Needful Things

“Close your eyes!” Mr. Gaunt invited. “Close your eyes, Brian, and tell me what you feel!”

Brian closed his eyes and stood there for a moment without moving, his right arm held out, the fist at the end of it enclosing the splinter. He did not see Mr. Gaunt’s upper lip lift, doglike, over his large, crooked teeth for a moment in what might have been a grimace of pleasure or anticipation. He had a vague sensation of movement-a corkscrewing kind of movement. A sound, quick and light: thudthud… thudthud. thudthud. He knew that sound.

It was"A boat!” he cried, delighted, without opening his eyes.

“I feel like I’m on a boat!”

“Do you indeed,” Mr. Gaunt said, and to Brian’s ears he sounded impossibly distant.

The sensations intensified; now he felt as if he were going up and down across long, slow waves. He could hear the distant cry of birds, and, closer, the sounds of many animals-cows lowing, roosters crowing, the low, snarling cry of a very big cat-not a sound of rage but an expression of boredom. In that one second he could almost feel wood (the wood of which this splinter had once been a part, he was sure) under his feet, and knew that the feet themselves were not wearing Converse sneakers but some sort of sandals, andThen it was going, dwindling to a tiny bright point, like the light of a TV screen when the power cuts out, and then it was gone. He opened his eyes, shaken and exhilarated.

His hand had curled into such a tight fist around the splinter that he actually had to will his fingers to open, and the joints creaked like rusty door-hinges.

“Hey, boy,” he said softly.

“Neat, isn’t it?” Mr. Gaunt asked cheerily, and plucked the splinter from Brian’s palm with the absent skill of a doctor drawing a splinter from flesh. He returned it to its place and re-locked the cabinet with a flourish.

“Neat,” Brian agreed in a long outrush of breath which was almost a sigh. He bent to look at the splinter. His hand still tingled a little where he had held it. Those feelings: the uptilt and downslant of the deck, the thudding of the waves on the hull, the feel of the wood under his feet… those things lingered with him, although he guessed (with a feeling of real sorrow) that they would pass, as dreams pass.

“Are you familiar with the story of Noah and the Ark?” Mr. Gaunt inquired.

Brian frowned. He was pretty sure it was a Bible story, but he had a tendency to zone out during Sunday sermons and Thursday night Bible classes. “Was that like a boat that went around the world in eighty days?” he asked.

Mr. Gaunt gri

Of course I can’t say it is from Noah’s Ark, because people would think I was the most outrageous sort of fake. There must be four thousand people in the world today trying to sell pieces of wood which they claim to be from Noah’s Ark-and probably four hundred thousand trying to peddle pieces of the One True Cross-but I can say it’s over two thousand years old, because it’s been carbon-dated, and I can say it came from the Holy Land, although it was found not on Mount Ararat, but on Mount Boram.”

Most of this was lost on Brian, but the most salient fact was not.

“Two thousand years,” he breathed. “Wow! You’re really sure?”

“I am indeed,” Mr. Gaunt said. “I have a certificate from M.I.T where it was carbon-dated, and that goes with the item, of course.

But, you know, I really believe it might be from the Ark.” He looked at the splinter speculatively for a moment, and then raised his dazzling blue eyes to Brian’s hazel ones. Brian was again transfixed by that gaze. “After all, Mount Boram is less than thirty kilometers, as the crow flies, from Mount Ararat, and greater mistakes than the final resting place of a boat, even a big one, have been made in the many histories of the world, especially when stories are handed down from mouth to ear for generations before they are finally committed to paper. Am I right?”

“Yeah,” Brian said. “Sounds logical.”

“And, besides-it produces an odd sensation when it’s held.

Wouldn’t you say so?”

“I guess!”

Mr. Gaunt smiled and ruffled the boy’s hair, breaking the spell.

“I like you, Brian. I wish all my customers could be as full of wonder as you are. Life would be much easier for a humble tradesman such as myself if that were the way of the world.”

“How much… how much would you sell something like that for?”

Brian asked. He pointed toward the splinter with a finger which was not quite steady. He was only now begi

Gaunt did not offer.

“Oh now,” Mr. Gaunt said, steepling his fingers below his chin and looking at Brian roguishly. “With an item like that-and with most of the good things I sell, the really interesting things-that would depend on the buyer. What the buyer would be willing to pay. What would you be willing to pay, Brian?”

“I don’t know,” Brian said, thinking of the ninety-one cents in his pocket, and then gulped: “A lot!”

Mr. Gaunt threw back his head and laughed heartily. Brian noticed when he did that he’d made a mistake about the man. When he first came in, he had thought Mr. Gaunt’s hair was gray. Now he saw that it was only silver at the temples. He must have been standing in one of the spotlights, Brian thought.

“Well, this has been terribly interesting, Brian, but I really do have a lot of work ahead of me before ten tomorrow, and so-”

“Sure,” Bran said, startled back into a consideration of good ma

“No, no, no! You misunderstand me!” Mr. Gaunt laid one of his long hands on Brian’s arm. Brian pulled his arm away. He hoped the gesture didn’t seem impolite, but he couldn’t help it even if it did.

Mr. Gaunt’s hand was hard and dry and somehow unpleasant.

It did not feel that different, in fact, from the chunk of petrified wood that was supposed to be from Nora’s Ark, or whatever it was.

But Mr. Gaunt was too much in earnest to notice Brian’s instinctive shrinking away. He acted as if he, not Brian, had committed a breach of etiquette. “I just thought we should get down to business. There’s no sense, really, in your looking at the few other things I’ve managed to unpack; there aren’t very many of them, and you’ve seen the most interesting of those which are out. Yet I have a pretty good knowledge of my own stock, even without an inventory sheet in my hand, and I might have something that you’d fancy, Brian. What would you fancy?”

“Jeepers,” Brian said. There were a thousand things he would fancy, and that was part of the problem-when the question was put as baldly as that, he couldn’t say just which of the thousand he would fancy the most.

“It’s best not to think too deeply about these things,” Mr. Gaunt said. He spoke idly, but there was nothing idle about his eyes, which were studying Brian’s face closely. “When I say, ’Brian Rusk, what do you want more than anything else in the world at this moment?’ what is your response? Quick!”

“Sandy Koufax,” Brian responded promptly. He had not been aware that his palm was open to receive the splinter from Nora’s Ark until he had seen it resting there, and he hadn’t been aware of what he was going to say in response to Mr. Gaunt’s question until he heard the words tumbling from his mouth. But the moment he heard them he knew they were exactly and completely right.