A prayer for Owen Meany: a novel

by John Irving

  "YOU HAVE NO DOUBT SHE'S THERE?" he nagged at me.

  "Of course I have no doubt!" I said.

  "BUT YOU CAN'T SEE HER-YOU COULD BE WRONG," he said.

  "No, I'm not wrong-she's there, I know she's there!" I yelled at him.

  "YOU ABSOLUTELY KNOW SHE'S THERE-EVEN THOUGH YOU CAN'T SEE HER?" he asked me.

  "Yes!" I screamed.

  "WELL, NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT GOD," said Owen Meany. "I CAN'T SEE HIM-BUT I ABSOLUTELY KNOW HE IS THERE!"

  Georgian Bay: My , -Katherine told me today that I should make an effort to not read any newspapers. She saw how The Globe and Mail ruined my day-and it is so

  gorgeous, so peaceful on this island, on all this water; it's such a shame to not relax here, to not take the opportunity to think more tranquilly, more reflectively. Katharine wants only the best for me; I know she's right-I should give up the news, just give it up. You can't understand anything by reading the news, anyway. If someone ever presumed to teach Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy or Robertson Davies to my Bishop Strachan students with die same, shallow, superficial understanding that I'm sure / possess of world affairs-or, even, American wrongdoing-I would be outraged. I am a good enough English teacher to know that my grasp of American misadventures-even in Vietnam, not to mention Nicaragua-is shallow and superficial. Whoever acquired any real or substantive intelligence from reading newspapers! I'm sure I have no in-depth comprehension of American villainy; yet I can't leave the news alone! You'd think I might profit from my experience with ice cream. If I have ice cream in my freezer, I'll eat it-I'll eat all of it, all at once. Therefore, I've learned not to buy ice cream. Newspapers are even worse for me than ice cream; headlines, and the big issues that generate the headlines, are pure fat. The island library, to be kind, is full of field guides-to everything I never knew enough about; I mean, real things, not "issues." I could study pine needles, or bird identification- there are even categories for studying the latter: in-flight movement, perching silhouettes, feeding and mating cries. It's fascinating-I suppose. And with all this water around, I could certainly take more than one day to go fishing with Charlie; I know it disappoints him that I'm not more interested in fishing. And Katherine has pointed out to me that it's been a long time since she and I have talked about our respective beliefs-the shared and private articles of our faith. I used to talk about this for hours with her-and with Canon Campbell, before her. Now I'm ashamed to tell Katherine how many Sunday services I've skipped. Katherine's right. I'm going to try to give up the news. The Globe and Mail said today that the Nicaraguan contras have executed prisoners; the contras are being investigated for " major cases of human-rights abuse"-and these same filthy contras are the "moral equivalent of our founding fathers," President Reagan says! Meanwhile, the spiritual leader of Iran, the ayatollah, urged all Moslems to "crush America's teeth in its mouth"; this sounds like just the guy the Americans should sell arms to-right? The United States simply isn't making sense. I agree with Katherine. Time to fish; time to observe the flatness of that small, aquatic mammal's tail-is it an otter or is it a muskrat? Time to find out. And out there, where the water of the bay turns blue-green and then to the color of a bruise, is that a loon or a coot I see diving there? Time to see; time to forget about the rest. And it's "high time"-as Canon Mackie is always saying-for me to try to be a Canadian! When I first came to Canada, I thought it was going to be easy to be a Canadian; like so many stupid Americans, I pictured Canada as simply some northern, colder, possibly more provincial region of the United States-I imagined it would be like moving to Maine, or Minnesota. It was a surprise to discover that Toronto wasn't as snowy and cold as New Hampshire-and not nearly as provincial, either. It was more of a surprise to discover how different Canadians were-they were so polite! Naturally, I started out apologizing. "I'm not really a draft dodger," I would say; but most Canadians didn't care what I was. "I'm not here tor evade the draft," I would explain. "I would certainly classify myself as antiwar," I said inthosedays. "I'm comfortable with the term'war resister,' " I told everyone, "but I don't need to dodge or evade the draft-that's not why I'm here."

