The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

THE

EVOLUTION

OF

CALPURNIA

TATE

JACQUELINE KELLY

THE

EVOLUTION

OF

CALPURNIA

TATE

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

NEW YORK

Table of Contents

TITLE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

CHAPTER 1: THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

CHAPTER 2: THE MEASURE OF THE MORNING

CHAPTER 3: THE POSSUM WARS

CHAPTER 4: VIOLA

CHAPTER 5: DISTILLATIONS

CHAPTER 6: MUSIC LESSONS

CHAPTER 7: HARRY GETS A GIRLFRIEND

CHAPTER 8: MICROSCOPY

CHAPTER 9: PETEY

CHAPTER 10: LULA STIRS UP TROUBLE (BUT DOESN’T MEAN TO)

CHAPTER 11: KNITTING LESSONS

CHAPTER 12: A SCIENTIFIC STUDY

CHAPTER 13: A SCIENTIFIC CORRESPONDENCE

CHAPTER 14: THE SHORT HOE

CHAPTER 15: A SEA OF COTTON

CHAPTER 16: THE TELEPHONE COMES

CHAPTER 17: HOME ECONOMIES

CHAPTER 18: COOKING LESSONS

CHAPTER 19: A DISTILLERY SUCCESS, OF SORTS

CHAPTER 20: THE BIG BIRTHDAY

CHAPTER 21: THE REPRODUCTIVE IMPERATIVE

CHAPTER 22: THANKSGIVING

CHAPTER 23: THE FENTRESS FAIR

CHAPTER 24: HARRY WOOS AGAIN

CHAPTER 25: CHRISTMAS EVE

CHAPTER 26: WORD COMES

CHAPTER 27: NEW YEAR’S EVE

CHAPTER 28: 1900

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter are from

The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.

Henry Holt and Company, LLC

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Henry Holt^® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Copyright © 2009 by Jacqueline Kelly

All rights reserved.

Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kelly, Jacqueline.

The evolution of Calpurnia Tate / Jacqueline Kelly.—1st ed.

p.    cm.

Summary: In central Texas in 1899, eleven-year-old Callie Vee Tate is instructed to be a lady by her mother, learns about love from the older three of her six brothers, and studies the natural world with her grandfather, the latter of which leads to an important discovery.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8841-0

ISBN-10: 0-8050-8841-5

[1. Nature—Fiction.  2. Family life—Texas—Fiction.  3. Grandfathers—Fiction.  4. Naturalists—Fiction.  5. Texas— History—19th century—Fiction.]  I. Title.

PZ7.K296184Evo 2009

[Fic]—dc22

2008040595

First Edition—2009 / Designed by April Ward

Printed in April 2009 in the United States of America by Quebecor World, Martinsburg, West Virginia, on acid-free paper. ∞

1  3  5  7  9  10  8  6  4  2

For my mother, Noeline Kelly

For my father, Brian Kelly

For my husband, Robert Duncan

THE

EVOLUTION

OF

CALPURNIA

TATE

CHAPTER 1

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

When a young naturalist commences the study of a group of organisms quite unknown to him, he is at first much perplexed to determine what differences to consider . . . for he knows nothing of the amount and kind of variation to which the group is subject. . . .

BY 1899, WE HAD LEARNED to tame the darkness but not the Texas heat. We arose in the dark, hours before sunrise, when there was barely a smudge of indigo along the eastern sky and the rest of the horizon was still pure pitch. We lit our kerosene lamps and carried them before us in the dark like our own tiny wavering suns. There was a full day’s work to be done before noon, when the deadly heat drove everyone back into our big shuttered house and we lay down in the dim high-ceilinged rooms like sweating victims. Mother’s usual summer remedy of sprinkling the sheets with refreshing cologne lasted only a minute. At three o’clock in the afternoon, when it was time to get up again, the temperature was still killing.

The heat was a misery for all of us in Fentress, but it was the women who suffered the most in their corsets and petticoats. (I was still a few years too young for this uniquely feminine form of torture.) They loosened their stays and sighed the hours away and cursed the heat and their husbands, too, for dragging them to Caldwell County to plant cotton and acres of pecan trees. Mother temporarily gave up her hairpieces, a crimped false fringe and a rolled horsehair rat, platforms on which she daily constructed an elaborate mountain of her own hair. On those days when we had no company, she even took to sticking her head under the kitchen pump and letting Viola, our quadroon cook, pump away until she was soaked through. We were forbidden by sharp orders to laugh at this astounding entertainment. As Mother gradually surrendered her dignity to the heat, we discovered (as did Father) that it was best to keep out of her way.