The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate (14 page)

Instead of a nickel or even a dime, he placed a surprisingly heavy coin in my palm. I peered at it, and the coin shimmered with a warm light. It was a five-dollar Liberty gold piece, the head of the queen of Liberty on one side, the eagle and shield on the other, more money than I'd ever seen in my life. A fortune! And all mine!

“I don't want you to spend this frivolously,” he said.

I immediately thought of the books I could buy and not have to beg from Mrs. Whipple at the Lockhart library, watching her face go all pruney whenever I requested something she deemed “inappropriate reading for a young girl.”

Father said, “Think of it as an investment in your future.”

I thought of all the scientific equipment I could buy, perhaps even a thirdhand microscope of my own.

“Save it now, and spend it wisely in the future,” he said, “perhaps on your hope chest and your trousseau.”

My what? Bridal linens? Clothes? Was he kidding? I searched his face for signs of joshing but there were none. I couldn't believe it. How had this happened? How could I be so misunderstood by my own father? I was a foreigner in my own home, a citizen of some other tribe, a member of some other genus.

He looked puzzled, waiting for some kind of response.

Words failed me. All I could stammer out was, “Thank you, Father.”

“You're very welcome. Please send Travis in on your way out.” I plunged the coin deep into my pinafore and left the room with a wounded heart. That he could know so little about his only daughter.

Travis, Lamar, and Sul Ross stood lined up in the hallway. Travis took one look at me and whispered, “Are we in trouble?”

“No, it's good news.”

“So why do you look like that?”

“Never mind. He wants to see you next.”

I retreated to my room and stewed in ambivalence, delighted with my coin and dismayed with my father. Had I been adopted? Had my rightful parents—whoever they were—slipped me into the Tate nest like a cuckoo's egg to be raised by others? Augh, the unfairness of it all. I could only console myself with Granddaddy, and I thanked my lucky stars for him, wishing he were my father instead of my grandfather, who necessarily had a limited say about my life. I pondered the coin, a literal treasure, then wrapped it in a piece of tissue paper and stashed it in the cigar box under the bed.

A week later, Mother, relieved and gladdened that Aggie was emerging from her shell, suggested a trip downtown to the Fentress General Store. She asked me to come along, and I agreed; trips to the store were usually fine entertainment. I wisely left my gold coin at home so as not to be tempted to spend any of it. While they fingered the various muslins and linens and calicoes, I perused the latest Sears Roebuck Catalogue chained to the counter, good for at least a half hour's diversion. You could buy everything in the world through the catalogue, from overcoats to underwear, from wigs to watches, from pianos to tubas, from snakebite kits to shotguns. You could buy a Singer sewing machine (it's where we'd gotten ours), or you could buy blouses and skirts and other clothes already made up, saving you the trouble of sewing for yourself. Amazing! You could buy curtains and carpets; you could buy a tractor or even one of the newfangled auto-mobiles, and it would magically arrive on your doorstep a mere three months later. Talk about speedy service! You could also buy such mundane things as huge sacks of flour and sugar and beans. The company had been the savior of many a pioneer housewife living on the plains in some wretched sod hut, anxiously scanning the horizon daily for her delivery.

Mr. Gates, Lula's father, came in and bought some shotgun shells. He tipped his hat to Mother and said, “Mrs. Tate, you'd best keep an eye out and tell your husband that we're losing chickens. I can't tell if it's a coon or fox or what. I got a shot off the other night, and I thought I got it, but we're still losing chickens.”

“Thank you, Mr. Gates. I will certainly pass that along to my husband.”

We made our purchases, and with admirable efficiency, the clerk wrapped them in brown paper and secured them with coarse twine. We had turned to go when Mother said, “Oh, wait. I forgot to buy your needles, Calpurnia.”

“My what?”

“Your number-three needles.”

“For what?”

“Your Christmas knitting.”

“My what?” I didn't like the turn this conversation was taking.

“Stop it. You sound like that wretched Polly. Thank goodness Mr. O'Flanagan took him off our hands. What was your grandfather thinking? No, I'm talking about your Christmas knitting. This year we move on to gloves.”

