“Well,” he said at last. “I have done an amazing thing.”
“What, Granddaddy, what?” I breathed.
“I doubt that any other man alive can make this claim.”
“Oh, what?” I wailed.
Calmly, Granddaddy said, “I have managed to take perfectly good pecans and ferment them into something approximating cat piss.”
My mouth flopped open.
“And what is the lesson we can take from this?” he went on.
I sat there and gawped at him.
He said, “The lesson for today is this: It is better to travel with hope in one’s heart than to arrive in safety. Do you understand?”
“No sir.”
“It means that we should celebrate today’s failure because it is a clear sign that our voyage of discovery is not yet over. The day the experiment succeeds is the day the experiment ends. And I inevitably find that the sadness of ending outweighs the celebration of success.”
“Should I write it in the log?” I said. “Cat piss, I mean.”
He chortled. “A good idea. We must be honest in our observations. Take up the pen and kindly do the honors, my girl.”
It was a red-letter day, after all, so I put aside the black ink and held up the bottle of red. He nodded his approval. I dipped the pen in the blood-red liquid and made a slow, careful notation. I showed it to Granddaddy.
“Excellent,” he said, “but I believe there are two s’s in the word piss.”
Chapter 20
THE BIG BIRTHDAY
We have many slight differences which may be called individual differences, such as are known frequently to appear in the offspring from the same parents. . . . No one supposes that all the individuals of the same species are cast in the very same mould. . . .
THE YEAR GROUND ON, and there was still no word about the Plant. My days consisted of a cycle of schoolwork, piano practice, and cooking lessons with Viola. I learned, against my will, how to make Beef Wellington and Lamb Parsifal. I learned how to fry chicken, catfish, and okra. I made white bread, brown bread, corn bread, and spoon bread.
None of this seemed to wear well on Viola. It didn’t wear all that well on me, either. In the shrinking scraps of free time I had left, I traipsed after Granddaddy as often as I could.
We made it to October. Ah, October. That time of ecstasy for me and three of my brothers, each of us with a birthday that month, plus Halloween to look forward to. It was almost too much excitement to bear. And that year it did in fact prove to be too much, at least for Mother, who called me, Lamar, Sul Ross, and Sam Houston in for a talk.
“Children,” she said, “this year we are going to have a birthday party for all of you to share. One big group birthday, instead of four ordinary ones. Won’t that be nice? We’ll invite all your friends and have a real celebration.”
“What?”
“Hey, that’s not fair!”
“Wait a minute.”
“Motherrrrr.”
Did she expect general joy about this arrangement? There was none. The chorus of grizzling was so loud and long that I was surprised she didn’t relent and go back on her plan. But she stuck it out.
“Enough!” she commanded. “It’s all too much. For me and for Viola, both. If she has to make four birthday feasts in one month again, she’ll quit us, I swear she will. And I’ll not have you complaining to her about it, either. It wasn’t she who suggested it.”
“Callie Vee could help her cook,” Lamar said loftily. “She’s learning how. Let her help. I want my own birthday party.”
I threw him such a venomous look that he took a step back.
Mother prevailed, and so began an entire week of preparations, during which she and Viola and SanJuanna went full-steam ahead (since it was my birthday too, I was excused from cooking, despite my rotten brother’s comment). We four children stayed out of their way and continued to vent our group spleen amongst ourselves, muttering about the unfairness of it all. Then the first Saturday of October came, and we were herded together for our communal birthday, in a peculiar mood both celebratory and sullen.
Viola’s job was to cook the mountains of food; SanJuanna’s was to keep it coming. Alberto’s job was to erect the pavilion tent in case of rain and lead Sunshine, a bitter, elderly Shetland pony, around on a tight rein, making sure she didn’t perform her favorite trick of whipping around like a snake and taking a chunk out of her rider’s leg.
Our initial collective pique melted away as the party began, and why not? It was the biggest party Fentress had ever seen. All of the children in town were invited, and many of their parents came too. There were pony rides, sparklers, bottle rockets, croquet, horseshoes, taffy pulls, and apple bobbing. There were favors and crepe-paper hats and streamers.
There were mounds of dainty sandwiches and sausage rolls; there were cool aspics and hot ham served with apricot preserves; cold roast beef sliced thin and served with fiery horseradish, which the children assiduously avoided; all the jelly roll and ice cream you could possibly eat; pecan pies and lemon meringue pies; there was a towering four-layer dark chocolate cake with the name of each birthday child written in fancy white icing on the sides, with candles on the top for all of us, a total of forty-nine, covering the top layer. (Twelve for me, fourteen for Lamar, fifteen for Sam Houston, and eight for Sul Ross. It was a veritable sheet of flame, and I could see that if we kept up the communal birthday, we’d soon have to convert to some other candle system, or else get a much larger cake.)
Things started out decorously enough but deteriorated into unprecedented pandemonium. Ajax swiped a sausage roll and managed to gulp down his prize while running at top speed, a mob of gleeful children pounding in pursuit.
My one responsibility for the day was to chaperone Sul Ross and make sure he didn’t stuff himself on birthday cake to the point of getting sick. A futile undertaking. Sul Ross always got sick on cake, whether watched by me or not.
Father and Mother played the gracious host and hostess. Granddaddy stood with the adults and had a convivial glass of beer. He announced that there was a birthday present for all of us coming from Austin but that it had been unexpectedly delayed and would arrive later in the week. This caused all sorts of speculation, but he wouldn’t tell us any details. Then he retreated to the library to take a refreshing nap.
Travis and Lamar and Sam Houston circulated in Lula Gates’s vicinity like planets around the sun, pestering her with constant questions: “More ice cream, Lula?” “Can I get you more cake, Lula?” “Are you having a good time, Lula?”
Nobody asked me if I wanted anything. But then, I was perfectly capable of getting my own cake. I surely was. A good, sturdy girl like me.
Lula stood talking with her mother, the tiniest beads of sweat on her nose, her loose hair a silver-and-gold cataract in the sun.
Mrs. Gates smiled at Travis and then Lamar. So, I thought, she is hoping to land a Tate boy for Lula, and it doesn’t look like she cares which one, either.
“Callie,” said Mrs. Gates, “we were talking about the fair. How is your handiwork coming along? If I may be permitted to toot my own daughter’s horn, I must say that Lula is surprising me with her skill these days.”
“Ah,” I said.
“We’re hoping she takes a ribbon in cutwork, although her lace making is progressing as well.”
“Well,” I said, and then realized I could think of not one single word about the subject. The gap in the conversation yawned wider until Travis chimed in.