“I remember.” How could I ever forget?
“Did we not talk about Mrs. Curie’s element? Mrs. Maxwell’s screech owl? Miss Anning’s pterodactyl? Her ichthyosaur?”
“No.”
“Miss Kovalevsky’s equations? Miss Bird’s travels to the Sandwich Islands?”
“No.”
“Such ignorance,” he muttered, and quick tears pricked my eyes. Was I such an ignorant girl? He went on. “Please forgive my ignorance, Calpurnia. You have made me well enough acquainted with the primitive state of your public education, and I should have known you would be left in the dark about certain matters of Science. Let me tell you about these women.”
I soaked up what he told me like a living sponge. It was galvanizing information. But was there something in his voice, some hesitation, some reservation I hadn’t heard before? We were interrupted by Mother herding the children inside for bed. Lately, it seemed that all my talks with Granddaddy were interrupted. Lately, it seemed that there wasn’t any time.
By unanimous vote, my brothers and I retired the Fentress Firefly Prize at bedtime, declaring the season of 1899 officially over.
Travis’s firefly was, in fact, the only one spotted that night. Although I knew the fireflies would return in a year, it felt like the extinction of a species. How sad to be the last of your kind, flashing your signal in the dark, alone, to nothingness. But I was not alone, was I? I had learned that there were others of my kind out there.
CHAPTER 22
THANKSGIVING
One of the most remarkable features in our domesticated races is that we see in them adaptation, not indeed to the animal’s or plant’s own good, but to man’s use or fancy.
I WOKE EARLIER than usual the next morning and knew, before I was completely awake, that something was different. I came fully awake and realized that I was cold. I was cold! The temperature had dropped a good forty degrees in the night in one of those unpredictable fronts that swept down from the Amarillo plains. I reached out a goose-fleshed arm to pull up a quilt, but of course there wasn’t one. Our household had been caught unprepared, so long had the heat hung over us like a suffocating shroud. I flung back my thin cotton sheet and stretched my arms to the ceiling and luxuriated in the chill air. I wondered, If I lay there long enough, would I start to shiver? But there wasn’t time for this kind of experiment. A lovely day waited to unroll before me.
I came downstairs dressed in my summer clothes because I had nothing else in my press to wear. Viola was singing “The Willow Bends Her Boughs for Me” as she stoked the kitchen stove. Idabelle was tucked tightly in her basket. Mother came down in her dressing gown, over which she’d thrown her prize cashmere shawl, which reeked of camphor. Father had bought it for her on their honeymoon in Galveston, a city into which an unimaginable profusion of fabulous goods flowed every day.
“Soft as a baby’s bottom,” Father always said about the shawl when she wore it, twinkling at Mother, who would flush. She fought a running battle against mouse and moth for possession of her shawl, and kept ahead by such heavy and diligent applications of mothballs that the smell wafted about in her wake like some vile perfume. By spring the smell would fade, but by then she’d have to pack it away again.
Viola made pecan sticky buns served with hot syrup, and we fell on them like ravenous beasts. Granddaddy celebrated the day by briefly giving up his shabby frock coat to SanJuanna to allow her another futile stab at making it presentable; the benzene had little effect except to make him smell like a walking laboratory.
On the back porch, the Outside Cats were curled into themselves. Ajax and the other dogs snuffled and pranced in the grass. Everyone had a brighter eye. Tempers were soothed, gladness filled our souls. We could go on.
That day on the way to school, my brothers and I raced each other for the first time in months. Miss Harbottle was in such a good mood that no one got the switch, and no one had to stand in the Corner of Shame. Lula Gates and I celebrated by jumping rope all the way home. It had been too hot for months to even think about it. When I tripped myself up, I realized that I had grown taller over the summer.
I stopped in at the gin on the way home, and since Father was engaged in a meeting with some other planters, I went to Mr. O’Flanagan’s office and asked him to cut me a longer length of jump rope.
“Certainly, certainly. Come in and say hello to Polly,” he said, getting up from his desk. Polly looked happy and healthy enough standing on his cage, but he still gave me the evil eye.
