“They are?”
“Yes. I wanted to tell you.”
“I’ll bet lots of fellas are sweet on her.”
This stopped me. I sat down in the straw and stroked Mouser, who looked like she could stand a little attention. “Travis,” I said, “aren’t you sweet on her?”
“I guess so.”
“Then how come you’re not upset?”
“About what?” he said, tickling Jesse James under the chin.
“About Sam Houston and Lamar.”
“Why should I be upset?” He looked at the kittens. “Which one is the next best, do you think, after Jesse James? I think it might be Bat Masterson, don’t you?”
“Which one is that?” I said.
“The orange one. His eyes are the same color as Lula’s. Kind of green and kind of blue. See?” He handed me a protesting Bat Masterson, and I could see that his—or maybe her—eyes were in fact the same color as Lula’s. “Maybe she’ll pick him.”
“Travis,” I said, “you don’t like Lula because she has eyes like your cat, right?”
“No, Callie, course not, don’t be silly.”
“Okay,” I said. “So what about Sam Houston? What about Lamar?”
He looked at me, puzzled, and I realized that he had no clue what I was talking about. But he would grow and change and understand soon enough. “Never mind,” I said. “Your cats sure are cute.”
The next morning I walked to school with Travis, letting my other brothers set off ahead of us. Lula met us at the bridge. She wore a white pinafore and a dark green hair ribbon that made her eyes look exactly the same color as Bat Masterson’s. She seemed pleased to see Travis. They talked all the rest of the way about cats, dogs, horses, school, Halloween, Christmas, and so on. You wouldn’t think a twelve-year-old girl would have much to say to a ten-year-old boy, but you’d be wrong. To my relief, the others left Travis alone all day.
But the walk home was another story. Travis again latched on to Lula, and so did Lamar. I wanted to run on ahead, but danger hung in the air.
“Hi, Lula,” said Lamar, spying an opportunity. “Can I carry your books home for you?”
Both Lula and Travis flushed. “Thank you, Lamar,” she said, and handed him her book strap. There was an awkward silence as we walked on. Then Lamar said, “So, Lula, how come you walk home with a baby like Travis? Why don’t you walk home with a real man like me?” He made a muscle with his arm. “Look, Lula, tough as whang.”
Oh, Lamar. You shouldn’t have. The look on Travis’s face, and Lula’s.
Travis cried, “I’m not a baby,” in a high unsteady voice, which of course made him sound exactly like one.
“I’m not a baby,” Lamar mimicked him.
“Quit it, Lamar,” I said. “You don’t have to be so mean.”
“What a baby, has to have his sister stand up for him. Titty-baby.”
This was too much to bear in front of Lula. Travis, the most placid of my brothers, dropped his books, rushed at Lamar, and shoved him with all his might. Lamar staggered and dropped Lula’s books and his lunch pail but managed to keep to his feet. I could see that Lamar was startled by this display but not in the least hurt. He yelled, “Baby!”
Travis teetered on the verge of tears. He wheeled and raced for home as fast as he could, sending up puffs of dust in the road. “Baby! Coward!” called Lamar. But I knew it wasn’t cowardice that sent Travis flying down the road. He didn’t want to shame himself and cry in front of Lula. Like a baby.
The three of us stood in the road in an awkward silence. I picked up Travis’s books. Lula cleared her throat and said, “I’ve got to go home. Bye.” She scrambled for her own books and had them gathered up before Lamar could reach them, and then she took off, her long braid flopping as she ran.
“Hey, Lula!” Lamar called after her. “Hey, Lula!” But she gave no sign she’d heard him and kept on running.
“Lamar,” I said, “sometimes you are such an amazing pill.”
“What are you talking about? He attacked me. He punched me. He hurt me.”
“He did not. I’m gonna tell Mother on you.”
“You snitch,” he said.
“You pill,” I said.
“Tattletale,” he said.
“Meanie.”
“I don’t want to walk with you.”
“Fine. I don’t want to walk with you.”
“I’m going ahead.”
