The man on the sidewalk ahead of us was Mr. Fish, whom we rather quickly caught up to--Mr. Fish was making his unreckless way with absurdly great care; he must have feared breaking his hip, too. He was startled by the sight of Owen Meany, wrapped up so tightly in my mother's scarf that only Owen's eyes were showing; but Mr. Fish was often startled to see Owen.
"Why aren't you already at the church, getting into your costumes?" he asked us. We pointed out that we would be almost an hour early. Even at the rate Mr. Fish was walking, he would be half an hour early; but Owen and I were surprised that Mr. Fish was attending the pageant.
"YOU'RE NOT A CHURCHGOER," Owen said accusingly.
"Why no, I'm not, that's true," Mr. Fish admitted. "But I wouldn't miss this for the world!"
Owen eyed his costar in A Christmas Carol cautiously. Mr. Fish seemed both so depressed and impressed by Owen's success that his attendance at the Christ Church Christmas Pageant was suspicious. I suspect that Mr. Fish enjoyed depressing himself; also, he was so slavishly devoted to amateur acting that he desperately sought to pick up as many pointers as he could by observing Owen's genius.
"I MAY NOT BE AT MY BEST TODAY," Owen warned Mr. Fish; he then demonstrated his barking cough, dramatically.
"A trouper like you is surely undaunted by a little illness, Owen," Mr. Fish observed. We three trudged through the snow together--Mr. Fish coming halfway to meet us, on the matter of pace.
He confided to Owen and me that he was a little nervous about attending church; that he'd never once been forced to go to church when he was a child--his parents had not been religious, either--and that he'd only "set foot" in churches for weddings and funerals. Mr. Fish wasn't even sure how much of Christ's story a Christmas pageant "covered."
"NOT THE WHOLE THING," Owen told him.
"Not the bit on the cross?" Mr. Fish asked.
"THEY DIDN'T NAIL HIM TO THE CROSS WHEN HE WAS A BABY!" Owen said.
"How about the bit when he does all the healing--and all the lecturing to the disciples?" Mr. Fish asked.
"IT DOESN'T GO PAST CHRISTMAS!" Owen said, with exasperation. "IT'S JUST THE BIRTHDAY SCENE!"
"It's not a speaking part," I reminded Mr. Fish.
"Oh, of course, I forgot about that," Mr. Fish said.
Christ Church was on Elliot Street, at the edge of the Gravesend Academy campus; at the corner of Elliot and Front streets, Dan Needham was waiting for us. Apparently the director intended to pick up a few pointers, too.
"My, my, look who's here!" Dan said to Mr. Fish, who blushed.
Owen was cheered to see that Dan was coming.
"IT'S A GOOD THING YOU'RE HERE, DAN," Owen told him, "BECAUSE THIS IS MISTER FISH'S FIRST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT, AND HE'S A LITTLE NERVOUS."
"I'm just not sure when to genuflect, and all that nonsense!" Mr. Fish said, chuckling.
"NOT ALL EPISCOPALIANS GENUFLECT," Owen announced.
"I don't," I said.
"I DO," said Owen Meany.
"Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't," Dan said. "When I'm in church, I watch the other people--I do what they do."
Thus did our eclectic foursome arrive at Christ Church.
Despite the cold, the Rev. Dudley Wiggin was standing outdoors on the church steps to greet the early arrivals; he was not wearing a hat, and his scalp glowed a howling red under his thin, gray hair--his ears looked frozen bloodless enough to break off. Barb Wiggin stood in a silver-fur coat beside him, wearing a matching fur hat.
"SHE LOOKS LIKE A STEWARDESS ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILROAD," Owen observed.
I got quite a shock to see the Rev. Lewis Merrill and his California wife standing next to the Wiggins; Owen was surprised, too.
"HAVE YOU CHANGED CHURCHES?" Owen asked them.
The long-suffering Merrills appeared not to possess the imaginative capacity to know what Owen meant; it was a question that raised havoc with Mr. Merrill's usually slight stutter.
"W-w-w-w-e have Ves-p-p-p-pers today!" Mr. Merrill told Owen, who didn't understand.
"The Congregationalists have a Vesper service today," I told Owen. "Instead of the regular morning service," I added. "Vespers are in the late afternoon."
"I KNOW WHAT TIME VESPERS ARE!" Owen answered irritably.
The Rev. Mr. Wiggin put his arm around his fellow clergyman's shoulder, giving the Rev. Mr. Merrill such a squeeze that the smaller, paler man looked alarmed. I believe that Episcopalians are generally heartier than Congregationalists.
