The Eternal Wonder Read Online Free PDF Page B

tonight, son, when he comes home.”
    He folded the bit of paper and put it in his pocket. Before he could ask his father, however, he overheard, though by accident, a conversation between his parents. The kitchen window was open and he was in the backyard playing with his dog, or rather teaching him a new trick. Most of his play with his pet had to do with teaching him tricks and finding out what Brisk, the dog, could and could not learn. He had been laughing at Brisk’s obedient efforts to walk on his hind legs when he heard his mother’s protesting voice through the open window.
    “George, you will have to explain things to Rannie. I can’t do it.”
    “What things, Sue?”
    “Well, he asked me what ‘virgin’ meant and what ‘immaculate conception’ means. Things like that!”
    He heard his father’s laughter. “I certainly can’t explain an immaculate conception!”
    “You’ll have to try. You know he never forgets anything. And he is determined to know.”
    Thus reminded, he immediately left his dog and ran into the house to find his father with his question. His father was upstairs, getting into sweater and slacks. Spring was at hand and the garden had been ploughed.
    “Virgin?” his father repeated. He hung up his professional suit in the closet and looked out the window.
    “See the garden?” he asked.
    Rannie came to his side. “Mr. Bates ploughed it this morning.”
    “Now we have to plant seeds in it,” his father said. “But—”
    He sat down and drew Rannie between his knees, his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Until we plant seeds there in that ploughed earth, we won’t have a garden. Right?”
    Rannie nodded, his eyes upon his father’s keenly handsome face.
    “So,” his father went on, “it’s virgin soil—virgin earth. All by itself it can’t grow the things we want. Everything begins with a seed—fruits and vegetables, trees and weeds—even people.”
    “People?” Rannie asked, astonished. “Was I a seed?”
    “No,” his father said. “But a seed was your beginning. I planted the seed. That’s why I am your father.”
    “What kind of seed?” he asked, astonished.
    “My kind,” his father said simply.
    “But—but—where did you plant it?”
    Questions rushed to his lips. He could not ask them fast enough.
    “In your mother,” his father said. “Until then she was a virgin.”
    “Immaculate conception?”
    “I think so.”
    “Conception—”
    His father interrupted. “Comes from the Latin word meaning an idea—an abstract idea—something that is at first just a thought. Then it becomes more—it’s a concept—then a—”
    “I was a concept?”
    “In a way—yes. I saw your mother, I fell in love with her, I wanted her to be my wife and your mother. That was my idea, my concept. When you began, it was a conception.”
    “When Jesus—”
    His father interrupted again. “Ah, we know he was born of love. That’s why we call it the Immaculate Conception. It wasn’t Joseph who planted that seed. He was getting rather old for seed-planting. Mary was young—still a virgin, perhaps. But someone who loved her planted the seed. We know that—someone very extraordinary, or there wouldn’t have been the extraordinary child.”
    “Where did he plant it? Where did you—”
    “Ah, that’s the next question! Inside the mother person, the woman, there’s a garden, a little enclosed spot, where the seed falls—and starts to grow. We call it the womb. It’s the growing place for children.”
    “Do I have one?”
    “No, you’re a seed-planter, like me.”
    “How do we—”
    “The instrument is the penis, and there’s a passageway to the womb called the vagina. Look up both those words in the dictionary.”
    “Can I plant seed now?”
    “No. You have to grow up first. You have to be a man.”
    “Can you do it whenever you like?”
    “Yes—but I like to do it only when your mother is ready. After all, she has the work of growing the