As for the shot, Owen and I were guilty of lack of practice; by the end of our freshman year, by the summer of 1963—when we were twenty-one, the legal drinking age at last!—we had trouble sinking the shot in under five seconds. We had to work at it all summer—just to get back to where we had been, just to break four seconds again. It was the summer the Buddhists in Vietnam were demonstrating—they were setting themselves on fire. It was the summer when Owen said, “WHAT’S A CATHOLIC DOING AS PRESIDENT OF A COUNTRY OF BUDDHISTS?” It was the summer when President Diem was not long for this world; President John F. Kennedy was not long for this world, either. And it was the first summer I went to work for Meany Granite.
It was my illusion that I worked for Mr. Meany; it was his illusion, too. It had been amply demonstrated to me—who bossed whom, in that family. I should have known, from the start, that Owen was in charge.
“MY FATHER WANTS TO START YOU OUT IN THE MONUMENT SHOP,” he told me. “YOU BEGIN WITH AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE FINISHED PRODUCT—IN THIS BUSINESS, IT’S EASIER TO BEGIN WITH THE FINE-TUNING. IT’S GETTING THE STUFF OUT OF THE GROUND THAT CAN BE TRICKY. I HOPE YOU DON’T THINK I’M CONDESCENDING, BUT WORKING WITH GRANITE IS A LOT LIKE WRITING A TERM PAPER—IT’S THE FIRST DRAFT THAT CAN KILL YOU. ONCE YOU GET THE GOOD STUFF INTO THE SHOP, THE FINE WORK IS EASY: CUTTING THE STONE, EDGING THE LETTERS—YOU’VE JUST GOT TO BE FUSSY. IT’S ALL SMOOTHING AND POLISHING—YOU’VE GOT TO GO SLOWLY.
“DON’T BE IN A HURRY TO WORK IN THE QUARRIES. AT THE MONUMENT-END, AT LEAST THE SIZE AND WEIGHT OF THE STONE ARE MANAGEABLE—YOU’RE WORKING WITH SMALLER TOOLS AND A SMALLER PRODUCT. AND IN THE SHOP, EVERY DAY IS DIFFERENT; YOU NEVER KNOW HOW BUSY YOU’LL BE—MOST PEOPLE DON’T DIE ON SCHEDULE, MOST FAMILIES DON’T ORDER GRAVESTONES IN ADVANCE.”
I don’t doubt that he was genuinely concerned for my safety, and I know he knew everything about granite; it was wise to develop a feeling for the stone—on a smaller, more refined scale—before one encountered the intimidating size and weight of it in the quarry. All the quarrymen—the signalman, the derrickman, the channel bar drillers, and the dynamiters—and even the sawyers who had to handle the rock before it was cut down to monument size … all the men who worked at the quarries were afforded a less generous margin for error than those of us who worked in the monument shop. Even so, I thought there was more than caution motivating Owen to keep me working in the monument shop for the entire summer of ’63. For one thing, I wanted muscles; and the physical work in the monument shop was a lot less strenuous than being a logger for my Uncle Alfred. For another thing, I envied Owen his tan—he worked in the quarries, unless it was raining; on rainy days, he worked in the shop with me. And we called him in from the quarries whenever there was a customer placing an order for a gravestone; Owen insisted that he be the one to handle that—and when the order was not placed by a funeral home, when the customer was a family member or a close friend of the deceased, we were all grateful that Owen wanted to handle it.
He was very good at that part of it—very respectful of grief, very tactful (while at the same time he managed to be very specific). I don’t mean that this was simply a matter of spelling the name correctly and double-checking the date of birth, and the date of death; I mean that the personality of the deceased was discussed, in depth—Owen sought nothing less than a PROPER monument, a COMPATIBLE monument. The aesthetics of the deceased were taken into consideration; the size, shape, and color of the stone were only the rough drafts of the business; Owen wanted to know the tastes of those mourners who would be viewing the gravestone more than once. I never saw a customer who was displeased with the final product; unfortunately—for the enterprises of Meany Granite—I never saw very many customers, either.
