The Eternal Wonder

  “I got chores to do,” he explained abruptly.

  THAT NIGHT HIS PARENTS CAME as near to a quarrel as he had ever heard. He was working on the water-powered engine, a project that had now progressed beyond the drawing he had finished in school. He had worked on it only intermittently in school, for he had learned even in his brief experience with himself that there were periods when he must allow his brain to rest by putting it to other matters. If he allowed it to puzzle too long over an invention or task, then there would come a moment when it simply refused to clarify a difficulty that must of course be clarified. Every puzzlement must be clarified. What he was working on now were the angles of the paddles or wings of the wheel. Each must be slightly different from the other, yet exactly in the right relationship to every other. It was in this moment of delicate adjustment that he heard his father’s voice infused with unwonted irritation.

  “But Susan, the boy is learning nothing in this school!”

  His mother replied with equal vigor. “He’s learning how to live with people of his own age!”

  “Susan, you don’t realize our responsibility for a brain like his!”

  “I don’t want him to grow up lonely!” Her voice broke, as though she were trying not to cry.

  “But he will always be lonely—you must accept the fact!”

  “On certain levels I do accept it, but not on every level. He must be able to live with other people, enjoying other people even if they can’t be on his level. He must have some relief from himself.”

  “He can never have relief from himself. A few hours—no, not even that. In fact, he will never be as lonely as he will be with other people.”

  “Oh, why do you say that? You break my heart.”

  “Well, it stands to reason—it’s when he is with other people that he will feel his difference most keenly.”

  “Darling, what shall we do?”

  “Teach him to accept himself. He’s a loner. We know it. He must know it—and learn that he has joys and resources that ordinary people can never know. He’ll know wonder as long as he lives—think what endless joy that will be! Always the reaching mind, always the searching curiosity! Don’t feel sorry for our son, Susan, my love. Rejoice, that unto us such a son is born! Our responsibility is to see that he fulfills himself, that he is not wasted. He must be allowed to proceed at his own top speed. No, Susan, I insist—we have to find the right school, the right teachers, even if we have to make it. Miss Downes knows it, bless her. She’s miserable at not being able to devote herself to him. That’s why she told you he should be in the sixth or seventh grade. I say he shouldn’t be in any grade but his own. He must go at his own speed. It’s our responsibility to see that he has his freedom.”

  THE NEXT AUTUMN HE FOUND HIMSELF in a new school in the same town, a small new school whose principal and teacher was his own father. There were other pupils, three girls and four boys. He did not know any of them. Five of them came from neighboring towns, two boys were from his own town, their fathers professors in science. The schoolroom was a large attic above the college gymnasium. The four walls were filled with shelves of books, except for the dormer windows. The building was so high that these windows looked out on treetops, and he had the feeling of being on a mountain. There was no schedule of studies. Sometime during the day his father introduced a subject, mathematics or science or literature. He read to them, up to a point, and then, posing a problem, he left it to them to solve. They could search among the books unguided or ask for guidance if they liked. Almost always the boys searched unguided. Almost always the girls asked for guidance.

  “Not because the girls are inferior,” his father told his mother one evening. “It is only because they think they are inferior.”

  “Or are afraid they are,” his mother said.

  “Same thing?”

  “Not at all—if they’re only afraid, they still have hope.”

  No one mentioned grades, no one spoke of marks. He himself grew interested in Latin because of his absorption with words, and was soon reading Virgil with relish. One language led to another and then his father introduced new teachers, a French woman, an aging Italian singer whose voice had cracked, the Spanish professor who was the head of the foreign language department in the college.

  His father drew upon the college faculty for all their teachers. New pupils came from other parts of the country, until they reached the limit of twenty.

  His father seemed to exert no pressure upon his pupils, but if a pupil lagged in curiosity or concentration he paid particular heed to that one for a matter of weeks until curiosity awakened again. If it did not, the pupil was returned to where he came from.

  “Why did you send Brad back to New York, Father?”

  “Talent isn’t enough, brains aren’t enough,” his father replied. “There has to be the hunger and thirst to know that involves energy and perseverance. I try to rouse the desire to know. If I fail, then I send the child home to his parents.”

  “You’re experimenting with these children,” his mother observed somewhat coldly.

  “It’s an experiment,” his father agreed. “But I am not making it. I am only discovering what is there—or not there. I am sorting.”

  HE WAS TWELVE when he was ready for college entrance examinations and he passed them with ease.

  “Now,” his father said, “you are ready to see the world for yourself. I’ve been saving for years for this day. Your mother, you, and I are going on a long, long journey. We may be gone for several years. Then, perhaps at sixteen, you’ll go to college. I don’t know. You may not want to go.”

  Alas, the long, long journey with his father and mother was never to take place. Instead his father took an entirely different journey with them—a lonely journey into death. It began so slowly that none of them noticed its beginning.

  “You are working too hard,” his mother said to his father one day in June. They were to go abroad in July.

  “I’ll rest a week or two after school closes,” his father replied.

