The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

When I got home, I joined my brothers and SanJuanna and Alberto in carrying quilts and winter clothing outside for airing. The lighter patchwork quilts were hung over the clothesline, and we set to beating them with all our might. It was one of those rare times that we were actually encouraged to be boisterous, and it was grand. The heavier feather quilts were spread out on clean sheets in the sun, and we took turns shooing the inquisitive dogs and cats and chickens away from them. Mother put a dilute solution of vinegar in a Flit gun and misted everything. She believed firmly in the disinfectant qualities of vinegar and sunshine, and who’s to say she was wrong? It’s practically all we had. Diphtheria, polio, typhus lurked everywhere, and we had no weapons against them, although living in the country instead of Austin gave us some protection.

With the change in the weather came the realization that Thanksgiving was sneaking up on us. We’d all been too hot for too long to give it much thought. It was unfortunate that this year the task of feeding our small flock of turkeys (numbering exactly three) fell to Travis. One turkey was destined for our table, one was for the hired help, and one was for the poor at the other end of town. This was traditional in our house. What was not traditional was that this year the softest-hearted child had been assigned to look after them.

Travis had promptly christened his charges Reggie, Tom Turkey, and Lavinia. He spent hours communing with them, preening their feathers with a stick while sitting in the dust and gobbling softly at them. They, in turn, seemed attached to him and followed him about within the confines of their pen.

Helen Keller could have seen what was coming, so why couldn’t my parents?

I don’t think it sank in for Travis until early November, when I went out to the pen with Viola so that she could inspect our prospective dinner. Travis sat on a stump holding Reggie on his lap, talking to him and feeding him corn from his lips. Oh, dear. He looked up and paled when he saw Viola.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“Honey, you got to face facts,” she said. “Get the others out here and line ’em up so I can see ’em.”

“You go away,” he said. His voice was thin and tight. I’d never heard him talk like that before. “Go away right now.”

Viola went straight to Mother and said, “You better think about that boy. Those turkeys is his pets.”

Mother went to Father and said, “Shouldn’t you turn the turkeys over to Alberto?”

Father summoned Travis and said, “You can’t let yourself get too attached, little man. This is a working farm, and you have to be big about such matters.”

Travis came to me and said, “They’re my friends, Callie. Why would anybody want to eat them?”

“Travis,” I said, “we always have a bird at Thanksgiving. That’s what they’re for. You know that.”

I thought he was going to cry. “We can’t eat my friends. What am I gonna tell Reggie?”

“I don’t think you should discuss it with him,” I said. “It’s better that way, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” he said sadly, and shuffled off.

The next day I sat in the kitchen with Viola and watched her punching down the bread dough, the cords working in her forearms. She was a marvel of efficiency.

“What’s on your mind?” she asked.

“Why do you think there’s something on my mind?”

“You got that look about you. You wearing it right now.”

This was news to me, that I was so transparent to the world. I said, “Viola, what about Thanksgiving? What about Travis? Can’t you do something? It’s going to kill him.”

“I talked to your mama,” she said, sprinkling flour on the board, “and she talked to your daddy. I done my part. If you can think of something else, you go right ahead.”

“Why did he have to get the birds this year? That was dumb.”

She shot me a look. “I’d never say.”

“Is it really his turn?” I counted my brothers on my fingers. “Let’s see, last year it was Sam Houston, and the year before that, it was Lamar, I think, so that means that this year it’s supposed to be . . . oh.”

“That’s right, baby girl.”

I pondered this and concluded that they shouldn’t have skipped over me. I would have made a better choice than Travis, now that I had been annealed in the furnace of the Scientific Method. Creatures sometimes had to die to advance knowledge; they also had to die to advance Thanksgiving. I knew this. I could have done it.

Probably.

The next day, I collared Travis after he fed his birds.

“Look,” I said, “think of them as chickens. We eat the chickens all the time, so try and think about the turkeys like that instead. You don’t care about the chickens like that, right?”

“But they’re not chickens, Callie. They know their names. They wait for me to come every morning.”

“I know they’re not chickens, Travis, but I’m saying if you practice thinking about them like they’re chickens, it’s going to be easier on you.”

He looked at me doubtfully.

“Or,” I said, “think of them like Polly. You didn’t get attached to Polly.” (And neither did anybody else.)