rom ashtrays; there's a partially articulated snake skeleton on his desk. I quickly
case the joint for clothes and come up with nothing. The next office belongs to a
woman, J. F. Bettley. On the third try I get lucky. D. W. Fitch has an entire suit
hung neatly on his coat rack, and it pretty much fits me, though it's a bit short in
the arms and legs and wide in the lapels. I wear one of the dinosaur T-shirts
under the jacket. No shoes, but I'm decent. D. W. also keeps an unopened
package of Oreo cookies in his desk, bless him. I appropriate them and leave,
closing the door carefully behind me.
Where was I, when I saw me? I close my eyes and fatigue takes me bodily,
caressing me with her sleepy fingers. I am almost out on my feet, but I catch
myself and it comes to me: a man in silhouette walking toward me backlit by the
museum's front doors. I need to get back to the Great Hall.
When I get there all is quiet and still. I walk across the middle of the floor,
trying to replicate the view of the doors, and then I seat myself near the coat
room, so as to enter stage left. I can hear blood rushing in my head, the air
conditioning system humming, cars whooshing by on Lake Shore Drive. I eat ten
Oreos, slowly, gently prying each one apart, scraping the filling out with my
front teeth, nibbling the chocolate halves to make them last. I have no idea what
time it is, or how long I have to wait. I'm mostly sober now, and reasonably alert.
Time passes, nothing happens. At last: I hear a soft thud, a gasp. Silence. I wait. I
stand up, silently, and pad into the Hall, walking slowly through the light that
slants across the marble floor. I stand in the center of the doors and call out, not
loud: "Henry."
Nothing. Good boy, wary and silent. I try again. "It's okay, Henry. I'm your
guide, I'm here to show you around. It's a special tour. Don't be afraid, Henry."
I hear a slight, oh-so-faint noise. "I brought you a T-shirt, Henry. So you won't
get cold while we look at the exhibits." I can make him out now, standing at the
edge of the darkness. "Here. Catch." I throw it to him, and the shirt disappears,
and then he steps into the light. The T-shirt comes down to his knees. Me at five,
dark spiky hair, moon pale with brown almost Slavic eyes, wiry, coltish. At five I
am happy, cushioned in normality and the arms of my parents. Everything
changed, starting now.
I walk forward slowly, bend toward him, speak softly. "Hello. I'm glad to see
you, Henry. Thank you for coming tonight."
"Where am I? Who are you?" His voice is small and high, and echoes a little
off the cold stone.
"You're in the Field Museum. I have been sent here to show you some things
you can't see during the day. My name is also Henry. Isn't that funny?"
He nods.
"Would you like some cookies? I always like to eat cookies while I look
around museums. It makes it more multi-sensory." I offer him the package of
Oreos. He hesitates, unsure if it's all right, hungry but unsure how many he can
take without being rude. "Take as many as you want. I've already eaten ten, so
you have some catching up to do." He takes three. "Is there anything you'd like
to see first?" He shakes his head. "Tell you what. Let's go up to the third floor;
that's where they keep all the stuff that isn't on display. Okay?"
"Okay."
We walk through darkness, up the stairs. He isn't moving very fast, so I climb
slowly with him.
"Where's Mom?"
"She's at home, sleeping. This is a special tour, only for you, because it's your
birthday. Besides, grown-ups don't do this sort of thing."
"Aren't you a grown-up?"
"I'm an extremely unusual grown-up. My job is to have adventures. So
naturally when I heard that you wanted to come back to the Field Museum right
away, I jumped at the chance to show you around."
"But how did I get here?" He stops at the top of the stairs and looks at me with
total confusion.
"Well, that's a secret. If I tell you, you have to swear not to say anything to
anyone."
"Why?"
"Because they wouldn't believe you. You can tell Mom, or Kimy if you want,
but that's it. Okay?"
"Okay...."
I kneel in front of him, my innocent self, look him in the eyes. "Cross your
heart and hope to die?"
"Uh-huh...."
"Okay. Here's how it is: you time traveled. You were in your bedroom, and all
of a sudden, poof! you are here, and it's a little earlier in the evening, so we have
plenty of time to look at everything before you have to go home." He is silent
and quizzical. "Does that make sense?"
"But...why?"
"Well, I haven't figured that out yet. I'll let you know when I do. In the
meantime, we should be moving along. Cookie?"
He takes one and we walk slowly down the corridor. I decide to experiment.
"Let's try this one." I slide the bookmark along a door marked 306 and open it.
When I flick on the lights there are pumpkin-sized rocks all over the floor, whole
and halved, craggy on the outside and streaked with veins of metal inside. "Ooh,
look, Henry. Meteorites."
