also collapse or burst into flames at the strain. And I suppose my grandmother noticed that Dan Needham was tall, and that he had a sizable bottom, and this no doubt meant to her that an even fewer-than-usual number of seats were available to him-while Lydia, not yet deft with her wheelchair, blocked the way here, and the way there, and neither my mother nor my grandmother had yet developed that necessary reflex to simply wheel her out of the way. And so the living room was a scene of idiocy and confusion, with Dan Needham spiraling toward one vulnerable antique after another, and my mother and grandmother colliding with Lydia's wheelchair while Grandmother barked this and that command regarding who should sit where. I hung back on the threshold of this awkwardness, keeping an eye on the ominous shopping bag, imagining that it had moved, a little-or that a mystery pet would suddenly materialize beside it and either eat, or be eaten by, the contents of the bag. We had never had a pet-my grandmother thought that people who kept pets were engaged in the basest form of self-mockery, intentionally putting themselves on a level with animals. Nevertheless, it made me extremely jumpy to observe the bag, awaiting its slightest twitch, and it made me even jumpier to observe the foolish nervousness of the adult ritual taking place in the living room. Gradually, I gave my whole attention to the bag; I slipped away from the threshold of the living room and retreated into the hall, sitting cross-legged on the scatter rug in front of the telephone table. The sides of the bag were almost breathing, and I thought I could detect an odor foreign to human experience. It was the suspicion of this odor that drew me nearer to the bag, until I crawled under the telephone table and put my ear to the bag and listened, and peered over the top of the bag-but the bag inside the bag blocked my view. In the living room, they were talking about history-that was Dan Needham's actual appointment: in the History Department. He had studied enough history at Harvard to be qualified to teach the conventional courses in that field at Gravesend. 'Oh, you got the job!' my mother said. What was special in his approach was his use of the history of drama-and here he said something about the public entertainment of any period distinguishing the period as clearly as its so-called politics, but I drifted in and out of the sense of his remarks, so intent was I on the contents of the shopping bag in the hall. I picked up the bag and held it in my lap and waited for it to move. In addition to his interview with the History Department
members, and with the headmaster, Dan Needham was saying, he had requested some time to address those students interested in theater-and any faculty members who were interested, too-and in this session he had attempted to demonstrate how the development of certain techniques of the theatrical arts, how certain dramatic skills, can enhance our understanding of not only the characters on a stage but of a specific time and place as well. And for this session with the drama students, Dan Needham was saying, he always brought along a certain 'prop'-something interesting, either to hold or focus the students' attention, or to distract them from what he would, finally, make them see. He was rather long-winded, I thought.
'What props?' my grandmother asked.
'Yes, what props ?' Lydia said. And Dan Needham said that a 'prop' could be anything; once he'd used a tennis ball-and once a live bird in a cage. That was it! I thought, feeling that whatever it was in the bag was hard and lifeless and unmoving-and a birdcage would be all that. The bird, of course, I couldn't touch. Still, I wanted to see it, and with trepidation-and as silently as possible, so that the bores in the living room would not hear the paper crinkling of the two bags-I opened just a little bit of the bag within the bag. The face that stared intently into mine was not a bird's face, and no cage prevented this creature from leaping out at me-and the creature appeared not only poised to leap out at me, but eager to do so. Its expression was fierce; its snout, as narrow as the nose of a fox, was pointed at my face like a gun; its wild, bright eyes winked with hatred and fearlessness, and the claws of its forepaws, which were reaching toward me, were long and prehistoric. It looked like a weasel in a shell-like a ferret with scales. I screamed. I also forgot I was sitting under the telephone table, because I leaped up, knocking over the table and tangling my feet in the phone cord. I couldn't get away; and when I lunged out of the hall and into the living room, the telephone, and the phone table, and the beast in the bag were all dragged-with considerable clamor-after me. And so I screamed again.
'Goodness gracious!' my grandmother cried. But Dan Needham said cheerfully to my mother: 'I told you he'd open the bag.'
At first I had thought Dan Needham was a fool like all the others, and that he didn't know the first thing about six-year-olds-that to tell a six-year-old not to open a bag was an invitation to open it. But he knew very well what a six-year-old was like; to his credit, Dan Needham was always a little bit of a six-year-old himself.
'What in heaven's name is in the bag?' my grandmother asked, as I finally freed myself from the phone cord and went crawling to my mother.
'My prop!' Dan Needham said. It was some 'prop,' all right, for in the bag was a stuffed armadillo. To a boy from New Hampshire, an armadillo resembled a small dinosaur-for who in New Hampshire ever heard of a two-foot-long rat with a shell on its back, and claws as distinguished as an anteater's? Armadillos eat insects and earthworms and spiders and land snails, but I had no way of knowing that. It looked at least willing, if not able, to eat me. Dan Needham gave it to me. It was the first present any of my mother's 'beaus' gave me that I kept. For years-long after its claws were gone, and its tail fell off, and its stuffing came out, and its sides collapsed, and its nose broke in half, and its glass eyes were lost-I kept the bony plates from the sheD of its back. I loved the armadillo, of course, and Owen Meany also loved it. We would be playing in the attic, abusing my grandmother's ancient sewing machine, or dressing up in my dead grandfather's clothes, and Owen would say, out of nowhere, 'LET'S GO GET THE ARMADILLO. LET'S BRING IT UP HERE AND HIDE IT IN THE CLOSET.'
The closet that housed my dead grandfather's clothes was vast