"Barb and I go to the Vespers, for the caroling--every year," Rector Wiggin announced. "And the Merrills come to our pageant!"
"Every year," Mrs. Merrill added neutrally; she looked miserably envious of Owen's face-concealing scarf.
The Rev. Mr. Merrill composed himself. I'd not seen him so tongue-tied since Sagamore's spontaneous funeral, and it occurred to me that it might be Owen who so effectively crippled his speech.
"We really go in for the caroling, we celebrate the songs of Christmas--we've always put great emphasis on our choir," Pastor Merrill said. He appeared to single me out for a heartfelt look when he said "choir," as if the mere mention of these trained angels was certain to remind me of my mother's lost voice.
"We go in more for the miracle itself!" said Mr. Wiggin joyfully. "And this year," the rector added, suddenly taking a grip of Owen's shoulder with his steady pilot's hand, "this year we've got a little Lord Jesus who's gonna take your breath away!" The Rev. Dudley Wiggin mauled Owen's head in his big paw, managing to push down the visor of Owen's red-and-black-checkered hunter's cap; at the same time, he effectively blinded Owen by scrunching up my mother's LUCKY scarf.
"Yes, sir!" said Rector Wiggin, who now lifted the hunter's cap off Owen's head, so quickly that static electricity caused Owen's silky-thin, babylike hair to stand up and wave in all directions. "This year," Captain Wiggin warned, "there's not gonna be a dry eye in the house!"
Owen, who appeared to be strangling in his scarf, sneezed.
"Owen, you come with me!" Barb Wiggin said sharply. "I've got to wrap this poor child in his swaddling clothes--before he catches cold!" she explained to the Merrills; but Mr. Merrill and his shivering wife looked in need of being wrapped in swaddling clothes themselves. They seemed aghast at the notion that Owen Meany was cast as the Prince of Peace. The Congregationalists are a lot less miracle-oriented than the Episcopalians, I believe.
In the chilly vestibule of the parish house, Barb Wiggin proceeded to imprison Owen Meany in the swaddling clothes; but however tightly or loosely she bound him in the broad, cotton swathes, Owen complained.
"IT'S TOO TIGHT, I CAN'T BREATHE!" he would say, coughing. Or else he would cry out, "I FEEL A DRAFT!"
Barb Wiggin worked over him with such a grim, humorless sense of purpose that you would have thought she was embalming him; perhaps that's what she thought of as she swaddled him--to calm herself.
The combination of being so roughly handled by Barb Wiggin and discovering that my grandmother had been free to attend the pageant--but had chosen not to attend--was deleterious to Owen's mood; he grew cranky and petulant. He insisted that he be unswaddled, and then reswaddled, in my mother's LUCKY scarf; when this was accomplished, the white cotton swathes could be wrapped over the scarf to conceal it. The point being, he wanted the scarf next to his skin.
"FOR WARMTH AND FOR LUCK," he said.
"The Baby Jesus doesn't need 'luck,' Owen," Barb Wiggin told him.
"ARE YOU TELLING ME CHRIST WAS LUCKY?" Owen asked her. "I WOULD SAY HE COULD HAVE USED A LITTLE MORE LUCK THAN HE HAD. I WOULD SAY HE RAN OUT OF LUCK, AT THE END."
"But Owen," Rector Wiggin said. "He was crucified, yet he rose from the dead--he was resurrected. Isn't the point that he was saved?"
"HE WAS USED," said Owen Meany, who was in a contrary mood.
The rector appeared to consider whether the time was right for ecclesiastical debate; Barb Wiggin appeared to consider throttling Owen with my mother's scarf. That Christ was lucky or unlucky,
that he was saved or used, seemed rather serious points of difference--even in the hurried-up atmosphere of the parish-house vestibule, drafty from the opening and closing of the outside door and at the same time smelling of steam from the wet woolen clothes that dripped melting snow into the heat registers. Yet who was a mere rector of Christ Church to argue with the babe in swaddling clothes about to lie in a manger?
"Wrap him up the way he likes it," Mr. Wiggin instructed his wife; but there was menace in his tone, as if the rector were weighing the possibilities of Owen Meany being the Christ or the Antichrist. With the fury of the strokes with which she unwrapped him, and rewrapped him, Barb Wiggin demonstrated that Owen was no Prince of Peace to her.