My heart plummeted. The previous Christmas, I'd been forced to learn how to knit socks for all my male relatives, who seemingly numbered in the thousands. This painful exercise had kept me away from my nature studies for weeks, and I'd resented every minute of it. The results were lumpy, pathetic items that only vaguely resembled socks. Nobody ever wore them, and I couldn't say I blamed them. But now this?

“Why should I have to knit,” I said, “when you can buy perfectly nice gloves from the Sears Catalogue?” In desperation I trotted back to the counter and started riffling through it. “Look, I can even show you the page. Why would anybody want my gloves, when you can have much nicer ones from Mr. Sears?” I stabbed frantically at the page. “Look at this: ‘Available in all sizes and many pleasing styles and colors.' And look here: ‘Your Satisfaction Guaranteed.' That's what it says, right here.”

Mother's lips compressed, always a dangerous sign. “That is not the point.”

“What
is
the point?” I said, a sudden flash of anger overwhelming my normally excellent judgment about not asking such insolent questions.

Noticing the clerk displaying an excessive interest in this exchange, Mother threw him a grim smile, took me firmly by the elbow, and pulled me out the door. I won't go so far as to say she yanked me into the street but it was pretty darned close. Aggie scuttled along behind with our parcels, a smirk on her lips.

“The
point
, my girl, is that you learn those domestic arts that are common knowledge for every young lady. That are
required
of every young lady. That is the point, and we shall speak no more about it. Agatha, I do apologize for my daughter's rudeness.”

She wheeled into the store and returned a minute later with a pair of needles. On the way home, I trailed behind and pretended not to know them, fuming and kicking viciously at blameless clods. They in turn chattered on about sewing and such and pretended not to notice me sulking in their wake.

I thought I could make a dash for it when I got home, but Mother herded me into the parlor before I had the chance to escape.

“Sit,” she commanded. I sat.

She handed me needles, a pattern, and a hank of navy blue wool.

“Cast on,” she said. I cast on and began to knit.

Aggie kneeled on the Persian carpet and cut out shirtwaists and skirts; she and Mother discussed fashions and ignored me some more. Which was fine with me. I wrestled with the pattern and fought with the wool; I muttered and huffed and dropped stitches, and generally worked myself into a fine snit, albeit a quiet one. If they'd left me to my own devices, I'd have hurled the whole sorry mess to the floor and run screaming for the river.

By the time Viola rang the dinner gong, I had nearly finished one tiny glove. Proudly, I held it up for inspection. Mother stared in disbelief. Aggie squawked a harsh, jeering laugh, reminiscent of the seagull and surprisingly cruel. I squinted at the glove, which didn't look right. I counted up the fingers: one, two, three, four, five. And six.

You'd think that would have been enough to get me out of the glove business for life, but alas, not so. Mother merely demoted me to mittens, which were really just socks for the hand, and a whole lot easier. I'm here to tell you that knitting gloves is devilishly hard, but on the other hand (ha!), mittens are a snap.

And as for Aggie, well, there was no friendship forged over books. (“I have better things to do than read.”) There was no bedtime ritual of hair brushing. (“Get away from me with those newty hands.”) She turned out to
not
be the sister I'd never had. Thank goodness.

 

CHAPTER 12

THE BANDIT SAGA

F. Cuvier has observed, that all animals that readily enter into domestication, consider man as a member of their own society, and thus fulfil their instinct of association.

O
NE AFTERNOON
Travis came into the parlor halfway through my piano practice, an unusual thing for him. Typically my audience consisted solely of Mother, acting more in the role of enforcer than music lover. (Although I have to say that she did enjoy Mr. Chopin's pieces whenever my teacher, Miss Brown, assigned one of them to me, particularly the nocturnes, all dreamy and pensive. It was a miracle I didn't put her off him for life, what with my sour notes and my style, which Miss Brown decried as “mechanical.” Well, you'd play mechanically too, with a wooden ruler hovering inches above your knuckles, just waiting to show you the error of your ways.)

I watched the clock on the mantel like a hawk, determined to play not one second longer than my mandatory thirty minutes. Travis beamed and bounced and fidgeted with ill-suppressed excitement while I mangled Mr. Tchaikovsky's “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” I doubted my performance was the cause, so something was up. He applauded politely with Mother at the end, and then urgently signaled me to follow him through the kitchen and out the back door. He trotted off to the barn, saying only, “Hurry up—you've got to see it.”

