The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

by Jacqueline Kelly

  Father spoke. “To our good health, to our continuing prosperity and, on this grand occasion, to Grandfather and his scientific endeavors. I must admit that there were times when I wondered about the way you spend your time, but you have proven it to be all worth the while. We are a proud family tonight!”

  Harry started up a chorus of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and then led them all in giving three cheers.

  “Let’s not forget Calpurnia,” said Harry, “with her Notebook. I claim some credit for your accomplishments, pet, for having given it to you. Well done.”

  Another cheer, this time aimed at me. I had to smile at their bright, excited faces.

  “It’s true,” said Granddaddy, raising his glass in my direction. “None of this would have happened without the help of my only grandchild, Calpurnia.” He drank serenely.

  His only grandchild! There was stunned silence from my brothers, followed by a rising swell of muttering and hissing.

  “Pardon me,” said Granddaddy, catching his mistake and bowing. “I meant, of course, my only granddaughter.” He calmly drank and then sat down. My brothers were in a snit, but I didn’t care. My heart pumped gladness through my veins. I was all to him, wasn’t I? And he was all to me.

  CHAPTER 27

  NEW YEAR’S EVE

  Man can hardly select, or only with much difficulty, any deviation of structure excepting such as is externally visible; and indeed he rarely cares for what is internal.

  FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, all the children, even down to Jim Bowie, were allowed to stay up to count the chimes of the clock at midnight on New Year’s Eve, a wildly exciting event, at least in theory. It was also nerve-racking, as there had been talk by some religious societies that the world was going to end on the first day of the millennium. The newspapers reported that there were wild, bearded men parading the streets in Austin, dressed in long robes and carrying big signs that read REPENT, THE END IS NIGH. Father had pooh-poohed the men as a bunch of cranks, but Travis had taken it seriously and asked me after some thought, “Callie, is the world really going to end tonight?”

  “No, silly. Granddaddy explained it to me. The century is merely the marking of the passage of time. Time is man-made and comes from England.”

  “But what if it does come to an end? Who will look after Jesse James? Who will feed Bunny?”

  I could see only one way out of this discussion. “Don’t worry, Travis. I will.”

  “Oh, okay. Thanks, Callie.”

  We went downstairs to an enormous dinner at six o’clock. The weather was dismal, but there were roaring fires in every room. Mother looked flushed and relaxed, and I noticed she was sipping bubbly wine that seemed to agree with her. Afterward, Father made several toasts and reassured us that the world was not coming to an end; that he was a fortunate man to be surrounded by his loving family, his own father, his own wife, his own children. There was a catch in his voice.

  Then we all retired to our rooms to rest for the long evening ahead, to say our prayers and to consider our resolutions. Traditionally, we each had to stand up in turn and recite our resolutions, which Mother wrote down on a paper that she kept pressed in the family Bible until the next year, when the old ones were replaced with new ones.

  I lay on my bed and stared out the window at the lowering sky. Part of me wanted our lives to go on as they always had, with all of us living together in our teeming old house. The other part of me yearned for desperate and dramatic change, to leave Fentress far behind. What good was it to have a hairy vetch “mootant” named after me, if my whole life was to be spent in Caldwell County, bounded by Lockhart and San Marcos, pecan trees and cotton fields? Granddaddy had told me I could make whatever I wished of my life. Some days I believed him, and other days I did not. This gloomy overcast afternoon, this last day of the dying century, was definitely turning into a “not” day. There were so many things I wanted to see and do in my lifetime, but how many of them were within my reach? I wrote a list of them on the last page of my Notebook. The red leather cover was creased and the deckled pages were getting grubby. My Notebook, my faithful friend for the past six months. I put it aside and fell asleep and dreamed that I was floating on a river. But it was not my own river. The water was pale green instead of blue, and, strangely, the riverbanks were covered in sand.

  Viola sounded the gong at nine o’clock and woke me. We trooped downstairs to bowls of dangerously hot Apple Brown Betty that seared the mouth. We each were given a party cracker to pull, inside of which was a paper crown, a noisemaker, and a miniature tin toy. A brisk market in these favors emerged, with much trading and dealing. Then it was just a matter of sitting and waiting. The younger boys, who had never been up this late, responded to the generalized slackening of discipline by either tearing up and down the stairs or falling fast asleep on the parlor rug.

