older the better!'-but she disliked most movie stars. After watching Captain Blood, she announced that Errol Flynn was 'no brains, all chest'; Hester thought that Olivia de Havilland was 'cow-eyed.' Owen suggested that pirate movies were all the same.
'STUPID SWORD FIGHTS!' he said. 'AND LOOK AT THE CLOTHES THEY WEAR! IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE FIGHTING WITH SWORDS, IT'S STUPID TO WEAR LOOSE, BAGGY SHIRTS-OF COURSE YOUR SHIRTS ARE GOING TO GET ALL SLASHED TO PIECES!'
Grandmother complained that the choice of movies wasn't even 'seasonal.' What was the point of showing It Happens Every Spring in November? No one is thinking about baseball at Thanksgiving, and It Happens Every Spring is such a stupid baseball movie that I think I could watch it every night and even fail to be reminded of my mother's death. Ray Milland is a college professor who becomes a phenomenal baseball player after discovering a formula that repels wood; how could this remind anyone of anything real ?
'Honestly, who thinks up these things?' Grandmother asked.
'Peckerheads,' said Hester, who was forever expanding her vocabulary. If Gravesend Academy had begun the process of saving Noah from himself, we could scarcely tell; it was Simon who seemed subdued, perhaps because he had missed Noah during the fall and was overwhelmed by the instant renewal of their athletic rivalry. Noah was experiencing considerable academic difficulties at the academy, and Dan Needham had several long heart-to-heart talks with Uncle Alfred and Aunt Martha. The Eastmans decided that Noah was intellectually exhausted; the family would spend that Christmas holiday on some recuperative beach in the Caribbean.
'IN THE RELAXING SETTING OF CAPTAIN BLOOD!' Owen observed. Owen was disappointed that the Eastmans were spending Christmas in the Caribbean; another opportunity to go to Sawyer Depot had eluded him. After Thanksgiving, he was depressed; and-like me-he was thinking about Hester. We went to The Idaho for the usual fare at the Saturday matinee-a double feature: Treasure of the Golden Condor, wherein Cornel Wilde is a dashing eighteenth-century Frenchman seeking hidden Mayan riches in Guatemala; and Drum Beat, wherein Alan Ladd is a cowboy and Audrey Dalton is an Indian. Between tales of ancient treasure and scalping parties, it was repeatedly clear to Owen and me that we lived in a dull age-that adventure always happened elsewhere, and long ago. Tarzan fit this formula-and so did the dreaded biblical epics. These, in combination with his Christmas pageant experiences, contributed to the newly sullen and withdrawn persona that Owen presented to the world at Christ Church. That the Wiggins had actually liked' The Robe made up Owen's mind: whether he ever got to go to Sawyer Depot for Christmas or not, he would never participate in another Nativity. I'm sure his decision did not upset the Wiggins greatly, but Owen was unforgiving on the subject of biblical epics in general and The Robe in particular. Although he thought that Jean Simmons was 'PRETTY, LIKE HESTER,' he also thought that Audrey Dalton-in Drum Beat-was 'LIKE HESTER IF HESTER HAD BEEN AN INDIAN.' Beyond all three having dark hair, I failed to see any resemblance. The Robe, to be fair, had hit Owen and me one Saturday afternoon at The Idaho with special force; my mother had been dead less than a year, and Owen and I were not comforted to see Richard Burton and Jean Simmons walk off to their deaths quite so happily. Furthermore, they appeared to exit the movie
and life itself by walking up into the sky! This was especially offensive. Richard Burton is a Roman tribune who converts to Christianity after crucifying Christ; both Burton and Jean Simmons take turns clutching Christ's robe a lot.
'WHAT A BIG FUSS ABOUT A BLANKET!' Owen said. 'THAT'S SO CATHOLIC,' he added-'TO GET VERY RELIGIOUS ABOUT OBJECTS.'
This was a theme of Owen's-the Catholics and their adoration of OBJECTS. Yet Owen's habit of collecting objects that he made (in his own way) RELIGIOUS was well known: I had only to remember my armadillo's claws. In all of Gravesend, the object that most attracted Owen's contempt was the stone statue of Mary Magdalene, the reformed prostitute who guarded the playground of St. Michael's-the parochial school. The life-sized statue stood in a meaningless cement archway-'meaningless' because the archway led nowhere; it was a gate without a place to be admitted to; it was an entrance without a house. The archway, and Mary Magdalene herself, overlooked the rutted macadam playground of the schoolyard-a surface too broken up to dribble a basketball on; the bent and rusted basket hoops had long ago been stripped of their nets, and the foul lines had been erased or worn away with sand. It was a forlornly unattended playground on weekends and school holidays; it was used strictly for recesses during school days, when the parochial students loitered mere-they were unmoved to play many games. The stern look of Mary Magdalene rebuked them; her former line of work and her harsh reformation shamed them. For although the playground reflected an obdurate disrepair, the statue itself was whitewashed every spring, and even on the dullest, grayest days- despite being dotted here and there with birdshit and occasional stains of human desecration-Mary Magdalene attracted and reflected more light than any other object or human presence at St. Michael's. Owen looked upon the school as a prison to which he was nearly sent; for had his parents not RENOUNCED the Catholics, St. Michael's would have been Owen's school. It had an altogether bleak, reformatory atmosphere; its life was punctuated by the sounds of an adjacent gas station-the bell that announced the arriving and departing vehicles, the accounting of the gas pumps themselves, and the multifarious din from the mechanics laboring in the pits. But over this unholy, unstudious, unsuitable ground the stone Mary Magdalene stood her guard; under her odd, cement archway, she at times appeared to be tending to an elaborate but crudely homemade barbecue; at other times, she seemed to be a goalie-poised in the goal. Of course, no Catholic would have fired a ball or a puck or any other missile at her; if the parochial students themselves were tempted, the grim, alert presence of the nuns would have discouraged them. And although the
