One of the students yelled. “What’s the hymn?” the student yelled.
“What did you say?” Randy White said.
“Tell us the number of the hymn!” someone shouted.
“What’s the hymn?” said a few more students—in unison.
I had not seen the Rev. Mr. Merrill climb—I suppose, shakily—to the stage; when I noticed him, he was standing beside the martyred Mary Magdalene. “The hymn is on page three-eighty-eight,” Pastor Merrill said clearly. The headmaster spoke sharply to him, but we couldn’t hear what the headmaster said—there was too much creaking of benches and bumping of hymnals as we rose to sing. I don’t know what influenced Mr. Merrill’s choice of the hymn. If Owen had told me about his dream, I might have found the hymn especially ominous; but as it was, it was simply familiar—a frequent choice, probably because it was victorious in tone, and squarely in that category of “pilgrimage and conflict,” which is often so inspiring to young men.
The Son of God goes forth to war, A king-ly crown to gain;
His blood-red ban-ner streams a-far; Who follows in his train?
Who best can drink his cup of woe, Tri-um-phant o-ver pain,
Who pa-tient bears his cross be-low, He fol-lows in his train.
It was a hymn that Owen liked, and we belted it out; we sang much more heartily—much more defiantly—than usual. The headmaster had nowhere to stand; he occupied the center stage—but with nothing to stand behind, he looked exposed and unsure of himself. As we roared out the hymn, the Rev. Lewis Merrill appeared to gain in confidence—and even in stature. Although he didn’t look exactly comfortable beside the headless Mary Magdalene, he stood so close to her that the podium light shone on him, too. When we finished the hymn, the Rev. Mr. Merrill said: “Let us pray. Let us pray for Owen Meany,” he said.
It was very quiet in The Great Hall, and although our heads were bowed, our eyes were on the headmaster. We waited for Mr. Merrill to begin. Perhaps he was trying to begin, I thought; then I realized that—awkward as ever—he had meant for us to pray for Owen. What he’d meant was that we were to offer our silent prayers for Owen Meany; and as the silence went on, and on, it became clear that the Rev. Lewis Merrill had no intention of hurrying us. He was not a brave man, I thought; but he was trying to be brave. On and on, we prayed and prayed; and if I had known about Owen’s dream, I would have prayed much harder.
Suddenly, the headmaster said, “That’s enough.”
“I’m s-s-s-sorry,” Mr. Merrill stuttered, “but I’ll say when it’s ‘enough.’”
I think that was when the headmaster realized he had lost; he realized then that he was finished. Because, what could he do? Was he going to tell us to stop praying? We kept our heads bowed; and we kept praying. Even as awkward as he was, the Rev. Mr. Merrill had made it clear to us that there was no end to praying for Owen Meany.
After a while, Randy White left the stage; he had the good sense, if not the decency, to leave quietly—we could hear his careful footsteps on the marble staircase, and the morning ice was still so brittle that we could even hear him crunching his way on the path outside the Main Academy Building. When we could no longer hear his footsteps in our silent prayers for Owen Meany, Pastor Merrill said, “Amen.”
Oh God, how often I have wished that I could relive that moment; I didn’t know how to pray very well then—I didn’t even believe in prayer. If I were given the opportunity to pray for Owen Meany now, I could do a better job of it; knowing what I know now, I might be able to pray hard enough.
It would have helped me, of course, if I could have seen his diary; but he wasn’t offering it—he was keeping his diary to himself. So often in its pages he had written his name—his full name—in the big bloc
k letters he called MONUMENT STYLE or GRAVESEND LETTERING; so many times he had transcribed, in his diary, his name exactly the way he had seen it on Scrooge’s grave. And I mean, before all the ROTC business—even before he was thrown out of school and knew that the U.S. Army would be his ticket through college. I mean, before he knew he was signing up—even then he had written his name in that way you see names inscribed on graves.
1LT PAUL O. MEANY, JR.
That’s how he wrote it; that was what the Ghost of the Future had seen on Scrooge’s grave; that and the date—the date was written in the diary, too. He wrote the date in the diary many, many times, but he never told me what it was. Maybe I could have helped him, if I’d known that date. Owen believed he knew when he was going to die; he also believed he knew his rank—he would die a first lieutenant.
And after the dream, he believed he knew more. The certainty of his convictions was always a little scary, and his diary entry about the dream is no exception.
Yesterday I was kicked out of school. Last night I had a dream. Now I know four things. I know that my voice doesn’t change—but I still don’t know why. I know that I am God’s instrument. I know when I’m going to die—and now a dream has shown me how I’m going to die. I’m going to be a hero! I trust that God will help me, because what I’m supposed to do looks very hard.
8
The Finger
* * *
Until the summer of 1962, I felt that I couldn’t wait to grow up and be treated with the kind of respect I imagined adults were routinely offered and adamantly thought they deserved—I couldn’t wait to wallow in the freedom and the privileges I imagined grown-ups enjoyed. Until that summer, my long apprenticeship to maturity struck me as arduous and humiliating; Randy White had confiscated my fake draft card, and I wasn’t yet old enough to buy beer—I wasn’t independent enough to merit my own place to live, I wasn’t earning enough to afford my own car, and I wasn’t something enough to persuade a woman to bestow her sexual favors upon me. Not one woman had I ever persuaded! Until the summer of ’62, I thought that childhood and adolescence were a purgatory without apparent end; I thought that youth, in a word, “sucked.” But Owen Meany, who believed he knew when and how he was going to die, was in no hurry to grow up. And as to my calling the period of our youth a “purgatory,” Owen said simply, “THERE IS NO PURGATORY—THAT’S A CATHOLIC INVENTION. THERE’S LIFE ON EARTH, THERE’S HEAVEN—AND THERE’S HELL.”
“I think life on earth is hell,” I said.
“I HOPE YOU HAVE A NICE SUMMER,” Owen said.
It was the first summer we spent apart. I suppose I should be grateful for that summer, because it afforded me my first glimpse of what my life without Owen would be like—you might say, it prepared me. By the end of the summer of 1962, Owen Meany had made me afraid of what the next phase was going to be. I didn’t want to grow up anymore; what I wanted was for Owen and me to go on being kids for the rest of our lives—sometimes Canon Mackie tells me, rather ungenerously, that I have succeeded. Canon Campbell, God Rest His Soul, used to tell me that being a kid for the rest of my life was a perfectly honorable aspiration.
I spent that summer of ’62 in Sawyer Depot, working for my Uncle Alfred. After what had happened to Owen, I didn’t want to work for the Gravesend Academy Admissions Office and give guided tours of the school—not anymore. The Eastman Lumber Company offered me a good job. It was tiring, outdoor work; but I got to spend my time with Noah and Simon—and there were parties on Loveless Lake almost every night, and swimming and waterskiing on Loveless Lake nearly every day, after work, and every weekend. Uncle Alfred and Aunt Martha welcomed me into the family; they gave me Hester’s room for the summer. Hester was keeping her school-year apartment in Durham, working as a waitress in one of those sandy, lobster-house restaurants … I think it was in Kittery or Portsmouth. After she got off work, she and Owen would cruise “the strip” at Hampton Beach in the tomato-red pickup. Hester’s school-year roommates were elsewhere for the summer, and Hester and Owen spent every night in her Durham apartment, alone. They were “living together as man and wife”—that was the disapproving and frosty way Aunt Martha put it, when she discussed it at all, which was rarely.