The Curious World Of Calpurnia Tate Part 21

She turned, and I could tell by the look on her face that she did see. Torn, tight-lipped, she nevertheless s.n.a.t.c.hed up the list, ran her narrowed eyes over it, and then, without looking at me, wheeled into the stacks, barking, "Twenty minutes."

Good. There was time to browse the Emporium and maybe catch up with Aggie getting her portrait made. With a light heart and a light step, I headed for the square. We were lucky to have such a fine library when the majority of counties across Texas had none at all. Dr. Eugene Clark, a physician dying young, had bequeathed ten thousand dollars for its construction so that the young woman who had declined his proposal of marriage would have a proper library and lyceum in which to study literature and music. It had been built for love. And those of us in Caldwell County who could read were the beneficiaries.

I told myself, Calpurnia, you're a lucky girl, even if you do have to deal with such a gorgon to check out books. Actually, that was the tiniest bit unkind, was it not? Apparently it was more unkind than that, because by the time I'd made it to the square on this clear, fine day, a small black cloud of guilt had gathered on my internal horizon.

I wondered why Mrs. Whipple disliked me so much. I realized that if she'd had no particularly good reason before, she had a plenty big reason now, and I had handed it to her on a plate. I inspected my behavior, trying to shine at least a neutral light on it, but could not. At best I had been rude. At worst I had been cruel. I tried to put myself in her shoes (or rather, her creaking corset): a widow, elderly, eking out a scanty existence, having to put up with impertinent children like, well, me. She was the Keeper of the Books, and deserving of respect. No matter that she treated the books as if they were her own, reluctant to hand them over to careless strangers who might not accord them the respect they deserved, who might have grubby hands, who might commit the sin of underlining or writing in the margins, who might even commit the ultimate evil of losing one of the precious volumes! Unthinkable!

Ack, Calpurnia, you wicked girl. I'd have to make it up to her somehow. I would make a sincere apology to her to clear my conscience. Let her dislike me if she would; I would refuse to dislike her. She could not make me.

At Sutherland's I examined the scents and soaps and powders, far more plentiful and elegant than the selection at the Fentress General Store. A bar of fancy lavender soap in a decorative tin caught my eye, and I thought it a suitable gift for an old lady. I allowed myself the briefest of sighs before telling myself to buck up and then forking over a whole quarter. I didn't have enough left over for a root beer float, but never mind. Now that I had my own income, I figured there'd be plenty of floats in my future.

I wandered up to the mezzanine tearoom, where ladies sat in delicate gilt chairs among the potted palms and drank from bone china cups and ate teeny-tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off (don't ask me why). I admired the pressed-tin ceiling, the slow turning of the two-bladed electric fans, the whooshing of the overhead pneumatic tubes carrying money and receipts back and forth across the store at a dizzying speed.

I went downstairs and found Harry buying cigars for Father. He said, "What have you got there, pet?"

"It's for Mrs. Whipple, the librarian. Do you think she'll like it?"

"Very suitable. But why are you buying her a gift?"

"I was mean to her." I explained the situation but did not tell him I had spent all my money, I swear. He commiserated and said, "Very commendable, pet. Come on, I'll buy you a float or a sundae, whichever you like."

"Gosh, really?" Life was looking up.

We sat side by side on swiveling stools at the fountain. Harry ordered a brand-new treat made from a split banana, an exotic imported fruit we'd never seen before. Of course, I had to order the root beer float. I admired the practiced ease with which the soda jerk a.s.sembled it, scooping the vanilla ice cream, adding the aromatic root beer, nicely calibrating just how high it would foam up in the tall tulip-shaped gla.s.s, almost but not quite overflowing, then topping it off with a dollop of glossy whipped cream and a shiny red cherry before sliding it to me on a frilly paper napkin with both a spoon and a straw.

I spooned up the whipped cream and pushed the ice cream to the bottom, discreetly slurping the fizzing slurry through my straw. Harry was kind enough to give me two bites of his banana split (there were definite advantages to being his pet), and it was such a marvelous treat that I resolved to have one of my own next time, even though they cost thirty cents!

Then I wandered through the various departments and admired the goods for sale. For some reason, they didn't carry books in stock. Maybe the store owner wasn't much of a reader, or maybe he figured the library was enough.

