by John Irving
“My half brother,” she mumbled. “But I still loved him!” she added. Her other half brother—the one who was alive—needed to ferociously restrain himself from spitting again. So they were a family torn in halves, or worse, I thought.
In the major’s car—where Owen and I were first able to acknowledge each other, to hug each other, and to pat each other on our backs—the major explained the family to us.
“They’re a mess, of course—they may all be criminally retarded,” the major said. His name was Rawls—Hollywood would have loved him. In close-up, he looked fifty, a gruff old type; but he was only thirty-seven. He’d earned a battlefield commission during the final days of the Korean War; he’d completed a tour of duty in Vietnam as an infantry battalion executive officer. Major Rawls had enlisted in the Army in 1949, when he’d been eighteen. He’d served the Army for nineteen years; he’d fought in two wars; he’d been passed over for promotion to lieutenant colonel, and—at a time when all the good “field grade” officers were in Washington or Vietnam—he’d ended up as a ROTC professor for his twilight tour of duty.
If Major Rawls had earned a battlefield commission, he had earned his measure of cynicism, too; the major spoke in sustained, explosive bursts—like rounds of fire from an automatic weapon.
“They may all be fucking each other—I wouldn’t be surprised about a family like this,” Major Rawls said. “The brother is the chief wacko—he hangs around the airport all day, watching the planes, talking to the soldiers. He can’t wait to be old enough to go to ’Nam. The only one in the family who might have been wackier than him is the one who’s dead—this was his third fucking tour ‘in country’! You should’ve seen him between tours—the whole fucking tribe lives in a trailer park, and the warrant officer just spent all his time looking in his neighbors’ windows through a telescopic sight. You know what I mean—lining up everyone in the crosshairs! If he hadn’t gone back to ’Nam, he’d have gone to jail.
“Both brothers have a different father—a dead one, not this clown,” Major Rawls informed us. “This clown’s the father of that unfortunate girl—I can’t tell you who knocked her up, but I’ve got a feeling it was a family affair. My odds are on the warrant officer—I think he had sighted her in his crosshairs, too. You know what I mean? Maybe both brothers were banging her,” Major Rawls said. “But I think the younger one is too crazy to get it up—he just can’t wait to be old enough to kill people,” the major said.
“Now the mother—she’s not just in space, she’s in fucking orbit,” Major Rawls said. “And wait till you get to the wake—wait till you meet the rest of the family! I tell you—they shouldn’t’ve sent the brother home from ’Nam, not even in a box. What they should’ve done is send his whole fucking family over there! Might be the only way to win the fucking war—if you know what I mean,” Major Rawls said.
We were following the silver-gray hearse, which the chauffeur drove ploddingly along a highway called Black Canyon. Then we turned onto something called Camelback Road. In the wind, the palm trees sawed over us; on the Bermuda grass, in one neighborhood, some old people sat in metal lawn chairs—as hot as it was, even at night, the old people wore sweaters, and they waved to us. They must have been crazy.
Owen Meany had introduced me to Major Rawls as his BEST FRIEND.
“MAJOR RAWLS—THIS IS MY BEST FRIEND, JOHN WHEELWRIGHT. HE’S COME ALL THE WAY FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE!” Owen had said.
“That’s better than coming from Vietnam. It’s nice to meet you, John,” Major Rawls had said; he had a crushing handshake and he drove his car as if every other driver on the road had already done something to offend him.
“Wait till you see the fucking funeral parlor!” the major said to me.
“IT’S A KIND OF SHOPPING-MALL MORTUARY,” Owen said, and Major Rawls liked that—he laughed.
“It’s a fucking ‘shopping-mall’ mortician!” Rawls said.
“THEY HAVE REMOVABLE CROSSES IN THE CHAPEL,” Owen informed me. “THEY CAN SWITCH CROSSES, DEPENDING ON THE DENOMINATION OF THE SERVICE—THEY’VE GOT A CRUCIFIX WITH AN ESPECIALLY LIFELIKE CHRIST HANGING ON IT, FOR THE CATHOLICS. THEY’VE GOT A PLAIN WOODEN CROSS FOR THE PLAIN, PROTESTANT TYPES. THEY’VE EVEN GOT A FANCY CROSS WITH JEWELS IN IT, FOR THE IN-BETWEENS,” Owen said.
