The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate Read online

  “Not like this, Mr. Fleming. I fear a calamity of the worst magnitude.”

  “You really saw a seagull?”

  “My granddaughter saw one earlier this morning.”

  Mr. Fleming cut his eyes sideways at me, and I flinched. I could read his thoughts, something along the lines of, Evacuate Texas’s largest cities on the word of a child? What madness is this?

  Granddaddy continued, “There is evidence that the animals have some senses that we do not, which may warn them of natural disasters. There are many anecdotal accounts of such things. The elephants of Batavia are said to foretell tidal waves; the bats of Mandalay are said to predict earthquakes.”

  Mr. Fleming spoke slowly. “Well … the lines are all jammed up right now. The price of cotton is swinging pretty good today, so there’s lots of commercial traffic. I’ve got a bunch of buy and sell orders stacked up ahead of you. I’d say there’s a couple of hours’ wait.”

  I had never heard Granddaddy raise his voice, and he did not do so now, but ice entered his gaze, and steel, his tone. He leaned over the counter and fixed Mr. Fleming with a piercing blue stare from beneath his bushy dragon eyebrows. “This, Mr. Fleming, is a matter of grave importance, possibly of life and death. Mere commercial transactions will have to wait.”

  Mr. Fleming squirmed and said, “Well, Cap’n, since it’s you, I’ll move you up to the head of the line. Be another ten minutes, though.”

  “Good man, Mr. Fleming. Your service in this time of need shall not be forgotten.”

  Granddaddy took a chair and stared into space. I felt too jittery to sit still on a bet. Since nothing was going to happen for a spell, I ran across the street to the gin, where Father was conducting business in his glassed-in office. He waved at me briefly through the glass. The place was a hive of activity as usual, engaged in the never-ending business of separating the cotton from its seeds and packing the fiber into huge bales for shipment downstream. The thrumming of the great leather machinery belts, the deafening noise from the floor, the shouting of orders back and forth, all of it served only to increase my tension. I wandered into the relative quiet of the assistant manager’s office to study the resident bird, Polly the Parrot, from a safe distance.

  Polly (it seemed that all parrots were named Polly, regardless of gender) was a three-foot-tall Amazon parrot that Granddaddy had bought for my twelfth birthday, the most gorgeous bird anyone had ever seen, with a golden chest, azure wings, and crimson tail. He was also touchy and irritable, unfortunate personality traits in a bird possessed of such an alarming beak and tremendous claws. He had proved so disturbing a presence in our house that, to everyone’s relief (including mine), he’d been donated to the gin’s assistant manager, Mr. O’Flanagan, an old salt who dearly loved a parrot. They were known to sing rude sea chanteys together behind closed doors.

  I compared the gull with the parrot, both so far from home, one displaced by Nature, one displaced by Man. Did Polly dream of tropical climes? Did he dream of lush jungles filled with sticky ripe fruits and tasty white grubs? Yet here he lived chained to a perch in a cotton gin in Fentress, Texas, and I was technically part of the reason. For the first time, I felt sorry for him.

  I took a cracker from a bowl on the desk and gingerly approached him. He fixed me with his fierce yellow eye and yelled, “Braawwkk!” I gulped and slowly extended my peace offering to him, pincered between the very tips of my fingers. Fingertips that might not be mine for long. I whispered, “Polly want a cracker?”

  He extended a terrifying claw, and I suddenly questioned my own sanity. Was I completely mad? Retreat now with all digits intact! But he plucked the cracker from my trembling hand with surprising gentleness, then said in his nasal otherworldly voice, “’Ank you.”

  I blinked at him. He blinked at me. Then he delicately nibbled his treat, as precise and genteel as any fancy lady at a society luncheon. So. We had a truce of sorts.

  Mr. O’Flanagan came in and greeted us. “I see you’re talking to Polly. Polly’s a good bird, aren’t you, my lad?” He ruffled the feathers on the back of the bird’s neck, a move I thought would surely irritate him, but he only leaned into Mr. O’Flanagan’s hand, muttering liquid sounds of pleasure. I marveled at this side of Polly and figured that maybe we could be friends too. But far more pressing matters awaited, and it occurred to me that Mr. O’Flanagan could help.