We went out to the street, where Harry and Alberto began to load up supplies. I wandered over to Hofacket's Portrait Parlor ("Fine Photographs for Fine Occasions") and was about to go in and look for Aggie when something in the window caught my eye. There, wedged between a photograph of a naked baby on a bearskin rug and an awkward countrified bride and groom in clothes rented for the occasion, was a familiar sight: Granddaddy and me and the Plant, on display for all the world-or at least all of Lockhart-to see. Goodness, we were locally famous. I wondered, could this be why Mrs. Whipple had it in for me? But no, she'd disliked me long before we'd discovered the Plant.

I went in, the tinkling bell overhead signaling my arrival.

"Take a seat!" hollered Mr. Hofacket. "I'm in the middle of a portrait here."

Then Aggie called, "Calpurnia, is that you? Come back here if that's you."

I pushed through the curtains into the studio where Aggie sat posed on an ornate wicker chair like a throne. In her lap she held a large spray of artificial roses and trailing greenery. She frowned at the flowers and said, "What d'you think? With the flowers or without?"

Mr. Hofacket looked up and said, "Why, h.e.l.lo, Miss Calpurnia. So nice to see you again." Mr. Hofacket had been much taken with our discovery and, if left to his own devices, would rattle on at length about the Plant's importance and the critical part he'd played in establishing the existence of a new species on the planet and how his close-up of Vicia tateii now resided at the Smithsonian, with his-Hofacket's-own embossed seal on the reverse, for anyone to see, forever and ever, and so forth and so on.

He inquired in respectful tones after Granddaddy's health and mine before I headed him off at the pa.s.s and asked him why he had our picture in the window.

"Well, missy, that's a good question. It's such a good question that half a dozen people come in here and ask it every single day, and then a lot of them stay to get their portraits done. It's what you might call a curiosity piece, a real conversation starter. Why, I remember one day-"

"With the flowers or without?" Aggie interrupted. "Sorry, Mr. Hofacket, but I don't have all day, you know."

"Right, right."

"So with or without?" Aggie stared at me with more than a flicker of impatience.

The flowers were fine approximations of the real thing, clearly made by someone who had studied the originals in Nature. "With, I think. They're very pretty. It's a shame that the colors won't show."

This sent Mr. Hofacket into gales of laughter at the thought of capturing color on a photographic plate. Aggie arranged the flowers while Mr. Hofacket loaded his magnesium flare and burrowed under his black cloth. "Hold real still," he commanded. "Three, two, one." The magnesium lit the room with a brilliant white light, leaving us momentarily stunned and blinded.

"Right," he said, "that should do 'er. You say you want two copies?"

"Yes, sir," said Aggie. "That's two dollars, right?"

"Right. Give me half an hour or so. They should be dry by then."

Aggie and I headed back to the Emporium but not before I pointed out the Plant in Hofacket's window. To my great satisfaction, she did look somewhat impressed, albeit grudgingly.

I left her fingering the fabrics and lace at the store and, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up my courage, headed back to the library to make my apology, present my gift, and perform whatever penance was expected of me.

I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and went in. To my simultaneous consternation and relief, Mrs. Whipple was nowhere to be seen. A small stack of books sat on the counter, tied with twine and bearing the briefest note: Books requested by Captain Walter Tate, Fentress. I tucked the books under my arm and carefully centered the pretty little tin of soap in the exact same spot. The brave part of me wanted to track her down in the stacks and follow through with my plan. The coward in me was highly relieved and thought, "Next time." This latter part seized the upper hand and whispered, "Hurry up, the wagon's waiting for you." Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn't, but I chose to believe it and skedaddled out the door, congratulating myself on both my bravery and my cowardice.

And by the way, I know for a fact that Aggie made a trip to the post office first thing Monday morning on her way to school.

CHAPTER 22.

THE VALUE OF LEARNING NEW SKILLS.

A small frog, of the genus Hyla, sits on a blade of gra.s.s about an inch above the surface of the water, and sends forth a pleasing chirp: when several are together they sing in harmony on different notes. I had some difficulty in catching a specimen of this frog. The genus Hyla has its toes terminated by small suckers; and I found this animal could crawl up a pane of gla.s.s, when placed absolutely perpendicular.

