The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate (7 page)

Three minutes later, Mr. Fleming said, “Well, that's done. Here's your receipt, Cap'n.”

“Mr. Fleming, I thank you for your commendable service.”

Mr. Fleming leaped to attention and saluted again. “Thankee, Cap'n.”

We walked to the gin, Granddaddy again lost in silence. He conferred with Father behind the glass; Father at first looked puzzled, then concerned. Granddaddy emerged a few minutes later, and we headed back to the house.

With trepidation, I asked, “Will we be safe here? Should we evacuate too?”

“What was that? Oh no. We may have some high winds and heavy rain, but I don't expect any loss of life. Not this far inland.”

“Are you sure? How can you tell?”

“The gull could have flown farther inland into the Hill Country, and yet it stopped here. Did it appear to be hurt in any way?”

“No, sir.”

“Then it stopped here not because of injury but because it deemed Fentress a safe place. Hurricanes quickly lose their force as they begin to travel overland. I trust the gull. Don't you?”

Despite Mr. O'Flanagan's confirmation, I could not answer, due to my worry about what I had set in motion. Three great cities might be thrown into panic, all based on Calpurnia Virginia Tate's brief sighting of an unknown bird. Me. A Nobody from Nowhere. What had I done? Nervous hives erupted on my neck.

“Granddaddy,” I said, my voice quavering, “what if … what if it was some other kind of bird? What if I'm wrong?” The hives spread to my chest.

“Calpurnia, do you or do you not believe in your own powers of observation?”

“Well … yes. But.”

“But what?”

“I guess I need to know … do
you
believe in them?”

“Have I taught you nothing?”

“No, sir, you've taught me plenty. It's just…”

“Just what?”

I struggled to hold back my tears. The burden thrust upon me was too great. Then, just as despair was about to overwhelm me, we turned the bend in the road—and there stood the gull, in our own drive. We stopped in our tracks. The gull opened its beak and laughed at us,
Ha-Ha-Haaaah
, a jeering, abrasive, unearthly cry, even worse than Jay's. Then it ponderously flapped away. I looked up at Granddaddy with a palpitating heart.

He said, “Do you see why they call it the laughing gull? Once heard, never forgotten.”

Relief flooded through me, and my welts subsided. I slipped my hand into his and took comfort in the huge rough palm. “I see,” I said shakily. “I do see.”

The wind picked up and shifted to the east. Despite the freshening breeze, the air felt strangely thicker, if that were possible.

We went into the library, where he peered at the barometer again. “The mercury is still falling. It's time to batten down the hatches.”

“We have hatches?”

“It is a nautical expression, and I am speaking metaphorically. Sailors secure the hatches on the ship's deck in preparation for a storm.”

“Oh.”

“We should have further discussions about weather in general, but now is not the proper time.” He crossed the hall into the parlor, where Mother sat working out of her mending basket.

I crept to the parlor door. It wasn't
exactly
eavesdropping, was it? I mean, if they'd wanted a private conversation, they'd have closed the door, wouldn't they?

Mother's voice rose: “Because of a
bird
? You would spread fear through half the state because of a
bird
?”

My hives resurged. I clawed savagely at my neck.

Granddaddy's voice remained calm. “Margaret, the seagull and the falling barometer are cause for serious concern. We disregard these signs at our peril.”

At that moment Sul Ross and Jim Bowie burst through the front door, and I jumped like a scalded cat. I ran upstairs to my room before they could reveal my presence with their pestering questions about why I looked so guilty and what I had heard.

*   *   *

M
OTHER WAS QUIET
at lunch, casting apprehensive glances from Granddaddy to the window, back and forth, back and forth. She then went to the telephone office at his insistence and placed a long-distance call to Galveston, an unprecedented extravagance that cost three whole dollars (!) and required the relaying services of four separate operators, all of whom no doubt listened in. The connection was bad, but in a minor miracle, Mother had actually talked to her sister Sophronia Finch, who shouted down the line that, yes, they were already experiencing high winds, but not to worry, they were used to such things, and Gus was at that very moment outside in his rubber boots securing the shutters on the house. Plus, the Weather Bureau, the government's own experts, did not seem overly alarmed.

