“IT WAS MOVING, ALL RIGHT,” said Owen Meany. “THAT’S WHY I NEVER HAD ANY DOUBT. IT COULDN’T HAVE BEEN THE DUMMY BECAUSE IT WAS MOVING,” he said. “AND IN ALL THESE YEARS THAT I’VE HAD THE DUMMY, THE DUMMY HAS NEVER MOVED.”
Since when, I wondered, did Owen Meany ever have ANY DOUBT? And how often had he stared at my mother’s dressmaker’s dummy? He expected it to move, I thought.
When it was so dark at the St. Michael’s playground that we couldn’t see the basket, we couldn’t see Mary Magdalene, either. What Owen liked best was to practice the shot until we lost Mary Magdalene in the darkness. Then he would stand under the basket with me and say, “CAN YOU SEE HER?”
“Not anymore,” I’d say.
“YOU CAN’T SEE HER, BUT YOU KNOW SHE’S STILL THERE—RIGHT?” he would say.
“Of course she’s still there!” I’d say.
“YOU’RE SURE?” he’d ask me.
“Of course I’m sure!” I’d say.
“BUT YOU CAN’T SEE HER,” he’d say—very teasingly. “HOW DO YOU KNOW SHE’S STILL THERE IF YOU CAN’T ACTUALLY SEE HER?”
“Because I know she’s still there—because I know she couldn’t have gone anywhere—because I just know!” I would say.
And one cold, late-fall day—it was November or even early December; Johnson had defeated Goldwater for the presidency; Khrushchev had been replaced by Brezhnev and Kosygin; five Americans had been killed in a Viet Cong attack on the air base at Bien Hoa—I was especially exasperated by this game he played about not seeing Mary Magdalene but still knowing she was there.
“YOU HAVE NO DOUBT SHE’S THERE?” he nagged at me.
“Of course I have no doubt!” I said.
“BUT YOU CAN’T SEE HER—YOU COULD BE WRONG,” he said.
“No, I’m not wrong—she’s there, I know she’s there!” I yelled at him.
“YOU ABSOLUTELY KNOW SHE’S THERE—EVEN THOUGH YOU CAN’T SEE HER?” he asked me.
“Yes!” I screamed.
“WELL, NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT GOD,” said Owen Meany. “I CAN’T SEE HIM—BUT I ABSOLUTELY KNOW HE IS THERE!”
Georgian Bay: July 29, 1987—Katherine told me today that I should make an effort to not read any newspapers. She saw how The Globe and Mail ruined my day—and it is so gorgeous, so peaceful on this island, on all this water; it’s such a shame to not relax here, to not take the opportunity to think more tranquilly, more reflectively. Katherine wants only the best for me; I know she’s right—I should give up the news, just give it up. You can’t understand anything by reading the news, anyway.
If someone ever presumed to teach Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy or Robertson Davies to my Bishop Strachan students with the same, shallow, superficial understanding that I’m sure I possess of world affairs—or, even, American wrongdoing—I would be outraged. I am a good enough English teacher to know that my grasp of American misadventures—even in Vietnam, not to mention Nicaragua—is shallow and superficial. Whoever acquired any real or substantive intelligence from reading newspapers? I’m sure I have no in-depth comprehension of American villainy; yet I can’t leave the news alone! You’d think I might profit from my experience with ice cream. If I have ice cream in my freezer, I’ll eat it—I’ll eat all of it, all at once. Therefore, I’ve learned not to buy ice cream. Newspapers are even worse for me than ice cream; headlines, and the big issues that generate the headlines, are pure fat.
The island library, to be kind, is full of field guides—to everything I never knew enough about; I mean, real things, not “issues.” I could study pine needles, or bird identification—there are even categories for studying the latter: in-flight movement, perching silhouettes, feeding and mating cries. It’s fascinating—I suppose. And with all this water around, I could certainly take more than one day to go fishing with Charlie; I know it disappoints him that I’m not more interested in fishing. And Katherine has pointed out to me that it’s been a long time since she and I have talked about our respective beliefs—the shared and private articles of our faith. I used to talk about this for hours with her—and with Canon Campbell, before her. Now I’m ashamed to tell Katherine how many Sunday services I’ve skipped.
