Go Set a Watchman

11

THERE WAS A time, long ago, when the only peaceful moments of her existence were those from the time she opened her eyes in the morning until she attained full consciousness, a matter of seconds until when finally roused she entered the day’s wakeful nightmare.

She was in the sixth grade, a grade memorable for the things she learned in class and out. That year the small group of town children were swamped temporarily by a collection of elderly pupils shipped in from Old Sarum because somebody had set fire to the school there. The oldest boy in Miss Blunt’s sixth grade was nearly nineteen, and he had three contemporaries. There were several girls of sixteen, voluptuous, happy creatures who thought school something of a holiday from chopping cotton and feeding livestock. Miss Blunt was equal to them all: she was as tall as the tallest boy in the class and twice as wide.

Jean Louise took to the Old Sarum newcomers immediately. After holding the class’s undivided attention by deliberately introducing Gaston B. Means into a discussion on the natural resources of South Africa, and proving her accuracy with a rubberband gun during recess, she enjoyed the confidence of the Old Sarum crowd.

With rough gentleness the big boys taught her to shoot craps and chew tobacco without losing it. The big girls giggled behind their hands most of the time and whispered among themselves a great deal, but Jean Louise considered them useful when choosing sides for a volleyball match. All in all, it was turning out to be a wonderful year.

Wonderful, until she went home for dinner one day. She did not return to school that afternoon, but spent the afternoon on her bed crying with rage and trying to understand the terrible information she had received from Calpurnia.

The next day she returned to school walking with extreme dignity, not prideful, but encumbered by accoutrements hitherto unfamiliar to her. She was positive everybody knew what was the matter with her, that she was being looked at, but she was puzzled that she had never heard it spoken of before in all her years. Maybe nobody knows anything about it, she thought. If that was so, she had news, all right.

At recess, when George Hill asked her to be It for Hot-Grease-in-the-Kitchen, she shook her head.

“I can’t do anything any more,” she said, and she sat on the steps and watched the boys tumble in the dust. “I can’t even walk.”

When she could bear it no longer, she joined the knot of girls under the live oak in a corner of the schoolyard.

Ada Belle Stevens laughed and made room for her on the long cement bench. “Why ain’tcha playin’?” she asked.

“Don’t wanta,” said Jean Louise.

Ada Belle’s eyes narrowed and her white brows twitched. “I bet I know what’s the matter with you.”

“What?”

“You’ve got the Curse.”

“The what?”

“The Curse. Curse o’ Eve. If Eve hadn’t et the apple we wouldn’t have it. You feel bad?”

“No,” said Jean Louise, silently cursing Eve. “How’d you know it?”

“You walk like you was ridin’ a bay mare,” said Ada Belle. “You’ll get used to it. I’ve had it for years.”

“I’ll never get used to it.”

It was difficult. When her activities were limited Jean Louise confined herself to gambling for small sums behind a coal pile in the rear of the school building. The inherent dangerousness of the enterprise appealed to her far more than the game itself; she was not good enough at arithmetic to care whether she won or lost, there was no real joy in trying to beat the law of averages, but she derived some pleasure from deceiving Miss Blunt. Her companions were the lazier of the Old Sarum boys, the laziest of whom was one Albert Coningham, a slow thinker to whom Jean Louise had rendered invaluable service during six-weeks’ tests.

One day, as the taking-in bell rang, Albert, beating coal dust from his breeches, said, “Wait a minute, Jean Louise.”

She waited. When they were alone, Albert said, “I want you to know I made a C-minus this time in geography.”

“That’s real good, Albert,” she said.

“I just wanted to thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Albert.”

Albert blushed to his hairline, caught her to him, and kissed her. She felt his wet, warm tongue on her lips, and she drew back. She had never been kissed like that before. Albert let her go and shuffled toward the school building. Jean Louise followed, bemused and faintly annoyed.

She only suffered a kinsman to kiss her on the cheek and then she secretly wiped it off; Atticus kissed her vaguely wherever he happened to land; Jem kissed her not at all. She thought Albert had somehow miscalculated, and she soon forgot.

As the year passed, often as not recess would find her with the girls under the tree, sitting in the middle of the crowd, resigned to her fate, but watching the boys play their seasonal games in the schoolyard. One morning, arriving late to the scene, she found the girls giggling more surreptitiously than usual and she demanded to know the reason.

“It’s Francine Owen,” one said.

“Francine Owen? She’s been absent a couple of days,” said Jean Louise.

“Know why?” said Ada Belle.

“Nope.”

“It’s her sister. The welfare’s got ’em both.”

Jean Louise nudged Ada Belle, who made room for her on the bench.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s pregnant, and you know who did it? Her daddy.”

Jean Louise said, “What’s pregnant?”

A groan went up from the circle of girls. “Gonna have a baby, stupid,” said one.

Jean Louise assimilated the definition and said, “But what’s her daddy got to do with it?”

Ada Belle sighed, “Her daddy’s the daddy.”

Jean Louise laughed. “Come on, Ada Belle—”

“That’s a fact, Jean Louise. Betcha the only reason Francine ain’t is she ain’t started yet.”

“Started what?”

“Started ministratin’,” said Ada Belle impatiently. “I bet he did it with both of ’em.”

“Did what?” Jean Louise was now totally confused.

The girls shrieked. Ada Belle said, “You don’t know one thing, Jean Louise Finch. First of all you-then if you do it after that, after you start, that is, you’ll have a solid baby.”

“Do what, Ada Belle?”

Ada Belle glanced up at the circle and winked. “Well, first of all it takes a boy. Then he hugs you tight and breathes real hard and then he French-kisses you. That’s when he kisses you and opens his mouth and sticks his tongue in your mouth—”

A ringing noise in her ears obliterated Ada Belle’s narrative. She felt the blood leave her face. Her palms grew sweaty and she tried to swallow. She would not leave. If she left they would know it. She stood up, trying to smile, but her lips were trembling. She clamped her mouth shut and clenched her teeth.

