awkward as he was, the Rev. Mr. Merrill had made it clear to us that there was no end to praying for Owen Meany. After a while, Randy White left the stage; he had the good sense, if not the decency, to leave quietly-we could hear his careful footsteps on the marble staircase, and the morning ice was still so brittle that we could even hear him crunching his way on the path outside the Main Academy Building. When we could no longer hear his footsteps in our silent prayers for Owen Meany, Pastor Merrill said, 'Amen.'
Oh God, how often I have wished that I could relive that moment; I didn't know how to pray very well then-I didn't even believe in prayer. If I were given the opportunity to pray for Owen Meany now, I could do a better job of it; knowing what I know now, I might be able to pray hard enough. It would have helped me, of course, if I could have seen his diary; but he wasn't offering it-he was keeping his diary to himself. So often in its pages he had written his name-hisJuU name-in the big block letters he called MONUMENT STYLE or GRAVESEND LETTERING; so many times he had transcribed, in his diary, his name exactly the way he had seen it on Scrooge's grave. And I mean, before all the ROTC business- even before he was thrown out of school and knew that the U.S. Army would be his ticket through college. I mean, before he knew he was signing up-even then he had written his name in that way you see names inscribed on graves. LT PAUL O. MEANY, JR. That's how he wrote it; that was what the Ghost of the Future had seen on Scrooge's grave; that and the date-the date was written in the diary, too. He wrote the date in the diary many, many times, but he never told me what it was. Maybe I could have helped him, if I'd known that date. Owen believed he knew when he was going to die; he also believed he knew his rank-he would die a first lieutenant.
And after the dream, he believed he knew more. The certainty of his convictions was always a little scary, and his diary entry about the dream is no exception. YESTERDAY I WAS KICKED OUT OF SCHOOL. LAST NIGHT I HAD A DREAM. NOW I KNOW FOUR THINGS. I KNOW THAT MY VOICE DOESN'T CHANGE-BUT I STILL DON'T KNOW WHY. I KNOW THAT I AM GOD'S INSTRUMENT. I KNOW WHEN I'M GOING TO DIE-AND NOW A DREAM HAS SHOWN ME HOW I'M GOING TO DIE. I'M GOING TO BE A HERO I TRUST THAT GOD WILL HELP ME, BECAUSE WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO LOOKS VERY HARD.
THE FINGER
UNTIL THE SUMMER of , I felt that I couldn't wait to grow up and be treated with the kind of respect imagined adults were routinely offered and adamantly thought they deserved-I couldn't wait to wallow in the freedom and the privileges I imagined grown-ups enjoyed. Until that summer, my long apprenticeship to maturity struck me as arduous and humiliating; Randy White had confiscated my fake draft card, and I wasn't yet old enough to buy beer-I wasn't independent enough to merit my own place to live, I wasn't earning enough to afford my own car, and I wasn't something enough to persuade a woman to bestow her sexual favors upon me. Not one woman had I ever persuaded! Until the summer of ', thought that childhood and adolescence were a purgatory without apparent end; I thought that youth, in a word, '' sucked.'' But Owen Meany, who believed he knew when and how he was going to die, was in no hurry to grow up. And as to my calling the period of our youth a 'purgatory,' Owen said simply, 'THERE IS NO PURGATORY-THAT'S A CATHOLIC INVENTION. THERE'S LIFE ON EARTH, THERE'S HEAVEN-AND THERE'S HELL.'
'I think life on earth is hell,' I said.
'I HOPE YOU HAVE A NICE SUMMER,' Owen said. It was the first summer we spent apart. I suppose I should be
grateful for that summer, because it afforded me my first glimpse of what my life without Owen would be like-you might say, it prepared me. By the end of the summer of , Owen Meany had made me afraid of what the next phase was going to be. I didn't want to grow up anymore; what I wanted was for Owen and me to go on being kids for the rest of our lives-sometimes Canon Mackie tells me, rather ungenerously, that I have succeeded. Canon Campbell, God Rest His Soul, used to tell me that being a kid for the rest of my life was a perfectly honorable aspiration. I spent that summer of ' in Sawyer Depot, working for my Uncle Alfred. After what had happened to Owen, I didn't want to work for the Gravesend Academy Admissions Office and give guided tours of the school-not anymore. The Eastman Lumber Company offered me a good job. It was tiring, outdoor work; but I got to spend my time with Noah and Simon-and there were parties on Loveless Lake almost every night, and swimming and waterskiing on Loveless Lake nearly every day, after work, and every weekend. Uncle Alfred and Aunt Martha welcomed me into the family; they gave me Hester's room for the summer. Hester was keeping her school-year apartment in Durham, working as a waitress in one of those sandy, lobster-house restaurants ... I think it was in Kittery or Portsmouth. After she got off work, she and Owen would cruise ' 'the strip'' at Hampton Beach in the tomato-red pickup. Hester's school-year roommates were elsewhere for the summer, and Hester and Owen spent every night in her Durham apartment, alone. They were 'living together as man and wife'-that was the disapproving and frosty way Aunt Martha put it, when she discussed it at all, which was rarely. Despite the fact that Owen and Hester were living together as man and wife, Noah and Simon and I could never be sure if they were actually 'doing it.' Simon was sure that Hester could not live without doing it, Noah somehow felt that Owen and Hester had done it-but that, for some special reason, they had stopped. I had the strangest feeling that anything between them was possible: that they did it and had always done it with abandon; that they had never done it, but that they might be doing something even worse-or better-and that the real bond between them (whether they 'did it' or not) was even more passionate and far sadder than sex. I felt cut off from Owen-I was working with wood and smelling a cool, northern air that was scented with trees; he was working with granite and feeling the sun beat down on the unshaded quarry, inhaling the rock dust and smelling the
