"That's his line of work, all right," Hester said. "At least he's familiar with the territory."
My "line of work," it seemed to me, was reading; my ambitions extended no further than to my choice of reading material. I loved being a graduate student; I loved my first teaching job, too--yet I felt I was so undaring. The very thought of bringing bodies home to their next of kin gave me the shivers.
In his diary, he wrote: "THE OFFICE FOR THE CASUALTY BRANCH IS IN THE PART OF THE POST THAT WAS BUILT JUST AFTER BLACK JACK PERSHING'S EXPEDITION AGAINST PANCHO VILLA--OUR BUILDING IS OLD AND STUCCOED AND THE MINT-GREEN PAINT ON THE CEILING IS PEELING. WE HAVE A WALL POSTER DEPICTING ALL THE MEDALS THE ARMY OFFERS. WITH A GREASE PENCIL, ON TWO PLASTIC-COVERED CHARTS, WE WRITE THE NAMES OF THE WEEK'S CASUALTIES, ALONGSIDE THE ARIZONA PRISONERS OF WAR. WHAT THE ARMY CALLS ME IS A 'CASUALTY ASSISTANCE OFFICER'; WHAT I AM IS A BODY ESCORT."
"Jesus! Tell me all about it!" I said--when he was home on leave for Christmas.
"SO HOW DO YOU LIKE BEING A GRADUATE STUDENT?" he asked me. "SO WHAT'S HE LIKE FOR A ROOMMATE?" he asked Hester. He was tan and fit-looking; maybe it was all the tennis. His uniform had only one medal on it.
"THEY GIVE IT TO EVERYONE!" said Owen Meany. On his left sleeve was a patch indicating his post, and on each shoulder epaulet was a brass bar signifying that he was a second lieutenant; on each collar was the brass U.S. insignia and the red-and-blue-striped silver shield of his branch: the Adjutant General's Corps. The MEANY name tag was the only other hardware on his uniform--there were no marksmanship badges, or anything else.
"NO OVERSEAS PATCH--I'M NOT MUCH TO LOOK AT," he said shyly; Hester and I couldn't take our eyes off him.
"Are they really in plastic bags--the bodies?" Hester asked him.
"Do you have to check the contents of the bags?" I asked him.
"Are there sometimes just parts of a head and loose fingers and toes?" Hester asked him.
"I suppose this might change how you feel--about going over there?" I said to him.
"Do the parents freak?" Hester asked. "And the wives--do you have to talk to the wives?"
He looked so awfully composed--he made us feel as if we'd never left school; of course, we hadn't.
"IT'S A WAY TO GO TO CALIFORNIA," Owen said evenly. "I FLY TO TUCSON. I FLY TO OAKLAND--IT'S THE ARMY BASE IN OAKLAND WHERE YOU GET YOUR BODY INSTRUCTIONS."
"What are 'body instructions,' for Christ's sake?" Hester said; but Owen ignored her.
"SOMETIMES I FLY BACK FROM SAN FRANCISCO," he said. "EITHER WAY, I GO CHECK THE CONTAINER IN THE BAGGAGE AREA--ABOUT TWO HOURS BEFORE WE TAKE OFF."
"You check the plastic bag?" I asked him.
"IT'S A PLYWOOD CONTAINER," he said. "THERE'S NO BAG. THE BODY IS EMBALMED. IT'S IN A CASKET. IN CALIFORNIA, I JUST CHECK THE PLYWOOD CONTAINER."
"For what?" I said.
"FOR LEAKS," he said. Hester looked as if she might throw up. "AND THERE'S INFORMATION STAPLED TO THE CONTAINER--I JUST MATCH THAT UP WITH THE K.I.A. SHEET."
"'K.I.A.'--what's that?" I said.
"KILLED IN ACTION," he said.
"Yes, of course," I said.
"BACK IN ARIZONA, IN THE FUNERAL HOME--THAT'S WHEN I CHECK THE BODY," he said.
"I don't want to hear any more," Hester said.
"OKAY," he said; he shrugged.
When we got away from Hester--we went to the Gravesend Academy gym to practice the shot, of course--I kept asking him about the bodies.