“—an’ that’s all there is to it. What’s the matter, Jean Louise? You’re white as a hain’t. Ain’t scared’ja, have I?” Ada Belle smirked.

“No,” said Jean Louise. “I just don’t feel so hot. Think I’ll go inside.”

She prayed they would not see her knees shaking as she walked across the schoolyard. Inside the girls’ bathroom she leaned over a washbasin and vomited.

There was no mistaking it, Albert had stuck out his tongue at her. She was pregnant.

JEAN LOUISE’S GLEANINGS of adult morals and mores to date were few, but enough: it was possible to have a baby without being married, she knew that. Until today she neither knew nor cared how, because the subject was uninteresting, but if someone had a baby without being married, her family was plunged into deep disgrace. She had heard Alexandra go on at length about Disgraces to Families: disgrace involved being sent to Mobile and shut up in a Home away from decent people. One’s family was never able to hold up their heads again. Something had happened once, down the street toward Montgomery, and the ladies at the other end of the street whispered and clucked about it for weeks.

She hated herself, she hated everybody. She had done nobody any harm. She was overwhelmed by the unfairness of it: she had meant no harm.

She crept away from the school building, walked around the corner to the house, sneaked to the back yard, climbed the chinaberry tree, and sat there until dinnertime.

Dinner was long and silent. She was barely conscious of Jem and Atticus at the table. After dinner she returned to the tree and sat there until twilight, when she heard Atticus call her.

“Come down from there,” he said. She was too miserable to react to the ice in his voice.

“Miss Blunt called and said you left school at recess and didn’t come back. Where were you?”

“Up the tree.”

“Are you sick? You know if you’re sick you’re to go straight to Cal.”

“No sir.”

“Then if you aren’t sick what favorable construction can you put upon your behavior? Any excuse for it?”

“No sir.”

“Well, let me tell you something. If this happens again it will be Hail Columbia.”

“Yes sir.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him, to shift her burden to him, but she was silent.

“You sure you’re feeling all right?”

“Yes sir.”

“Then come on in the house.”

At the supper table, she wanted to throw her plate fully loaded at Jem, a superior fifteen in adult communication with their father. From time to time Jem would cast scornful glances at her. I’ll get you back, don’t you worry, she promised him. But I can’t now.

Every morning she awakened full of catlike energy and the best intentions, every morning the dull dread returned; every morning she looked for the baby. During the day it was never far from her immediate consciousness, intermittently returning at unsuspected moments, whispering and taunting her.

She looked under baby in the dictionary and found little; she looked under birth and found less. She came upon an ancient book in the house called Devils, Drugs, and Doctors and was frightened to mute hysteria by pictures of medieval labor chairs, delivery instruments, and the information that women were sometimes thrown repeatedly against walls to induce birth. Gradually she assembled data from her friends at school, carefully spacing her questions weeks apart so as not to arouse suspicion.

She avoided Calpurnia for as long as she could, because she thought Cal had lied to her. Cal had told her all girls had it, it was natural as breathing, it was a sign they were growing up, and they had it until they were in their fifties. At the time, Jean Louise was so overcome with despair at the prospect of being too old to enjoy anything when it would finally be over, she refrained from pursuing the subject. Cal had said nothing about babies and French-kissing.

Eventually she sounded out Calpurnia by way of the Owen family. Cal said she didn’t want to talk about that Mr. Owen because he wasn’t fit to associate with humans. They were going to keep him in jail a long time. Yes, Francine’s sister had been sent to Mobile, poor little girl. Francine was at the Baptist Orphans’ Home in Abbott County. Jean Louise was not to occupy her head thinking about those folks. Calpurnia was becoming furious, and Jean Louise let matters rest.

When she discovered that she had nine months to go before the baby came, she felt like a reprieved criminal. She counted the weeks by marking them off on a calendar, but she failed to take into consideration that four months had passed before she began her calculations. As the time drew near she spent her days in helpless panic lest she wake up and find a baby in bed with her. They grew in one’s stomach, of that she was sure.

The idea had been in the back of her mind for a long time, but she recoiled from it instinctively: the suggestion of a final separation was unbearable to her, but she knew that a day would come when there would be no putting off, no concealment. Although her relations with Atticus and Jem had reached their lowest ebb (“You’re downright addled these days, Jean Louise,” her father had said. “Can’t you concentrate on anything five minutes?”), the thought of any existence without them, no matter how nice heaven was, was untenable. But being sent to Mobile and causing her family to live thereafter with bowed heads was worse: she didn’t even wish that on Alexandra.

According to her calculations, the baby would come with October, and on the thirtieth day of September she would kill herself.

AUTUMN COMES LATE in Alabama. On Halloween, even, one may hide porch chairs unencumbered by one’s heavy coat. Twilights are long, but darkness comes suddenly; the sky turns from dull orange to blue-black before one can take five steps, and with the light goes the last ray of the day’s heat, leaving livingroom weather.

Autumn was her happiest season. There was an expectancy about its sounds and shapes: the distant thunk pomp of leather and young bodies on the practice field near her house made her think of bands and cold Coca-Colas, parched peanuts and the sight of people’s breath in the air. There was even something to look forward to when school started-renewals of old feuds and friendships, weeks of learning again what one half forgot in the long summer. Fall was hot-supper time with everything to eat one missed in the morning when too sleepy to enjoy it. Her world was at its best when her time came to leave it.

She was now twelve and in the seventh grade. Her capacity to savor the change from grammar school was limited; she did not revel in going to different classrooms during the day and being taught by different teachers, nor in knowing that she had a hero for a brother somewhere in the remote senior school. Atticus was away in Montgomery in the legislature, Jem might as well have been with him for all she saw of him.

On the thirtieth of September she sat through school and learned nothing. After classes, she went to the library and stayed until the janitor came in and told her to leave. She walked to town slowly, to be with it as long as possible. Daylight was fading when she walked across the old sawmill tracks to the ice-house. Theodore the ice-man said hey to her as she passed, and she walked down the street and looked back at him until he went inside.

