Go Set a Watchman

15

MAD, MAD, MAD as a hatter. Well, that’s the way of all Finches. Difference between Uncle Jack and the rest of ’em, though, is he knows he’s crazy.

She was sitting at a table behind Mr. Cunningham’s ice cream shop, eating from a wax-paper container. Mr. Cunningham, a man of uncompromising rectitude, had given her a pint free of charge for having guessed his name yesterday, one of the tiny things she adored about Maycomb: people remembered their promises.

What was he driving at? Promise me-incidental to the issue-Anglo-Saxon-dirty word-Childe Roland. I hope he doesn’t lose his sense of propriety or they will have to shut him up. He’s so far out of this century he can’t go to the bathroom, he goes to the water closet. But mad or not, he’s the only one of ’em who hasn’t done something or said something-

Why did I come back here? Just to rub it in, I suppose. Just to look at the gravel in the back yard where the trees were, where the carhouse was, and wonder if it was all a dream. Jem parked his fishing car over there, we dug earthworms by the back fence, I planted a bamboo shoot one time and we fought it for twenty years. Mr. Cunningham must have salted the earth where it grew, I don’t see it any more.

Sitting in the one o’clock sun, she rebuilt her house, populated the yard with her father and brother and Calpurnia, put Henry across the street and Miss Rachel next door.

It was the last two weeks of the school year and she was going to her first dance. Traditionally, the members of the senior class invited their younger brothers and sisters to the Commencement Dance, held the night before the Junior-Senior Banquet, which was always the last Friday in May.

Jem’s football sweater had grown increasingly gorgeous-he was captain of the team, the first year Maycomb beat Abbottsville in thirteen seasons. Henry was president of the Senior Debating Society, the only extracurricular activity he had time for, and Jean Louise was a fat fourteen, immersed in Victorian poetry and detective novels.

In those days when it was fashionable to court across the river, Jem was so helplessly in love with a girl from Abbott County he seriously considered spending his senior year at Abbottsville High, but was discouraged by Atticus, who put his foot down and solaced Jem by advancing him sufficient funds to purchase a Model-A coupe. Jem painted his car bright black, achieved the effect of whitewalled tires with more paint, kept his conveyance polished to perfection, and motored to Abbottsville every Friday evening in quiet dignity, oblivious to the fact that his car sounded like an oversized coffee mill, and that wherever he went hound dogs tended to congregate in large numbers.

Jean Louise was sure Jem had made some kind of deal with Henry to take her to the dance, but she did not mind. At first she did not want to go, but Atticus said it would look funny if everybody’s sisters were there except Jem’s, told her she’d have a good time, and that she could go to Ginsberg’s and pick out any dress she wanted.

She found a beauty. White, with puffed sleeves and a skirt that billowed when she spun around. There was only one thing wrong: she looked like a bowling pin in it.

She consulted Calpurnia, who said nobody could do anything about her shape, that’s just the way she was, which was the way all girls more or less were when they were fourteen.

“But I look so peculiar,” she said, tugging at the neckline.

“You look that way all the time,” said Calpurnia. “I mean you’re the same in every dress you have. That’un’s no different.”

Jean Louise worried for three days. On the afternoon of the dance she returned to Ginsberg’s and selected a pair of false bosoms, went home, and tried them on.

“Look now, Cal,” she said.

Calpurnia said, “You’re the right shape all right, but hadn’t you better break ’em in by degrees?”

“What do you mean?”

Calpurnia muttered, “You should’a been wearing ’em for a while to get used to ’em-it’s too late now.”

“Oh Cal, don’t be silly.”

“Well, give ’em here. I’m gonna sew ’em together.”

As Jean Louise handed them over, a sudden thought rooted her to the spot. “Oh golly,” she whispered.

“What’s the matter now?” said Calpurnia. “You’ve been fixin’ for this thing a slap week. What did you forget?”

“Cal, I don’t think I know how to dance.”

Calpurnia put her hands on her hips. “Fine time to think of that,” she said, looking at the kitchen clock. “Three forty-five.”

Jean Louise ran to the telephone. “Six five, please,” she said, and when her father answered she wailed into the mouthpiece.

“Keep calm and consult Jack,” he said. “Jack was good in his day.”

“He must have cut a mean minuet,” she said, but called her uncle, who responded with alacrity.

Dr. Finch coached his niece to the tune of Jem’s record player: “Nothing to it… like chess… just concentrate… no,no,no, tuck in your butt… you’re not playing tackle… loathe ballroom dancing… too much like work… don’t try to lead me… when he steps on your foot it’s your own fault for not moving it… don’t look down… don’t,don’t,don’t… now you’ve got it… basic, so don’t try anything fancy.”

After one hour’s intense concentration Jean Louise mastered a simple box step. She counted vigorously to herself, and admired her uncle’s ability to talk and dance simultaneously.

“Relax and you’ll do all right,” he said.

His exertions were repaid by Calpurnia with the offer of coffee and an invitation to supper, both of which he accepted. Dr. Finch spent a solitary hour in the livingroom until Atticus and Jem arrived; his niece locked herself in the bathroom and remained there scrubbing herself and dancing. She emerged radiant, ate supper in her bathrobe, and vanished into her bedroom unconscious of her family’s amusement.

While she was dressing she heard Henry’s step on the front porch and thought him calling for her too early, but he walked down the hall toward Jem’s room. She applied Tangee Orange to her lips, combed her hair, and stuck down her cowlick with some of Jem’s Vitalis. Her father and Dr. Finch rose to their feet when she entered the livingroom.

“You look like a picture,” said Atticus. He kissed her on the forehead.

“Be careful,” she said. “You’ll muss up my hair.”

Dr. Finch said, “Shall we take a final practice turn?”

Henry found them dancing in the livingroom. He blinked when he saw Jean Louise’s new figure, and he tapped Dr. Finch on the shoulder. “May I cut in, sir?

“You look plain pretty, Scout,” Henry said. “I’ve got something for you.”

“You look nice too, Hank,” said Jean Louise. Henry’s blue serge Sunday pants were creased to painful sharpness, his tan jacket smelled of cleaning fluid; Jean Louise recognized Jem’s light-blue necktie.

“You dance well,” said Henry, and Jean Louise stumbled.

“Don’t look down, Scout!” snapped Dr. Finch. “I told you it’s like carrying a cup of coffee. If you look at it you spill it.”

Atticus opened his watch. “Jem better get a move on if he wants to get Irene. That trap of his won’t do better than thirty.”

When Jem appeared Atticus sent him back to change his tie. When he reappeared, Atticus gave him the keys to the family car, some money, and a lecture on not doing over fifty.

“Say,” said Jem, after duly admiring Jean Louise, “you all can go in the Ford, and you won’t have to go all that way to Abbottsville with me.”

Dr. Finch was fidgeting with his coat pockets. “It is immaterial to me how you go,” he said. “Just go. You’re making me nervous standing around in all your finery. Jean Louise is beginning to sweat. Come in, Cal.”

Calpurnia was standing shyly in the hall, giving her grudging approval to the scene. She adjusted Henry’s tie, picked invisible lint from Jem’s coat, and desired the presence of Jean Louise in the kitchen.

“I think I ought to sew ’em in,” she said doubtfully.

Henry shouted come on or Dr. Finch would have a stroke.

“I’ll be okay, Cal.”

Returning to the livingroom, Jean Louise found her uncle in a suppressed whirlwind of impatience, in vivid contrast to her father, who was standing casually with his hands in his pockets. “You’d better get going,” said Atticus. “Alexandra’ll be here in another minute-then you will be late.”