  “Sir? Mr. O’Flanagan? You’ve sailed around the world, haven’t you?”

  “I have that, my girl. I’ve seen the sun rise over Bora-Bora; I’ve seen the beacon fires at Tierra del Fuego.”

  “Is it true…” I hesitated, torn about questioning Granddaddy’s judgment. But so much was at stake, including my own peace of mind.

  “Yes, darlin’?”

  I plunged ahead. “Is it true that the animals can predict a coming disaster?”

  “I believe they can, my dear. Why, once when I was in New Guinea, I saw the snakes fleeing their homes in great numbers only an hour before an earthquake struck.”

  Relief washed over me. I dashed from the room, crying “Thank you!” over my shoulder, and was gone.

  I got back to the telegraph office in time to catch Mr. Fleming enter his call sign on the “bug” and begin rattling off the first message. I craned over the counter to watch, fascinated by this miraculous ability to instantaneously “talk” to someone hundreds of miles away. His fingers bounced on the bug, clicking out the shorter dots and longer dashes, sending actual language sparking along an electrical wire at the amazing speed of forty words per minute. It was a wonderful tool, and I coveted one of my own. Perhaps one day in the future we would each have our own personal telegraphs and shoot messages back and forth to our friends along an electrical wire. Far-fetched, but still a girl could dream.

  Three minutes later, Mr. Fleming said, “Well, that’s done. Here’s your receipt, Cap’n.”

  “Mr. Fleming, I thank you for your commendable service.”

  Mr. Fleming leaped to attention and saluted again. “Thankee, Cap’n.”

  We walked to the gin, Granddaddy again lost in silence. He conferred with Father behind the glass; Father at first looked puzzled, then concerned. Granddaddy emerged a few minutes later, and we headed back to the house.

  With trepidation, I asked, “Will we be safe here? Should we evacuate too?”

  “What was that? Oh no. We may have some high winds and heavy rain, but I don’t expect any loss of life. Not this far inland.”

  “Are you sure? How can you tell?”

  “The gull could have flown farther inland into the Hill Country, and yet it stopped here. Did it appear to be hurt in any way?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then it stopped here not because of injury but because it deemed Fentress a safe place. Hurricanes quickly lose their force as they begin to travel overland. I trust the gull. Don’t you?”

  Despite Mr. O’Flanagan’s confirmation, I could not answer, due to my worry about what I had set in motion. Three great cities might be thrown into panic, all based on Calpurnia Virginia Tate’s brief sighting of an unknown bird. Me. A Nobody from Nowhere. What had I done? Nervous hives erupted on my neck.

  “Granddaddy,” I said, my voice quavering, “what if … what if it was some other kind of bird? What if I’m wrong?” The hives spread to my chest.

  “Calpurnia, do you or do you not believe in your own powers of observation?”

  “Well … yes. But.”

  “But what?”

  “I guess I need to know … do you believe in them?”

  “Have I taught you nothing?”

  “No, sir, you’ve taught me plenty. It’s just…”

  “Just what?”

  I struggled to hold back my tears. The burden thrust upon me was too great. Then, just as despair was about to overwhelm me, we turned the bend in the road—and there stood the gull, in our own drive. We stopped in our tracks. The gull opened its beak and laughed at us, Ha-Ha-Haaaah, a jeering, abrasive, unearthl
y cry, even worse than Jay’s. Then it ponderously flapped away. I looked up at Granddaddy with a palpitating heart.

  He said, “Do you see why they call it the laughing gull? Once heard, never forgotten.”

  Relief flooded through me, and my welts subsided. I slipped my hand into his and took comfort in the huge rough palm. “I see,” I said shakily. “I do see.”

  The wind picked up and shifted to the east. Despite the freshening breeze, the air felt strangely thicker, if that were possible.

  We went into the library, where he peered at the barometer again. “The mercury is still falling. It’s time to batten down the hatches.”

  “We have hatches?”

  “It is a nautical expression, and I am speaking metaphorically. Sailors secure the hatches on the ship’s deck in preparation for a storm.”