The town water-tank was in a field by the ice-house. It was the tallest thing she had ever seen. A tiny ladder ran from the ground to a small porch encircling the tank.

She threw down her books and began climbing. When she had climbed higher than the chinaberry trees in her back yard she looked down, was dizzy, and looked up the rest of the way.

All of Maycomb was beneath her. She thought she could see her house: Calpurnia would be making biscuits, before long Jem would be coming in from football practice. She looked across the square and was sure she saw Henry Clinton come out of the Jitney Jungle carrying an armload of groceries. He put them in the back seat of someone’s car. All the streetlights came on at once, and she smiled with sudden delight.

She sat on the narrow porch and dangled her feet over the side. She lost one shoe, then the other. She wondered what kind of funeral she would have: old Mrs. Duff would sit up all night and make people sign a book. Would Jem cry? If so, it would be the first time.

She wondered if she should do a swan dive or just slip off the edge. If she hit the ground on her back perhaps it would not hurt so much. She wondered if they would ever know how much she loved them.

Someone grabbed her. She stiffened when she felt hands pinning her arms to her sides. They were Henry’s, stained green from vegetables. Wordlessly he pulled her to her feet and propelled her down the steep ladder.

When they reached the bottom, Henry jerked her hair: “I swear to God if I don’t tell Mr. Finch on you this time!” he bawled. “I swear, Scout! Haven’t you got any sense playing on this tank? You might have killed yourself!”

He pulled her hair again, taking some with him: he shook her; he unwound his white apron, rolled it into a wad, and threw it viciously at the ground. “Don’t you know you could’ve killed yourself. Haven’t you got any sense?”

Jean Louise stared blankly at him.

“Theodore saw you up yonder and ran for Mr. Finch, and when he couldn’t find him he got me. God Almighty-!”

When he saw her trembling he knew she had not been playing. He took her lightly by the back of the neck; on the way home he tried to find out what was bothering her, but she would say nothing. He left her in the livingroom and went to the kitchen.

“Baby, what have you been doing?”

When speaking to her, Calpurnia’s voice was always a mixture of grudging affection and mild disapproval. “Mr. Hank,” she said. “You better go back to the store. Mr. Fred’ll be wondering what happened to you.”

Calpurnia, resolutely chewing on a sweetgum stick, looked down at Jean Louise. “What have you been up to?” she said. “What were you doing on that water-tank?”

Jean Louise was still.

“If you tell me I won’t tell Mr. Finch. What’s got you so upset, baby?”

Calpurnia sat down beside her. Calpurnia was past middle age and her body had thickened a little, her kinky hair was graying, and she squinted from myopia. She spread her hands in her lap and examined them. “Ain’t anything in this world so bad you can’t tell it,” she said.

Jean Louise flung herself into Calpurnia’s lap. She felt rough hands kneading her shoulders and back.

“I’m going to have a baby!” she sobbed.

“When?”

“Tomorrow!”

Calpurnia pulled her up and wiped her face with an apron corner. “Where in the name of sense did you get a notion like that?”

Between gulps, Jean Louise told her shame, omitting nothing, and begging that she not be sent to Mobile, stretched, or thrown against a wall. “Couldn’t I go out to your house? Please, Cal.” She begged that Calpurnia see her through in secret; they could take the baby away by night when it came.

“You been totin’ all this around with you all this time? Why didn’t you say somethin’ about it?”

She felt Calpurnia’s heavy arm around her, comforting when there was no comfort. She heard Calpurnia muttering:

“… no business fillin’ your head full of stories… kill ’em if I could get my hands on ’em.”

“Cal, you will help me, won’t you?” she said timidly.

Calpurnia said, “As sure as the sweet Jesus was born, baby. Get this in your head right now, you ain’t pregnant and you never were. That ain’t the way it is.”

“Well if I ain’t, then what am I?”

“With all your book learnin’, you are the most ignorant child I ever did see…” Her voice trailed off. “… but I don’t reckon you really ever had a chance.”

Slowly and deliberately Calpurnia told her the simple story. As Jean Louise listened, her year’s collection of revolting information fell into a fresh crystal design; as Calpurnia’s husky voice drove out her year’s accumulation of terror, Jean Louise felt life return. She breathed deeply and felt cool autumn in her throat. She heard sausages hissing in the kitchen, saw her brother’s collection of sports magazines on the livingroom table, smelled the bittersweet odor of Calpurnia’s hairdressing.

“Cal,” she said. “Why didn’t I know all this before?”

Calpurnia frowned and sought an answer. “You’re sort of ’hind f’omus, Miss Scout. You sort of haven’t caught up with yourself… now if you’d been raised on a farm you’da known it before you could walk, or if there’d been any women around-if your mamma had lived you’da known it—”

“Mamma?”

“Yessum. You’da seen things like your daddy kissin’ your mamma and you’da asked questions soon as you learned to talk, I bet.”

“Did they do all that?”

Calpurnia revealed her gold-crowned molars. “Bless your heart, how do you think you got here? Sure they did.”

“Well I don’t think they would.”

“Baby, you’ll have to grow some more before this makes sense to you, but your daddy and your mamma loved each other something fierce, and when you love somebody like that, Miss Scout, why that’s what you want to do. That’s what everybody wants to do when they love like that. They want to get married, they want to kiss and hug and carry on and have babies all the time.”

“I don’t think Aunty and Uncle Jimmy do.”

Calpurnia picked at her apron. “Miss Scout, different folks get married for different kinds of reasons. Miss Alexandra, I think she got married to keep house.” Calpurnia scratched her head. “But that’s not anything you need to study about, that’s not any of your concern. Don’t you study about other folks’s business till you take care of your own.”

Calpurnia got to her feet. “Right now your business is not to give any heed to what those folks from Old Sarum tell you-you ain’t called upon to contradict ’em, just don’t pay ’em any attention-and if you want to know somethin’, you just run to old Cal.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this to start with?”

