high, and going out. I waded into the harbor channel, off the tip of the breakwater; I was quickly submerged, up to my chest, and I had to retreat to the last slab of granite on the breakwater-so that I could throw the dummy as far into the ocean as I could. I wanted to be sure that the dummy reached into the channel, which I knew was very, very deep. For a moment, I hugged the body of the dummy to my face; but whatever scent had once clung to the red dress had long ago departed. Then I threw the dummy into the channel. For a horrible moment, it floated. There was air trapped under the hollow wire-mesh of the body. The dummy rolled over on its back in the water. I saw my mother's wonderful bosom above the surface of the water-THE BEST BREASTS OF ALL THE MOTHERS! as Owen Meany had said. Then the dummy rolled again; bubbles of air escaped from the body, and 'The Lady in Red' sank into the channel off the breakwater at Rye Harbor, where Owen Meany had firmly believed he had a right to sit and watch the sea. I saw the sun come up, like a bright marble on the granite-gray surface of the Atlantic. I drove to the apartment I shared with Hester in Durham and took a shower and dressed for Owen's funeral. I didn't know where Hester was, but I didn't care; I already knew how she felt about his funeral. I'd last seen Hester at Front Street; with my grandmother, Hester and I had watched Bobby Kennedy be killed in Los Angeles-over and over again. That was when Hester had said: 'Television gives good disaster.'
Owen had never said a word to me about Bobby Kennedy's assassination. That had happened in June, , when time was running out on Owen Meany. I'm sure that Owen was too preoccupied with his own death to have anything to say about Bobby Kennedy's. It was early in the morning, and I kept so few things in Hester's apartment, it was no trouble to pack up what I wanted; mostly books. Owen had kept some books at Hester's, too, and I packed one of them-C. S. Lewis's Reflections on the Psalms. Owen had circled a favorite Sentence: 'I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself.' After I finished packing-and I'd left Hester a check for my share of the rent for the rest of the summer-I still had time to kill, so I read parts of Owen's diary; I looked at the more disjointed entries, which were composed in a grocery-list style, as if he'd been making notes to himself. I learned that huachuca-as in Fort Huachuca- means 'mountain of the winds.' And there were several pages of Vietnamese vocabulary and expressions-Owen had paid special attention to 'COMMAND FORMS OF VERBS.' Two commands were written out several times- the pronunciation was emphasized; Owen had spelled the Vietnamese phonetically.
'MAM SOON- 'LIE DOWN'! DOONG SA-'DON'T BE AFRAID'!'
I read that part over and over again, until I felt I had the pronunciation right. There was quite a good pencil drawing of a phoenix, that mythical bird that was supposed to burn itself on a funeral pyre and then rise up from its own ashes. Under the drawing, Owen had written: 'OFTEN A SYMBOL OF REBORN IDEALISM, OR HOPE-OR AN EMBLEM OF IMMORTALITY.' And on another page, jotted hastily in the margin-with no connection to anything else on the page-he had scrawled: 'THIRD DRAWER, RIGHT-HAND SIDE.' This marginalia was not emphasized; in no way had he indicated that this was a message for me-but certainly, I thought, he must have remembered that time when he'd sat at Mr. Merrill's desk, talking to Dan and me and opening and closing the desk drawers, without appearing to notice the contents. Of course, he had seen the baseball-he had known then who my father was-but Owen Meany's faith was huge; he had also known that God would tell me who my father was. Owen believed it was unnecessary to tell me himself. Besides: he knew it would only disappoint me. Then I flipped to one of the parts of the diary where he'd mentioned me.
'THE HARDEST THING I EVER HAD TO DO WAS TO CUT OFF MY BEST FRIEND'S FINGER! WHEN THIS IS OVER, MY BEST FRIEND SHOULD MAKE A CLEAN BREAK FROM THE PAST-HE SHOULD SIMPLY START OVER AGAIN. JOHN SHOULD GO TO CANADA. I'M
SURE IT'S A NICE COUNTRY TO LIVE IN-AND THIS COUNTRY IS MORALLY EXHAUSTED.'
Then I flipped to the end of the diary and reread his last entry.
'TODAY'S THE DAY! '. . . HE THAT BELIEVETH IN ME, THOUGH HE WERE DEAD, YET SHALL HE LIVE; AND WHOSOEVER LIVETH AND BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL NEVER DIE.' '
Then I closed Owen's diary and packed it with the rest of my things. Grandmother was an early riser; there were a few photographs of her, and of my mother, that I wanted from Front Street-and more of my clothes. I wanted to have breakfast in the rose garden with Grandmother; there was still a lot of time before Owen's funeral-enough time to tell Grandmother where I was going. Then I drove over to Waterhouse Hall and told Dan Needham what my plans were; also, Dan had something I wanted to take with me, and I knew he wouldn't object-he'd been bashing his toes on it for years! I wanted the granite doorstop that Owen had made for Dan and my mother, his wedding present to them, the lettering in his famous, gravestone style-JULY, -and neatly beveled along the sides, and perfectly edged at the corners; it was crude, but it had been Owen's earliest known work with the diamond wheel, and I wanted it. Dan told me that he understood everything, and that he loved me. I told him: 'You're the best father a boy ever had-and the only father I ever needed.'
Then it was time for Owen Meany's funeral. Our own Gravesend chief of police, Ben Pike, stood at the heavy double doors of Kurd's Church-as if he intended to frisk Owen Meany's mourners for the 'murder weapon,' the long-lost 'instrument of death'; I was tempted to tell the bastard where he could find the fucking baseball. Fat Mr. Checkering was there, still grieving that he'd decided to let Owen Meany bat for me-that he'd told Owen to 'swing away.' The Thurstons-Buzzy's parents-were there, although they were Catholics and only recently had attended their own son's funeral. And the Catholic priest-Father Findley-he was there, as was Mrs. Hoyt, despite how badly the town had treated her for her 'anti-American' draft-counseling activities. Rector Wiggin and Barb
