A prayer for Owen Meany: a novel

by John Irving

  stood about five years of lessons from Graham McSwiney, but she didn't believe in being taught to sing. Singing was something "inside" her, she claimed.

  "YOU MAKE IT SOUND LIKE A DISEASE," Owen told her; but he was her number-one supporter. When she was struggling to write her own songs, I know that Owen gave her some ideas; later she told me that he'd even written some songs for her. And in those days she looked like a folk singer-which is to say any old way she wanted, or like everyone else: a little dirty, a little worldly, a lot knocked-about. She looked hard-traveled, she looked as if she slept on a rug (with lots of men), she looked as if her hair smelled of lobster. I remember her singing "Four Strong Winds"-I remember this very vividly. I think I'll go out to Alberta, Weather's good there in the fall; I got some friends that I can go to workin' for.

  "WHERE'S ALBERTA?" Owen Meany had asked her.

  "In Canada, you asshole," Hester had said.

  "THERE'S NO NEED TO BE CRUDE," Owen had told her. "IT'S A PRETTY SONG. IT MUST BE SAD TO GO TO CANADA."

  It was . He was about to become a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.

  "You think it's 'sad' to go to Canada!" Hester screamed at him. "Where they're going to send you is a lot sadder."

  "I DON'T WANT TO DIE WHERE IT'S COLD," said Owen Meany. What he meant was, he believed he knew that he would die where it was warm-very warm. On Christmas Eve, , two American servicemen were killed in Saigon when Viet Cong terrorists bombed the U.S. billets; one week later, on New Year's Eve, Hester threw up-perhaps she upchucked with special verve, because Owen Meany was prompted to take the power of Hester's puking as a sign.

  "IT LOOKS LIKE IT'S GOING TO BE A BAD YEAR," Owen observed, while we watched Hester's spasms in the rose garden. Indeed, it was the year the war began in earnest; at least, it was the year when the average unobservant American began to notice that we had a problem in Vietnam. In February, the U.S. Air Force conducted Operation Flaming Dart-a "tactical air reprisal."

  "What does that mean?" I asked Owen, who was doing so well in his studies of Military Science.

  "THAT MEANS WE'RE BOMBING THE SHIT OUT OF TARGETS IN NORTH VIETNAM," he said. In March, the U.S. Air Force began Operation Rolling Thunder-"to interdict the flow of supplies to the south."

  "What does that mean?" I asked Owen.

  "THAT MEANS WE'RE BOMBING THE SHIT OUT OF TARGETS IN NORTH VIETNAM," said Owen Meany. That was the month when the first American combat troops landed in Vietnam; in April, President Johnson authorized the use of U.S. ground troops-"for offensive operations in South Vietnam."

  "THAT MEANS, 'SEARCH AND DESTROY, SEARCH AND DESTROY,' " Owen said. In May, the U.S. Navy began Operation Market Time-"to detect and intercept surface traffic in South Vietnam coastal waters." Harry Hoyt was there; Harry was very happy in the Navy, his mother said.

  "But what are they doing there?" I asked Owen.

  "THEY'RE SEIZING AND DESTROYING ENEMY CRAFT," said Owen Meany. It was out of conversations he had been having with one of his professors of Military Science that he was prompted to observe: "THERE'S NO END TO THIS. WHAT WE'RE DEALING WITH IS GUERRILLA WARFARE. ARE WE PREPARED TO OBLITERATE THE WHOLE COUNTRY? YOU CAN CALL IT 'SEARCH AND DESTROY' OR 'SEIZE AND DESTROY'-EITHER WAY, IT'S DESTROY AND DESTROY. THERE'S NO GOOD WAY TO END IT."

  I could not get over the idea of Harry Hoyt "seizing and destroying enemy craft"; he was such an idiot! He didn't even know how to play Little League baseball! I simply couldn't forgive him for the base on balls that led to Buzzy Thurston's easy grounder . . . that led to Owen Meany coming to the plate. If Harry had only struck out or hit the ball, everything might have turned out differently. But he was a walker.

  "How could Harry Hoyt possibly be involved in 'seizing and destroying' anything!'" I asked Owen. "Harry isn't smart

  enough to recognize an 'enemy craft' if one sailed right over his head!"

  "HAS IT OCCURRED TO YOU THAT VIETNAM IS FULL OF HARRY HOYTS?" Owen asked. The professor of Military Science who had impressed Owen, and given him a sense of catastrophe about the tactical and strategic management of the war, was some crusty and critical old colonel of infantry-a physical-fitness nut who thought Owen was too small for the combat branches of the Army. I believe that Owen excelled in his Military Science courses in an effort to persuade this old thug that he could more than compensate for his size; Owen spent much after-class time chatting up the old buzzard-it was Owen's intention to be the honor graduate, the number-one graduate from his ROTC unit. With a number-one rating, Owen was sure, he would be assigned a "combat arms designator"-Infantry, Armor, or Artillery.

