of a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger's mentality to have no
plan, no thought for the future, just run blind first chance he saw.
Funny thing, Atticus Finch might've got him off scot free, but
wait-? Hell no. You know how they are. Easy come, easy go. Just
shows you, that Robinson boy was legally married, they say he kept
himself clean, went to church and all that, but when it comes down
to the line the veneer's mighty thin. Nigger always comes out in 'em.
A few more details, enabling the listener to repeat his version in
turn, then nothing to talk about until The Maycomb Tribune
appeared the following Thursday. There was a brief obituary in the
Colored News, but there was also an editorial.
Mr. B. B. Underwood was at his most bitter, and he couldn't have
cared less who canceled advertising and subscriptions. (But Maycomb
didn't play that way: Mr. Underwood could holler till he sweated and
write whatever he wanted to, he'd still get his advertising and
subscriptions. If he wanted to make a fool of himself in his paper
that was his business.) Mr. Underwood didn't talk about miscarriages
of justice, he was writing so children could understand. Mr. Underwood
simply figured it was a sin to kill cripples, be they standing,
sitting, or escaping. He likened Tom's death to the senseless
slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children, and Maycomb thought he
was trying to write an editorial poetical enough to be reprinted in
The Montgomery Advertiser.
How could this be so, I wondered, as I read Mr. Underwood's
editorial. Senseless killing- Tom had been given due process of law to
the day of his death; he had been tried openly and convicted by twelve
good men and true; my father had fought for him all the way. Then
Mr. Underwood's meaning became clear: Atticus had used every tool
available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts
of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute
Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.
The name Ewell gave me a queasy feeling. Maycomb had lost no time in
getting Mr. Ewell's views on Tom's demise and passing them along
through that English Channel of gossip, Miss Stephanie Crawford.
Miss Stephanie told Aunt Alexandra in Jem's presence ("Oh foot, he's
old enough to listen.") that Mr. Ewell said it made one down and about
two more to go. Jem told me not to be afraid, Mr. Ewell was more hot
gas than anything. Jem also told me that if I breathed a word to
Atticus, if in any way I let Atticus know I knew, Jem would personally
never speak to me again.
26
School started, and so did our daily trips past the Radley Place.
Jem was in the seventh grade and went to high school, beyond the
grammar-school building; I was now in the third grade, and our
routines were so different I only walked to school with Jem in the
mornings and saw him at mealtimes. He went out for football, but was
too slender and too young yet to do anything but carry the team
water buckets. This he did with enthusiasm; most afternoons he was
seldom home before dark.
The Radley Place had ceased to terrify me, but it was no less
gloomy, no less chilly under its great oaks, and no less uninviting.
Mr. Nathan Radley could still be seen on a clear day, walking to and
from town; we knew Boo was there, for the same old reason- nobody'd
seen him carried out yet. I sometimes felt a twinge of remorse, when
passing by the old place, at ever having taken part in what must
have been sheer torment to Arthur Radley- what reasonable recluse
wants children peeping through his shutters, delivering greetings on
the end of a fishing-pole, wandering in his collards at night?
And yet I remembered. Two Indian-head pennies, chewing gum, soap
dolls, a rusty medal, a broken watch and chain. Jem must have put them
away somewhere. I stopped and looked at the tree one afternoon: the
trunk was swelling around its cement patch. The patch itself was
turning yellow.
We had almost seen him a couple of times, a good enough score for
anybody.
But I still looked for him each time I went by. Maybe someday we
would see him. I imagined how it would be: when it happened, he'd just
be sitting in the swing when I came along. "Hidy do, Mr. Arthur," I
would say, as if I had said it every afternoon of my life. "Evening,
Jean Louise," he would say, as if he had said it every afternoon of my
life, "right pretty spell we're having, isn't it?" "Yes sir, right
pretty," I would say, and go on.
It was only a fantasy. We would never see him. He probably did go
out when the moon was down and gaze upon Miss Stephanie Crawford.
I'd have picked somebody else to look at, but that was his business.
He would never gaze at us.
"You aren't starting that again, are you?" said Atticus one night,
when I expressed a stray desire just to have one good look at Boo
Radley before I died. "If you are, I'll tell you right now: stop it.
I'm too old to go chasing you off the Radley property. Besides, it's
dangerous. You might get shot. You know Mr. Nathan shoots at every
shadow he sees, even shadows that leave size-four bare footprints. You
were lucky not to be killed."
I hushed then and there. At the same time I marveled at Atticus.
This was the first he had let us know he knew a lot more about
something than we thought he knew. And it had happened years ago.