They were on the front porch when Henry halted. “I forgot!” he yelped, and ran to Jem’s room. He returned carrying a box, presenting it to Jean Louise with a low bow: “For you, Miss Finch,” he said. Inside the box were two pink camellias.

“Ha-ank,” said Jean Louise. “They’re bought!”

“Sent all the way to Mobile for ’em,” said Henry. “They came up on the six o’clock bus.”

“Where’ll I put ’em?”

“Heavenly Fathers, put ’em where they belong!” exploded Dr. Finch. “Come here!”

He snatched the camellias from Jean Louise and pinned them to her shoulder, glaring sternly at her false front. “Will you now do me the favor of leaving the premises?”

“I forgot my purse.”

Dr. Finch produced his handkerchief and made a pass at his jaw. “Henry,” he said, “go get that abomination cranked. I’ll meet you out in front with her.”

She kissed her father goodnight, and he said, “I hope you have the time of your life.”

The Maycomb County High School gymnasium was tastefully decorated with balloons and white-and-red crepe paper streamers. A long table stood at the far end; paper cups, plates of sandwiches, and napkins surrounded two punch bowls filled with a purple mixture. The gymnasium floor was freshly waxed and the basketball goals were folded to the ceiling. Greenery enveloped the stage front, and in the center, for no particular reason, were large red cardboard letters: MCHS.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said Jean Louise.

“Looks awfully nice,” said Henry. “Doesn’t it look bigger when there’s no game going on?”

They joined a group of younger and elder brothers and sisters standing around the punch bowls. The crowd was visibly impressed with Jean Louise. Girls she saw every day asked her where she got her dress, as if they didn’t all get them there: “Ginsberg’s. Calpurnia took it up,” she said. Several of the younger boys with whom she had been on eye-gouging terms only a few years ago made self-conscious conversation with her.

When Henry handed her a cup of punch she whispered, “If you want to go on with the seniors or anything I’ll be all right.”

Henry smiled at her. “You’re my date, Scout.”

“I know, but you shouldn’t feel obliged—”

Henry laughed. “I don’t feel obligated to do one thing. I wanted to bring you. Let’s dance.”

“Okay, but take it easy.”

He swung her out to the center of the floor. The public address system blared a slow number, and counting systematically to herself, Jean Louise danced through it with only one mistake.

As the evening wore on, she realized that she was a modest success. Several boys had cut in on her, and when she showed signs of becoming stuck, Henry was never far away.

She was sensible enough to sit out jitterbug numbers and avoid music with a South American taint, and Henry said when she learned to talk and dance at the same time she’d be a hit. She hoped the evening would last forever.

Jem and Irene’s entrance caused a stir. Jem had been voted Most Handsome in the senior class, a reasonable assessment: he had his mother’s calflike brown eyes, the heavy Finch eyebrows, and even features. Irene was the last word in sophistication. She wore a clinging green taffeta dress and high-heeled shoes, and when she danced dozens of slave bracelets clinked on her wrists. She had cool green eyes and jet hair, a quick smile, and was the type of girl Jem fell for with monotonous regularity.

Jem danced his duty dance with Jean Louise, told her she was doing fine but her nose was shining, to which she replied he had lipstick on his mouth. The number ended and Jem left her with Henry. “I can’t believe you’re going in the Army in June,” she said. It makes you sound so old.”

Henry opened his mouth to answer, suddenly goggled, and clasped her to him in a clinch.

“What’s the matter, Hank?”

“Don’t you think it’s hot in here? Let’s go out.”

Jean Louise tried to break away, but he held her close and danced her out the side door into the night.

“What’s eating you, Hank? Have I said something—”

He took her hand and walked her around to the front of the school building.

“Ah—” said Henry. He held both her hands. “Honey,” he said. “Look at your front.”

“It’s pitch dark. I can’t see anything.”

“Then feel.”

She felt, and gasped. Her right false bosom was in the center of her chest and the other was nearly under her left armpit. She jerked them back into position and burst into tears.

She sat down on the schoolhouse steps; Henry sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. When she stopped crying she said, “When did you notice it?”

“Just then, I swear.”

“Do you suppose they’ve been laughing at me long?”

Henry shook his head. “I don’t think anybody noticed it, Scout. Listen, Jem danced with you just before I did, and if he’d noticed it he’da certainly told you.”

“All Jem’s got on his mind’s Irene. He wouldn’t see a cyclone if it was comin’ at him.” She was crying again, softly. “I’ll never be able to face them again.”

Henry squeezed her shoulder. “Scout, I swear they slipped when we were dancing. Be logical-if anybody’d seen they’d’ve told you, you know that.”

“No I don’t. They’d just whisper and laugh. I know how they do.”

“Not the seniors,” said Henry sedately. “You’ve been dancing with the football team ever since Jem came in.”

She had. The team, one by one, had requested the pleasure: it was Jem’s quiet way of making sure she had a good time.

“Besides,” continued Henry, “I don’t like ’em anyway. You don’t look like yourself in them.”

Stung, she said, “You mean I look funny in ’em? I look funny without ’em, too.”

“I mean you’re just not Jean Louise.” He added, “You don’t look funny at all, you look fine to me.”

“You’re nice to say that, Hank, but you’re just saying it. I’m all fat in the wrong places, and—”

Henry hooted. “How old are you? Goin’ on fifteen still. You haven’t even stopped growing yet. Say, you remember Gladys Grierson? Remember how they used to call her ‘Happy Butt’?”

“Ha-ank!”

“Well, look at her now.”

Gladys Grierson, one of the more delectable ornaments of the senior class, had been afflicted to a greater extent with Jean Louise’s complaint. “She’s downright slinky now, isn’t she?”

Henry said masterfully, “Listen, Scout, they’ll worry you the rest of the night. You better take ’em off.”

“No. Let’s go home.”

“We’re not going home, we’re going back in and have a good time.”

“No!”

“Damn it, Scout, I said we’re going back, so take ’em off!”

“Take me home, Henry.”

With furious, disinterested fingers, Henry reached beneath the neck of her dress, drew out the offending appurtenances, and flung them as far as he could into the night.

“Now shall we go in?”

No one seemed to notice the change in her appearance, which proved, Henry said, that she was vain as a peacock, thinking everybody was looking at her all the time.

The next day was a school day, and the dance broke up at eleven. Henry coasted the Ford down the Finch driveway and brought it to a stop under the chinaberry trees. He and Jean Louise walked to the front door, and before he opened it for her, Henry put his arms around her lightly and kissed her. She felt her cheeks grow hot.

“Once more for good luck,” he said.

He kissed her again, shut the door behind her, and she heard him whistling as he ran across the street to his room.

Hungry, she tiptoed down the hall to the kitchen. Passing her father’s room, she saw a strip of light under his door. She knocked and went in. Atticus was in bed reading.

“Have a good time?”

“I had a won-derful time,” she said. “Atticus?”

“Hm?”

“Do you think Hank’s too old for me?”

“What?”

“Nothing. Goodnight.”

SHE SAT THROUGH roll call the next morning under the weight of her crush on Henry, coming to attention only when her homeroom teacher announced that there would be a special assembly of the junior and senior schools immediately after the first-period bell.

She went to the auditorium with nothing more on her mind than the prospect of seeing Henry, and weak curiosity as to what Miss Muffett had to say. Probably another war bond drive.