"USUALLY, YOU DISCUSS WITH THE MORTICIAN WHETHER OR NOT THE BODY IS SUITABLE FOR VIEWING--WHETHER OR NOT THE FAMILY SHOULD SEE IT," he said. "SOMETIMES THE FAMILY WANTS TO BE CLOSE TO YOU--THEY FEEL YOU'RE ONE OF THEM. OTHER TIMES, YOU GET THE FEELING YOU SHOULD KEEP OUT OF THEIR WAY--YOU HAVE TO PLAY THIS PART BY EAR. AND THEN THERE'S THE FOLDING OF THE FLAG--YOU GIVE THE FLAG TO THE MOTHER, USUALLY; OR TO THE WIFE, IF THERE'S A WIFE. THAT'S WHEN YOU GIVE YOUR LITTLE SPEECH."
"What do you say?" I asked him.
He was dribbling the basketball, his head nodding almost imperceptibly to the rhythm of the ball bouncing on the floor, his eyes always on the rim of the basket. "'IT IS MY PRIVILEGE TO PRESENT TO YOU OUR COUNTRY'S FLAG IN GRATEFUL APPRECIATION FOR THE SERVICE RENDERED TO THIS NATION BY YOUR SON'--NATURALLY, YOU SAY 'BY YOUR HUSBAND,' IF YOU'RE GIVING THE FLAG TO A WIFE," he added.
"Naturally," I said; he passed me the ball.
"READY?" he said. He was already moving toward me--already timing his leap and, in his mind's eye, seeing the shot fall--when I passed the ball back to him.
Those were brief days and nights; we tried to remember which government spokesman had said that Operation Rolling Thunder was "closing in on Hanoi." That was what had prompted Owen to say: "I THINK HANOI CAN HANDLE IT."
According to the State Department--according to Dean Rusk--we were "winning a war of attrition." That was what prompted Owen to say: "THAT'S NOT THE KIND OF WAR WE WIN."
He had revised a few of his earlier views of our Vietnam policy. Some veterans of the war, whom he'd met at Fort Huachuca, had convinced him that Marshal Ky had once been popular, but now the Viet Cong was gaining the support of South Vietnamese peasants--because our troops had pulled out of the populated areas and were wasting their time chasing the North Vietnamese through the jungles and the mountains. Owen wanted to learn why our troops didn't pull back into the populated areas and wait for the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong to come to them. If we were "protecting" South Vietnam, why didn't we stay with the people and protect them?
On the other hand, it was confusing because many of the Vietnam veterans Owen had met were of the opinion that we should be fighting more "all-out," that we should bomb North Vietnam even more, mine the harbors, and make an amphibious landing north of the DMZ to cut the supply lines for the North Vietnamese Army--in short, fight to win. There was no way to really know what we should do if one didn't go over there and see it, Owen said, but he believed that trying to win a conventional war against North Vietnam was stupid. We should stay in South Vietnam and protect the South Vietnamese from North Vietnamese aggression, and from the Viet Cong--until such time as the South Vietnamese developed an army and, more important, a government that was strong and popular enough to make South Vietnam capable of protecting itself.
"Then the South Vietnamese will be able to attack North Vietnam all by themselves--is that what you mean?" Hester asked him. "You make about as much sense as LBJ," she said. Hester wouldn't say "President Johnson."
As for President Johnson, Owen said: "THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A WORSE PRESIDENT--THERE COULDN'T BE A WORSE ONE, UNLESS THEY ELECT MCNAMARA."
Hester talked about the "Peace Movement."
"WHAT'PEACE MOVEMENT'?--OR DO YOU MEAN THE DON'T-GET-DRAFTED MOVEMENT? THAT'S THE ONLY 'MOVEMENT' I SEE," said Owen Meany.
We talked like the war itself, going nowhere. I moved out of the apartment, so that he could have some nights alone with Hester--I don't know if either of them appreciated it. I spent a few pleasant evenings with Dan and Grandmother.
I had convinced Grandmother to take the train, with me, to Sawyer Depot for Christmas; Grandmother had decided, previously, that she no longer took trains. It was arranged that Dan would take the Christmas Eve train from Gravesend, following the closing performance of A Christmas Carol. And Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred had prevailed upon Hester to bring Owen to Sawyer Depot for Christmas--that was how significantly Owen had managed to impress them. Hester kept threatening to back out of these lavish reunion plans; I believe it was only for Owen's sake that she was agreeing to go home at all--especially for Christmas.
