Part 18 (1/2)

When she said it aloud like that, I had to admit it didn't sound all that smart.

”So what'll you pay me?”

I'd thought carefully about this ahead of time. ”A whole dollar. Cash money.”

”That's not very much. I'll need two.”

My mind raced through the rapid mental calculations for which I'm justly famous. What could I threaten her with? How about the snake? He'd be perfect, but then she'd run to Mother, and Mother would send Alberto to trap it and kill it. It didn't seem right to involve an innocent snake in matters of pure Commerce. Perhaps I could play on Aggie's sympathy, but she didn't seem to have any. Since I couldn't come up with anything else on the spot, I'd have to resort to the truth.

I gulped and said, ”A whole dollar is a lot for me, Aggie. Maybe it's not an awful lot to you. But it's an awful lot to me.”

She examined me shrewdly, and I could tell she was running her own calculations.

”A dollar fifty.”

”Okay,” I said, and we shook on it. It was more than I wanted to pay and less than she wanted to make. ”When do we start?”

”As soon as you give me the money. Oh, and you have to buy your own ribbon. I won't have you wearing out mine.”

So even though it about killed me, I took two dollars out of my cigar box, gave a dollar fifty of it to Aggie, and ordered a type-writing ribbon for fifty cents from the Sears Catalogue. And even though Mr. Sears was famous for his speedy delivery, I knew I was in for one of those annoying lessons in patience until it arrived.

For want of something better to do, I threw myself into my lessons. At school we were studying the great explorers, Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan and Captain Cook, valiant men who had set sail from Europe and headed for parts unknown at a time when some people still believed that the Earth was flat with dragons lurking at the edge, waiting to gobble up the plunging s.h.i.+ps. Miss Harbottle told us they navigated great distances ”by the stars,” but when I asked her to explain further, she ducked the question; I had the distinct feeling she didn't know much about it.

Of course I went to Granddaddy.

”Ah,” he said, taking the globe from the shelf and placing it on his desk. ”Notice these lines running parallel to the equator. They are called lines of lat.i.tude. These other lines running from pole to pole are lines of constant longitude. These imaginary lines divide up the Earth in an especially useful way. Taken together, they can specify any position on the planet.”

”But how can you tell your lat.i.tude and longitude by the stars?”

”I'll show you tonight. But first you will need to build a mariner's astrolabe. Gather together the following items: a good-sized piece of cardboard, a protractor, a length of string, a cardboard tube, and a heavy nut or bolt. Then come back after dark, and we will navigate the old-fas.h.i.+oned way.”

It took me only ten minutes to gather the cardboard, the tube, the string, and the nut. Now, where was I to find a protractor? Then I realized with a sinking heart that the only one I could think of belonged to that pill Lamar. Ugh. He'd received it last Christmas, along with a compa.s.s and a steel ruler in a handsome leather case. (Meanwhile, I got a book called The Science of Housewifery. There was no justice in the world.) To go back to Granddaddy without the protractor was unthinkable. He often told me I was a resourceful girl, and I didn't want to damage his opinion of me.

I examined my options. It might be simplest to ask Lamar but I could just hear him saying no in that sneering voice of his. Or perhaps I could ”borrow” it without him knowing. What could be the harm in that? (Other than the never-ending heck to pay if he caught me.) I considered the ever-s.h.i.+fting allegiances and loyalties and alliances that constantly formed and re-formed between my brothers at a dizzying pace. Sometimes it was hard to keep up with who was on the outs with whom, but there was one boy who was always loyal to me.

TRAVIS SAID, ”What do you want it for, Callie?”

”Granddaddy and I are going to make a mariner's astrolabe, and I can't do it without a protractor.”

”What's an astrolabe?”

”It's a scientific instrument, and I'll show it to you later. So will you do it?”

”Why don't you ask Lamar?”

”Travis, don't be a dolt. He'd never lend it to me in a million years.” Really, the boy's propensity for thinking the best of everyone got on my nerves sometimes.