“DON’T BE VAIN,” Owen told m
e, when I complained about the length of my apprenticeship in the monument shop. “IF YOU’RE STANDING IN THE BOTTOM OF A QUARRY, THINKING ABOUT WHAT KIND OF TAN YOU’RE GETTING—OR YOUR STUPID MUSCLES—YOU’RE GOING TO END UP UNDER TEN TONS OF GRANITE. BESIDES, MY FATHER THINKS YOU’RE DOING A GREAT JOB WITH THE GRAVESTONES.”
But I don’t think Mr. Meany ever noticed the work I was doing with the monuments; it was August before I even saw Mr. Meany in the shop, and he looked surprised to see me—but he always said the same thing, whenever and wherever he saw me. “Why, it’s Johnny Wheelwright!” he’d always say.
And when it wasn’t raining—or when Owen wasn’t talking directly to a customer—the only other time that Owen was in the shop was when there was an especially difficult piece of stonecutting assigned, a particularly complicated gravestone, a demanding shape, lots of tight curves and sharp angles, and so forth. And the typical Gravesend families were plain and dour in the face of death; we had few calls for elaborate coping, even fewer for archways with dosserets, and not one for angels sliding down barber poles. That was too bad, because to see Owen at work with the diamond wheel was to witness state-of-the-art monument-making. There was no one as precise with the diamond wheel as Owen Meany.
A diamond wheel is similar to a radial-arm saw, a wood saw familiar to me from my uncle’s mill; a diamond wheel is a table saw but the blade is not part of the table—the blade, which is a diamond-impregnated wheel, is lowered to the table in a gantry. The wheel blade is about two feet in diameter and studded (or “tipped”) with diamond segments—these are pieces of diamond, only a half inch long, only a quarter inch wide. When the blade is lowered onto the granite, it cuts through the stone at a preset angle into a waiting block of wood. It is a very sharp blade, it makes a very exact and smooth cut; it is perfect for making the precise, polished edges on the tops and sides of gravestones—like a scalpel, it makes no mistakes, or only the user’s mistakes. By comparison to other saws in the granite business, it is so fine and delicate a tool that it isn’t even called a saw—it is always called “the diamond wheel.” It passes through granite with so little resistance that its sound is far less snarly than many wood saws of the power type; a diamond wheel makes a single, high-pitched scream—very plaintive. Owen Meany said: “A DIAMOND WHEEL MAKES A GRAVESTONE SOUND AS IF THE STONE ITSELF IS MOURNING.”
Think of how much time he spent in that creepy monument shop on Water Street, the unfinished lettering of the names of the dead surrounding him—is it any wonder that he SAW his own name and the date of his death on Scrooge’s grave? No; it’s a wonder he didn’t SEE such horrors every day! And when he put on those crazy-looking safety goggles and lowered the diamond wheel into cutting position, the terribly consistent scream of that blade must have reminded him of the “permanent scream,” which was his own unchanging voice—to use Mr. McSwiney’s term for it. After my summer in the monument shop, I could appreciate what might have appealed to Owen Meany about the quiet of churches, the peace of prayer, the easy cadence of hymns and litanies—and even the simplistic, athletic ritual of practicing the shot.
As for the rest of the summer of 1963—when the Buddhists in Vietnam were torching themselves, and time was running out on the Kennedys—Hester was working as a lobster-house waitress again.
“So much for a B.A. in Music,” she said.
At least I could appreciate what Owen Meany meant, when he said of Randy White: “I’D LIKE TO GET HIM UNDER THE DIAMOND WHEEL—ALL I’D NEED IS JUST A FEW SECONDS. I’D LIKE TO PUT HIS DOINK UNDER THE DIAMOND WHEEL,” Owen said.
