The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate Page 3

  “Well, I found this ar—”

  “No, no,” I gurgled. “Miss Harbottle gave a talk about it at school. Yes, ha-ha. Now we all wash our hands a lot. Heh-heh.”

  Mother narrowed her eyes but said nothing.

  Oh, Travis, Travis, my downy little chick of a brother. How you survived each day without being squashed under life’s passing wheels was beyond me. Later I told him, “Look, if Mother ever finds out about Armand, you’ll never be allowed to adopt any other animal. Of any kind. Ever again. D’you want that?”

  “I guess not.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  He said, “I feel kind of itchy. And sick to my stomach. And dizzy all over. Oh, and my hair hurts. Do you think it’s leprosy?”

  I didn’t know, so I looked up the symptoms in Granddaddy’s Contagious and Tropical Diseases of Man, a book full of dreadful pictures that were best not gazed at directly (or at all if one could help it), what with the creeping larval eruptions and rotting body parts.

  It turned out that the early symptoms of leprosy included loss of the eyebrows, along with loss of sensation in the cooler areas of the skin, such as the knees. Travis inspected his eyebrows in the mirror a hundred times a day, and at least once daily asked me to pinch him hard on the knees. Each time he said “ow” and sighed in relief. (He was still in short pants at that point, and walked around with bruised knees on display. If Mother noticed, she made no comment.)

  CHAPTER 3

  THE BAROMETER SPEAKS

  At the place where we slept water necessarily boiled, from the diminished pressure of the atmosphere, at a lower temperature than it does in a less lofty country.…

  SPRING TURNED SLOWLY into summer with its inevitable crushing heat and our inevitable grousing about it. Viola said it was so hot, the hens were laying hard-boiled eggs. I complained about the heat less than the others because I often slipped away to the river at midday while they took to their shuttered rooms for a sweaty, fretful nap. Since I owned no bathing costume, I stripped down to my chemise, then floated on my back in the gentle eddies, examining the clouds overhead for fanciful shapes and scenes: There stood an Indian teepee; there, a waltzing gopher; there, a puffing dragon.

  The scenes overhead formed and broke apart and re-formed endlessly. I noted that the thick, puffy cumulus clouds were excellent fodder for the imagination while the thin, sparse cirrus ones were useless. Question for the Notebook: What shapes the clouds? It must have something to do with moisture in the air. And what about a mackerel sky? Discuss further with Granddaddy.

  I could hear the shouting, splashing, uncouth town boys at the bridge downstream, and though I envied them their rope swing, nothing could have induced me to join them, swimming as I was in my underclothes. After my refreshing dip, I made order of my hair and clothes as best I could with a comb and towel I kept secreted in a brown paper bag at the base of a hollow tree, then sneaked back to my room.

  Later that day, I asked Granddaddy about the weather. He said that scientists had actually ridden in a huge balloon two miles above the earth and discovered that the puffy lower clouds were composed of tiny droplets of water like fog, while the higher wispy clouds were made of tiny ice crystals. And mackerel skies were formed by a rare type of cloud in between them. I marveled at the courage it must have taken to be the first person to make that flight.

  We started my study of the weather with wind direction. This was easy, as there was a weather vane mounted at the very top of the house next to the lightning rod. The vane was cut from a sheet of tin in the shape of a longhorn steer; it swiveled automatically to point into the direction of the wind. Any nitwit could figure it out. After several days’ observation, I noted that when the wind blew from the west, it generally signaled good weather to come. I wrote my findings in my Notebook.

  To measure wind speed, I built an “anemometer” out of four cardboard cones glued together in the manner of a whirligig, but my materials weren’t up to the job, and the first good gust tore my instrument apart, scattering bits of debris across the front lawn.

  “Was that another one of your ‘science experiments’?” said Lamar, standing on the porch with Sul Ross.

  What a pill. I said, “Lamar, you’d probably flunk out of a school of fish.”

  Sul Ross hooted with laughter at this, and Lamar rabbit punched him but could not come up with a decent retort. In a battle of wits, Lamar was unarmed.

