The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate (23 page)

I
N BETWEEN MY SCHOOLWORK
, my nature studies with Granddaddy, knitting mittens, and piano practice, I ran to Dr. Pritzker's whenever I could. Sometimes he gave me a nickel or even a dime for my help.

That particular day, I arrived at his office bearing a fragrant basket of fried chicken from Viola, along with a warm apple crumble. The doctor was pulling jars from the shelves with his good hand and pouring ingredients into a mortar while Samuel pulverized them with a pestle.

Dr. Pritzker looked up and said, “My, that smells good. I hope you've got something in there for me.”

“Yessir,” I said. “It's from Viola in payment for Idabelle. And, Samuel, there's a bundle in here for you too. Viola says to stop by before you go home—she has a message for your momma.”

Samuel, who could not read or write, poured the finished powder into a clean jar while Dr. Pritzker fumbled at his desk with a paper label. His clawed, withered right hand looked no better to me. He wrote laboriously with his left hand and examined the results.

“Blast. That looks flat-out terrible.”

It did look terrible, like something J.B. had done.

“Uh, Doctor?” I said. “I could write that for you, if you like.”

After a moment, he replied, “Of course you could. That would be a great help. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner.”

He handed me a fresh label and a pencil. I decided to play it safe and print in block letters rather than write in cursive. I worked slowly and carefully:
MAKE A POULTICE OF TWO LEVEL TEASPOONS IN HALF-PINT OF TEPID WATER AND APPLY TO TORN EAR THRICE DAILY
.

“Much better,” he said.

“Do you want me to deliver it?”

“I surely would appreciate that. It needs to go to McCarthy's farm, and we've got to make a call on a sick heifer in the opposite direction.”

I walked off eastward while the doctor and Samuel headed westward in their buggy. McCarthy's farm was a good twenty minutes away, and I poked along, looking for life in the drainage ditch and taking note of the flora and fauna on the way.

Mrs. McCarthy, a thin, weatherworn housewife, met me at the farmhouse door and pointed me in the direction of the barn, where her husband was tending a heifer with a badly wounded ear.

I handed over the medicine to Mr. McCarthy. To my surprise, he drew a nickel from the depths of his baggy overalls and handed it to me, saying, “Here y'are, missy.”

“Oh no, Mr. McCarthy, I can't take that.”

“Sure you can. Go buy yourself a so-dee at the store.”

I stammered my thanks and hurried off, clutching my windfall. My brothers often made a little money here and there doing all sorts of things, whereas the only money I ever earned was tending the colored children for the week their mothers picked cotton. By the time I got back as far as the Fentress General Store, I'd made up my mind: a “so-dee” from the fountain sounded good, but the thought of adding to my cigar box treasury of $2.67 sounded better. And the thought of not telling my brothers about a potential new source of income? Better still.

After a few afternoons with Dr. Pritzker, I noticed that he prescribed a half dozen or so of his mixtures over and over again.

I said, “Dr. Pritzker, while I'm here, do you want me to write a whole bunch of labels? I could do them for the arnica, the mustard seed, and the spirits of turpentine. I notice you use them a lot. If I made several of them right now, you'd have them ready for when I'm not here.”

He grinned first at me and then at Samuel. “By golly, we've got a real brain in our midst.”

Well, that puffed me up quite a bit. I took extra care with my work, and as I was leaving, he gave me a whole quarter.

I pondered his situation and mine. I thought about the turtleback mound of bills and correspondence sliding off his desk. I thought about my cursive handwriting that was no great shakes. And I came up with a plan.

Interrupting Aggie at her mending, I said, “You're not using your writing machine, so why don't you teach me to type?”

Startled, she looked up. “Why would I do that? You don't need to type-write.”

A child of lesser fortitude might have been discouraged by this and retreated, but I was made of sterner stuff. And I knew what made Aggie tick. I said, “I'll pay you.”

She considered this. “You'll pay me to teach you?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“So I can make money.”

A crafty look crept over her. “Oh, I get it. You want to work for that dirty old Jew, right? Although he does have nice manners for a Jew, not like some I've met. I have to give him that.”

“Dr. Pritzker?” This puzzled and offended me. “Well, of course he's dirty
some
times. You would be too if you worked in the stables and sties and such, but he always washes up afterward. He carries his own bar of soap in his bag. I've seen it. And he's not
that
old.”

She barked a harsh laugh that set my teeth on edge. “You don't know anything at all.”

“That's not true! I know plenty of things.”

“Right. You know all kinds of things about stuff nobody cares two hoots about. Newts and bugs. Who cares about that?”

Rage and incredulity flared within me. “How can you say that? All those things are important. Granddaddy says so.”

“Another old loon,” said Aggie. “Why you pay any attention to someone like that is beyond me.”

I could have punched her at that moment and would have willingly faced the infinite maternal consequences. But then I'd never get what I needed from her. Something important. I marshaled every ounce of self-control in my being and forced myself to calm down.

I said, “If you teach me, I can make some more money.”

“So you want to spend money to make money.”

When she said it aloud like that, I had to admit it didn't sound all that smart.

“So what'll you pay me?”

I'd thought carefully about this ahead of time. “A whole dollar. Cash money.”

“That's not very much. I'll need two.”

My mind raced through the rapid mental calculations for which I'm justly famous. What could I threaten her with? How about the snake? He'd be perfect, but then she'd run to Mother, and Mother would send Alberto to trap it and kill it. It didn't seem right to involve an innocent snake in matters of pure Commerce. Perhaps I could play on Aggie's sympathy, but she didn't seem to have any. Since I couldn't come up with anything else on the spot, I'd have to resort to the truth.