The Maycomb County High School principal was a Mr. Charles Tuffett, who to compensate for his name, habitually wore an expression that made him resemble the Indian on a five-cent piece. The personality of Mr. Tuffett was less inspiring: he was a disappointed man, a frustrated professor of education with no sympathy for young people. He was from the hills of Mississippi, which placed him at a disadvantage in Maycomb: hard-headed hill folk do not understand coastal-plain dreamers, and Mr. Tuffett was no exception. When he came to Maycomb he lost no time in making known to the parents that their children were the most ill-mannered lot he had ever seen, that vocational agriculture was all they were fit to learn, that football and basketball were a waste of time, and that he, happily, had no use for clubs and extracurricular activities because school, like life, was a business proposition.

His student body, from the eldest to the youngest, responded in kind: Mr. Tuffett was tolerated at all times, but ignored most of the time.

Jean Louise sat with her class in the middle section of the auditorium. The senior class sat in the rear across the aisle from her, and it was easy to turn and look at Henry. Jem, sitting beside him, was squint-eyed, miasmal, and mute, as he always was in the morning. When Mr. Tuffett faced them and read some announcements, Jean Louise was grateful that he was killing the first period, which meant no math. She turned around when Mr. Tuffett descended to brass tacks:

In his time he had come across all varieties of students, he said, some of which carried pistols to school, but never in his experience had he witnessed such an act of depravity as greeted him when he came up the front walk this morning.

Jean Louise exchanged glances with her neighbors. “What’s eating him?” she whispered. “God knows,” answered her neighbor on the left.

Did they realize the enormity of such an outrage? He would have them know this country was at war, that while our boys-our brothers and sons-were fighting and dying for us, someone directed an obscene act of defilement at them, an act the perpetrator of which was beneath contempt.

Jean Louise looked around at a sea of perplexed faces; she could spot guilty parties easily on public occasions, but she was met with blank astonishment on all sides.

Furthermore, before they adjourned, Mr. Tuffett would say he knew who did it, and if the party wished leniency he would appear at his office not later than two o’clock with a statement in writing.

The assembly, suppressing a growl of disgust at Mr. Tuffett’s indulgence in the oldest schoolmaster’s trick on record, adjourned and followed him to the front of the building.

“He just loves confessions in writing,” said Jean Louise to her companions. “He thinks it makes it legal.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t believe anything unless it’s written down,” said one.

“Then when it’s written down he always believes every word of it,” said another.

“Reckon somebody’s painted swastikas on the sidewalk?” said a third.

“Been done,” said Jean Louise.

They rounded the corner of the building and stood still. Nothing seemed amiss; the pavement was clean, the front doors were in place, the shrubbery had not been disturbed.

Mr. Tuffett waited until the school assembled, then pointed dramatically upward. “Look,” he said. “Look, all of you!”

Mr. Tuffett was a patriot. He was chairman of every bond drive, he gave tedious and embarrassing talks in assembly on the War Effort, the project he instigated and viewed with most pride was a tremendous billboard he caused to be erected in the front schoolyard proclaiming that the following graduates of MCHS were in the service of their country. His students viewed Mr. Tuffett’s billboard more darkly: he had assessed them twenty-five cents apiece and had taken the credit for it himself.

Following Mr. Tuffett’s finger, Jean Louise looked at the billboard. She read, IN THE SERVICE OF THEIR COUNTR. Blocking out the last letter and fluttering softly in the morning breeze were her falsies.

“I assure you,” said Mr. Tuffett, “that a signed statement had better be on my desk by two o’clock this afternoon. I was on this campus last night,” he said, emphasizing each word. “Now go to your classes.”

That was a thought. He always sneaked around at school dances to try and catch people necking. He looked in parked cars and beat the bushes. Maybe he saw them. Why did Hank have to throw ’em?

“He’s bluffing,” said Jem at recess. “But again he may not be.”

They were in the school lunchroom. Jean Louise was trying to behave inconspicuously. The school was near bursting point with laughter, horror, and curiosity.

“For the last time, you all, let me tell him,” she said.

“Don’t be a gump, Jean Louise. You know how he feels about it. After all, I did it,” said Henry.

“Well, for heaven’s sake they’re mine!”

“I know how Hank feels, Scout,” said Jem. “He can’t let you do it.”

“I fail to see why not.”

“For the umpteenth time I just can’t, that’s all. Don’t you see that?”

“No.”

“Jean Louise, you were my date last night—”

“I will never understand men as long as I live,” she said, no longer in love with Henry. “You don’t have to protect me, Hank. I’m not your date this morning. You know you can’t tell him.”

“That’s for sure, Hank,” said Jem. “He’d hold back your diploma.”

A diploma meant more to Henry than to most of his friends. It was all right for some of them to be expelled; in a pinch, they could go off to a boarding school.

“You cut him to the quick, you know,” said Jem. “It’d be just like him to expel you two weeks before you graduate.”

“So let me,” said Jean Louise. “I’d just love being expelled.” She would. School bored her intolerably.

“That’s not the point, Scout. You simply can’t do it. I could explain-no I couldn’t, either,” said Henry, as the ramifications of his impetuosity sank in. “I couldn’t explain anything.”

“All right,” said Jem. “The situation is this. Hank, I think he’s bluffing, but there’s a good chance he isn’t. You know he prowls around. He might have heard you all, you were practically under his office window—”

“But his office was dark,” said Jean Louise.

“—he loves to sit in the dark. If Scout tells him it’ll be rugged, but if you tell him he’ll expel you sure as you were born, and you’ve got to graduate, son.”

“Jem,” said Jean Louise. “It’s lovely to be a philosopher, but we ain’t getting anywhere—”

“Your status as I see it, Hank,” said Jem, tranquilly ignoring his sister, “is you’ll be damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

“I—”

“Oh shut up, Scout!” said Henry viciously. “Don’t you see I’ll never be able to hold up my head again if I let you do it?”

“Cu-u-rr, I never saw such heroes!”

Henry jumped up. “Wait a minute!” he shouted. “Jem, give me the car keys and cover for me in study hall. I’ll be back for econ.”

Jem said, “Miss Muffett’ll hear you leaving, Hank.”

“No he won’t. I’ll push the car to the road. Besides, he’ll be in study hall.”

It was easy to be absent from a study hall Mr. Tuffett guarded. He took little personal interest in his students, knowing only the more uninhibited by name. Seats were assigned in the library, but if one made clear one’s desire not to attend, the ranks closed; the person on the end of one’s row set the remaining chair in the hall outside and replaced it when the period was over.

Jean Louise paid no attention to her English teacher, and fifty anxious minutes later was stopped by Henry on the way to her civics class.

“Now listen,” he said tersely. “Do exactly as I tell you: you’re gonna tell him. Write—” he handed her a pencil and she opened her notebook.

“Write, ‘Dear Mr. Tuffett. They look like mine.’ Sign your full name. Better copy it over in ink so he’ll believe it. Now just before noon you go and give it to him. Got it?”

She nodded. “Just before noon.”

When she went to civics she knew it was out. Groups of students were clustered in the hall mumbling and laughing. She endured grins and friendly winks with equanimity-they almost made her feel better. It’s grown people who always believe the worst, she thought, confident that her contemporaries believed no more nor less than what Jem and Hank had circulated. But why did they tell it? They’d be kidded forever: they wouldn’t care because they were graduating, but she would have to sit there for three more years. No, Miss Muffett would expel her and Atticus would send her off somewhere. Atticus would hit the ceiling when Miss Muffett told him the gory story. Oh well, it’d get Hank out of a mess. He and Jem were awfully gallant for a while but she was right in the end. It was the only thing to do.