As for doinks—as for mine, in particular—I had another slow summer. The Catholic Church had reason to be proud of the insurmountable virtue of Caroline O’Day, with or without her St. Michael’s uniform—and of the virtue of countless others, any church could be proud; they were all virtuous with me. I felt someone’s bare breast, briefly—only once, and it was an accident—one warm night when we went swimming off the beach at Little Boar’s Head and the phosphorescence, in my opinion, was especially seductive. The girl was a musical friend of Hester’s, and in the tomato-red pickup, on the ride back to Durham, Hester volunteered to be the one to sit on my lap, because my date was so displeased by my awkward, amateurish advances.
“Here, you sit in the middle, I’ll sit on him,” Hester told her friend. “I’ve felt his silly hard-on before, and it doesn’t bother me.”
“THERE’S NO NEED TO BE CRUDE,” said Owen Meany.
And so I rode from Little Boar’s Head to Durham with Hester on my lap—once again, humiliated by my hard-on. I thought that just a few seconds under the diamond wheel would certainly suffice for me; and if someone were to put my doink under the wheel, I considered that it would be no great loss.
I was twenty-one and I was still a Joseph; I was a Joseph then, and I’m just a Joseph now.
Georgian Bay: July 27, 1987—why can’t I just enjoy all the nature up here? I coaxed one of the Keeling kids to take me in one of the boats to Pointe au Baril Station. Miraculously, no one on the island needed anything from the station: not an egg, not a scrap of meat, or a bar of soap; not even any live bait. I was the only one who needed anything; I “needed” a newspaper, I’m ashamed to say. Needing to know the news—it’s such a weakness, it’s worse than many other addictions, it’s an especially debilitating illness.
The Toronto Star said the White House was so frustrated by both Congress and the Pentagon that a small, special-forces group within the military was established; and that actual, active-duty American troops fired rockets and machine guns at Nicaraguan soldiers—all this was unknown to the Congress or the Pentagon. Why aren’t Americans as disgusted by themselves—as fed up with themselves—as everyone else is? All their lip service to democracy, all their blatantly undemocratic behavior! I’ve got to stop reading about this whole silly business! All these headlines can turn your mind to mush—headlines that within a year will seem most unmemorable; and if memorable, merely quaint. I live in Canada, I have a Canadian passport—why should I waste my time caring what the Americans are doing, especially when they don’t care themselves?
I’m going to try to interest myself in something more cosmic—in something more universal, although I suppose that a total lack of integrity in government is “universal,” isn’t it?
There was another story in The Toronto Star, more appropriate to the paradisiacal view of the universe one can enjoy from Georgian Bay. It was a story about black holes: scientists say that black holes could engulf two whole galaxies! The story was about the potential “collapse of the star system”—what could be more important than that?
Listen to this: “Black holes are concentrations of matter so dense they have collapsed upon themselves. Nothing, not even light, can escape their intense gravitational pull.” Imagine that! Not even light—my God! I announced this news to the Keeling family; but one of the middle children—a sort of science-prize student—responded to me rather rudely.
“Yeah,” he said, “but all the black holes are about two million light-years away from Earth.”
And I thought: That is about as far away from Earth as Owen Meany is; that is about as far away from Earth as I would like to be.
And where is JFK today? How far away is he?
On November 22, 1963, Owen Meany and I were in my room at 80 Front Street, studying for a Geology exam. I was angry with Owen for manipulating me into taking Geology, the true nature of which was concealed—at the University of New Hampshire—in the curriculum catalog under the hippie-inspired title of Earth Science. Owen had misled me into thinking that the course would be an easy means of satisfying a part of our science requirement—he knew all about rocks, he assured me, and the rest of the course would concern itself with fossils. “IT’LL BE NEAT TO KNOW ALL ABOUT THE DINOSAURS!” Owen had said; he seduced me. We spent less than a week with the dinosaurs—and far less time with fossils than we spent learning the horrible names of the ages of the earth. And it turned out that Owen Meany didn’t know a metamorphic schist from an igneous intrusion—unless the latter was granite.
On November 22, 1963, I had just confused the Paleocene epoch with the Pleistocene, and I was further confused by the difference between an epoch and an era.