”Oh. Do you want me to ask him for you?”

”No. I want you to ... get it. And don't say anything to him about it.”

”You mean, steal it?”

”It's not stealing, it's only borrowing.”

”And then we'll give it back?”

”Absolutely.”

I expected further protestation but he merely said, ”Okay.”

After dinner, he sidled up to me in the hall and said in a stage whisper, ”Here it is.” He handed me the cool metal instrument, and I hid it in my pinafore pocket before seeking out Granddaddy in the library, where we were guaranteed privacy from the prying eyes of certain nosy brothers.

Under his direction, I cut the cardboard into a half circle. Then I used the protractor to draw marks along the edge of the circle every five degrees. I punched a hole in the center of the flat edge of the cardboard, threaded the string through it, and tied the string to the nut. Finally, I glued the tube across the flat edge. The finished astrolabe looked like this: When I was finished, Granddaddy inspected my handiwork. ”A primitive instrument, but workable. Shall we go outside and locate the North Star? We will need a little light, but not so much as to obscure the stars.”

He lit a lamp, and we walked out to the middle of the front lawn. The crickets hushed their creaking song as we approached. It was almost bedtime, but Mother had a natural reticence about approaching Granddaddy, and I could usually eke out an extra half hour working on a project with him before she called me to bed.

He turned the lamp down to a tiny firefly-size flame, and the crickets resumed their chorus. Matilda the hound yodeled once in the distance. Otherwise the night was silent.

Granddaddy said, ”Show me the North Star.”

I knew the major compa.s.s points-everybody did-so I could at least point vaguely northward. ”It has to be somewhere over there.”

Granddaddy sighed, no doubt at my shocking ignorance. ”Let us start from the beginning. Can you find Ursa Major? Also known as the Big Bear or the Big Dipper?”

”Oh yes, I know that one.” I proudly pointed to it. There was no missing it, with its shape exactly like a dipper. ”But it doesn't look like a bear.”

”I agree. Nevertheless, the ancients called it such. Now, look at the dipper bowl and locate the two stars at the end of it. Do you see them? Then follow the line those two stars make until you find a fairly bright star, which turns out to be the last star in the handle of the Little Dipper, also known as Ursa Minor, the Little Bear.”

”Got it,” I said.

”That is Polaris, also called the Phoenician Star, also called the North Star. The other stars appear to wheel around it in the night sky due to the Earth's rotation, but that star remains in a nearly constant position. If you were to stand at the North Pole, it would be almost directly overhead. The axis around which the Earth rotates happens to point almost directly at this star, which explains why the star does not appear to move as our planet turns, once every day. Shakespeare wrote in one of his plays three hundred years ago, 'I am constant as the northern star.' Once you know where north is, you naturally know where the other directions are as well. In the southern hemisphere, sailors cannot see the North Star and must use the Southern Cross instead. So no matter where in the world you are, no matter how lost you may be, these stars will guide you home. Sailors have always considered them lucky; this is where we get the expression 'to thank one's lucky stars.'”

I thought of the Phoenicians and Egyptians and Vikings, brave men who had steered their s.h.i.+ps by the very same star. It was as if their hands and hearts and voices reached across the centuries to a girl in Fentress, Texas, who had never seen the sea and probably never would. I felt a part of history and also, truth to tell, a bit sad.

”Now,” said Granddaddy, ”the North Star does more than tell you the four cardinal directions. Sailors have used it for two thousand years to find their position at sea. But now we will measure our lat.i.tude. Look through the tube at the North Star.”

This was a bit tricky, what with the tube so narrow and the star so easy to lose from the wobbling aperture. Finally I had it.

”Good,” said Granddaddy. ”Now, being very careful to hold still, keep the tube immobile while you read the angle marked by the string.”

I did as instructed and saw that the string hung at an angle of thirty degrees as marked on the cardboard. This meant that the angle between the horizon and the North Star was thirty degrees.

”We'll double-check our work,” he said. I measured the angle again.

”Yep, thirty degrees.”