“Ajax,” I said, “what are you doing? Stop it. Put that back where it belongs.”
He pranced back to us, pleased with himself, and dutifully laid the turtle at our feet before shaking water all over us. He sat and looked up at me expectantly.
“He thinks he’s doing his job,” said Granddaddy. “You had better praise him or all your father’s training will be for nothing.”
“Oh, Ajax. Good boy, I guess.” I gave him a pat. “What are we going to do with your turtle? Travis already has one in his room, and I doubt that Mother will tolerate another. Perhaps you should hold his collar while I let this one go.”
“I’ll walk him up the bank,” said Granddaddy. “He shouldn’t see you letting it go, or he will come to question the purpose of his work and eventually grow disheartened.” He led Ajax away, and when they were both out of sight I inspected the turtle. Why had it allowed itself to be captured by such a large, dumb land creature? Was it old? Was it sick? There was nothing obviously wrong with it. It looked like every other turtle in the river. Maybe it was simply stupid. Maybe it was better that it died so that it wouldn’t produce more generations of stupid baby turtles. But too late, I had interfered and thus made myself responsible for its safety. Wondering if I was, in my own small way, promoting the survival of the unfittest, I pushed it into the water, where it disappeared in a wink.
“It’s all right,” I yelled over my shoulder. “You can let him go.”
I climbed up the bank after them, and Ajax met me at the top, sniffing at me for his turtle. “It’s gone,” I said, showing him my empty hands. “See?” I swear he understood me because his ears drooped and he turned away.
“It’s gone, Ajax, I’m sorry. Come here and be a good dog.” I ruffled his coat and thumped his sides the way he liked, even though I knew I would stink like a wet dog for the rest of the day. “There’s a good boy. You’re a good boy.” This cheered him up some, and he forgave me enough to walk with me while we caught up to Granddaddy.
Ajax found the biggest burrow I’d seen in a long while. It looked and smelled like a badger’s hole, and badgers were getting rare in our part of the world. He amused himself by sticking his muzzle deep inside and sniffing in excitement.
“What do you see there?” I called out to Granddaddy, who peered with interest at a small, uninteresting plant. “Come on, Ajax.” I hauled on his collar to keep him from losing the end of his nose to a swipe from the burrow’s notoriously irritable tenant.
“Vetch,” said Granddaddy. “It looks like hairy vetch, but it may be a mutant. Look, it’s got this odd dependent leaf at the bottom.” He pinched off a couple of inches of stalk and handed it to me. “Let’s save that one.”
A boring plant, but I put it in a jar and printed HAIRY VETCH (MOOTANT?) on the label.
He said, “I’ve also got a woolly caterpillar over here. Have you ever raised one of these?” He held up a twig on which squirmed the biggest, fuzziest caterpillar I’d ever seen, a good two inches long. (Or, more properly, five centimeters. Granddaddy had told me that true scientists used the Continental system, which would soon come into widespread use in America.) The caterpillar was covered in dense fur that looked as plush and inviting as a cat’s pelt, but I knew better than to stroke it. I’d been told my whole life that woolly caterpillars would sting you badly. I just didn’t know if it was a little badly or a whole lot badly.
“What kind is he?” I asked.
“I’m uncertain about the species,” he said. “There are several that look alike to the naked eye, and you can’t know what you’ve got until it emerges as the winged imago.”
“So how bad is their sting?”
He said, “I suppose you could touch him and find out. Which raises an interesting point: How far are you willing to go in the name of science? This is something for you to ponder.”
Well, maybe. Or maybe I could give one of the younger boys a penny to touch it for me. But then I considered the price I’d have to pay later with Mother. Definitely not worth it.
“Let’s take him home, and I’ll raise him,” I said. “I think I’ll call him Petey.”
“Calpurnia, you will find it a bad idea to give names to your experimental subjects.”
“Why?” I said, dropping Petey and his twig into the biggest Mason jar we had, quart-size, with holes punched in the lid.
“It tends to spoil the truly objective observation.”
“I’m not sure what that means, Granddaddy.”
But he was lost in thought over some animal tracks. “Fox, I think,” he murmured. “With a couple of kits, by the look of it. That’s encouraging. I thought the coyotes had got them all.”
By the time we got back to the house, we found that Sam Houston and Lamar had brought home a startling catfish that weighed forty-five pounds on the gin scale. Its huge, frowning mouth was framed with lashing barbels as thick around as pencils. It was a fright to look upon. The biggest of these fish didn’t fight the hook much, so my brothers did not count them good sport. The main challenge was hauling them out of the river and lugging them home without touching the poisonous spines on their fins.
That night we had big chunks of it for dinner, rolled in cornmeal and deep-fried, its white flesh still tanged with the undertaste of mud that didn’t seem to bother anybody else. I didn’t want to eat it. I didn’t even want to see it. It was as big as J.B. I mean, the size of that thing. It was big enough to take my whole leg in its mouth, and me swimming in the river every day. I pictured it grabbing me and dragging me down to the bottom, holding me there too long, or maybe long enough, depending on whether you looked at it from my perspective or the fish’s. My family would find me later, my hair swirling about like tragic Ophelia’s. Or maybe they wouldn’t find enough good-sized pieces to justify the cost of a funeral; maybe they would only find my chemise. Would you have a casket and a ceremony for just a chemise? Probably not. But how about a limb? Hadn’t General Jackson’s arm been given a full funeral ceremony? Or how about a head? I guessed a head would do it.
With that, I decided that I had analyzed the matter enough and did my best to think no more about it. Still, for months after that, when I stepped into the river, I thought of that Leviathan at one end of the scale waiting to mutilate me and the swarming microscopic creatures at the other end waiting to insinuate themselves. It was too bad, but sometimes a little knowledge could ruin your whole day, or at least take off some of the shine.
Chapter 9
PETEY
Peculiarities in the silkworm are known to appear at the corresponding caterpillar or cocoon stage.
AS THE SUMMER WORE ON, I spent more and more time studying Science and less and less time practicing the piano. This turned out to be unwise in the long run, since each time I missed practice I had to make up the time and pay for it with an extra half hour. On Saturday, after playing for a whole two hours (!), I made my escape with my Notebook and tapped on the library door.
“Enter if you must,” Granddaddy called out. He was examining some plates in The Atlas of Microscopic Pond Life.