'YOU WANT TO BEAT ME UP?' he'd say to some punk. ' 'YOU WANT TO GO TO JAIL? YOU'RE SO UGLY-YOU THINK I'LL HAVE TROUBLE REMEMBERING YOUR FACE?'' Then he'd point to me. 'YOU SEE HIM? ARE YOU SUCH AN ASSHOLE YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT A WITNESS IS? GO AHEAD-BEAT ME UP!' Only one guy did-or tried. It was like watching a dog go after a raccoon; the dog does all the work, but the raccoon gets the better of it. Owen just covered up; he grabbed for hands and feet, he went for the fingers first, but he was content to tear off a sho&and go for the toes. He took a pounding but he wrapped himself into a ball; he left no extremities showing. He broke the guy's pinky-he bent it so sharply that after the fight the guy's little finger pointed straight up off the back of his hand. He tore one of the guy's shoes off and bit his toes; there was a lot of blood, but the guy was wearing a sock-I couldn't see the actual damage, only that he had trouble walking. The guy was pulled off Owen by a cotton-candy vendor-he was arrested shortly thereafter for screaming obscenities, and we heard he was sent to reform school because he turned out to be driving a stolen car. We never saw him on the beachfront again, and the word about Owen-on the strip, around the casino, and along the boardwalk-was that he was dangerous to pick a fight with; the rumor was that he'd bitten off someone's ear. Another summer, I heard that he'd blinded a guy with a Popsicle stick. That these reports weren't exactly true did not matter at Hampton Beach. He was 'that little dude in the red pickup,' he was 'the quarry-worker-he carries some kind of tool on him.'' He was 'a mean little fucker-watch out for him.'
We were seventeen; we had a sullen summer. In the fall, Noah and Simon started college out on the West Coast; they went to one of those California universities that no one on the East Coast can ever remember the name of. And the Eastmans continued their folly of considering Hester as less of an investment; they sent her to the University of New Hampshire, where-as a resident-she merited in-state tuition. 'They want to keep me in their own backyard,' was how Hester put it.
'THEY PUT HER IN OUR BACKYARD,' was how Owen put it; the state university was only a twenty-minute drive from Gravesend. That it was a better university than the tanning club that Noah and Simon attended in California was not an argument that impressed Hester; the boys got to travel, the boys got the more agreeable climate-she got to stay home. To New Hampshire natives, the state university-notwithstanding how basically solid an education it offered-was not exotic; to Gravesend Academy students, with their elitist eyes on the Ivy League schools, it was 'a cow college,' wholly beyond redemption. But in the fall of ', when Owen and I began our tenth-grade year at the academy, Owen was regarded as especially gifted-by our peers-because he was dating a college girl; that Hester was a cow-college girl did not tarnish Owen's reputation. He was Ladies' Man Meany, he was Older-Woman Master; and he was still and would always be The Voice. He demanded attention; and he got it. Toronto: May , -Gary Hart, a former U.S. senator from Colorado, quit his campaign for the presidency after some Washington reporters caught him shacked up for the weekend with a Miami model; although both the model and the candidate claimed that nothing 'immoral' occurred-and Mrs. Hart said that she supported her husband, or maybe it was that she 'understood' him-Mr. Hart decided that such intense scrutiny of his personal life created an 'intolerable situation' for him and his family. He'll be back; want to bet? In the United States, no one like him disappears for long; remember Nixon? What do Americans know about morality? They don't want their presidents to have penises but they don't mind if their presidents covertly arrange to support the Nicaraguan rebel forces after Congress has restricted such aid; they don't want their presidents to deceive their wives but they don't mind if their presidents deceive Congress-lie to the people and violate the people's constitution! What Mr. Hart should have said was
that nothing unusually immoral had occurred, or that what happened was only typically immoral; or that he was testing his abilities to deceive the American people by deceiving his wife first-and that he hoped the people would see by this example that he was immoral enough to be good presidential material! I can just hear what The Voice would have said about all this. A sunny day; my fellow Canadians in Winston Churchill Park have their bellies turned toward the sun. All the girls at Bishop Strachan are tugging up their middies and hiking up their pleated skirts; they are pushing their knee socks down around their ankles; the whole world wants a tan. But Owen hated the spring; the warm weather made him think that school was almost over, and Owen loved school. When school was over, Owen Meany went back to the quarries. When school began again-when we started the fall term of -I realized that The Voice had not been idle for the summer; Owen came back to school with a stack of columns ready for The Grave. He charged the Search Committee to find a new headmaster who was dedicated to serving the faculty and the students-'NOT A SERVANT OF THE ALUMNI AND THE TRUSTEES.' Although he made fun of Thorny- particularly, of old Archie Thorndike's notion of 'the wtiole boy''-Owen praised our departing headmaster for being 'AN EDUCATOR FIRST, A FUND-RAISER SECOND.' Owen cautioned the Search Committee to 'BEWARE OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES-THEY'LL PICK A HEADMASTER WHO CARES MORE ABOUT FUND DRIVES THAN THE CURRICULUM OR THE FACULTY WHO TEACH IT. AND DON'T LISTEN TO THE ALUMNI!' warned The Voice; Owen had a low opinion of the alumni.' 'THEY CAN'T EVEN BE TRUSTED TO REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS REALLY LIKE TO BE HERE; THEY'RE ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT WHAT THE SCHOOL DID FOR THEM-OR HOW THE SCHOOL MADE SOMETHING OUT OF THEM, AS IF THEY WERE UNFORMED CLAY WHEN THEY CAME HERE. AS FOR HOW HARSH THE SCHOOL COULD BE, AS FOR HOW MISERABLE THEY WERE WHEN THEY WERE STUDENTS-THE ALUMNI HAVE CONVENIENTLY FORGOTTEN.'
Someone in faculty meeting called Owen 'that little turd'; Dan Needham argued that Owen truly adored the school, but that a Gravesend education did not and should not teach respect for uncritical love, for blind devotion. It became harder to defend Owen when he started the petition against fish on Fridays.
'WE HAVE A NONDENOMINATIONAL CHURCH,' he stated. 'WHY DO WE HAVE A CATHOLIC DINING HALL? IF CATHOLICS WANT TO EAT FISH ON FRIDAY, WHY MUST THE REST OF US JOIN THEM? MOST KIDS HATE FISH! SERVE FISH BUT SERVE SOMETHING ELSE, TOO-COLD CUTS, OR EVEN PEANUT-BUTTER-AND-JELLY SANDWICHES. WE ARE FREE TO LISTEN TO THE GUEST PREACHER AT KURD'S CHURCH, OR WE
