When we heard from him, we heard together; his first letters weren’t very special—he sounded more bored than overwhelmed. Hester and I probably put more effort into talking about those first letters than Owen had put into writing them.
There was a major who’d taken a liking to him; Owen said that his writing and editorial work for The Grave had provided him with a better background for what the Army seemed to want of him than anything he’d learned in ROTC, or in Basic Training. Hester and I agreed that Owen sounded despondent. He said simply: “A GREAT DEAL HAS TO BE WRITTEN EVERY DAY.”
The second month he’d been away, or thereabouts, his letters were perkier. He was more optimistic about his orders; he’d heard some good things about Fort Huachuca, Arizona. All the talk at Fort Benjamin Harrison told him that Fort Huachuca was a fortunate place to be; he’d be working in the Adjutant’s Office of the Strategic Communications Command—he’d been told that the major general who was in charge was “flexible” on the subject of reassignments; the major general had been known to assist his junior officers with their requests for transfers.
When I started graduate school in the fall of ’66, I was still looking for an apartment in Durham—or even in Newmarket, between Durham and Gravesend. I was looking halfheartedly, but—at twenty-four—I knew I had to admit to myself that what Owen had told me was true: that I was too old to be living with my stepfather or my grandmother.
“Why don’t you move in with me?” Hester said. “You’d have your own bedroom,” she added—unnecessarily.
When her two previous roommates had graduated, Hester had replaced only one of them; after all, Owen was there much of the time—Hester having only one roommate made it less awkward for Owen. When the one roommate had left to get married, Hester hadn’t replaced her. My first anxiety about sharing an apartment with Hester was that Owen might disapprove.
“It was Owen’s idea,” Hester told me. “Didn’t he write you about it?”
That letter came along, after he’d settled into Fort Huachuca.
“IF HESTER STILL DOESN’T HAVE A ROOMMATE, WHY DON’T YOU MOVE IN WITH HER?” he wrote. “THAT WAY, I COULD CALL YOU BOTH—COLLECT!—AT THE SAME NUMBER.
“YOU SHOULD SEE FORT HUACHUCA! SEVENTY-THREE THOUSAND ACRES! PRAIRIE GRASSLAND, ELEVATION ABOUT FIVE THOUSAND FEET—EVERYTHING IS YELLOW AND TAN, EXCEPT THE MOUNTAINS IN THE DISTANCE ARE BLUE AND PURPLE AND EVEN PINK. THERE’S A FISHING LAKE JUST BEHIND THE OFFICERS’ CLUB! THERE ARE ALMOST TWENTY THOUSAND PERSONNEL HERE, BUT THE FORT IS SO SPREAD OUT, YOU’D NEVER KNOW THEY WERE HERE—IT’S SIX MILES FROM THE WEST ENTRANCE OF THE FORT TO THE AIRFIELD, AND ANOTHER MILE TO THE HEADQUARTERS BARRACKS, AND YOU CAN GO EAST ANOTHER SIX MILES FROM THERE. I’M GOING TO START PLAYING TENNIS—I CAN TAKE FLYING LESSONS, IF I WANT TO! AND MEXICO IS ONLY TWENTY MILES AWAY! THE PRAIRIE IS NOT LIKE THE DESERT—BUT THERE ARE JOSHUA TREES AND PRICKLY PEAR, AND THERE ARE WILD PIGS CALLED JAVELINA, AND COYOTE. YOU KNOW WHAT COYOTES LIKE TO EAT BEST? HOUSE CATS!
“FORT HUACHUCA HAS THE LARGEST HORSE POPULATION OF ANY ARMY POST. THE HORSES AND THE TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE OF THE OLD HOUSES, AND THE WOODEN BARRACKS, AND THE PARADE GROUNDS—WHICH ARE LEFT OVER FROM THE INDIAN WARS—MAKE EVERYTHING FEEL LIKE THE PAST. AND ALTHOUGH EVERYTHING IS HUGE, IT IS ALSO ISOLATED; THAT FEELS LIKE THE PAST, TOO.
