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about it,
Owen?" my mother asked.
    "THERE'S ALSO THE MATTER OF THE BUS," Owen said.
"TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL, YOU CAN TAKE A BUS. I DON'T LIVE RIGHT IN TOWN, YOU
KNOW. HOW WOULD I GET TO THE ACADEMY? IF I WAS A DAY STUDENT, I MEAN-HOW WOULD
I GET THERE? HOW WOULD I GET BACK HOME? BECAUSE MY PARENTS WOULD NEVER LET ME
LIVE IN A DORMITORY. THEY NEED ME AT HOME. ALSO, DORMITORIES ARE EVIL. SO HOW
DO THE DAY STUDENTS GET TO SCHOOL AND GET HOME?" he asked.
    "Someone drives them," my mother said. "/ could
drive
        you, Owen-at least
until you got a driver's license of your own."
    "NO, IT WON'T WORK," Owen said. "MY FATHER'S TOO
BUSY, AND MY MOTHER DOESN'T DRIVE."
    Mrs. Meany-both my mother and I knew-not only didn't drive; she
never left the house. And even in the summer, the windows in that house were
never open; his mother was allergic to dust, Owen had explained. Every day of
the year, Mrs. Meany sat indoors behind the windows bleared and streaked with
grit from the quarry. She wore an old set of pilot's headphones (the wires
dangling, unattached) because the sound of the channeling machine-the channel
bar, and the rock chisels-disturbed her. On blasting days, she played the
phonograph very loudly-the big band sound, the needle skipping occasionally
when the dynamite was especially nearby and percussive. Mr. Meany did the
shopping. He drove Owen to Sunday school, and picked him up-although he did not
attend the Episcopal services himself. It was apparently enough revenge upon the
Catholics to be sending Owen there; either the added defiance of his own
attendance was unnecessary, or else Mr. Meany had suffered such an outrage at
the hands of the Catholic authorities that he was rendered unreceptive to the
teachings of any church. He was, my mother knew, quite unreceptive on the
subject of Gravesend Academy. "There is the interests of the town,"
he once said in Town Meeting, "and then there is the interests of
theml" This regarded the request of the academy to widen the saltwater river
and dredge a deeper low-tide channel at a point in the Squamscott that would
improve the racing course for the academy crew; several shells had become mired
in the mud flats at low tide. The part of the river the academy wished to widen
was a peninsula of tidewater marsh bordering the Meany Granite Quarry; it was
totally unusable land, yet Mr. Meany owned it and he resented that the academy
wanted to scoop it away-"for purposes of recreation!" he said.
    "We're talking about mud, not granite," a representative
of the academy had remarked.
    "I'm talkin' about us and them}" Mr. Meany had
shouted, in what is now recorded as a famous Town Meeting. In order for a Town
Meeting to be famous in Gravesend, it is only necessary that there be a good
row. The Squamscott was widened; the channel was dredged. If it was just mud,
the town decided, it didn't matter whose mud it was.
    "You're going to the academy, Owen," my mother told
him. "That's all there is to it. If any student ever belonged in a proper
school, it's you-that place was made with you in mind, or it was made for no
one."
    "WE MISSED DOING A GOOD DEED," Owen said morosely.
"THAT MAN SHINGLING THE CHURCH-HE NEEDED HELP."
    "Don't argue with me, Owen," my mother said.
"You're going to the academy, if I have to adopt you. I'll kidnap you, if
I have to," she said. But no one on this earth was ever as stubborn as
Owen Meany; he waited a mile before he said another word, and then he said,
"NO. IT WON'T WORK."
    Gravesend Academy was founded in  by the Rev. Emery Hurd, a
follower of the original Wheelwright's original beliefs, a childless Puritan
with an ability-according to Wall-for "Oration on the advantages of
Learning and its happy Tendency to promote Virtue and Piety." What would
the Rev. Mr. Hurd have thought of Owen Meany? Hurd conceived of an academy
whereat "no vicious lad, who is liable to contaminate his associates, is
allowed to remain an hour";