“All words, all books—in English, that is,” his father replied. “And each brick has a name of its own and a sound of its own. I’ll tell you the names, first.”
Whereupon his father repeated clearly and slowly the names of the letters. Three such repetitions and he knew the name of each letter. His father tested him by writing the letters out of order, but he knew them all.
“Good,” his father said with surprised looks. “Very good. Now for what they say. Each has a sound.”
For the next hour he listened closely to what each letter said in sound. “Now I can read,” he exclaimed. “I can read because I understand.”
“Not so fast,” his father told him. “Letters can say several sounds if they are put together. But you’ve learned enough for one day.”
“I can read because I know how reading is done,” he insisted. “I know and so I can do it.”
“All right,” his father said. “Try for yourself, you can always ask.”
And he went back to his own reading.
AFTER THIS SNOWY SATURDAY WHEN he was three years old, he spent most of his time in learning how to read by himself. At first he had to ask many questions of his mother, running to find where she was in the house, making beds, sweeping floors and such things as occupied her from morning until night.
“What is this word?” he asked.
She was always patient. Whatever she was doing she stopped and looked where his small forefinger pointed.
“That long word? Oh, Rannie, you won’t be using it for such a while—‘intellectual.’”
“What does it mean?”
“It means liking to use your brain.”
“What is brain?”
“It’s your thinking machine—what you have in here.”
She tapped his skull lightly with her gold-thimbled finger. She was sewing a button on his father’s shirt.
“I have a brain in there?” he asked.
“You most certainly have—so that it almost scares me sometimes.”
“Why does it scare you?”
“Oh, because—you’re only a little boy not four years old yet.”
“What does my brain look like, Mama?”
“Like everyone’s, I guess—a wrinkly gray something.”
“Then why does it scare you?”
“You do ask such questions—” She broke off.
“But I have to ask you, Mama. If I don’t ask, I won’t know.”
“You could look in the dictionary.”
“Where is it, Mama?”
She put down her sewing then and led him to the library and to a big book open on a small table and showed him how to find words.
“‘Intellectual,’ for example—it begins with an
He listened and looked, absorbed and fascinated. This big book, then, was the source of all words! He had the key, he knew the principle!
“I won’t ever need to ask you again, Mama. I know now, all by myself.”
HE LIVED IN A SMALL TOWN, busy with people much older than he. It was a college town and his father taught every day except Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday in the morning he went to church with his parents. At first when he was small, for he did not consider himself small now that he was nearly four years old, his birthday less than a week away, he had been left in the basement in the church nursery. This had not lasted long. He had soon looked at all the picture books, had solved all the puzzles, and had successfully intimidated all the children by appearing much their senior. He was large for his age and he assumed the other children were babies. He was humiliated by being left with them, he thought their prattle absurd, and after two Sundays he asked to be allowed to sit upstairs in the church with the adults.
His father was doubtful and looked at his mother, questioning.
“Can he sit still, do you think?”
“I will sit still,” he replied quickly.
“Let’s give him a try. He doesn’t like it downstairs,” his mother said.
He did not really like it upstairs, either, but remembering his promise, he kept it. Inside his skull his brain busied itself by instinct. Not for a moment could it be idle. He pondered the words of the minister, ignoring sometimes their implication and considering instead their sound, their spelling, their meaning. His relentless memory imprisoned any word that was new and when he went home he consulted his constant companion, the dictionary. There were times when the dictionary failed him, nevertheless, and then he was compelled to resort to his mother, since it was intolerable not to know.
“Mama, what does ‘virgin’ mean?”
His mother looked up, surprised, from something she was stirring in a bowl on the kitchen table. She hesitated. “Why, I suppose it means not married.”
“But Mama, Mary was married. She was married to Joseph. The minister said so.”
“Oh, that—I suppose no one quite understands that. Jesus was born of what’s called the Immaculate Conception.”
He went away with two new words. Finding them far apart in the dictionary, he tried putting them together. They made no sense. He copied them in the capital letters, as yet his only way of writing, and returned to his mother in the kitchen. She had finished her stirring, she was washing bowl and spoon, and a delicious scent of baking cake pervaded the atmosphere. He showed her the printed words and made complaint.
“Mama, I still don’t understand.”
She shook her head. “I can’t explain it to you, son. I don’t really understand it myself.”
“Then how can I know, Mama?”
“Ask your father 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.”