Then all these plans fell through. No one had noticed how severely the train service had been deteriorating; it turned out that it wasn't possible to take a train from Gravesend to Sawyer Depot--and on Christmas Eve, the stationmaster told Dan, it was impossible to take a train anywhere! And so we once more reverted to our isolated Christmases. On the day of Christmas Eve, Owen and I were practicing the shot in the Gravesend Academy gym and
he told me he was simply spending a quiet Christmas with his parents; I was spending the day with Grandmother and Dan. Hester, according to Owen, had--on the spur of the moment--accepted an invitation to SOMEWHERE SUNNY.
"YOU OUGHT TO THINK ABOUT JOINING THE 'PEACE MOVEMENT,' OLD BOY," he told me. I guess he had picked up the OLD BOY at Fort Huachuca. "AS I UNDERSTAND IT, IT'S A GOOD WAY TO GET LAID. YOU JUST MAKE YOURSELF LOOK A LITTLE DISTRACTED--LOOKING ANGRY ALSO HELPS--AND YOU KEEP SAYING YOU'RE 'AGAINST THE WAR.' OF COURSE, I DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW ANYONE WHO'S FOR IT--BUT JUST KEEP SAYING YOU'RE 'AGAINST THE WAR,' AND LOOK AS IF THE WHOLE THING CAUSES YOU A LOT OF PERSONAL ANGUISH. NEXT THING YOU KNOW, YOU'LL GET LAID--YOU CAN COUNT ON IT!"
We just kept sinking the shot; it still takes my breath away to remember how good we were at it. I mean--zip!--he would pass me the ball. "READY?" he would ask, and--zip!--I would pass it back to him and get ready to lift him. It was automatic; almost as soon as I passed him the ball, he was there--in my arms, and soaring. He didn't bother to yell "TIME"--not anymore. We didn't bother to time ourselves; we were consistently under three seconds--we had no doubt about that--and sometimes I think we were faster.
"How many bodies a week are there?" I asked him.
"IN ARIZONA? I WOULD GUESS THAT WE AVERAGE TWO--AT THE MOST, THREE--CASUALTIES A WEEK. SOME WEEKS THERE AREN'T ANY, OR ONLY ONE. AND I WOULD ESTIMATE THAT ONLY HALF OF OUR CASUALTIES HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH VIETNAM--THERE ARE A LOT OF CAR ACCIDENTS, YOU KNOW, AND SOME SUICIDES."
"What percentage of the bodies is not--how did you put it?--'suitable for viewing'?" I asked him.
"FORGET ABOUT THE BODIES," Owen said. "THEY'RE NOT YOUR PROBLEM--YOUR PROBLEM IS YOU'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WHEN YOU LOSE YOUR STUDENT DEFERMENT? DO YOU HAVE A PLAN? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO DO--PROVIDED THERE'S A WAY TO DO IT? I DON'T SEE YOU BEING HAPPY IN THE ARMY. I KNOW YOU DON'T WANT TO GO TO VIETNAM. BUT I DON'T SEE YOU IN THE PEACE CORPS, EITHER. ARE YOU PREPARED TO GO TO CANADA? YOU DON'T LOOK PREPARED--NOT TO ME. YOU DON'T EVEN LOOK LIKE MUCH OF A PROTESTER. YOU'RE PROBABLY THE ONE PERSON I KNOW WHO COULD JOIN WHAT HESTER CALLS THE 'PEACE MOVEMENT' AND MANAGE NOT TO GET LAID. I DON'T SEE YOU HANGING OUT WITH THOSE ASSHOLES--I DON'T SEE YOU HANGING OUT WITH ANYBODY. WHAT I'M TELLING YOU IS, IF YOU WANT TO DO THINGS YOUR OWN WAY, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE A DECISION--YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIND A LITTLE COURAGE."
"I want to go on being a student," I told him. "I want to be a teacher. I'm just a reader," I said.
"DON'T SOUND SO ASHAMED," he said. "READING IS A GIFT."
"I learned it from you," I told him.
"IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED IT--IT'S A GIFT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT--IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT."
"What do I need courage for?" I asked him.
