father not to teach you any more. It's best to begin reading with a
fresh mind. You tell him I'll take over from here and try to undo
the damage-"
"Ma'am?"
"Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now."
I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime. I
never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing
illicitly in the daily papers. In the long hours of church- was it
then I learned? I could not remember not being able to read hymns. Now
that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that
just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit
without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of
shoelaces. I could not remember when the lines above Atticus's
moving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all the
evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills to Be
Enacted into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow- anything Atticus
happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night.
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not
love breathing.
I knew I had annoyed Miss Caroline, so I let well enough alone and
stared out the window until recess when Jem cut me from the covey of
first-graders in the schoolyard. He asked how I was getting along. I
told him.
"If I didn't have to stay I'd leave. Jem, that damn lady says
Atticus's been teaching me to read and for him to stop it-"
"Don't worry, Scout," Jem comforted me. "Our teacher says Miss
Caroline's introducing a new way of teaching. She learned about it
in college. It'll be in all the grades soon. You don't have to learn
much out of books that way- it's like if you wanta learn about cows,
you go milk one, see?"
"Yeah Jem, but I don't wanta study cows, I-"
"Sure you do. You hafta know about cows, they're a big part of
life in Maycomb County."
I contented myself with asking Jem if he'd lost his mind.
"I'm just trying to tell you the new way they're teachin' the
first grade, stubborn. It's the Dewey Decimal System."
Having never questioned Jem's pronouncements, I saw no reason to
begin now. The Dewey Decimal System consisted, in part, of Miss
Caroline waving cards at us on which were printed "the," "cat," "rat,"
"man," and "you." No comment seemed to be expected of us, and the
class received these impressionistic revelations in silence. I was
bored, so I began a letter to Dill. Miss Caroline caught me writing
and told me to tell my father to stop teaching me. "Besides," she
said. "We don't write in the first grade, we print. You won't learn to
write until you're in the third grade."
Calpurnia was to blame for this. It kept me from driving her crazy
on rainy days, I guess. She would set me a writing task by scrawling
the alphabet firmly across the top of a tablet, then copying out a
chapter of the Bible beneath. If I reproduced her penmanship
satisfactorily, she rewarded me with an open-faced sandwich of bread
and butter and sugar. In Calpurnia's teaching, there was no
sentimentality: I seldom pleased her and she seldom rewarded me.
"Everybody who goes home to lunch hold up your hands," said Miss
Caroline, breaking into my new grudge against Calpurnia.
The town children did so, and she looked us over.
"Everybody who brings his lunch put it on top of his desk."
Molasses buckets appeared from nowhere, and the ceiling danced
with metallic light. Miss Caroline walked up and down the rows peering
and poking into lunch containers, nodding if the contents pleased her,
frowning a little at others. She stopped at Walter Cunningham's
desk. "Where's yours?" she asked.
Walter Cunningham's face told everybody in the first grade he had
hookworms. His absence of shoes told us how he got them. People caught
hookworms going barefooted in barnyards and hog wallows. If Walter had
owned any shoes he would have worn them the first day of school and
then discarded them until mid-winter. He did have on a clean shirt and
neatly mended overalls.
"Did you forget your lunch this morning?" asked Miss Caroline.
Walter looked straight ahead. I saw a muscle jump in his skinny jaw.
"Did you forget it this morning?" asked Miss Caroline. Walter's
jaw twitched again.
"Yeb'm," he finally mumbled.
Miss Caroline went to her desk and opened her purse. "Here's a
quarter," she said to Walter. "Go and eat downtown today. You can
pay me back tomorrow."
Walter shook his head. "Nome thank you ma'am," he drawled softly.
Impatience crept into Miss Caroline's voice: "Here Walter, come
get it."
Walter shook his head again.
When Walter shook his head a third time someone whispered, "Go on
and tell her, Scout."
I turned around and saw most of the town people and the entire bus
delegation looking at me. Miss Caroline and I had conferred twice
already, and they were looking at me in the innocent assurance that
familiarity breeds understanding.
I rose graciously on Walter's behalf: "Ah- Miss Caroline?"
"What is it, Jean Louise?"
"Miss Caroline, he's a Cunningham."
I sat back down.
"What, Jean Louise?"
I thought I had made things sufficiently clear. It was clear
enough to the rest of us: Walter Cunningham was sitting there lying
his head off. He didn't forget his lunch, he didn't have any. He had
none today nor would he have any tomorrow or the next day. He had
probably never seen three quarters together at the same time in his
life.