“’Cause things started for you a mite early, and you didn’t seem to take to it so much, and we didn’t think you’d take to the rest of it any better. Mr. Finch said wait a while till you got used to the idea, but we didn’t count on you finding out so quick and so wrong, Miss Scout.”

Jean Louise stretched luxuriously and yawned, delighted with her existence. She was becoming sleepy and was not sure she could stay awake until supper. “We having hot biscuits tonight, Cal?”

“Yes ma’am.”

She heard the front door slam and Jem clump down the hall. He was headed for the kitchen, where he would open the refrigerator and swallow a quart of milk to quench his football-practice thirst. Before she dozed off, it occurred to her that for the first time in her life Calpurnia had said “Yes ma’am” and “Miss Scout” to her, forms of address usually reserved for the presence of high company. I must be getting old, she thought.

Jem wakened her when he snapped on the overhead light. She saw him walking toward her, the big maroon M standing out starkly on his white sweater.

“Are you awake, Little Three-Eyes?”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” she said. If Henry or Calpurnia had told on her she would die, but she would take them with her.

She stared at her brother. His hair was damp and he smelled of the strong soap in the schoolhouse locker rooms. Better start it first, she thought.

“Huh, you’ve been smoking,” she said. “Smell it a mile.”

“Haven’t.”

“Don’t see how you can play in the line anyway. You’re too skinny.”

Jem smiled and declined her gambit. They’ve told him, she thought.

Jem patted his M. “Old Never-Miss-’Em-Finch, that’s me. Caught seven out of ten this afternoon,” he said.

He went to the table and picked up a football magazine, opened it, thumbed through it, and was thumbing through it again when he said: “Scout, if there’s ever anything that happens to you or something-you know-something you might not want to tell Atticus about—”

“Huh?”

“You know, if you get in trouble at school or anything-you just let me know. I’ll take care of you.”

Jem sauntered from the livingroom, leaving Jean Louise wide-eyed and wondering if she were fully awake.

12

SUNLIGHT ROUSED HER. She looked at her watch. Five o’clock. Someone had covered her up during the night. She threw off the spread, put her feet to the floor, and sat gazing at her long legs, startled to find them twenty-six years old. Her loafers were standing at attention where she had stepped out of them twelve hours ago. One sock was lying beside her shoes and she discovered its mate on her foot. She removed the sock and padded softly to the dressing table, where she caught sight of herself in the mirror.

She looked ruefully at her reflection. You have had what Mr. Burgess would call “The ’Orrors,” she told it. Golly, I haven’t waked up like this for fifteen years. Today is Monday, I’ve been home since Saturday, I have eleven days of my vacation left, and I wake up with the screamin’ meemies. She laughed at herself: well, it was the longest on record-longer than elephants and nothing to show for it.

She picked up a package of cigarettes and three kitchen matches, stuffed the matches behind the cellophane wrapper, and walked quietly into the hall. She opened the wooden door, then the screen door.

On any other day she would have stood barefoot on the wet grass listening to the mockingbirds’ early service; she would have pondered over the meaninglessness of silent, austere beauty renewing itself with every sunrise and going ungazed at by half the world. She would have walked beneath yellow-ringed pines rising to a brilliant eastern sky, and her senses would have succumbed to the joy of the morning.

It was waiting to receive her, but she neither looked nor listened. She had two minutes of peace before yesterday returned: nothing can kill the pleasure of one’s first cigarette on a new morning. Jean Louise blew smoke carefully into the still air.

She touched yesterday cautiously, then withdrew. I don’t dare think about it now, until it goes far enough away. It is weird, she thought, this must be like physical pain. They say when you can’t stand it your body is its own defense, you black out and you don’t feel any more. The Lord never sends you more than you can bear-

That was an ancient Maycomb phrase employed by its fragile ladies who sat up with corpses, supposed to be profoundly comforting to the bereaved. Very well, she would be comforted. She would sit out her two weeks home in polite detachment, saying nothing, asking nothing, blaming not. She would do as well as could be expected under the circumstances.

She put her arms on her knees and her head in her arms. I wish to God I had caught you both at a jook with two sleazy women-the lawn needs mowing.

Jean Louise walked to the garage and raised the sliding door. She rolled out the gasoline motor, unscrewed the fuel cap, and inspected the tank. She replaced the cap, flicked a tiny lever, placed one foot on the mower, braced the other firmly in the grass, and yanked the cord quickly. The motor choked twice and died.

Damn it to hell, I’ve flooded it.

She wheeled the mower into the sun and returned to the garage where she armed herself with heavy hedge clippers. She went to the culvert at the entrance to the driveway and snipped the sturdier grass growing at its two mouths. Something moved at her feet, and she closed her cupped left hand over a cricket. She edged her right hand beneath the creature and scooped it up. The cricket beat frantically against her palms and she let it down again. “You were out too late,” she said. “Go home to your mamma.”

A truck drove up the hill and stopped in front of her. A Negro boy jumped from the running-board and handed her three quarts of milk. She carried the milk to the front steps, and on her way back to the culvert she gave the mower another tug. This time it started.

She glanced with satisfaction at the neat swath behind her. The grass lay crisply cut and smelled like a creek bank. The course of English Literature would have been decidedly different had Mr. Wordsworth owned a power mower, she thought.

Something invaded her line of vision and she looked up. Alexandra was standing at the front door making come-here-this-minute gestures. I believe she’s got on a corset. I wonder if she ever turns over in bed at night.

Alexandra showed little evidence of such activity as she stood waiting for her niece: her thick gray hair was neatly arranged, as usual; she had on no makeup and it made no difference. I wonder if she has ever really felt anything in her life. Francis probably hurt her when he appeared, but I wonder if anything has ever touched her.

“Jean Louise!” hissed Alexandra. “You’re waking up this whole side of town with that thing! You’ve already waked your father, and he didn’t get two winks last night. Stop it right now!”

Jean Louise kicked off the motor, and the sudden silence broke her truce with them.

“You ought to know better than to run that thing barefooted. Fink Sewell got three toes chopped off that way, and Atticus killed a snake three feet long in the back yard just last fall. Honestly, the way you behave sometimes, anybody’d think you were behind the pale!”

