seen us, then had ventured down this far because he knew good and well
we'd be coming along. He thought Mr. Finch'd be with us, though.
"Shucks, ain't much but around the corner," said Jem. "Who's
scared to go around the corner?" We had to admit that Cecil was pretty
good, though. He had given us a fright, and he could tell it all
over the schoolhouse, that was his privilege.
"Say," I said, "ain't you a cow tonight? Where's your costume?"
"It's up behind the stage," he said. "Mrs. Merriweather says the
pageant ain't comin' on for a while. You can put yours back of the
stage by mine, Scout, and we can go with the rest of 'em."
This was an excellent idea, Jem thought. He also thought it a good
thing that Cecil and I would be together. This way, Jem would be
left to go with people his own age.
When we reached the auditorium, the whole town was there except
Atticus and the ladies worn out from decorating, and the usual
outcasts and shut-ins. Most of the county, it seemed, was there: the
hall was teeming with slicked-up country people. The high school
building had a wide downstairs hallway; people milled around booths
that had been installed along each side.
"Oh Jem. I forgot my money," I sighed, when I saw them.
"Atticus didn't," Jem said. "Here's thirty cents, you can do six
things. See you later on."
"Okay," I said, quite content with thirty cents and Cecil. I went
with Cecil down to the front of the auditorium, through a door on
one side, and backstage. I got rid of my ham costume and departed in a
hurry, for Mrs. Merriweather was standing at a lectern in front of the
first row of seats making last-minute, frenzied changes in the script.
"How much money you got?" I asked Cecil. Cecil had thirty cents,
too, which made us even. We squandered our first nickels on the
House of Horrors, which scared us not at all; we entered the black
seventh-grade room and were led around by the temporary ghoul in
residence and were made to touch several objects alleged to be
component parts of a human being. "Here's his eyes," we were told when
we touched two peeled grapes on a saucer. "Here's his heart," which
felt like raw liver. "These are his innards," and our hands were
thrust into a plate of cold spaghetti.
Cecil and I visited several booths. We each bought a sack of Mrs.
Judge Taylor's homemade divinity. I wanted to bob for apples, but
Cecil said it wasn't sanitary. His mother said he might catch
something from everybody's heads having been in the same tub. "Ain't
anything around town now to catch," I protested. But Cecil said his
mother said it was unsanitary to eat after folks. I later asked Aunt
Alexandra about this, and she said people who held such views were
usually climbers.
We were about to purchase a blob of taffy when Mrs. Merriweather's
runners appeared and told us to go backstage, it was time to get
ready. The auditorium was filling with people; the Maycomb County High
School band had assembled in front below the stage; the stage
footlights were on and the red velvet curtain rippled and billowed
from the scurrying going on behind it.
Backstage, Cecil and I found the narrow hallway teeming with people:
adults in homemade three-corner hats, Confederate caps,
Spanish-American War hats, and World War helmets. Children dressed
as various agricultural enterprises crowded around the one small
window.
"Somebody's mashed my costume," I wailed in dismay. Mrs.
Merriweather galloped to me, reshaped the chicken wire, and thrust
me inside.
"You all right in there, Scout?" asked Cecil. "You sound so far off,
like you was on the other side of a hill."
"You don't sound any nearer," I said.
The band played the national anthem, and we heard the audience rise.
Then the bass drum sounded. Mrs. Merriweather, stationed behind her
lectern beside the band, said: "Maycomb County Ad Astra Per Aspera."
The bass drum boomed again. "That means," said Mrs. Merriweather,
translating for the rustic elements, "from the mud to the stars."
She added, unnecessarily, it seemed to me, "A pageant."
"Reckon they wouldn't know what it was if she didn't tell 'em,"
whispered Cecil, who was immediately shushed.
"The whole town knows it," I breathed.
"But the country folks've come in," Cecil said.
"Be quiet back there," a man's voice ordered, and we were silent.
The bass drum went boom with every sentence Mrs. Merriweather
uttered. She chanted mournfully about Maycomb County being older
than the state, that it was a part of the Mississippi and Alabama
Territories, that the first white man to set foot in the virgin
forests was the Probate Judge's great-grandfather five times
removed, who was never heard of again. Then came the fearless
Colonel Maycomb, for whom the county was named.
Andrew Jackson appointed him to a position of authority, and Colonel
Maycomb's misplaced self-confidence and slender sense of direction
brought disaster to all who rode with him in the Creek Indian Wars.
Colonel Maycomb persevered in his efforts to make the region safe
for democracy, but his first campaign was his last. His orders,
relayed to him by a friendly Indian runner, were to move south.