I gulped and said, “A whole dollar is a lot for me, Aggie. Maybe it's not an awful lot to you. But it's an awful lot to me.”

She examined me shrewdly, and I could tell she was running her own calculations.

“A dollar fifty.”

“Okay,” I said, and we shook on it. It was more than I wanted to pay and less than she wanted to make. “When do we start?”

“As soon as you give me the money. Oh, and you have to buy your own ribbon. I won't have you wearing out mine.”

So even though it about killed me, I took two dollars out of my cigar box, gave a dollar fifty of it to Aggie, and ordered a type-writing ribbon for fifty cents from the Sears Catalogue. And even though Mr. Sears was famous for his speedy delivery, I knew I was in for one of those annoying lessons in patience until it arrived.

For want of something better to do, I threw myself into my lessons. At school we were studying the great explorers, Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan and Captain Cook, valiant men who had set sail from Europe and headed for parts unknown at a time when some people still believed that the Earth was flat with dragons lurking at the edge, waiting to gobble up the plunging ships. Miss Harbottle told us they navigated great distances “by the stars,” but when I asked her to explain further, she ducked the question; I had the distinct feeling she didn't know much about it.

Of course I went to Granddaddy.

“Ah,” he said, taking the globe from the shelf and placing it on his desk. “Notice these lines running parallel to the equator. They are called lines of latitude. These other lines running from pole to pole are lines of constant longitude. These imaginary lines divide up the Earth in an especially useful way. Taken together, they can specify any position on the planet.”

“But how can you tell your latitude and longitude by the stars?”

“I'll show you tonight. But first you will need to build a mariner's astrolabe. Gather together the following items: a good-sized piece of cardboard, a protractor, a length of string, a cardboard tube, and a heavy nut or bolt. Then come back after dark, and we will navigate the old-fashioned way.”

It took me only ten minutes to gather the cardboard, the tube, the string, and the nut. Now, where was I to find a protractor? Then I realized with a sinking heart that the only one I could think of belonged to that pill Lamar. Ugh. He'd received it last Christmas, along with a compass and a steel ruler in a handsome leather case. (Meanwhile, I got a book called
The Science of Housewifery
. There was no justice in the world.) To go back to Granddaddy without the protractor was unthinkable. He often told me I was a resourceful girl, and I didn't want to damage his opinion of me.

I examined my options. It might be simplest to ask Lamar but I could just hear him saying no in that sneering voice of his. Or perhaps I could “borrow” it without him knowing. What could be the harm in that? (Other than the never-ending heck to pay if he caught me.) I considered the ever-shifting allegiances and loyalties and alliances that constantly formed and re-formed between my brothers at a dizzying pace. Sometimes it was hard to keep up with who was on the outs with whom, but there was one boy who was always loyal to me.

*   *   *

T
RAVIS SAID
, “What do you want it for, Callie?”

“Granddaddy and I are going to make a mariner's astrolabe, and I can't do it without a protractor.”

“What's an astrolabe?”

“It's a scientific instrument, and I'll show it to you later. So will you do it?”

“Why don't you ask Lamar?”

“
Travis,
don't be a dolt. He'd never lend it to me in a million years.” Really, the boy's propensity for thinking the best of everyone got on my nerves sometimes.

“Oh. Do you want me to ask him for you?”

“No. I want you to … get it. And don't say anything to him about it.”

“You mean, steal it?”

“It's not stealing, it's only borrowing.”

“And then we'll give it back?”

“Absolutely.”

I expected further protestation but he merely said, “Okay.”

After dinner, he sidled up to me in the hall and said in a stage whisper, “Here it is.” He handed me the cool metal instrument, and I hid it in my pinafore pocket before seeking out Granddaddy in the library, where we were guaranteed privacy from the prying eyes of certain nosy brothers.

Under his direction, I cut the cardboard into a half circle. Then I used the protractor to draw marks along the edge of the circle every five degrees. I punched a hole in the center of the flat edge of the cardboard, threaded the string through it, and tied the string to the nut. Finally, I glued the tube across the flat edge. The finished astrolabe looked like this:

When I was finished, Granddaddy inspected my handiwork. “A primitive instrument, but workable. Shall we go outside and locate the North Star? We will need a little light, but not so much as to obscure the stars.”

He lit a lamp, and we walked out to the middle of the front lawn. The crickets hushed their creaking song as we approached. It was almost bedtime, but Mother had a natural reticence about approaching Granddaddy, and I could usually eke out an extra half hour working on a project with him before she called me to bed.

He turned the lamp down to a tiny firefly-size flame, and the crickets resumed their chorus. Matilda the hound yodeled once in the distance. Otherwise the night was silent.

Granddaddy said, “Show me the North Star.”

I knew the major compass points—everybody did—so I could at least point vaguely northward. “It has to be somewhere over there.”

Granddaddy sighed, no doubt at my shocking ignorance. “Let us start from the beginning. Can you find Ursa Major? Also known as the Big Bear or the Big Dipper?”

“Oh yes, I know that one.” I proudly pointed to it. There was no missing it, with its shape exactly like a dipper. “But it doesn't look like a bear.”

“I agree. Nevertheless, the ancients called it such. Now, look at the dipper bowl and locate the two stars at the end of it. Do you see them? Then follow the line those two stars make until you find a fairly bright star, which turns out to be the last star in the handle of the Little Dipper, also known as Ursa Minor, the Little Bear.”

“Got it,” I said.