at work in even Dostoevski's simplest descriptions; once again, it's the description they miss. Raskolnikov's landlord, for example-'his face seemed to be thickly covered with oil, like an old iron lock.' What a perfect face for his landlord to have! 'Isn't that marvekms?' I ask the class; they stare at me as if they think I'm crazier than Raskolnikov.'
Dan Needham, occasionally, stares at me that way, too. How could he possibly think I could 'forgive and forget'? There is too much forgetting. When we schoolteachers worry that our students have no sense of history, isn't it what people forget that worries us? For years I tried to forget who my father might be; I didn't want to find out who he was, as Owen pointed out. How many times, for example, did I call back my mother's old singing teacher, Graham McSwiney? How many times did I call him and ask him if he'd learned the whereabouts of Buster Freebody, or if he'd remembered anything about my mother that he hadn't told Owen and me? Only once; I called him only once. Graham McSwiney told me to forget about who my father was; I was willing. Mr. McSwiney said: 'Buster Freebody-if he's alive, if you find him-would be so old that he wouldn't even remember your mother-not to mention who her boyfriend was!' Mr. McSwiney was much more interested in Owen Meany-in why Owen's voice hadn't changed. 'He should see a doctor- there's really no good reason for a voice like his,' Graham McSwiney said. But, of course, there was a reason. When I learned what the reason was, I never called Mr. McSwiney to tell him; I doubt it would have been a scientific enough explanation for Mr. McSwiney. I tried to tell Hester, but Hester said she didn't want to know. 'I'd tielieve what you'd tell me,' Hester said, 'so please spare me the details.'
As for the purpose of Owen Meany's voice, and everything that happened to him, I told only Dan and the Rev. Lewis Merrill. 'I suppose it's possible,' Dan said. 'I suppose stranger things have happened-although I can't, off the top of my head, think of an example. The important thing is that you believe it, and I would never challenge your right to believe what you want.'
'But do you believe it?' I asked him.
'Well, I believe you' Dan said.
' 'How can you not believe it?'' I asked Pastor Merrill. ' 'You of all people,' I told him. 'A man of faith-how can you not believe it?'
'To believe it-I mean all of it,' the Rev. Lewis Merrill said, '-to believe everything . . . well, that calls upon more faith than I have.'
'But you of all people!' I said to him. 'Look at me-I never was a believer, not until this happened. If / can believe it, why can't you?' I asked Mr. Merrill. He began to stutter.
'It's easier for you to j-j-j-just accept it. Belief is not something you have felt, and then not felt; you haven't ---lived with belief, and with Mnbelief. It's easier f-f-f-for you,' the Rev. Mr. Merrill repeated. 'You haven't ever been f-f-f-full of faith, and full of d-d-d-doubt. Something j-j-j-just strikes you as a miracle, and you believe it. For me, it's not that s-s-s-simple,' said Pastor Merrill.
'But it is a miracle!' I cried. 'He told you that dream-I know he did! And you were there-when he saw his name, and the date of his death, on Scrooge's grave. You were there!' I cried. 'How can you doubt that he knew' I asked Mr. Merrill. 'He knew-he knew everything] What do you call that-if you don't call it a miracle?'
'You've witnessed what you c-c-c-call a miracle and now you believe-you believe everything,' Pastor Merrill said. 'But miracles don't c-c-c-cause belief-real miracles don't m-m-m-make faith out of thin air; you have to already have faith in order to believe in real miracles. I believe that Owen was extraordinarily g-g-g-gifted-yes, gifted and powerfully sure of himself. No doubt he suffered some powerfully disturbing visions, too-and he was certainly emotional, he was very emotional. But as to knowing what he appeared to 'know'-there are other examples of p-p-p-precognition; not every example is necessarily ascribed to God. Look at you- you never even believed in G-G-G-God; you've said so, and here you are ascribing to the h-h-h-hand of God everything that happened to Owen M-M-M-Meany!'
This August, at Front Street, a dog woke me up. In the deepest part of my sleep, I heard the dog and thought it was Sagamore; then I thought it was my dog-I used to have a dog, in Toronto-and only when I was wide awake did I catch up to myself, in the present time, and realize that both Sagamore and my dog were dead. It used to be nice to have a dog to walk in Winston Churchill Park; perhaps I should get another. Out on Front Street, the strange dog barked and barked. I got out of bed; I took the familiar walk along the dark hall to my mother's room-where it is always lighter, where the curtains are never drawn. Dan sleeps in my grandmother's former bedroom-the official master bedroom of Front Street, I suppose. I looked out my mother's window but I couldn't see the dog. Then I went into the den-or so it had been called when my grandfather had been alive. Later, it was a kind of children's playroom, the room where my mother had played the old Victrola, where she had sung along with Frank Sinatra and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. It was on the couch in that room where Hester had spread herself out, and waited, while Noah and Simon and I searched all of Front Street, in vain, for Owen Meany. We'd never learned where she'd hidden him, or where he'd hidden himself. I lay down on that old couch and remembered all of that. I must have fallen asleep there; it was a vastly historical couch, upon which-I also remembered- my mother had first whispered into my ear: 'My little fling!'
When I woke up, my right hand had drifted under one of the deep couch cushions; my wrist detected something there-it felt like a playing card, but when I extracted it from under the cushion, I saw that it was a relic from Owen Meany's long-ago collection: a very old and bent baseball card. Hank