“What are ‘in-betweens’?” I asked Owen Meany.
“That’s what we’ve got on our hands here,” Major Rawls said. “We’ve got fucking Baptists—they’re fucking ‘in-betweens,’ all right,” he said. “You remember that asshole minister, Meany?” Major Rawls asked Owen.
“YOU MEAN THE BAPTIST THE MORTUARY USES? OF COURSE I DO!” Owen said.
“Just wait till you meet him!” Major Rawls said to me.
“I can’t wait,” I said.
Owen made me put on the extra black armband. “DON’T WORRY,” he told me. “WE’LL HAVE A LOT OF FREE TIME.”
“Do you guys want dates?” Major Rawls asked us. “I know some hot coeds,” he said.
“I KNOW YOU DO,” Owen said. “BUT NO THANKS—WE’RE JUST GOING TO HANG OUT.”
“I’ll show you where the porn shop is,” Major Rawls offered.
“NO THANKS,” Owen said. “WE JUST WANT TO RELAX.”
“What are you—a couple of fags?” the major asked—he laughed at his joke.
“MAYBE WE ARE,” said Owen Meany, and Major Rawls laughed again.
“Your friend’s the funniest little fucker in the Army,” the major said.
It actually was a kind of shopping-mall mortuary, surrounded by an unfathomable inappropriateness for a funeral home. In the style of a Mexican hacienda, the mortuary—and its chapel with the changeable crosses—formed one of several L-joints in a long, interconnected series of pink- and white-stuccoed buildings. Immediately adjacent to the mortuary itself was an ice-cream shop; adjoined to the chapel was a pet shop—the windowfront displayed an arrangement of snakes, which were on sale.
“It’s no fucking wonder the warrant officer wanted to go back to ’Nam,” Major Rawls said.
Before the oily mortician could inquire who I was—or ask on whose authority I was permitted to view the contents of the plywood container—Owen Meany introduced me.
“THIS IS MISTER WHEELWRIGHT—OUR BODY EXPERT,” Owen said. “THIS IS INTELLIGENCE BUSINESS,” Owen told the mortician. “I MUST ASK YOU NOT TO DISCUSS THIS.”
“Oh no—never!” the mortician said; clearly, he didn’t know what there was—or might be—to DISCUSS. Major Rawls rolled his eyes and concealed a dry laughter by pretending to cough. A carpeted hall led to a room that smelled like a chemistry lab, where two inappropriately cheerful attendants were loosening the screws on the transfer case—another man stacked the plywood against a far wall. He was finishing an ice-cream cone, so he clumsily stacked the wood with his free hand. It took four people to lift the heavy coffin—perhaps twenty-gauge steel—onto the mortuary’s chrome dolly. Major Rawls spun three catches that looked like those fancy wheel locks on certain sports cars.
Owen Meany opened the lid and peered inside. After a while, he turned to Rawls. “IS IT HIM?” he asked the major.
Major Rawls looked into the coffin for a long time. The mortician knew enough to wait his turn.
Finally, Major Rawls turned away. “I think it’s him,” Rawls said. “It’s close enough,” he added. The mortician started for the coffin, but Owen stopped him.
“PLEASE LET MISTER WHEELWRIGHT LOOK FIRST,” he said.
“Oh yes—of course!” the mortician said, backing away. To his attendants, the mortician whispered: “This is intelligence business—there will be no discussion of this.” The two attendants, and even the mild-looking fellow who was handling the plywood and eating ice cream, glanced nervously at one another.
“What was the cause of death?” the mortician asked Major Rawls.
“THAT’S PRECISELY WHAT’S UNDER INVESTIGATION,” Owen snapped at him. “THAT’S WHAT WE’RE NOT DISCUSSING!”
“Oh yes—of
course!” the idiot mortician said.
Major Rawls again tried not to laugh; he coughed.
I avoided looking too closely at the body of the warrant officer. I was so prepared for something not even recognizably human that, at first, I felt enormously relieved; almost nothing appeared to be wrong with the man—he was a whole soldier in his greens and aviator wings and warrant officer brass. He had a makeup tan, and the skin on his face appeared to be stretched too tightly over his bones, which were prominent. There was an unreal element to his hair, which resembled a kind of wig-in-progress. Then certain, specific things began to go a little wrong with my perception of the warrant officer’s face—his ears were as dark and shriveled as prunes, as if a set of headphones had caught fire when he’d been listening to something; and there were perfectly goggle-shaped circles burned into the skin around his eyes, as if he were part raccoon. I realized that his sunglasses had melted against his face, and that the tautness of his skin was, in fact, the result of his whole face being swollen—his whole face was a tight, smooth blister, which gave me the impression that the terrific heat he’d been exposed to had been generated from inside his head.