Katherine’s right. I’m going to try to give up the news. The Globe and Mail said today that the Nicaraguan contras have executed prisoners; the contras are being investigated for “22 major cases of human-rights abuse”—and these same filthy contras are the “moral equivalent of our founding fathers,” President Reagan says! Meanwhile, the spiritual leader of Iran, the ayatollah, urged all Moslems to “crush America’s teeth in its mouth”; this sounds like just the guy the Americans should sell arms to—right? The United States simply isn’t making sense.
I agree with Katherine. Time to fish; time to observe the flatness of that small, aquatic mammal’s tail—is it an otter or is it a muskrat? Time to find out. And out there, where the water of the bay turns blue-green and then to the color of a bruise, is that a loon or a coot I see diving there? Time to see; time to forget about the rest. And it’s “high time”—as Canon Mackie is always saying—for me to try to be a Canadian!
When I first came to Canada, I thought it was going to be easy to be a Canadian; like so many stupid Americans, I pictured Canada as simply some northern, colder, possibly more provincial region of the United States—I imagined it would be like moving to Maine, or Minnesota. It was a surprise to discover that Toronto wasn’t as snowy and cold as New Hampshire—and not nearly as provincial, either. It was more of a surprise to discover how different Canadians were—they were so polite! Naturally, I started out apologizing. “I’m not really a draft dodger,” I would say; but most Canadians didn’t care what I was. “I’m not here to evade the draft,” I would explain. “I would certainly classify myself as antiwar,” I said in those days. “I’m comfortable with the term ‘war resister,’” I told everyone, “but I don’t need to dodge or evade the draft—that’s not why I’m here.”
But most Canadians didn’t care why I’d come; they didn’t ask any questions. It was 1968, probably the midpoint of Vietnam “resisters” coming to Canada; most Canadians were sympathetic—they thought the war in Vietnam was stupid and wrong, too. In 1968, you needed fifty points to become a landed immigrant; landed immigrants could apply for Canadian citizenship, for which they’d be eligible in five years. Earning my fifty “points” was easy for me; I had a B.A. cum laude, and a Master’s degree in English—with Owen Meany’s help, I’d written my Master’s thesis on Thomas Hardy. I’d also had two years’ teaching experience; while I was in graduate school at the University of New Hampshire, I taught part-time at Gravesend Academy—Expository Writing for ninth graders. Dan Needham and Mr. Early had recommended me for the job.
In 1968, one out of every nine Canadians was an immigrant; and the Vietnam “resisters” were better-educated and more employable than most immigrants in Canada. That year the so-called Union of American Exiles was organized; compared to Hester—and her SDS friends, those
so-called Students for a Democratic Society—the few guys I knew in the Union of American Exiles were a pretty tame lot. I was used to rioters; Hester was big on riots then. That was the year she was arrested in Chicago.
Hester had her nose broken while rioting at the site of the Democratic Party’s national convention. She said a policeman mashed her face against the sliding side door of a van; but Hester would have been disappointed to return from Chicago with all her bones intact. The Americans I ran into in Toronto—even the AMEX organizers, even the deserters—were a whole lot more reasonable than Hester and many other Americans I had known “at home.”
There was a general misunderstanding about the so-called deserters; the deserters I knew were politically mild. I never met one who’d actually been in Vietnam; I never met one who was even scheduled to go. They were just guys who’d been drafted and had hated the service; some of them had even enlisted. Only a few of them told me that they’d deserted because it had shamed them to maintain any association with that insupportable war; as for a couple of the ones who told me that—I had the feeling that their stories weren’t true, that they were only saying they’d deserted because the war was “insupportable”; they’d learned that this was politically acceptable to say.
And there was another, general misunderstanding at that time: contrary to popular belief, coming to Canada was not a very shrewd way to beat the draft; there were better and easier ways to “beat” it—I’ll tell you about one, later. But coming to Canada—either as a draft dodger or as a deserter, or even for my own, more complicated reasons—was a very forceful political statement. Remember that? Remember when what you did was a kind of “statement”? I remember one of the AMEX guys telling me that “resistance as exile was the ultimate judgment.” How I agreed with him! How self-important it seemed: to be making “the ultimate judgment.”