AND SPEAKING OF DRAMA, I gave a fair bit of thought to the “problem” of Travis’s queasiness in the face of blood and guts, and how to fix it. I cornered Granddaddy in the library and posed Travis’s dilemma to him.
“So, as I understand it,” he said, “you want to help, uh … Travis? Which one is he again?”
“You remember, Granddaddy. He’s the one who raised the turkeys last year and got so upset about killing them.”
“Ah, yes. Quite the charade, as I recall.”
“Yep. I mean, yes.”
Travis had been so wrought up about us eating his pets that the night before they’d met their doom, Granddaddy and I had altered their appearance with paint and scissors to convince him that we had traded with the neighbors for different birds. The turkeys had not been happy about their transformation, and I still bore a small scar on my left elbow as a souvenir. (The things we do for the brothers we love! I wouldn’t have done it for Lamar in a million years.)
“And you want to help him get over his, shall we say, squeamishness? Do I have that right?”
“Yessir.”
“May I inquire exactly why?”
“He wants to be a veterinarian, so he needs to be able to work with innards and blood and things like that. But he’s not at all tough like me. He got nauseated when I showed him my earthworm.”
“Did he, now?”
“Yes, but it didn’t bother me. I have a cast-iron stomach, you know.”
“Indeed you do.”
I practically glowed under this high praise.
He thought for a moment. “An interesting conundrum. I suggest we expose him to progressively more vivid and complex examples of dissection. In this way we can slowly accustom his nervous system to greater degrees of explicitness, so as not to cause too great a shock. At the same time, this will offer you a good opportunity to learn more about anatomy. We shall proceed upward through the invertebrates to the vertebrates and perhaps finish with some small mammal. I leave it to you to instruct him from there. Tomorrow we shall work on the American grasshopper, Schistocerca americana.”
The next day, I caught a big yellow grasshopper in my net. I took it to Granddaddy in the laboratory, where we euthanized it humanely in a killing jar. As we began, he said, “We are dissecting an insect at the top of the invertebrate ladder. Observe. Describe. Note. Analyze.”
I did so, remarking on the two large compound eyes, the three minuscule simple eyes (so small as to be almost invisible), the two sets of wings, the three sets of legs. The large eyes gave the insect a wide field of vision that made it difficult to creep up on; without the long-handled net, I’d never have snagged it.
Under his instruction, I dissected and pinned the various parts. There were no lungs but rather spiracles, a set of tiny holes along the abdomen that acted as bellows to draw air directly into the body. There was also an open circulating system where blood flowed freely through open body cavities rather than a closed system with the blood contained in blood vessels. (As in, for example, man.) I made a few sketches and took careful notes.
When finished, I covered my dissecting tray with cheesecloth and carried it out to find Travis. I tracked him down at the pigpen, where he was scratching Petunia between the ears with a stick.
“Look,” I said, pulling back the cloth and showing him the bright yellow shards strewn across the black wax. “This is the grasshopper we did this morning.”
“Uh,” he said.
“Travis, you have to look. Granddaddy says this will help you.”
“Uh.”
Now, I’ll admit that to a beginner the sight of a dismantled grasshopper might be a little disconcerting, but really, the boy needed some grit. And how was he to get it without my help?
“Stop scratching that pig and take a look.”
He reluctantly stopped, glanced over briefly, and swallowed hard.
“You can touch it,” I said in encouraging tones, stirring around a couple of the large muscular hindlegs. “It won’t bite, you know.”
He took a deep breath through his nose and turned pale.
“See how this set of legs is specially adapted for jumping? And look at these big eyes here—that’s one reason they’re so hard to catch. Here, hold the tray.”
“That’s okay, I can see from here.”
“Take. The. Tray.” I shoved it at him.
He took it but averted his gaze. His hands trembled a little.
“Do you want to be an animal doctor or not?”
He gulped. “I do. At least … I think I do.”
“Then you’re going to stand here and look at that thing. I’m not kidding.”
“I don’t think I can do it, Callie.”
“Yes, you can do it, because I’m going to stand right here beside you. All right?” No answer.
“I said, ‘all right?’”
“I guess.”
“Look, here are the maxillae and mandibles for crushing food.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And here are the antennae, and here are the cerebral ganglia. They’re a sort of primitive brain.”
“Yep.”