"What's meteorites?"
"Rocks that fall from outer space." He looks at me as though I'm from outer
space. "Shall we try another door?" He nods. I close the meteorite room and try
the door across the corridor. This room is full of birds. Birds in simulated flight,
birds perched eternally on branches, bird heads, bird skins. I open one of the
hundreds of drawers; it contains a dozen glass tubes, each holding a tiny gold
and black bird with its name wrapped around a foot. Henry's eyes are the size of
saucers. "Do you want to touch one?"
"Uh-huh."
I remove the cotton wadding from the mouth of a tube and shake a goldfinch
onto my palm. It remains tube-shaped. Henry strokes its small head, lovingly.
"It's sleeping?"
"More or less." He looks at me sharply, distrusting my equivocation. I insert
the finch gently back into the tube, replace the cotton, replace the tube, shut the
drawer. I am so tired. Even the word sleep is a lure, a seduction. I lead the way
out into the hall, and suddenly I recollect what it was I loved about this night
when I was little.
"Hey, Henry. Let's go to the library." He shrugs. I walk, quickly now, and he
runs to keep up. The library is on the third floor, at the east end of the building.
When we get there, I stand for a minute, contemplating the locks. Henry looks at
me, as though to say, Well, that's that. I feel in my pockets, and find the letter
opener. I wiggle the wooden handle off, and lo, there's a nice long thin metal
prong in there. I stick one half of it into the lock and feel around. I can hear the
tumblers springing, and when I'm all the way back I stick in the other half, use
my bookmark on the other lock and presto, Open Sesame!
At last, my companion is suitably impressed. "How'd you do that?"
"It's not that hard. I'll teach you another time. Entrez!" I hold open the door
and he walks in. I flip on the lights and the Reading Room springs into being;
heavy wooden tables and chairs, maroon carpet, forbidding enormous Reference
Desk. The Field Museum's Library is not designed to appeal to five-year-olds. It's
a closed-stacks library, used by scientists and scholars. There are bookcases
lining the room, but they hold mostly leather-bound Victorian science
periodicals. The book I'm after is in a huge glass and oak case by itself in the
center of the room. I spring the lock with my bobby pin and open the glass door.
Really, the Field ought to get more serious about security. I don't feel too terrible
about doing this; after all, I'm a bona fide librarian, I do Show and Tells at the
Newberry all the time. I walk behind the Reference Desk and find a piece of felt
and some support pads, and lay them out on the nearest table. Then I close and
carefully lift the book out of its case and onto the felt. I pull out a chair. "Here,
stand on this so you can see better." He climbs up, and I open the book.
It's Audubon's Birds of America, the deluxe, wonderful double-elephant folio
that's almost as tall as my young self. This copy is the finest in existence, and I
have spent many rainy afternoons admiring it. I open it to the first plate, and
Henry smiles, and looks at me. " 'Common Loon'" he reads. "It looks like a duck."
"Yeah, it does. I bet I can guess your favorite bird."
He shakes his head and smiles.
"What'll you bet?"
He looks down at himself in the T-Rex T-shirt and shrugs. I know the feeling.
"How about this: if I guess you get to eat a cookie, and if I can't guess you get
to eat a cookie?"
He thinks it over and decides this would be a safe bet. I open the book to
Flamingo. Henry laughs.
"Am I right?"
"Yes!"
It's easy to be omniscient when you've done it all before. "Okay, here's your
cookie. And I get one for being right. But we have to save them 'til we're done
looking at the book; we wouldn't want to get crumbs all over the bluebirds,
right?"
"Right!" He sets the Oreo on the arm of the chair and we begin again at the
beginning and page slowly through the birds, so much more alive than the real
thing in glass tubes down the hall.
"Here's a Great Blue Heron. He's really big, bigger than a flamingo. Have you
ever seen a hummingbird? I saw some today!"
"Here in the museum?"
"Uh-huh."
"Wait 'til you see one outside-they're like tiny helicopters, their wings go so
fast you just see a blur...." Turning each page is like making a bed, an enormous
expanse of paper slowly rises up and over. Henry stands attentively, waits each
time for the new wonder, emits small noises of pleasure for each Sandhill Crane,
American Coot, Great Auk, Pileated Woodpecker. When we come to the last
plate, Snow Bunting, he leans down and touches the page, delicately stroking the
engraving. I look at him, look at the book, remember, this book, this moment, the
first book I loved, remember wanting to crawl into it and sleep.
"You tired?"
"Uh-huh."
"Should we go?" Okay.
I close Birds of America, return it to 