GRANDDADDY'S LESSON PLAN next called for a frog, and we fortuitously came across a good-sized one at the inlet, not long dead, floating with its pale belly up. It was a Rana sphenocephala, the southern leopard frog, so named because of its distinctive dark spots. On inspection, the cause of death was not obvious.

"Will it do?" I asked Granddaddy. It looked only a little worse for wear.

"It will do," he said.

"I wonder what killed it?"

"Perhaps you shall find out when you do your autopsy," he replied.

We carried the frog back to the laboratory in my old fishing creel and pulled out the dissecting pan and tools. I was taking a real step up the evolutionary ladder, advancing to phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, meaning the frog had a backbone and spinal cord in common with humans, unlike the earthworm. And speaking of earthworms, where was Travis? He had agreed to watch this procedure. I fretted momentarily over whether I should retrieve him, then figured the time and trauma would not be worth it. It would be challenge enough to force him to study the results. And that boy wanted to be a veterinarian? How was that supposed to work?

Following Granddaddy's instructions, I turned the frog on its back and pinned each foot to the wax. I made an H-shaped incision the length of the belly through the smooth but tough skin and carefully pinned it back, then repeated the process through the substantial layer of muscle. There lay the innards: the surprisingly large liver, the tiny pancreas and wormlike intestines, the saclike lungs, the kidneys.

"Regard the heart," said Granddaddy, pointing it out with tweezers. "It comprises only three chambers, unlike the mammalian and avian hearts, which each have four. The frog heart mixes oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor blood before pumping it around the body; it is therefore not as efficient as the hearts of birds and humans, which pump only oxygen-rich blood, providing the organism with greater energy."

We concluded with the kidneys and cloaca and ovaries, showing the frog to be female, although no eggs were present. Perhaps a real herpetologist could have figured out the cause of death, but I found nothing obvious to explain it.

I took the tray to Travis in the barn, where he was sitting on a stool and entertaining the barn cats with a bit of string. He saw me coming and said, "Oh no. What is it this time?"

"Remember I told you we were moving up the evolutionary ladder? Well, we've made it to our first vertebrate. It's a leopard frog. You've seen them at the river."

I showed him the tray.

"Ooh." He moaned and put his head between his knees. But he didn't throw up and he didn't faint. I decided to call this progress of a sort.

We moved on to a stillborn baby rabbit, one of Bunny's progeny, and this time I insisted he watch. I tied the tiny pathetic creature on its back on a board and secured the paws with twine. Then I took a sharp pocketknife and made a careful incision down the chest and belly. I looked up in time to see Travis's eyes roll back in his head. I dropped the knife and caught him as he crumpled to the straw.

It turned out that my brother, who loved animals-or at least their exteriors-to distraction, could not, when faced with their interiors, maintain consciousness.

AFTER A LIFETIME of waiting, my type-writer ribbon finally arrived. I almost missed it, thinking the parcel on the hall table was one of the dime novels that arrived for Lamar twice per month.

I ran upstairs with my ribbon and found Aggie writing another of her interminable letters to The Lump (my private name for Lafayette). How she could wring such long missives out of such an uneventful life was beyond me.

"It's arrived, Aggie!" I panted.

She didn't even look up. "What's arrived?"

"My ribbon. We can start my lessons now."

"Oh, that." She stretched and yawned. "All right. Tomorrow."

"What about now?" I said, champing at the bit.

"I'm busy."

"You're only writing a letter."

"I'll have you know," she sniffed, "it's a very important letter. Maybe the most important letter of my life."

"Really? Then why don't you type-write it and I'll watch?"

"No, it's private. Go away."

"I can't go away. This is my room." At least it used to be.

"Well, it's my room too. Go away and draggle in mud puddles with your grandfather. That's what you two do, right?"

I didn't like her tone. I also couldn't deny it. Putting the best face on it, I said with stiff dignity, "We study all forms of Nature, all the way from pond water up to the stars."

She snorted. I thought furiously and said, "And besides, you're related to him too, you know. He's your ... he's your"-and here I sketched a quick genealogical map in my mind-"your great-uncle."

I could tell by the startled look on her face she'd never thought of this. She came back with, "Only by marriage. Not by blood."

