reverence around this demonstration of the engine's power that Major Rawls and Owen and I half expected the barrel to take flight-or at least drive itself away. By the marvel of a long extension cord, a TV was placed in a prime position on the dry, brown lawn; a circle of men were watching a baseball game, of course. And where were the women? Clustered in their own groups, according to age or marriage or divorce or degree of pregnancy, most of the women were inside the sweltering house, where the ovenlike temperature appeared to have wilted them, like the limp raw vegetables that were plunked in assorted bowls alongside the assorted ' 'dips' that were now in their third day of exposure to this fetid air. Inside, too, the sink was filled with ice, through which one could search in vain for a cold beer. The mother with her high-piled, sticky, pink hair slouched against the refrigerator, which she seemed to be guarding from the others; occasionally, she flicked the ash from her cigarette into what she vacantly assumed was an ashtray-rather, it was a small plate of nuts that had been creatively mixed with a breakfast cereal.
'Here comes the fuckin' Army!' she said-when she saw us. She was drinking what smelled like bourbon out of a highball glass-this one was etched with a poor likeness of a pheasant or a grouse or a quail. It was not necessary to introduce me, although-several times-Owen and Major Rawls tried. Not everyone knew everyone else, anyway; it was hard to tell family from neighbors, and specifics such as which children were the offspring of whose previous or present marriage were not even considered. The relatives from Yuma and Modesto-aside from the uncomfortable fact that their children, and perhaps they themselves, were housed in tents and dismantled cars- simply blended in. The father who'd struck his stepson at the airport was dead drunk and had passed out in a bedroom with the door open; he was sprawled not on the bed but on the floor at the foot of the bed, upon which four or five small children were glued to a second television set, their attention riveted to a crime drama that surely held no surprises for them.
'You find a woman here, I'll pay for the motel,' Rawls said to me. 'I've been working this scene for two nights-this is my third. I tell you, there's not one woman you'd dare to put a move on-not here. The best thing I've seen is the pregnant sister-imagine that!'
Dutifully, I imagined it: the pregnant sister was the only one who tried to be nice to us; she tried to be especially nice to Owen.
'It's a very hard job you have,' she told him.
'IT'S NOT AS HARD AS BEING IN VIETNAM,' he said politely. The pregnant sister had a hard job, too, I thought; she looked as if she needed to make a nearly constant effort not to be beaten by her mother or her father, or raped by the latter, or raped and beaten by her younger half brother-or some combination of, or all of, the above. Owen said to her: 'I'M WORRIED ABOUT YOUR BROTHER-I MEAN YOUR HALF BROTHER, THE TALL BOY. I'LL HAVE A WORD WITH HIM. WHERE IS HE?'
The girl looked too frightened to speak. Then she said: 'I know you have to give my mother the flag-at the funeral. I know what my mother's gonna do-
when you give her the flag. She said she's gonna spit on you,' the pregnant sister told Owen. 'And I know her-she will!' the girl said. 'She'll spit in your face!'
'IT HAPPENS, SOMETIMES,' Owen said. 'WHERE'S THE TALL BOY-YOUR HALF BROTHER? WHAT'S HIS NAME?'
'If Vietnam hadn't killed that bastard, somethin' else would have-that's what/ say!' said the pregnant sister, who quickly looked around, fearful that someone in the family might have overheard her.
'DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE FUNERAL,' Owen told her. 'WHERE'S THE TALL BOY? WHAT'S HIS NAME?' There was a closed door off a narrow hall, and the girl cautiously pointed to it.
'Don't tell him I told you,' she whispered.
'WHAT'S HIS NAME?' Owen asked her. She looked around, to make sure no one was watching her; there was a gob of mustard on the swollen belly of her wrinkled dress. 'Dick!' she said; then she moved away. Owen knocked on the door.
'Watch yourself, Meany,' Major Rawls said. 'I know the police, at die airport-they never take their eyes off this guy.'' Owen knocked on the door a little more insistently.
'Fuck you!' Dick shouted through the closed door.
'YOU'RE TALKING TO AN OFFICER*.' said Owen Meany.
'Fuck you, sir!' Dick said.
'THAT'S BETTER,' Owen said. 'WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE-BEATING OFF?'
Major Rawls pushed Owen and me out of the path of the door; we were all standing clear of the door when Dick opened it. He was wearing a different pair of fatigue pants, he was barefoot and bare-chested, and he'd blackened his face with something like shoe polish-as if, after the merrymakers all settled down, he planned to engage in undercover activities in the dangerous neighborhood. With the same black marker, he had drawn circles around his nipples-like twin bull's-eyes on his chest.
'Come on in,' he said, stepping back into his room, where-no doubt-he dreamed without cease of butchering the Viet Cong. The room