“See what?” I said, trotting behind him.

“Come on. I've got a new pet.”

Now, I knew that Travis's pets usually spelled a whole lot of trouble, but his obvious joy and enthusiasm were infectious. “What is it?”

“You'll see. It's in Armand's cage for now.”

“Maybe you should tell me what it is first. To, you know, prepare me.”

But he wouldn't answer. I followed him out to the barn. And there in a cage in a dim corner was a baby raccoon. She was about the size of a half-grown kitten, with a pointy nose, a bushy ringed tail, and the black mask that gave her the look of a mischievous child costumed as a burglar at Halloween.

“Isn't she cute?” he said. “I think I'll call her Bandit.”

Bandit hissed in displeasure. She stared at us warily, her shiny black eyes exactly the size and color of Mother's jet beads that she wore on special occasions.

“Travis,” I said, halfheartedly, “she's adorable, but you can't keep a raccoon. Father will be furious. He shoots them on sight. They raid the henhouse, and they tear up the vegetable patch, and they eat the pecans off the trees.”

“Watch this,” he said. He pushed a bit of lettuce through the wire, and she immediately grabbed it in her paw-hands, washed it carefully in the water bowl, and ate it like a miniature human at a picnic. No wonder they were called
Procyon lotor
, meaning “washer dog.”

“And,” I went on, “if Father doesn't shoot her, then Viola will. You know how she is about her garden.”

He cooed at Bandit and fed her another lettuce leaf.

“And they grow wild as they get older. They don't make good pets. You know that, right?”

“I found her in the scrub. She was all by herself and crying.”

“Was it near Lula's place? Her father says they've been losing chickens.”

Travis did not answer.

Exasperated, I said, “Did you look for the mother?”

“What? Oh. Well … yes.”

“Travis.”

“She was starving! She was lonely! What could I do? You wouldn't have left her, either. Just look at her, Callie. She's cute as a bug's ear.”

Bandit munched on her lettuce, turning it in her clever little hands, all the while gazing at us with alert black eyes. Yep, completely adorable. At least for a while.

“Besides,” he went on, “nobody has to know.”

“Do you really think you can keep a secret like this?” I said skeptically.

“Of course. No one has to know.”

That night at supper, Father said to Travis, “So, young man, Alberto tells me you are keeping a coon in the barn. Is that right?”

Travis gaped. He obviously hadn't had time to work up a good story and had been caught flat-footed. Alberto was the hired man, and Father paid his wages. Of course he would report such goings-on.

Father said, “You know how I feel about coons and such. Varmints, all of them.”

“Yes, Father,” he said, head bowed. “I'm sorry.” He raised his head and mustered his arguments: “She's an orphan, you see, and she was starving when I found her. I couldn't just leave her there. And I promise to take good care of her. I'll keep her away from the henhouse, I promise.”

Father looked at Mother, who sighed deeply but had nothing to add, having no doubt been worn down by variations of the same argument over the years.

“All right,” said Father grudgingly. “But if there's any trouble, any trouble at all, I'll shoot it myself and feed it to the dogs. Is that understood?”

“Yessir.” Travis beamed his heartbreaking smile, which even drew a half smile from Father, so potent was its force.

Thus began the saga of Bandit. What made her more troublesome than Armand and Jay put together were her boundless curiosity and her busy little paws. They were more like hands than paws, really, in that she could open anything. Travis put a puppy collar on her, and she had it off within five minutes. He made a tiny harness for her from leather scraps, and she had it off within ten minutes. Then he hit on the idea of putting the buckle between her shoulder blades, the one place she couldn't reach. Yet. He put her on a leash and tried to take her for walks, which so infuriated her that she leaped and thrashed like a hooked trout to the point of exhaustion. He figured out that he could coax her to follow him for a few feet with bits of cheese, discovering along the way that she would eat anything—literally anything—that could remotely be construed as edible. Potato peels, kitchen scraps, garbage, rotting fish heads—she relished it all. After carefully washing it, that is; her fastidiousness about the disgusting things she put in her mouth amused us both.