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The snowplows were in no hurry to be early on Sunday mornings, and the only vehicle that didn’t slip and skid as it made its way up Front Street was the heavy truck from the Meany Granite Company. Owen had so many clothes on, he had difficulty bending his knees as he trudged up the driveway—and his arms did not swing close to his sides, but protruded stiffly, like the limbs of a scarecrow. He was so muffled up in a long, dark-green scarf that I couldn’t see his face at all—but who could ever mistake Owen Meany for anyone else? It was a scarf my mother had given him—when she’d discovered, one winter, that he didn’t own one. Owen called it his LUCKY scarf, and he saved it for important occasions or for when it was especially cold.

The last Sunday before Christmas called for my mother’s scarf—on both counts. As Owen and I tramped down Front Street toward Christ Church, the birds took flight at Owen’s barking cough; there was a phlegmy rattle in his chest, loud enough for me to hear through his many layers of winter clothes.

“You don’t sound very well, Owen,” I pointed out to him.

“IF JESUS HAD TO BE BORN ON A DAY LIKE THIS, I DON’T THINK HE’D HAVE LASTED LONG ENOUGH TO BE CRUCIFIED,” Owen said.

On Front Street’s almost-virgin sidewalk, only one set of footprints had broken the snow before us; except for the clumsy peeing of dogs, the sidewalk was an unmarred path of white. The figure who had made the morning’s first human tracks in the snow was too bundled up and too far ahead of Owen and me for us to recognize him.

“YOUR GRANDMOTHER ISN’T COMING TO THE PAGEANT?” Owen asked me.

“She’s a Congregationalist,” I reminded him.

“BUT IS SHE SO INFLEXIBLE THAT SHE CAN’T SWITCH CHURCHES FOR ONE SUNDAY OF THE YEAR? THE CONGREGATIONALISTS DON’T HAVE A PAGEANT.”

“I know, I know,” I said; but I knew more than that: I knew the Congregationalists didn’t even have the conventional morning service on the last Sunday before Christmas—they had Vespers instead. It was a special event, largely for caroling. It wasn’t that my grandmother’s church service was in conflict with our pageant; it was that Grandmother was not enticed to see Owen play the Christ Child. She had remarked that she found the idea “repulsive.” Also, she made such a fuss about the weather’s potential for breaking her hip that she announced her intention to skip the Vespers at the Congregational Church. By the later afternoon, when the light was gone, it was even easier, she reasoned, to break your hip on the ice in the dark.

The man on the sidewalk ahead of us was Mr. Fish, whom we rather quickly caught up to—Mr. Fish was making his unreckless way with absurdly great care; he must have feared breaking his hip, too. He was startled by the sight of Owen Meany, wrapped up so tightly in my mother’s scarf that only Owen’s eyes were showing; but Mr. Fish was often startled to see Owen.

“Why aren’t you already at the church, getting into your costumes?” he asked us. We pointed out that we would be almost an hour early. Even at the rate Mr. Fish was walking, he would be half an hour early; but Owen and I were surprised that Mr. Fish was attending the pageant.

“YOU’RE NOT A CHURCHGOER,” Owen said accusingly.

“Why no, I’m not, that’s true,” Mr. Fish admitted. “But I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”

Owen eyed his costar in A Christmas Carol cautiously. Mr. Fish seemed both so depressed and impressed by Owen’s success that his attendance at the Christ Church Christmas Pageant was suspicious. I suspect that Mr. Fish enjoyed depressing himself; also, he was so slavishly devoted to amateur acting that he desperately sought to pick up as many pointers as he could by observing Owen’s genius.

“I MAY NOT BE AT MY BEST TODAY,” Owen warned Mr. Fish; he then demonstrated his barking cough, dramatically.

“A trouper like you is surely undaunted by a little illness, Owen,” Mr. Fish observed. We three trudged through the snow together—Mr. Fish coming halfway to meet us, on the matter of pace.

He confided to Owen and me that he was a little nervous about attending church; that he’d never once been forced to go to church when he was a child—his parents had not been religious, either—and that he’d only “set foot” in churches for weddings and funerals. Mr. Fish wasn’t even sure how much of Christ’s story a Christmas pageant “covered.”

“NOT THE WHOLE THING,” Owen told him.

“Not the bit on the cross?” Mr. Fish asked.

“THEY DIDN’T NAIL HIM TO THE CROSS WHEN HE WAS A BABY!” Owen said.

“How

about the bit when he does all the healing—and all the lecturing to the disciples?” Mr. Fish asked.

“IT DOESN’T GO PAST CHRISTMAS!” Owen said, with exasperation. “IT’S JUST THE BIRTHDAY SCENE!”

“It’s not a speaking part,” I reminded Mr. Fish.

“Oh, of course, I forgot about that,” Mr. Fish said.

Christ Church was on Elliot Street, at the edge of the Gravesend Academy campus; at the corner of Elliot and Front streets, Dan Needham was waiting for us. Apparently the director intended to pick up a few pointers, too.

“My, my, look who’s here!” Dan said to Mr. Fish, who blushed.

Owen was cheered to see that Dan was coming.

“IT’S A GOOD THING YOU’RE HERE, DAN,” Owen told him, “BECAUSE THIS IS MISTER FISH’S FIRST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT, AND HE’S A LITTLE NERVOUS.”

“I’m just not sure when to genuflect, and all that nonsense!” Mr. Fish said, chuckling.