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As Dan describes it, the faculty were ill-trained for lifting anything; even the athletic types were neither as strong nor as flexible as young basketball players—and they should have considered something basic to their task: it is much easier to carry something heavy and awkward upstairs than it is to lug it down.

Mr. Tubulari, the track-and-field coach, was overzealous in his descent of the stairs from the stage; he fell off and landed on the hard, wooden bench in the front row of assembled seats—a hymnal fortunately cushioned the blow to his head, or he might have been knocked senseless. Dan Needham described Mr. Tubulari as “already senseless, before his fall,” but the track-and-field coach severely sprained his ankle in the mishap and had to be carried to the Hubbard Infirmary. That left even fewer less-than-able-bodied faculty—and some beefy wives—to deal with the unfortunate wreck of Dr. Dolder’s Volkswagen, which now stood on its rear end, which is a Beetle’s heavy end, where its engine is. The little car, standing so oddly upright, appeared to be saluting or applauding the weary faculty who had so ungracefully dropped it offstage.

“It’s a good thing Dr. Dolder isn’t here,” Dan observed.

Because the headmaster was so riled up, no one wished to point out the obvious: that they would have been better off to let the students have “the last laugh”—then the faculty could have ordered a strong, healthy bunch of students to carry the car safely offstage. If the students wrecked the car in the course of its removal from the Main Academy Building, then the students would have been responsible. As it was, things went from bad to worse, as they often will when amateurs are involved in an activity that they perform in bad temper—and in a hurry.

The students would be arriving for morning meeting in another ten or fifteen minutes; a smashed Volkswagen sitting on its rear end in the front of The Great Hall might very well produce a louder and longer laugh than a natty, well-cared-for car facing them, undamaged, onstage. But there was brief discussion, if any, of this; the headmaster, bright-red in the face with the strain of lifting the solid little German marvel of the highways, urged the faculty to put their muscles into the chore and spare him their comments.

Bur there had been ice, and a little snow, on the VW; this was melted now. The car was wet and slippery; puddles of water were underfoot. One of the faculty wives—one especially prolific with progeny, and one whose maternal girth was more substantial than well coordinated—slipped under the Volkswagen as it was being returned to its wheels; although she was not hurt, she was wedged quite securely under the stubborn automobile. Volkswagens were pioneers in sealing the bottoms of their cars, and the poor faculty wife discovered that there was no gap beneath the car that would allow her to wriggle free.

This presented—with less than ten minutes before morning meeting—a new humiliation for the headmaster: Dr. Dolder’s damaged Volkswagen, leaking its engine and transmission oil upon the prostrate body of a trapped faculty wife; she was not an especially popular faculty wife among the students, either.

“Jesus Fucking Christ!” said Randy White.

Some of the “early nerds” were already arriving. “Early nerds” were students who were so eager for the school day to begin that they got to morning meeting long before the time they were required to be there. I don’t know what they are called today; but I’m sure that such students are never called anything nice.

Some of these “early nerds” were quite startled to be shouted at by the headmaster, telling them to “come back at the proper time!” Meanwhile, in tilting the VW to its side—enough to allow the safe deliverance of the rotund faculty wife—the inexperienced car handlers tilted the Beetle too far; it fell flat on the driver’s side (there went that window and that sideview mirror; the debris, together with the tail-light glass from the VW’s inexpert fall from the stage, was hastily swept under the front-row wooden bench where the injured Mr. Tubulari had fallen).

Someone suggested getting Dr. Dolder; if the doctor unlocked the car, the stalwart vehicle could be rolled, if not driven, to the head of the broad and sweeping marble stairway. Perhaps it would be easier to navigate the staircase with someone inside, behind the wheel?

“Nobody’s calling Dolder!” the headmaster cried. Someone pointed out that—since the window was broken—it was, in any case, an unnecessary step. Also, someone else pointed out, the Volkswagen could not be driven, or rolled, on its side; better to solve that problem. But according to Dan, the untrained faculty were unaware of their own strength; in attempting to right the car upon its wheels, they heaved too hard and tossed it from the driver’s side to the passenger side—flattening the front-row wooden bench (and there went the passenger-side window, and the other sideview mirror).

“Perhaps we should cancel morning meeting?” Dan Needham cautiously suggested. But the headmaster—to everyone’s astonishment—actually righted the Volkswagen, upon its wheels, by himself! I guess his adrenal glands were pumping! Randy White then seized his lower back with both hands and dropped, cursing, to his knees.

