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!
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
