The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate (10 page)

She didn't raise her voice. She didn't have to. Hives of shame popped up on my neck. “You're right, Mother. I'm sorry. You're right.”

She picked up her mending, signaling the end of our parley. I crept away, feeling about three inches high. I clawed at the horrible prickles erupting on my neck and met the boys on the porch.

Lamar took one look at me and said, “You botched it up good, I can tell.”

“I did my best.”

“Well, it obviously wasn't good enough.”

“You should have been there, Lamar. You should have seen the look on her face.”

“‘The look on her face'? That's all it took for you to cave in? You're some kind of lousy negotiator. That's what we get for sending a dumb girl to do a man's job. I'll do it myself next time.” He hawked and spat in the dust.

It was all so unfair I could have smacked him, but he wheeled and stalked off. Sam Houston and Sul Ross looked back and forth at us doubtfully and then straggled after him.

I yelled, “She said it was unseemly!”

They ignored me. And to top it off, I'd become a giant walking hive. At the horse trough, I pumped cool water onto my pinafore and applied it as a compress. I paced in circles and took deep breaths, trying to calm down. This resulted in only partial subsidence of the hives and my temper, so I decided there was only one other treatment open to me: a soothing application of Granddaddy.

I found him working in the laboratory with the burlap flap pinned aside to let in light and fresh air.

He greeted me with, “Hives again? What is it this time?”

I stared at him and said, “Am I that predictable?”

“Generally not, but your dermis is, yes.”

“Oh. Well, don't say a word, but I'm thinking about running away from home.” I smiled weakly to show him I was joking. Mostly.

He received this bit of news with equanimity. “Is that right? Where will you go? What will you do for money? Have you considered these things?”

“I've saved up twenty-seven cents.”

“I doubt you can buy your independence with all of twenty-seven cents.”

“Yes.” I sighed. “It's a pitiful sum to run away on. The train fare to Austin is more than that. But if I do save enough, will you come with me? I can't go without you, you know.” I kissed him on the forehead, adding, “But you'll probably have to pay your own way.”

“It's most kind of you to invite me, but I do most of my traveling in the library these days. A seated man can travel far and wide with nothing more than a globe and an atlas. And I find all the adventure I need at this stage in life through the lenses of the microscope and telescope. There is world enough for me right here with my specimens and books.”

I thought about it and realized that I, too, was an explorer. Hadn't I crossed the wide ocean to England with Mr. Dickens? Hadn't I drifted down the great Mississippi with Huck? Didn't I travel in time and space every time I opened a book?

Granddaddy said, “What, may I ask, has precipitated this sudden desire to escape our town?”

“I didn't behave very nicely to Mother. But it wasn't all my fault. My brothers put me up to it.”

“Brothers will do that,” he said gravely, then listened to my tale of woe and agreed with me that life was not fair. Then he asked how old I was turning.

“Thirteen.”

“Thirteen, eh? Soon you'll be a young lady.”

“Please don't say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because girls get to do little enough in this world, and, from what I can tell, young ladies get to do even less.”

“Hmm, there's some truth in that, although I don't know why it should be so. It seems to me that any girl or young lady with a brain in good working order should be allowed to achieve whatever she might.”

“I'm glad you feel that way, Granddaddy, but not everyone does, especially around here.”

“Speaking of birthdays and travel, I have something for you in the library that I think you'll like. Come with me.”

I took his hand as we walked to the house, glad that a girl can never be too grown-up to hold her grandfather's hand.

He unlocked the library door and pulled back the heavy bottle-green drapes for better light. Then he took a book from his cabinet, saying, “Before he wrote
The Origin of Species
, Darwin spent five years sailing around the world on a small ship, HMS
Beagle
. Five whole years, collecting specimens and exploring distant lands.” Granddaddy stared into the distance, eyes agleam. The decades magically dropped from his face, and I could see the boy he once had been.