“WHEN IT RAINS, YOU CAN SMELL THE CREOSOTE BUSHES. MOSTLY, IT’S SUNNY AND WARM—NOT TERRIBLY HOT; THE AIR IS DRIER THAN ANY PLACE I’VE EVER BEEN. BUT—DON’T WORRY—THERE ARE NO PALM TREES!”
And so I moved in with Hester. I quickly realized that I had done her a disservice—to think of her as slovenly. It was only herself she treated carelessly; she kept the shared rooms of the apartment fairly neat, and she even picked up my clothes and books—when I left them in the kitchen or in the living room. Even the roaches in the kitchen were not there out of any dirtiness that could be ascribed to Hester; and although she appeared to know a lot of guys, not one of them ever returned to the apartment and spent the night with her. She often came home quite late, but she always came home. I did not ask her if she was being “faithful” to Owen Meany; I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt—and besides: who could even guess what Owen was doing?
From his letters, we gathered he was doing a lot of typing; he was playing tennis, which Hester and I found unlikely—and he had actually taken a couple of flying lessons, which we found unbelievable. He complained that his room in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters—a dormitory-type room, with a private bath—was stifling. But he complained, for a while, of almost nothing else.
He confessed he was “BUTTERING UP THE COMMANDER”—a certain Major General LaHoad. “WE CALL HIM LATOAD,” Owen wrote, “BUT HE’S A GOOD GUY. I COULD DO A LOT WORSE THAN END UP AS HIS AIDE-DE-CAMP—THAT’S THE ANGLE I’M SHOOTING. FORGIVE THE EXPRESSION—I’VE BEEN SHOOTING SOME POOL IN THE COMPANY DAY ROOM.
“TYPICAL ARMY: WHEN I ARRIVE AND REPORT TO THE STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS COMMAND, THEY TELL ME THERE’S BEEN A MISTAKE—THEY WANT ME IN THE PERSONNEL SECTION, INSTEAD. THEY CALL IT ‘PERSONNEL AND COMMUNITY ACTION’ AT THE POST. I SIGN DISCHARGE PAPERS, I ATTEND THE OCS AND WARRANT OFFICER BOARDS—HAVE BEEN ‘RECORDER’ FOR THE LATTER. SCARIEST THING I DO IS PLAY NIGHT WATCHMAN: I CARRY A FLASHLIGHT AND A MILITARY-POLICE RADIO. IT TAKES TWO HOURS TO CHECK ALL THE LOCKS YOU THINK MIGHT BE JIMMIED AROUND THE FORT: THE SHOPS AND THE CLUBS AND THE STORAGE SHEDS, THE MOTOR POOL AND THE COMMISSARY AND THE AMMO DUMP. MEANWHILE, I KNOW THE EMERGENCY PROCEDURES IN THE STAFF DUTY OFFICER’S NOTEBOOK BY HEART—‘UPON WARNING OF A NUCLEAR ATTACK YOU SHOULD NOTIFY …’ AND SO FORTH.
“IDEALLY, MAJOR GENERAL LAHOAD WILL CHOOSE ME TO BE THE BARTENDER AT HIS PARTIES—AT THE LAST PARTY, I BROUGHT DRINKS TO HIS FLUFF OF A WIFE ALL NIGHT; STILL COULDN’T FILL HER UP, BUT SHE LIKED THE ATTENTION. SHE THINKS I’M ‘CUTE’—YOU KNOW THE TYPE. I FIGURE IF I COULD BE LATOAD’S AIDE-DE-CAMP—IF I COULD SWING IT—THE MAJOR GENERAL WOULD LOOK KINDLY UPON MY REQUEST FOR TRANSFER. THINK WHAT A BLOW IT WOULD BE TO THE PERSONNEL SECTION—HOW THEY WOULD MISS ME! TODAY I SIGNED A CHAPLAIN OUT ON LEAVE, AND I HELPED A HYSTERICAL MOTHER LOCATE HER SON IN THE SIGNAL GROUP—APPARENTLY, THE BAD BOY HADN’T WRITTEN HOME.
