of God's Appointed would have been a surprise to me. To have seen him up in the air, at Sunday school, you would not have thought he was at work on God's Assignment. And you must remember-forgetting about Owen- that at the age of eleven I did not believe there were 'chosen ones,' or that God 'appointed' anyone, or that God gave 'assignments.' As for Owen's belief that he was 'God's instrument,' I didn't know that there was other evidence upon which Owen was basing his conviction that he'd been specially selected to carry out the work of the Lord; but Owen's idea-that God's reasoning was somehow predetermining Owen's every move-came from much more than that one unlucky swing and crack of the bat. As you shall see. Today-January , -it is snowing in Toronto; in the dog's opinion, Toronto is improved by snow. I enjoy walking the dog when it's snowing, because the dog's enthusiasm is infectious; in the snow, the dog establishes his territorial rights to the St. Clair Reservoir as if he were the first dog to relieve
himself there-an illusion that is made possible by the fresh snow covering the legion of dog turds for which the St. Clair Reservoir is famous. In the snow, the clock tower of Upper Canada College appears to preside over a preparatory school in a small New England town; when it's not snowing, the cars and buses on the surrounding roads are more numerous, the sounds of traffic are less muted, and the presence of downtown Toronto seems closer. In the snow, the view of the clock tower of Upper Canada College-especially from the distance of Kilbarry Road, or, closer, from the end of Frybrook Road-reminds me of the clock tower of the Main Academy Building in Graves-end; fastidious, sepulchral. In the snow, there is something almost like New England about where I live on Russell Hill Road; granted, Torontonians do not favor white clapboard houses with dark-green or black shutters, but my grandmother's house, at Front Street, was brick-Torontonians prefer brick and stone. Inexplicably, Torontonians clutter their brick and stone houses with too much trim, or with window trim and shutters-and they also carve their shutters with hearts or maple leaves-but the snow conceals these frills; and on some days, like today, when the snow is especially wet and heavy, the snow turns even the brick houses white. Toronto is sober, but not austere; Graves-end is austere, but also pretty; Toronto is not pretty, but in the snow Toronto can look like Gravesend-both pretty and austere. And from my bedroom window on Russell Hill Road, I can see both Grace Church on-the-Hill and the Bishop Strachan chapel; how fitting that a boy whose childhood was divided by two churches should live out his present life in view of two more! But this suits me now; both churches are Anglican. The cold, gray stones of both Grace Church and The Bishop Strachan School are also improved by snow. My grandmother liked to say that snow was ' 'healing''-that it healed everything. A typical Yankee point of view: if it snows a lot, snow must be good for you. In Toronto, it's good for me. And the little children sledding at the St. Clair Reservoir: they remind me of Owen, too-because I have fixed Owen at a permanent size, which is the size he was when he was eleven, which was the size of an average five-year-old. But I should be careful not to give too much credit to the snow; there are so many things that remind me of Owen. I avoid American newspapers and magazines, and American television-and other Americans in Toronto. But Toronto is not far enough away. Just the day before yesterday-January , -the front page of The Globe and Mail gave us a full account of President Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Message. Will I ever learn? When I see such things, I know I should simply not read them; I should pick up The Book of Common Prayer, instead. I should not give in to anger; but, God forgive me, I read the State of the Union Message. After almost twenty years in Canada, there are certain American lunatics who still fascinate me.
'There must be no Soviet beachhead in Central America,' President Reagan said. He also insisted that he would not sacrifice his proposed nuclear missiles in space-his beloved Star Wars plan-to a nuclear arms agreement with the Soviet Union. He even said that 'a key element of the U.S.-Soviet agenda' is 'more responsible Soviet conduct around the world''-as if the United States were a bastion of' 'responsible conduct around the world'! I believe that President Reagan can say these things only because he knows that the American people will never hold him accountable for what he says; it is history that holds you accountable, and I've already expressed my opinion that Americans are not big on history. How many of them even remember their own, recent history? Was twenty years ago so long ago for Americans? Do they remember October , ? Fifty thousand antiwar demonstrators were in Washington; I was there; that was the ' 'March on the Pentagon''-remember? And two years later-in October of '-there were fifty thousand people in Washington again; they were carrying flashlights, they were asking for peace. There were a hundred thousand asking for peace in Boston Common; there were two hundred fifty thousand in New York. Ronald Reagan had not yet numbed the United States, but he had succeeded in putting California to sleep; he described the Vietnam protests as 'giving aid and comfort to the enemy.' As president, he still didn't know who the enemy was. I now believe that Owen Meany always knew; he knew everything. We were seniors at Gravesend Academy in February of ; we watched a lot of TV at Front Street. President Kennedy said that U.S. advisers in Vietnam would return fire if fired upon.
'I HOPE WE'RE ADVISING THE RIGHT GUYS,' Owen Meany said. That spring, less than a month before Gravesend Academy's graduation exercises, the TV showed us a map of Thailand; five thousand U.S. Marines and fifty jet fighters were being sent there-'in response to Communist expansion in Laos,' President Kennedy said.
'I HOPE WE KNOW WHAT WE'RE DOING,' said Owen Meany. In the summer of ', the summer following our first year at the university, the Buddhists in Vietnam were demonstrating; there were revolts. Owen and I saw our first self-immolation-on television. South Vietnamese government forces, led by Ngo Dinh Diem-the elected president- attacked several Buddhist pagodas; that was in August. In May, Diem's brother-Ngo Dinh Nhu, who ran the secret police force-had broken up a Buddhist celebration by killing eight children and one woman.
'DIEM IS A CATHOLIC,' Owen Meany announced. 'WHAT'S A CATHOLIC DOING AS PRESIDENT OF A COUNTRY OF BUDDHISTS?'
That was the summer that Henry Cabot Lodge became the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam; that was the summer that Lodge received a State