  “Oh.”

  “We should have further discussions about weather in general, but now is not the proper time.” He crossed the hall into the parlor, where Mother sat working out of her mending basket.

  I crept to the parlor door. It wasn’t exactly eavesdropping, was it? I mean, if they’d wanted a private conversation, they’d have closed the door, wouldn’t they?

  Mother’s voice rose: “Because of a bird? You would spread fear through half the state because of a bird?”

  My hives resurged. I clawed savagely at my neck.

  Granddaddy’s voice remained calm. “Margaret, the seagull and the falling barometer are cause for serious concern. We disregard these signs at our peril.”

  At that moment Sul Ross and Jim Bowie burst through the front door, and I jumped like a scalded cat. I ran upstairs to my room before they could reveal my presence with their pestering questions about why I looked so guilty and what I had heard.

  * * *

  MOTHER WAS QUIET at lunch, casting apprehensive glances from Granddaddy to the window, back and forth, back and forth. She then went to the telephone office at his insistence and placed a long-distance call to Galveston, an unprecedented extravagance that cost three whole dollars (!) and required the relaying services of four separate operators, all of whom no doubt listened in. The connection was bad, but in a minor miracle, Mother had actually talked to her sister Sophronia Finch, who shouted down the line that, yes, they were already experiencing high winds, but not to worry, they were used to such things, and Gus was at that very moment outside in his rubber boots securing the shutters on the house. Plus, the Weather Bureau, the government’s own experts, did not seem overly alarmed.

  After dinner, we sat on the porch and looked in vain for fireflies. Their season was coming to an end, or perhaps they were cowering in the long grass, battening down their own tiny hatches. The air was still and oppressive, but my younger brothers raced one another across the lawn and turned cartwheels and fell into wrestling piles that formed and broke apart and re-formed again in fleeting combinations of foes and allies.

  I sat at Granddaddy’s feet as he slowly rocked back and forth in his old wicker rocker and smoked his cigar, the tip glowing in the dark like the biggest, reddest firefly of all. He said, “The barometer is still dropping. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “How can that be?”

  But before he could answer, Mother called, “Bedtime.”

  I whispered, “Good night, Granddaddy,” and gave him a kiss. He didn’t seem to notice. I left him slowly rocking, staring off to the east, his face now in shadow.

  That night Idabelle prowled up and down the stairs, meowing all the while in a most irritating manner. I scooped her up and took her to bed with me, where I quieted her with soothing pats and honeyed words until she finally settled down. Was her uneasiness also a warning? Question for the Notebook: Wouldn’t you expect cats to be especially sensitive to such things, with their fur and whiskers picking up strange vibrations and such? I imagined that if I were so equipped, I’d be able to pick up lots of distant signals of strange events. I fell asleep and dreamed I was a cat.

  I woke up once in the middle of the night. The temperature had fallen, and there was no sign of Idabelle. Rain lashed my window. The glass shivered in its frame; its nervous rattling rhythm set my teeth on edge. I hauled up my quilt and eventually fell into an uneasy sleep, this time filled with strange birds and whistling winds.

  The next day, Father reported that all the lines to Galveston Island were down. There was no news going in. And no news coming out.

  CHAPTER 6

  A CITY DROWNED

  [D]uring the previous night hail as large as small apples, and extremely hard, had fallen with such violence as to kill the greater number of the wild animals.

  ALL NEXT DAY, the gusting winds spat intermittent rain. The newspaper reported that the city of Galveston lay silent, but that a mighty storm had lashed the coast, and the few survivors who had reached the mainland reported catastrophic destruction.

  We walked to the Methodist church under a clutch of dripping black umbrellas. Reverend Barker offered up a special prayer for the people of Galveston, and the choir sang “Nearer My God to Thee.” Everyone either had friends or family there or knew someone who did. Several of the adults sobbed openly; the others looked drawn and spoke in hushed tones. Tears rolled down Mother’s face; Father put his arm around her shoulder and held her tight.