She wrote out her confession in ink, and as noon drew near, her spirits flagged. Normally there was nothing she enjoyed more than a row with Miss Muffett, who was so thick one could say almost anything to him provided one was careful to maintain a grave and sorrowful countenance, but today she had no taste for dialectics. She felt nervous and she despised herself for it.

She was faintly queasy when she walked down the hall to his office. He had called it obscene and depraved in assembly; what would he say to the town? Maycomb thrived on rumors, there would be all kinds of stories getting back to Atticus-

Mr. Tuffett was sitting behind his desk, gazing testily at its top. “What do you want?” he said, without looking up.

“I wanted to give you this, sir,” she said, backing away instinctively.

Mr. Tuffett took her note, wadded it up without reading it, and threw it at the wastepaper basket.

Jean Louise had the sensation of being floored by a feather.

“Ah, Mr. Tuffett,” she said. “I came to tell you like you said. I–I got ’em at Ginsberg’s,” she added gratuitously. “I didn’t mean any—”

Mr. Tuffett looked up, his face reddening with anger. “Don’t you stand there and tell me what you didn’t mean! Never in my experience have I come across—”

Now she was in for it.

But as she listened she received the impression that Mr. Tuffett’s were general remarks directed more to the student body than to her, they were an echo of his early morning feelings. He was concluding with a précis on the unhealthy attitudes engendered by Maycomb County when she interrupted:

“Mr. Tuffett, I just want to say everybody’s not to blame for what I did-you don’t have to take it out on everybody.”

Mr. Tuffett gripped the edge of his desk and said between clenched teeth, “For that bit of impudence you may remain one hour after school, young lady!”

She took a deep breath. “Mr. Tuffett,” she said, “I think there’s been a mistake. I really don’t quite—”

“You don’t, do you? Then I’ll show you!”

Mr. Tuffett snatched up a thick pile of loose-leaf notebook paper and waved it at her.

“You, Miss, are the hundred and fifth!”

Jean Louise examined the sheets of paper. They were all alike. On each was written “Dear Mr. Tuffett. They look like mine,” and signed by every girl in the school from the ninth grade upward.

She stood for a moment in deep thought; unable to think of anything to say to help Mr. Tuffett, she stole quietly out of his office.

“He’s a beaten man,” said Jem, when they were riding home to dinner. Jean Louise sat between her brother and Henry, who had listened soberly to her account of Mr. Tuffett’s state of mind.

“Hank, you are an absolute genius,” she said. “What ever gave you the idea?”

Henry inhaled deeply on his cigarette and flicked it out the window. “I consulted my lawyer,” he said grandly.

Jean Louise put her hands to her mouth.

“Naturally,” said Henry. “You know he’s been looking after my business since I was knee-high, so I just went to town and explained it to him. I simply asked him for advice.”

“Did Atticus put you up to it?” asked Jean Louise in awe.

“No, he didn’t put me up to it. It was my own idea. He balked around for a while, said it was all a question of balancin’ the equities or something, that I was in an interesting but tenuous position. He swung around in his chair and looked out the window and said he always tried to put himself in his clients’ shoes…” Henry paused.

“Keep on.”

“Well, he said owin’ to the extreme delicacy of my problem, and since there was no evidence of criminal intent, he wouldn’t be above throwin’ a little dust in a juryman’s eyes-whatever that means-and then, oh I don’t know.”

“Oh Hank, you do know.”

“Well, he said something about safety in numbers and if he were me he wouldn’t dream of connivin’ at perjury but so far as he knew all falsies looked alike, and that was about all he could do for me. He said he’d bill me at the end of the month. I wasn’t out of the office good before I got the idea!”

Jean Louise said, “Hank-did he say anything about what he was going to say to me?”

“Say to you?” Henry turned to her. “He won’t say a darn thing to you. He can’t. Don’t you know everything anybody tells his lawyer’s confidential?”

THOCK. SHE FLATTENED the paper cup into the table, shattering their images. The sun stood at two o’clock, as it had stood yesterday and would stand tomorrow.

Hell is eternal apartness. What had she done that she must spend the rest of her years reaching out with yearning for them, making secret trips to long ago, making no journey to the present? I am their blood and bones, I have dug in this ground, this is my home. But I am not their blood, the ground doesn’t care who digs it, I am a stranger at a cocktail party.

16

“HANK, WHERE’S ATTICUS?”

Henry looked up from his desk. “Hi, sweetie. He’s at the post office. It’s about coffee-time for me. Comin’ along?”

The same thing that compelled her to leave Mr. Cunningham’s and go to the office caused her to follow Henry to the sidewalk: she wished to look furtively at them again and again, to assure herself that they had not undergone some alarming physical metamorphosis as well, yet she did not wish to speak to them, to touch them, lest she cause them to commit further outrage in her presence.

As she and Henry walked side by side to the drugstore, she wondered if Maycomb was planning a fall or winter wedding for them. I’m peculiar, she thought. I cannot get into bed with a man unless I’m in some state of accord with him. Right now I can’t even speak to him. Cannot speak to my oldest friend.

They sat facing each other in a booth, and Jean Louise studied the napkin container, the sugar bowl, the salt and pepper shakers.

“You’re quiet,” said Henry. “How was the Coffee?”

“Atrocious.”

“Hester there?”

“Yes. She’s about yours and Jem’s age, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, same class. Bill told me this morning she was pilin’ on the warpaint for it.”

“Hank, Bill Sinclair must be a gloomy party.”

“Why?”

“All that guff he’s put in Hester’s head—”

“What guff?”

“Oh, the Catholics and the Communists and Lord knows what else. It seems to have run all together in her mind.”

Henry laughed and said, “Honey, the sun rises and sets with that Bill of hers. Everything he says is Gospel. She loves her man.”

“Is that what loving your man is?”

“Has a lot to do with it.”

Jean Louise said, “You mean losing your own identity, don’t you?”

“In a way, yes,” said Henry.

“Then I doubt if I shall ever marry. I never met a man—”

“You’re gonna marry me, remember?”

“Hank, I may as well tell you now and get it over with: I’m not going to marry you. Period and that’s that.”

She had not intended to say it but she could not stop herself.

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Well, I’m telling you now that if you ever want to marry”-was it she who was talking? — “you’d best start looking around. I’ve never been in love with you, but you’ve always known I’ve loved you. I thought we could make a marriage with me loving you on that basis, but—”

“But what?”

“I don’t even love you like that any more. I’ve hurt you but there it is.” Yes, it was she talking, with her customary aplomb, breaking his heart in the drugstore. Well, he’d broken hers.

Henry’s face became blank, reddened, and its scar leaped into prominence. “Jean Louise, you can’t mean what you’re saying.”

“I mean every word of it.”

Hurts, doesn’t it? You’re damn right it hurts. You know how it feels, now.

Henry reached across the table and took her hand. She pulled away. “Don’t you touch me,” she said.

“My darling, what is the matter?”

Matter? I’ll tell you what’s the matter. You won’t be pleased with some of it.

“All right, Hank. It’s simply this: I was at that meeting yesterday. I saw you and Atticus in your glory down there at that table with that-that scum, that dreadful man, and I tell you my stomach turned. Merely the man I was going to marry, merely my own father, merely made me so sick I threw up and haven’t stopped yet! How in the name of God could you? How could you?”

