The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

I spoke up in a shaking voice. “Mr. Darwin’s book. That one. Please.”

She pinioned me with a sour look and said, “I most certainly do not. I wouldn’t keep such a thing in my library. They keep a copy at the Austin library, but I would have to order it by post. That’s fifty cents. Do you have fifty cents?”

“No, ma’am.” I could feel myself turning pink. I’d never had fifty cents in my life.

“And,” she added, “I would need a letter from your mother permitting you to read that particular book. Do you have such a letter?”

“No, ma’am,” I said, mortified. My neck was starting to itch, the telltale precursor to an outbreak of hives.

She sniffed. “I thought not. Now, I have books to be shelved. You must excuse me.”

I wanted to weep with rage and humiliation, but I refused to cry in front of the old bat. I left the library in a purple froth and found Harry lounging in front of the general store. He looked at me with concern.

I scratched the welts that had popped up on my neck and yelled, “What is the point of a library if they won’t give you a book?”

Harry glanced around. “What are you talking about?”

“Some people aren’t fit to be librarians,” I said. “I want to go home now.”

On the long, hot, silent trip back in the wagon piled high with goods, Harry looked over at me. “What’s the matter, my own pet?”

“Nothing,” I snapped. Oh, absolutely nothing, except that I was strangling on bitterness and gall and was in no mood to talk about it. For once I was glad of the privacy of the deep sunbonnet that Mother made me wear to prevent freckling.

“Do you know what’s in that crate?” Harry said. “The one right behind you?” I didn’t bother to reply. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I hated the world.

“It’s a wind machine,” he said, “for Mother.”

If it had been any of my other brothers, I would have snarled at him, Don’t be ridiculous—there’s no such thing.

“Really, it is,” he said. “You’ll see.”

When we got home, I couldn’t stand the noisy excitement at the unloading of the wagon. I bolted for the river. I ripped off my bonnet and pinafore and dress and threw myself into the water, casting terror into the hearts of the local tadpoles and turtles. Good. That lady librarian had ruined my day, and I was determined to ruin someone—or something—else’s day. I ducked my head underwater and let out a long, loud scream, the sound burbling in my ears. I came up for air and did it again. And one more time, just to be thorough. The cooling water gradually soothed me. After all, what was one book to me? Really, it didn’t matter. One day I would have all the books in the world, shelves and shelves of them. I would live my life in a tower of books. I would read all day long and eat peaches. And if any young knights in armor dared to come calling on their white chargers and plead with me to let down my hair, I would pelt them with peach pits until they went home.

I lay on my back and watched a pair of swallows racing up and down the river, tumbling like acrobats in pursuit of invisible bugs. Despite my hours of freedom, the summer was not proceeding as I’d envisaged. Nobody was interested in the Questions that I wrote in my Notebook. Nobody was interested in helping me figure out the Answers. The heat sapped the life out of everybody and everything.

I thought of our beloved, big old house and how sad it looked in the middle of the yellow dried-out lawn. Usually the grass was soft and cool and green, inviting you to take off your boots and run across it barefoot and play Statues, but now it was a scorched bright gold and as menacing to the feet as straw stubble. The yellow grass made it hard to see my brand-new species of big yellow grasshopper. You couldn’t find them until you practically stepped on them. Then they would zing upward and fly ponderously on clacking wings for a few feet and disappear in the grass again. Catching them was difficult, despite their being fat and slow. Funny how the smaller and quicker emerald ones were such a snap to catch. They were just too easy to spot. The birds spent their days gobbling them up while the yellow ones hid nearby and taunted their less-fortunate brothers.

And then I understood. There was no new species. They were all one kind of grasshopper. The ones that were born a bit yellower to begin with lived to an old age in the drought; the birds couldn’t see them in the parched grass. The greener ones, the ones the birds picked off, didn’t last long enough to grow big. Only the yellower ones survived because they were more fit to survive the torrid weather. Mr. Charles Darwin was right. The proof lay in my own front yard.

I lay in shock in the water thinking about this, staring at the sky, looking for some flaw in my reasoning, some crack in my conclusion. I could find none. Then I splashed my way to the bank. I hauled myself out by some handy elephant ears, dried off with my pinafore, dressed as fast as I could, and ran home.