Scattered Seeds

Connie Kendall is at the counter finishing the last paragraph of one of John Avery Whittaker's stories when the author himself walks up. The story is The Tangled Web, and she has read it before. She tells Whit he is a very good writer and admits she wishes she could write stories like that. When he asks why she doesn't, Connie explains that she has tried: she starts with a pencil and a blank piece of paper, and she ends with a pencil and a blank piece of paper.

Whit tells her his ideas are simply the things he already knows - the lessons he has learned and the experiences he has had. The Tangled Web grew out of something that happened to him when he was a boy. Most stories, he says, are nothing more than life's lessons written down. Connie is not convinced. The lessons she learns never seem exciting or adventurous or funny, and mostly they just remind her how much she didn't know before. Whit admits that a great deal depends on how a person looks at a lesson, and then he offers to prove his point by reminding Connie of something that happened to her not long ago: the play.

Whit had written The Sower and the Seeds and had turned the building's old auditorium into a little theater, and he had asked Connie to direct. On the first day, scripts went out to the cast. Tom Riley was given the lead as the farmer and spent a good while wondering aloud whether a farmer might not also be handsome and debonair. Monty was cast as Rocky, a demanding role he promised to work hard at. Jenny was cast as Weeds, a colorful and rather tragic character who starts out in good company before falling under the charms of the wrong crowd, and Jenny happily compared her to a modern-day Persephone and pointed out the line that paraphrases George Orwell. Lucy was handed the small part of Goody. It was less than a walk-on, and Connie explained that fact so bluntly that she nearly talked Lucy out of it, but Lucy said she was simply glad to be part of the play and would take whatever role she was given.

The last part to be filled was Bertie, and Eugene Meltsner arrived to claim it, announcing that he had been a closet thespian for most of his life and had never before had the chance to tread the boards. He had also obtained an advance copy of the script, and he had suggestions: reverse Rocky and Weeds, cast the farmer as a woman, make Bertie musical, and let him try out a few festive numbers on his ukulele. He aimed every one of these ideas at Whit, until Whit finally explained that the director was Connie and the final decisions were hers. Eugene, doubtful, asked about her experience. Connie's one credit turned out to be an elementary school anti-litter production called Little Flip-Flop Meets Mean Old Mr. Gum, in which she had acted rather than directed, but she had been reading up on directing at the library and asked the cast for a chance.

Looking back on it from the counter, Connie calls that day a painful memory, but Whit presses her to think the whole story through. Not everything was bad. Once the cast accepted her as director, rehearsals actually went smoothly for a while, and were even fun. Things fell apart at the third rehearsal. Eugene was pulled away twice by urgent phone calls from his college Computer Club. Jenny refused to perform her monologue in front of anyone until she knew it perfectly, and rather than risk a mistake she gave up her part and went home. Monty, who had not learned his lines, decided the role was too much work and walked out too. Then Eugene returned to say the Computer Club needed him and his theatrical debut would have to be postponed indefinitely. Connie was left with a cast of two.

The play was saved, Connie remembers, because Whit rewrote it so the four of them could perform it, and everyone's hard work made it a smashing success. Even so, she still doesn't see the point of the story. Whit does. What she has just described, he tells her, is a modern-day version of the parable of the sower in Matthew 13, which Jesus used to show the different ways people respond to the gospel. The Computer Club snatched Eugene away just as the birds snatched the seed from the path. Monty was eager at first but bailed out the moment things got hard, like the seed sown among rocks with no roots. Jenny was so worried about what others would think that she choked, like the seed among thorns. Tom and Lucy stuck with it, worked hard, and produced a good crop.

Connie protests that she never would have noticed any of it on her own, which is exactly Whit's point about how much depends on the way a person looks at things. He believes parables surround people every day, and that the only trick is learning to look for them. Then he sends her off to write, since she now has her story. Connie even has a title, Scattered Seeds, and Whit asks for the pencil to add the one thing still missing: by Connie Kendall.