  I went to Granddaddy and said, “My anemometer blew apart.”

  “That’s a shame,” he said. “The homemade ones often do, but at least you are now familiar with the principles involved.”

  Our next lesson involved something called “air pressure” that you measured with a barometer. I’d had to build the anemometer because we didn’t own one, but we—or rather Grandaddy—owned a barometer, so I figured we’d use that one for my lessons. I figured wrong.

  He said, “We will need a jar, a balloon, a rubber band, a straw, a sewing needle, a metric ruler, and a pot of glue.”

  Now, that was certainly an intriguing list, but I could make no sense of it.

  “Why do we need those things?”

  “You’re going to build your own barometer.”

  I gestured at the handsome brass instrument mounted on the library wall, saying, “What’s wrong with that one?”

  “Not a thing, as far as I know.”

  “Oh, I see. This is going to be one of those lessons about learning something from the ground up, right?”

  “That’s correct,” he said, licking a forefinger and turning a page. “I’ll wait here for you.”

  I considered the list of things we needed. I had no balloon, and was pretty sure none of my brothers did, either, so I ran to the general store and bought one for a nickel. (Normally I would have kicked at the exorbitant price, but it was all worth it for Science.) I also filched a paper straw from the soda fountain.

  Then I ran to the laboratory and found a ruler and an empty jar and pot of glue among the jumble of tubing and beakers and the hundreds of small bottles filled with a nasty-looking brown liquid. Granddaddy had been trying to distill whiskey from pecans for years, and the shelves were crammed with his many failures.

  I returned with all the necessary equipment and placed it on his desk.

  “Now,” he said, “before we begin, you need to understand what we will be measuring. The concept of air pressure was not fully understood until 1643, when the Italian scientist Torricelli, who built the first barometer, said famously, ‘We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air.’”

  Granddaddy went on to explain the astounding fact that although air is invisible, it actually weighs something, and that the many miles of air in the atmosphere above us actually weigh a lot. He reminded me of how my ears popped when I dove deep in the river, down to where the catfish live, due to the growing weight of water above me and its pressure on my eardrums. And in that same way, the air pressed down on us with a mighty force of 14.7 pounds per square inch. Fortunately we were able to stand the pressure, and in fact didn’t even notice it, because it compressed us from all directions at once, and because our bodies were rigid enough to push back.

  I found this information rather disconcerting, but being a Fact of the Universe, there was no getting around it.

  He went on, “The barometer we will make is different from Torricelli’s barometer because they didn’t have rubber balloons in his day. But the idea of measuring air pressure was his real contribution. He got the idea in part from his friend and colleague Galileo, now revered as the ‘Father of Modern Science,’ who was imprisoned during his lifetime for heresy. And Torricelli actually had to hide his first barometer from his neighbors to avoid accusations of witchcraft. Ah, me. Such is the lot of the scientist bold enough to advance the boundaries of knowledge. But enough history, let us begin. You will find the device is simplicity itself.”

  Under his instruction, I cut the neck off the balloon and stretched it tight over the open t
op of the jar, securing it in place with the rubber band. Then I dabbed glue onto one end of the straw and placed it horizontally on top of the balloon so that the end of the straw was stuck to the center of the balloon. Finally, I glued the needle to the far end of the straw.

  I stepped back and studied my creation. How could such an unimpressive instrument possibly work?

  As if reading my mind, Granddaddy said, “I admit it’s rather a crude model, but eminently workable. Now measure the height of the needle and write it down.”

  I stood the ruler up and made a note of where the needle pointed.

  “As the air pressure increases, it presses down on the balloon, compressing the air inside the jar. This causes the glued end of the straw to go down, which causes the needle end to rise. Conversely, as the air pressure falls, the needle will fall. Measure the height of the needle several times per day, and you will see that rising pressure and a rising needle generally indicate good weather is on the way. Falling pressure and a falling needle presage rain and stormy weather. You could also try using the jar of bear grease I have somewhere, but I remain skeptical about its efficacy.”

  “The jar of what?” I didn’t think I’d heard him right.