  "I don't understand why you want a combat branch," I said to him.

  "IF THERE'S A WAR AND I'M IN THE ARMY, I WANT TO BE IN THE WAR," he said. "I DON'T WANT TO SPEND THE WAR AT A DESK. LOOK AT IT THIS WAY: WE AGREE THAT HARRY HOYT IS AN IDIOT. WHO'S GOING TO KEEP THE HARRY HOYTS FROM GETTING THEIR HEADS BLOWN OFF?"

  "Oh, so you want to be a herol" I told him. "If you were any smarter than Harry Hoyt, you'd be smart enough to spend the war at a deskl"

  I began to think more highly of the colonel who thought Owen was too small for a combat branch. His name was Eiger, and I tried to talk to him once; in my view, I was doing Owen a favor.

  "Colonel Eiger, sir," I said to him. Despite the liver spots on the backs of his hands and the roll of sun-wrecked skin that only slightly overlapped his tight, brown collar, he looked capable of about seventy-five fast push-ups on command. "I know that you know Owen Meany, sir," I said to him; he didn't speak-he waited for me to continue, chewing his gum so conservatively that you weren't sure he had any gum in his mouth at all; he might have been engaged in some highly disciplined pattern of exercises for his tongue. "I want you to know that I agree with you, sir," I said. "I don't think Owen Meany is suitable for combat." The colonel-although this was barely detectable-stopped chewing. "It's not just his size," I ventured. "I am his best friend, and even I have to question his stability-his emotional stability," I said.

  "Thank you. That will be all," the colonel said.

  "Thank you, sir," I said. It was May, ; I watched Owen closely-to see if he'd received any further discouragement from Colonel Eiger. Something must have happened-the colonel must have said something to him-because that was the spring when Owen Meany stopped smoking; he just gave it up, cold. He took up running! In two weeks, he was running five miles a day; he said his goal-by the end of the month-was to average six minutes per mile. And he took up beer.

  "Why the beer?" I asked him.

  "WHOEVER HEARD OF SOMEONE IN THE ARMY NOT DRINKING BEER?" he asked me. It sounded like something Colonel Eiger would have said to him; probably the colonel thought it was a further indication that Owen was a wimp-that he didn't drink. And so, by the time he left for Basic Training, he was in pretty good shape-all that running, even with the beer, was a favorable exchange for a pack a day. He admitted that he didn't like the running; but he'd developed a taste for beer. He never drank very much of it-I never saw him get drunk, not before Basic Training-but Hester remarked that the beer vastly improved his disposition.

  "Nothing would make Owen exactly mellow," she said, "but believe me: the beer helps."

  I felt funny working for Meany Granite when Owen wasn't there.

  "I'M ONLY GONE FOR SIX WEEKS," he pointed out. "AND BESIDES: I FEEL BETTER KNOWING YOU'RE IN CHARGE OF THE MONUMENT SHOP. IF SOMEONE DIES, YOU'VE GOT THE PROPER MANNERS TO HANDLE THE ORDER FOR THE GRAVESTONE. I TRUST YOU TO HAVE THE RIGHT TOUCH."

  "Good luck!" I said to him.

  "DON'T EXPECT ME TO HAVE TIME TO WRITE- IT'S GOING TO BE PRETTY INTENSE," he said. "BASICALLY, I'VE GOT TO EXCEL IN THREE AREAS-ACADEMICS, LEADERSHIP, PHYSICAL FITNESS. FRANKLY, IN THE LATTER CATEGORY, I'M WORRIED ABOUT THE OBSTACLE COURSE-I HEAR THERE'S A

  WALL, ABOUT TWELVE FEET. THAT MIGHT BE A LITTLE HIGH FOR ME."

  Hester was singing; she refused to participate in a conversation about Basic Training; she said that if she heard Owen recite his preferre
d COMBAT BRANCHES one more time, she would throw up. I'll never forget what Hester was singing; it's a Canadian song, and-over the years-I've heard this song a hundred times. I guess it will always give me the shivers. If you were even just barely alive in the sixties, I'm sure you've heard the song that Hester sang, the song I remember so vividly. Four strong winds that blow lonely, Seven seas that run high, All those things that don't change come what may. But our good times are all gone, And I'm bound for movin' on, I'll look for you if I'm ever back this way. They sent him to Fort Knox, or maybe it was Fort Bragg; I forget-once I asked Hester if she remembered which place it was where Owen was sent for Basic Training.