"YOU WILL NEED IT," he told me. "WHEN YOU'RE NOTIFIED TO REPORT FOR YOUR PREINDUCTION PHYSICAL, YOU'RE GOING TO NEED SOME COURAGE THEN. AFTER YOUR PHYSICAL--WHEN THEY PRONOUNCE YOU 'FULLY ACCEPTABLE FOR INDUCTION'--IT WILL BE A LITTLE LATE TO MAKE A DECISION THEN. ONCE THEY CLASSIFY YOU ONE-A, A LOT OF GOOD A LITTLE COURAGE WILL DO YOU. BETTER THINK ABOUT IT, OLD BOY," said Owen Meany.
He reported back to Fort Huachuca before New Year's Eve; Hester stayed away, wherever she was, and I spent New Year's Eve alone--Grandmother said she was too old to stay up to welcome in the New Year. I didn't drink too much, but I drank a little. Hester's damage to the rose garden was surely of the stature of a tradition; her absence, and Owen's, seemed ominous to me.
There were more than 385,000 Americans in Vietnam, and almost 7,000 Americans had been killed there; it seemed only proper to drink something for them.
When Hester returned from SOMEWHERE SUNNY, I refrained from commenting on her lack of a tan. There were more protests, more demonstrations; she didn't ask me to accompany her when she went off to them. Yet no one was allowed to spend the night with her in our apartment; when we talked about Owen, we talked about how much we loved him.
"Between how much you love him and whatever it is that you think of me, I sometimes wonder if you'll ever get laid," Hester told me.
"I could always join the 'Peace Movement,'" I told her. "You know, I could simply make myself look a little distracted--looking angry also helps--and I could keep saying I am 'against the war.' Personal anguish--that's the key! I could convey a lot of personal anguish in regard to my anger 'against the war'--next thing you know, I'll get laid!" Hester didn't even crack a smile.
"I've heard that one," she said.
I wrote Owen that I had selected Thomas Hardy as the subject for my Master's thesis; I doubt he was surprised. I also told him that I had given much thought to his advice to me: that I should gather the courage to make a decision about what to do when faced with the loss of my draft deferment. I was trying to determine what sort of decision I might make--I couldn't imagine a very satisfying solution; and I was puzzled about what sort of COURAGE he'd imagined would be required of me. Short of my deciding to go to Vietnam, the other available decisions didn't strike me as requiring a great deal in the way of courage.
"You're always telling me I don't have any faith," I wrote to Owen. "Well--don't you see?--that's a part of what makes me so indecisive. I wait to see what will happen next--because I don't believe that anything I might decide to do would matter. You know Hardy's poem 'Hap'--I know you do. You remember ... 'How arrives it joy lies slain,/And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?/--Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,/And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan.... These purblind Doomsters had as readily strownBlisses about my pilgrimage as pain.' I know you know what that means: you believe in God but I believe in 'Crass Casualty'--in chance, in luck. That's what I mean. You see? What good does it do to make whatever decision you're talking about? What good does courage do--when what happens next is up for grabs?"
Owen Meany wrote to me: "DON'T BE SO CYNICAL--NOT EVERYTHING IS 'UP FOR GRABS.' YOU THINK THAT ANYTHING YOU DECIDE TO DO DOESN'T MATTER? LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE BODIES. SAY YOU'RE LUCKY--SAY YOU NEVER GO TO VIETNAM, SAY YOU NEVER HAVE A WORSE JOB THAN MY JOB. YOU HAVE TO TELL THEM HOW TO LOAD THE BODY ON THE AIRPLANE, AND HOW TO UNLOAD IT--YOU HAVE TO BE SURE THEY KEEP THE HEAD HELD HIGHER THAN THE FEET. IT'S PRETTY AWFUL IF ANY FLUID ESCAPES THROUGH THE ORIFICES--PROVIDED THERE ARE ANY ORIFICES.
"THEN THERE'S THE LOCAL MORTICIAN. PROBABLY HE NEVER KNEW THE DECEASED. EVEN SUPPOSING THAT THERE'S A WHOLE BODY--EVEN SUPPOSING THAT THE BODY ISN'T BURNED, AND THAT IT HAS A WHOLE NOSE, AND SO FORTH--NEITHER OF YOU KNOWS WHAT THE BODY USED TO LOOK LIKE. THE MORTUARY SECTIONS BACK AT THE COMMAND POSTS IN VIETNAM ARE NOT KNOWN FOR THEIR ATTENTION TO VERISIMILITUDE. IS THAT FAMILY GOING TO BELIEVE IT'S EVEN HIM? BUT IF YOU TELL THE FAMILY THAT THE BODY ISN'T 'SUITABLE FOR VIEWING,' HOW MUCH WORSE IS IT GOING TO BE FOR THEM?--JUST IMAGINING WHAT A HORRIBLE THING IS UNDER THE LID OF THAT CASKET. SO IF YOU SAY, 'NO, YOU SHOULDN'T VIEW THE BODY,' YOU FEEL YOU SHOULD ALSO SAY, 'LISTEN, IT ISN'T REALLY THAT BAD.' AND IF YOU LET THEM LOOK, YOU DON'T WANT TO BE THERE. SO IT'S A TOUGH DECISION. YOU'VE GOT A TOUGH DECISION, TOO--BUT IT'S NOT THAT TOUGH, AND YOU BETTER MAKE IT SOON."
