A prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

instrument of death, I guess you'd
call it," Ben Pike said.
    "The murder weapon!" Mr. Chickering said, squeezing me
as he spoke. We were waiting for either my grandmother or my mother's new
husband to come get me. "The instrument of death!" Mr. Chickering
said. "Jesus Christ, Ben-it was a baseball!''
    "Well, where is it?" Chief Pike said. "If it
killed somebody, I'm supposed to see it-actually, I'm supposed to possess
it."
    "Don't be an asshole, Ben," Mr. Chickering said.
    "Did one of your kids take it?" Chief Pike asked our
fat coach and manager.
    "Ask them-don't ask me!" Mr. Chickering said. All the
players had been made to stand behind the bleachers while the police took
photographs of my mother. They were still standing there, peering out at the
murderous field through the empty seats. Several townspeople were standing with
the players-mothers and dads and ardent baseball fans. Later, I would remember
Owen's voice, speaking to me in the darkness-because my head was under the
warm-up jacket.
    "I'M SORRY!"
    Bit by bit, over the years, all of it would come back to
me-everyone who was standing there behind the bleachers, and everyone who had
gone home. But then I took the warm-up jacket off my head and all I knew was
that Owen Meany was not standing there behind the bleachers. Mr. Chickering
must have observed the same thing.
    "Owen!" he called.
    "He went home!" someone called back.
    "He had his bike!" someone said. I could easily
imagine him, struggling with his bike up the Maiden Hill Road-first pedaling,
then wobbling, then getting off to walk his bike; all the while, in view of the
river. In those days, our baseball uniforms were an itchy wool, and I could see
Owen's uniform, heavy with sweat, the number  too big for his back-when he
tucked his shirt into his pants, he tucked in half the number, too, so that
anyone passing him on the Maiden Hill Road would have thought he was number . I
suppose there was no reason for him to wait; my mother always gave Owen and his
bike a ride home after our Little League games. Of course, I thought, Owen has
the ball. He was a collector; one had to consider only his baseball cards.
"After all," Mr. Chickering would say-in later years-' 'it was the
only decent hit the kid ever made, the only real wood he ever got on the ball.
And even then, it was a foul ball. Not to mention that it killed someone."
    So what if Owen has the ball? I was thinking. But at the time I
was mainly thinking about my mother; I was already
        beginning to get
angry with her for never telling me who my father was. At the time, I was only
eleven; I had no idea who else had attended that Little League game, and that
death-and who had his own reason for wanting to possess the ball that Owen
Meany hit.

 

     

     
    THE ARMADILLO

     
    MY MOTHER'S NAME was Tabitha, although no one but my grandmother
actually called her that. Grandmother hated nicknames-with the exception that
she never called me John; I was always Johnny to her, even long after I'd
become just plain John to everyone else. To everyone else, my mother was Tabby.
I recall one occasion when the Rev. Lewis Merrill said "Tabitha," but
that was spoken in front of my mother and grandmother-and the occasion was an
argument, or at least a plea. The issue was my mother's decision to leave the
Congregational Church for the Episcopal, and the Rev. Mr. Merrill-speaking to
my grandmother, as if my mother weren't in the room-said, "Tabitha
Wheelwright is the one truly angelic voice in our choir, and we shall be a
choir without a soul if she leaves us." I must add, in Pastor MerrilFs
defense, that he didn't always speak with such Byzantine muddiness, but he was
sufficiently worked up about my mother's and my own departure from his church
to offer his opinions as if he were speaking from the pulpit. In New Hampshire,
when I was a boy, Tabby was a common name for house cats, and there was
undeniably a feline quality to