  When we got home, Mother retired to her room after dosing herself with a headache powder and Lydia Pinkham’s tonic. She’d forgotten to make me do my piano practice, and I, the soul of consideration, did not bother to remind her, reckoning that she had more than enough to worry about.

  Next day there were whispers of water six feet deep in the streets, of whole families drowned, of the city washed away. Somber clothes marked the somber mood in our town. Some of the men wore black armbands; some of the women wore black veils. The whole town—no, the whole State—seemed to hold its breath while we waited for the downed telegraph and telephone wires to be restored. Ships all the way from Brownsville to New Orleans were steaming to the ruined city at that very moment, loaded with food and water and tents and tools. And coffins.

  I went looking for Harry and finally tracked him down in the storehouse off the barn, where he was taking an inventory.

  “Harry, what’s going on?”

  “Shh. Seven, eight, nine barrels of flour.” He made a checkmark on a list.

  “Harry.”

  “Go away. Beans, coffee, sugar. Let’s see, bacon, lard, powdered milk.”

  “Harry, tell me.”

  “Sardines. Go away.”

  “Harry.”

  “Look, we’re going to Galveston. But Father said not a word to the others.”

  “Who’s going? Why can’t you talk about it? And I am not ‘the others’—I’m your pet, remember?”

  “Stop it and go away.”

  I stopped it and went away.

  I wandered around morosely for a while before I got the bright idea of checking in the Fentress Indicator, our daily newspaper. Harry was normally the only one of the children allowed to read the paper (the rest of us were still deemed too young, something to do with our “tender sensibilities”). I found a stack of discarded papers in the pantry where Viola stored them. She saved them for mulch in the kitchen garden. I grabbed the latest paper and ran outside to the back porch. The headlines read: Galveston Tragedy. Devastating Flood. Pride of Texas Washed to Sea by Hurricane. Most Deadly Natural Disaster in American History. Thousands Feared Lost.

  Thousands. Thousands. The terrible word pounded in my brain. My marrow froze, and my knees turned to jelly. A part of me could not believe it, but the rest of me knew it was true. And my relatives, the Finches, were they included in those thousands? They were our kinfolk, bound to us by ties of blood. And Galveston itself, the finest city in Texas, our capital of culture, with its glittering opera house and magnificent mansions, all gone.

  I dropped the paper, ran to my room, and threw myself on my tall brass bed, stricken. I wept without ceasing until Mother came upstairs and dosed me with
Lydia Pinkham’s, which only made me dizzy; then she dosed me with cod-liver oil, which only made me sick. Finally I crawled from my bed and sought out Granddaddy in the laboratory. He perched me on the tall stool at the counter where I normally worked as his assistant, patted my hair, and said, “There, there, now. These things happen in Nature. You are not responsible for this. There, now. You’re a good girl, and brave.”

  Ah, brave. Normally that word from him would have filled me with elation, but not now.

  “Why wouldn’t they listen?” I hiccuped.

  “People often don’t. You can lay the evidence before them but you cannot make them believe what they choose not to.”

  He uncorked a small bottle filled with murky brown liquid and raised it in a toast, saying, “To the Galveston that once was; to the Galveston that yet will be.” He sipped and grimaced. “Damn, that’s awful. Would you like a drink? Oh, I forgot, you don’t drink. Just as well. This stuff is still terrible. I’m thinking of giving up on this particular branch of research.”

  I was so startled I stopped crying.

  “Give up?” I’d never known him to give up on anything, not even me. Not even the time I’d heartily deserved to be given up on when I’d temporarily lost the precious Vicia tateii, the new species of hairy vetch we had found.

  “But, Granddaddy, after all the work you’ve done.” I looked at the scores of bottles jamming the shelves and counter, each labeled with its run date and method of distillation. Such a lot of work to abandon.

  “I’m not giving it up entirely, mind, merely changing direction. I now realize that the pecan is much more suited to a sweet drink, such as an after-dinner liqueur. Besides, none of the work has been for naught. Remember, Calpurnia, you learn more from one failure than ten successes. And the more spectacular the failure, the greater the lesson learned.”

  “Are you saying I should be aiming for spectacular failures? Mother really won’t like that. She has a hard enough time with my ordinary ones.”