  He remembered his father always as tall and thin, and he had scarcely noticed his suddenly excessive thinness. Now he looked at his father. As usually they did after their evening meal, they sat on the cool side porch, facing the lawn enclosed by a hedge high enough to shield them from the street. His father lay outstretched on a long chair. Nothing more was said. They sat listening to the music from the stereo in the living room. But he was to remember that evening forever, because, after his mother had spoken, he examined his father’s face as he leaned back in his chair, the eyes closed, the lips pale, the cheeks hollowed. He observed a certain fragility that had not been a part of his father’s natural appearance. That night he went to bed anxious, and he drew his mother aside. “Is my father sick?” he asked.

  “He’s going to the hospital the day after school closes and have a thorough checkup,” his mother said, and she pursed her lips together firmly.

  He hesitated, noticing everything without knowing, as he always did, the shape of his mother’s lips, the upper one bowed, the lower full, a beautiful mouth. And at the same moment the environment impressed itself upon his senses, the open windows and the triangled leaves of the sycamore trees stirring in the breeze, the picture upon the wall over the mantelpiece of soft green hills, a winding country road, a stone wall, a house and barn, and over it all the mistiness of early spring. spring at woodstock­, the top of the frame read. Woodstock, Vermont, was his mother’s hometown, and the picture, she always said, kept her from being homesick here in Ohio. But there seemed nothing more to say, and he went on his way to his room and bed.

  All during the long summer he lived a double life, his own and his father’s. His own was troublesome enough, for at twelve he was large for his age and he seemed strange to himself, his feelings strange and new, his body changing, growing so fast that clothes he wore easily enough one day were
too small for him a month later. His emotions quickened, whether because he knew now that his father was dying, or because his body was taking on a life of its own, his muscles strengthening, his whole being impatient for what he could not define, his penis enlarging and making its own demands on him as though it were some sort of separate being with a life separate from himself, a querulous creature whose demands he did not know how to satisfy.

  His father’s weakening hold on life made him unwilling, almost ashamed, to inquire why his own life was burgeoning, and his mother, he reasoned, would not be able to understand. It was then that he thought of Chris, that early friend whom he had scarcely seen in the intervening years. Not since he had stopped going to public school had he seen Chris, except occasionally on the street. He had learned that Chris had dropped out of school and was working at his father’s gas station at South End.

  South End was the opposite side of town and there was nothing to bring them together. He knew now that he and Chris belonged to different worlds, as far apart as different planets, even. He knew this and yet the knowledge made him desperate with loneliness.

  The knowledge, also, that his father was dying added even more to his loneliness.

  Inside his father’s gaunt frame there grew a cancer, a creature insensate and mindless, yet with a life of its own. It fed upon his father’s flesh and bones, it sucked his father’s life away, it spread its crablike tentacles farther and farther into his father’s frame until his father was the appendage and the thing the creature. His father became an image of pain, drowsy with drugs, drawing one slow breath after another until each seemed it must be the last.

  And all this time the summer went on its luxuriant way, the corn growing tall, the wheat ripe, the hay cut.

  “Two months—maybe,” the doctor said.

  Two months—an endless time to endure, yet too swift, and his father was already out of his reach. A faint smile when he came into his father’s room, the skeleton hand reaching and clinging for a moment and then loosening, the eyes half-closed and glazed with pain, and this was all he knew now of his father. He was wildly restless, angry, rebellious, and there were times when he wept, alone and helpless.

  ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON the house grew intolerable. His mother was relieving the nurse they had now to employ and the house was empty. He could not read in the tensity of waiting and yet waiting with unutterable dread for his father’s last fluttering breath. One month of the two had passed and this last month was eternity. Everything was changed. His mother was far away, wrapped in her own stern solitude of sorrow. All the people they knew—his parents’ friends, his schoolmates, everyone—were infinitely far away. He needed to see someone who knew nothing of what he was suffering, who would not ask him how his father was. He needed youth and health and life and in impetuous desperation he set forth to find it. He set out to find Chris.

  “THAT AIN’T YOU, IS IT?” Chris shouted. He had grown into a burly youth, red-faced, loud-voiced, his full mouth pouting, his blond hair crew-cut. He wore soiled green coveralls and his nails were black.

  “I’m Rannie Colfax, if that’s who you mean.”

  He put out his hand but Chris drew back.

  “I’m all black grease,” he said. “Say, what you doin’ with yourself these days?”

  “We were going on a long tour around the world but my father was taken ill—cancer. He’s—very ill.”

  “Too bad—too bad,” Chris said.

  A customer stooped and, putting his head out the window, he bawled, “Fill her up—high-test—”

  “What you doin’ tonight?” Chris asked from the gasoline tank.

  “Nothing—I just thought I’d look you up.”

  “Me and little ole Ruthie,” Chris said, snickering.

  To his surprise, Rannie felt a strange stir in his groin. “How is she?”

  “Pretty,” Chris said. “Too pretty for her own good—or mine. I might marry her one of these days, if she can ever be pinned down.”

  “But Chris, how old are you?” Rannie asked in astonishment.

  “Fifteen—sixteen—somepin like that. My ma’s never sure just what year it was she borned me.”