“We have to do a lot of things we don’t want to do, Jean Louise.”

She blazed. “What kind of answer is that? I thought Uncle Jack had finally gone off his rocker but I’m not so sure now!”

“Honey,” said Henry. He moved the sugar bowl to the center of the table and pushed it back again. “Look at it this way. All the Maycomb Citizens’ Council is in this world is-is a protest to the Court, it’s a sort of warning to the Negroes for them not to be in such a hurry, it’s a—”

“—tailor-made audience for any trash who wants to get up and holler nigger. How can you be a party to such a thing, how can you?”

Henry pushed the sugar bowl toward her and brought it back. She took it away from him and banged it down in the corner.

“Jean Louise, as I said before, we have to do—”

“—a lot of things we don’t—”

“—will you let me finish? — we don’t want to do. No, please let me talk. I’m trying to think of something that might show you what I mean… you know the Klan-?”

“Yes I know the Klan.”

“Now hush a minute. A long time ago the Klan was respectable, like the Masons. Almost every man of any prominence was a member, back when Mr. Finch was young. Did you know Mr. Finch joined?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised at anything Mr. Finch ever joined in his life. It figures—”

“Jean Louise, shut up! Mr. Finch has no more use for the Klan than anybody, and didn’t then. You know why he joined? To find out exactly what men in town were behind the masks. What men, what people. He went to one meeting, and that was enough. The Wizard happened to be the Methodist preacher—”

“That’s the kind of company Atticus likes.”

“Shut up, Jean Louise. I’m trying to make you see his motive: all the Klan was then was a political force, there wasn’t any cross-burning, but your daddy did and still does get mighty uncomfortable around folks who cover up their faces. He had to know who he’d be fighting if the time ever came to-he had to find out who they were…”

“So my esteemed father is one of the Invisible Empire.”

“Jean Louise, that was forty years ago—”

“He’s probably the Grand Dragon by now.”

Henry said evenly, “I’m only trying to make you see beyond men’s acts to their motives. A man can appear to be a part of something not-so-good on its face, but don’t take it upon yourself to judge him unless you know his motives as well. A man can be boiling inside, but he knows a mild answer works better than showing his rage. A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them. I said sometimes we have to do—”

Jean Louise said, “Are you saying go along with the crowd and then when the time comes—”

Henry checked her: “Look, honey. Have you ever considered that men, especially men, must conform to certain demands of the community they live in simply so they can be of service to it?

“Maycomb County’s home to me, honey. It’s the best place I know to live in. I’ve built up a good record here from the time I was a kid. Maycomb knows me, and I know Maycomb. Maycomb trusts me, and I trust Maycomb. My bread and butter comes from this town, and Maycomb’s given me a good living.

“But Maycomb asks certain things in return. It asks you to lead a reasonably clean life, it asks that you join the Kiwanis Club, to go to church on Sunday, it asks you to conform to its ways—”

Henry examined the salt shaker, moving his thumb up and down its grooved sides. “Remember this, honey,” he said. “I’ve had to work like a dog for everything I ever had. I worked in that store across the square-I was so tired most of the time it was all I could do to keep up with my lessons. In the summer I worked at home in Mamma’s store, and when I wasn’t working there I was hammering in the house. Jean Louise, I’ve had to scratch since I was a kid for the things you and Jem took for granted. I’ve never had some of the things you take for granted and I never will. All I have to fall back on is myself—”

“That’s all any of us have, Hank.”

“No it isn’t. Not here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there are some things I simply can’t do that you can.”

“And why am I such a privileged character?”

“You’re a Finch.”

“So I’m a Finch. So what?”

“So you can parade around town in your dungarees with your shirttail out and barefooted if you want to. Maycomb says, ‘That’s the Finch in her, that’s just Her Way.’ Maycomb grins and goes about its business: old Scout Finch never changes. Maycomb’s delighted and perfectly ready to believe you went swimming in the river buck naked. ‘Hasn’t changed a bit,’ it says. ‘Same old Jean Louise. Remember when she-?’”

He put down the salt shaker. “But let Henry Clinton show any signs of deviatin’ from the norm and Maycomb says, not ‘That’s the Clinton in him,’ but ‘That’s the trash in him.’”

“Hank. That is untrue and you know it. It’s unfair and it’s ungenerous, but more than anything in this world it’s just not true!”

“Jean Louise, it is true,” said Henry gently. “You’ve probably never even thought about it—”

“Hank, you’ve got some kind of complex.”

“I haven’t got anything of the kind. I just know Maycomb. I’m not in the least sensitive about it, but good Lord, I’m certainly aware of it. It says to me that there are certain things I can’t do and certain things I must do if I—”

“If you what?”

“Well, sweetie, I would really like to live here, and I like the things other men like. I want to keep the respect of this town, I want to serve it, I want to make a name for myself as a lawyer, I want to make money, I want to marry and have a family—”

“In that order, I suppose!”

Jean Louise got up from the booth and marched out of the drugstore. Henry followed on her heels. At the door he turned and yelled he’d get the check in a minute.

“Jean Louise, stop!”

She stopped.

“Well?”

“Honey, I’m only trying to make you see—”

“I see all right!” she said. “I see a scared little man; I see a little man who’s scared not to do what Atticus tells him, who’s scared not to stand on his own two feet, who’s scared not to sit around with the rest of the red-blooded men—”

She started walking. She thought she was walking in the general direction of the car. She thought she had parked it in front of the office.

“Jean Louise, will you please wait a minute?”

“All right, I’m waiting.”

“You know I told you there were things you’d always taken for granted—”

“Hell yes, I’ve been taking a lot of things for granted. The very things I’ve loved about you. I looked up to you like God knows what because you worked like hell for everything you ever had, for everything you’ve made yourself. I thought a lot of things went with it, but they obviously aren’t there. I thought you had guts, I thought—”

She walked down the sidewalk, unaware that Maycomb was looking at her, that Henry was walking beside her pitifully, comically.

“Jean Louise, will you please listen to me?”

“God damn you, what?”

“I just want to ask you one thing, one thing-what the hell do you expect me to do? Tell me, what the hell do you expect me to do?”

“Do? I expect you to keep your gold-plated ass out of citizens’ councils! I don’t give a damn if Atticus is sitting across from you, if the King of England’s on your right and the Lord Jehovah’s on your left-I expect you to be a man, that’s all!”

She drew in her breath sharply. “I-you go through a goddamned war, that’s one kind of being scared, but you get through it, you get through it. Then you come home to be scared the rest of your life-scared of Maycomb! Maycomb, Alabama-oh brother!”

They had come to the door of the office.

Henry grabbed her shoulders. “Jean Louise, will you stop one second? Please? Listen to me. I know I’m not much, but think one minute. Please think. This is my life, this town, don’t you understand that? God damn it, I’m part of Maycomb County’s trash, but I’m part of Maycomb County. I’m a coward, I’m a little man, I’m not worth killing, but this is my home. What do you want me to do, go shout from the housetops that I am Henry Clinton and I’m here to tell you you’re all wet? I’ve got to live here, Jean Louise. Don’t you understand that?”

“I understand that you’re a goddamned hypocrite.”

“I am trying to make you see, my darling, that you are permitted a sweet luxury I’m not. You can shout to high heaven, I cannot. How can I be of any use to a town if it’s against me? If I went out and-look, you will admit that I have a certain amount of education and a certain usefulness in Maycomb-you admit that? A millhand can’t do my job. Now, shall I throw all that down the drain, go back down the county to the store and sell people flour when I could be helping them with what legal talent I have? Which is worth more?”

