“He should learn to wear a hat—it won’t kill him,” my grandmother complained. “In this weather, he’ll catch his death.”
When our old friend Robert Frost tried to read his inaugural poem, Owen became most upset; maybe it was the wind, maybe Frost’s eyes were tearing in the cold, or else it was the glare from the sun, or simply that the old man’s eyesight was failing—whatever, he looked very feeble and he couldn’t read his poem properly.
“The land was ours before we were the land’s,” Frost began. It was “The Gift Outright,” and Owen knew it by heart.
“SOMEONE HELP HIM!” Owen cried, when Frost began to struggle. Someone tried to help him—maybe it was the president himself, or Mrs. Kennedy; I don’t remember.
It was not much help, in any case, and Frost went on struggling with the poem. Owen tried to prompt him, but Robert Frost could not hear The Voice—not all the way from Gravesend. Owen recited from memory; his memory of the poem was better than Frost’s.
SOMETHING WE WERE WITHHOLDING MADE US WEAK
UNTIL WE FOUND OUT THAT IT WAS OURSELVES
WE WERE WITHHOLDING FROM OUR LAND OF LIVING,
AND FORTHWITH FOUND SALVATION IN SURRENDER.
It was the same voice that had prompted the Announcing Angel, who’d forgotten his lines eight years ago; it was the Christ Child speaking from the manger again.
“JESUS, WHY CAN’T ANYONE HELP HIM?” Owen cried.
It was the president’s speech that really affected us; it left Owen Meany speechless and had him writing in his diary into the small hours of the night. Some years later—after everything—I would get to read what he had written; at the time, I knew only how excited he was—how he felt that Kennedy had changed everything for him.
“NO MORE SARCASM MASTER,” he wrote in the diary. “NO MORE CYNICAL, NEGATIVE, SMART-ASS, ADOLESCENT BULLSHIT! THERE IS A WAY TO BE OF SERVICE TO ONE’S COUNTRY WITHOUT BEING A FOOL; THERE IS A WAY TO BE OF USE WITHOUT BEING USED—WITHOUT BEING A SERVANT OF OLD MEN, AND THEIR OLD IDEAS.” There was more, much more. He thought that Kennedy was religious, and—incredibly—he didn’t mind that Kennedy was a Catholic. “I BELIEVE HE’S A KIND OF SAVIOR,” Owen wrote in his diary. “I DON’T CARE IF HE’S A MACKEREL-SNAPPER—HE’S GOT SOMETHING WE NEED.”
In Scripture class, Owen asked the Rev. Mr. Merrill if he didn’t agree that Jack Kennedy was “THE VERY THING ISAIAH HAD IN MIND—YOU KNOW, ‘THE PEOPLE WHO WALKED IN DARKNESS HAVE SEEN A GREAT LIGHT; THOSE WHO DWELT IN A LAND OF DEEP DARKNESS, ON THEM HAS LIGHT SHINED.’ YOU REMEMBER THAT?”
“Well, Owen,” Mr. Merrill said cautiously, “I’m sure Isaiah would have liked John Kennedy; I don’t know, however, if Kennedy was ‘the very thing Isaiah had in mind,’ as you say.”
“‘FOR TO US A CHILD IS BORN,’” Owen recited, “‘TO US A SON IS GIVEN; AND THE GOVERNMENT WILL BE UPON HIS SHOULDER’—REMEMBER THAT?”
I remember; and I remember how long it was after Kennedy’s inauguration that Owen Meany would still recite to me from Kennedy’s speech: “‘ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU—ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY.’”
Remember that?
7
The Dream
* * *
Owen and I were nineteen-year-old seniors at Gravesend Academy—at least a year older than the other members of our class—when Owen told me, point-blank, what he had expressed to me, symbolically, when he was eleven and had mutilated my armadillo.
“GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER,” he said to me, when I was complaining about practicing the shot; I thought he would never slam-dunk the ball in under four seconds, and I was bored with all our trying. “MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT,” he said. “GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD’S INSTRUMENT.”
That he might have thought such a thing when he was eleven—when the astonishing results of that foul ball were such a shock to us both, and when whatever UNSPEAKABLE OUTRAGE his parents had suffered had plunged his religious upbringing into confusion and rebellion—I could understand him thinking anything then. But not when we were nineteen! I was so surprised by the matter-of-fact way he simply announced his insane belief—“GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS”—that when he jumped into my hands, I dropped him. The basketball rolled out of bounds. Owen didn’t look much like GOD’S INSTRUMENT in his fallen position—holding his knee, which he’d twisted in his fall, and writhing around on the gym floor under the basket.
“If you’re God’s instrument, Owen,” I said, “how come you need my help to stuff a basketball?”
It was Christmas vacation, 1961, and we were alone in the gym—except for our old friend (and our only audience) the retarded janitor, who operated the official scorer’s clock whenever Owen was in the mood to get serious about timing the shot. I wish I could remember his name; he was often the only janitor on duty during school holidays and summer weekends, and there was a universal understanding that he was retarded or “brain damaged”—and Owen had heard that the janitor had suffered “shell shock” in the war. We didn’t even know which war—we didn’t know what “shell shock” even was.
Owen sat on the basketball court, rubbing his knee.
“I SUPPOSE YOU HEARD THAT FAITH CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS,” he said. “THE TROUBLE WITH YOU IS, YOU DON’T HAVE ANY FAITH.”
“The trouble with you is, you’re crazy,” I told him; but I retrieved the basketball. “It’s simply irresponsible,” I said—“for someone your age, and of your education, to go around thinking he’s God’s instrument!”
“I FORGOT I WAS TALKING TO MISTER RESPONSIBILITY,” he said.