“No, I’m going ahead.”
“Well, go right ahead then!”
And, in a lather of irritation, we were both home before we knew it.
Our family took a dim view of snitching and tattling. Why, I don’t know. I walked through the front door, weighing the cost of telling versus not telling, when I was saved from making a decision by Mother calling me into the parlor.
“Calpurnia. Come in here and tell me what’s wrong with Travis.”
“Um, maybe you better ask Lamar,” I said, as he tried to slink past me in the hallway.
“Lamar, come in here and explain,” she said. Travis was sitting on the carpet at her feet, hugging his knees, his face flushed and swollen. He threw a furious look at Lamar.
“What happened at school today?” she said. She nodded at Travis. “He won’t tell me anything.”
Lamar looked surprised. He hadn’t expected that.
“Lamar?” said Mother. He looked away and wouldn’t answer.
“Calpurnia? What happened?” I looked at Travis for guidance, but his face was blank. “Calpurnia, I’m not asking you to tell me, I’m ordering you to tell me. Right this minute.”
So I told, hoping that both brothers would understand that I was under orders and had no choice. Mother listened in silence to my whole story, starting with Lula. To my surprise, she looked more sad than angry. She doled out a light punishment of extra chores, and that, we hoped, was the end of that.
But boys being boys, and Lula being a beauty, it was not.
The next several days were a cauldron of anxiety for me, and for Travis too, no doubt. Lula came to pick a kitten at a time she and I had arranged together, making sure that none of my brothers was around. To my relief, she chose Belle Starr.
I was constantly on guard against Lamar and Sam Houston on the trips to and from school, and it started to wear on me. I got to the point where I couldn’t stand it anymore, and after dinner one night, I called them together out on the porch and said, “Look, you can’t keep herding me and Lula about like sheep. I’m tired out. You’ve got to leave us alone. You’ve got to leave each other alone. If you don’t agree not to fight, I’ll make sure that she never speaks to any of you ever again. As long as you all live.”
I wasn’t sure how I could manage that, but I was the resident Lula expert, their beloved’s best friend, and I spoke with such conviction that they believed me.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “Each of you can walk with us one day a week. Travis, you get Monday, Lamar gets Wednesday, and Sam Houston gets Friday. That’s that.”
“What about Tuesday and Thursday? Who gets those?” said Sam Houston.
“Nobody does. You leave us alone. I’m not kidding. Any questions?”
To my great satisfaction there were none.
CHAPTER 11
KNITTING LESSONS
Natural selection will modify the structure of the young in relation to the parent, and of the parent in relation to the young.
THE LULA SYSTEM I’d devised ended up working well enough, at least for the next few weeks. I invited her over to play piano after school, and we learned a couple of popular duets at our mothers’ request. We knew we wouldn’t have to play them at the next recital. Or any recital, for that matter. Then I made the mistake of inviting her over to work on one of our Domestic Arts assignments together and Mother got a good look at her stitches. Lord have mercy, how could I have been so stupid?
“Calpurnia,” said Mother a few days later, in a tone I dreaded, “I think it’s t
ime you graduated from knitting scarves to socks. There’s nothing like good, thick woollen socks made by a pair of loving hands. If we start now, you’ll have time to make a pair for all your brothers before Christmas, maybe even for Father and Grandfather, as well. Wouldn’t that be nice? Bring your knitting bag, and we’ll sit in the parlor.”
The pressure was on.
I sighed and put down my magnifying glass. I was in the middle of preserving a particularly nice specimen of Viceroy butterfly in a framed glass to hang next to Granddaddy’s specimens in the library, but it was raining outside and the delicate work was tough without direct sunlight.
Mother seemed pleased by the skeins of new wool that she pulled from her own bag, which bristled with needles of every size. The wool was a fine dark chocolate brown and bound in thick hanks. She sat with her hands out like paddles while I unwound the skeins and rewound them into a ball. Although I was not excited at the prospect of knitting socks, the rhythmic shuttling of the wool back and forth was hypnotic, and I grudgingly had to admit that there might be worse ways to spend a rainy day. Might be. Mother also seemed calmed and relaxed by this timeless domestic ritual; knitting always seemed to soothe her headaches, and she didn’t need such frequent doses of Lydia Pinkham’s.
