mother had waved to in the stands. Why not at the baseball games themselves? you might wonder. Why not observe the actual fans in the actual bleachers? People tend to take the same seats. But at Dan's theater I had an advantage; I could watch the audience unseen-and I would not be drawing attention to myself by putting myself between the field of play and them. Backstage, and all that this implies, is invisible. You can see more in faces that can't see you. If I was looking for my father, shouldn't I look for him unobserved?
' 'Spirit!' ' said Scrooge to the Ghost of Christinas Past. ' 'Remove me from this place.' '
And I watched Mr. Arthur Dowling watching his wife, who said: ' 'I told you these were shadows of the things that had been. That they are what they are,' ' Amanda Dowling said, ' 'do not blame me!' ' I watched my fellow townspeople snicker-all but Mr. Arthur Dowling, who remained seriously impressed by the reversed sexual role he saw before him. That the Dowlings' 'took turns' at The Gravesend Players-
that they never took roles in the same play-was a great source of mirth to Dan, who enjoyed joking with Mr. Fish.
'I wonder if the Dowlings 'take turns' sexually ' Dan would say.
'It's most unpleasant to imagine,' Mr. Fish would say. What daydreams I accomplished backstage on Christmas Eve! How I fed myself memories from the faces of my fellow townspeople! When Mr. Fish asked the Ghost of Christmas Present if the poor, wretched children were his, the Spirit told him, ' 'They are Man's.' ' How proud Mrs. Kenmore was of Mr. Kenmore, the butcher; how the rheumatic heart of their son Donny jumped for joy to see his father with words instead of meat at his fingertips! ' 'This boy is Ignorance,' ' the butcher said. ' 'This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be encased.' ' He meant ' 'erased' '; but Mr. Kenmore was probably thinking of sausages. On the trusting faces of my fellow townspeople there was no more awareness of Mr. Kenmore's error than Mr. Kenmore himself possessed; of the faces I surveyed, only Harriet Wheelwright-who had seen almost as many versions of A Christmas Carol as Dan Needham had directed-winced to hear the butcher butcher his line. My grandmother, a born critic, briefly closed her eyes and sighed. Such was my interest in the audience, I did not turn to face the stage until Owen Meany made his appearance. I did not need to see him to know he was there. A hush fell over the audience. The faces of my fellow townspeople-so amused, so curious, so various-were rendered shockingly similar; each face became the model of each other's fear. Even my grandmother-so detached, so superior-drew her fur closer around her shoulders and shivered: an apparent draft had touched the necks of my fellow townspeople; the shiver that passed through my grandmother appeared to pass through them all. Donny Kenmore clutched his rheumatic heart; Maureen Early, determined not to pee in her pants again, shut her eyes. The look of dread upon the face of Mr. Arthur Dowling surpassed even his interest in sexual role-reversal-for neither the sex nor the identity of Owen Meany was clear; what was clear was that he was a ghost.
' 'Ghost of the Future!' ' Mr. Fish exclaimed. ' 'I fear you more than any specter I have seen.' ' To observe the terror upon my fellow towns-people's faces was entirely convincing; it was obvious that they agreed with Mr. Fish's assessment of this ghost's fearful qualities. ' 'Will you not speak to me?' ' Scrooge pleaded. Owen coughed. It was not, as Dan had hoped, a 'humanizing' sound; it was a rattle so deep, and so deeply associated with death, that the audience was startled-people twitched in their seats; Maureen Early, abandoning all hope of containing her urine, opened her eyes wide and stared at the source of such an unearthly bark. That was when I turned to look at him, too-at the instant his baby-powdered hand shot out of the black folds of his cowl, and he pointed. A fever chill sent a spasm down his trembling arm, and his hand responded to the jolt as to electricity. Mr. Fish flinched.
' 'Lead on!' ' cried Scrooge. ' 'Lead on!' ' Gliding across the stage, Owen Meany led him. But the future was never quite clear enough for Scrooge to see it-until, at last, they came to the churchyard. 'A worthy place!' Dickens called it ... 'overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life; choked up with too much burying, fat with repleted appetite.'
' 'Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,' ' Scrooge began to say. Among the papier-mache gravestones, where Mr. Fish was standing, one stone loomed larger than the others; it was this stone that Owen pointed to-again and again, he pointed and pointed. So that Mr. Fish would stop stalling-and get to the part where he reads his own name on that grave-Owen stepped closer to the gravestone himself. Scrooge began to babble.
' 'Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But,' ' Mr. Fish said to Owen, ' 'if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!' '
Owen Meany, not moved to speak, bent over the gravestone; appearing to read the name he saw there to himself, he directly fainted.
'' Owen!'' Mr .Fish said crossly, but Owen was as committed to not answering as the Ghost of the Future. 'Owen?' Mr. Fish asked, more sympathetically; the audience appeared to sympathize with Mr. Fish's reluctance to touch the slumped, hooded figure. It would be just like Owen, I thought, to regain consciousness by jumping to his feet and screaming; this was exactly
what Owen did-before Dan Needham could call for the curtain. Mr. Fish fell over what was meant to be his grave, and the sheer terror in Owen's cry was matched by a corresponding terror in the