  "All I know is, he shouldn't have gone-he should have gone to Canada," Hester said. How often I have thought that! There are times when I catch myself looking for him-even expecting to see him. Once, in Winston Churchill Park, when there were children rough-housing-at least, moving quickly-I saw someone about his size, standing slightly to the side of whatever activity was consuming the others, looking a trifle tentative but very alert, certainly eager to try what the others were doing, but restraining himself, or else picking the exactly perfect moment to take charge. But Owen didn't come to Canada; he went to Fort Knox or Fort Bragg, where he failed the obstacle course. He was the best academically; he had the highest marks in leadership- whatever that is, and however the U.S. Army determines what it is. But he had been right about the wall; it was a little high for him-he simply couldn't get over it. He "failed to negotiate the wall"-that was how the Army put it. And since class rank in ROTC is composed of excellence in Academics, in Leadership, and in Physical Fitness, Owen Meany--just that simply-failed to get a number-one ranking; his choice of a "combat arms designator" was, therefore, not assured.

  "But you're such a good jumper!" I told him. "Couldn't you just jump it-couldn't you grab hold of the top of the wall and haul yourself over it?"

  "I COULDN'T REACH THE TOP OF THE WALL!" he said. "I AM A GOOD JUMPER, BUT I'M FUCKING FIVE FEET TALL! IT'S NOT LIKE PRACTICING THE SHOT, YOU KNOW-I'M NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE ANYONE BOOST ME UP!"

  "I'm sorry," I said. "You've still got your whole senior year. Can't you work on Colonel Eiger? I'll bet you can convince him to give you what you want."

  "I'VE GOT A NUMBER-TWO RANKING-DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? IT'S BY THE BOOK. COLONEL EIGER LIKES ME-HE JUST DOESN'T THINK I'M FITl" He was so distracted by his failure, I didn't press him about giving me a dynamite lesson. I felt guilty for ever speaking to Colonel Eiger-Owen was so upset. But, at the same time, I didn't want him to get a combat-branch assignment. In the fall of ', when we returned to Durham for our senior year, there were already protests against U.S. policy in Vietnam; that October, there were protests in thirty or forty American cities-I think Hester attended about half of them. Typical of me, I felt unsure: I thought the protesters made more sense than anyone who remotely subscribed to "U.S. policy"; but I also thought that Hester and most of her friends were losers and jerks. Hester was already beginning to call herself a "socialist."

  "OH, EXCUSE ME, I THOUGHT YOU WERE A WAITRESS'." Owen Meany said. "ARE YOU SHARING ALL YOUR TIPS WITH THE OTHER WAITRESSES?"

  "Fuck you, Owen," Hester said. "I could call myself a Republican, and I'd still make more sense than you"

  I had to agree. At the very least, it was inconsistent of Owen Meany to want a combat-branch assignment; with the keen eye he had always had for spotting bullshit, why would he want to go to Vietnam? And the war, and the protests-they were just beginning; anyone could see that. On Christmas Day, President Johnson suspended Operation Rolling Thunder-no more bombing of North Vietnam, "to induce negotiations for peace." Was anyone fooled by that?

  "MADE FOR TELEVISION!" said Owen Meany. So why

  did he want to go there? Did he want to be a hero so badly that he would have gone anywhere! That fall he was told he was Adjutant General's Corps "material"; that was not what he wanted to hear-the Adjutant General's Corps was not a combat branch. He was appealing the decision; mistakes of this kind-regarding one's orders- were almost common, he claimed.

  "I THINK COLONEL EIGER IS IN MY CORNER," Owen said. "AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED, I'M STILL WAITING TO HEAR ABOUT A COMBAT BRANCH."

  By New Year's Eve, -when Hester was making her usual statement in the rose garden at Front Street-only U.S. military personnel had been killed in action; it was just the beginning. I guess that figure did not include the death of Harry Hoyt; "in action" was not exactly how poor Harry was killed. It had been just like another base on balls for Harry Hoyt, I thought-snake-bit while waiting his turn with a whore, snake-bit while peeing under a tree.

  "JUST LIKE DRAWING A WALK," said Owen Meany. "POOR HARRY."

