He had revised a few of his earlier views of our Vietnam policy. Some veterans of the war, whom he’d met at Fort Huachuca, had convinced him that Marshal Ky had once been popular, but now the Viet Cong was gaining the support of South Vietnamese peasants—because our troops had pulled out of the populated areas and were wasting their time chasing the North Vietnamese through the jungles and the mountains. Owen wanted to learn why our troops didn’t pull back into the populated areas and wait for the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong to come to them. If we were “protecting” South Vietnam, why didn’t we stay with the people and protect them?
On the other hand, it was confusing because many of the Vietnam veterans Owen had met were of the opinion that we should be fighting more “all-out,” that we should bomb North Vietnam even more, mine the harbors, and make an amphibious landing north of the DMZ to cut the supply lines for the North Vietnamese Army—in short, fight to win. There was no way to really know what we should do if one didn’t go over there and see it, Owen said, but he believed that trying to win a conventional war against North Vietnam was stupid. We should stay in South Vietnam and protect the South Vietnamese from North Vietnamese aggression, and from the Viet Cong—until such time as the South Vietnamese developed an army and, more important, a government that was strong and popular enough to make South Vietnam capable of protecting itself.
“Then the South Vietnamese will be able to attack North Vietnam all by themselves—is that what you mean?” Hester asked him. “You make about as much sense as LBJ,” she said. Hester wouldn’t say “President Johnson.”
As for President Johnson, Owen said: “THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A WORSE PRESIDENT—THERE COULDN’T BE A WORSE ONE, UNLESS THEY ELECT MCNAMARA.”
Hester talked about the “Peace Movement.”
“WHAT‘PEACE MOVEMENT’?—OR DO YOU MEAN THE DON’T-GET-DRAFTED MOVEMENT? THAT’S THE ONLY ‘MOVEMENT’ I SEE,” said Owen Meany.
We talked like the war itself, going nowhere. I moved out of the apartment, so that he could have some nights alone with Hester—I don’t know if either of them appreciated it. I spent a few pleasant evenings with Dan and Grandmother.
I had convinced Grandmother to take the train, with me, to Sawyer Depot for Christmas; Grandmother had decided, previously, that she no longer took trains. It was arranged that Dan would take the Christmas Eve train from Gravesend, following the closing performance of A Christmas Carol. And Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred had prevailed upon Hester to bring Owen to Sawyer Depot for Christmas—that was how significantly Owen had managed to impress them. Hester kept threatening to back out of these lavish reunion plans; I believe it was only for Owen’s sake that she was agreeing to go home at all—especially for Christmas.
Then all these plans fell through. No one had noticed how severely the train service had been deterioratin
g; it turned out that it wasn’t possible to take a train from Gravesend to Sawyer Depot—and on Christmas Eve, the stationmaster told Dan, it was impossible to take a train anywhere! And so we once more reverted to our isolated Christmases. On the day of Christmas Eve, Owen and I were practicing the shot in the Gravesend Academy gym and he told me he was simply spending a quiet Christmas with his parents; I was spending the day with Grandmother and Dan. Hester, according to Owen, had—on the spur of the moment—accepted an invitation to SOMEWHERE SUNNY.
“YOU OUGHT TO THINK ABOUT JOINING THE ‘PEACE MOVEMENT,’ OLD BOY,” he told me. I guess he had picked up the OLD BOY at Fort Huachuca. “AS I UNDERSTAND IT, IT’S A GOOD WAY TO GET LAID. YOU JUST MAKE YOURSELF LOOK A LITTLE DISTRACTED—LOOKING ANGRY ALSO HELPS—AND YOU KEEP SAYING YOU’RE ‘AGAINST THE WAR.’ OF COURSE, I DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW ANYONE WHO’S FOR IT—BUT JUST KEEP SAYING YOU’RE ‘AGAINST THE WAR,’ AND LOOK AS IF THE WHOLE THING CAUSES YOU A LOT OF PERSONAL ANGUISH. NEXT THING YOU KNOW, YOU’LL GET LAID—YOU CAN COUNT ON IT!”
We just kept sinking the shot; it still takes my breath away to remember how good we were at it. I mean—zip!—he would pass me the ball. “READY?” he would ask, and—zip!—I would pass it back to him and get ready to lift him. It was automatic; almost as soon as I passed him the ball, he was there—in my arms, and soaring. He didn’t bother to yell “TIME”—not anymore. We didn’t bother to time ourselves; we were consistently under three seconds—we had no doubt about that—and sometimes I think we were faster.
“How many bodies a week are there?” I asked him.
“IN ARIZONA? I WOULD GUESS THAT WE AVERAGE TWO—AT THE MOST, THREE—CASUALTIES A WEEK. SOME WEEKS THERE AREN’T ANY, OR ONLY ONE. AND I WOULD ESTIMATE THAT ONLY HALF OF OUR CASUALTIES HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH VIETNAM—THERE ARE A LOT OF CAR ACCIDENTS, YOU KNOW, AND SOME SUICIDES.”