“Henry, how can you live with yourself?”

“It’s comparatively easy. Sometimes I just don’t vote my convictions, that’s all.”

“Hank, we are poles apart. I don’t know much but I know one thing. I know I can’t live with you. I cannot live with a hypocrite.”

A dry, pleasant voice behind her said, “I don’t know why you can’t. Hypocrites have just as much right to live in this world as anybody.”

She turned around and stared at her father. His hat was pushed back on his head; his eyebrows were raised; he was smiling at her.

17

“HANK,” SAID ATTICUS, “why don’t you go have a long look at the roses on the square? Estelle might give you one if you ask her right. Looks like I’m the only one who’s asked her right today.”

Atticus put his hand to his lapel, where was tucked a fresh scarlet bud. Jean Louise glanced toward the square and saw Estelle, black against the afternoon sun, steadily hoeing under the bushes.

Henry held out his hand to Jean Louise, dropped it to his side, and left without a word. She watched him walk across the street.

“You’ve known all that about him?”

“Certainly.”

Atticus had treated him like his own son, had given him the love that would have been Jem’s-she was suddenly aware that they were standing on the spot where Jem died. Atticus saw her shudder.

“It’s still with you, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t it about time you got over that? Bury your dead, Jean Louise.”

“I don’t want to discuss it. I want to move somewhere else.”

“Let’s go in the office, then.”

Her father’s office had always been a source of refuge for her. It was friendly. It was a place where, if troubles did not vanish, they were made bearable. She wondered if those were the same abstracts, files, and professional impedimenta on his desk that were there when she would run in, out of breath, desperate for an ice cream cone, and request a nickel. She could see him swing around in his swivel chair and stretch his legs. He would reach down deep into his pocket, pull out a handful of change, and from it select a very special nickel for her. His door was never closed to his children.

He sat slowly and swung around toward her. She saw a flash of pain cross his face and leave it.

“You knew all that about Hank?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand men.”

“We-ll, some men who cheat their wives out of grocery money wouldn’t think of cheating the grocer. Men tend to carry their honesty in pigeonholes, Jean Louise. They can be perfectly honest in some ways and fool themselves in other ways. Don’t be so hard on Hank, he’s coming along. Jack tells me you’re upset about something.”

“Jack told you—”

“Called a while ago and said-among other things-that if you weren’t already on the warpath you’d soon be. From what I heard, you already are.”

So. Uncle Jack told him. She was accustomed now to having her family desert her one by one. Uncle Jack was the last straw and to hell with them all. Very well, she’d tell him. Tell him and go. She would not argue with him; that was useless. He always beat her: she’d never won an argument from him in her life and she did not propose to try now.

“Yes sir, I’m upset about something. That citizens’ councilin’ you’re doing. I think it’s disgusting and I’ll tell you that right now.”

Her father leaned back in his chair. He said, “Jean Louise, you’ve been reading nothing but New York papers. I’ve no doubt all you see is wild threats and bombings and such. The Maycomb council’s not like the North Alabama and Tennessee kinds. Our council’s composed of and led by our own people. I bet you saw nearly every man in the county yesterday, and you knew nearly every man there.”

“Yes sir, I did. Every man from that snake Willoughby on down.”

“Each man there was probably there for a different reason,” said her father.

No war was ever fought for so many different reasons. Who said that? “Yeah, but they all met for one reason.”

“I can tell you the two reasons I was there. The Federal Government and the NAACP. Jean Louise, what was your first reaction to the Supreme Court decision?”

That was a safe question. She would answer him.

“I was furious,” she said.

She was. She had known it was coming, knew what it would be, had thought she was prepared for it, but when she bought a newspaper on the street corner and read it, she stopped at the first bar she came to and drank down a straight bourbon.

“Why?”

“Well sir, there they were, tellin’ us what to do again—”

Her father grinned. “You were merely reacting according to your kind,” he said. “When you started using your head, what did you think?”

“Nothing much, but it scared me. It seemed all backward-they were putting the cart way out in front of the horse.”

“How so?”

He was prodding her. Let him. They were on safe ground. “Well, in trying to satisfy one amendment, it looks like they rubbed out another one. The Tenth. It’s only a small amendment, only one sentence long, but it seemed to be the one that meant the most, somehow.”

“Did you think this out for yourself?”

“Why, yes sir. Atticus, I don’t know anything about the Constitution…”

“You seem to be constitutionally sound so far. Proceed.”

Proceed with what? Tell him she couldn’t look him in the eye? He wanted her views on the Constitution, then he’d have ’em: “Well, it seemed that to meet the real needs of a small portion of the population, the Court set up something horrible that could-that could affect the vast majority of folks. Adversely, that is. Atticus, I don’t know anything about it-all we have is the Constitution between us and anything some smart fellow wants to start, and there went the Court just breezily canceling one whole amendment, it seemed to me. We have a system of checks and balances and things, but when it comes down to it we don’t have much check on the Court, so who’ll bell the cat? Oh dear, I’m soundin’ like the Actors Studio.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m-I’m just trying to say that in trying to do right we’ve left ourselves open for something that could be truly dangerous to our set-up.”

She ran her fingers through her hair. She looked at the rows of brown-and-black bound books, law reports, on the wall opposite. She looked at a faded picture of the Nine Old Men on the wall to the left of her. Is Roberts dead? she wondered. She could not remember.

Her father’s voice was patient: “You were saying-?”

“Yes sir. I was saying that I–I don’t know much about government and economics and all that, and I don’t want to know much, but I do know that the Federal Government to me, to one small citizen, is mostly dreary hallways and waiting around. The more we have, the longer we wait and the tireder we get. Those old mossbacks on the wall up there knew it-but now, instead of going about it through Congress and the state legislatures like we should, when we tried to do right we just made it easier for them to set up more hallways and more waiting—”

Her father sat up and laughed.

“I told you I didn’t know anything about it.”

“Sweet, you’re such a states’ rightist you make me a Roosevelt Liberal by comparison.”

“States’ rightist?”

Atticus said, “Now that I’ve adjusted my ear to feminine reasoning, I think we find ourselves believing the very same things.”

She had been half willing to sponge out what she had seen and heard, creep back to New York, and make him a memory. A memory of the three of them, Atticus, Jem, and her, when things were uncomplicated and people did not lie. But she would not have him compound the felony. She could not let him add hypocrisy to it:

“Atticus, if you believe all that, then why don’t you do right? I mean this, that no matter how hateful the Court was, there had to be a beginning—”

“You mean because the Court said it we must take it? No ma’am. I don’t see it that way. If you think I for one citizen am going to take it lying down, you’re quite wrong. As you say, Jean Louise, there’s only one thing higher than the Court in this country, and that’s the Constitution—”

“Atticus, we are talking at cross-purposes.”

“You are dodging something. What is it?”

The dark tower. Childe Roland to the dark tower came. High school lit. Uncle Jack. I remember now.

“What is it? I’m trying to say that I don’t approve of the way they did it, that it scares me to death when I think about the way they did it, but they had to do it. It was put under their noses and they had to do it. Atticus, the time has come when we’ve got to do right—”

“Do right?”

“Yes sir. Give ’em a chance.”

“The Negroes? You don’t think they have a chance?”

“Why, no sir.”

“What’s to prevent any Negro from going where he pleases in this country and finding what he wants?”

“That’s a loaded question and you know it, sir! I’m so sick of this moral double-dealing I could—”

He had stung her, and she had shown him she felt it. But she could not help herself.