The weather had cooled somewhat. Although it wasn’t warranted, a small fire of pecan logs popped in the fireplace to foster the illusion that summer was well past us. Travis wandered in with Jesse James and Billy the Kid. He dangled some wool before them and soon had them springing back and forth and tumbling on the carpet. Lamar came in and at Mother’s request put some Schubert songs on the gramophone.
“Let’s start with socks for Jim Bowie, shall we?” said Mother. “Some small plain ones. We’ll learn about patterns later. Cast on a row of, oh, let’s say forty stitches, and we’ll start at the calf.” She handed me four tiny knitting needles.
“Four?” I frowned. “What do I do with four?”
“You knit in a perpetual circle instead of turning back at the end of a row.”
Help! I was clumsy enough with two needles. This was going to be much worse than I thought. Mother made encouraging noises while I cast on the first row of my first sock. There were so many sharp needle points sticking out at unexpected angles that it was like juggling a porcupine.
“Look,” she said, “if you wrap the wool around your fourth finger like this, it’s easier to control the tension, and the stitches stay even.” I tried to do as she showed me, and to be truthful, the next row did look better. The one after that looked better still. I noticed that once you got into a certain rhythm, the stitches flowed down the needle so that you picked up the next one before you knew it.
“Now we begin to cast off to make it narrower toward the ankle. Yes, that’s right.”
Slowly—exceedingly slowly—the mess of wool in my hands began to take shape. The afternoon passed, and although I wouldn’t call it fun, it wasn’t as terrible as I had feared. At the end I had in my hand one small, funny-looking knitted brown thing. I held it up for inspection and decided that it looked more socklike than not. Mother seemed pleased with it. She said, “It looks just like the first one I made at your age.”
“Well, that’s that,” I said, packing up my knitting bag. “Done.”
“What do you mean, done? Where are you going?”
I looked at her, not comprehending.
“Let’s start on the next one,” Mother said.
“The next one?” I yelped. Was she crazy? It had taken me hours to make this one.
“Of course the next one, and kindly don’t raise your voice like that. What’s Jim Bowie going to do with only one sock?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I wanted to add, I don’t care. Maybe he can make a puppet out of it.
“And what about the other boys? And Father? And Grandfather?” she said.
I counted up. There were the six brothers plus Father and Granddaddy, and they had many feet amongst them. So that meant there was also tomorrow, and the day after that and the one after that. My mind reeled. There was my whole life for you, socks stretching all the way to the infinite horizon, a yawning valley of knitting tedium. I felt sick.
“Please, Mother,” I said in pathetic tones, “let me do it tomorrow. I think my eyes are strained.”
She looked so concerned at this that I realized I must have touched a nerve. Perhaps the addition of spectacles to her only daughter’s not-so-promising features didn’t bear thinking about. This was a small but handy nut of knowledge, and I stored it away for future use. Also, perhaps I could cultivate sick headaches.
“All right,” she said, “that will do for today.”
I grabbed my knitting bag and got out of there before she could think of some other homegrown skill for me to learn. I took my bag to my room and then dashed downstairs and out to the darkened laboratory, but Granddaddy wasn’t there. He was probably out collecting plants. Rainy days were a good time to collect plant specimens, which was just as well, as it was impossible to find animal or insect life, all of which melted away in the rain and stayed away until the sun came out again. I lit one of the lamps and sat in his shabby sprung armchair, contemplating the rows of glinting bottles. The lulling rain pattered overhead.
I awoke to Granddaddy hanging his dripping oilskin on a nail.
“Good afternoon, Calpurnia. Are you keeping well?”
“Yes, sir, but I’m tired out from all the knitting I had to do today.”
“And how do you like knitting?”
