Fresh recruits arrived, and Major Rawls went on making a killing—he was a pro at pinball.
I complained about the extent of my hangover; Owen must have had a worse hangover—or one at least as bad as mine—but I imagine, now, that he was savoring it; he knew it was his last hangover. Then the confusion would return to him, and he must have felt that he knew absolutely nothing. He sat beside me and I could see him changing—from nervousness to depression, from fear to elation. I thought it was his hangover; but one minute he must have been thinking, “MAYBE IT HAPPENS ON THE AIRPLANE.” Then in another minute, he must have said to himself: “THERE ARE NO CHILDREN. I DON’T EVEN HAVE TO GO TO VIETNAM—I CAN STILL GET OUT OF IT.”
In the airport, he said to me—out of the blue: “YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A GENIUS TO OUTSMART THE ARMY.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I said: “I suppose not.”
In another minute, he must have been thinking: “IT WAS JUST A CRAZY DREAM! WHO THE FUCK KNOWS WHAT GOD KNOWS? I OUGHT TO SEE A PSYCHIATRIST!”
Then he would stand up and pace; he would look around for the children; he was looking for his killer. He kept glancing at his watch.
When they announced my flight to Boston—it was scheduled to depart in half an hour—Owen was grinning ear-to-ear. “THIS MAY BE THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE!” he said. “MAYBE NOTHING’S GOING TO HAPPEN!”
“I think you’re still drunk,” I told him. “Wait till you get to the hangover.”
A plane had just landed; it had arrived from somewhere on the West Coast, and it taxied into view. I heard Owen Meany gasp beside me, and I turned to look where he was looking.
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked him. “They’re just penguins.”
The nuns—there were two of them—were meeting someone on the plane from the West Coast; they stood at the gate to the runway. The first people off the plane were also nuns—two more. The nuns waved to each other. When the children emerged from the airplane—they were closely following the nuns—Owen Meany said: “HERE THEY ARE!”
Even from the runway gate, I could see that they were Asian children—one of the nuns leaving the plane was an Oriental, too. There were about a dozen kids; only two of them were small enough to be carried—one of the nuns carried one of the kids, and one of the older children carried the other little one. They were both boys and girls—the average age was maybe five or six, but there were a couple of kids who were twelve or thirteen. They were Vietnamese orphans; they were refugee children.
Many military units sponsored orphanages in Vietnam; many of the troops donated their time—as well as what gifts they could solicit from home—to help the kids. There was no official government-sponsored refugee program to relocate Vietnamese children—not before the fall of Saigon in April 1975—but certain churches were active in Vietnam throughout the course of the war.
Catholic Relief Services, for example; the Catholic Relief groups were responsible for escorting orphans out of Vietnam and relocating them in the United States—as early as the mid-sixties. Once in the United States, the orphans would be met by social workers from the archdiocese or diocese of the particular city of their arrival. The Lutherans were also involved in sponsoring the relocation of Vietnamese orphans.
The children that Owen Meany and I saw in Phoenix were being escorted by nuns from Catholic Relief Services; they were being delivered into the charge of nuns
from the Phoenix Archdiocese, who would take them to new homes, and new families, in Arizona. Owen and I could see that the children were anxious about it.
If the heat was no shock to them—for it was certainly very hot where they’d come from—the desert and the hugeness of the sky and the moonscape of Phoenix must have overwhelmed them. They held each other’s hands and stayed together, circling very closely around the nuns. One of the little boys was crying.
When they came into the Sky Harbor terminal, the blast of air conditioning instantly chilled them; they were cold—they hugged themselves and rubbed their arms. The little boy who was crying tried to wrap himself up in the habit of one of the nuns. They all milled around in lost confusion, and—from the game room—the young recruits with their shaved heads stared out at them. The children stared back at the soldiers; they were used to soldiers, of course. As the kids and the recruits stared back and forth at each other, you could sense the mixed feelings.
Owen Meany was as jumpy as a mouse. One of the nuns spoke to him.
“Officer?” she said.
“YES, MA’AM—HOW MAY I HELP YOU?” he said quickly.
“Some of the boys need to find a men’s room,” the nun said; one of the younger nuns tittered. “We can take the girls,” the first nun said, “but if you’d be so kind—if you’d just go with the boys.”
“YES, MA’AM—I’D BE HAPPY TO HELP THE CHILDREN,” said Owen Meany.
“Wait till you see the so-called men’s room,” I told Owen; I led the way. Owen just concentrated on the children. There were seven boys; the nun who was also Vietnamese accompanied us—she carried the smallest boy. The boy who was crying had stopped as soon as he saw Owen Meany. All the children watched Owen closely; they had seen many soldiers—yes—but they had never seen a soldier who was almost as small as they were! They never took their eyes off him.
On we marched—when we passed by the game room, Major Rawls had his back to us; he didn’t see us. Rawls was humping the pin-ball machine in a fury. In the mouth of a corridor I’d walked down before—it led nowhere—we marched past Dick Jarvits, the tall, lunatic brother of the dead warrant officer, standing in the shadows.
He wore the jungle fatigues; he was strapped up with an extra cartridge belt or two. Although it was dark in the corridor, he wore the kind of sunglasses that must have melted on his brother’s face when the helicopter had caught fire. Because he was wearing sunglasses, I couldn’t tell if Dick saw Owen or me or the children; but from the gape of his open mouth, I concluded that something Dick had just seen had surprised him.
The “Men’s Temporary Facilities” were the same as I had left them. The same mops and pails were there, and the unhung mirror still leaned against the wall. The vast mystery sink confused the children; one of them tried to pee in it, but I pointed him in the direction of the crowded urinal. One of the children considered peeing in a pail, but I showed him the toilet in the makeshift, plywood stall. Owen Meany, the good soldier, stood under the window; he watched the door. Occasionally, he would glance above him, sizing up the deep window ledge below the casement window. Owen looked especially small standing under that window, because the window ledge was at least ten feet high—it towered above him.
The nun was waiting for her charges, just outside the door.
I helped one of the children unzip his fly; the child seemed unfamiliar with a zipper. The children all jabbered in Vietnamese; the small, high-ceilinged room—like a coffin standing upright on one end—echoed with their voices.
I’ve already said how slow I am; it wasn’t until I heard their shrill, foreign voices that I remembered Owen’s dream. I saw him watching the door, his arms hanging loosely at his sides.