In spite of herself, Jean Louise grinned. Alexandra could be relied upon to produce a malapropism on occasions, the most notable being her comment on the gulosity displayed by the youngest member of a Mobile Jewish family upon completing his thirteenth year: Alexandra declared that Aaron Stein was the greediest boy she had ever seen, that he ate fourteen ears of corn at his Menopause.

“Why didn’t you bring in the milk? It’s probably clabber by now.”

“I didn’t want to wake you all up, Aunty.”

“Well, we are up,” she said grimly. “Do you want any breakfast?”

“Just coffee, please.”

“I want you to get dressed and go to town for me this morning. You’ll have to drive Atticus. He’s pretty crippled today.”

She wished she had stayed in bed until he had left the house, but he would have waked her anyway to drive him to town.

She went into the house, went to the kitchen, and sat down at the table. She looked at the grotesque eating equipment Alexandra had put by his plate. Atticus drew the line at having someone feed him, and Dr. Finch solved the problem by jamming the handles of a fork, knife, and spoon into the ends of big wooden spools.

“Good morning.”

Jean Louise heard her father enter the room. She looked at her plate. “Good morning, sir.”

“I heard you weren’t feeling good. I looked in on you when I got home and you were sound asleep. All right this morning?”

“Yes sir.”

“Don’t sound it.”

Atticus asked the Lord to give them grateful hearts for these and all their blessings, picked up his glass, and spilled its contents over the table. The milk ran into his lap.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It takes me a while to get going some mornings.”

“Don’t move, I’ll fix it.” Jean Louise jumped up and went to the sink. She threw two dishtowels over the milk, got a fresh one from a drawer of the cabinet, and blotted the milk from her father’s trousers and shirt front.

“I have a whopping cleaning bill these days,” he said.

“Yes sir.”

Alexandra served Atticus bacon and eggs and toast. His attention upon his breakfast, Jean Louise thought it would be safe to have a look at him.

He had not changed. His face was the same as always. I don’t know why I expected him to be looking like Dorian Gray or somebody.

She jumped when the telephone rang.

Jean Louise was unable to readjust herself to calls at six in the morning, Mary Webster’s Hour. Alexandra answered it and returned to the kitchen.

“It’s for you, Atticus. It’s the sheriff.”

“Ask him what he wants, please, Zandra.”

Alexandra reappeared saying, “Something about somebody asked him to call you—”

“Tell him to call Hank, Zandra. He can tell Hank whatever he wants to tell me.” He turned to Jean Louise. “I’m glad I have a junior partner as well as a sister. What one misses the other doesn’t. Wonder what the sheriff wants at this hour?”

“So do I,” she said flatly.

“Sweet, I think you ought to let Allen have a look at you today. You’re offish.”

“Yes sir.”

Secretly, she watched her father eat his breakfast. He managed the cumbersome tableware as if it were its normal size and shape. She stole a glance at his face and saw it covered with white stubble. If he had a beard it would be white, but his hair’s just turning and his eyebrows are still jet. Uncle Jack’s already white to his forehead, and Aunty’s gray all over. When I begin to go, where will I start? Why am I thinking these things?

She said, “Excuse me,” and took her coffee to the livingroom. She put her cup on a lamp table and was opening the blinds when she saw Henry’s car turn into the driveway. He found her standing by the window.

“Good morning. You look like pale blue sin,” he said.

“Thank you. Atticus is in the kitchen.”

Henry looked the same as ever. After a night’s sleep, his scar was less vivid. “You in a snit about something?” he said. “I waved at you in the balcony yesterday but you didn’t see me.”

“You saw me?”

“Yeah. I was hoping you’d be waiting outside for us, but you weren’t. Feeling better today?”

“Yes.”

“Well, don’t bite my head off.”

She drank her coffee, told herself she wanted another cup, and followed Henry into the kitchen. He leaned against the sink, twirling his car keys on his forefinger. He is nearly as tall as the cabinets, she thought. I shall never be able to speak one lucid sentence to him again.

“—happened all right,” Henry was saying. “It was bound to sooner or later.”

“Was he drinking?” asked Atticus.

“Not drinking, drunk. He was coming in from an all-night boozing down at that jook they have.”

“What’s the matter?” said Jean Louise.

“Zeebo’s boy,” said Henry. “Sheriff said he has him in jail-he’d asked him to call Mr. Finch to come get him out-huh.”

“Why?”

“Honey, Zeebo’s boy was coming out of the Quarters at daybreak this morning splittin’ the wind, and he ran over old Mr. Healy crossing the road and killed him dead.”

“Oh no—”

“Whose car was it?” asked Atticus.

“Zeebo’s, I reckon.”

“What’d you tell the sheriff?” asked Atticus.

“Told him to tell Zeebo’s boy you wouldn’t touch the case.”

Atticus leaned his elbows against the table and pushed himself back.

“You shouldn’t’ve done that, Hank,” he said mildly. “Of course we’ll take it.”

Thank you, God. Jean Louise sighed softly and rubbed her eyes. Zeebo’s boy was Calpurnia’s grandson. Atticus may forget a lot of things, but he would never forget them. Yesterday was fast dissolving into a bad night. Poor Mr. Healy, he was probably so loaded he never knew what hit him.

“But Mr. Finch,” Henry said. “I thought none of the—”

Atticus eased his arm on the corner of the chair. When concentrating it was his practice to finger his watch-chain and rummage abstractedly in his watchpocket. Today his hands were still.

“Hank, I suspect when we know all the facts in the case the best that can be done for the boy is for him to plead guilty. Now, isn’t it better for us to stand up with him in court than to have him fall into the wrong hands?”

A smile spread slowly across Henry’s face. “I see what you mean, Mr. Finch.”

“Well, I don’t,” said Jean Louise. “What wrong hands?”

Atticus turned to her. “Scout, you probably don’t know it, but the NAACP-paid lawyers are standing around like buzzards down here waiting for things like this to happen—”

“You mean colored lawyers?”

