The Eternal Wonder

  “Why?” he had asked.

  His father had laughed. “Why indeed! He’s right—and quite self-sufficient.”

  Now he did not pause in the schoolyard with the other children. Some of them he knew, but he had no playmates. He tired of them quickly when they came into his home yard and he preferred a book to games. Now and then his mother protested.

  “Rannie, you ought to play with the other children.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “It would be fun,” she said.

  “I have fun by myself,” he said. “Besides, what they think is fun isn’t fun for me.”

  So now he walked straight into the schoolhouse and asked a man where the first-grade room was. The man looked at him, a gray-haired man—with a young face.

  “You’re Professor Colfax’s son, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rannie said.

  “I’ve heard about you. I was a classmate of his once—before you were born. I’m Jonathan Parker, your principal. Come with me. I’ll introduce you.”

  He put a hand on Rannie’s shoulder and led him down the hall and around a corner and stopped at the first door to the right.

  “Here we are. This is your room. Your teacher is Martha Downes—Miss Downes. She’s a good teacher. Miss Downes, this is Randolph Colfax—Rannie for short.”

  “How do you do, Miss Downes?” Rannie said.

  He looked into a lined, spectacled face, kind but unsmiling.

  “I’ve been expecting you, Rannie,” she said. They shook hands.

  “Your seat is there by the window. Jackie Blaine is on one side of you, Ruthie Greene on the other. Do you know them?”

  “Not yet,” Rannie said.

  The bell rang at this moment and children came tumbling into the halls. Most of the first graders had mothers with them, and some of the little girls cried when their mothers left them. Ruthie was one of these. He leaned toward her.

  “Don’t cry,” he told her. “You’ll have a good time learning things.”

  “I don’t want to learn things,” she sobbed. “I want to go home.”

  “I’ll take you home after school,” he told her. “Unless you came in a bus.”

  She wiped her eyes on the edge of her pink gingham skirt. “I didn’t come in a bus. I walked here with my mother.”

  “Then I’ll walk back with you,” he promised.

  On the whole, however, the day was disappointing. He learned nothing new, since he already knew how to read. He read through his first reader while Miss Downes was explaining letters and their sounds on the blackboard. He enjoyed the half hour of crayon work, for he devised a wheel-driven engine he had been thinking about to set in a dam he was building in the small brook that ran through the half-acre lot behind his home.

  “What is that?” Miss Downes asked, examining it through the lower half of her spectacles.

  “It’s a water-powered engine,” he replied. “I haven’t finished it yet.”

  “What’s the use of it?” she asked.

  “It will keep the fish in the pool on the upper side. See, when they swim down, this wing will stop them.”

  “What if they swim up?” she asked.

  “The wing will help them—like this.”

  She looked at him with shrewd, kind eyes. “You don’t belong here,” she told him.

  “Where do I belong?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said almost sadly. “I doubt anyone will ever know.”

  HE PUT THIS REPLY into his mind as she passed on to the next desk, intending to ask his father what she meant, but the day ended in such turmoil that he never thought of it again. True to his promise, he waited for Ruthie and hand in hand the two of them walked up the street in the direction opposite that of his home. He heard some giggling among the other children but he paid no heed to it. Ruthie, however, seemed disturbed—indeed, almost angry.

  “They’re silly,” she muttered.

  “Then why do you care?” he asked.

  “They think you’re in love with me,” she went on.

  He considered this. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Because I’m a girl,” she explained.

  “You are a girl,” he said. “That is, you are a girl if you don’t have a penis. My father told me so.”

  “What’s a penis?” she asked, her brown eyes large and innocent.

  “It’s what I have. I’ll show—if you’d like to see it.”

  “I’ve never seen one,” she said with interest.

  They were walking in the shade of one of the huge old elms that lined the street. He paused and, putting down his books, he opened his fly and showed the small limp penis hanging beneath his stomach.

  She was fascinated. “It’s cute,” she said, “so tiny! What do you use it for?”

  “It’s a planter,” he told her, and was about to explain further when she surprised him by pulling up her short skirt.

  “Want to see me?” she asked in all kindness.

  “Yes,” he said. “I haven’t seen a girl.”

  She pulled down her small pants and he knelt in the grass, the better to examine the new sight.

  He saw two soft pale lips, enclosing a pink opening that scarcely showed itself except for a rosy tip, smaller than the tip of Ruthie’s little finger. It might have been a penis but it was absurdly small. Perhaps it was just for pretty, but it looked like the bud of a rose, a miniature rose such as his mother grew in her rose beds.

  “Now I know,” he exclaimed. He rose and, drawing up his zipper, he took his book bag, and they sauntered on, oblivious to the occasional passerby.

  To his surprise, when they reached Ruthie’s house, a modest two-story building on the edge of town, her mother was waiting at the gate. Her face was far from pleasant, although she was a pretty woman.

  “Rannie Colfax,” she said severely. “You are a bad, bad boy. Ruthie, go in the house and wait for me. Don’t ever speak to Rannie again!”

