A Prayer for Owen Meany

l asleep, I realized that everything Dan had said about Owen's intentions was correct. How much it has meant to my life that Dan Needham was almost never wrong! I was not as familiar with Wall's History of Gravesend as I became when I was eighteen and read the whole thing for myself; but I was familiar with those parts of it that Owen Meany considered "important." And just before I fell asleep, I also recognized my armadillo for what it was--in addition to all those things Dan had told me. My armadillo had been amputated to resemble Watahantowet's totem, the tragic and mysterious armless man--for weren't the Indians wise enough to understand that everything had its own soul, its own spirit?

It was Owen Meany who told me that only white men are vain enough to believe that human beings are unique because we have souls. According to Owen, Watahantowet knew better. Watahantowet believed that animals had souls, and that even the much-abused Squamscott River had a soul--Watahantowet knew that the land he sold to my ancestors was absolutely full of spirits. The rocks they had to move to plant a field--they were, forever after, restless and displaced spirits. And the trees they cut down to build their homes--they had a different spirit from the spirits that escaped those houses as the smoke from firewood. Watahantowet may have been the last resident of Gravesend, New Hampshire, who really understood what everything cost. Here, take my land! There go my arms!

It would take me years to learn everything that Owen Meany was thinking, and I didn't understand him very well that night. Now I know that the armadillo told me what Owen was thinking although Owen himself would not until we were both students at Gravesend Academy; it wasn't until then that I realized Owen had already conveyed his message to me--via the armadillo. Here is what Owen Meany (and the armadillo) said: "GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER. MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT. GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD'S INSTRUMENT."

How could it ever have occurred to me that a fellow eleven-year-old was thinking any such thing? That Owen Meany was a Chosen One was the furthest thing from my mind; that Owen could even consider himself one of God's Appointed would have been a surprise to me. To have seen him up in the air, at Sunday school, you would not have thought he was at work on God's Assignment. And you must remember--forgetting about Owen--that at the age of eleven I did not believe there were "chosen ones," or that God "appointed" anyone, or that God gave "assignments." As for Owen's belief that he was "God's instrument," I didn't know that there was other evidence upon which Owen was basing his conviction that he'd been specially selected to carry out the work of the Lord; but Owen's idea--that God's reasoning was somehow predetermining Owen's every move--came from much more than that one unlucky swing and crack of the bat. As you shall see.


Today--January 30, 1987--it is snowing in Toronto; in the dog's opinion, Toronto is improved by snow. I enjoy walking the dog when it's snowing, because the dog's enthusiasm is infectious; in the snow, the dog establishes his territorial rights to the St. Clair Reservoir as if he were the first dog to relieve himself there--an illusion that is made possible by the fresh snow covering the legion of dog turds for which the St. Clair Reservoir is famous.

In the snow, the clock tower of Upper Canada College appears to preside over a preparatory school in a small New England town; when it's not snowing, the cars and buses on the surrounding roads are more numerous, the sounds of traffic are less muted, and the presence of downtown Toronto seems closer. In the snow, the view of the clock tower of Upper Canada College--especially from the distance of Kilbarry Road, or, closer, from the end of Frybrook Road--reminds me of the clock tower of the Main Academy Building in Gravesend; fastidious, sepulchral.

In the snow, there is something almost like New England about where I live on Russell Hill Road; granted, Torontonians do not favor white clapboard houses with dark-green or black shutters, but my grandmother's house, at 80 Front Street, was brick--Torontonians prefer brick and stone. Inexplicably, Torontonians clutter their brick and stone houses with too much trim, or with window trim and shutters--and they also carve their shutters with hearts or maple leaves--but the snow conceals these frills; and on some days, like today, when the snow is especially wet and heavy, the snow turns even the brick houses white. Toronto is sober, but not austere; Gravesend is austere, but also pretty; Toronto is not pretty, but in the snow Toronto can look like Gravesend--both pretty and austere.

And from my bedroom window on Russell Hill Road, I can see both Grace Church on-the-Hill and the Bishop Strachan chapel; how fitting that a boy whose childhood was divided by two churches should live out his present life in view of two more! But this suits me now; both churches are Anglican. The cold, gray stones of both Grace Church and The Bishop Strachan School are also improved by snow.