  But most Canadians didn't care why I'd come; they didn't ask any questions. It was , probably the midpoint of Vietnam "resisters" coming to Canada; most Canadians were sympathetic-they thought the war in Vietnam was stupid and wrong, too. In , you needed fifty points to become a landed immigrant; landed immigrants could apply for Canadian citizenship, for which they'd be eligible in five years. Earning my fifty "points" was easy for me; I had a B.A. cum laude, and a Master's degree in English-with Owen Meany's help, I'd written my Master's thesis on Thomas Hardy. I'd also had two years' teaching experience; while I was in graduate school at the University of New Hampshire, I taught part-time at Gravesend Academy-Expository Writing for ninth graders. Dan Needham and Mr. Early had recommended me for the job. In , one out of every nine Canadians was an immigrant; and the Vietnam "resisters" were better-educated and more employable than most immigrants in Canada. That year the so-called Union of American Exiles was organized; compared

  to Hester-and her SDS friends, those so-called Students for a Democratic Society-the few guys I knew in the Union of American Exiles were a pretty tame lot. I was used to rioters; Hester was big on riots then. That was the year she was arrested in Chicago. Hester had her nose broken while rioting at the site of the Democratic Party's national convention. She said a policeman mashed her face against the sliding side door of a van; but Hester would have been disappointed to return from Chicago with all her bones intact. The Americans I ran into in Toronto-even the AMEX organizers, even the deserters- were a whole lot more reasonable than Hester and many other Americans I had known "at home."

  There was a general misunderstanding about the so-called deserters; the deserters I knew were politically mild. I never met one who'd actually been in Vietnam; I never met one who was even scheduled to go. They were just guys who'd been drafted and had hated the service; some of mem had even enlisted. Only a few of them told me that they'd deserted because it had shamed them to maintain any association with that insupportable war; as for a couple of the ones who told me that-I had the feeling that then- stories weren't true, that they were only saying they'd deserted because the war was "insupportable"; they'd learned that this was politically acceptable to say. And there was another, general misunderstanding at that time: contrary to popular belief, coming to Canada was not a very shrewd way to beat the draft; there were better and easier ways to "beat" it-I'll tell you about one, later. But coming to Canada-either as a draft dodger or as a deserter, or even for my own, more complicated reasons-was a very forceful political statement. Remember that? Remember when what you did was a kind of "statement"? I remember one of the AMEX guys telling me that "resistance as exile was the ultimate judgment." How I agreed with him! How self-important it seemed: to be making "the ultimate judgment."

  The truth is, I never had to suffer. When I first came to Toronto in ', I met a few confused and troubled young Americans; I was a little older than most of them-and they certainly seemed no more confused or troubled than many of the Americans I had known at home. Unlike Buzzy Thurston, for example, they had not driven their cars head-on into a bridge abutment in an effort to beat the draft. Unlike Harry Hoyt, they had not been bitten to death by a Russell's viper while waiting for their turn with a Vietnamese whore. And to my surprise, the Canadians I met actually liked me. And with my graduate degree-and even my junior teaching experience at such a prestigious school as Gravesend Academy-I was instantly respectable and almost immediately employed. The distinction I hastened to make, to almost every Canadian I met, was probably a waste of time; that I wasn't there as a draft dodger or a deserter didn't really matter very much to the Canadians. It mattered to the Americans I met, and I didn't like how they responded: that I was in Canada by choice, that I was not a fugitive, and that I didn't have to be in Toronto-in my view, this made my commitment more serious; but in their view I was less desperate an
d, therefore, less serious. It's true: we Wheelwrights have rarely suffered. And unlike most of those other Americans, I also had the church; don't underestimate the church-its healing power, and the comforting way it can set you apart. My first week in Toronto, I had an interview at Upper Canada College; the whole school made me feel that I'd never left Gravesend Academy! They didn't have an opening in their English Department, but they assured me that my vitae was "most laudable" and that I'd have no trouble finding a job. They were so helpful, they sent me the short distance down Lonsdale Road to Grace Church on-the-Hill; Canon Campbell, they said, was especially interested in helping Americans. Indeed he was. When the canon asked me what my church was, I said, "I guess I'm an Episcopalian."

  "You guess!" he said. I explained that I'd not attended an actual service in the Episcopal Church since the famous Nativity of '; thinking of Hurd's Church and Pastor Merrill's rather lapsed Congregationalism, I said, "I guess I'm sort of nondenominational."