I felt a little ill, but more ashamed than sick—I felt I was being indecent, invading the warrant officer’s privacy … to the degree that a thrill-seeker who’s pressed too close to the wreckage of an automobile accident might feel guilty for catching a glimpse of the bloody hair protruding through the fractured windshield. Owen Meany knew that I couldn’t speak.
“IT’S WHAT YOU EXPECTED—ISN’T IT?” Owen asked me; I nodded, and moved away.
Quickly the mortician darted to the coffin. “Oh, really—you’d think they’d make a better effort than this!” he said. Fussily, he took a tissue and wiped some leakage—some fluid—from the corner of the warrant officer’s mouth. “I don’t believe in open caskets, anyway,” the mortician said. “That last look can be the heartbreaker.”
“I don’t think this guy had a gift for breaking hearts,” Major Rawls said. But I could think of one heart that the warrant officer had broken; his tall younger brother was heartbroken—he was much worse than heartbroken, I thought.
Owen and I had an ice-cream cone, next door, while Major Rawls and the mortician argued about the “asshole minister.” It was a Saturday. Because tomorrow was a Sunday, the service couldn’t be held in the Baptist Church—it would conflict with the Sunday services. There was a Baptist minister who “traveled” to the mortuary and performed the service in the mortuary’s flexible chapel.
“You mean he travels because he’s such an asshole that he doesn’t have a church of his own!” said Major Rawls; he accused the mortician and the minister of frequently working together—“for the money.”
“It costs money in a church, too—wherever you die and have a service, it costs money,” the mortician said.
“MAJOR RAWLS IS JUST TIRED OF LISTENING TO THIS PARTICULAR BAPTIST,” Owen explained to me.
Back in the car, Rawls said: “I don’t believe anyone in this family ever went to church—not ever! That fucking funeral director—I know he talked the family into being Baptists. He probably told them they had to say they were something—then he told them to be Baptists. He and that fucking minister—they’re a match made in hell!”
“THE CATHOLICS REALLY DO THIS SORT OF THING BETTER THAN ANYBODY,” said Owen Meany.
“The fucking Catholics!” said Major Rawls.
“NO, THEY REALLY DO THIS SORT OF THING THE BEST—THEY HAVE THE PROPER SOLEMNITY, THE PROPER SORT OF RITUALS, AND PROPER PACING,” Owen said.
I was amazed to find that Owen Meany had praised the Catholics; but he was absolutely serious. Even Major Rawls didn’t wish to argue with him.
“No one does ‘this sort of thing’ well—that’s all I know,” the major said.
“I DIDN’T SAY ANYONE DID IT ‘WELL,’ SIR—I SAID THE CATHOLICS DID IT ‘BETTER’; THEY DO IT BEST,” said Owen Meany.
I asked Owen what had been the stuff I’d seen leaking from the warrant officer’s mouth.
“That’s just phenol,” said Major Rawls.
“IT’S ALSO CALLED CARBOLIC ACID,” Owen said.
“I call it ‘phenol,’” Rawls said.
Then I asked them how the warrant officer had died.
“He was such a dumb asshole,” Major Rawls said. “He was refueling a helicopter—he just made some stupid-asshole mistake.”
“YOU AGGRAVATE HIGH OCTANE—THAT’LL DO IT,” said Owen Meany.
“I can’t wait to show you guys this fucking ‘picnic wake,’” Major Rawls said. Apparently, that was where we were driving next—to the “picnic wake” that was now in its third, merrymaking day. Major Rawls blew his horn at someone who he thought was possibly inching out of a driveway into the path of our car; actually, it was my impression that the person was waiting in the driveway for us to pass. “Look at that asshole!” Major Rawls said. On we drove through nighttime Phoenix.
Owen Meany patted the back of my hand. “DON’T WORRY,” he said to me. “WE JUST HAVE TO MAKE AN APPEARANCE AT THE WAKE—WE DON’T HAVE TO STAY LONG.”