  I ate half of my Christmas orange with ostentatious enjoyment, much to the annoyance of those who had already finished theirs. I saved the other half to eat in a different century. Would an 1899 orange taste different in 1900?

  By ten o’clock, we were all exhausted and craving our beds but determined to make it to the magic hour. At eleven, it was time for the annual resolutions. Mother pulled our old resolutions out of the Bible and read them aloud to much laughter and then burned them in the fireplace. My last resolution had been to master darning and spinning. I had made it a lifetime ago, before the hot summer month when my grandfather and I had first recognized each other.

  We tried to explain to J.B. what a resolution was, but he was too young to understand. Mother made a resolution for him, namely, that he would learn his ABCs in the coming year. Sul Ross made a resolution to finish his school assignments on time. Travis resolved to spend more time playing with Jesse James. This was impossible, as he toted the gangly cat with him everywhere, tucked into the bib of his overalls.

  Then it was my turn. I stood up, pulled my Notebook from my pocket, and opened it to the last page.

  “It’s not so much a resolution. It’s more like a list.” I cleared my throat and read, “I want to see the following things before I die: the northern lights. Harry Houdini. The Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic Ocean. Any old ocean at all—it doesn’t matter. Niagara Falls. Coney Island. A kangaroo. A platypus. The Eiffel Tower. The Grand Canyon. Snow.”

  I sat down to silence. Then Harry said, “Very good, pet,” and started clapping. My other brothers joined in. Mother’s and Father’s applause was tepid. I felt vaguely melancholy.

  Lamar said, “I resolve to do better in geometry.” He spent hours each day running around the house measuring the angle of things with his new steel protractor.

  Sam Houston said, “Lula Gates won’t let me carry her books home from school, so I resolve to carry Effie Preston’s, even if she doesn’t want me to. I swear I’m going to do it.” This got a good laugh.

  Then it was Harry’s turn, but he only smiled and said, “It’s a secret.” There was a general outcry of that’s not fair.

  I said, “You have to tell us, Harry. Otherwise it isn’t a real resolution.” Finally he relented to get us off his back. He glanced at Mother and said, somewhat weakly, I thought, “I resolve to study hard so I can get into the university next year.”

  Mother twinkled with pleasure at this, which of course was his intended result, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it, he was just throwing her a sop. The fact that he wouldn’t tell us his real resolution made me suspect that it had something to do with Fern Spitty.

  Mother’s resolution was to make sure that every single one of her children made it to church at least twice a week. There was stirring in the ranks at this but no one had the courage to moan about it to her face.

  Father’s resolution was to give up dipping snuff. Since he was only allowed to dip at the gin, he’d decided that the agony of having to give it up at the front door every day when he came home outweighed the pleasure of partaking at work. Mother looked delighted and sipped her fizzy win
e.

  It took some badgering of Granddaddy, who took it jovially enough before he said, “It would be a sad commentary on my life if I were to have any resolutions left at my age. However . . . there is one thing. . . .”

  Mystified, I searched my brain. Something to do with the mutant? Or that he wanted to perfect his pecan spirits? I had no clue.

  “I wish to go driving in an auto-mobile,” he said. “I hear they have one in Austin.”

  “But they’re dreadful machines!” said Mother. “And so unsafe! They say they’re likely to explode without warning, and people are always breaking their arms at the crank.”

  “True.” He smiled. There was a contented, faraway expression on his face. He looked to the world as if he were staring off into the distance; but I knew that he was gazing into the future.