The cows--the former turtledoves--were staggering around the crowded vestibule, as if made restless by the absence of hay. Mary Beth Baird looked quite lush--like a slightly plump starlet--in her white raiment; but both the Holy Mother effect, and the Holy Virgin effect, were undermined by her long, rakish pigtail. As a typical Joseph, I was attired in a dull brown robe, the biblical equivalent of a three-piece suit. Harold Crosby, delaying his ascension in the often-faulty angel-apparatus, had twice requested a "last" visit to the men's room. Swaddled as he was, it was a good thing, I thought, that Owen didn't have to pee. He couldn't stand; and even if he'd been propped up on his feet, he couldn't have walked--Barb Wiggin had wrapped his legs too tightly together.
That was the first problem: how to get him to the creche. So that our creative assembly could gather out of sight of the congregation, a tripartite screen had been placed in front of the rude manger--a gold-brocade cross adorned each purple panel of the triptych. We were supposed to take our places behind this altarpiece--to freeze there, in photographic stillness. And as the Announcing Angel began his harrowing descent to the shepherds, thus distracting the congregation from us, the purple screen would be removed. The "pillar of light," following the shepherds and kings, would lead the congregation's rapt attention to our assembly in the stable.
Naturally, Mary Beth Baird wanted to carry Owen to the creche. "I can do it!" the Virgin Mother proclaimed. "I've lifted him up before!"
"NO, JOSEPH CARRIES THE BABY JESUS!" Owen cried, beseeching me; but Barb Wiggin wished to undertake the task herself. Observing that the Christ Child's nose was running, she deftly wiped it; then she held the handkerchief in place, while instructing him to "blow." He blew an inhuman little honk. Mary Beth Baird was provided with a clean handkerchief, in case the Baby Jesus's nose became offensive while he lay in view in the manger; the Virgin Mother was delighted to have been given a physical responsibility for Owen.
Before she lifted the little Prince of Peace in her arms, Barb Wiggin bent over him and massaged his cheeks. There was a curious combination of the perfunctory and the erotic in her attentions to Owen Meany. Naturally, I saw something so stewardesslike in her performance of these duties--as if she were dispatching with Owen in the manner that she might have changed a diaper; while at the same time there was something salacious in how close she put her face to his, as if she were intent on seducing him. "You're too pale," she told him, actually pinching color into Owen's face.
"OW!" he said.
"The Baby Jesus should be apple-cheeked," she told him. She bent even closer to him and touched the tip of her nose to his nose; quite unexpectedly, she kissed him on the mouth. It was not a tender, affectionate kiss; it was a cruel, teasing kiss that startled Owen--he flushed, he turned the rosy complexion Barb Wiggin had desired; tears sprang to his eyes.
"I know you don't like to be kissed, Owen," Barb Wiggin told him flirtatiously, "but that's for good luck--that's all that's for."
I knew it was the first time Owen had been kissed on the mouth since my mother had kissed him; that Barb Wiggin might have reminded him of my mother, I'm sure, outraged him. He clenched his fists at his sides as Barb Wiggin lifted him, stiffly prone, to her breasts. His legs, too tightly swaddled to bend at the knees, stuck out straight; he appeared to be a successful levitation experiment in the arms of a harlot-magician. Mary Beth Baird, who had once pleaded to be allowed to kiss the Baby Jesus, glared with jealous loathing at Barb Wiggin, who must have been an exceptionally strong stewardess--in her time in the sky. She had no difficulty carrying Owen to his prepared place in the hay. She bore him easily against her breasts with the stern sense of ceremony of a foxy mortician--bearing a child-pharaoh into the pyramid's hidden tomb.
"Relax, relax," she whispered to him; she put her mouth wickedly close to his ear, and he blushed rosier and rosier.
And I, Joseph--forever standing in the wings--saw what the envious Virgin Mary failed to see. I saw it, and I'm sure Barb Wiggin saw it, too--I'm sure it was why she so shamelessly continued to torture him. The Baby Jesus had an erection; its protrusion was visible in spite of the tightly bound layers of his swaddling clothes.
Barb Wiggin laid him in the manger; she smiled knowingly at him, and gave him one more saucy peck, on his rosy cheek--for good luck, no doubt. This was not of the nature of a Christlike lesson for Owen Meany: to learn, as he lay in the manger, that someone you hate can give you a hard-on. Anger and shame flushed Owen's face; Mary Beth Baird, misunderstanding the Baby Jesus' expression, wiped his nose. A cow trod on an angel, who nearly toppled the tripartite, purple screen; the hind part of a donkey was nudged by the teetering triptych. I stared into the darkness of the mock flying buttresses for some reassuring glimpse of the Announcing Angel; but Harold Crosby was invisible--he was hidden, doubtless in fear and trembling, above the "pillar of light."