  "Well, we'll fix thatl" Canon Campbell said. He gave me my first Anglican prayer book, my first Canadian prayer book; it is The Book of Common Prayer that I still use. It was as simple as that: joining a church, becoming an Anglican. I wouldn't call any of it suffering. And so the first Canadians I knew were churchgoers-an almost universally helpful lot, and much less confused and troubled than the few Americans I'd met in Toronto (and most Americans I had known at home). These Grace Church on-the-Hill Anglicans were conservative; "conservative"-

  about certain matters of propriety, especially-is perfectly all right with us Wheelwrights. About such matters, New Eng-landers have more in common with Canadians than we have with New Yorkersl For example, I quickly learned to prefer the positions stated by the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme to those more abrasive stances of the Union of American Exiles. The Toronto Anti-Draft Programme favored "assimilation into mainstream Canadian life"; they considered the Union of American Exiles "too political"-by which they meant, too activist, too rnilitantly anti-United States. Possibly, the Union of American Exiles was contaminated by their open dealings with deserters. The object of the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme was to get Americans "assimilated" quickly; they reasoned that we Americans should begin the process of our assimilation by dropping the subject of the United States. At the beginning, this seemed so reasonable-and so easy- to me. Within a year of my arrival, even the Union of American Exiles showed signs of "assimilation." The acronym AMEX changed in meaning from American Exile to American Expatriate. Doesn't that sound more agreeable to the aim of "assimilation into mainstream Canadian life"? I thought so. When some of those Grace Church on-the-Hill Anglicans asked me what I thought of Prime Minister Pearson's "old point of view"-that the deserters (as opposed to the war resistors) were in a category of U.S. citizens to be discouraged from coming to Canada-I actually said I agreed! Even though-as I've admitted-I'd never met a harsh deserter, not one. The ones I met were "in a category of citizens" that any country could have used and even appreciated. And when it was aired in the Twenty-eighth Parliament-in -that U.S. deserters were being turned back at the border because they were "persons who were likely to become public charges," I never actually said-to any of my Canadian Mends-that I suspected these deserters were no more likely to become "public charges" than / was likely to become such a charge. By then, Canon Campbell had introduced me to old Teddybear Kilgore, who had hired me to teach at Bishop Strachan. We Wheelwrights have always benefited from our connections. Owen Meany didn't have any connections. It was never easy for him to fit in. I think I know what he would have said to that bullshit that was printed in The Toronto Daily Star; at the time, I thought that bullshit was so right-on-target that I cut it out of the newspaper and taped it to my refrigerator door-December , . It was in response to the AMEX published statement of the "first five priorities" for American expatriates (the fifth being "to try to fit into Canadian life"). To quote The Toronto Daily Star: "Unless the young Americans for whom AMEX speaks revise their priorities and put Number Five first, they risk arousing a growing hostility and suspicion among Canadians." I never doubted that mis was true. But I know what Owen Meany would have said about that. "THAT SOUNDS LIKE SOMETHING AN AMERICAN WOULD SAY!'' Owen Meany would have said. "THE 'FIRST PRIORITY' IN EVERY YOUNG AMERICAN'S LIFE IS TO TRY TO FIT INTO AMERICAN LIFE. DOESN'T THE STUPID TORONTO DAILY STAR KNOW WHO THESE YOUNG AMERICANS IN CANADA ARE! THESE ARE AMERICANS WHO LEFT THEIR COUNTRY BECAUSE THEY COULDN'T AND DIDN'T WANT TO 'FIT IN.' NOW THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO MAKE IT THEIR 'FIRST PRIORITY' TO 'FIT IN' HERE? BOY-THAT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE; THAT'S REALLY BRILLIANT. THAT'S WORTH ONE OF THOSE STUPID JOURNALISM AWARDSl"

  But I didn't complain; I didn't bitch about anything-not then. I thought I'd heard Hester "bitch" enough for a lifetime. Remember the War Measures Act? I didn't say a word; I" agreed with everything. So what if civil liberties were suspended for six months? So what that there could be searches without warrants? So what if people could be detained without counsel for up to ninety days? All the action was happening in Montreal. If Hester had been in Toronto then, not even Hester would have been arrested! I just kept quiet; I was cultivating my Canadian friendships, and most of my friends thought that Trudeau could do no wrong, that he was a prince. Even my dear old friend Canon Campbell made a rather empty remark to me-but I would never challenge him. Canon Campbell said: "Trudeau is our Kennedy, you know." I was glad that Canon Campbell didn't say "Trudeau is our Kennedy" to Owen Meany; I think I know what Owen would have said.