I tried again: "Walter's one of the Cunninghams, Miss Caroline."
"I beg your pardon, Jean Louise?"
"That's okay, ma'am, you'll get to know all the county folks after a
while. The Cunninghams never took anything they can't pay back- no
church baskets and no scrip stamps. They never took anything off of
anybody, they get along on what they have. They don't have much, but
they get along on it."
My special knowledge of the Cunningham tribe- one branch, that is-
was gained from events of last winter. Walter's father was one of
Atticus's clients. After a dreary conversation in our livingroom one
night about his entailment, before Mr. Cunningham left he said, "Mr.
Finch, I don't know when I'll ever be able to pay you."
"Let that be the least of your worries, Walter," Atticus said.
When I asked Jem what entailment was, and Jem described it as a
condition of having your tail in a crack, I asked Atticus if Mr.
Cunningham would ever pay us.
"Not in money," Atticus said, "but before the year's out I'll have
been paid. You watch."
We watched. One morning Jem and I found a load of stovewood in the
back yard. Later, a sack of hickory nuts appeared on the back steps.
With Christmas came a crate of smilax and holly. That spring when we
found a crokersack full of turnip greens, Atticus said Mr.
Cunningham had more than paid him.
"Why does he pay you like that?" I asked.
"Because that's the only way he can pay me. He has no money."
"Are we poor, Atticus?"
Atticus nodded. "We are indeed."
Jem's nose wrinkled. "Are we as poor as the Cunninghams?"
"Not exactly. The Cunninghams are country folks, farmers, and the
crash hit them hardest."
Atticus said professional people were poor because the farmers
were poor. As Maycomb County was farm country, nickels and dimes
were hard to come by for doctors and dentists and lawyers.
Entailment was only a part of Mr. Cunningham's vexations. The acres
not entailed were mortgaged to the hilt, and the little cash he made
went to interest. If he held his mouth right, Mr. Cunningham could get
a WPA job, but his land would go to ruin if he left it, and he was
willing to go hungry to keep his land and vote as he pleased. Mr.
Cunningham, said Atticus, came from a set breed of men.
As the Cunninghams had no money to pay a lawyer, they simply paid us
with what they had. "Did you know," said Atticus, "that Dr. Reynolds
works the same way? He charges some folks a bushel of potatoes for
delivery of a baby. Miss Scout, if you give me your attention I'll
tell you what entailment is. Jem's definitions are very nearly
accurate sometimes."
If I could have explained these things to Miss Caroline, I would
have saved myself some inconvenience and Miss Caroline subsequent
mortification, but it was beyond my ability to explain things as
well as Atticus, so I said, "You're shamin' him, Miss Caroline. Walter
hasn't got a quarter at home to bring you, and you can't use any
stovewood."
Miss Caroline stood stock still, then grabbed me by the collar and
hauled me back to her desk. "Jean Louise, I've had about enough of you
this morning," she said. "You're starting off on the wrong foot in
every way, my dear. Hold out your hand."
I thought she was going to spit in it, which was the only reason
anybody in Maycomb held out his hand: it was a time-honored method
of sealing oral contracts. Wondering what bargain we had made, I
turned to the class for an answer, but the class looked back at me
in puzzlement. Miss Caroline picked up her ruler, gave me half a dozen
quick little pats, then told me to stand in the corner. A storm of
laughter broke loose when it finally occurred to the class that Miss
Caroline had whipped me.
When Miss Caroline threatened it with a similar fate the first grade
exploded again, becoming cold sober only when the shadow of Miss
Blount fell over them. Miss Blount, a native Maycombian as yet
uninitiated in the mysteries of the Decimal System, appeared at the
door hands on hips and announced: "If I hear another sound from this
room I'll burn up everybody in it. Miss Caroline, the sixth grade
cannot concentrate on the pyramids for all this racket!"
My sojourn in the corner was a short one. Saved by the bell, Miss
Caroline watched the class file out for lunch. As I was the last to
leave, I saw her sink down into her chair and bury her head in her
arms. Had her conduct been more friendly toward me, I would have
felt sorry for her. She was a pretty little thing.
3
Catching Walter Cunningham in the schoolyard gave me some
pleasure, but when I was rubbing his nose in the dirt Jem came by
and told me to stop. "You're bigger'n he is," he said.
"He's as old as you, nearly," I said. "He made me start off on the