  Then there was nothing left to do but sit and wait for the next hour to pass. My parents talked quietly, Granddaddy smoked cigars and read his National Geographic, and my brothers and I took turns at fighting off sleep and failing miserably. Finally, finally, the clock struck midnight, and as the chimes died out, we heard a cacophony of pots and pans being beaten in the streets all over town. We clasped hands in a circle and sang “Auld Lang Syne.” The words were incomprehensible, but the music was lovely. I looked around the circle of dear faces and considered all the gifts that had come to me over the past year. There were Mother and Father, holding hands and looking tired but happy. She had a few threads of gray at her temples, which I hadn’t noticed before. There was Harry: proud, tall, handsome, his collar and tie immaculate, a young gentleman in the making. There were Sam Houston and Lamar; there was Travis with Jesse James in his arms; there was yawning Sul Ross. There was J.B., dead on his feet but gamely determined to see in the new year.

  And there was my grandfather, adding his low baritone in sad, sweet harmony to the music, his long beard glinting in the firelight. We had been so close to missing each other, he and I. He had turned out to be the greatest gift of all.

  Then the pots and pans died out, and the song ended. Everyone except for Mother and Father shuffled up to bed, leaving the two of them to sit up together awhile longer.

  I put on my thickest red flannel nightie and dove into bed. Mercifully, SanJuanna had taken the chill off the sheets with a warming pan. I intended to lie there for a while and take stock of my life. That’s what you do at the end of the century, don’t you? But I think I actually fell asleep right away and only dreamed I was taking stock.

  CHAPTER 28

  1900

  The action of climate seems at first sight to be quite independent of the struggle for existence; but in so far as climate chiefly acts in reducing food, it brings on the most severe struggle between the individuals. . . .

  I AWOKE IN A gasping panic. There was something terribly wrong with the world, and I knew in my marrow that something dreadful had happened during the night. It took me several seconds to figure out exactly what was wrong: There was such a deep, unnatural silence in the house and outside my window that it felt like the whole world had packed up and stolen away in the night. Had it happened? Had the world come to an end? Should I fall to my knees and pray?

  And the light was all wrong. The light edging around my curtains seemed not so much like light as its absence. Every object in my room had taken on a flat, grayish aspect.

  And then Ajax barked, just once. The sound was reassuring, even though it was muffled and as flat as the light. My panic was somewhat subdued by the realization that my bladder was about to burst. I felt desperate to use the chamber pot, but first I had to face the hideousness that awaited outside. I considered this. Well, if you did have to face the hideousness, it was a lot better to do so with an empty bladder. On the other hand, the china chamber pot would be awfully cold. I weighed these things, groped under the bed for the pot, and did a fair job of balancing above the icy rim.

  That was better. Now to the business of facing hideousness.

  I stood resolutely before the window and put my shoulders back in good military posture, took a deep breath, and yanked the curtain aside.

  And there it was: a perfect blanket of white covering the lawn, the trees, the road, as far as I could see, all absolutely unbroken, untouched, and still. Snow. It had to be snow.

  The world hadn’t ended. It had just begun.

  I looked around my room at my familiar things in the strange light: the hummingbird’s nest in its glass box, my red Notebook, my framed butterflies.

  I put on my rabbit slippers and pulled my wool dressing gown over my nightie. I edged around the noisy floorboard in the middle of the room and opened my door as quietly as I could, but it creaked loudly in the cold. I waited to see if anyone stirred, but to my relief there was no sound. I wanted to be alone. I wanted this just for me.

  I tiptoed down the stairs out the front door and stood on the porch, clutching my gown around me. The temperature amazed me. How could the world be this cold? I inhaled deeply, and the air felt like a dagger in my chest. My exhaled breath formed clouds in the air that disappeared before I could catch them in my hands. There was no noise except for the whoosh of my breathing and the rushing of my own heartbeat. There were no birds in the silvery sky, no squirrels in the trees, no possums. Where had all the abounding life gone? The lack of living things made the landscape both beautiful and menacing.

  As I looked out, a young coyote came slowly out of the trees, delicately lifting and shaking each paw before gingerly putting it down again in the snow. Step, flick, pause . . . step, flick, pause. . . . There was an expression on its face of such great disgust that I laughed. Startled, it looked up and saw me on the porch, and then I swear it sneered at me. It turned slowly on the spot and went back into the trees the way it had come, trying to step in its own tracks, still step-flick-pausing as it went.