Atticus nodded. “Yep. We’ve got three or four in the state now. They’re mostly in Birmingham and places like that, but circuit by circuit they watch and wait, just for some felony committed by a Negro against a white person-you’d be surprised how quick they find out-in they come and… well, in terms you can understand, they demand Negroes on the juries in such cases. They subpoena the jury commissioners, they ask the judge to step down, they raise every legal trick in their books-and they have ’em aplenty-they try to force the judge into error. Above all else, they try to get the case into a Federal court where they know the cards are stacked in their favor. It’s already happened in our next-door-neighbor circuit, and there’s nothing in the books that says it won’t happen here.”

Atticus turned to Henry. “So that’s why I say we’ll take his case if he wants us.”

“I thought the NAACP was forbidden to do business in Alabama,” said Jean Louise.

Atticus and Henry looked at her and laughed.

“Honey,” said Henry, “you don’t know what went on in Abbott County when something just like this happened. This spring we thought there’d be real trouble for a while. People across the river here even, bought up all the ammunition they could find—”

Jean Louise left the room.

In the livingroom, she heard Atticus’s even voice:

“… stem the tide a little bit this way… good thing he asked for one of the Maycomb lawyers…”

She would keep her coffee down come hell or high water. Who were the people Calpurnia’s tribe turned to first and always? How many divorces had Atticus gotten for Zeebo? Five, at least. Which boy was this one? He was in real dutch this time, he needed real help and what do they do but sit in the kitchen and talk NAACP… not long ago, Atticus would have done it simply from his goodness, he would have done it for Cal. I must go to see her this morning without fail…

What was this blight that had come down over the people she loved? Did she see it in stark relief because she had been away from it? Had it percolated gradually through the years until now? Had it always been under her nose for her to see if she had only looked? No, not the last. What turned ordinary men into screaming dirt at the top of their voices, what made her kind of people harden and say “nigger” when the word had never crossed their lips before?

“—keep them in their places, I hope,” Alexandra said, as she entered the livingroom with Atticus and Henry.

“There’s nothing to fret about,” said Henry. “We’ll come out all right. Seven-thirty tonight, hon?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you might show some enthusiasm about it.”

Atticus chuckled. “She’s already tired of you, Hank.”

“Can I take you to town, Mr. Finch? It’s powerfully early, but I think I’ll run down and tend to some things in the cool of the morning.”

“Thanks, but Scout’ll run me down later.”

His use of her childhood name crashed on her ears. Don’t you ever call me that again. You who called me Scout are dead and in your grave.

Alexandra said, “I’ve got a list of things for you to get at the Jitney Jungle, Jean Louise. Now go change your clothes. You can run to town now-it’s open-and come back for your father.”

Jean Louise went to the bathroom and turned on the hot water tap in the tub. She went to her room, pulled out a cotton dress from the closet, and slung it over her arm. She found some flat-heeled shoes in her suitcase, picked up a pair of panties, and took them all into the bathroom.

She looked at herself in the medicine-cabinet mirror. Who’s Dorian now?

There were blue-brown shadows under her eyes, and the lines from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth were definite. No doubt about them, she thought. She pulled her cheek to one side and peered at the tiny mother line. I couldn’t care less. By the time I’m ready to get married I’ll be ninety and then it’ll be too late. Who’ll bury me? I’m the youngest by far-that’s one reason for having children.

She cut the hot water with cold, and when she could stand it she got into the tub, scrubbed herself soberly, released the water, rubbed herself dry, and dressed quickly. She gave the tub a rinse, dried her hands, spread the towel on the rack, and left the bathroom.

“Put on some lipstick,” said her aunt, meeting her in the hall. Alexandra went to the closet and dragged out the vacuum cleaner.

“I’ll do that when I come back,” said Jean Louise.

“It’ll be done when you get back.”

THE SUN HAD not yet blistered the sidewalks of Maycomb, but it soon would. She parked the car in front of the grocery store and went in.

Mr. Fred shook hands with her, said he was glad to see her, drew out a wet Coke from the machine, wiped it on his apron, and gave it to her.

This is one good thing about life that never changes, she thought. As long as he lived, as long as she returned, Mr. Fred would be here with his… simple welcome. What was that? Alice? Brer Rabbit? It was Mole. Mole, when he returned from some long journey, desperately tired, had found the familiar waiting for him with its simple welcome.

“I’ll rassle up these groceries for you and you can enjoy your Coke,” said Mr. Fred.

“Thank you, sir,” she said. Jean Louise glanced at the list and her eyes widened. “Aunty’s gettin’ more like Cousin Joshua all the time. What does she want with cocktail napkins?”

Mr. Fred chuckled. “I reckon she means party napkins. I’ve never heard of a cocktail passing her lips.”

“You never will, either.”

Mr. Fred went about his business, and presently he called from the back of the store. “Hear about Mr. Healy?”

“Ah-um,” said Jean Louise. She was a lawyer’s daughter.

“Didn’t know what hit him,” said Mr. Fred. “Didn’t know where he was going to begin with, poor old thing. He drank more jack-leg liquor than any human I ever saw. That was his one accomplishment.”

“Didn’t he used to play the jug?”

“Sure did,” said Mr. Fred. “You remember back when they’d have talent nights at the courthouse? He’d always be there blowin’ that jug. He’d bring it full and drink a bit to get the tone down, then drink some more until it was real low, and then play his solo. It was always Old Dan Tucker, and he always scandalized the ladies, but they never could prove anything. You know pure shinny doesn’t smell much.”

“How did he live?”

“Pension, I think. He was in the Spanish-to tell you the truth he was in some war but I can’t remember what it was. Here’s your groceries.”

“Thanks, Mr. Fred,” Jean Louise said. “Good Lord, I’ve forgot my money. Can I leave the slip on Atticus’s desk? He’ll be down before long.”

“Sure, honey. How’s your daddy?”

“He’s grim today, but he’ll be at the office come the Flood.”