“Old Polly’s a good bird, aren’t you?” Mr. O’Flanagan said, and affectionately ruffled the feathers on his back the wrong way. I watched in alarm, but instead of ripping Mr. O’Flanagan’s scalp off with his talons, Polly winked slowly in obvious pleasure and leaned into his hand.
“Polly’s a good boy,” said the bird in its disquieting nasal counterfeit of a human voice.
“Yes, he is,” cooed Mr. O’Flanagan, “yes, he is. Here, Calpurnia, you can pet him while I get some rope.”
Not likely. I stood well across the room. Polly and I looked at each other. He raised and lowered his crest and then I swear he hissed at me like a feral cat. I was backing out of the room when Mr. O’Flanagan returned with a length, saying, “Let’s see, how long should we cut this?”
I was glad to see him back. I was glad that Polly had found his proper place in the world but gladder still that it was not with us.
When I got home, I joined my brothers and SanJuanna and Alberto in carrying quilts and winter clothing outside for airing. The lighter patchwork quilts were hung over the clothesline, and we set to beating them with all our might. It was one of those rare times that we were actually encouraged to be boisterous, and it was grand. The heavier feather quilts were spread out on clean sheets in the sun, and we took turns shooing the inquisitive dogs and cats and chickens away from them. Mother put a dilute solution of vinegar in a Flit gun and misted everything. She believed firmly in the disinfectant qualities of vinegar and sunshine, and who’s to say she was wrong? It’s practically all we had. Diphtheria, polio, typhus lurked everywhere, and we had no weapons against them, although living in the country instead of Austin gave us some protection.
With the change in the weather came the realization that Thanksgiving was sneaking up on us. We’d all been too hot for too long to give it much thought. It was unfortunate that this year the task of feeding our small flock of turkeys (numbering exactly three) fell to Travis. One turkey was destined for our table, one was for the hired help, and one was for the poor at the other end of town. This was traditional in our house. What was not traditional was that this year the softest-hearted child had been assigned to look after them.
Travis had promptly christened his charges Reggie, Tom Turkey, and Lavinia. He spent hours communing with them, preening their feathers with a stick while sitting in the dust and gobbling softly at them. They, in turn, seemed attached to him and followed him about within the confines of their pen.
Helen Keller could have seen what was coming, so why couldn’t my parents?
I don’t think it sank in for Travis until early November, when I went out to the pen with Viola so that she could inspect our prospective dinner. Travis sat on a stump holding Reggie on his lap, talking to him and feeding him corn from his lips. Oh, dear. He looked up and paled when he saw Viola.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“Honey, you got to face facts,” she said. “Get the others out here and line ’em up so I can see ’em.”
“You go away,” he said. His voice was thin and tight. I’d never heard him talk like that before. “Go away right now.”
Viola went straight to Mother and said, “You better think about that boy. Those turkeys is his pets.”
Mother went to Father and said, “Shouldn’t you turn the turkeys over to Alberto?”
Father summoned Travis and said, “You can’t let yourself get too attached, little man. This is a working farm, and you have to be big abou
t such matters.”
Travis came to me and said, “They’re my friends, Callie. Why would anybody want to eat them?”
“Travis,” I said, “we always have a bird at Thanksgiving. That’s what they’re for. You know that.”
I thought he was going to cry. “We can’t eat my friends. What am I gonna tell Reggie?”
“I don’t think you should discuss it with him,” I said. “It’s better that way, don’t you think?”
“I guess,” he said sadly, and shuffled off.
The next day I sat in the kitchen with Viola and watched her punching down the bread dough, the cords working in her forearms. She was a marvel of efficiency.
“What’s on your mind?” she asked.
“Why do you think there’s something on my mind?”
“You got that look about you. You wearing it right now.”
This was news to me, that I was so transparent to the world. I said, “Viola, what about Thanksgiving? What about Travis? Can’t you do something? It’s going to kill him.”