  “I was given a jar of bear fat some years ago by Gordon Poteet, who had been snatched by the Comanche outside Fredericksburg when he was nine years old. I was a member of the Rangers’ posse that pursued his captors across Texas to bring him back, a long tale of woe I prefer not to delve into at the moment. But we did eventually return him to his parents a few years later, by which time he had turned mostly Indian. He changed his name to Gordon Whitefeather and now lives halfway between the two societies, happy neither here nor there. He gave me a jar of grease and claimed that the medicine man had taught him to predict the weather from observing certain changes in the fat, changes that I speculate are caused by varying air pressure.”

  “Huh. I think I’ll stick with the barometer.” We had just stepped into a brand-new century, and a jar of bear grease struck me as too much of a retreat to the old one. I took my instrument to the farthest corner of the front porch and parked it out of harm’s way behind a couple of Mother’s potted plants.

  The next morning was mostly overcast and gloomy with low, patchy clouds. I sat on the front steps and made my usual observations of flora and fauna. I added the following: Needle is rising, which is supposed to mean higher pressure, which is supposed to mean fine weather. Seems doubtful. Maybe go with bear grease next time?

  But by recess, the clouds had dissipated and the sun smiled down from a blue enamel sky. The barometer had spoken.

  * * *

  OUR ANNUAL SCHOOL PICNIC—a special treat that we all looked forward to with great anticipation—was scheduled for the following Friday afternoon. When I checked the barometer at 6:15 that morning, my heart sank. The needle was falling, a harbinger of bad weather. Ugh. When I arrived at school, the sky was aquamarine with not one single cloud. Nevertheless, I went up to Miss Harbottle and told her that we might be in for some rain on our picnic.

  She waved a dismissive hand at the heavens and sighed. “Calpurnia Tate, wherever do you get these ideas?”

  “From the barometer, Miss Harbottle.”

  “Well, I suggest you use the eyes God gave you instead. There’s nothing wrong with them, is there?”

  “Not that I know of, Miss Harbottle.”

  “Thank goodness for that. Now, please go in. You’re holding up the line.”

  A couple of my classmates tittered and elbowed each other, one of them being Dovie Medlin, my least favorite of all, a self-important nincompoop with delusions of grandeur over the fact that her older sister was the town’s Telephone Operator. The odious Dovie enjoyed lording this over everyone and would not concede that having one’s name attached to a new species of plant could possibly rise to such a level of magnificence. Gah.

  But when the first ominous roll of thunder sounded at noon, Dovie’s mouth fell open in a perfect O of disbelief, and Miss Harbottle glared at me as if I were somehow responsible for ruining our outing. How ridiculous! How satisfying! I bit back a giggle and fought to keep a suitably bland expression on my face.

  * * *

  UNBELIEVABLY, TRAVIS CONTINUED to mope over the loss of his armadillo. He spent his free time brushing and hugging Bunny (who still did not fetch), and playing with the barn cats, whom he had named after famous outlaws (Jesse James, Belle Starr, etc.), but this was apparently not enough. To cheer him up, I suggested we go and see the Holloways’ new pups. We walked half a mile up the Lockhart Road to the Holloways’ sagging farmhouse. Mrs. Holloway answered the peeling door wearing a dirty apron. Maisie, a medium-sized brown-and-white rat terrier, whined in distress at her feet.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Holloway,” I said.

  “Hi, Maisie,” Travis said. “What’s wrong with her? Why is she crying like that?”

  “She had some puppies,” Mrs. Holloway said, “and now they’re gone.”

  “Where are they?” Travis said.

  Mrs. Holloway looked uncomfortable. “Well, you got to understand about those pups. Best we can tell, a coyote jumped the fence when Maisie was in heat, and we got seven of these real ugly pups. Seven! Can you imagine? You never saw the likes. We couldn’t even give ’em away. Mercy me.”

  “I’ll take one,” Travis said quickly.

  I glanced at him in consternation. We hadn’t discussed this with our parents.

  “I’ll take two,” he said.

