I walked across the tarmac toward the family, who had not moved—only their eyes followed Owen Meany and the body in the box. They stood paralyzed by their anger; but the major stepped smartly forward to greet Owen; the chauffeur opened the tailgate of the long, silver-gray hearse; and the mortician became the unctuous delegate of death—the busybody it was his nature to be.
Owen hopped lightly off the forklift; he dropped his duffel bag to the tarmac and cracked open the triangular cardboard box. With the major’s help, Owen unfolded the flag—it was difficult to manage in the strong wind. Suddenly, more runway lights were turned on, and the flag swelled and snapped brightly against the dark sky; rather clumsily, Owen and the major finally covered the crate with the flag. Once the body was slid into the hearse, the flag on top of the container lay still, and the family—like a large, ungainly animal—approached the hearse and Owen Meany.
That was when I noticed that the hugely tall boy was not wearing a pair of workmen’s overalls—he was wearing jungle fatigues—and what I had mistaken for splotches of grease or oil were in fact the camouflage markings. The fatigues looked authentic, but the boy was clearly not old enough to “serve” and he was hardly in a proper uniform—on his big feet, he wore a scuffed and filthy pair of basketball shoes, “high tops”; and his matted, shoulder-length hair certainly wasn’t Army regulation. It was not a carpenter’s belt he wore; it was a kind of cartridge belt, with what appeared to be live ammo, actual loaded shells—at least, some of the cartridge sleeves in the belt were stuffed with bullets—and from various loops and hooks and straps, attached to this belt, certain things were hanging … neither a mechanic’s tools, nor the equipment that is standard for a telephone repairman. The towering boy carried some authentic-looking Army equipment: an entrenching tool, a machete, a bayonet—although the sheath for the bayonet did not look like Army issue, not to me; it was made of a shiny material in a Day-Glo-green color, and embossed upon it was the traditional skull and crossbones in Day-Glo orange.
The pregnant girl, whom I took to be the tall monster’s sister, could not have been older than sixteen or seventeen; she began to sob—then she made a fist and bit into the big knuckle at the base of her index finger, to stop herself from crying.
“Fuck!” the mother cried out. The slow-moving man who appeared to be her husband folded and unfolded his beefy arms, and—spontaneously, upon the mother’s utterance—the specter in jungle fatigues tipped his head back and spat another sizable, mud-colored trajectory.
“Would you stop doing that?” the pregnant girl asked him.
“Fuck you,” he said.
The slow-moving man was not as slow as I thought. He lashed out at the boy—it was a solidly thrown right jab that caught the kid flush on his cheek and dropped him, like Owen’s duffel bag, to the tarmac.
“Don’t you speak to your sister that way,” the man said.
The boy, not moving, said: “Fuck you—she’s not my sister, she’s just my half sister!”
The mother said: “Don’t speak to your father that way.”
“He’s not my father—you asshole,” the boy said.
“Don’t you call your mother an ‘asshole’!” the man said; but when he stepped closer to the boy on the tarmac—as if he were positioning himself near enough to kick the boy—the boy rose unsteadily to his feet. He held the machete in one hand, the bayonet in the other.
“You’re both assholes,” the boy told the man and woman—and when his half sister commenced to cry again, he once more tipped back his head and spat the tobacco juice; he did not spit on her, but he spat in her general direction.
It was Owen Meany who spoke to him. “I LIKE THAT SHEATH—FOR THE BAYONET,” Owen said. “DID YOU MAKE IT YOURSELF?”
As I had seen it happen before—with strangers—the whole, terrible family was frozen by Owen Meany’s voice. The pregnant girl stopped crying; the father—who was not the tall boy’s father—backed away from Owen, as if he were more afraid of The Voice than of either a bayonet or a machete, or both; the mother nervously patted her sticky hair, as if Owen had caused her to worry about her appearance. The top of Owen Meany’s cap reached only as high as the tall boy’s chest.
The boy said to him: “Who are you? You little twit.”
“This is the casualty assistance officer,” the major said. “This is Lieutenant Meany.”
“I want to hear him say it,” the boy said, not taking his eyes off Owen.
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“I’M LIEUTENANT MEANY,” Owen said; he offered to shake hands with the boy. “WHAT’S YOUR NAME?” But in order to shake hands with Owen, the boy would have had to sheathe at least one of his weapons; he appeared unwilling. He also didn’t bother to tell Owen his name.
“What’s the matter with your voice?” he asked Owen.
“NOTHING—WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?” Owen asked him. “YOU WANT TO DRESS UP AND PLAY SOLDIER—DON’T YOU KNOW HOW TO SPEAK TO AN OFFICER?”
As a natural bully, the boy respected being bullied. “Yes, sir,” he said snidely to Owen.
“PUT THOSE WEAPONS AWAY,” Owen told him. “IS THAT YOUR BROTHER I JUST BROUGHT HOME?” Owen asked him.
“Yes, sir,” the boy said.
“I’M SORRY YOUR BROTHER’S DEAD,” said Owen Meany. “DON’T YOU WANT TO PAY SOME ATTENTION TO HIM?” Owen asked.
“Yes, sir,” the boy said quietly; he looked at a loss about how to PAY SOME ATTENTION to his dead brother, and so he stared forlornly at the corner of the flag that was near enough to the open tailgate of the hearse to be occasionally moved by the wind.
Then Owen Meany circulated through the family, shaking hands, saying he was sorry; such a range of feelings flashed across the mother’s face—she appeared contradictively stimulated to flirt with him and to kill him. The impassive father seemed to me to be the most disagreeably affected by Owen’s unnatural size; the man’s doughy countenance wavered between brute stupidity and contempt. The pregnant girl was stricken with shyness when Owen spoke to her.
“I’M SORRY ABOUT YOUR BROTHER,” he said to her; he came up to her chin.