“I talked to your mama,” she said, sprinkling flour on the board, “and she talked to your daddy. I done my part. If you can think of something else, you go right ahead.”
“Why did he have to get the birds this year? That was dumb.”
She shot me a look. “I’d never say.”
“Is it really his turn?” I counted my brothers on my fingers. “Let’s see, last year it was Sam Houston, and the year before that, it was Lamar, I think, so that means that this year it’s supposed to be . . . oh.”
“That’s right, baby girl.”
I pondered this and concluded that they shouldn’t have skipped over me. I would have made a better choice than Travis, now that I had been annealed in the furnace of the Scientific Method. Creatures sometimes had to die to advance knowledge; they also had to die to advance Thanksgiving. I knew this. I could have done it.
Probably.
The next day, I collared Travis after he fed his birds.
“Look,” I said, “think of them as chickens. We eat the chickens all the time, so try and think about the turkeys like that instead. You don’t care about the chickens like that, right?”
“But they’re not chickens, Callie. They know their names. They wait for me to come every morning.”
“I know they’re not chickens, Travis, but I’m saying if you practice thinking about them like they’re chickens, it’s going to be easier on you.”
He looked at me doubtfully.
“Or,” I said, “think of them like Polly. You didn’t get attached to Polly.” (And neither did anybody else.)
“Polly is a scary bird,” he said. “My turkeys aren’t scary—they’re tame.”
“Travis,” I said, “you’ve got to try. And you’ve got to stop spending all your time with them. I’m not kidding.”
Two days later, Reggie went missing, apparently having wormed his bulky body through a tiny rent in the corner of the pen.
Oh, there was pure heck to pay, no doubt about it, but Travis stuck fast and stoutly denied that he’d engineered the escape. Unfortunately for my brother and Reggie both, the bird showed up at first light the following morning and waited outside the pen for his breakfast and morning grooming from his best friend. I didn’t see it, but Lamar reported that Travis burst into tears when he saw the bird and tried to shoo him into the brush, but Reggie was determined to return to the soft life. Alberto was assigned to reinforce the pen, which was then personally inspected by Father, followed by yet another talk with Travis behind closed doors.
As the holiday grew closer, Travis grew paler and quieter.
In desperation, I went to Harry, who disappointed me by saying only, “Look, we’ve all had to go through it.”
“Yes,” I said, “but none of you made pets out of your birds. It’s different for him, don’t you see?”
“It’s supposed to be your turn, you know.”
“I know.”
“But I talked Father out of it,” said Harry.
“You did? Why?”
“Because we both figured it would be too hard on you.”
“Well, that sure makes me laugh. Poor old Travis is about to fall apart, in case nobody’s noticed.”
“Okay.” Harry sighed. “What do you suggest?”
“I don’t have anything to suggest. That’s why I’m asking you to help.”
“Have you talked to Granddaddy about it?” he asked.
“I’m afraid to,” I said. “He believes in survival of the fittest. And it looks to me like those turkeys are only fit for Thanksgiving dinner.”
Despite admonishments from nearly every family member, Travis spent more time with the turkeys instead of less.
I went to the parlor one afternoon, where Mother was sewing, and I said, “I have a terrific idea. Why don’t we have a ham this year for Thanksgiving?”
“We have a ham at Christmas,” she responded, inspecting a frayed cuff.
“Yes, but we could have ham twice, couldn’t we? It wouldn’t kill us,” I said. Travis liked the shoats too, but fortunately, that year none of our present piglets had evidenced a singular enough personality to earn a name.
“We’re not going to spoil Thanksgiving dinner because Travis has become overly fond of a bird.” Mother was the court of last resort on household matters; there was no appeal, but I laid out my next suggestion anyway, feeble as it was.
“What about this?” I said to her. “We can trade our three turkeys for someone else’s. That way, at least he won’t have to eat his own bird.”
Mother sighed and looked at me. “He’s causing such a lot of trouble. All right, but they would have to be birds of the same size, not a pound less. Bring him to me, and I’ll tell him.”
