that he wouldn't mind staying overnight, too-my mother invited him to stay, because (she said) his clothes hadn't completely dried. And although I asked him-'Where'd she hide you? Just give me a clue! Tell me what part of the house, just tell me which floor'-he wouldn't disclose his triumph. He was wide awake, and in no mood to sleep, and he was irritatingly philosophic regarding the true character of my cousins, whom he said I had failed to present fairly to him.
'YOU HAVE REALLY MISJUDGED THEM,' he lectured me. 'PERHAPS WHAT YOU CALL THEIR WILD-NESS IS JUST A MATTER OF LACK OF DIRECTION. SOMEONE HAS TO GIVE ANY GROUP OF PEOPLE DIRECTION, YOU KNOW.' I lay there thinking I couldn't wait until he came to Sawyer Depot, and my cousins got him on skis and simply pointed him downhill; that might shut him up about providing adequate 'direction.' But there was no turning him off; he just babbled on and on. I got drowsy, and turned my back to him, and therefore I was confused when I heard him say, 'IT'S HARD TO GO TO SLEEP WITHOUT IT, ONCE YOU GET USED TO IT- ISN'T IT?'
'Without what?' I asked him. 'Used to what, Owen?'
'THE ARMADILLO,' he said. And so that day after Thanksgiving, when Owen Meany met my cousins, provided me with two very powerful images of Owen-especially on the night I tried to get to sleep after had killed my mother. I lay in bed knowing that Owen would be thinking about my mother, too, and that he would be thinking not only of me but also of Dan Needham-of how much we both would miss her-and if Owen was thinking of Dan, I knew that he would be thinking about the armadillo, too. It was also important: that day when my mother and I chased after Owen in the car-and I saw the posture of his body jerking on his bicycle, trying to pedal up Maiden Hill; and I saw how he faltered, and had to get off the bike and walk it the rest of the way. That day provided me with a cold-weather picture of how Owen must have looked on that warm, summer evening when he was struggling home after the Little League game-with his baseball uniform plastered to his back. What was he going to tell his parents about the game? It would take years for me to remember the decision regarding whether I should spend the night after that fatal game with Dan Needham, in the apartment that he and my mother had moved into, with me, after they'd married-it was a faculty apartment in one of the academy dormitories-or whether I would be more comfortable spending that terrible night back in my old room in my grandmother's house at
Front Street. So many of the details surrounding that game would take years to remember! Anyway, Dan Needham and my grandmother agreed that it would be better for me to spend the night at Front Street, and so-in addition to the disorientation of waking up the next morning, after very little sleep, and gradually realizing that the dream of my mother being killed by a baseball that Owen Meany hit was not a dream-I faced the further disorientation of not immediately knowing where I was. It was very much like waking up as a kind of traveler in science fiction, someone who had traveled 'back in time'-because I had grown used to waking up in my room in Dan Needham's apartment. And as if all this weren't sufficiently bewildering, there was a noise I had never before associated with Front Street; it was a noise in the driveway, and my bedroom windows didn't face the driveway, so I had to get out of bed and leave my room to see what the noise was. I was pretty sure I knew. I had heard that noise many times at the Meany Granite Quarry; it was the unmistakable, very lowest gear of the huge, flatbed hauler-the truck Mr. Meany used to carry the granite slabs, the curbstones and cornerstones, and the monuments. And sure enough, the Meany Granite Company truck was in my grandmother's driveway-taking up the whole driveway-and it was loaded with granite and gravestones. I could easily imagine my grandmother's indignation-if she was up, and saw the truck there. I could just hear her saying, 'How incredibly tasteless of that man! My daughter not dead a day and what is he doing-giving us a tombstone? I suppose he's already carved the letters!' That is actually what / thought. But Mr. Meany did not get out of the cab of his track. It was Owen who got out on the passenger side, and he walked around to the rear of the flatbed and removed several large cartons from the rest of the load; the cartons were Clearly not full of granite or Owen would not have been able to lift them off by himself. But he managed this, and brought all the cartons to the step by the back door, where I was sure he was going to ring the bell. I could still hear his voice saying 'I'M SORRY!'-while my head was hidden under Mr. Chicker-ing's warm-up jacket-and as much as I wanted to see Owen, I knew I would burst into tears as soon as he spoke, or as soon as I had to speak to him. And therefore I was relieved when he didn't ring the bell; he left the cartons at the back door and ran quickly to the cab, and Mr. Meany drove the granite truck out of the driveway, still in the very lowest gear. In the cartons were all of Owen's baseball cards, his entire collection. My grandmother was appalled, but for several years she didn't understand Owen or appreciate him; to her, he was 'that boy,' or 'that little guy,' or 'that voice.' I knew the baseball cards were Owen's favorite things, they were what amounted to his treasure-I could instantly identify with how everything connected to the game of baseball had changed for him, as it had changed for me (although I'd never loved the game as Owen had loved it). I knew without speaking to Owen that neither of us would ever play Little League ball again, and that there was some necessary ritual ahead of us both-wherein we would need to throw away our bats and gloves and uniforms, and every stray baseball there was to be found around our houses and yards (except for that baseball, which I suspected Owen had relegated to a museum-piece status). But I needed to talk to Dan Needham about the baseball cards, because they were Owen's most prized possessions -indeed, his only prized possessions-and since my mother's accident had made baseball a game of death, what did Owen want me to do with his baseball cards? Did they merely represent how he was washing his hands of the great American pastime, or did he want me to assuage my grief by indulging in the pleasure I would derive from burning all those baseball cards? On that day, it would have been a pleasure to burn them.
'He wants you to give them back,' Dan Needham said. I knew from the first that my mother had picked a winner when she picked Dan, but it was not until the day after my mother's death that I knew she'd picked a
