Building, where he always parked. The trailer-truck was so big that the presence of only one other car in the circular driveway would force him to park the truck out on Front Street-and in the winter months, there was a ban regarding parking on Front Street, a snow-removal restriction that the town imposed, and Owen was hopping mad about that, too. The car that kept Owen from parking his truck in the circular driveway adjacent to the Main Academy Building was Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen Beetle. In keeping with the lovable and exasperating tidiness of his countrymen, Dr. Dolder was exact and predictable about his little VW. His bachelor apartment was in Quincy Hall-a dormitory on the far side of the Gravesend campus; it seemed to be ' 'the far side'' from everywhere, but it was as far from the Main Academy Building as you could get and still be on the Gravesend campus. Dr. Dolder parked his VW by the Main Academy Building only when he'd been drinking. He was a frequent dinner guest of Randy and Sam White's; he parked by the Main Academy Building when he ate with the Whites-and when he drank too much, he left his car there and walked home. The campus was not so large that he couldn't (or shouldn't) have walked both ways-to dinner and back-but Dr. Dolder was one of those Europeans who had fallen in love with a most American peculiarity: how Americans will walk nowhere if they can drive there. In Zurich, I'm sure, Dr. Dolder walked everywhere; but he drove his little VW across the Gravesend campus, as if he were touring the New England states. Whenever Dr. Bolder's VW was parked in the circular driveway by the Main Academy Building, everyone knew that the doctor was simply exercising his especially Swiss prudence; he was not a drunk, and the few small roads he might have traveled on to drive himself from dinner at the Whites' to Quincy Hall would not have given him much opportunity to maim many of the sober and innocent residents of Gravesend. There's a good chance he would never have encountered anyone; but Dr. Dolder loved his Beetle, and he was a cautious man. Once-in the fresh snow upon his Volkswagen's windshield-a first-year German student had written with his ringer: Herr Doktor Dolder hat zu viel betrunken! I could usually tell-when I saw Owen, either at breakfast or at morning meeting-if Dr. Dolder had had too much to drink the night before; if it was winter, and if Owen was surly-looking, I knew he'd faced an early-morning parking problem. I knew when the pickup had failed to start-and there was no room for him to park the trailer-truck-just by looking at him.

  "What's up?" I would ask him.

  "THAT TIGHT-ASS TIPSY SWISS DINK!'' Owen Meany would say.

  "I see," I would say. And this particular February morning, I can imagine how the Swiss psychiatrist's Beetle would have affected him. I guess Owen must have been sitting in the frigid cab of the truck-you could drive that big hauler for an hour before you'd even notice that the heater was on-and I'll bet he was smoking, and probably talking to himself, too, when he looked into the path of his headlights and saw about three quarters of the basketball team walking his way. In the cold air, their breathing must have made him think that they were smoking, too-although he knew all of them, and knew they didn't smoke; he entertained them at least two or three times a week by his devotion to practicing the shot. He told me later that there were about eight or ten basketball players-not quite the whole team. All of them lived in the same dorm-it was one of the traditional jock dorms on the campus; and because the basketball team was playing at some faraway school, they were on their way to the dining hall for an early breakfast with the waiters who had dining-hall duty. They

  were big, happy guys with goofy strides, and they didn't mind being out of bed before it was light-they were going to miss their Saturday morning classes, and they saw the whole day as an adventure. Owen Meany was not quite in such a cheerful mood; he rolled down the window of the big truck's frosty cab and called them over. They were friendly, and-as always-extremely glad to see him, and they jumped onto the flatbed of the trailer and roughhoused with each other, pushing each other off the flatbed, and so forth.

  "YOU GUYS LOOK VERY STRONG TODAY," said Owen Meany, and they hooted in agreement. In the path of the truck's headlights, the innocent shape of Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen Beetle stood encased in ice and dusted very lightly with last night's snow. "I'LL BET YOU GUYS AREN'T STRONG ENOUGH TO PICK UP THAT VOLKSWAGEN," said Owen Meany. But, of course, they were strong enough; they were not only strong enough to lift Dr. Dolder's Beetle-they were strong enough to carry it out of town. The captain of the basketball team was an agreeable giant; when Owen practiced the shot with this guy, the captain lifted Owen with one hand.

  "No problem," the captain said to Owen. "Where do you want it?"

  Owen swore to me that it wasn't until that moment that he got THE IDEA. It's clear to me that Owen never overcame his irritation with Randy White for moving morning chapel from Kurd's Church to the Main Academy Building and calling it morning meeting, that he still thought of that as the headmaster's GRANDSTANDING. The sets for Dan's winter-term play had already been dismantled; the stage of The Great Hall, as it was called, was bare. And that broad, sweeping, marble stairway that led up to The Great Hall's triumphant double doors ... all of that, Owen was sure, was big enough to permit the easy entrance of Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen. And wouldn't that be something: to have that perky little automobile parked on center stage-a kind o
f cheerful, harmless message to greet the headmaster and the entire student body; a little something to make them smile, as the dog days of March bore down upon us and the long-awaited break for spring vacation could not come soon enough to save us all.

  "CARRY IT INTO THE MAIN ACADEMY BUILDING," Owen Meany told the captain of the basketball team. "TAKE IT UPSTAIRS TO THE GREAT HALL AND CARRY IT UP ON THE STAGE," said The Voice. "PUT IT RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STAGE, FACING FORWARD-RIGHT NEXT TO THE HEADMASTER'S PODIUM. BUT BE CAREFUL YOU DON'T SCRATCH IT-AND FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T DROP IT! DON'T PUT A MARK ON ANYTHING," he cautioned the basketball players. "DON'T DO THE SLIGHTEST DAMAGE-NOT TO THE CAR AND NOT TO THE STAIRS, NOT TO THE DOORS OF THE GREAT HALL, NOT TO THE STAGE," he said. "MAKE IT LOOK LIKE IT FLEW UP THERE," he told them. "MAKE FT LOOK LIKE AN ANGEL DROVE IT ONSTAGE!" said Owen Meany. When the basketball players carried off Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen, Owen thought very carefully about using the available parking space; he decided it was wiser to drive all the way over to Waterhouse Hall and park next to Dan's car, instead. Not even Dan saw him park the truck there; and if anyone had seen him running across the campus, as it was growing light, that would not have seemed strange-he was just a faculty waiter with dining-hall duty, hurrying so he wouldn't be late. He ate his breakfast in the dining-hall kitchen with the other waiters and with an extraordinarily hungry and jolly bunch of basketball players. Owen was setting the head faculty table when the captain of the basketball team said good-bye to him.