  Well, if the coyote could walk in that stuff, I could too. I walked down the steps into the snow. It was not solid like ice, but puffy. It was not silent either, but compressed under my foot with a squeaky crunch. My feet were chilled immediately, and I slipped and almost fell, but no matter. I picked my way down the front steps and looked over my shoulder at my own tracks, which rapidly turned into shallow foot-shaped puddles of water. Ahead of me lay perfection. Could I stand it? Could I bear to mar it with my presence?

  I could. I had to have this gift of the moment—this great gift of the new century—to myself for one more minute, a few more precious seconds, before the bustle and shouts and tracks of the others shattered it forever. Gathering up my gown, I ran down the curved drive as fast as I could, lurching and slipping and filled with joy. I knew I looked crazed but I didn’t care. I ran to the street, which was unmarked by any wagon wheel, then veered off and ran through the pristine brush toward the river. Here I came across a pecan tree downed by the snow, its raw, flesh-tinted core the only color in the otherwise black-and-white landscape.

  I saw a few skittery tracks left by birds and other small creatures, no doubt as confused by this silent white world as I was. Of course they were confused; the last snow had been decades ago. If a finch lived for only two years, how could it pass along the idea of something it had never seen to the next generation? Did the word disappear from the finch language, from finch society? How could any species survive the snow if the word for it died out? The finch race, all the other races, would be unprepared. I would have to put out quantities of seed and suet, hay and ham, and in this way provide for all the links along the food chain.

  My feet were turning into blocks of ice, and I realized I was exhausted. I turned and walked back toward the house. It was the first morning of the first day of the new century. Snow blanketed the ground. Anything was possible.

  The house was beginning to show its usual signs of morning life. I saw my grandfather watching me from his upstairs window. He raised one hand to me in salute. I replied in kind. We stood that way for a moment. Then I ran for the warmth of our home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


  I have, for the sake of fiction, taken some small liberties with Texas history, and I apologize to any reader who spots those places where I have played fast and loose with the facts. Also for the sake of fiction, I have taken liberties with the blooming season of certain plants and the taxonomy of the Vicia genus. I beg forgiveness of those botanists and horticulturists who know better. Any errors concerning scientific matters are entirely my fault.

  Thanks to the following entities for their encouragement and support along the way: The Mississippi Review; the Texas Commission for the Arts; the Writers’ League of Texas; the Dallas Museum of Art.

  Thanks to Barbara French of the Bat Conservancy, to Dr. Diana Sanchez-Bushong of Westlake United Methodist Church, and to Dr. Spencer Behmer of Texas A&M University for their expertise.

  Special thanks to Lou Ann and Jim Bradley for the use of their cabin when I needed it; thanks to Professor Roberta Walker of the University of Texas at El Paso, who could teach a rock to write; to Lee K. Abbott and Grace Paley; to Shelley Williams Austin, Dr. Michael Glasscock, Karen Stolz, Roberta Preston Pazdral, Gerry Beckman, Robin Allen, and Katherine Tanney; thanks to Mike Robinson and his daughter Callie, and to Phil and Jeannie Tate for the name of our heroine. Thanks to the Fabulous Writers of Austin for their boundless support: Pansy Flick, Graciela Fleming, Nancy Gore, Gaylon Greer, Jim Haws, Cecilia Jones, Kim Kronzer, Laura van Landuyt, Diane Owens, and Lottie Shapiro. To Houston White, Dian Donnell, and Charlie Prichard for introducing me to the Old House; to the late John “Sandy” Lockett for the bat tale, which he swore actually happened to him at Scholz’s Garden in Austin (an unlikely story, yes, but he never gave me any reason to doubt him). To my early readers, Joe Kulhavy, Wayne Price, Roxanne Hale Drolet, Carol Jarvis, and Noeleen Thompson for their encouragement, along with my comadre, Val Brown, who teaches piano with kindness and encouragement and in no way resembles Miss Brown. To my agent, Marcy Posner, for plucking me from the hopper. To Laura Godwin, Noa Wheeler, Ana Deboo, Marianne Cohen, and everyone at Holt for making this a better book.