After dinner, we sat on the porch and looked in vain for fireflies. Their season was coming to an end, or perhaps they were cowering in the long grass, battening down their own tiny hatches. The air was still and oppressive, but my younger brothers raced one another across the lawn and turned cartwheels and fell into wrestling piles that formed and broke apart and re-formed again in fleeting combinations of foes and allies.

I sat at Granddaddy's feet as he slowly rocked back and forth in his old wicker rocker and smoked his cigar, the tip glowing in the dark like the biggest, reddest firefly of all. He said, “The barometer is still dropping. I can feel it in my bones.”

“How can that be?”

But before he could answer, Mother called, “Bedtime.”

I whispered, “Good night, Granddaddy,” and gave him a kiss. He didn't seem to notice. I left him slowly rocking, staring off to the east, his face now in shadow.

That night Idabelle prowled up and down the stairs, meowing all the while in a most irritating manner. I scooped her up and took her to bed with me, where I quieted her with soothing pats and honeyed words until she finally settled down. Was her uneasiness also a warning? Question for the Notebook: Wouldn't you expect cats to be especially sensitive to such things, with their fur and whiskers picking up strange vibrations and such? I imagined that if I were so equipped, I'd be able to pick up lots of distant signals of strange events. I fell asleep and dreamed I was a cat.

I woke up once in the middle of the night. The temperature had fallen, and there was no sign of Idabelle. Rain lashed my window. The glass shivered in its frame; its nervous rattling rhythm set my teeth on edge. I hauled up my quilt and eventually fell into an uneasy sleep, this time filled with strange birds and whistling winds.

The next day, Father reported that all the lines to Galveston Island were down. There was no news going in. And no news coming out.

 

CHAPTER 6

A CITY DROWNED

[D]uring the previous night hail as large as small apples, and extremely hard, had fallen with such violence as to kill the greater number of the wild animals.

A
LL NEXT DAY
, the gusting winds spat intermittent rain. The newspaper reported that the city of Galveston lay silent, but that a mighty storm had lashed the coast, and the few survivors who had reached the mainland reported catastrophic destruction.

We walked to the Methodist church under a clutch of dripping black umbrellas. Reverend Barker offered up a special prayer for the people of Galveston, and the choir sang “Nearer My God to Thee.” Everyone either had friends or family there or knew someone who did. Several of the adults sobbed openly; the others looked drawn and spoke in hushed tones. Tears rolled down Mother's face; Father put his arm around her shoulder and held her tight.

When we got home, Mother retired to her room after dosing herself with a headache powder and Lydia Pinkham's tonic. She'd forgotten to make me do my piano practice, and I, the soul of consideration, did not bother to remind her, reckoning that she had more than enough to worry about.

Next day there were whispers of water six feet deep in the streets, of whole families drowned, of the city washed away. Somber clothes marked the somber mood in our town. Some of the men wore black armbands; some of the women wore black veils. The whole town—no, the whole State—seemed to hold its breath while we waited for the downed telegraph and telephone wires to be restored. Ships all the way from Brownsville to New Orleans were steaming to the ruined city at that very moment, loaded with food and water and tents and tools. And coffins.

I went looking for Harry and finally tracked him down in the storehouse off the barn, where he was taking an inventory.

“Harry, what's going on?”

“Shh. Seven, eight, nine barrels of flour.” He made a checkmark on a list.

“Harry.”

“Go away. Beans, coffee, sugar. Let's see, bacon, lard, powdered milk.”

“Harry, tell me.”

“Sardines. Go away.”

“Harry.”

“Look, we're going to Galveston. But Father said not a word to the others.”

“Who's going? Why can't you talk about it? And I am not ‘the others'—I'm your pet, remember?”

“Stop it and go away.”

I stopped it and went away.

I wandered around morosely for a while before I got the bright idea of checking in the
Fentress Indicator
, our daily newspaper. Harry was normally the only one of the children allowed to read the paper (the rest of us were still deemed too young, something to do with our “tender sensibilities”). I found a stack of discarded papers in the pantry where Viola stored them. She saved them for mulch in the kitchen garden. I grabbed the latest paper and ran outside to the back porch. The headlines read: Galveston Tragedy. Devastating Flood. Pride of Texas Washed to Sea by Hurricane. Most Deadly Natural Disaster in American History. Thousands Feared Lost.