“It’s not the worst thing in the world,” I admitted, “but there’s such a lot of it. I’m supposed to knit socks for everyone before Christmas, and that’s a tremendous number of socks. I’m hoping you like yours plain because I haven’t learned any patterns yet.”
“I like my socks plain. I never learned any patterns either.”
“You can knit?” I asked, amazed.
“Oh, yes, and darn too. Several of the men in my regiment were accomplished knitters.”
He saw the look on my face and went on, “We had to be self-sufficient in the field. If you needed a new sock, you made it yourself. There were no wives or sisters—or granddaughters, for that matter—to look after us, and parcels from home seldom got through. I remember one sergeant writing home at Christmas, asking his wife to send him a new pair of rabbit gloves. They arrived in the middle of the following summer, and by then he’d lost two fingers to frostbite. But he kept his thumbs, so he was happy about that. There was, of course, the problem of the empty fingers in the gloves. They interfered with his rifle grip, but he lopped them off at the knuckle and sewed them flat. Made a neat job of it, if I remember.”
“Self-sufficient.” I thought about this for a while. If our soldier boys had learned to knit, if my grandfather had learned, maybe it wouldn’t kill me to learn.
He looked at me. “I imagine that your mother is hoping you learn cookery, as well. We had to cook for ourselves, too.”
“Granddaddy, are you trying to make me feel better?”
He smiled. “I suppose I am.”
“Mother’s threatening to make me learn a new dish every week. It might not be so bad, except that you spend hours making it and then it’s all gone in fifteen minutes. Then you sweep up the kitchen and you scrub the counter and you have to start all over again without a single moment’s rest. What do you have to show for it? How does Viola stand it?”
“It’s all Viola knows,” he said. “And when something is all you know, it’s easy to stand it. There is one other thing she knows: Her life could be much harder. Viola is ‘house’ instead of ‘field.’ She has aunts and uncles in Bastrop chopping cotton with the short hoe and pulling the long sack.”
“Father won’t allow a short hoe on the place.”
“Do you know why not?” said Granddaddy.
“No sir, I don’t.”
“It’s because I provided him with the opportunity to spend a full day in the field with one when he was about your a
ge. I hope he provides your brothers with the same experience.”
“Do you think he’d let me try it?”
“I doubt he would want to see his daughter out there.”
“Hmm. So what did you find today?”
He pulled his spectacles from his pocket and lifted his satchel onto the counter. “Here are some nice specimens of sangre de drago, or dragon’s blood. The Indians used it to treat gum inflammation. I did see an Oxalis violacea, but I think we have enough of those. And, look here, it’s a Croton fruticulosus, which I’ve never seen blooming this late before. You may have heard it called bush croton. Let’s try and root this one.”
The plants were nowhere near as interesting to me as the insects, and the insects were not as interesting as the animals, but Granddaddy had shown me how they were all dependent, one upon the other, and you had to study and appreciate all of the phyla in order to understand any one of them. So I peered at the wilted wisps he sorted with his finger and tried to learn something.
“Do you remember,” he said, “the hairy vetch we found a while back? The possible mutant?”
It had been an extremely boring plant, but I did remember it.
“Can you find it for me?” he said. “I think it’s still here somewhere. I haven’t had time to press it.”
I scuffled through the jars and envelopes and came up with it, an unprepossessing dried brown scrap.
“The mootant,” I said. “Here it is.”
“The correct pronunciation is ‘mew-tant.’”
“How do you spell that? And please don’t tell me to look it up.”
“Just this once. It’s M-U-T-A-N-T.”
“I think my pronunciation is better,” I said. “Mootant. What is it? What does it mean?”
“Mr. Darwin discusses it in some detail. Have you not reached that chapter yet?”
I felt comfortable enough with him to admit how difficult I found the reading. “I’m still studying the chapter on Artificial Selection. It’s taking me longer than I thought. It’s dense reading.”
“For someone of your tender years, I suppose it is,” he mused, while inspecting the jar. He opened it and tipped the sample out onto a fresh square of blotting paper. “Hand me the magnifying glass, will you?” he said.
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate Page 12