'YES, MA'AM-I'D BE HAPPY TO HELP THE CHILDREN,' said Owen Meany.
'Wait till you see the so-called men's room,' I told Owen; I led the way. Owen just concentrated on the children. There were seven boys; the nun who was also Vietnamese accompanied us-she carried the smallest boy. The boy who was crying had stopped as soon as he saw Owen Meany. All the children watched Owen closely; they had seen many soldiers-yes-but they had never seen a soldier who was almost as small as they were! They never took their eyes off him. On we marched-when we passed by the game room, Major Rawls had his back to us; he didn't see us. Rawls was humping the pinball machine in a fury. In the mouth of a corridor I'd walked down before-it led nowhere-we marched past Dick Jarvits, the tall, lunatic brother of the dead warrant officer, standing in the shadows. He wore the jungle fatigues; he was strapped up with an extra cartridge belt or two. Although it was dark in the corridor, he wore the kind of sunglasses that must have melted on his brother's face when the helicopter had caught fire. Because he was wearing sunglasses, I couldn't tell if Dick saw Owen or me or the children; but from the gape of his open mouth, I concluded that something Dick had just seen had surprised him. The 'Men's Temporary Facilities' were the same as I had left them. The same mops and pails were there, and the unhung mirror still leaned against the wall. The vast mystery sink confused the children; one of them tried to pee in it, but I pointed him in the direction of the crowded urinal. One of the children considered peeing in a pail, but I showed him the toilet in the makeshift, plywood stall. Owen Meany, the good soldier, stood under the window; he watched the door. Occasionally, he would glance above him, sizing up the deep window ledge below the casement window. Owen looked especially small standing under that window, because the window ledge was at least ten feet high-it towered above him. The nun was waiting for her charges, just outside the door. I helped one of the children unzip his fly; the child seemed unfamiliar with a zipper. The children all jabbered in Vietnamese; the small, high-ceilinged room-like a coffin standing upright on one end-echoed with their voices. I've already said how slow I am; it wasn't until I heard their shrill, foreign voices that I remembered Owen's dream. I saw him watching the door, his arms hanging loosely at his sides.
'What's wrong?' I said to him.
'STAND BESIDE ME,' he said. I was moving toward him when the door was kicked wide open and Dick Jarvits stood there, nearly as tall and thin as the tall, thin room; he held a Chicom grenade-carefully-in both hands.
'HELLO, DICK,' said Owen Meany.
'You little twitl' Dick said. One of the children screamed; I suppose they'd all seen men in jungle fatigues before-I think that the little boy who screamed had seen a Chicom grenade before, too. Two or three of the children began to cry.
'DOONG SA,' Owen Meany told them. 'DON'T BE AFRAID,' Owen told the children. 'DOONG SA, DOONG SA,' he said. It was not only because he spoke their language; it was his voice that compelled the children to listen to him-it was a voice like their voices. That was why they trusted him, why they listened. 'DOONG SA,' he said, and they stopped crying.
'It's just the place for you to die,' Dick said to Owen. 'With all these little gooks-with these little dinksV Dick said.
' 'NAM SOON!'' Owen told the children.' 'NAM SOONl LIE DOWN!' Even the littlest boy understood him. 'LIE DOWN!' Owen told them. 'NAM SOON! NAM SOON!' All the children threw themselves on the floor-they covered their ears, they shut their eyes.
'NOW I KNOW WHY MY VOICE NEVER CHANGES,' Owen said to me. 'DO YOU SEE WHY?' he asked me.
'Yes,' I said.
'WE'LL HAVE JUST FOUR SECONDS,' Owen told me calmly. 'YOU'LL NEVER GET TO VIETNAM, DICK,' Owen told the terrible, tall boy-who ripped the fuse cord and tossed the bottle-shaped grenade, end over end, right to me.
'Think fast-Mister Fuckin' Intelligence Man!' Dick said. I caught the grenade, although it wasn't as easy to handle as a basketball-I was lucky. I looked at Owen, who was already moving toward me.
'READY?' he said; I passed him the Chicom grenade and opened my arms to catch him. He jumped so lightly into my hands; I lifted him up-as easily as I had always lifted him. After all: I had been practicing lifting up Owen Meany- forever. The nun who'd been waiting for the children outside the door of the 'Men's Temporary Facilities'-she hadn't liked the looks of Dick; she'd run off to get the other soldiers. It was Major Rawls who caught Dick running away from the temporary men's room.
'What have you done, you fuck-face?' the major screamed at Dick. Dick had drawn the bayonet. Major Rawls seized Dick's machete-Rawls broke Dick's neck with one blow, with the dull edge of the blade. I'd sensed that there was something more bitter than anger in the major's uncommon, lake-green eyes; maybe it was just his contact lenses, but Rawls hadn't won a battlefield commission in Korea for nothing. He may not have been prepared to kill an unfortunate, fifteen-year-old boy; but Major Rawls was even less prepared to be killed by such a kid, who-as Rawls had said to Owen-was (at least on this earth) 'beyond saving.'
When Owen Meany said 'READY?' I figured we had about two seconds left to live. But he soared far above my arms-when I lifted him, he soared even higher than usual; he wasn't taking any chances. He went straight up, never turning to face me, and instead of merely dropping the grenade and
