Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

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.