“An epic journey! Think of it! What I would have given to be at his side tracking the puma and the condor in Patagonia, observing the vampire bat of the Argentine, collecting the orchids of Madagascar. Why, look there, on the shelf.”

He pointed to the thick glass carboy containing the bottled beast that Darwin himself had sent him years before.

“He collected that cuttlefish,
Sepia officinalis
, off the Cape of Good Hope. The voyage was arduous and short on creature comforts, and several times almost cost him his life, but it cemented his love of the natural world and started him along the path to thinking about evolution. I think you'll find this book smoother sailing than
Origin.
”

He handed me the leather-bound book,
The Voyage of the
Beagle. “Happy birthday,” he said, “and bon voyage.”

Oh, the pleasure, the wonder, the anticipation of a new book. I thanked him with a hug and a kiss on his whiskery cheek, then hid it beneath my pinafore and ran with it to my room, for who knew what desecration Lamar might be capable of in a fit of rage?

I read well into the night, accompanying Mr. Darwin to the Galapagos Islands, Madagascar, the Canary Islands, Australia. Along with him, I marveled at the loud shocking click made by the butterfly
Papilio feronia
, a type of insect the world had previously thought mute. We watched the spermaceti whales leaping almost clear of the water, their splashes booming like cannon fire. Together we wondered at the
Diodon
, or puffer fish, a spiky fish that inflated itself into an inedible ball when threatened. (And although Mr. Darwin's description of this oddity was vivid, I yearned to see one in real life.) Together we hid from panthers and pirates, and dined with savages and grandees and cannibals, although not, one hoped, on human flesh.

My dreams that night were filled with the creak of the rigging, the swaying of the deck, the pressure of the wind. Not bad for a girl who'd never seen the ocean. A bon voyage, indeed.

 

CHAPTER 9

THE MYSTERY ANIMAL

In this northern part of Chile … an arrow-head made of agate, and of precisely the same form with those now used in Tierra del Fuego, was given me.

W
E ENDED UP HAVING
a birthday celebration of sorts, although it was not the one Lamar wanted. Nor I, for that matter. Viola made a fruit punch and I helped her make a pecan cake. Unfortunately, I frosted it before it had completely cooled; the icing pooled in a hollow on top and dribbled down the sides, giving it a truly pitiful look. Viola decorated it with a sparse handful of tiny candles, rather meager and depressing, nothing like the conflagration of the year before. Mother smiled bravely and made a short speech about how we must all do our bit to support the refugees, even those of us who stayed behind and whose part involved only standing by. Her words filled us with such guilt that we smiled weakly and pretended we were satisfied with our lot, even Lamar, who'd never been blessed with much in the way of tact.

Our celebration may have been lackluster, but I did end up receiving a once-in-a-lifetime gift on my actual birthday when Granddaddy and I took the rowboat out for the day. We slipped it loose from its mooring below the cotton gin and set off with a picnic basket, a butterfly net, and my Notebook. We took turns at the oars, but the work was easy and the current mild, and once we got away from the clatter of the gin, a great hush fell upon the river. We floated in complete peace downstream, talking about the passing flora and fauna on the way. The water was clear as glass.

We could see the silvery shiners and lively perch darting through the gently undulating star grass and wild rice. I even caught a glimpse of a great scowling catfish lurking under the bank.

About halfway to Prairie Lea, we landed on a gravel bar to eat our sandwiches and make some notes. The gravel and stones were worn smooth from the action of the water, but there was a jagged one that stood out from its fellows and caught my eye. I picked it up and realized from its triangular shape and beveled edges that I held a genuine Indian arrowhead in my hand.

“Look, Granddaddy,” I cried. “It's an arrowhead from the Comanche wars.” Each of my brothers had found one or two over the years but this was my first.

He examined it gravely in his rough palm. “I think,” he said, “that you have found something much older, probably from the early Tonkawas. They served as scouts for us at the Battle of Plum Creek.”

“Were you
there
?” I said. “Did you
see
it?” Plum Creek had been the early name for Lockhart, site of the last great fight against the Comanche. And only fourteen miles away. It had never occurred to me that a relative of mine had taken part.

