Free A prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving Page B

with the aid of only a flashlight. No matter how
many times we had seen the armadillo, to come upon it in the black closet-to
suddenly light up its insane, violent face-was always frightening. Every time
the finder found it, he would yell. Owen's yelling would occasionally produce
my grandmother, who would not willingly mount the rickety staircase to the
attic and struggle with the attic's trapdoor. She would stand at the foot of
the staircase and say, "Not so loud, you boys!"
        And she would
sometimes add that we were to be careful with the ancient sewing machine, and
with Grandfather's clothes-because she might want to sell them, someday.
"That sewing machine is an antique, you know!" Well, almost
everything at  Front Street was an antique, and almost none of it-Owen and
I knew perfectly well-would ever be sold; not, at least, while my grandmother
was alive. She liked her antiques, as was evidenced by the growing number of
chairs and couches in the living room that no one was allowed to sit on. As for
the discards in the attic, Owen and I knew they were safe forever. And
searching among those relics for the terrifying armadillo . . . which itself
looked like some relic of the animal world, some throwback to an age when men
were taking a risk every time they left the cave . . . hunting for that stuffed
beast among the artifacts of my grandmother's culture was one of Owen Meany's
favorite games.
    "I CAN'T FIND IT," he would call out from the closet.
"I HOPE YOU DIDN'T PUT IT IN THE SHOES, BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO STEP ON IT
BEFORE I SEE IT. AND I HOPE YOU DIDN'T PUT IT ON THE TOP SHELF BECAUSE I DON'T
LIKE TO HAVE IT ABOVE ME-I HATE TO SEE IT LOOKING DOWN AT ME. AND IT'S NO FAIR
PUTTING IT WHERE IT WILL FALL DOWN IF I JUST TOUCH SOMETHING, BECAUSE THAT'S
TOO SCARY. AND WHEN IT'S INSIDE THE SLEEVES, I CAN'T FIND FT WITHOUT REACHING
INSIDE FOR IT-THAT'S NO FAIR, EITHER."
    "Just shut up and find it, Owen," I would say.
    "NO FAIR PUTTING IT IN THE HATBOXES," Owen would say,
while I listened to him stumbling over the shoes inside the closet. "AND
NO FAIR WHEN IT SPRINGS OUT AT ME BECAUSE YOU STRETCH THE SUSPENDERS IN THAT
WAY . . . AAAAAAHHHHHH! THAT'S NO FAIR!"
    Before Dan Needham brought anything as exotic as that armadillo
or himself into my life, my expectations regarding anything unusual were
reserved for Owen Meany, and for school holidays and portions of my summer
vacation when my mother and I would travel "up north" to visit Aunt
Martha and her family. To anyone in coastal New Hampshire, "up north"
could mean almost anywhere else in the state, but Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred
lived in the White Mountains, in what everyone called "the north
country," and when they or my cousins said they were going "up
north," they meant a relatively short drive to any of several towns that
were a little north of them-to Bartlett or to Jackson, up where the real skiing
was. And in the summers, Loveless Lake, where we went to swim, was also
"up north" from where the Eastmans lived-in Sawyer Depot. It was the
last train station on the Boston & Maine before North Conway, where most of
the skiers got off. Every Christmas vacation and Easter, my mother and I, and
our skis, departed the train in Sawyer Depot; from the depot itself, we could
walk to the Eastmans' house. In the summer, when we visited at least once, it
was an even easier walk-without our skis. Those train rides-at least two hours
from Gravesend-were the most concrete occasions I was given in which to imagine
my mother riding the Boston & Maine in the other direction -south, to
Boston, where I almost never went. But the passengers traveling north, I always
believed, were very different types from the citybound travelers-skiers,
hikers, mountain-lake swimmers: these were not men and women seeking trysts, or
keeping assignations. The ritual of those train rides north is unforgettable to
me, although I remember nothing of the equal