But I don't think Mr. Meany ever noticed the work I was doing with the monuments; it was August before I even saw Mr. Meany in the shop, and he looked surprised to see me-but he always said the same thing, whenever and wherever he saw me. 'Why, it's Johnny Wheelwright!' he'd always say. And when it wasn't raining-or when Owen wasn't talking directly to a customer-the only other time that Owen was in the shop was when there was an especially difficult piece of stonecutting assigned, a particularly complicated gravestone, a demanding shape, lots of tight curves and sharp angles, and so forth. And the typical Gravesend families were plain and dour in the face of death; we had few calls for elaborate coping, even fewer for archways with dosserets, and not one for angels sliding down barber poles. That was too bad, because to see Owen at work with the diamond wheel was to witness state-of-the-art monument-making. There was no one as precise with the diamond wheel as Owen Meany.
A diamond wheel is similar to a radial-arm saw, a wood saw familiar to me from my uncle's mill; a diamond wheel is a table saw but the blade is not part of the table-the blade, which is a diamond-impregnated wheel, is lowered to the table in a gantry. The wheel blade is about two feet in diameter and studded (or 'tipped') with diamond segments-these are pieces of diamond, only a half inch long, only a quarter inch wide. When the blade is lowered onto the granite, it cuts through the stone at a preset angle into a waiting block of wood. It is a very sharp blade, it makes a very exact and smooth cut; it is perfect for making the precise, polished edges on the tops and sides of gravestones-like a scalpel, it makes no mistakes, or only the user's mistakes. By comparison to other saws in the granite business, it is so fine and delicate a tool that it isn't even called a saw-it is always called 'the diamond wheel.' It passes through granite with so little resistance that its sound is far less snarly than many wood saws of the power type; a diamond wheel makes a single, high-pitched scream-very plaintive. Owen Meany said: 'A DIAMOND WHEEL MAKES A GRAVESTONE SOUND AS IF THE STONE ITSELF IS MOURNING.'
Think of how much time he spent in that creepy monument shop on Water Street, the unfinished lettering of the names of the dead surrounding him-is it any wonder that he SAW his own name and the date of his death on Scrooge's grave? No; it's a wonder he didn't SEE such horrors every day! And when he put on those crazy-looking safety goggles and lowered the diamond wheel into cutting position, the terribly consistent scream of that blade must have reminded him of the 'permanent scream,' which was his own unchanging voice-to use Mr. McSwiney's term for it. After my summer in the monument shop, I could appreciate what might have appealed to Owen Meany about the quiet of churches, the peace of prayer, the easy cadence of hymns and litanies-and even the simplistic, athletic ritual of practicing the shot. As for the rest of the summer of -when the Buddhists in Vietnam were torching themselves, and time was running out on the Kennedys-Hester was working as a lobster-house waitress again.
'So much for a B.A. in Music,' she said. At least I could appreciate what Owen Meany meant, when he said of Randy White: 'I'D LIKE TO GET HIM UNDER THE DIAMOND WHEEL-ALL I'D NEED IS JUST A FEW SECONDS. I'D LIKE TO PUT HIS DOINK UNDER THE DIAMOND WHEEL,' Owen said. As for doinks-as for mine, in particular-I had another slow summer. The Catholic Church had reason to be proud of the insurmountable virtue of Caroline O'Day, with or without her St. Michael's uniform-and of the virtue of countless others, any church could be proud; they were all virtuous with me. I felt someone's bare breast, briefly-only once, and it was an accident-one warm night when we went swimming off the beach at Little Boar's Head and the phosphorescence, in my opinion, was especially seductive. The girl was a musical friend of Hester's, and in the tomato-red pickup, on the ride back to Durham, Hester volunteered to be the one to sit on my lap, because my date was so displeased by my awkward, amateurish advances.
'Here, you sit in the middle, I'll sit on him,' Hester told her friend. 'I've felt his silly hard-on before, and it doesn't bother me.'
'THERE'S NO NEED TO BE CRUDE,' said Owen Meany. And so I rode from Little Boar's Head to Durham with Hester on my lap-once again, humiliated by my hard-on. I thought that just a few seconds under the diamond wheel would certainly suffice for me; and if someone were to put my doink under the wheel, I considered that it would be no great loss. I was twenty-one and I was still a Joseph; I was a Joseph then, and I'm just a Joseph now. Georgian Bay: July , -why can't I just enjoy all the nature up here? I coaxed one of the Keeling kids to take me in one of the boats to Pointe au Baril Station. Miraculously, no one on the island needed anything from the station: not an egg, not a scrap of meal, or a bar of soap; not even any live bait. I was the only one who needed anything; I 'needed' a newspaper, I'm ashamed to say. Needing to know the news- it's such a weakness, it's worse than many other addictions, it's an especially debilitating illness. The Toronto Star said the White House was so frustrated by both Congress and the Pentagon that a small, special-forces group within the military was established; and that actual, active-duty American troops fired rockets and machine guns at Nicaraguan soldiers-all this was unknown to the Congress or the Pentagon. Why aren't Americans as disgusted by them-
selves-as fed up with themselves-as everyone else is? All their lip service to democracy, all their blatantly undemocratic behavior! I've got to stop reading about this whole silly business! All these headlines can turn your mind to mush- headlines that within a year will seem most unmemorable; and if memorable, merely quaint. I live in Canada, I have a Canadian passport-why should I waste my time caring what the Americans are doing, especially when they don't care themselves? I'm going to try to interest myself in something more cosmic-in something more universal, although I suppose that a total lack of integrity in government is 'universal,' isn't it? There was another story in The Toronto Star, more appropriate to the paradisiacal view of the universe one can enjoy from Georgian Bay. It was a story about black holes: scientists say that black holes could engulf two whole galaxies! The story was about the potential 'collapse of the star