My grandmother liked to say that snow was "healing"--that it healed everything. A typical Yankee point of view: if it snows a lot, snow must be good for you. In Toronto, it's good for me. And the little children sledding at the St. Clair Reservoir: they remind me of Owen, too--because I have fixed Owen at a permanent size, which is the size he was when he was eleven, which was the size of an average five-year-old. But I should be careful not to give too much credit to the snow; there are so many things that remind me of Owen.

I avoid American newspapers and magazines, and American television--and other Americans in Toronto. But Toronto is not far enough away. Just the day before yesterday--January 28, 1987--the front page of The Globe and Mail gave us a full account of President Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Message. Will I ever learn? When I see such things, I know I should simply not read them; I should pick up The Book of Common Prayer, instead. I should not give in to anger; but, God forgive me, I read the State of the Union Message. After almost twenty years in Canada, there are certain American lunatics who still fascinate me.

"There must be no Soviet beachhead in Central America," President Reagan said. He also insisted that he would not sacrifice his proposed nuclear missiles in space--his beloved Star Wars plan--to a nuclear arms agreement with the Soviet Union. He even said that "a key element of the U.S.-Soviet agenda" is "more responsible Soviet conduct around the world"--as if the United States were a bastion of "responsible conduct around the world"!

I believe that President Reagan can say these things only because he knows that the American people will never hold him accountable for what he says; it is history that holds you accountable, and I've already expressed my opinion that Americans are not big on history. How many of them even remember their own, recent history? Was twenty years ago so long ago for Americans? Do they remember October 21, 1967? Fifty thousand antiwar demonstrators were in Washington; I was there; that was the "March on the Pentagon"--remember? And two years later--in October of '69--there were fifty thousand people in Washington again; they were carrying flashlights, they were asking for peace. There were a hundred thousand asking for peace in Boston Common; there were two hundred fifty thousand in New York. Ronald Reagan had not yet numbed the United States, but he had succeeded in putting California to sleep; he described the Vietnam protests as "giving aid and comfort to the enemy." As president, he still didn't know who the enemy was.

I now believe that Owen Meany always knew; he knew everything.

We were seniors at Gravesend Academy in February of 1962; we watched a lot of TV at 80 Front Street. President Kennedy said that U.S. advisers in Vietnam would return fire if fired upon.

"I HOPE WE'RE ADVISING THE RIGHT GUYS," Owen Meany said.

That spring, less than a month before Gravesend Academy's graduation exercises, the TV showed us a map of Thailand; five thousand U.S. Marines and fifty jet fighters were being sent there--"in response to Communist expansion in Laos," President Kennedy said.

"I HOPE WE KNOW WHAT WE'RE DOING," said Owen Meany.

In the summer of '63, the summer following our first year at the university, the Buddhists in Vietnam were demonstrating; there were revolts. Owen and I saw our first self-immolation--on television. South Vietnamese government forces, led by Ngo Dinh Diem--the elected president--attacked several Buddhist pagodas; that was in August. In May, Diem's brother--Ngo Dinh Nhu, who ran the secret police force--had broken up a Buddhist celebration by killing eight children and one woman.

"DIEM IS A CATHOLIC," Owen Meany announced. "WHAT'S A CATHOLIC DOING AS PRESIDENT OF A COUNTRY OF BUDDHISTS?"

That was the summer that Henry Cabot Lodge became the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam; that was the summer that Lodge received a State Department cable advising him that the United States would "no longer tolerate" Ngo Dinh Nhu's "influence" on President Diem's regime. In two months, a military coup toppled Diem's South Vietnamese government; the next day, Diem and his brother, Nhu, were assassinated.

"IT LOOKS LIKE WE'VE BEEN ADVISING THE WRONG GUYS," Owen said.

And the next summer, when we saw on TV the North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Tonkin Gulf--within two days, they attacked two U.S. destroyers--Owen said: "DO WE THINK THIS IS A MOVIE?"

