information-he knew exactly when my plane left Boston, and when my plane arrived in Phoenix; I'd arrive a little earlier than his flight with the body from San Francisco, but I wouldn't have to wait long. I could just meet his plane, and after that, we' stick together; he'd already booked us into a motel- 'WITH AIR CONDITIONING, GOOD TV, A GREAT POOL. WE'LL HAVE A BLAST!' Owen assured me; he'd already arranged everything. The proposed funeral was all fouled up because the body was already two days late. Relatives of the deceased warrant officer-family members from Modesto and Yuma-had been delayed in Phoenix for what must have seemed forever. Arrangements with the funeral parlor had been made and canceled and made again; Owen knew the mortician and the minister-'THEY'RE REAL ASSHOLES: DYING IS JUST A BUSINESS TO THEM, AND WHEN THINGS DON'T COME OFF ON SCHEDULE, THEY BITCH AND MOAN ABOUT THE MILITARY AND MAKE THINGS WORSE FOR THE POOR FAMILY.'
Apparently the family had planned a kind of' 'picnic wake''; the wake was now in its third day. Owe' was pretty sure that all he'd have to do was deliver the booy to the mortuary; the survivor assistance officer-a ROTC professor at Arizona State University, a major whom Owen also knew-had warned Owen that the family was so pissed off at the Army that they probably wouldn't want a military escort at the funeral.
'BUT YOU NEVER KNOW,' Owen told me. 'WE'LL JUST HANG AROUND, SORT OF PLAY IT BY EAR-EITHER WAY, I CAN GET A COUPLE OF FREE DAYS OUT OF IT. WHEN THERE'S BEEN A FUCK-UP LIKE THIS, THERE'S NEVER ANY PROBLEM WITH ME GETTING A COUPLE OF DAYS AWAY FROM THE POST. I JUST NOTIFY THE ARMY THAT I'M STICKING AROUND PHOENIX-'AT THE REQUEST OF THE FAMILY,' IS HOW I PUT IT. SOMETIMES, IT'S EVEN TRUE-LOTS OF TIMES, THE FAMILY WANTS YOU TO STICK AROUND. THE POINT IS, I'LL HAVE LOTS OF FREE TIME AND WE CAN JUST HANG OUT TOGETHER. LIKE I TOLD YOU, THE MOTEL HAS A GREAT SWIMMING POOL; AND IF IT'S NOT TOO HOT, WE CAN PLAY SOME TENNIS.'
'I don't play tennis,' I reminded him.
'WE DON'T HAVE TO PLAY TENNIS,' Owen said. It seemed to me to be a long way to go for only a couple of days. I also thought that the details of the body-escorting business-as they might pertain to this particular body-were more than a little uncertain, if not altogether vague. But there was no doubt that Owen had his heart set on my meeting him in Phoenix, and he sounded even more agitated than usual. I thought he might need the company; we hadn't seen each other since Christmas. After all, I'd never been to Arizona-and, I admit, at the time I was curious to see something of the so-called body escorting. It didn't occur to me that July was not the best season to be in Phoenix-but what did / know?
'Sure, let's do it-it sounds like fun,' I told him.
'YOU'RE MY BEST FRIEND,' said Owen Meany-his voice breaking a little. I assumed it was the telephone; I thought we had a bad connection. That was the day they made desecrating the U.S. flag a federal crime. Owen Meany spent the night of July , , in Oakland, California, where he was given a billet in the Bachelor Officers' Quarters; on the morning of July , Owen left quarters at the Oakland Army Depot-noting, in his diary, 'THE ENLISTED MEN ON FAR EAST LEVY ARE RE-
QUIRED TO LINE UP AT A NUMBERED DOOR, WHERE THEY ARE ISSUED JUNGLE FATIGUES, AND OTHER CRAP. THE RECRUITS ARE GIVEN STEAK DINNERS BEFORE BEGINNING THEIR FLIGHT TO VIETNAM. I'VE SEEN THIS PLACE TOO MANY TIMES: THE SPARS AND CRANES AND THE TIN WAREHOUSE ROOFS, AND THE GULLS GLIDING OVER THE AIRPLANE HANGARS-AND ALL THE NEW RECRUITS, ON THEIR WAY OVER THERE, AND THE BODIES COMING HOME. SO MANY GREEN DUFFEL BAGS ON THE SIDEWALKS. DO THE RECRUITS KNOW THE CONTENTS OF THOSE GRAY PLYWOOD BOXES?'
Owen noted in his diary that he was issued, as usual, the triangular cardboard box, in which the correctly prefolded flag was packaged-'WHO THINKS UP THESE THINGS? DOES THE PERSON WHO MAKES THE CARDBOARD BOX KNOW WHAT IT'S FORT' He was issued the usual funeral forms and the usual black armband-he lied to a clerk about dropping his armband in a urinal, in order to be issued another one; he wanted me to have a black armband, too, so that I would look ACCEPTABLY OFFICIAL. About the time my plane left Boston, Owen Meany was identifying a plywood container in the baggage area of the San Francisco airport. From the air, flying over Phoenix, you notice the nothingness first of all. It resembles a tan- and cocoa-colored moon, except that there are vast splotches of green-golf courses and the other pampered land where irrigation systems have been installed. From my Geology course, I knew that everything below me had once been a shallow ocean; and at dusk, when I flew into Phoenix, the shadows on the rocks were a tropical-sea purple, and the tumbleweeds were aquamarine- so that I could actually imagine the ocean that once was there. In truth, Phoenix still resembled a shallow sea, marred by the fake greens and blues of swimming pools. Some ten or twenty miles in the distance, a jagged ridge of reddish, tea-colored mountains were here and there capped with waxy deposits of limestone-to a New Englander, they looked like dirty snow. But it was far too hot for snow. Although, at dusk, the sun had lost its intensity, the dry heat shimmered above the tarmac; despite a breeze, the heat persisted with furnacelike generation. After the heat, I noticed the palm trees-all the beautiful, towering palm trees. Owen's plane, like the body he was escorting home, was late. I waited with the men in their guayabera shirts and huara-ches, and their cowboy boots; the women, from petite to massive, appeared immodestly content in short shorts and halter tops, their rubber thongs slapping the hard floors of the Phoenix airport, which was optimistically called the Sky Harbor. Both the men and women were irrepressibly fond of the local silver-and-turquoise jewelry. There was a game room, where a young, sunburned soldier was tilting a pinball machine with a kind of steadfast resentment. The first men's room I found was locked and labeled 'Temporarily Out of Order'; but the paper sign was so yellowed, it looked like an old announcement. After a search that transported me through widely varying degrees of air-conditioned coolness, I found a makeshift men's room, which was labeled 'Men's Temporary Facilities.'
At first, I wasn't sure I was in a men's room; it was a dark,
