Wiggin were not in attendance; they had so fervently sought to hold Owen's service in Christ Church, no doubt they were miffed that they'd been rejected. Captain Wiggin, that crazed ex-pilot, had claimed that nothing could please him more than a bang-up funeral for a hero. A unit of the New Hampshire National Guard provided a local funeral detail; they served as Owen's so-called honor guard. Owen had once told me that they do this for money-they get one day's pay. The casualty assistance officer-Owen's body escort-was a young, frightened-looking first lieutenant who rendered a military salute more frequently than I thought was required of him; it was his first tour of duty in the Casualty Branch. The so-called survivor assistance officer was none other than Owen's favorite professor of Military Science from the University of New Hampshire; Colonel Eiger greeted me most solemnly at the heavy double doors.
'I guess we were wrong about your little friend,' Colonel Eiger said to me.
'Yes, sir,' I said.
'He proved he was quite suitable for combat,' Colonel Eiger said.
'Yes, sir,' I said. The colonel put his liver-spotted hand on my shoulder; then he stepped to one side of the heavy double doors and stood at attention, as if he meant to challenge Chief Ben Pike's position of authority. The honor guard, in white spats and white gloves, strode down the aisle in bridal cadence and smartly split to each side of the flag-draped casket, where Owen's medal-pinned to the flag-brightly reflected the beam of sunlight that shone through the hole the baseball had made in the stained-glass window of the chancel. In the routine gloom of the old stone church, this unfamiliar beam of light appeared to be drawn to the bright gold of Owen's medal-as if the light itself had burned a hole in the dark stained glass; as if the light had been searching for Owen Meany. A stern, sawed-off soldier, whom Colonel Eiger had referred to as a master sergeant, whispered something to the honor guard, who stood at parade rest and glanced anxiously at Colonel Eiger and the first lieutenant who was serving his first duty as a body escort. Colonel Eiger whispered something to the first lieutenant. The congregation coughed; they creaked in the old, worn
pews. The organ cranked out one dirge after another while the stragglers found their seats. Although Mr. Early was one of the ushers, and Dan Needham was another, most of the ushers were quarrymen-I recognized the derrickman and the dynamiters; I nodded to the signalman and the sawyers, and the channel bar drillers. These men looked like granite itself-its great strength can withstand a pressure of twenty thousand pounds per square inch. Granite, like lava, was once melted rock; but it did not rise to the earth's surface-it hardened deep underground; and because it hardened slowly, it formed fairly large crystals. Mr. and Mrs. Meany occupied the front right-center pew of Kurd's Church all by themselves. They sat like upheaved slabs of granite, not moving, their eyes fixed upon the dazzling medal that winked in the beam of sunlight on top of Owen's casket. The Meanys stared intently; they viewed their son's casket with much the same strangled awe that had shone in their eyes when the little Lord Jesus had spotted them in the congregation at the Christ Church Christmas Pageant of -when Owen had basked in the 'pillar of light.' The alertness and anxiety in the Meanys' expressions suggested to me that they remembered how Owen had reproached them for their uninvited attendance at that Nativity.
'WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING HERE?' the angry Lord Jesus had screamed at them. 'YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE!' Owen had shouted. 'IT IS A SACRILEGE FOR YOU TO BE HERE!'
That is what / thought about Owen's funeral: that it was a SACRILEGE for the Meanys to be there. And their nervous fixation upon Owen's medal, pinned to the American flag, suggested that the Meanys quite possibly feared that Owen might rise up from his casket as he had risen up from the mountain of hay in the manger-and once again reproach his parents. They had actually told a ten- or eleven-year-old boy that he'd had a 'virgin birth'-that he was 'like the Christ Child'! At Owen's funeral in Kurd's Church, I found myself praying that Owen would rise up from his closed casket and shout at his poor parents: 'YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE!' But Owen Meany didn't move, or speak. Mr. Fish looked very frail; yet he sat beside my grandmother in the second row of right-center pews and fixed his gaze upon the shining medal on Owen Meany's casket-as if Mr. Fish also hoped that Owen would give us one more performance; as if Mr. Fish could not believe that, in this production, Owen Meany had not been given a speaking part. My Uncle Alfred and Aunt Martha also sat in Grandmother's pew; none of us had mentioned Hester's absence; even Simon-who was also seated in Grandmother's pew-had restrained himself from speaking about Hester. The Eastmans more comfortably discussed how sorry they were that Noah couldn't be there-Noah was still in Africa, teaching proper forestry to the Nigerians. I'll never forget what Simon said to me when I told him I was going to Canada.
'Canada! That's gonna be one of the biggest problems facing northeastern lumber mills-you wait and see!' Simon said. 'Those Canadians are gonna export their lumber at a much lower cost than we're gonna produce it here!'
Good old Simon: not a political bone in his body; I doubt it occurred to him that I wasn't going to Canada for the lumber. I recognized the Prelude, from Handel's Messiah-' know that my Redeemer liveth.' I also recognized the pudgy man across the aisle from me; he was about my age, and he'd been staring at me. But it wasn't until he began to search the high, vaulted ceiling of Kurd's Church-perhaps seeking angels in the shadowy buttresses-that I realized I was in the presence of Fat Harold Crosby, the former Announcing Angel who'd flubbed his lines and needed prompting, and who'd been abandoned in the heavens of Christ Church in the Nativity of '. I nodded to Harold, who smiled tearfully at me; I'd heard that Mrs. Hoyt had successfully coached him into acquiring a -F deferment from the draft-for psychological reasons. I did not, at first, recognize our old Sunday school
