last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern
town is always made up of people you know- doesn't say much for
them, does it?"
"I'll say not," said Jem.
"So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses,
didn't it?" said Atticus. "That proves something- that a gang of
wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human.
Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children... you children last
night made Walter Cunningham stand in my shoes for a minute. That
was enough."
Well, I hoped Jem would understand folks a little better when he was
older; I wouldn't. "First day Walter comes back to school'll be his
last," I affirmed.
"You will not touch him," Atticus said flatly. "I don't want
either of you bearing a grudge about this thing, no matter what
happens."
"You see, don't you," said Aunt Alexandra, "what comes of things
like this. Don't say I haven't told you."
Atticus said he'd never say that, pushed out his chair and got up.
"There's a day ahead, so excuse me. Jem, I don't want you and Scout
downtown today, please."
As Atticus departed, Dill came bounding down the hall into the
diningroom. "It's all over town this morning," he announced, "all
about how we held off a hundred folks with our bare hands...."
Aunt Alexandra stared him to silence. "It was not a hundred
folks," she said, "and nobody held anybody off. It was just a nest
of those Cunninghams, drunk and disorderly."
"Aw, Aunty, that's just Dill's way," said Jem. He signaled us to
follow him.
"You all stay in the yard today," she said, as we made our way to
the front porch.
It was like Saturday. People from the south end of the county passed
our house in a leisurely but steady stream.
Mr. Dolphus Raymond lurched by on his thoroughbred. "Don't see how
he stays in the saddle," murmured Jem. "How c'n you stand to get drunk
'fore eight in the morning?"
A wagonload of ladies rattled past us. They wore cotton sunbonnets
and dresses with long sleeves. A bearded man in a wool hat drove them.
"Yonder's some Mennonites," Jem said to Dill. "They don't have
buttons." They lived deep in the woods, did most of their trading
across the river, and rarely came to Maycomb. Dill was interested.
"They've all got blue eyes," Jem explained, "and the men can't shave
after they marry. Their wives like for 'em to tickle 'em with their
beards."
Mr. X Billups rode by on a mule and waved to us. "He's a funny man,"
said Jem. "X's his name, not his initial. He was in court one time and
they asked him his name. He said X Billups. Clerk asked him to spell
it and he said X. Asked him again and he said X. They kept at it
till he wrote X on a sheet of paper and held it up for everybody to
see. They asked him where he got his name and he said that's the way
his folks signed him up when he was born."
As the county went by us, Jem gave Dill the histories and general
attitudes of the more prominent figures: Mr. Tensaw Jones voted the
straight Prohibition ticket; Miss Emily Davis dipped snuff in private;
Mr. Byron Waller could play the violin; Mr. Jake Slade was cutting his
third set of teeth.
A wagonload of unusually stern-faced citizens appeared. When they
pointed to Miss Maudie Atkinson's yard, ablaze with summer flowers,
Miss Maudie herself came out on the porch. There was an odd thing
about Miss Maudie- on her porch she was too far away for us to see her
features clearly, but we could always catch her mood by the way she
stood. She was now standing arms akimbo, her shoulders drooping a
little, her head cocked to one side, her glasses winking in the
sunlight. We knew she wore a grin of the uttermost wickedness.
The driver of the wagon slowed down his mules, and a shrill-voiced
woman called out: "He that cometh in vanity departeth in darkness!"
Miss Maudie answered: "A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance!"
I guess that the foot-washers thought that the Devil was quoting
Scripture for his own purposes, as the driver speeded his mules. Why
they objected to Miss Maudie's yard was a mystery, heightened in my
mind because for someone who spent all the daylight hours outdoors,
Miss Maudie's command of Scripture was formidable.
"You goin' to court this morning?" asked Jem. We had strolled over.
"I am not," she said. "I have no business with the court this
morning."
"Aren't you goin' down to watch?" asked Dill.
"I am not. 't's morbid, watching a poor devil on trial for his life.
Look at all those folks, it's like a Roman carnival."
"They hafta try him in public, Miss Maudie," I said. "Wouldn't be
right if they didn't."
"I'm quite aware of that," she said. "Just because it's public, I
don't have to go, do I?"
Miss Stephanie Crawford came by. She wore a hat and gloves. "Um, um,
um," she said. "Look at all those folks- you'd think William
Jennings Bryan was speakin'."
"And where are you going, Stephanie?" inquired Miss Maudie.
"To the Jitney Jungle."