  "OH, YOU MEAN TRUDEAU DIDDLED MARILYN MONROE?" Owen Meany would have said. But I didn't come to Canada to be a smart-ass American; and Canon Campbell told me that most smart-ass Canadians tend to

  move to the United States. I didn't want to be one of those people who are critical of everything. In the seventies, there were a lot of complaining Americans in Toronto; some of them complained about Canada, too-Canada sold the United States over five hundred million dollars' worth of ammunition and other war supplies, these complainers said.

  "Is that Canadian or U.S. dollars?" I would ask. I was very cool; I wasn't going to jump into anything. In short, I was doing my best to be a Canadian; I wasn't ranting my head off about the goddamn U.S. this or the motherfucking U.S. thatl And when I was told that, by , Canada-"per capita"- was earning more money as an international arms exporter than any other nation in the world, I said, "Really? That's very interesting!"

  Someone said to me that most war resisters who returned to the United States couldn't take the Canadian climate; and what did I think of the seriousness of the war resistance if ' 'these people" could be deterred from their commitment by a little cold weather? I said it was colder in New Hampshire. And did I know why not so many black Americans had come to Canada? someone asked me. And the ones who come don't stay, someone else said. It's because the ghetto where they come from treats them nicer, said someone else. I didn't say a word. I was more of an Anglican than I ever was either a Congregationalist or an Episcopalian-or even a nondenomi-national, Kurd's Church whatever-l-wns. I was a participant at Grace Church on-the-Hill in a way that I had never been a participant before; and I was getting to be a good teacher, too. I was still young then; I was only twenty-six. And I didn't have a girlfriend when I started teaching all those BSS girls-and I never once looked at one of them in that way; not once, not even at the ones who had their schoolgirl crushes on me. Oh, there were quite a few years when those girls had their crushes on me-not anymore; not now, of course. But I still remember those pretty girls; some of them even asked me to attend their weddings! In those early years, when Canon Campbell was such a friend and an inspiration to me-when I carried my Book of Common Prayer, and my Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, everywhere I went!-I was a veritable card-carrying Canadian. Whenever I'd run into one of that AMEX crowd-and I didn't run into them often, not in Forest Hill-I wouldn't even talk about the United States, or Vietnam. I must have believed that my anger and my loneliness would simply go away-if I simply let them go. There were rallies;
of course, there were protests. But I didn't attend; I didn't even hang out in Yorkville-that's how out of it I was! When "The Riverboat" was gone, I didn't mourn-or even sing old folk songs to myself. I'd heard enough of Hester singing folk songs. I cut my hair short then; I cut it short today. I've never had a beard. All those hippies, all those days of protest songs and "sexual freedom"; remember that? Owen Meany had sacrificed much more, he had suffered much more-I was not even remotely interested in other people's sacrifices or in what they imagined was their heroic suffering. They say there's no zeal like the zeal of the convert-and that's the kind of Anglican I was. They say there's no citizen as patriotic as the new immigrant-and there was no one who tried any harder to be "assimilated" than I tried. They say there's no teacher with such a desire for his subject as the novice possesses-and I taught those BSS girls to read and write their little middies off! In , there were , deserters from the U.S. armed forces; in , there were ,-that year, only , Americans were prosecuted for Selective Service violations. I wonder how many more were burning or had already burned their draft cards. What did I care? Burning your draft card, coming to Canada, getting your nose busted by a cop in Chicago-I never thought these gestures were heroic, not compared to Owen Meany's commitment. And by , more than forty thousand Americans had died in Vietnam; I don't imagine that a single one of them would have thought that draft-card burning or coming to Canada was especially "heroic"-nor would they have thought that getting arrested for rioting in Chicago was such a big fucking deal. And as for Gordon Lightfoot and Neil Young, as for Joni Mitchell and lan and Sylvia-I'd already heard Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and Hester. I'd even heard Hester sing "Four Strong Winds." She was always quite good with the guitar, she had her mother's pretty voice-although Aunt Martha's voice was not as pretty as my mother's-which was merely pretty, not strong enough, not developed. Hester could have