Author's webpage: http://www.geocities.com/VBabe47/home.html

Author's disclaimer:
There once was a group in Toronto
Who made the world's best TV show
People, wolves, places, and plot
All the rights they have got
But here I can do what I want to

Author's notes:
Author's Notes: I've often wondered how Fraser reached adulthood so innocent of his physical beauty. By this, I don't mean that as of Due South, he walks into Chicago and is stunned that anyone finds him handsome. By this, I mean, how he lacks the emotional baggage and little vanities found in practically anyone who is even a little bit better looking than usual. It seems as if he made it to adulthood unaware of his looks, and has since then found them something of a nuisance...rarely or never used to his advantage, even when it would be advisable, and something to be ignored when possible. It is obvious that his grandparents were intelligent, well-read people. They would have known that he was handsome. For him not to know, it would have had to be a deliberate decision. How would such a choice have come about, and why would Grandma Fraser withhold that knowledge from Ben?

PS: The author is running off to Mouseland two seconds after she throws this baby on the hexwood archive. She will not be back on line for at least six months, maybe more, but she still loves feedback. The "author" link actually goes to one of the author's best friends. Send feedback there.

***

Great Scott, when on earth did that happen?

I've been living with Ben practically every day of his life since he was not yet seven years old. I've washed his back and behind his ears. I've darned his socks, let out the cuffs of his trousers, and mended his shirts. I've scolded him when he was naughty, and I've praised him when he has done well. I taught him algebra and Abraham, zoology and Zen. Apparently, however, I've been deficient in at least one area, and as I stare befuddled out the window, I wonder what exactly I'm going to do about it.

Oh, I haven't discovered some dark and hideous secret, no. Far from it. He's doing exactly what I told him to do, exactly what he's been doing these past three or four summers now. Log by log, he's moving the unburnt firewood from its place at the side of the cabin out to the shed so that little animals don't nest in it during the brief warmth of summer. It's not an undully taxing assignment, but it is good, physical labour, providing useful exercise to his youthful form, and his grandfather certainly doesn't need to be doing it, no matter what George may think. Not with his arthritis.

Ben does not have anything approaching arthritis, or any other affliction I can see. He looks very healthy, indeed, more than healthy.

The boy is beautiful.

Great Scott, but the boy is beautiful.

When did that happen?

I suppose my blind spot came from familiarity. When he was just a bit of a thing, Caroline would bring him by every few months or so, and I saw it then. He was a lovely infant and a charming toddler, all blue eyes and soft curls and rosy cheeks, very much like a little Renaissance cherubim.

I told Caroline he was 'handsome enough', and to the local women, I allowed myself to say that my grandson was a 'comely little fellow', but I remember how I would fuss over him when I wrote my sister back in Halifax. Looking back, I do believe that I gave her the impression that Ben was the finest, sweetest, smartest baby that God had placed on this earth. Ah, well, I suppose that a new grandmother can be forgiven that much. Lord knows I've yet to meet a woman who didn't talk as if her first grandchild was Jesus Christ himself.

When his mother died, I saw then too that he was a pretty child, but it was only with a sense of sorrow. He looked delicate, fragile, his skin nearly translucent, and his eyes...they ripped at my soul. Horrible, ancient, pained eyes, so large in that tiny face. I resolved myself to toughen him, body and spirit alike.

He would never hurt like that again if I could help it, so I diverted him quickly to study. Already, under Caroline's tutelage, he had learned his letters, to read a good bit, to count to one hundred, and to do simple sums. The dear thing had also been teaching him a few bits of French, getting a foot in the door for me where his foreign languages were concerned. I eventually finished teaching him French, and added on Latin, Greek, Spanish, Russian, Sign Language, and three dialects of Chinese. Ben has a sharp wit and lively intelligence, and unlike most lads I've taught, does not seem to favor mathematics or literature one more than the other. I therefore taught him in both equally, matching Calculus with Canturberry Tales, and he matched me, taking all I could give.

My plot of enrichment and distraction worked for both of us, it seems. Ben quickly seemed to put that dark cloud behind him with the blessed speed that little boys are wont to forget such things, and I devoted myself to his edification even as he did. He forgot his pain, I forgot my wonder.

Waking him up in the morning and putting him to bed at night, he became, for all intents and purposes, my son. I was so accustomed to his presence and his ways, that I believe I have forgotten the way I was once touched by them. I wonder if he resents me for it? As I think, I realize that I have praised him less and less for things as his intelligence - one thing I could have sworn a former teacher could never miss - grows familiar.

Was it only a week ago he came home from a local Inuit village and told me he had mastered their language? Was it only a week ago that I hardly turned from the dishes with a murmered, "that's nice, Ben."

Was it only a week ago that he was all knees and elbows and awkwardness? Or was it a month? A year?

I can't remember. My God, I can't remember when he changed from pretty child to gawky adolescent, or when he changed from gawky adolescent to this. I look out the window again, trying to sear this moment into my memory so that I shan't forget again.

He really is beautiful.

Ben has removed his shirt under the warm sun of early summer, and his exposed skin is lightly glossed with sweat and beginning to pinken, warning of the sunburn that will come if he refuses to heed my warnings yet again. His body is lean, slender in youth, but he has labored hard since he was a young boy, and it shows in the clear markings of muscles that play beneath his skin as he moves. He has yet to fully broaden through his chest and shoulders, but already they are wide for his age, his waist and hips narrow, his legs long. His face has lost much of its childish roundness, the nose now chiseled, the cheekbones smoothly visible, the features classically proportioned and shaped. Like Robert, he has the Fraser blue eyes with the dark, thick hair, and I turn away quickly as I see him raise those eyes briefly towards the cabin now.

What if he sees me? I've never just stared at him like that before. Were he to see me now, he would know in an instant something was wrong. I would have to explain myself, and what would I say. "Pardon, Ben, I happened to glance out the window and realized that you are developing into an exceptionally handsome young man."

I couldn't. I can't. I've worked so hard to make that boy what he is - and by that I mean what he is inside, not whatever genetic fluke might have shaped his outside packaging. I like to pride myself on having had a hand in creating a young man who, at the typically incorrigible age of sixteen, is polite, learned, good-natured, moral, refined, level-headed, and humble.

I'm not about to upset that by throwing vanity into the mix. Robert was different. Robert was a nice-looking lad, even rather handsome in his own right, but he was always with other children, and he knew without my ever being brought into the subject exactly where he fit into the hierarchy of physical attractiveness. In Robert's world, there were always boys more homely and more handsome, and that kept him from the dangers of a swelled head.

Ben has no such system of natural checks and balances. He is being raised in an environment where the dominant standard of beauty owes nothing to Caucasian norms. Here, he is an oddity, not a paragon, and thus is able to go through these tender years without any of the pitfalls of ego that would normally be placed in his path by unusual beauty. Here, he will not grow up vain. He will not grow up absorbed with his looks. He will not grow up with illusions that he is owed something.

Certainly, he will know eventually. One of these days, he will meet a girl, or even a forthright friend, and they will tell him. By then, however, he will be older. It will be too late for him to be conceited. Too late for his looks to corrupt him, to be anything but an innocent blessing.

Yes, Ben, you are beautiful.

But you'll never hear it from me.

THE END