The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

“My, my, that is certainly a hefty specimen you have there. I’ve never seen one so sizeable. Have you identified the family it belongs to?”

“I think he must be Saturniidae, or maybe Sphingidae,” I said, proud of my pronunciation.

“What do you plan to do with him?”

“I was going to enter him in the pet show at the Fair, but Harry thinks he won’t live that long, and you keep telling me he’s not a pet. And Mother wants him out of the house. So that means I can kill him and keep him for my collection. Or I can let him go.”

Granddaddy looked at me. We both looked at Petey, squashed in his jar. “He’s a handsome specimen,” Granddaddy said. “You may never see another like him.”

“I know.” I frowned. “You did warn me not to name him. But I’ve raised him this far. I don’t think I can kill him.”

AT DUSK, when we gathered on the lawn to await the first firefly, my brothers stood on the porch while I set Petey’s jar in the grass. Granddaddy watched from a rocker and sipped store-bought bourbon. I took the lid off the jar and stood back.

For a minute Petey huddled there without moving. Then he crawled over the lip of the jar and emerged from his glass cocoon. As he wobbled his way onto the grass, Ajax came trotting around the corner of the house. Petey stretched his quivering wings wide. Too late, from the corner of my eye I saw the dog charge, his ears flapping, thrilled with the prospect of a new game of fetch. Petey pulsed feebly into the air and came to rest a couple of feet away, with Ajax closing fast. He was going to swallow my best specimen, my science project, my Petey. Fury boiled within me. Stupid dog! I ran at him and screamed Ajax!—so loud that I startled myself. Who knew I had that much wind in me? The birds in the trees took flight, and Ajax hesitated. I lunged at his collar. But he leaped sideways, thinking that it was all a fine new entertainment. He pounced again and Petey rose again, chest-high this time, flapping like an awkward pullet testing its wings.

“No!” I screamed, and this time Ajax heard a word he recognized. Puzzled, he looked at me with Petey between his front paws. This was all fine sport, wasn’t it? His job was to retrieve flying things, wasn’t it? I rushed at the dog again, when Petey, with a mighty effort, launched himself into the air and in that split second was transformed from an ungainly land-bound dweller into something else, a creature of the wind, a citizen of the air.

I watched in amazement. Petey looked like he’d been flying forever. Ajax huffed and pulled at his collar, and I let him go. There was no catching that moth now.

“Wow!” exclaimed my brothers. “You did well, Callie.” “I thought that moth was a goner, for sure.”

Granddaddy raised his glass in salute as Petey disappeared into the scrub.

Later that night, I sat on the front porch by myself as it grew dark, delaying bedtime as long as I could, until all I could see was the last of the white lilies along the front walk. They glowed in the dark like pale miniature stars fallen to earth. Then something whizzed past me through the air, making straight for them, where it set up a commotion, thrashing around inside one flower after another. It sounded like a hummingbird, but I couldn’t see it. Did hummingbirds fly at night? I didn’t think so. Could it be a nectar-eating bat? I didn’t know, and even though I couldn’t see for sure, I decided that it had to be Petey. At least, I told myself so.

I preferred a happy ending.

CHAPTER 10

LULA STIRS UP TROUBLE

 (BUT DOESN’T MEAN TO)

The rock-thrush of Guiana, birds of Paradise, and some others, congregate; and successive males display their gorgeous plumage and perform strange antics before the females, which standing by as spectators, at last choose the most attractive partner.

IT TOOK MY FRIEND Lula Gates a long time to live down the ignominy of getting sick in public at the piano recital. For weeks she talked of nothing else. I grew tired of it and told her it could have been worse, that Maestro Frédéric Chopin had once done the same thing at a command performance for the king and queen of Prussia.

“Really?” said Lula, brightening at once.

No. I made that up. But it did make her feel better, and as a consequence she shut up about it.