  I frowned at him.

  “I’ll take three,” he said.

  I glared at him and nudged him with my foot.

  “Why, honey,” Mrs. Holloway said, looking uncomfortable again, “you’re too late. Mr. Holloway finally got fed up with their yapping and took ’em to the river in a sack ten minutes ago.”

  “Oh no!”

  “If you run, you might catch him, but maybe it’s best that you don’t. Ugly, I tell you. Mercy me.”

  Travis wheeled and took off like a madman. I managed to stutter a good-bye to Mrs. Holloway and ran after him at top speed.

  “Travis, stop! Don’t look!”

  He ran even faster. I kept up with him halfway until I got a sudden agonizing stitch in my side, slowing me to a trot a hundred yards back. Off in the distance, I could see a figure on horseback heading our way. Mr. Holloway. Returning from the bridge. Travis shouted something I couldn’t hear. Mr. Holloway shook his head and jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at the bridge. Travis ran on.

  As I passed Mr. Holloway, he said, “You don’t want no coyote cross.”

  I hurried on. Travis stood on the bridge feverishly scanning the slow-moving river for signs of life. But there was nothing to see. No sack, no puppies, not even bubbles. For Travis’s sake, I was grateful.

  “They’re gone,” I said.

  We stood there a few minutes longer. He said not a word. I put my arm around him, and we turned for home. It would be months before we spoke of it again.

  CHAPTER 4

  DEVIL BIRDS

  [The tameness of the birds] is common to all the terrestrial species.… One day, whilst lying down, a mocking-thrush alighted on the edge of a pitcher, made of the shell of a tortoise, which I held in my hand, and began very quietly to sip the water.

  A FEW WEEKS LATER, I was in the kitchen with Viola, petting Idabelle and generally getting in the way, when Travis came through the back door, beaming and carrying an old straw hat covered with a red bandanna, from whence issued rustling sounds.

  “Hey, everybody, you’ll never guess what I found!”

  Viola looked up sharply. “Whatever it is, I don’t want it in my kitchen.”

  “What is it?” I said, with both interest and trepidation.

  He whipped back the cloth like a conjurer to reveal two baby blue jays, scrawny, stringy, partially feathered, pink mouths agape, and ugly enough to turn sweet milk into clabber. They strained upward, quivering for food, emitting grating high-pitched cries.
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br />   Now, it wasn’t all that unusual to occasionally run across a stranded young bird that had fallen or been dumped from the nest. But two? I found that … suspicious.

  “You found them? Really? Where?”

  Travis wouldn’t meet my eye. “Down near the gin.”

  Viola said, “I don’t care where you found ’em, you get them nasty things out of here right now. Those are devil birds.”

  As if to confirm her opinion, both birds threw back their heads, much too big for their wobbly necks, and screamed like, well, the devil. You wouldn’t think such frail-looking organisms would be capable of such a racket, but this was how they begged for food from their parents.

  Viola yelled over the noise, “Get ’em out of here.”

  Travis chattered on our way to the barn. “I’ve heard they make good pets. Have you heard that? They say they’re really smart, and you can teach them tricks. I’ve been thinking about their names. How about Blue for one and Jay for the other? Blue is this one here. Look, he’s a little bit smaller. And Jay, well, he’s a little bit bigger, but one of his wings looks kind of funny. I hope it’s okay. But that’s how you tell them apart. I wonder when they ate last? Do you think they’ll eat chicken feed? Or will we have to dig for worms?”

  “Travis, you know how Mother and Father feel about wild animals.”

  “But these aren’t even animals, Callie. They’re birds. So it’s different.”

  “Not really. Birds are a class of vertebrate within the kingdom Animalia.”

  “I don’t know what that means, but boy, they sure are noisy.”

  And boy, they sure were noisy. Their cries were an annoying sound halfway between a squeak and a screech, and about six octaves higher than I could sing. I followed him to the barn, where he looked for some kind of home for them. But the raucous cries of Blue and Jay quickly drew an attentive circle of the Outside Cats, eyes agleam and tails atwitch.