A Prayer for Owen Meany

“You have such a head for history,” the canon said. “How can you remember the dates?”

“Canon Mackie,” I said.

“John, John,” the canon said. “I know you’re upset; I’m not mocking you. I’m just trying to help you understand—about the Vestry elections—”

“I don’t care about the Vestry elections!” I said angrily—indicating, of course, how much I cared. “I’m sorry,” I said.

The canon put his warm, moist hand on my arm.

“To our younger parish officers,” he said, “you’re something of an eccentric. They don’t understand those years that brought you here; they wonder why—especially, when you defame the United States as vociferously as you do—why you aren’t more Canadian than you are! Because you’re not really a Canadian, you know—and that troubles some of the older members of this parish, too; that troubles even those of us who do remember the circumstances that brought you here. If you made the choice to stay in Canada, why do you have so little to do with Canada? Why have you learned so little about us? John: it’s something of a joke, you know—how you don’t even know your way around Toronto.”

That is Canon Mackie in a nutshell; I worry about a war, and the canon agonizes about how I get lost the second I step out of Forest Hill. I talk about the loss of the most substantive treaty that exists between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the canon teases me about my memory for dates!

Yes, I have a good head for dates. How about August 9, 1974? Richard Nixon was finished. How about September 8, 1974? Richard Nixon was pardoned. And then there was April 30, 1975: the U.S. Navy evacuated all remaining personnel from Vietnam; they called this Operation Frequent Wind.

Canon Mackie is skillful with me, I have to admit. He mentions “dates” and what he calls my “head for history” to set up a familiar thesis: that I live in the past. Canon Mackie makes me wonder if my devotion to the memory of Canon Campbell is not also an aspect of how much I live in the past; years ago, when I felt so close to Canon Campbell, I lived less in the past—or else, what we now call the past was then the present; it was the actual time that Canon Campbell and I shared, and we were both caught up in it. If Canon Campbell were alive, if he were still rector of Grace Church, perhaps he would be no more sympathetic to me than Canon Mackie is sympathetic today.

Canon Campbell was alive on January 21, 1977. That was the day President Jimmy Carter issued a pardon to the “draft-dodgers.” What did I care? I was already a Canadian citizen.

Although Canon Campbell cautioned me about my anger, too, he understood why that “pardon” made me so angry. I showed Canon Campbell the letter I wrote to Jimmy Carter. “Dear Mr. President,” I wrote. “Who will pardon the United States?”

Who can pardon the United States? How can they be pardoned for Vietnam, for their conduct in Nicaragua, for their steadfast and gross contribution to the proliferation of nuclear arms?

“John, John,” Canon Mackie said. “Your little speech about Christmas—at the Parish Council meeting? I doubt that even Scrooge would have chosen a Parish Council meeting as the proper occasion for such an announcement.”

“I merely said that I found Christmas depressing,” I said.

/> “‘Merely’!” said Canon Mackie. “The church counts very heavily on Christmas—for its missions, for its livelihood in this city. And Christmas is the focal point for the children in our church.”

And what would the canon have said if I’d told him that the Christmas of ’53 put the finishing touches on Christmas for me? He would have told me, again, that I was living in the past. So I said nothing. I hadn’t wanted to talk about Christmas in the first place.

Is it any wonder how Christmas—ever since that Christmas—depresses me? The Nativity I witnessed in ’53 has replaced the old story. The Christ is born—“miraculously,” to be sure; but even more miraculous are the demands he succeeds in making, even before he can walk! Not only does he demand to be worshiped and adored—by peasants and royalty, by animals and his own parents!—but he also banishes his mother and father from the house of prayer and song itself. I will never forget the inflamed color of his bare skin in the winter cold, and the hospital white-on-white of his swaddling clothes against the new snow—a vision of the little Lord Jesus as a born victim, born raw, born bandaged, born angry and accusing; and wrapped so tightly that he could not bend at the knees at all and had to lie on his parents’ laps as stiffly as someone who, mortally wounded, lies upon a stretcher.

How can you like Christmas after that? Before I became a believer, I could at least enjoy the fantasy.

That Sunday, feeling the wind cut through my Joseph-robe out on Elliot Street, contributed to my belief in—and my dislike of—the miracle. How the congregation straggled out of the nave; how they hated to have their rituals revised without warning. The rector was not on the steps to shake their hands because so many of the congregation had followed our triumphant exit, leaving the Rev. Mr. Wiggin stranded at the altar with his benediction unsaid—he was supposed to have delivered his benediction from the nave, where the recessional should have led him (and not us).

And what was Barb Wiggin supposed to do with the “pillar of light,” now that she had craned the light to follow the Lord Jesus and his tribe to the door? Dan Needham told me later that the Rev. Dudley Wiggin made a most unusual gesture for the rector of Christ Church to make from the pulpit; he drew his forefinger across his throat—a signal to his wife to kill the light, which (only after we’d departed) she finally did. But to many of the bewildered congregation, who took their cues from the rector—for how else should they know what their next move should be, in this unique celebration?—the gesture of the Rev. Dudley Wiggin slashing his own throat was particularly gripping. Mr. Fish, in his inexperience, imitated the gesture as if it were a command—and then looked to Dan for approval. Dan observed that Mr. Fish was not alone.