Thousands.
Thousands
. The terrible word pounded in my brain. My marrow froze, and my knees turned to jelly. A part of me could not believe it, but the rest of me knew it was true. And my relatives, the Finches, were they included in those thousands? They were our kinfolk, bound to us by ties of blood. And Galveston itself, the finest city in Texas, our capital of culture, with its glittering opera house and magnificent mansions, all gone.

I dropped the paper, ran to my room, and threw myself on my tall brass bed, stricken. I wept without ceasing until Mother came upstairs and dosed me with Lydia Pinkham's, which only made me dizzy; then she dosed me with cod-liver oil, which only made me sick. Finally I crawled from my bed and sought out Granddaddy in the laboratory. He perched me on the tall stool at the counter where I normally worked as his assistant, patted my hair, and said, “There, there, now. These things happen in Nature. You are not responsible for this. There, now. You're a good girl, and brave.”

Ah, brave. Normally that word from him would have filled me with elation, but not now.

“Why wouldn't they listen?” I hiccuped.

“People often don't. You can lay the evidence before them but you cannot make them believe what they choose not to.”

He uncorked a small bottle filled with murky brown liquid and raised it in a toast, saying, “To the Galveston that once was; to the Galveston that yet will be.” He sipped and grimaced. “Damn, that's awful. Would you like a drink? Oh, I forgot, you don't drink. Just as well. This stuff is still terrible. I'm thinking of giving up on this particular branch of research.”

I was so startled I stopped crying.

“Give up?” I'd never known him to give up on anything, not even me. Not even the time I'd heartily deserved to be given up on when I'd temporarily lost the precious
Vicia tateii
, the new species of hairy vetch we had found.

“But, Granddaddy, after all the work you've done.” I looked at the scores of bottles jamming the shelves and counter, each labeled with its run date and method of distillation. Such a lot of work to abandon.

“I'm not giving it up entirely, mind, merely changing direction. I now realize that the pecan is much more suited to a sweet drink, such as an after-dinner liqueur. Besides, none of the work has been for naught. Remember, Calpurnia, you learn more from one failure than ten successes. And the more spectacular the failure, the greater the lesson learned.”

“Are you saying I should be aiming for spectacular failures? Mother really won't like that. She has a hard enough time with my ordinary ones.”

“I'm not saying you should aim for them, merely learn from them.”

“Oh.”

“Strive to make each subsequent failure a better one. And as for regrets…”

“Yes?”

“They are only useful as instructional tools. Once you have learned all you can from them, they are best discarded.”

“I see. I think.”

“Good. Now, if you don't mind, I'd appreciate your taking notes while I check the last of these runs.”

I plucked a pencil from the cracked shaving mug on the counter and sharpened it. If we were not exactly back in business as usual, we were at least heading in that direction.

*   *   *

O
N
W
EDNESDAY
, Father, Harry, and our hired man, Alberto, heaped the long-bed wagon with blankets and tools and barrels of food. Mother tearfully embraced Father, who whispered some private words of comfort to her. Then he shook Granddaddy's hand and shook all our hands, and kissed each of us on the cheek.

“Mind your mother, now,” he said, and if his gaze lingered on me a tad longer than the others, well, I deemed that unfair.

Alberto shyly kissed his wife, SanJuanna, good-bye. Her lips moved in a silent prayer, and she made the sign of the cross.

Father and Alberto climbed upon the wagon, Father taking the reins. Harry mounted King Arthur, one of our big workhorses. Not the most comfortable ride over the long distance, with his deep chest and broad back, but his massive power would be useful for clearing roads and hauling lumber. Their plan was to drive to Luling, where they would load the wagon on either a steamboat or a train for the coast, depending on the amount of relief traffic. Men and supplies were said to be racing to Galveston from all over the state, and my family was determined to do its part. And to find Uncle Gus and Aunt Sophronia and Cousin Aggie.