was there at all, or he hadn't seen me for years. Perhaps this was his unsubtle way of announcing my presence to Mrs. Meany, but that lady was unchanged by her husband's greeting; she remained in profile to both the window and to us. For variety, she would at times gaze into the fire, although nothing she saw there ever prompted her to tend to the logs or the coals; possibily she preferred smoke to flames. And one day, when he must have been feeling especially conversational, Mr. Meany said: 'Why, it's Johnny Wheelwright! How goes all that Christmas rehearsin'?'
'Owen's the star of the pageant,' I said. As soon as I spoke, I felt the knuckles of his tiny fist in my back.
'You never said you was the star,' Mr. Meany said to Owen.
'He's the Baby Jesus!' I said. 'I'm just old Joseph.'
'The Baby Jesus?' said Mr. Meany. 'I thought you was an angel, Owen.'
'NOT THIS YEAR,' Owen said. 'COME ON, WE GOTTA GO,' he said to me, pulling the back of my shirt.
'You're the Christ Child?' his father asked him.
'I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN FIT IN THE CRIB,' Owen said.
'Now we're not even using a crib,' I explained. 'Owen's in charge of the whole thing-he's the star and the director.' Owen yanked my shirt so hard he untucked it.
'The director,' Mr. Meany repeated flatly. That was when I felt cold, as if a draft had pushed itself into the house in an unnatural way-down the warm chimney. But it was no draft; it was Mrs. Meany. She had actually moved. She was staring at Owen. There was confusion in her expression, a mix of terror and awe-of shock; but also of a most familiar resentment. By comparison to such a stare, I realized what a relief his mother's profile must be to Owen Meany. Outside, in the raw wind off the Squamscott, I asked Owen if I had said anything I shouldn't have said.
'I THINK THEY LIKE ME BETTER AS AN ANGEL,' he said. The snow never seemed to stick on Maiden Hill; it could never get a grip on the huge, upthrust slabs of granite that marked the rims of the quarries. In the pits themselves the snow was dirty, mixed with sand, tracked by birds and squirrels; the sides of the quarries were too steep for dogs. There is always so much sand around a granite quarry; somehow, it works its way to the top of the snow; and around Owen's house there was always so much wind that the sand stung against your face-like the beach in winter. I watched Owen pull down the earflaps of his red-and-black-checkered hunter's cap; that was when I realized that I'd left my hat on his bed. We were on our way down Maiden Hill; Dan had said he'd meet us with the car, at the boathouse on the Swasey Parkway.
'Just a second,' ItoldOwen. 'I forgot my hat.' Iran back to the house; I left him kicking at a rock that had been frozen in the ruts of the dirt driveway. I didn't knock; the clump of pine boughs on the door was blocking the most natural place to knock, anyway. Mr. Meany was standing by the mantel, either looking at the creche or at the fire. 'Just forgot my hat,' I said, when he looked up at me. I didn't knock on the door of Owen's room, either. At first, I thought the dressmaker's dummy had moved; I thought that somehow it had found a way to bend at the waist and had sat down on Owen's bed. Then I realized that Mrs. Meany was sitting on the bed; she was staring quite intently at my mother's figure and she did not interrupt her gaze when I entered the room.
'Just forgot my hat,' I repeated; I couldn't tell if she heard me. I put on my hat and was leaving the room, closing the door as quietly as I could behind me, when she said, 'I'm sorry about your poor mother.' It was the first time she had ever spoken to me. I peeked back into the room. Mrs. Meany hadn't moved; she sat with her head slightly bowed to the dressmaker's dummy, as if she were awaiting some instructions. It was noon when Owen and I passed under the railroad trestle bridge at the foot of the Maiden Hill Road, a few hundred yards below the Meany Granite Quarry; years later, the abutment of that bridge would be the death of Buzzy Thurston, who had successfully evaded the draft. But that Christmas of ', when Owen and I walked under the bridge, was the first time our being there coincided with the passing of The Flying Yankee-the express train that raced between Portland and Boston, in just two hours. It screamed through Gravesend every day at noon; and although Owen and I had watched it hurtle through town
from the Gravesend depot, and although we had put pennies on the tracks for The Flying Yankee to flatten, we had never before been directly under the trestle bridge exactly as The Flying Yankee was passing over us. I was still thinking of Mrs. Meany's attitude of supplication before my mother's dummy when the trestlework of the bridge began to rattle. A fine grit sifted down between the railroad ties and the trestles and settled upon Owen and me; even the concrete abutments shook, and-shielding our eyes from the loosened sand-we looked up to see the giant, dark underbelly of the train, speeding above us. Through the gaps between the passing cars, flashes of the leaden, winter sky blinked down on us.
'IT'S THE FLYING YANKEES Owen managed to scream above the clamor. All trains were special to Owen Meany, who had never ridden on a train; but The Flying Yankee-its terrifying speed and its refusal to stop in Gravesend- represented to Owen the zenith of travel. Owen (who had never been anywhere) was a considerable romantic on the subject of travel.
'What a coincidence!' I said, when The Flying Yankee had gone; I meant that it was a farfetched piece of luck that had landed us
