'LOOK UP 'OLIGARCHY' IN THE DICTIONARY IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I MEAN: 'A FORM OF GOVERNMENT IN WHICH THE POWER IS VESTED IN A FEW PERSONS OR IN A DOMINANT CLASS OR CLIQUE; GOVERNMENT BY THE FEW.' '
But there were other issues of 'government' that captured everyone's attention at the time; even Owen was distracted from the decision-making capacities of the new headmaster.
Everyone was talking about Kennedy or Nixon; and it was Owen who initiated a mock election among the Gravesend Academy students-he organized it, he set up the balloting in the school post office, he seated himself behind a big table and checked off every student's name. He caught a few kids voting twice, he sent 'runners' to bother kids in the dorm who had not yet voted. For two days, he spent all his time between classes behind that big table; he wouldn't let anyone else be the checker. The ballots themselves were secured in a locked box that was kept in the director of scholarships' office-whenever it was out of Owen's sight. There he sat at the table, with a campaign button as big as a baseball on the lapel of his sport jacket:
All the Way with J F K He wanted a Catholic!
'THERE'S NO MONKEY BUSINESS ABOUT THIS ELECTION,' he told the voters. 'IF YOU'RE ENOUGH OF AN ASSHOLE TO VOTE FOR NIXON, YOUR DUMB VOTE WILL BE COUNTED-JUST LIKE ANYBODY ELSE!'
Kennedy won, in a landslide, but predicted that the real vote-in November-would be much closer; yet Owen believed that Kennedy would, and should, triumph. 'THIS IS AN ELECTION THAT YOUNG PEOPLE CAN FEEL A PART OF,'' announced The Voice; indeed, although Owen and I were too young to vote, we felt very much a part of all that youthful 'vigor' that Kennedy represented. 'WOULDN'T IT BE NICE TO HAVE A PRESIDENT WHOM PEOPLE UNDER THIRTY WON'T LAUGH AT? WHY VOTE FOR EISENHOWER'S FIVE O'CLOCK SHADOW WHEN YOU CAN HAVE JACK KENNEDY?'
Once again, the headmaster saw fit to challenge the 'editorial nature' of in morning meeting. 'I'm a Republican,' Randy White told us. 'So that you don't think that The Grave represents Republicans with even marginal objectivity, allow me to take a minute of your time-while, perhaps, the euphoria of John Kennedy's landslide election here is still high but (I hope) subsiding. I'm not surprised that so youthful a candidate has charmed many of you with his 'vigah,' but-fortunately-the fate of the country is not decided by young men who are not old enough to vote. Mr. Nixon's experience may not seem so glamorous to you; but a presidential election is not a sailing race, or a beauty contest between the candidates' wives.
'I'm an Illinois Republican,' the headmaster said. 'Illinois is the Land of Lincoln, as you boys know.'
'ILLINOIS IS THE LAND OF ADLAI STEVENSON,' Owen Meany wrote. 'AS FAR AS I KNOW, ADLAI STEVENSON IS A MORE RECENT RESIDENT OF ILLINOIS THAN ABRAHAM LINCOLN-AS FAR AS I KNOW, ADLAI STEVENSON IS A DEMOCRAT AND HE'S STILL ALIVE.'
And this little difference of opinion, as far as / know, was what prompted Randy White to make another decision. He replaced Mr. Early as the faculty adviser to The Grave; Mr. White made himself the faculty adviser-and so was presented with a more adversarial censor than Owen had ever faced in Mr. Early.
'You'd better be careful, Owen,' Dan Needham advised.
'You better watch your ass, man,' I told him. It was a very cold evening after Christmas when he pulled the tomato-red pickup into the parking lot behind St. Michael's-the parochial school. His headlights shone across the playground, which had been flooded by an earlier, unseasonable rain that had now frozen to the black, reflecting sheen of a pond. 'TOO BAD WE DON'T HAVE OUR SKATES,' Owen said. At the far end of the smooth sheet of ice, the truck's headlights caused the statue of Mary Magdalene to glow in her goal. 'TOO BAD WE DON'T HAVE OUR HOCKEY STICKS, AND A PUCK,' Owen said. A light went on-and then another light-in the saltbox where the nuns lived; then the porch light was turned on, too, and two of the nuns came out on the porch and stared at our headlights. 'EVER SEE PENGUINS ON ICE?' Owen said.
'Better not do anything,' I advised him, and he turned the truck around in the parking lot and drove to Front Street. There was a 'creature feature' on The Late Show, Owen and I were now of the opinion that the only good movies were the really bad ones. He never showed me what he wrote in his diary-not then. But after that Christmas he often carried it with him, and I knew it was important to him because he kept it by his bed, on his night table, right next to his copies of Robert Frost's poems
and under the guardianship of my mother's dressmaker's dummy. When he spent the night with me, at Dan's or at Front Street, he always wrote in the diary before he allowed me to turn out the light. The night I remember him writing most furiously was the night following President Kennedy's inauguration; that was in January of , and I kept begging him to turn the light out, but he went on, just writing and writing, and I finally fell asleep with the light on-I don't know when he stopped. We'd watched the inauguration on television at Front Street; Dan and my grandmother watched with us, and although my grandmother complained that Jack Kennedy was 'too young and too handsome'-that he looked 'like a movie star' and that 'he should wear a hat'-Kennedy was the first Democrat that Harriet Wheelwright had ever voted for, and she liked him. Dan and Owen and I were crazy about him. It was a bright, cold, and windy day in Washington-and in Gravesend-and Owen was worried about the weather.
