The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate Read Online Free

here that Travis had a special gift for happiness. He was one of those rare individuals whose face lit up like the sun when he smiled, his entire being suffused with contagious happiness. The world could not help but smile back.)
    â€œHey, Lula,” he said, “guess what I’ve got? A pet armadillo!”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œYou should come and see him. He’ll eat right out of your hand. I’ll let you feed him if you like. Would you like to?”
    â€œGosh, you always have the most interesting pets. I’d love to see it.”
    And that’s how—probably for the first time in history—the nine-banded armadillo became a tool of courtship and an implement of wooing.
    Lula came the next day, to Travis’s delight. I could tell he was pulling ahead of my other brothers in the Lula stakes. He took Armand from his cage and fed him an egg, which Armand tore into with his usual relish. Lula watched in fascination but, being a bit of a delicate flower, declined to hold the beast when offered the chance. (Although we could not have known it at the time, this turned out to be a fortunate choice on her part.)
    On the weekend, Travis spent hours in the barn with Armand, fruitlessly trying to turn him into a pet. He cuddled him and fed him by hand and buffed his armor with a soft cloth, but Armand simply did not care.
    One night at dinner, Travis surprised me by speaking directly to Granddaddy, something he seldom, if ever, did. He started out with, “Sir?”
    No response.
    â€œSir? Grandfather?”
    Granddaddy snapped out of his reverie and looked around the table, trying to locate the speaker. His gaze finally settled on Travis.
    â€œYes, uh … young man?”
    Travis quailed under the direct and curious gaze. He stammered, “I-I was wondering, sir. Do you know how long armadillos live? Sir?”
    Granddaddy stroked his beard and said, “Generally, in the wild, I would say about five years. However, in captivity, they have been known to survive as long as fifteen.”
    Travis and I glanced at each other in dismay. Granddaddy noticed this and looked amused but said nothing more.
    *   *   *
    W E FED A RMAND twice daily, and he put on weight nicely, no doubt due to the fact that he no longer had to wander afield for his dinner. He tolerated Travis briefly cradling him but that was all. He never seemed to welcome us, despite the fact that we brought him his daily hard-boiled eggs. He never stopped digging at the corner of his cage, to the point that we had to reinforce it with bits of scrap lumber. But Travis, inexplicably, loved Armand as he loved all animals and would not give him up.
    One morning I visited the pantry and found no hard-boiled eggs. Viola sat at the kitchen table peeling a giant mound of potatoes. My brothers, growing boys all, managed to plow their way through a hillock of spuds every day. I said, “Why don’t we have any eggs?”
    â€œSo it’s you,” she said. “I wondered how those eggs was walking off. What are you doing with ’em?”
    â€œNothing,” I said stoutly.
    â€œYou eating them all yourself?”
    â€œYup.”
    â€œI doubt that, missy. You feeding some hobo at the river? Your momma ain’t gonna like that.”
    â€œThen perhaps you shouldn’t tell her,” I said, a shade more pertly than I’d intended.
    â€œDon’t take that tone with me, little miss.”
    â€œSorry.” I sat down and peeled with her, marveling at the speed at which her nimble fingers worked, finishing two clean spuds to my single eye-pocked one. We worked together in silence for a while and then I said, “It isn’t a hobo; it’s something else. I’ll tell you if you promise not to tell anyone.”
    â€œAnyone” meaning, of course, Mother.
    â€œDon’t be doing that to me. You know better.”
    I sighed. “You’re right. I’m