"Blow!" Mary Beth Baird whispered to Owen, who looked ready to explode.
It was the choir that saved him.
There was a metallic clicking, like the teeth of a ratchet, as the mechanism for lowering the angel began its task; this was followed by a brief gasp, the panicked intake of Harold Crosby's breath--as the choir began.
O lit-tle town of Beth-le-hem,
How still we see thee lie!
A-bove thy deep and dream-less sleep
The si-lent stars go by ...
Only gradually did the Baby Jesus unclench his fists; only slowly did the Christ Child's erection subside. The glint of anger in Owen's eyes was dulled, as if by an inspired drowsiness--a trance of peace blessed the little Prince's expression, which brought tears of adoration to the already moist eyes of the Holy Mother.
"Blow! Why won't you blow?" she whispered plaintively. Mary Beth Baird held the handkerchief to his nose, managing to cover his mouth, too--as if she were administering an anesthetic. With grace, with gentleness, Owen pushed her hand and the handkerchief aside; his smile forgave her everything, even her clumsiness, and the Blessed Virgin tottered a trifle on her knees, as if she were preparing to swoon.
Hidden from the congregation's view, but ominously visible to us, Barb Wiggin seized the controls of the angel-lowering apparatus like a heavy-equipment operator about to attack the terra firma with a backhoe. When Owen caught her eye, she appeared to lose her confidence and her poise; the look he gave her was both challenging and lascivious. A shudder coursed through Barb Wiggin's body; she gave a corresponding jerk of her shoulders, distracting her from her task. Harold Crosby's meant-to-be-stately descent to earth was momentarily suspended.
"'Be not afraid,'" Harold Crosby began, his voice quaking. But I, Joseph--I saw someone who was afraid. Barb Wiggin, frozen at the controls of the "pillar of light," arrested in her duties with the angel-lowering apparatus, was afraid of Owen Meany; the Prince of Peace had regained his control. He had made a small but important discovery: a hard-on comes and goes. The "pillar of light," which was supposed to follow Harold Crosby's now-interrupted, risky descent, appeared to have a will of its own; it illuminated Owen on the mountain of hay, as if the light had wrested control of itself from Barb Wiggin. The light that was supposed to reveal the angel bathed the manger instead.
From the congregation--as the janitor tiptoed out of sight with the tripartite screen--there arose a single m
urmur; but the Christ Child quieted them with the slightest movement of his hand. He directed a most unbabylike, sardonic look at Barb Wiggin, who only then regained her control; she moved the "pillar of light" back to the Descending Angel, where it belonged.
"'Be not afraid,'" Harold Crosby repeated; Barb Wiggin, a tad eager at the controls of the angel-lowering apparatus, dropped him suddenly--it was about a ten-foot free fall, before she abruptly halted his descent; his head was jerked and snapped all around, with his mouth open, and he swung back and forth above the frightened shepherds, like a giant gull toying with the wind. "'Be not afraid'!" Harold cried loudly. There he paused, swinging; he was stalling; he had forgotten the rest of his lines.
Barb Wiggin, trying to prevent the angel from swinging, turned Harold Crosby away from the shepherds and the congregation--so that he continued to swing, but with his back toward everyone, as if he had decided to spurn the world, or retract his message.
"'Be not afraid,'" he mumbled indistinctly.
From the hay in the dark came the cracked falsetto, the ruined voice of an unlikely prompter--but who else would know, by heart, the lines that Harold Crosby had forgotten? Who else but the former Announcing Angel?
"'FOR BEHOLD, I BRING YOU GOOD NEWS OF A GREAT JOY WHICH WILL COME TO ALL THE PEOPLE,'" Owen whispered; but Owen Meany couldn't really whisper--his voice had too much sand and gravel in it. Not only Harold Crosby heard the Christ Child's prompting; every member of the congregation heard it, too--the strained, holy voice speaking from the darkened manger, telling the angel what to say. Dutifully, Harold repeated the lines he was given.
Thus, when the "pillar of light" finally followed the shepherds and kings to their proper place of worship at the creche, the congregation was also prepared to adore him--whatever special Christ this was who not only knew his role but also knew all the other, vital parts of the story.
Mary Beth Baird was overcome. Her face flopped first on the hay, then her cheek bumped the Baby Jesus' hip; then she lunged further into prostration, actually putting her heavy head in Owen's lap. The "pillar of light" trembled at this shameless, unmotherly behavior. Barb Wiggin's fury, and her keen anticipation of worse to come, suggested the intensity of someone in command of a machine-gun nest; she struggled to hold the light steady.