“Why don’t you stay home this time?”

She lowered her guard when she saw nothing but incurious good humor in Mr. Fred’s face: “I will, someday.”

“You know, I was in the First War,” said Mr. Fred. “I didn’t go overseas, but I saw a lot of this country. I didn’t have the itch to get back, so after the war I stayed away for ten years, but the longer I stayed away the more I missed Maycomb. I got to the point where I felt like I had to come back or die. You never get it out of your bones.”

“Mr. Fred, Maycomb’s just like any other little town. You take a cross-section—”

“It’s not, Jean Louise. You know that.”

“You’re right,” she nodded.

It was not because this was where your life began. It was because this was where people were born and born and born until finally the result was you, drinking a Coke in the Jitney Jungle.

Now she was aware of a sharp apartness, a separation, not from Atticus and Henry merely. All of Maycomb and Maycomb County were leaving her as the hours passed, and she automatically blamed herself.

She bumped her head getting into the car. I shall never become accustomed to these things. Uncle Jack has a few major points in his philosophy.

ALEXANDRA TOOK THE groceries from the back seat. Jean Louise leaned over and opened the door for her father; she reached across him and shut it.

“Want the car this morning, Aunty?”

“No, dear. Going somewhere?”

“Yessum. I won’t be gone long.”

She watched the street closely. I can do anything but look at him and listen to him and talk to him.

When she stopped in front of the barbershop she said, “Ask Mr. Fred how much we owe him. I forgot to take the slip out of the sack. Said you’d pay him.”

When she opened the door for him, he stepped into the street.

“Be careful!”

Atticus waved to the driver of the passing car. “It didn’t hit me,” he said.

She drove around the square and out the Meridian highway until she came to a fork in the road. This is where it must have happened, she thought.

There were dark patches in the red gravel where the pavement ended, and she drove the car over Mr. Healy’s blood. When she came to a fork in the dirt road she turned right, and drove down a lane so narrow the big car left no room on either side. She went on until she could go no farther.

The road was blocked by a line of cars standing aslant halfway in the ditch. She parked behind the last one and got out. She walked down the row past a 1939 Ford, a Chevrolet of ambiguous vintage, a Willys, and a robin’s-egg blue hearse with the words HEAVENLY REST picked out in a chromium semicircle on its front door. She was startled, and she peered inside: in the back there were rows of chairs screwed to the floor and no place for a recumbent body, quick or dead. This is a taxi, she thought.

She pulled a wire ring off the gatepost and went inside. Calpurnia’s was a swept yard: Jean Louise could tell it had been swept recently, brushbroom scratches were still visible between smooth footprints.

She looked up, and on the porch of Calpurnia’s little house stood Negroes in various states of public attire: a couple of women wore their best, one had on a calico apron, one was dressed in her field clothes. Jean Louise identified one of the men as Professor Chester Sumpter, principal of the Mt. Sinai Trade Institute, Maycomb County’s largest Negro school. Professor Sumpter was clad, as he always was, in black. The other black-suited man was a stranger to her, but Jean Louise knew he was a minister. Zeebo wore his work clothes.

When they saw her, they stood straight and retreated from the edge of the porch, becoming as one. The men removed their hats and caps, the woman wearing the apron folded her hands beneath it.

“Morning, Zeebo,” said Jean Louise.

Zeebo broke the pattern by stepping forward. “Howdy do, Miss Jean Louise. We didn’t know you was home.”

Jean Louise was acutely conscious that the Negroes were watching her. They stood silent, respectful, and were watching her intently. She said, “Is Calpurnia home?”

“Yessum, Miss Jean Louise, Mamma in the house. Want me to fetch her?”

“May I go in, Zeebo?”

“Yessum.”

The black people parted for her to enter the front door. Zeebo, unsure of protocol, opened the door and stood back to let her enter. “Lead the way, Zeebo,” she said.

She followed him into a dark parlor to which clung the musky sweet smell of clean Negro, snuff, and Hearts of Love hairdressing. Several shadowy forms rose when she entered.

“This way, Miss Jean Louise.”

They walked down a tiny hallway, and Zeebo tapped at an unpainted pine door. “Mamma,” he said. “Miss Jean Louise here.”

The door opened softly, and Zeebo’s wife’s head appeared around it. She came out into the hall, which was scarcely large enough to contain the three of them.

“Hello, Helen,” said Jean Louise. “How is Calpurnia?”

“She taking it mighty hard, Miss Jean Louise. Frank, he never had any trouble before…”

So, it was Frank. Of all her multifarious descendants, Calpurnia took most pride in Frank. He was on the waiting list for Tuskegee Institute. He was a born plumber, could fix anything water ran through.

Helen, heavy with a pendulous stomach from having carried so many children, leaned against the wall. She was barefooted.

“Zeebo,” said Jean Louise, “you and Helen living together again?”

“Yessum,” said Helen placidly. “He’s done got old.”

Jean Louise smiled at Zeebo, who looked sheepish. For the life of her, Jean Louise could not disentangle Zeebo’s domestic history. She thought Helen must be Frank’s mother, but she was not sure. She was positive Helen was Zeebo’s first wife, and was equally sure she was his present wife, but how many were there in between?

She remembered Atticus telling of the pair in his office, years ago when they appeared seeking a divorce. Atticus, trying to reconcile them, asked Helen would she take her husband back. “Naw sir, Mr. Finch,” was her slow reply. “Zeebo, he been goin’ around enjoyin’ other women. He don’t enjoy me none, and I don’t want no man who don’t enjoy his wife.”

“Could I see Calpurnia, Helen?”

“Yessum, go right in.”

Calpurnia was sitting in a wooden rocking chair in a corner of the room by the fireplace. The room contained an iron bedstead covered with a faded quilt of a Double Wedding Ring pattern. There were three huge gilt-framed photographs of Negroes and a Coca-Cola calendar on the wall. A rough mantelpiece teemed with small bright objets d’art made of plaster, porcelain, clay, and milk glass. A naked light bulb burned on a cord swinging from the ceiling, casting sharp shadows on the wall behind the mantelpiece, and in the corner where Calpurnia sat.