“SPEAKING OF HOME, I’M TAKING TEN DAYS’ LEAVE FOR CHRISTMAS!”
And so Hester and I waited to see him. That October, President Johnson visited the U.S. troops in Vietnam; but we heard no further word from Owen Meany—concerning what progress or success he had encountered with his efforts to be reassigned. All Owen said was: “MAJOR GENERAL LAHOAD IS THE KEY. I SCRATCH HIS BACK … YOU KNOW THE REST.”
It was December before he mentioned that he’d sent another Personnel Action Form to Washington, asking for transfer to Vietnam; those forms, as many times as he would submit them, were routed through his chain of command—including Major General LaHoad. By December, the major general had Owen working as a casualty assistance officer in the Personnel Section. Apparently, Owen had made a favorable impression upon some grieving Arizona family who had connections at the Pentagon; through the chain of command, the major general had received a special letter of commendation—the Casualty Branch at the post had reason to be proud: a Second Lieutenant Paul O. Meany,
Jr., had been of great comfort to the parents of a 2LT infantry type who’d been killed in Vietnam. Owen had been especially moving when he’d read the award citation for the Silver Star medal to the next of kin. Major General LaHoad had congratulated Owen personally.
At Fort Huachuca, the Casualty Branch was composed of Second Lieutenant Paul O. Meany, Jr., and a staff sergeant in his thirties—“A DISGRUNTLED CAREER MAN,” according to Owen; but the staff sergeant had an Italian wife whose homemade pasta was “SUCH AN IMPROVEMENT ON HESTER’S THAT IT MAKES THE STAFF SERGEANT OCCASIONALLY WORTH LISTENING TO.” In the Casualty Branch, the second lieutenant and the staff sergeant were assisted by “A TWENTY-THREE-YEAR-OLD SPEC5 AND A TWENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD SPEC4.”
“He might as well be talking about insects—for all I know!” Hester said. “What the fuck is a ‘Spec Four’ and a ‘Spec Five’—and how does he expect us to know what he’s talking about?”
I wrote back to him. “What exactly does a casualty assistance officer do?” I asked.
On the walls of the Casualty Branch Office at Fort Huachuca, Owen said there were maps of Arizona and Vietnam—and a roster of Arizona men who were prisoners of war or missing in action, along with the names of their next of kin. When the body of an Arizona man arrived from Vietnam, you went to California to escort the body home—the body, Owen explained, had to be escorted by a man of the same rank or higher; thus a private’s body might be brought home by a sergeant, and a second lieutenant would escort the body of another second lieutenant or (let’s say) of a warrant officer.
“Hester!” I said. “He’s delivering bodies!” He’s the one who brings the casualties home!”
“That’s his line of work, all right,” Hester said. “At least he’s familiar with the territory.”
My “line of work,” it seemed to me, was reading; my ambitions extended no further than to my choice of reading material. I loved being a graduate student; I loved my first teaching job, too—yet I felt I was so undaring. The very thought of bringing bodies home to their next of kin gave me the shivers.
In his diary, he wrote: “THE OFFICE FOR THE CASUALTY BRANCH IS IN THE PART OF THE POST THAT WAS BUILT JUST AFTER BLACK JACK PERSHING’S EXPEDITION AGAINST PANCHO VILLA—OUR BUILDING IS OLD AND STUCCOED AND THE MINT-GREEN PAINT ON THE CEILING IS PEELING. WE HAVE A WALL POSTER DEPICTING ALL THE MEDALS THE ARMY OFFERS. WITH A GREASE PENCIL, ON TWO PLASTIC-COVERED CHARTS, WE WRITE THE NAMES OF THE WEEK’S CASUALTIES, ALONGSIDE THE ARIZONA PRISONERS OF WAR. WHAT THE ARMY CALLS ME IS A ‘CASUALTY ASSISTANCE OFFICER’; WHAT I AM IS A BODY ESCORT.”
“Jesus! Tell me all about it!” I said—when he was home on leave for Christmas.