  He was shocked and amazed. “But I was only walking Ruthie home—she was afraid.”

  “Don’t tell me what you were doing! I know—I’ve already been told by half the people in town. Go home at once. Your parents are waiting for you.”

  He turned and walked homeward in the same state of shock and amazement. What had he done?

  RUTHER’S MOTHER WAS RIGHT. His parents were waiting for him when he came to the door of the living room. His mother was in her rocking chair, knitting very fast on a red sweater she was making for him.

  “You handle this,” she said to his father.

  She rose then and crossed the room to where he stood in the doorway, kissed his cheek and went away upstairs.

  “Come here son,” his father said.

  He was sitting in the old leather armchair that had once belonged to his own father. How often he had been called to appear before him to answer stern, ministerial questions! The memory of his childish terror softened his heart now toward his own son.

  Rannie drew near and stood waiting, his heart beating hard in his bosom. What had happened? What had he done?

  “Push that hassock over here close to me, son, and let’s get at the truth of all this,” his father said. “Remember, it’s you I shall believe. Whatever happened, I know you’ll tell me the truth.”

  Rannie’s heart calmed. He drew the crewelwork hassock close to his father’s knees and sat down.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Papa, because nothing happened.”

  “Maybe it seemed nothing to you, son, but Ruthie’s mother said you pulled up her skirts and—”

  He was instantly relieved. “Oh that? Why, she’d never seen a penis, she didn’t even know what it was, so I showed her mine. Then she said she’d show me, too, so she pulled up her skirt to show me. It’s very different, Papa. You
’d be surprised. It’s sort of like a mouth, only it’s not red, except for a tiny pink tip showing like the tip of your tongue. That’s all there was.”

  “Did people pass by?”

  “I didn’t see them, Papa.”

  “Well, it seems they did see you and they told Ruthie’s mother.”

  “Told her what?”

  “That you were inspecting each other.”

  “But how else were we to know, Papa?”

  His father frowned. “You’re right, of course, Rannie. How else were you to know? I see absolutely nothing wrong in learning the truth about anything. The trouble is that most people don’t agree with you and me. Now, I’m glad you’ve seen how Ruthie is shaped and if I were Ruthie’s father—or mother—I’d be glad she had the opportunity to see how a boy is shaped. The sooner one knows the truth about anything and everything, the better for all concerned. But some people think there’s sin in sex.”

  “What’s sex, Papa?”

  “It’s another word for what I told you about—the seed-planting, you know, for a human child, which takes place between a man and woman. Ruthie’s mother thought you and Ruthie were doing something like that, and since you’re both only children, she thought it was wrong. I suppose in a way she was right, because there’s time for everything and you haven’t come to the time, nor has Ruthie.”

  “How will we know when we come to the time?”

  “Your own body will tell you. For now, I’d be glad you know what you know about it, and go on to learn other things you don’t know, of which there are plenty. The world is full of things you don’t know. I’m going to buy an encyclopedia. It’s better than a dictionary.”

  “Does it tell about everything?” Rannie inquired. In the possibility of such joy he forgot Ruthie and her mother.

  “Just about everything,” his father said, “and I smell something like cookies baking in the oven.”

  He rose and they walked to the kitchen, his hand on Rannie’s shoulder. At the door he stopped.

  “Just one thing—you did no wrong. If anyone says you did, or acts as if you did, send him—or her—to me.”

  “Yes, Papa,” Rannie said.

  But he paid little heed to what his father had said. The fragrance of cinnamon cookies made him ravenous and his mouth was watering.

  THE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL was another disappointing day, exactly as yesterday had been. Ruthie’s seat had been changed to the other side of the room and a dark-haired boy, large for his age, named Mark, had been substituted. There was no importance to this, for he, Rannie, had forgotten about Ruthie. The disappointment lay in the fact, more and more obvious as the day went on, that he was not learning anything. He had already read through the first-grade reader, he had long past lost interest in crayon work, and the few books on a shelf were, he considered after he examined them, books for babies. The story Miss Downes read to the class was also for babies—something about bluebirds in the spring.

  “Aren’t you interested in this nice story, Rannie?” Miss Downes asked.

  He had been drawing a geometric design of intertwined triangles while she read. He looked up from his paper, pencil in hand.

  “No, Miss Downes,” he said.

  She looked at him hard for a few seconds, puzzled as he could see, and he felt it necessary to explain.

  “I used to read stories like that when I first learned to read.”

  “When was that?” she asked.

  “I can’t remember when it was,” he replied. But he put down the pencil, feeling it would be impolite to continue, and she went on with her reading.

  At recess, to which he looked forward, he found himself isolated. Ruthie did not speak to him and he stood apart, watching the other children. He felt no shyness, only curiosity and interest. Squabbling took place over the swings, until a biggish boy, whose name was Chris, took leadership by appropriating the highest swing for himself. Then, noticing Rannie, he shouted.

  “Want a turn?”