"Still counts," I said, "so you might be a bit nicer about him."

"Hmpf."

The next day she pulled the precious Underwood out of the wardrobe and set it on the desk. She removed her ribbon and threaded mine through various struts, saying, "Watch closely. I don't want to repeat myself." Then she rolled a clean sheet of paper into the machine and rapped out smartly: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

Leaning over her shoulder, I said, "Why did the fox do that? Did the dog not mind it? I'd think any self-respecting dog would mind."

"No, silly, it's a typing exercise. It's one single sentence with all the letters of the alphabet in it."

I was too excited to take offense, and I also didn't want to contradict her by pointing out that there was no s in the sentence; you'd have to make either the dog or the fox plural. We switched places and I sat in the chair. She showed me how to place my hands at the "home position" and, with great excitement, I was off and running.

Except that I wasn't. Learning to type turned out to be tedious and dreary, not at all the magical experience I'd imagined. I'd been a bit worried that Aggie might not commit herself fully to the project, but I needn't have. She was true to her word and gave me terribly boring exercises (rather like piano scales) and checked on my progress daily, even grading my efforts like a real teacher.

We started with ASDF. Not even a real word. The keys kept sticking together, and I spent more time unsticking them than actually typing. Really, the only fun part was the small satisfying ding! at the end of a line, the bell warning you that you were reaching the edge of your paper. Then it was time to whack the return lever as hard as you could, sending the carriage crashing back to the beginning of a fresh line.

"Keep the fingers arched as if you're playing the piano," she reminded me about a million times. "Don't let your fingers collapse." I complained about these exercises bitterly but only under my breath. After all, the whole endeavor was my idea and involved considerable cash outlay, so I could hardly gripe about it to her or anyone else.

Aggie grumbled that my constant practice was getting on her nerves, a reasonable complaint, so I moved a chair and small table into the trunk room. I spent a half hour in there every day, pecking and clacking, ASDF, ASDF, ASDF. Then I moved on to FDSA. This was progress? Finally we moved on to real words, improvement of a sort but not as exciting as it sounds. I typed cat and mat and sat until I thought I would scream. It was worse than the McGuffey Reader. Then I moved on to sad and lad and mad until I thought I would scream. The trouble was that my left little finger, by far the weakest, had to hit the a, a letter that, if you examined any sentence at random, lurked everywhere; you couldn't get through a single line without it. This meant all of my a's were quite a bit fainter than the other letters, giving the lines a mottled look and marring their precise symmetry. Still I persevered. And I improved.

So engrossed was I that I did not notice my brothers crowding the trunk room doorway, staring at me. I looked up, startled.

"What?" I said.

"Uh, nothing. We just wondered about the noise."

"Well, if it bothers you, shut the door."

At the start I sounded like this: Clack ...

Clack ...

Clack ...

Not too much later, I sounded like this: Clack ... clack ... clack ...

And not too much after that, I sounded like this: Clackity clackity DING! CRASH!

After weeks of this, I went to Granddaddy in the library and said, "Do you have a letter you need to send? I'm practicing on the type-writing machine."

"Ah," he said, "another giant stride forward into the new century. Here is a rough copy of a letter I was about to write in pen. See how you go with it."

I rushed back to my "office," took out a piece of pristine white paper, and rolled it onto the platen. For a moment, I paused with my fingers above the keys so that I would remember my first real typing job, then began.

Dear Professor Higgins, Enclosed please find a few seeds of the Vicia tateii, which you have reqested. I thank you kindly for the Vicia higgenseii seeds received by post earlier this week. They arrived in good condition. I look forward to germinating your specimans, and entering into a fruitful exchange of ideas regarding the conparative anatomy and physology of the two.

I remain, sir, faithfully yours, Walter Tate Fortunately I read it over to make sure there were no mistakes and discovered four of them! Ack, what a mess! My first formal commission, and I had botched it. I carefully typed it over, checked it twice, then ran to the library.

Granddaddy read it with me leaning over his shoulder. He signed it with his ink pen, blotted his signature, and beamed.

"Marvelous! Why, it wasn't all that long ago we communicated by pressing a sharp stick into a wet slab of clay. Truly the machine age is upon us. Well done. Here," he said, reaching into his waistcoat pocket, "a little something for your trouble."