President Johnson asked Congress to give him the power to "take all necessary measures to repel an armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was approved by the House by a unanimous vote of 416 to 0; it passed the Senate by a vote of 88 to 2. But Owen Meany asked my grandmother's television set a question: "DOES THAT MEAN THE PRESIDENT CAN DECLARE A WAR WITHOUT DECLARING IT?"

That New Year's Eve--I remember that Hester drank too much; she was throwing up--there were barely more than twenty thousand U.S. military personnel in Vietnam, and only a dozen (or so) had been killed. By the time the Congress put an end to the Tonkin Gulf Resolution--in May of 1970--there had been more than half a million U.S. military personnel in Vietnam; and more than forty thousand of them were dead.

As early as 1965, Owen Meany detected a problem of strategy.

In March, the U.S. Air Force began Operation Rolling Thunder--to strike targets in North Vietnam; to stop the flow of supplies to the South--and the first American combat troops landed in Vietnam.

"THERE'S NO END TO THIS," Owen said. "THERE'S NO GOOD WAY TO END IT."

On Christmas Day, President Johnson suspended Operation Rolling Thunder; he stopped the bombing. In a month, the bombing began again, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opened their televised hearings on the war. That was when my grandmother started paying attention.

In the fall of 1966, Operation Rolling Thunder was said to be "closing in on Hanoi"; but Owen Meany said, "I THINK HANOI CAN HANDLE IT."

Do you remember Operation Tiger Hound? How about Operation Masher/WhiteWing/Than Phong II? That one produced 2,389 "known enemy casualties." And then there was Operation Paul Revere/Than Phong 14--not quite so successful, only 546 "known enemy casualties." And how about Operation Maeng Ho 6? There were 6,161 "known enemy casualties."

By New Year's Eve, 1966, a total of 6,644 U.S. military had been killed in action; it was Owen Meany who remembered that was 483 more casualties than the enemy had suffered in Operation Maeng Ho.

"How do you remember such things, Owen?" my grandmother asked him.

From Saigon, General Westmoreland was asking for "fresh manpower"; Owen remembered that, too. According to the State Department, according to Dean Rusk--remember him?--we were "winning a war of attrition."

"THAT'S NOT THE KIND OF WAR WE WIN," said Owen Meany.

By the end of '67, there were five hundred thousand U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. That was when General Westmoreland said, "We have reached an important point where the end begins to come into view."

"WHAT END?" Owen Meany asked the general. "WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 'FRESH MANPOWER'? REMEMBER THE 'FRESH MANPOWER'?"

I now believe that Owen remembered everything; a part of knowing everything is remembering everything.

Do you remember the Tet Offensive? That was in January of '68; "Tet" is a traditional Vietnamese holiday--the equivalent of our Christmas and New Year's--and it was usual, during the Vietnam War, to observe a cease-fire for the holiday season. But that year the North Vietnamese attacked more than a hundred South Vietnamese towns--more than thirty provincial capitals. That was the year President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection--remember? That was the year Robert Kennedy was assassinated; you might recall that. That was the year Richard Nixon was elected president; maybe you remember him. In the following year, in 1969--the year when Ronald Reagan described the Vietnam protests as "giving aid and comfort to the enemy"--there were still half a million Americans in Vietnam. I was never one of them.

More than thirty thousand Canadians served in Vietnam, too. And almost as many Americans came to Canada during the Vietnam War; I was one of them--one who stayed. By March of 1971--when Lt. William Calley was convicted of premeditated murder--I was already a landed immigrant, I'd already applied for Canadian citizenship. It was Christmas, 1972, when President Nixon bombed Hanoi; that was an eleven-day attack, employing more than forty thousand tons of high explosives. As Owen had said: Hanoi could handle it.

What did he ever say that wasn't right? I remember what he said about Abbie Hoffman, for example--remember Abbie Hoffman? He was the guy who tried to "levitate" the Pentagon off its foundations; he was quite a clown. He was the guy who created the Youth International Party, the "Yippies"; he was very active in antiwar protests, while at the same time he conceived of a meaningful revolution as roughly anything that conveyed irreverence with comedy and vulgarity.