I found Travis in the pen, sitting in the dust with Reggie and Lavinia and Tom Turkey.
“You need to come in,” I told him. “Mother wants to talk to you.”
“Is it about my birds?” he said, excited. “It’s about my birds, isn’t it? Is she going to let me keep them? She’s going to let me keep them, right?” He followed me to the house, chattering all the way.
Mother said to him, “Travis, we can’t not have Thanksgiving. But Callie has an idea, and I am willing to go along with it. We can trade your birds for someone else’s—that’s if we can find someone who’ll do it. But they have to be just as big as ours.”
“Trade? What do you mean?”
“Well, we would give someone our turkeys, and they would give us theirs.”
“But I would get to go visit them. Wouldn’t I?”
“No, dear, you wouldn’t,” she said.
“Then why would we do that?” he asked.
“It’s so that we could have someone else’s bird for Thanksgiving, not one of yours. So you don’t have to watch us eating Ronald.”
“Reggie,” he said, sniffling.
“Reggie, yes. And this way, you could have some turkey for Thanksgiving too. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“No,” he cried.
“That’s enough. Please wipe your nose and try to collect yourself.”
I wondered why he wasn’t relieved of turkey duty and given something else to do instead. I guess it’s because once you were assigned a chore you did it. We lived daily with the birth and death of every kind of animal, and we were expected to get used to it, or at least the boys were. Tender sensibilities didn’t enter into it; life was hard, but life for animals on a working farm was harder. And a whole lot shorter.
I enlisted my brothers, and we started looking for replacement birds. Nearly everyone in town raised a few chickens, but turkeys were less common, being bigger and having a more pronounced tendency toward meanness, except of course for Travis’s birds. We checked with our classmates, with the mayor, with Alberto, who came from a huge family of brothers and sisters and cousins at the other end of town. We put up a small handwritten notice at the newspaper office and made sure that old Backy Medlin, the gin’s most mau
ndering gossip, knew what we were looking for. I even bribed Lamar to go to the post office and tell Postmaster Grassel so that I wouldn’t have to see the man.
It was a great plan, or at least a decent one. And absolutely nothing happened. As the day approached and Travis became more and more distressed, I went to Granddaddy in the library and explained the problem.
“Which one is Travis again?” he said.
“He’s the ten-year-old. The one who’s been crying all the time lately.”
“Ah. So that’s what’s wrong with him. I thought perhaps he had worms.”
“Not that I know of. Mother’s always giving us purgatives. We’ve got to help him, Granddaddy.”
“Calpurnia, our whole existence on this earth is a cycle of life and death. That is a fact. There is no stopping it.”
“You’re not going to help,” I said and turned to go. “And you with your bat. If we were going to eat your bat for Thanksgiving, instead of turkey, you’d do something about it.”
“Calpurnia,” he said, “is it so important to you?”
“Not to me, it isn’t,” I said. “But it is important to Travis. So I guess that makes it important to me.”
“Well, then.”
THE FATEFUL DAY drew close, and I went to my brother. “Travis,” I said, “I have found you three substitute turkeys. I’ve found a man who’ll trade. But you can’t watch. You have to say good-bye to them tonight. It’s better this way, do you understand?”
“No,” he said miserably. “I don’t understand any of it. It’s no good.”
“We have to do it this way,” I said. “You have to trust me.”
Travis sat in the pen that afternoon until dusk. I could see him from the window upstairs in the back hall. Finally, he gave each of the birds a hug, pressing his face deep into their feathers, then tore himself away and ran into the house. Sobbing, he ran past me and slammed the door to his room.
Next morning, looking down at the pen, you could see there were three new turkeys. They were a different color from ours, and they had fewer tail feathers, as if they’d been fighting, but Mother was happy enough to see that they looked about the same size and weight as our old ones. Alberto went out early and chopped off their heads on the chopping block, and SanJuanna plucked and singed them clean. I noticed them conferring over the dead, naked turkeys on the back porch, speaking low in Spanish.
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate Page 20