  “But Ruthie—”

  “She’s thirteen, but she’s all dolled up to look sixteen. She’s rare, she is. Lots of fellers—but she likes me best, she says—acts it too. I make good money here with my dad—ornery old cuss!”

  “I’d better be home tonight,” Rannie said. “I don’t like to leave my mother alone just now.”

  “No, well, you’re right at that, I guess. Gee, I’m sorry about your old man. But come again, will ya, Rannie?”

  “Yes, thank you, Chris. It’s good to see you.”

  “RANNIE!” HIS MOTHER WAS SHAKING him awake. “The doctor is here. Your father is—dying.”

  He leaped out of bed, instantly awake, and put his arm about her. She leaned against him for a few seconds and then drew him with her.

  “We mustn’t waste a minute,” she said.

  He followed her into the room where his father lay, stretched straight upon the wide old four-poster bed. The doctor sat beside him, his fingers on the dying man’s wrist.

  “He has lost consciousness, I think,” the doctor said.

  A whisper came from his father’s stiff lips—

  “No—I am still—here.”

  With effort he lifted his eyelids, searching.

  “Rannie—”

  “I’m here, Father.”

  “Susan—love—”

  “I’m here, darling.”

  “Give our son—freedom.”

  “I know.”

  A silence came, so long that those watching thought it was forever. But no, his father had not finished with life.

  “Rannie—”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Never give up—wonder.”

  “I never will, Father. You’ve taught me.”

  “Wonder,” his father whispered, gasping for breath. “It’s the beginning of—of—all—knowledge.”

  His voice stopped. A slight shiver shook his skeleton frame. Now they knew he was gone.

  “Father!” Rannie cried, and seized his father’s clasped hands in his own.

  “It’s over,” the doctor said, and, stooping, he closed the glazing eyes. Then he turned to Rannie. “See to your mother, my boy. Take her away.”

  “I don’t want to be taken away,” his mother said. “Thank you, Doctor. Rannie and I will just stay here with him for a while.”

  “As you like,” the doctor said. “I’ll report the death and send someone to discuss details with you.”

  He shook hands with them gravely, kindly, and left them. They stood side-by-side, together and yet forever separate, as they looked down on the quiet figure of the man they both loved so well, yet each so differently. Memories, too, were altogether different, and so was the future each faced. What, Rannie was thinking, shall I do without him? Who will tell me the truth about everything or where to go to find the truth? Who will help me to know what I am and what I ought to be?

  What his mother was thinking he did not know, because he did not yet know what love between man and woman was, although wonder was beginning. He could not wonder now for he wanted only to see his father in his memory as alive and strong. Instead here lay this still, inert figure of a man, a mere shadow of the man he had known and looked to for nearly everything for all of his life.

  He turned to his mother, seeking comfort, thinking at this moment only of himself.

  “Oh no,” he sobbed. “No—no—no!”

  His mother said nothing. She put her arms about him, and after a moment she spoke.

  “Come,” she said. “We can do no more for him now—except live as he wanted us to live.”

  And she led him away.

  LIFE BEGAN AGAIN SOMEHOW
. The few days before the funeral were a dull maze of grief, the funeral was an hour of incredible agony.

  “Dust to dust—,” the minister intoned at last, and he heard the dull thud of clods falling upon the coffin. He and his mother stood hand-in-hand, transfixed in horror, until someone, the minister or a neighbor, someone, led them away. Someone said, “This at least you need not endure.”

  And they left the others and were driven back to the house, which no longer seemed a home but only a house that happened to be theirs.

  Someone said, “Tell me, would you rather have us stay with you or would you rather be alone?”

  “Thank you—we’d rather be alone,” his mother said. They were left then, alone in the house. The foolish dog leaped and jumped about them joyously, and neither of them could bear it.

  “Put the dog in the garage,” his mother said.

  He put the dog in the garage and then came back to the kitchen and sat down at the table while his mother cooked something.

  “Neither of us will be hungry,” she said, “but I’ll bake some gingerbread and make that special sweet sauce you like.”

  “Don’t bother, please, Mother,” he said.

  “I’m better doing something,” she said.

  He sat in silence then, watching her and wishing he did not think of his father lying white and still under the newly piled earth. He tried indeed most earnestly to remember his father as he had been when he was well, the autumn days when they had tramped in the woods, the winter days when his father had taught him how to ski, the summer days when he had taught him how to swim. It seemed to him now that everything he had learned his father had taught him. Who would teach him now?

  “It is terrible—terrible—terrible—”

  The words burst from him and his mother stopped her stirring in the big yellow bowl and looked at him, spoon in hand.

  “What are you thinking, son?” she asked gently.

  “He’s lying there all alone—in the ground—in the ground, Mother! There ought to be a better way.”

  “Yet I couldn’t bear to think of his body—his beautiful, beautiful body—burned to ashes,” she cried passionately. “A handful of ashes—no, I couldn’t bear it. There’d be nothing left. As it is—he’s decently clothed, he’s in a sort of bed—alone, of course.”