Miss Maudie said she'd never seen Miss Stephanie go to the Jitney
Jungle in a hat in her life.
"Well," said Miss Stephanie, "I thought I might just look in at
the courthouse, to see what Atticus's up to."
"Better be careful he doesn't hand you a subpoena."
We asked Miss Maudie to elucidate: she said Miss Stephanie seemed to
know so much about the case she might as well be called on to testify.
We held off until noon, when Atticus came home to dinner and said
they'd spent the morning picking the jury. After dinner, we stopped by
for Dill and went to town.
It was a gala occasion. There was no room at the public hitching
rail for another animal, mules and wagons were parked under every
available tree. The courthouse square was covered with picnic
parties sitting on newspapers, washing down biscuit and syrup with
warm milk from fruit jars. Some people were gnawing on cold chicken
and cold fried pork chops. The more affluent chased their food with
drugstore Coca-Cola in bulb-shaped soda glasses. Greasy-faced children
popped-the-whip through the crowd, and babies lunched at their
mothers' breasts.
In a far corner of the square, the Negroes sat quietly in the sun,
dining on sardines, crackers, and the more vivid flavors of Nehi Cola.
Mr. Dolphus Raymond sat with them.
"Jem," said Dill, "he's drinkin' out of a sack."
Mr. Dolphus Raymond seemed to be so doing: two yellow drugstore
straws ran from his mouth to the depths of a brown paper bag.
"Ain't ever seen anybody do that," murmured Dill.
"How does he keep what's in it in it?"
Jem giggled. "He's got a Co-Cola bottle full of whiskey in there.
That's so's not to upset the ladies. You'll see him sip it all
afternoon, he'll step out for a while and fill it back up."
"Why's he sittin' with the colored folks?"
"Always does. He likes 'em better'n he likes us, I reckon. Lives
by himself way down near the county line. He's got a colored woman and
all sorts of mixed chillun. Show you some of 'em if we see 'em."
"He doesn't look like trash," said Dill.
"He's not, he owns all one side of the riverbank down there, and
he's from a real old family to boot."
"Then why does he do like that?"
"That's just his way," said Jem. "They say he never got over his
weddin'. He was supposed to marry one of the- the Spencer ladies, I
think. They were gonna have a huge weddin', but they didn't- after the
rehearsal the bride went upstairs and blew her head off. Shotgun.
She pulled the trigger with her toes."
"Did they ever know why?"
"No," said Jem, "nobody ever knew quite why but Mr. Dolphus. They
said it was because she found out about his colored woman, he reckoned
he could keep her and get married too. He's been sorta drunk ever
since. You know, though, he's real good to those chillun-"
"Jem," I asked, "what's a mixed child?"
"Half white, half colored. You've seen 'em, Scout. You know that
red-kinky-headed one that delivers for the drugstore. He's half white.
They're real sad."
"Sad, how come?"
"They don't belong anywhere. Colored folks won't have 'em because
they're half white; white folks won't have 'em cause they're
colored, so they're just in-betweens, don't belong anywhere. But Mr.
Dolphus, now, they say he's shipped two of his up north. They don't
mind 'em up north. Yonder's one of 'em."
A small boy clutching a Negro woman's hand walked toward us. He
looked all Negro to me: he was rich chocolate with flaring nostrils
and beautiful teeth. Sometimes he would skip happily, and the Negro
woman tugged his hand to make him stop.
Jem waited until they passed us. "That's one of the little ones," he
said.
"How can you tell?" asked Dill. "He looked black to me."
"You can't sometimes, not unless you know who they are. But he's
half Raymond, all right."
"But how can you tell?" I asked.
"I told you, Scout, you just hafta know who they are."
"Well how do you know we ain't Negroes?"
"Uncle Jack Finch says we really don't know. He says as far as he
can trace back the Finches we ain't, but for all he knows we mighta
come straight out of Ethiopia durin' the Old Testament."
"Well if we came out durin' the Old Testament it's too long ago to
matter."
"That's what I thought," said Jem, "but around here once you have
a drop of Negro blood, that makes you all black. Hey, look-"
Some invisible signal had made the lunchers on the square rise and
scatter bits of newspaper, cellophane, and wrapping paper. Children
came to mothers, babies were cradled on hips as men in sweat-stained
hats collected their families and herded them through the courthouse
doors. In the far corner of the square the Negroes and Mr. Dolphus
Raymond stood up and dusted their breeches. There were few women and
