“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.
I guess Lula was beautiful, although I wasn’t aware of it at the time. She had a long blond braid of honey and silver threaded together that hung all the way down her back and swayed with a life of its own when she played a vigorous piece on the piano. Her eyes were an odd, pale color somewhere between blue and green, their hue depending on the color of her hair ribbon. There was one strange thing about her that I found fascinating: She always had a delicate mist of perspiration across the bridge of her nose, winter or summer. It was barely enough to moisten a fingertip, but when you wiped it away, it immediately reappeared. This sounds unattractive, but it was entertaining rather than off-putting. As a small child, I would stand there and dab it away and watch it return for as long as she would let me. There seemed to be no explanation for it.
You would think that having Lula as a friend would be a great relief to me after all my brothers, and generally this was so, but sometimes she could be a bit sappy. She wouldn’t collect specimens with me at the dam (snakes). She wouldn’t walk with me to the old Confederate Training Ground (blisters and snakes). She wouldn’t go swimming in the river (undressing and snakes). But we shared a desk at school, and we always had. This is how our friendship had started and why in part, I guess, it persevered. Plus, I believe that her mother might have promoted the friendship. She might have thought it a social plum for Lula to have a friend in the Tate family. And did her mother also harbor hopes that Lula might one day snag one of the Tate boys as a husband? It’s possible. I’m guessing we had more money than other families in the county. Lula’s own family seemed comfortable enough. Her father owned the stables, and they could afford piano lessons, and they had a maid but no cook. She had only the one brother, feeble-minded Toddy. Toddy didn’t go to school but instead spent his days in a corner of his room, clutching the ragged remnant of an old quilt and rocking himself without ceasing. He was peaceful unless you took his scrap of quilt away, and then he became distressed and produced horrible, loud mooing noises until he got it back. His family found it more trouble than it was worth to take it away from him for washing, so as a consequence it smelled disgusting. Apart from this, the Gateses’ house seemed quiet compared with mine.
Lula won prizes for her needlework, whereas mine was straggly and pitiful. I couldn’t understand her powers of concentration when she rolled a French knot or toiled over a tatted collar in Sewing class at school.
“It’s the same as learning a piano piece, Callie,” she would say, “and you can do that fine. All you have to do is practice it over and over until you get it right.”
I pondered this and decided she was right. So why did I find the music so different from the needlework? When you played the piano, the notes vanished a second later in the air and you were left with nothing. Still, the music brought joy even as the notes evaporated, and playing a rag exhilarated everyone to the point of jumping around the parlor. What did the embroidery bring? Something decorative and permanent and occasionally useful, yes, but I found it dull and quiet work, suitable for a rainy day with only the monotonous ticking of the parlor clock for company. Mouse work.
I did convince Lula to play some Sousa arrangements for four hands with me, and we made a good go of it, pounding out twice as much music in a veritable torrent of strict-tempo chords, which was highly gratifying.
ONE AFTERNOON, my thirteen-year-old brother Lamar sidled up to me on the porch as I sat tallying Lepidoptera.
“Callie. . . .”
“What?”
“Do you think Lula likes me?”
“Sure, Lamar.”
“No, what I mean is, do you think she . . . likes me?”
This was a surprise. Lamar had never shown any interest in girls before. “Why are you asking me?” I said. “Why don’t you ask her?”
He looked aghast. “I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Well . . . I don’t know,” he said lamely.
“Then I don’t know what to tell you.” I had a flash of inspiration. “Why don’t you talk to Harry about it?”
He looked relieved. “Yes,” he said, “that’s a good idea. But you won’t tell Lula, will you?”
“No.”
“And you won’t tell any of the others, will you?”
“No.”
“Okay. Thanks, Callie.”
I didn’t think too much about the conversation until a few days later, when Sam Houston, the fourteen-year-old, crept up to me in the hallway and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Callie, say, I need to talk to you. Do you think Lula Gates likes me?”
“What?” I said.
He flinched. “Don’t jump like that. I only wondered if maybe she likes me, that’s all.”