"WHO DOES THIS JERK THINK HE'S HELPING?" Owen said.

It was Owen Meany who kept me out of Vietnam--a trick that only Owen could have managed.

"JUST THINK OF THIS AS MY LITTLE GIFT TO YOU"--that was how he put it.

It makes me ashamed to remember that I was angry with him for taking my armadillo's claws. God knows, Owen gave me more than he ever took from me--even when you consider that he took my mother.





3


The Angel




* * *



In her bedroom at 80 Front Street, my mother kept a dressmaker's dummy; it stood at attention next to her bed, like a servant about to awaken her, like a sentry guarding her while she slept--like a lover about to get into bed beside her. My mother was good at sewing; in another life, she could have been a seamstress. Her taste was quite uncomplicated, and she made her own clothes. Her sewing machine, which she also kept in her bedroom, was a far cry from the antique that we children abused in the attic; Mother's machine was a strikingly modern piece of equipment, and it got a lot of use.

For all those years before she married Dan Needham, my mother never had a real job, or pursued a higher education; and although she never lacked money--because my grandmother was generous to her--she was clever at keeping her personal expenses to a minimum. She would bring home some of the loveliest clothes, from Boston, but she would never buy them; she dressed up her dressmaker's dummy in them, and she copied them. Then she'd return the originals to the various Boston stores; she said she always told them the same thing, and they never got angry at her--instead, they felt sorry for her, and took the clothes back without an argument.

"My husband doesn't like it," she'd tell them.

She would laugh to my grandmother and me about it. "They must think I'm married to a real tyrant! He doesn't like anything!" My grandmother, keenly aware that my mother wasn't married at all, would laugh uncomfortably at this, but it seemed such a solitary and innocent piece of mischief that I'm sure Harriet Wheelwright did not object to her daughter having a little fun.

And Mother made beautiful clothes: simple, as I've described--most of them were white or black, but they were made of the best material and they fitted her perfectly. The dresses and blouses and skirts she brought home were multicolored, and multipatterned, but my mother would expertly imitate the cut of the clothes in basic black and white. As in many things, my mother could be extremely accomplished without being in the least original or even inventive. The game she acted out upon the perfect body of the dressmaker's dummy must have pleased the frugal, Yankee part of her--the Wheelwright in her.

My mother hated darkness. There could never be enough light to suit her. I saw the dummy as a kind of accomplice to my mother in her war against the night. She would close her curtains only when she was undressing for bed; when she had her nightgown and her robe on, she would open the curtains. When she turned out the lamp on her bedside table, whatever light there was in the night flooded into her room--and there was always some light. There were streetlights on Front Street, Mr. Fish left lights on in his house all night, and my grandmother left a light on--it pointlessly illuminated the garage doors. In addition to this neighborhood light, there was starlight, or moonlight, or that unnameable light that comes from the eastern horizon whenever you live near the Atlantic Coast. There was not a night when my mother lay in her bed unable to see the comforting figure of the dressmaker's dummy; it was not only her confederate against the darkness, it was her double.

It was never naked. I don't mean that my mother was so crazy about sewing that there was always a dressin-progress upon the dummy; whether out of a sense of decency, or a certain playfulness that my mother had not outgrown--from whenever it was that she used to dress up her dolls--the dummy was always dressed. And I don't mean casually; Mother would never allow the dummy to stand around in a slip. I mean that the dummy was always completely dressed--and well dressed, too.

I remember waking up from a nightmare, or waking up and feeling sick, and going down the dark hall from my room to hers--feeling my way to her doorknob. Once in her room, I sensed that I had traveled to another time zone; after the darkness of my room and the black hall, my mother's room glowed--by comparison to the rest of the house, it was always just before dawn in my mother's room. And there would be the dummy, dressed for real life, dressed for the world. Sometimes I would think the dummy was my mother, that she was already out of bed and on her way to my room--possibly she'd heard me coughing, or crying out in my sleep; perhaps she got up early; or maybe she was just coming home, very late. Other times, the dummy would startle me; I would have forgo