  He had no desire for a swing, since he had one at home, but a vague desire for companionship made him nod his head. He took his turn and then, about to stand apart again, he found Chris at his side.

  “Want to race to the gate—see who’s first?”

  “All right,” he said courteously.

  They raced, coming to the finish in a tie.

  “You run real good,” Chris said. “I can beat the rest of these babies. Say, I hear Ruthie showed herself to you!” Chris was from a higher grade than Rannie but it seemed that the news of his quest for knowing about girls was everywhere in the small school.

  He stared blankly at Chris. “I don’t understand what’s so interesting about that.”

  “Oh, come on,” Chris said.

  He had no answer for this, for he had no interest in Ruthie now. Chris continued. “Know how kids get made?”

  “Yes, my father told me,” he said.

  Chris stared at him. “Your old man told you?”

  “Yes—my father,” he said.

  “Gosh, he must have a dirty mind,” Chris said with contempt.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, surprised and inclined to anger.

  The bell rang at that instant, and conversation was cut off. He went back to his seat, thoughtful and vaguely angry. He liked Chris, he liked his brusqueness, his force, even his roughness. In spite of a vague anger he decided to be friends with this boy, if he could. And he decided too that he would not tell his father what Chris had said.

  IT WAS BECAUSE OF CHRIS that he did not complain to his parents about the stupidity of school. He raced off to school early every morning so that he and Chris could have half an hour of intense play before school began. Recess was the reward in the middle of the morning and they ate their lunches together. Unfortunately, Chris lived at the far end of town and his bus took them away from each other at the end of school, but this was compensated for, in Rannie’s case, by the arrival of the encyclopedia, twenty-four volumes, all bound in dark blue with gold lettering. Immediately after he came home from school and after a sandwich and a glass of milk and a piece of pie or cake or some cookies in the kitchen with his mother, he read the encyclopedia, page after page, volume after volume. It was incredibly exciting, one subject after another, explained briefly but clearly, telling him things he had not known existed. He read until nightfall and his father came home. There were words he had to look up in the dictionary, of course, many of them, for his parents were relentless in their determination regarding the dictionary. He must find his own meanings.

  “Never ask someone to do what you can do for yourself,” his mother sermonized.

  “I’ll improve on that,” his father said. “Never let anyone do something for you that you enjoy doing for yourself.”

  “Is that what you do?” she demanded.

  “As far as life permits,” he replied.

  Rannie listened. The conversation between his parents interested him—indeed, fascinated him. It was always above his head, sometimes only slightly, but he had to stretch his mind. They never simplified themselves for him. Though they included him in everything they did, he was aware that somehow, somewhere, they were alone together, the two of them. On the subject of parents he and Chris disagreed totally.

  “Parents are nuts,” Chris said flatly.

  “Mine aren’t,” Rannie said.

  “Always hollerin’ about somepin.”

  “Not mine!”

  The disagreement was such that they became secretly curious about each other’s parents. Thus, one Saturday, Chris accepted an invitation to inspect Rannie’s parents by coming to skate on the frozen swimming pool in the backyard. Rannie had introduced Chris to his mother as she was making a weekend cake in the kitchen and he had been pleased to find that Chris was impressed by her blond good looks.

  “She’s pr
etty, all right,” he agreed. “Where’s your old man?”

  Rannie had learned to understand Chris’s language without using it. “He’s in the study, writing a book. We don’t bother him until he opens the door himself.”

  “Writing a book?” Chris asked incredulously.

  “Yes—on the science of art.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s what he’s writing about.”

  “Sure—but what does it mean?”

  “He believes that art is based on certain scientific principles.”

  “Oh, come on—what does that mean?”

  “I don’t know altogether—until he’s finished the book and I can read it.”

  “You read books?”

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  “No. I hate readin’.”

  “Then how do you know anything?”

  “How do you mean know anything? I ast somebody, if I want to know—like how do you go out west. I’m goin’ to have a ranch out west when I grow up—say, ten, ’leven years from now. Come on—let’s skate.”

  They skated and noon arrived before they thought it possible except that they were starving.

  “Luncheon waits!” his mother sang out of the kitchen door.

  So, their skates off and their ears scarlet with cold, they went into the dining room and found Rannie’s father waiting behind his chair.

  “Papa, this is Chris,” Rannie said.

  “Chris, I’m happy to meet you,” his father said.

  “You haven’t washed, Rannie,” his mother reminded him.

  They went to the downstairs powder room, Rannie leading and Chris obviously impressed.

  “Your ole man looks swell,” Chris said. “Clean and all—like Sunday. Mine works in a garage—it’s his garage. I’m gonna work there when I’m old enough. I work now in summer on the days I feel like it. But I’m gonna work every day when I’m sixteen and Pop’ll pay me good money—he says so. He’s okay if he isn’t mad about somepin. Anyways, he don’t drink. Ma’s glad of that.”

  In spite of every effort on the part of his parents, however, Chris was completely silent during the meal, and immediately afterward declared that he must go home.