“And look at the pattern of the veins in this wing. Every species of grasshopper has its own unique arrangement—did you know that?”
“Nope.”
He kept glancing away, and I reminded him each time to stay focused on the tray. The tremor in his hands finally subsided but the color did not return to his cheeks. We must have stood there for a good five minutes before I finally said, “That’s enough for today.”
“Okay, thanks!” He shoved the tray at me and bolted for the barn, no doubt to hug Bunny and sink his cheek deep into the soft white fur, his standard ritual of comfort.
I looked at Petunia and said, “I’m not sure he can do it. He’s already having trouble with a grasshopper.” The pig grunted sociably in reply, but I couldn’t tell if she agreed with me or not.
* * *
AND SPEAKING OF TRAVIS and dilemmas, he confessed to another on our way home from school when I asked him, “Has the coydog finally run off, or are you still feeding it?”
“You mean Scruffy?”
Uh-oh. “Travis, we agreed you wouldn’t name him. Right?”
“Well, I figured it couldn’t hurt. And everybody needs a name. Come and see him with me. He’s looking real good, better and better all the time.”
He led me down the bank, calling softly, “Scruffy, here boy, good doggy.”
Out of the bushes came not the wreck that I remembered but something that looked in the main like, well, a dog. The eyes were bright, the nose moist, the expression happy. He still limped, but less than before. Yes, I had to admit it, he looked like your usual Canis familiaris of the small-to-medium, brownish-reddish variety. He approached Travis with his ears folded submissively and his tail wagging, but stopped in his tracks when he saw me.
“It’s all right, Scruffy,” said Travis. “We’ve brought you your lunch.”
Travis put down a sandwich, and Scruffy, deciding I was not a threat, approached us and wolfed it down. I studied him. Up close, he actually looked more like a coyote than a dog, with a long, narrow snout and a bushy coyote-like tail. He finished his food, licked his chops, and looked at us expectantly.
“That’s all there is today, boy. I’ll bring you more tomorrow.” Travis turned to me and said, “Hey, Callie, watch this.” He turned back to the coydog. “Scruffy, sit.”
Scruffy sat.
My mouth flopped open. Then Travis did something else. He patted Scruffy and was rewarded with a lick on his hand.
“You shouldn’t touch him,” I warned. “Who knows what kind of diseases he has?”
“Oh,” he said airily, “if he had any diseases I would have caught them a long time ago. He lets me pet him and pull the ticks off, and he loves it when I brush him.”
So much for warnings from a concerned sister.
“Do you want to pet him? He won’t hurt you.” Travis beamed at me wit
h the full force of his happiness, before which so many were powerless.
I held out my hand to Scruffy. He sniffed it carefully and then rewarded me with a small lick. I tried not to think about the possible germs involved and gave him a pat on the head.
“See?” said Travis. “He’s just as tame as can be.”
I looked at my little brother and decided that, painful as it might be, I had to speak up as the voice of reason. “Look, Mother says we have too many dogs, and Father only wants a purebred hunter. And your history with Armand and Jay and Bandit means your reputation with wild pets is at an all-time low.”
“But he’s not wild. He’s only half wild.”
“I know, and if you want to keep feeding him, that’s one thing. But you can’t bring him home. They’ll never accept him, not in a million years.”
He sighed, a deep shuddering sigh hauled up from the depths of his being.
“So let him stay right here,” I said. “He has his den to live in and you to feed him. You can visit him every day. He can be your secret pet.”
Travis scratched behind Scruffy’s ears and finally said, “Okay. I guess.”
“And be sure you feed him enough so he’s not hunting chickens. That’s the last thing either of you needs. Come on, I have to get home for piano practice.”
He reluctantly hugged Scruffy good-bye, and then turned to wave at him from the top of the bank. I worried about that boy. And his coydog.
CHAPTER 19
NAVIGATING THE INNER AND OUTER WORLDS
While sailing … on one very dark night, the sea presented a wonderful and most beautiful spectacle. There was a fresh breeze, and every part of the surface, which during the day is seen as foam, now glowed with a pale light. The vessel drove before her bows two billows of liquid phosphorus, and in her wake she was followed by a milky train. As far as the eye reached, the crest of every wave was bright, and the sky above the horizon, from the reflected glare of these livid flames, was not so utterly obscure as over the vault of the heavens.
IN 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 sometimes. 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 though
t 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.