“Don’t touch me!” the headmaster cried. “I’m fine!” he said, grimacing—and coming unsteadily to his feet. He sharply kicked the rear fender of Dr. Dolder’s car. Then he reached through the hole where the driver’s-side window had been and unlocked the door. He sat behind the wheel—with apparent jolts of extreme discomfort assailing him from the region of his lower back—and commanded the faculty to push him.

“Where?” Dan Needham asked the headmaster.

“Down the Jesus Fucking Christly stairs!” Headmaster White cried. And so they pushed him; there was little point in trying to reason with him, Dan Needham later explained.

The bell for morning meeting was already ringing when Randy White began his bumpy descent of the broad and sweeping marble stairway; several students—normal students, in addition to the “early nerds”—were milling around in the foyer of the Main Academy Building, at the foot of the staircase.

Who can really piece together all the details of such a case—I mean, who can ever get straight what happened exactly? It was an emotional moment for the headmaster. And there is no overestimating the pain in his lower back; he had lifted the car all by himself—whether his back muscles went into spasms while he was attempting to steer the VW downstairs, or whether he suffered the spasms after his spectacular accident … well, this is academic, isn’t it?

Suffice it to say that the students in the foyer fled from the wildly approaching little vehicle. No doubt, the melted snow and ice were on the Beetle’s tires, too—and marble, as everyone knows, is slippery. This way and that way, the dynamic little car hopped down the staircase; great slabs of marble appeared to leap off the polished handrails of the stairway—the result of the Volkswagen’s gouging out hunks of marble as it skidded from side to side.

There’s an old New Hampshire phrase that is meant to express extreme fragility—and damage: “Like a robin’s egg rollin’ down the spout of a rain gutter!”

Thus did the headmaster descend the marble staircase from The Great Hall to the foyer of the Main Academy Building—except that he didn’t quite arrive at his destination. The car flipped and landed on its roof, and jammed itself sideways—and upside down—in the middle of the stairway. The doors could not be opened—nor could the headmaster be removed from the wreckage; such spasms assailed his lower back that he could not contort himself into the necessary posture to make an exit from the car through the space where the windshield had been. Randy White, sitting upside down and holding fast to the steering wheel, cried out that there was a “conspiracy of students and faculty” who were—clearly—“against” him. He said numerous, unprintable things about Dr. Dolder’s “fussy-fucking drinking habits,” about all German-manufactured cars, about what “wimps and pussys” were masquerading as “able-bodied” among the faculty—and their wives!—and he shouted and screamed that his back was “killing” him, until his wife, Sam, could be brought to the scene, where she knelt on the chipped marble stairs and gave her upside-down husband what comfort she could. Professionals were summoned to extricate him from the destroyed Volkswagen; later—long after morning meeting was over—they finally rescued the headmaster by removing the driver’s-side door of Dr. Dolder’s poor car with a torch.

The headmaster was confined to the Hubbard Infirmary for the remainder of the day; the nurses, and the school doctor, wanted to keep him—for observation—overnight, but the headmaster threatened to fire all of them if he was not released.

Over and over again, Randy White was heard to shout or cry out or mutter to his wife: “This has Owen Meany’s name written all over it!”

It was an interesting morning meeting, that morning. We were more than twice as long being seated, because only one staircase ascending to The Great Hall was available for our passage—and then there was the problem of the front-row bench being smashed; the boys who regularly sat there had to find places for themselves on the floor, or onstage. There were crushed beads of glass, and chipped paint, and puddles of engine and transmission oil everywhere—and except for the opening and cl

osing hymn, which drowned out the cries of the trapped headmaster, we were forced to listen to the ongoing drama on the stairway. I’m afraid this distracted us from the Rev. Mr. Merrill’s prayer, and from Mr. Early’s annual pep talk to the seniors. We should not allow our anxieties about our pending college admission (or our rejection) to keep us from having a good spring holiday, Mr. Early advised us.

“Goddamn Jesus Fucking Christ—keep that blowtorch away from my face!” we all heard the headmaster cry.

And at the end of morning meeting, the headmaster’s wife, Sam, shouted at those students who attempted to descend the blocked staircase by climbing over the ruined Volkswagen—in which the headmaster was still imprisoned.

“Where are your manners?” Mrs. White shouted.

It was after morning meeting before I had a chance to speak to Owen Meany.

“I don’t suppose you had anything to do with all of that?” I asked him.