No, only last summer- no, summer before last, when... time was playing
tricks on me. I must remember to ask Jem.
So many things had happened to us, Boo Radley was the least of our
fears. Atticus said he didn't see how anything else could happen, that
things had a way of settling down, and after enough time passed people
would forget that Tom Robinson's existence was ever brought to their
attention.
Perhaps Atticus was right, but the events of the summer hung over us
like smoke in a closed room. The adults in Maycomb never discussed the
case with Jem and me; it seemed that they discussed it with their
children, and their attitude must have been that neither of us could
help having Atticus for a parent, so their children must be nice to us
in spite of him. The children would never have thought that up for
themselves: had our classmates been left to their own devices, Jem and
I would have had several swift, satisfying fist-fights apiece and
ended the matter for good. As it was, we were compelled to hold our
heads high and be, respectively, a gentleman and a lady. In a way,
it was like the era of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, without all her
yelling. There was one odd thing, though, that I never understood:
in spite of Atticus's shortcomings as a parent, people were content to
re-elect him to the state legislature that year, as usual, without
opposition. I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I
withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced
to.
I was forced to one day in school. Once a week, we had a Current
Events period. Each child was supposed to clip an item from a
newspaper, absorb its contents, and reveal them to the class. This
practice allegedly overcame a variety of evils: standing in front of
his fellows encouraged good posture and gave a child poise; delivering
a short talk made him word-conscious; learning his current event
strengthened his memory; being singled out made him more than ever
anxious to return to the Group.
The idea was profound, but as usual, in Maycomb it didn't work
very well. In the first place, few rural children had access to
newspapers, so the burden of Current Events was borne by the town
children, convincing the bus children more deeply that the town
children got all the attention anyway. The rural children who could,
usually brought clippings from what they called The Grit Paper, a
publication spurious in the eyes of Miss Gates, our teacher. Why she
frowned when a child recited from The Grit Paper I never knew, but
in some way it was associated with liking fiddling, eating syrupy
biscuits for lunch, being a holy-roller, singing Sweetly Sings the
Donkey and pronouncing it dunkey, all of which the state paid
teachers to discourage.
Even so, not many of the children knew what a Current Event was.
Little Chuck Little, a hundred years old in his knowledge of cows
and their habits, was halfway through an Uncle Natchell story when
Miss Gates stopped him: "Charles, that is not a current event. That is
an advertisement."
Cecil Jacobs knew what one was, though. When his turn came, he
went to the front of the room and began, "Old Hitler-"
"Adolf Hitler, Cecil," said Miss Gates. "One never begins with Old
anybody."
"Yes ma'am," he said. "Old Adolf Hitler has been prosecutin' the-"
"Persecuting Cecil...."
"Nome, Miss Gates, it says here- well anyway, old Adolf Hitler has
been after the Jews and he's puttin' 'em in prisons and he's taking
away all their property and he won't let any of 'em out of the country
and he's washin' all the feeble-minded and-"
"Washing the feeble-minded?"
"Yes ma'am, Miss Gates, I reckon they don't have sense enough to
wash themselves, I don't reckon an idiot could keep hisself clean.
Well anyway, Hitler's started a program to round up all the
half-Jews too and he wants to register 'em in case they might wanta
cause him any trouble and I think this is a bad thing and that's my
current event."
"Very good, Cecil," said Miss Gates. Puffing, Cecil returned to
his seat.
A hand went up in the back of the room. "How can he do that?"
"Who do what?" asked Miss Gates patiently.
"I mean how can Hitler just put a lot of folks in a pen like that,
looks like the govamint'd stop him," said the owner of the hand.
"Hitler is the government," said Miss Gates, and seizing an
opportunity to make education dynamic, she went to the blackboard. She
printed DEMOCRACY in large letters. "Democracy," she said. "Does
anybody have a definition?"
"Us," somebody said.
I raised my hand, remembering an old campaign slogan Atticus had
once told me about.
"What do you think it means, Jean Louise?"
"'Equal rights for all, special privileges for none,'" I quoted.
"Very good, Jean Louise, very good," Miss Gates smiled. In front
of DEMOCRACY, she printed WE ARE A. "Now class, say it all together,
'We are a democracy.'"
We said it. Then Miss Gates said, "That's the difference between
America and Germany. We are a democracy and Germany is a dictatorship.
Dictator-ship," she said. "Over here we don't believe in persecuting
anybody. Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced. Prejudice,"
she enunciated carefully. "There are no better people in the world
than the Jews, and why Hitler doesn't think so is a mystery to me."
An inquiring soul in the middle of the room said, "Why don't they
like the Jews, you reckon, Miss Gates?"