  "His poor mother," my grandmother said; she was moved to expand upon her thesis on dying. "I would rather be murdered by a maniac than bitten by a snake," she said. And so, in Gravesend, our first vision of death in Vietnam was not of that standard Viet Cong soldier in his sandals and black pajamas, with something that looked like a lampshade for a hat-and with the Soviet AK- assault rifle, using a .mm bullet, fired either single-shot or on full automatic. Rather, we turned to my grandmother's Wharton Encyclopedia of Venomous Snakes-which had already provided Owen and me with several nightmares, when we were children-and there we found our vision of the enemy in Southeast Asia: Russell's viper. Oh, it was so tempting to reduce the United States' misadventure in Vietnam to an enemy one could see Harry Hoyt's mother made up her mind that we were our enemy. Less than a month after the New Year-after we had resumed our bombing of North Vietnam and Operation Rolling Thunder was back on target-Mrs. Hoyt created her disturbance in the office of the Gravesend local draft board, choosing to use their bulletin board to advertise that she would give free draft-counseling advice in her home-sessions in how to evade the draft. She managed to advertise herself all around the university, in Durham, too-Hester told me that Mrs. Hoyt drew more of a crowd from the university community than she was able to summon among the locals in Gravesend. The university students were closer to being drafted than those Gravesend High School students who could manage to be accepted by even the lowliest college or university. In , two million Americans had so-called student deferments that protected them from the draft. In a year, this would be modified-to exclude graduate students; but those graduate students in their second year, or further along in their studies, would keep their exemptions. I would fall perfectly into the crack. When draft deferments for graduate students got the ax, I would be in my first year of graduate school; my draft deferment would get the ax, too. I would be summoned for a preinduction physical at my local Gravesend draft board, where I had every reason to expect I would be found fully acceptable for induction-what was called -A-fit to serve, and standing at the head of the line. That was the kind of thing that Mrs. Hoyt was attempting to prepare us for-as early as February, , she started warning the young people who would listen to her; she made contact with all of Harry's contemporaries in Gravesend.

  "Johnny Wheelwright, you listen to me!" she said; she got me on the telephone at Front Street, and I was afraid of her. Even my grandmother thought that Mrs. Hoyt should be conducting herself "in a manner more suitable to mourning"; but Mrs. Hoyt was as mad as a hornet. She'd given Owen a lecture at the monument shop when she was picking out a stone for Harry!

  "I don't want a cross," she told Owen. "A lot of good God ever did him!"

  "YES, MA'AM," said Owen Meany.

  "And I don't want one of those things that look like a stepping-stone-that's just like the military, to give you a grave that people can walk on!" Mrs. Hoyt said.

  "I UNDERSTAND," Owen told her. Then she lit into him about his ROTC "obligation," about how he should do everything he could to end up with a "desk job"-if he knew what was good for him.

  "And I don't mean a desk job in Saigonl" she said to him. "Don't you dare be a participant in that genocide]" she told him. "Do you want to set fire to small Asian women and children?" she asked him.

  "NO, M
A'AM!" said Owen Meany.

  To me, she said: "They're not going to let you be a graduate student in English. What do they care about English*? They barely speak it!"

  "Yes, ma'am," I said.

  "You can't hide in graduate school-believe me, it won't work," said Mrs. Hoyt. "And unless you've got something wrong with you-I mean, physically-you're going to die in a rice paddy. Is there anything wrong with you?" she asked me.

  "Not that I know of, ma'am," I said.

  "Well, you ought to think of something," Mrs. Hoyt told me. "I know someone who does psychiatric counseling; he can coach you-he can make you seem crazy. But that's risky, and you've got to start now-you need time to develop a history, if you're going to convince anybody you're insane. It's no good just getting drunk and smearing dog shit in your hair the night before your physical-if you don't develop a mental history, it won't work to try to fake it."

  That, however, is what Buzzy Thurston tried-and it worked. It worked a little too well. He didn't develop a "history" that was one day longer than two weeks; but even in that short time, he managed to force enough alcohol and drugs into his body to convince his body that it liked this form of abuse. To Mrs. Hoyt, Buzzy would be as much a victim of the war as her Harry; Buzzy would kill himself trying to stay out of Vietnam.

  "Have you thought about the Peace Corps?" Mrs. Hoyt asked me. She said she'd counseled one young man-also an English major-to apply to the Peace Corps. He'd been accepted as an English teacher in Tanzania. It was a pity, she admitted, that the Red Chinese had sent about four hundred ' 'advisers'' to Tanzania in the summer of '; the Peace Corps, naturally, had withdrawn in a hurry. "Just think about it," Mrs. Hoyt said to me. "Even Tanzania is a better idea than Vietnam!"

  I told her I'd think about it; but I thought I had so much time! Imagine this: you're a university senior, you're a virgin-do you believe it when someone tells you that you have to make up your mind between Vietnam and Tanzania?