Mr. Chickering should have wept—not only for the whimsy with which he’d instructed Owen Meany to “Swing away!” Had he known everything that would follow, he would have bathed his chubby face in even more tears than he produced that day in Hurd’s when he was grieving for and as a team.

Naturally, Police Chief Pike sat apart; policemen like to sit by the door. And Chief Pike wasn’t weeping. To him, my mother was still a “case”; for him, the service was an opportunity to look over the suspects—because we were all suspects in Chief Pike’s eyes. Among the mourners, Chief Pike suspected the ball-thief lurked.

He was always “by the door,” Chief Pike. When I dated his daughter, I always thought he would be bursting through a door—or a window—at any moment. It was doubtless a result of my anxiety concerning his sudden entrance that I once tangled my lower lip in his daughter’s braces, retreating too quickly from her kiss—certain I had heard the chief’s boots creaking in my near vicinity.

That day at Hurd’s, you could almost hear those boots creaking by the door, as if he expected the stolen baseball to loose itself from the culprit’s pocket and roll across the dark crimson carpeting with incriminating authority. For Chief Pike, the theft of the ball that killed my mother was an offense of a far graver character than a mere misdemeanor; at the very least, it was the work of a felon. That my poor mother had been killed by the ball seemed not to concern Chief Pike; that poor Owen Meany had hit the ball was of slightly more interest to our chief of police—but only because it established a motive for Owen to possess the baseball in question. Therefore, it was not upon my mother’s closed coffin that our chief of police fixed his stare; nor did Chief Pike pay particular attention to the formerly airborne Captain Wiggin—nor did he show much interest in the slight stutter of the shaken Pastor Merrill. Rather, the intent gaze of our chief of police bore into the back of the head of Owen Meany, who sat precariously upon six or seven copies of The Pilgrim Hymnal; Owen tottered on the stack of hymnals, as if the police chief’s gaze unbalanced him. He sat as near to our family pews as possible; he sat where he’d sat for my mother’s wedding—behind the Eastman family in general, and Uncle Alfred in particular. This time there would be no jokes from Simon about the inappropriateness of Owen’s navy-blue Sunday school suit—such a little clone of the suit his father wore. The granitic Mr. Meany sat heavily beside Owen.

“‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord,’” said the Rev. Dudley Wiggin. “‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.’”

“‘O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered,’” said the Rev. Lewis Merrill. “‘Accept our prayers on behalf of thy servant Tabby, and grant her an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of thy saints.’”

In the dull light of Hurd’s Church, only Lydia’s wheelchair gleamed—in the aisle beside my grandmother’s pew, where Harriet Wheelwright sat alone. Dan and I sat in the pew behind her. The Eastmans sat behind us.

The Rev. Captain Wiggin called upon Corinthians—“God shall wipe away all tears”—whereupon, Dan began to cry.

The rector, eager as ever to represent belief as a battle, brought up Isaiah—“He will swallow up death in victory.” Now I heard my Aunt Martha join Dan; but the two of them were no match for Mr. Chickering, who had started weeping even before the ministers began their readings of the Old and the New Testament.

Pastor Merrill stuttered his way into Lamentations—“The Lord is good unto them that wait for him.”

Then we were led through the Twenty-third Psalm, as if there were a soul in Gravesend who didn’t know it by heart: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want”—and so forth. When we got to the part that goes, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” that was when I began to hear Owen’s voice above all the others.

When the rector said, “‘Give courage to those who are bereaved,’” I was already dreading how loud Owen’s voice would be during the final hymn; I knew it was one he liked.

When the pastor said, “‘Help us, we pray, in the midst of things we cannot understand,’” I was already humming the hymn, trying to drown out Owen’s voice—in advance.

And when Mr. Wiggin and Mr. Merrill struggled to say, in unison, “‘Grant us to entrust Tabitha to thy never-failing love,’” I knew it was time; I almost covered my ears.

What else do we sing at an untimely death, what else but that catchy number that is categorized in The Pilgrim Hymnal as a favorite hymn of “ascension and reign”—the popular “Crown Him with Many Crowns,” a real organ-breaker?

For when else, if not at the death of a loved one, do we most need to hear about the resurrection, about eternal life—about him who has risen?

Crown him with man-y crowns, The Lamb up-on his throne;

Hark! how the heaven-ly an-them drowns All mu-sic but its own;

A-wake, my soul, and sing Of him who died for thee,

And hail him as thy match-less king Through all e-ter-ni-ty.

Crown him the Lord of love; Be-hold his hands and side,

Rich wounds, yet vis-i-ble above, In beau-ty glo-ri-fied;

No an-gel in the sky Can ful-ly bear that sight,

But down-ward bends his burn-ing eye At mys-ter-ies so bright.

But it was the third verse that especially inspired Owen.

CROWN HIM THE LORD OF LIFE, WHO TRI-UMPHED O’ER THE GRAVE,

AND ROSE VIC-TO-RIOUS IN THE STRIFE FOR THOSE HE CAME TO SAVE;

HIS GLO-RIES NOW WE SING WHO DIED AND ROSE ON HIGH,

WHO DIED, E-TER-NAL LIFE TO BRING, AND LIVES THAT DEATH MAY DIE.

Even later, at the committal, I could hear Owen’s awful voice ringing, when Mr. Wiggin said, “‘In the midst of life we are in death.’” But it wa

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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