How small she looks, thought Jean Louise. She used to be so tall.

Calpurnia was old and she was bony. Her sight was failing, and she wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses which stood out in harsh contrast to her warm brown skin. Her big hands were resting in her lap, and she raised them and spread her fingers when Jean Louise entered.

Jean Louise’s throat tightened when she caught sight of Calpurnia’s bony fingers, fingers so gentle when Jean Louise was ill and hard as ebony when she was bad, fingers that had performed long-ago tasks of loving intricacy. Jean Louise held them to her mouth.

“Cal,” she said.

“Sit down, baby,” said Calpurnia. “Is there a chair?”

“Yes, Cal.” Jean Louise drew up a chair and sat in front of her old friend.

“Cal, I came to tell you-I came to tell you that if there’s anything I can do for you, you must let me know.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Calpurnia. “I don’t know of anything.”

“I want to tell you that Mr. Finch got word of it early this morning. Frank had the sheriff call him and Mr. Finch’ll… help him.”

The words died on her lips. Day before yesterday she would have said “Mr. Finch’ll help him” confident that Atticus would turn dark to daylight.

Calpurnia nodded. Her head was up and she looked straight before her. She cannot see me well, thought Jean Louise. I wonder how old she is. I never knew exactly, and I doubt if she ever did.

Jean Louise said, “Don’t worry, Cal. Atticus’ll do his best.”

Calpurnia said, “I know he will, Miss Scout. He always do his best. He always do right.”

Jean Louise stared open-mouthed at the old woman. Calpurnia was sitting in a haughty dignity that appeared on state occasions, and with it appeared erratic grammar. Had the earth stopped turning, had the trees frozen, had the sea given up its dead, Jean Louise would not have noticed.

“Calpurnia!”

She barely heard Calpurnia talking: “Frank, he do wrong… he pay for it… my grandson. I love him… but he go to jail with or without Mr. Finch…”

“Calpurnia, stop it!”

Jean Louise was on her feet. She felt the tears come and she walked blindly to the window.

The old woman had not moved. Jean Louise turned and saw her sitting there, seeming to inhale steadily.

Calpurnia was wearing her company manners.

Jean Louise sat down again in front of her. “Cal,” she cried, “Cal, Cal, Cal, what are you doing to me? What’s the matter? I’m your baby, have you forgotten me? Why are you shutting me out? What are you doing to me?”

Calpurnia lifted her hands and brought them down softly on the arms of the rocker. Her face was a million tiny wrinkles, and her eyes were dim behind thick lenses.

“What are you all doing to us?” she said.

“Us?”

“Yessum. Us.”

Jean Louise said slowly, more to herself than to Calpurnia: “As long as I’ve lived I never remotely dreamed that anything like this could happen. And here it is. I cannot talk to the one human who raised me from the time I was two years old… it is happening as I sit here and I cannot believe it. Talk to me, Cal. For God’s sake talk to me right. Don’t sit there like that!”

She looked into the old woman’s face and she knew it was hopeless. Calpurnia was watching her, and in Calpurnia’s eyes was no hint of compassion.

Jean Louise rose to go. “Tell me one thing, Cal,” she said, “just one thing before I go-please, I’ve got to know. Did you hate us?”

The old woman sat silent, bearing the burden of her years. Jean Louise waited.

Finally, Calpurnia shook her head.

“ZEEBO,” SAID JEAN Louise. “If there’s anything I can do, for goodness’ sake call on me.”

“Yessum,” the big man said. “But it don’t look like there’s anything. Frank, he sho’ killed him, and there’s nothing nobody can do. Mr. Finch, he can’t do nothing about sump’n like that. Is there anything I can do for you while you’re home, ma’am?”

They were standing on the porch in the path cleared for them. Jean Louise sighed. “Yes, Zeebo, right now. You can come help me turn my car around. I’d be in the corn patch before long.”

“Yessum, Miss Jean Louise.”

She watched Zeebo manipulate the car in the narrow confine of the road. I hope I can get back home, she thought. “Thank you, Zeebo,” she said wearily. “Remember now.” The Negro touched his hatbrim and walked back to his mother’s house.

Jean Louise sat in the car, staring at the steering wheel. Why is it that everything I have ever loved on this earth has gone away from me in two days’ time? Would Jem turn his back on me? She loved us, I swear she loved us. She sat there in front of me and she didn’t see me, she saw white folks. She raised me, and she doesn’t care.

It was not always like this, I swear it wasn’t. People used to trust each other for some reason, I’ve forgotten why. They didn’t watch each other like hawks then. I wouldn’t get looks like that going up those steps ten years ago. She never wore her company manners with one of us… when Jem died, her precious Jem, it nearly killed her…

Jean Louise remembered going to Calpurnia’s house late one afternoon two years ago. She was sitting in her room, as she was today, her glasses down on her nose. She had been crying. “Always so easy to fix for,” Calpurnia said. “Never a day’s trouble in his life, my boy. He brought me a present home from the war, he brought me an electric coat.” When she smiled Calpurnia’s face broke into its million wrinkles. She went to the bed, and from under it pulled out a wide box. She opened the box and held up an enormous expanse of black leather. It was a German flying officer’s coat. “See?” she said. “It turns on.” Jean Louise examined the coat and found tiny wires running through it. There was a pocket containing batteries. “Mr. Jem said it’d keep my bones warm in the wintertime. He said for me not to be scared of it, but to be careful when it was lightning.” Calpurnia in her electric coat was the envy of her friends and neighbors. “Cal,” Jean Louise had said. “Please come back. I can’t go back to New York easy in my mind if you aren’t there.” That seemed to help: Calpurnia straightened up and nodded. “Yes ma’am,” she said. “I’m coming back. Don’t you worry.”

Jean Louise pressed the drive button and the car moved slowly down the road. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch a nigger by his toe. When he hollers let him go… God help me.