He looked at me in mild surprise. “Oh yes, I was right in the thick of it. Have I not spoken of it to you?”

“Uh, no. You never have.”

“Well, I suppose that's because it was not our finest hour, despite the public hailing us as heroes of the Republic. And it was not the Comanches' finest hour, either. In August of 1840, Chief Buffalo Hump and his warriors were driving a herd of almost two thousand horses and pack mules back from a raid on the pioneer settlements. They had been pillaging and burning in a great swath along the coast. Now they were headed for the Comancheria, their buffalo-hunting lands in northwest Texas. The mules were heavily loaded with iron, much prized for forging arrowheads, and a huge supply of dry goods plundered from a depot near Victoria. But the horses were the real prize.”

I thought of Lockhart, with its courthouse and many stores and library, and even electricity. Our seat of civilization. “But why were you there?” I said. “How did it happen?”

“Ranger Captain Ben McCulloch had been following them for some days and realized that they would have to cross Plum Creek. He sent out some of his men to round up all the farmers and settlers in the area that they could, every single able-bodied man with a horse and a firearm. My father and I were plowing that day when one of the militia rode up with an urgent summons to arms. I was only sixteen, but like all sixteen-year-olds on the frontier, I knew how to ride and shoot, and that was all that mattered.”

“Did you … did you kill any Indians?”

“I suppose I did.”

This answer mystified me until he elaborated: “In the smoke and the dust and the chaos, it was difficult to be sure. We numbered perhaps two hundred, while the Indians must have had at least five hundred warriors, but Buffalo Hump at first did not wish to engage us in battle. Then it became clear they were trying to delay until the vast herd had passed safely by. They could not bring themselves to abandon the horses. And as for the other booty, they had taken yards of red cloth and decorated their warhorses with it, weaving long streamers of red ribbon into their tails. Some wore top hats; some carried open umbrellas. Oh, it was quite the spectacle. But then Captain Caldwell gave the order to charge, and we plowed into the great mass, firing our rifles. The herd panicked and stampeded. The overloaded pack mules got bogged down and were run over by two thousand frightened horses crashing into them. The Comanche were trapped by the very animals they prized so highly. Many were trampled and crushed by the horses; many were shot trying to escape. It was a terrible rout. And although Buffalo Hump lived to fight another day, their fatal weakness for horses spelled the beginning of the end of the Comanche in Texas.”

“Were you hurt?”

“I was not hurt, and neither was my father. We suffered surprisingly few casualties. President Lamar was well pleased.”

“And then you came home, right?”

“We all returned to our farms and families a few days later, but not before dividing up the enormous plunder. Since there was no way to return it to the original owners, my father and I returned with a mule laden with a bolt of red calico and a keg of brandy. My mother was glad to see that cloth, and I remember that for many years she dressed us all in shirts and pants of that same fabric, and used it for quilts and such.”

I suddenly realized there were several blocks of faded red fabric in my winter quilt.

“Wait,” I said, “is that the red material in my quilt?”

“Probably so.”

I resolved to take better care of the quilt, which I'd never before given a second thought to. Gosh, here I'd been sleeping all this time under Indian spoils of war and never known it!

“Ah, me,” he said, “the times I have seen. You might not realize, Calpurnia, that when I was born twenty miles from here, all this land was actually part of Mexico. Then I was just your age when Texas won its independence from Mexico and became an independent republic. I saw General Santa Anna, the defeated dictator of Mexico, led through the streets in chains. Five years after that, we fought the Comanche. Then, only four years later, we became part of the United States but had to fight another war with Mexico to make them accept it. Fourteen years after that, we tried to leave the United States, leading to the most terrible war of all, the only one we lost. We could not break up the Union. Now here I am, an old man, having survived four wars and lived long enough to see the age of the auto-mobile.”

He stood up, saying, “That is more than enough reminiscing for one day. Let us proceed on our journey.”