Her father picked up a pencil and tapped it on his desk. “Jean Louise,” he said. “Have you ever considered that you can’t have a set of backward people living among people advanced in one kind of civilization and have a social Arcadia?”

“You’re queering the pitch on me, Atticus, so let’s keep the sociology out of it for a second. Of course I know that, but I heard something once. I heard a slogan and it stuck in my head. I heard ‘Equal rights for all; special privileges for none,’ and to me it didn’t mean anything but what it said. It didn’t mean one card off the top of the stack for the white man and one off the bottom for the Negro, it—”

“Let’s look at it this way,” said her father. “You realize that our Negro population is backward, don’t you? You will concede that? You realize the full implications of the word ‘backward,’ don’t you?”

“Yes sir.”

“You realize that the vast majority of them here in the South are unable to share fully in the responsibilities of citizenship, and why?”

“Yes sir.”

“But you want them to have all its privileges?”

“God damn it, you’re twisting it up!”

“There’s no point in being profane. Think this over: Abbott County, across the river, is in bad trouble. The population is almost three-fourths Negro. The voting population is almost half-and-half now, because of that big Normal School over there. If the scales were tipped over, what would you have? The county won’t keep a full board of registrars, because if the Negro vote edged out the white you’d have Negroes in every county office—”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Honey,” he said. “Use your head. When they vote, they vote in blocs.”

“Atticus, you’re like that old publisher who sent out a staff artist to cover the Spanish-American War. ‘You draw the pictures. I’ll make the war.’ You’re as cynical as he was.”

“Jean Louise, I’m only trying to tell you some plain truths. You must see things as they are, as well as they should be.”

“Then why didn’t you show me things as they are when I sat on your lap? Why didn’t you show me, why weren’t you careful when you read me history and the things that I thought meant something to you that there was a fence around everything marked ‘White Only’?”

“You are inconsistent,” said her father mildly.

“Why so?”

“You slang the Supreme Court within an inch of its life, then you turn around and talk like the NAACP.”

“Good Lord, I didn’t get mad with the Court because of the Negroes. Negroes slapped the brief on the bench, all right, but that wasn’t what made me furious. I was ravin’ at what they were doing to the Tenth Amendment and all the fuzzy thinking. The Negroes were—”

Incidental to the issue in this war… to your own private war.

“You carry a card these days?”

“Why didn’t you hit me instead? For God’s sake, Atticus!”

Her father sighed. The lines around his mouth deepened. His hands with their swollen joints fumbled with his yellow pencil.

“Jean Louise,” he said, “let me tell you something right now, as plainly as I can put it. I am old-fashioned, but this I believe with all my heart. I’m a sort of Jeffersonian Democrat. Do you know what that is?”

“Huh, I thought you voted for Eisenhower. I thought Jefferson was one of the great souls of the Democratic Party or something.”

“Go back to school,” her father said. “All the Democratic Party has to do with Jefferson these days is put his picture up at banquets. Jefferson believed full citizenship was a privilege to be earned by each man, that it was not something given lightly nor to be taken lightly. A man couldn’t vote simply because he was a man, in Jefferson’s eyes. He had to be a responsible man. A vote was, to Jefferson, a precious privilege a man attained for himself in a-a live-and-let-live economy.”

“Atticus, you are rewriting history.”

“No I’m not. It might benefit you to go back and have a look at what some of our founding fathers really believed, instead of relying so much on what people these days tell you they believed.”

“You might be a Jeffersonian, but you’re no Democrat.”

“Neither was Jefferson.”

“Then what are you, a snob or something?”

“Yes. I’ll accept being called a snob when it comes to government. I’d like very much to be left alone to manage my own affairs in a live-and-let-live economy, I’d like for my state to be left alone to keep house without advice from the NAACP, which knows next to nothing about its business and cares less. That organization has stirred up more trouble in the past five years—”

“Atticus, the NAACP hasn’t done half of what I’ve seen in the past two days. It’s us.”

“Us?”

“Yes sir, us. You. Has anybody, in all the wrangling and high words over states’ rights and what kind of government we should have, thought about helping the Negroes?

“We missed the boat, Atticus. We sat back and let the NAACP come in because we were so furious at what we knew the Court was going to do, so furious at what it did, we naturally started shouting nigger. Took it out on them, because we resented the government.

“When it came we didn’t give an inch, we just ran instead. When we should have tried to help ’em live with the decision, it was like Bonaparte’s retreat we ran so fast. I guess it’s the first time in our history that we ever ran, and when we ran we lost. Where could they go? Who could they turn to? I think we deserve everything we’ve gotten from the NAACP and more.”

“I don’t think you mean what you’re saying.”

“I mean every word of it.”

“Then let’s put this on a practical basis right now. Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?”

“They’re people, aren’t they? We were quite willing to import them when they made money for us.”

“Do you want your children going to a school that’s been dragged down to accommodate Negro children?”

“The scholastic level of that school down the street, Atticus, couldn’t be any lower and you know it. They’re entitled to the same opportunities anyone else has, they’re entitled to the same chance—”

Her father cleared his throat. “Listen, Scout, you’re upset by having seen me doing something you think is wrong, but I’m trying to make you understand my position. Desperately trying. This is merely for your own information, that’s all: so far in my experience, white is white and black’s black. So far, I’ve not yet heard an argument that has convinced me otherwise. I’m seventy-two years old, but I’m still open to suggestion.

“Now think about this. What would happen if all the Negroes in the South were suddenly given full civil rights? I’ll tell you. There’d be another Reconstruction. Would you want your state governments run by people who don’t know how to run ’em? Do you want this town run by-now wait a minute-Willoughby’s a crook, we know that, but do you know of any Negro who knows as much as Willoughby? Zeebo’d probably be Mayor of Maycomb. Would you want someone of Zeebo’s capability to handle the town’s money? We’re outnumbered, you know.

“Honey, you do not seem to understand that the Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people. You should know it, you’ve seen it all your life. They’ve made terrific progress in adapting themselves to white ways, but they’re far from it yet. They were coming along fine, traveling at a rate they could absorb, more of ’em voting than ever before. Then the NAACP stepped in with its fantastic demands and shoddy ideas of government-can you blame the South for resenting being told what to do about its own people by people who have no idea of its daily problems?

“The NAACP doesn’t care whether a Negro man owns or rents his land, how well he can farm, or whether or not he tries to learn a trade and stand on his own two feet-oh no, all the NAACP cares about is that man’s vote.

“So, can you blame the South for wanting to resist an invasion by people who are apparently so ashamed of their race they want to get rid of it?

“How can you have grown up here, led the kind of life you’ve led, and can only see someone stomping on the Tenth Amendment? Jean Louise, they’re trying to wreck us-where have you been?”

“Right here in Maycomb.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I grew up right here in your house, and I never knew what was in your mind. I only heard what you said. You neglected to tell me that we were naturally better than the Negroes, bless their kinky heads, that they were able to go so far but so far only, you neglected to tell me what Mr. O’Hanlon told me yesterday. That was you talking down there, but you let Mr. O’Hanlon say it. You’re a coward as well as a snob and a tyrant, Atticus. When you talked of justice you forgot to say that justice is something that has nothing to do with people-

“I heard you on the subject of Zeebo’s boy this morning… nothing to do with our Calpurnia and what she’s meant to us, how faithful she’s been to us-you saw nigger, you saw NAACP, you balanced the equities, didn’t you?