“What percentage of the bodies is not—how did you put it?—‘suitable for viewing’?” I asked him.
“FORGET ABOUT THE BODIES,” Owen said. “THEY’RE NOT YOUR PROBLEM—YOUR PROBLEM IS YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WHEN YOU LOSE YOUR STUDENT DEFERMENT? DO YOU HAVE A PLAN? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO DO—PROVIDED THERE’S A WAY TO DO IT? I DON’T SEE YOU BEING HAPPY IN THE ARMY. I KNOW YOU DON’T WANT TO GO TO VIETNAM. BUT I DON’T SEE YOU IN THE PEACE CORPS, EITHER. ARE YOU PREPARED TO GO TO CANADA? YOU DON’T LOOK PREPARED—NOT TO ME. YOU DON’T EVEN LOOK LIKE MUCH OF A PROTESTER. YOU’RE PROBABLY THE ONE PERSON I KNOW WHO COULD JOIN WHAT HESTER CALLS THE ‘PEACE MOVEMENT’ AND MANAGE NOT TO GET LAID. I DON’T SEE YOU HANGING OUT WITH THOSE ASSHOLES—I DON’T SEE YOU HANGING OUT WITH ANYBODY. WHAT I’M TELLING YOU IS, IF YOU WANT TO DO THINGS YOUR OWN WAY, YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE A DECISION—YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIND A LITTLE COURAGE.”
“I want to go on being a student,” I told him. “I want to be a teacher. I’m just a reader,” I said.
“DON’T SOUND SO ASHAMED,” he said. “READING IS A GIFT.”
“I learned it from you,” I told him.
“IT DOESN’T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED IT—IT’S A GIFT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT—IF YOU’RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT.”
“What do I need courage for?” I asked him.
“YOU WILL NEED IT,” he told me. “WHEN YOU’RE NOTIFIED TO REPORT FOR YOUR PREINDUCTION PHYSICAL, YOU’RE GOING TO NEED SOME COURAGE THEN. AFTER YOUR PHYSICAL—WHEN THEY PRONOUNCE YOU ‘FULLY ACCEPTABLE FOR INDUCTION’—IT WILL BE A LITTLE LATE TO MAKE A DECISION THEN. ONCE THEY CLASSIFY YOU ONE-A, A LOT OF GOOD A LITTLE COURAGE WILL DO YOU. BETTER THINK ABOUT IT, OLD BOY,” said Owen Meany.
He reported back to Fort Huachuca before New Year’s Eve; Hester stayed away, wherever she was, and I spent New Year’s Eve alone—Grandmother said she was too old to stay up to welcome in the New Year. I didn’t drink too much, but I drank a little. Hester’s damage to the rose garden was surely of the stature of a tradition; her absence, and Owen’s, seemed ominous to me.
There were more than 385,000 Americans in Vietnam, and almost 7,000 Americans had been killed there; it seemed only proper to drink something for them.
When Hester returned from SOMEWHERE SUNNY, I refrained from commenting on her lack of a tan. There were more protests, more demonstrations; she didn’t ask me to accompany her when she went off to them. Yet no one was allowed to spend the night with her in our apartment; when we talked about Owen, we talked about how much we loved him.
“Between how much you love him and whatever it is that you think of me, I sometimes wonder if you’ll ever get laid,” Hester told me.
“I could always join the ‘Peace Movement,’” I told her. “You know, I could simply make myself look a little distracted—looking angry also helps—and I could keep saying I am ‘against the war.’ Personal anguish—that’s the key! I could convey a lot of personal anguish in regard to my anger ‘against the war’—next thing you know, I’ll get laid!” Hester didn’t even crack a smile.
“I’ve heard that one,” she said.
I wrote Owen that I had selected Thomas Hardy as the subject for my Master’s thesis; I doubt he was surprised. I also told him that I had given much thought to his advice to me: that I should gather the courage to make a decision about what to do when faced with the loss of my draft deferment. I was trying to determine what sort of decision I might make—I couldn’t imagine a very satisfying solution; and I was puzzled about what sort of COURAGE he’d imagined would be required of me. Short of my deciding to go to Vietnam, the other available decisions didn’t strike me as requiring a great deal in the way of courage.
“You’re always telling me I don’t have any faith,” I wrote to Owen. “Well—don’t you see?—that’s a part of what makes me so indecisive. I wait to see what will happen next—because I don’t believe that anything I might decide to do would matter. You know Hardy’s poem ‘Hap’—I know you do. You remember … ‘How arrives it joy lies slain,/And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?/—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,/And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan.... /These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown/Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.’ I know you know what that means: you believe in God but I believe in ‘Crass Casualty’—in chance, in luck. That’s what I mean. You see? What good does it do to make whatever decision you’re talking about? What good does courage do—when what happens next is up for grabs?”