“You won’t be able to tear yourselves away!” the major said excitedly. “I’m telling you, these people are on the verge of killing each other—it’s the kind of scene where mass-murderers get all their ideas!”
Major Rawls had been exaggerating. The “tribe,” as he’d called the family, did not live (as he’d said) in a trailer park, but in a one-story tract house with turquoise aluminum siding; but for the daring choice of turquoise, the house was identical to all the others in what I suppose is still called a low-income housing development. The neighborhood was distinguished by a large population of dismantled automobiles—indeed, there were more cars on cinder blocks, with their wheels off or their engines ripped out from under their hoods, than there were live cars parked at the curbs or in driveways. And since the houses were nearly all constructed of cheap, uninsulated materials—and the residents could not afford or did not choose to trouble themselves with air conditioning—the neighborhood (even in the evening) teemed with outdoor activities of the kind that are usually conducted indoors. Televisions had been dragged outside, folding card tables and folding chairs gave the crowded suburb the atmosphere of a shabby sidewalk café—and block after block of outdoor barbecue pits and charcoal grills, which darkly smoked and sizzled with grease, gave the newcomer the impression that this part of Phoenix was recovering from an air raid that had set the ground on fire and driven the residents from their homes with only their most cherished and salvageable belongings. Some of the older people swayed in hammocks.
Screen doors whapped throughout the night, cats fought and fucked without cease, a cacophony of dogs malingered in the vicinity of each outdoor barbecue-in-progress, and an occasional flash of heat-lightning lit up the night, casting into silhouette the tangled maze of television antennas that towered over the low-level houses—as if a vast network of giant spiderwebs threatened the smaller, human community below.
“I tell you, the only thing preventing a murder here is that everyone would be a witness,” said Major Rawls.
Tents—for the children—filled the small backyard of the dead warrant officer’s home; there were two cars on cinder blocks in the backyard, and for the duration of the “picnic wake” some of the smaller children had been sleeping in these; and there was also a great boat on cinder blocks—a fire-engine-red racing boat with a gleaming chrome railing running around its jutting bow. The boat appeared more comfortable to sleep in than the turquoise house, at every orifice of which there popped into view the heads of children or adults staring out at the night.
One of the boat’s big twin engines had been removed from the stern and was fastened to the rim of a large iron barrel, full of water; in the barrel, the noisy engine ran and ran—at least half a dozen grown men surrounded this display of spilled gasoline and oil, and the powerful propellers that churned and churned the water in the sloshing barrel. The men
stood with such reverence around this demonstration of the engine’s power that Major Rawls and Owen and I half expected the barrel to take flight—or at least drive itself away.
By the marvel of a long extension cord, a TV was placed in a prime position on the dry, brown lawn; a circle of men were watching a baseball game, of course. And where were the women? Clustered in their own groups, according to age or marriage or divorce or degree of pregnancy, most of the women were inside the sweltering house, where the ovenlike temperature appeared to have wilted them, like the limp raw vegetables that were plunked in assorted bowls alongside the assorted “dips” that were now in their third day of exposure to this fetid air.
Inside, too, the sink was filled with ice, through which one could search in vain for a cold beer. The mother with her high-piled, sticky, pink hair slouched against the refrigerator, which she seemed to be guarding from the others; occasionally, she flicked the ash from her cigarette into what she vacantly assumed was an ashtray—rather, it was a small plate of nuts that had been creatively mixed with a breakfast cereal.
“Here comes the fuckin’ Army!” she said—when she saw us. She was drinking what smelled like bourbon out of a highball glass—this one was etched with a poor likeness of a pheasant or a grouse or a quail.
It was not necessary to introduce me, although—several times—Owen and Major Rawls tried. Not everyone knew everyone else, anyway; it was hard to tell family from neighbors, and specifics such as which children were the offspring of whose previous or present marriage were not even considered. The relatives from Yuma and Modesto—aside from the uncomfortable fact that their children, and perhaps they themselves, were housed in tents and dismantled cars—simply blended in.
The father who’d struck his stepson at the airport was dead drunk and had passed out in a bedroom with the door open; he was sprawled not on the bed but on the floor at the foot of the bed, upon which four or five small children were glued to a second television set, their attention riveted to a crime drama that surely held no surprises for them.