After consulting a tree to ascertain from its lichen which way was
south, and taking no lip from the subordinates who ventured to correct
him, Colonel Maycomb set out on a purposeful journey to rout the enemy
and entangled his troops so far northwest in the forest primeval
that they were eventually rescued by settlers moving inland.
Mrs. Merriweather gave a thirty-minute description of Colonel
Maycomb's exploits. I discovered that if I bent my knees I could
tuck them under my costume and more or less sit. I sat down,
listened to Mrs. Merriweather's drone and the bass drum's boom and was
soon fast asleep.
They said later that Mrs. Merriweather was putting her all into
the grand finale, that she had crooned, "Po-ork," with a confidence
born of pine trees and butterbeans entering on cue. She waited a few
seconds, then called, "Po-ork?" When nothing materialized, she yelled,
"Pork!"
I must have heard her in my sleep, or the band playing Dixie
woke me, but it was when Mrs. Merriweather triumphantly mounted the
stage with the state flag that I chose to make my entrance. Chose is
incorrect: I thought I'd better catch up with the rest of them.
They told me later that Judge Taylor went out behind the
auditorium and stood there slapping his knees so hard Mrs. Taylor
brought him a glass of water and one of his pills.
Mrs. Merriweather seemed to have a hit, everybody was cheering so,
but she caught me backstage and told me I had ruined her pageant.
She made me feel awful, but when Jem came to fetch me he was
sympathetic. He said he couldn't see my costume much from where he was
sitting. How he could tell I was feeling bad under my costume I
don't know, but he said I did all right, I just came in a little late,
that was all. Jem was becoming almost as good as Atticus at making you
feel right when things went wrong. Almost- not even Jem could make
me go through that crowd, and he consented to wait backstage with me
until the audience left.
"You wanta take it off, Scout?" he asked.
"Naw, I'll just keep it on," I said. I could hide my mortification
under it.
"You all want a ride home?" someone asked.
"No sir, thank you," I heard Jem say. "It's just a little walk."
"Be careful of haints," the voice said. "Better still, tell the
haints to be careful of Scout."
"There aren't many folks left now," Jem told me. "Let's go."
We went through the auditorium to the hallway, then down the
steps. It was still black dark. The remaining cars were parked on
the other side of the building, and their headlights were little help.
"If some of 'em were goin' in our direction we could see better," said
Jem. "Here Scout, let me hold onto your- hock. You might lose your
balance."
"I can see all right."
"Yeah, but you might lose your balance." I felt a slight pressure on
my head, and assumed that Jem had grabbed that end of the ham. "You
got me?"
"Uh huh."
We began crossing the black schoolyard, straining to see our feet.
"Jem," I said, "I forgot my shoes, they're back behind the stage."
"Well let's go get 'em." But as we turned around the auditorium
lights went off. "You can get 'em tomorrow," he said.
"But tomorrow's Sunday," I protested, as Jem turned me homeward.
"You can get the Janitor to let you in... Scout?"
"Hm?"
"Nothing."
Jem hadn't started that in a long time. I wondered what he was
thinking. He'd tell me when he wanted to, probably when we got home. I
felt his fingers press the top of my costume, too hard, it seemed. I
shook my head. "Jem, you don't hafta-"
"Hush a minute, Scout," he said, pinching me.
We walked along silently. "Minute's up," I said. "Whatcha thinkin'
about?" I turned to look at him, but his outline was barely visible.
"Thought I heard something," he said. "Stop a minute."
We stopped.
"Hear anything?" he asked.
"No."
We had not gone five paces before he made me stop again.
"Jem, are you tryin' to scare me? You know I'm too old-"
"Be quiet," he said, and I knew he was not joking.
The night was still. I could hear his breath coming easily beside
me. Occasionally there was a sudden breeze that hit my bare legs,
but it was all that remained of a promised windy night. This was the
stillness before a thunderstorm. We listened.
"Heard an old dog just then," I said.
"It's not that," Jem answered. "I hear it when we're walkin'
along, but when we stop I don't hear it."
"You hear my costume rustlin'. Aw, it's just Halloween got you...."
I said it more to convince myself than Jem, for sure enough, as we
began walking, I heard what he was talking about. It was not my
costume.
"It's just old Cecil," said Jem presently. "He won't get us again.
Let's don't let him think we're hurrying."
We slowed to a crawl. I asked Jem how Cecil could follow us in
this dark, looked to me like he'd bump into us from behind.