In the spring of 1967, when I received the notice from the local Gravesend draft board to report for my preinduction physical, I still wasn't sure what Owen Meany meant. "You better call him," Hester said to me; we kept reading the notice, over and over. "You better find out what he means--in a hurry," she said.
"DON'T BE AFRAID," he told me. "DON'T REPORT FOR YOUR PHYSICAL--DON'T DO ANYTHING," he said. "YOU'VE GOT A LITTLE TIME. I'M TAKING A LEAVE. I'LL BE THERE AS SOON AS I CAN MAKE IT. ALL YOU'VE GOT TO KNOW IS WHAT YOU WANT. DO YOU WANT TO GO TO VIETNAM?"
"No," I said.
"DO YOU WANT TO SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE IN CANADA--THINKING ABOUT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY DID TO YOU?" he asked me.
"Now that you put it that way--no," I told him.
"FINE. I'LL BE RIGHT THERE--DON'T BE AFRAID. THIS TAKES JUST A LITTLE COURAGE
," said Owen Meany.
"What takes 'just a little courage'?" Hester asked me.
It was a Sunday in May when he called me from the monument shop; U.S. planes had just bombed a power plant in Hanoi, and Hester had only recently returned from a huge antiwar protest rally in New York.
"What are you doing at the monument shop?" I asked him; he said he'd been helping his father, who had fallen behind on a few crucial orders. Why didn't I meet him there?
"Why don't we meet somewhere nicer--for a beer?" I asked him.
"I'VE GOT PLENTY OF BEER HERE," he said.
It was odd to meet him in the monument shop on a Sunday. He was alone in that terrible place. He wore a surprisingly clean apron--and the safety goggles, loosely, around his neck. There was an unfamiliar smell in the shop--he had already opened a beer for me, and he was drinking one himself; maybe the beer was the unfamiliar smell.
"DON'T BE AFRAID," Owen said.
"I'm not really afraid," I said. "I just don't know what to do."
"I KNOW, I KNOW," he said; he put his hand on my shoulder.
Something was different about the diamond wheel.
"Is that a new saw?" I asked him.
"JUST THE BLADE IS NEW," he said. "JUST THE DIAMOND WHEEL ITSELF."
I had never seen it gleam so; the diamond segments truly sparkled.
"IT'S NOT JUST NEW--I BOILED IT," he said. "AND THEN I WIPED IT WITH ALCOHOL." That was the unfamiliar smell! I thought--alcohol. The block of wood on the saw table looked new--the cutting block, we called it; it didn't have a nick in it. "I SOAKED THE WOOD IN ALCOHOL AFTER I BOILED IT, TOO," Owen said.
I've always been pretty slow; I'm the perfect reader! It wasn't until I caught the whiff of a hospital in the monument shop that I realized what he meant by JUST A LITTLE COURAGE. Behind the diamond wheel was a workbench for the lettering and edging tools; it was upon this bench that Owen had laid out the sterile bandages, and the makings for a tourniquet.
"NATURALLY, THIS IS YOUR DECISION," he told me.
"Naturally," I said.
"THE ARMY REGULATION IN QUESTION STATES THAT A PERSON WOULD NOT BE PHYSICALLY QUALIFIED TO SERVE IN THE CASE OF THE ABSENCE OF THE FIRST JOINT OF EITHER THUMB, OR THE ABSENCE OF THE FIRST TWO JOINTS ON EITHER THE INDEX, MIDDLE, OR RING FINGER. I KNOW TWO JOINTS WILL BE TOUGH," said Owen Meany, "BUT YOU DON'T WANT TO BE WITHOUT A THUMB."