And what were we supposed to do? Our gang from the manger, ill-dressed for the weather, huddled uncertainly together after the granite truck turned onto Front Street and out of sight. The revived hind part of one donkey ran to the door of the parish-house vestibule, which he found locked; the cows slipped in the snow. Where could we go but back in the main door? Had someone locked the parish house out of fear that thieves would steal our real clothes? To our knowledge, there was no shortage of clothes like ours in Gravesend, and no robbers. And so we bucked against the grain; we fought against the congregation—they were coming out—in order that we might get back in. For Barb Wiggin, who wished that every worship service was as smooth as a flight free of bumpy air—and one that departs and arrives on time—the sight of the traffic jam in the nave of the church must have caused further upset. Smaller angels and shepherds darted between the grown-ups’ legs; the more stately kings, clutching their toppled crowns—and the clumsier cows, and the donkeys now in halves—made awkward progress against the flow of bulky overcoats. The countenances of many a parishioner reflected shock and insult, as if the Lord Jesus had just spat in their faces—to deem them sacrilegious. Among the older members of the congregation—with whom the jocular Captain Wiggin and his brash wife were not an overnight success—there was a stewing anger, apparent in their frowns and scowls, as if the shameful pageant they had just witnessed were the rector’s idea of something “modern.” Whatever it was, they hadn’t liked it, and their reluctant acceptance of the ex-pilot would be delayed for a few more years.

I found myself chin-to-chest with the Rev. Lewis Merrill, who was as baffled as the Episcopalian congregation—regarding what he and his wife were supposed to do next. They were nearer the nave of the church than was the rector, who was nowhere to be found, and if the Rev. Mr. Merrill continued to press, with the throng, toward the door, he might find himself out on the steps—in a position to shake hands with the departing souls—in advance of the Rev. Mr. Wiggin’s appearance there. It was surely not Pastor Merrill’s responsibility to shake hands with Episcopalians, following their botched pageant. God forbid that any of them might think that he was the reason for the pageant being so peculiarly wrecked, or that this was how the Congregationalists interpreted the Nativity.

“Your little friend?” Mr. Merrill asked in a whisper. “Is he always so … like that?”

Is he always like what? I thought. But in the crush of the crowd, it would have been hard to stand my ground while Mr. Merrill stuttered out what he meant.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s Owen, this was pure Owen today. He’s unpredictable, but he’s always in charge.”

“He’s quite … miraculous,” the Rev. Mr. Merrill said, smiling faintly—clearly glad that the Congregationalists preferred caroling to pageants, and clearly relieved that Owen Meany had moved no farther down the Protestant rungs than the Episcopalians. The pastor was probably imagining what sort of damage Owen might accomplish at a Vesper service.

Dan grabbed me in the connecting passage to the parish house; he said he’d wait for me to get my clothes, and Owen’s—we could go back to the dorm together, then, or to 80 Front Street. Mr. Fish was happy and agitated; if he thought that the Rev. Dudley Wiggin’s “slashing his throat” was a part of the rector’s annual performance, he also imagined that everything Owen had done was in the script—and Mr. Fish had been quite impressed by the dramatic qualities of the story. “I love the part when he tells the angel what to say—that’s brilliant,” Mr. Fish said. “And how he throws his mother aside—how he starts right in with the criticism … I mean, you get the idea, right away, that this is no ordinary baby. You know, he’s the Lord! Jesus—from Day One. I mean, he’s born giving orders, telling everyone what to do. I thought you told me he didn’t have a speaking part! I had no idea it was so … primitive a ritual, so violent, so barbaric. But it’s very moving,” Mr. Fish added hastily, lest Dan and I be offended to hear our religion described as “primitive” and “barbaric.”

“It’s not quite what the … author … intended,” Dan told Mr. Fish. I left Dan explaining the deviations from the expected to the excited amateur actor—I wanted to get dressed, and find Owen’s clothes, in a hurry, without encountering either of the Wiggins. But I was a while getting my hands on Owen’s clothes. Mary Beth Baird had balled them up with her own in a corner of the vestibule, where she then lay down to weep—on top of them. It was complicated, getting her to relinquish Owen’s clothes without striking her; and impossible to interrupt her sobbing. Everything that had upset the little Lord Jesus had been her fault, in her opinion; she had not only failed to soothe him—she’d been a bad mother in general. Owen hated her, she claimed. How she wished she understood him better! Yet, somehow—as she explained to me, through her tears—she was sure she “understood” him better than anyone else did.

At age eleven, I was too young to glimpse a vision of what sort of overwrought wife and mother Mary Beth Baird would make; there in the vestibule, I wanted only to hit her—to forcibly take Owen’s clothes and leave her in a puddle of tears. The very idea of her understanding Owen Meany made me sick! What she really meant was that she wanted to take him home and lie on top of him; her idea of understanding him began and ended with her desire to cover his body, to never let him get up.

Because I was slow in leaving the vestibule, Barb Wiggin caught me.