“I remember that rape case you defended, but I missed the point. You love justice, all right. Abstract justice written down item by item on a brief-nothing to do with that black boy, you just like a neat brief. His cause interfered with your orderly mind, and you had to work order out of disorder. It’s a compulsion with you, and now it’s coming home to you—”

She was on her feet, holding the back of the chair.

“Atticus, I’m throwing it at you and I’m gonna grind it in: you better go warn your younger friends that if they want to preserve Our Way of Life, it begins at home. It doesn’t begin with the schools or the churches or anyplace but home. Tell ’em that, and use your blind, immoral, misguided, nigger-lovin’ daughter as your example. Go in front of me with a bell and say, ‘Unclean!’ Point me out as your mistake. Point me out: Jean Louise Finch, who was exposed to all kinds of guff from the white trash she went to school with, but she might never have gone to school for all the influence it had on her. Everything that was Gospel to her she got at home from her father. You sowed the seeds in me, Atticus, and now it’s coming home to you—”

“Are you finished with what you have to say?”

She sneered. “Not half through. I’ll never forgive you for what you did to me. You cheated me, you’ve driven me out of my home and now I’m in a no-man’s-land but good-there’s no place for me any more in Maycomb, and I’ll never be entirely at home anywhere else.”

Her voice cracked. “Why in the name of God didn’t you marry again? Marry some nice dim-witted Southern lady who would have raised me right? Turned me into a simpering, mealy-mouthed magnolia type who bats her eyelashes and crosses her hands and lives for nothing but her lil’ole hus-band. At least I would have been blissful. I’d have been typical one hundred per cent Maycomb; I would have lived out my little life and given you grandchildren to dote on; I would have spread out like Aunty, fanned myself on the front porch, and died happy. Why didn’t you tell me the difference between justice and justice, and right and right? Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t think it necessary, nor do I think so now.”

“Well, it was necessary and you know it. God! And speaking of God, why didn’t you make it very plain to me that God made the races and put the black folks in Africa with the intention of keeping them there so the missionaries could go tell them that Jesus loved ’em but meant for ’em to stay in Africa? That us bringing ’em over here was all a bad mistake, so they’re to blame? That Jesus loved all mankind, but there are different kinds of men with separate fences around ’em, that Jesus meant that any man can go as far as he wants within that fence—”

“Jean Louise, come down to earth.”

He said it so easily that she stopped short. Her wave of invective had crashed over him and still he sat there. He had declined to be angry. Somewhere within her she felt that she was no lady but no power on earth would prevent him from being a gentleman, yet the piston inside drove her on:

“All right, I’ll come down to earth. I’ll land right in the livingroom of our house. I’ll come down to you. I believed in you. I looked up to you, Atticus, like I never looked up to anybody in my life and never will again. If you had only given me some hint, if you had only broken your word with me a couple of times, if you had been bad-tempered or impatient with me-if you had been a lesser man, maybe I could have taken what I saw you doing. If once or twice you’d let me catch you doing something vile, then I would have understood yesterday. Then I’d have said that’s just His Way, that’s My Old Man, because I’d have been prepared for it somewhere along the line—”

Her father’s face was compassionate, almost pleading. “You seem to think I’m involved in something positively evil,” he said. “The council’s our only defense, Jean Louise—”

“Is Mr. O’Hanlon our only defense?”

“Baby, Mr. O’Hanlon’s not, I’m happy to say, typical of the Maycomb County council membership. I hope you noticed my brevity in introducing him.”

“You were sort of short, but Atticus, that man—”

“Mr. O’Hanlon’s not prejudiced, Jean Louise. He’s a sadist.”

“Then why did you all let him get up there?”

“Because he wanted to.”

“Sir?”

“Oh yes,” said her father vaguely. “He goes about addressing citizens’ councils all over the state. He asked permission to speak to ours and we gave it to him. I rather think he’s paid by some organization in Massachusetts—”

Her father swung away from her and looked out the window. “I’ve been trying to make you see that the Maycomb council, at any rate, is simply a method of defense against—”

“Defense, hell! Atticus, we aren’t on the Constitution now. I’m trying to make you see something. You now, you treat all people alike. I’ve never in my life seen you give that insolent, back-of-the-hand treatment half the white people down here give Negroes just when they’re talking to them, just when they ask ’em to do something. There’s no get-along-there-nigger in your voice when you talk to ’em.

“Yet you put out your hand in front of them as a people and say, ‘Stop here. This is as far as you can go!’”

“I thought we agreed that—”

Her voice was heavy with sarcasm: “We’ve agreed that they’re backward, that they’re illiterate, that they’re dirty and comical and shiftless and no good, they’re infants and they’re stupid, some of them, but we haven’t agreed on one thing and we never will. You deny that they’re human.”

“How so?”

“You deny them hope. Any man in this world, Atticus, any man who has a head and arms and legs, was born with hope in his heart. You won’t find that in the Constitution, I picked that up in church somewhere. They are simple people, most of them, but that doesn’t make them subhuman.

“You are telling them that Jesus loves them, but not much. You are using frightful means to justify ends that you think are for the good of the most people. Your ends may well be right-I think I believe in the same ends-but you cannot use people as your pawns, Atticus. You cannot. Hitler and that crowd in Russia’ve done some lovely things for their lands, and they slaughtered tens of millions of people doing ’em…”

Atticus smiled. “Hitler, eh?”

“You’re no better. You’re no damn better. You just try to kill their souls instead of their bodies. You just try to tell ’em, ‘Look, be good. Behave yourselves. If you’re good and mind us, you can get a lot out of life, but if you don’t mind us, we will give you nothing and take away what we’ve already given you.’

“I know it’s got to be slow, Atticus, I know that full well. But I know it’s got to be. I wonder what would happen if the South had a ‘Be Kind to the Niggers Week’? If just for one week the South would show them some simple, impartial courtesy. I wonder what would happen. Do you think it’d give ’em airs or the beginnings of self-respect? Have you ever been snubbed, Atticus? Do you know how it feels? No, don’t tell me they’re children and don’t feel it: I was a child and felt it, so grown children must feel, too. A real good snub, Atticus, makes you feel like you’re too nasty to associate with people. How they’re as good as they are now is a mystery to me, after a hundred years of systematic denial that they’re human. I wonder what kind of miracle we could work with a week’s decency.

“There was no point in saying any of this because I know you won’t give an inch and you never will. You’ve cheated me in a way that’s inexpressible, but don’t let it worry you, because the joke is entirely on me. You’re the only person I think I’ve ever fully trusted and now I’m done for.”

“I’ve killed you, Scout. I had to.”

“Don’t you give me any more double-talk! You’re a nice, sweet, old gentleman, and I’ll never believe a word you say to me again. I despise you and everything you stand for.”

“Well, I love you.”

“Don’t you dare say that to me! Love me, huh! Atticus, I’m getting out of this place fast, I don’t know where I’m going but I’m going. I never want to see another Finch or hear of one as long as I live!”

“As you please.”

“You double-dealing, ring-tailed old son of a bitch! You just sit there and say ‘As you please’ when you’ve knocked me down and stomped on me and spat on me, you just sit there and say ‘As you please’ when everything I ever loved in this world’s-you just sit there and say ‘As you please’-you love me! You son of a bitch!”

“That’ll do, Jean Louise.”

That’ll do, his general call to order in the days when she believed. So he kills me and gives it a twist… how can he taunt me so? How can he treat me so? God in heaven, take me away from here… God in heaven, take me away…