Part Two Chapter 16
To Kill a Mockingbird
Jem heard me. He thrust his head around the connecting door. As he
came to my bed Atticus's light flashed on. We stayed where we were
until it went off; we heard him turn over, and we waited until he
was still again.
Jem took me to his room and put me in bed beside him. "Try to go
to sleep," he said, "It'll be all over after tomorrow, maybe."
We had come in quietly, so as not to wake Aunty. Atticus killed
the engine in the driveway and coasted to the carhouse; we went in the
back door and to our rooms without a word. I was very tired, and was
drifting into sleep when the memory of Atticus calmly folding his
newspaper and pushing back his hat became Atticus standing in the
middle of an empty waiting street, pushing up his glasses. The full
meaning of the night's events hit me and I began crying. Jem was
awfully nice about it: for once he didn't remind me that people nearly
nine years old didn't do things like that.
Everybody's appetite was delicate this morning, except Jem's: he ate
his way through three eggs. Atticus watched in frank admiration;
Aunt Alexandra sipped coffee and radiated waves of disapproval.
Children who slipped out at night were a disgrace to the family.
Atticus said he was right glad his disgraces had come along, but Aunty
said, "Nonsense, Mr. Underwood was there all the time."
"You know, it's a funny thing about Braxton," said Atticus. "He
despises Negroes, won't have one near him."
Local opinion held Mr. Underwood to be an intense, profane little
man, whose father in a fey fit of humor christened Braxton Bragg, a
name Mr. Underwood had done his best to live down. Atticus said naming
people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.
Calpurnia was serving Aunt Alexandra more coffee, and she shook
her head at what I thought was a pleading winning look. "You're
still too little," she said. "I'll tell you when you ain't." I said it
might help my stomach. "All right," she said, and got a cup from the
sideboard. She poured one tablespoonful of coffee into it and filled
the cup to the brim with milk. I thanked her by sticking out my tongue
at it, and looked up to catch Aunty's warning frown. But she was
frowning at Atticus.
She waited until Calpurnia was in the kitchen, then she said, "Don't
talk like that in front of them."
"Talk like what in front of whom?" he asked.
"Like that in front of Calpurnia. You said Braxton Underwood
despises Negroes right in front of her."
"Well, I'm sure Cal knows it. Everybody in Maycomb knows it."
I was beginning to notice a subtle change in my father these days,
that came out when he talked with Aunt Alexandra. It was a quiet
digging in, never outright irritation. There was a faint starchiness
in his voice when he said, "Anything fit to say at the table's fit
to say in front of Calpurnia. She knows what she means to this
family."
"I don't think it's a good habit, Atticus. It encourages them. You
know how they talk among themselves. Every thing that happens in
this town's out to the Quarters before sundown."
My father put down his knife. "I don't know of any law that says
they can't talk. Maybe if we didn't give them so much to talk about
they'd be quiet. Why don't you drink your coffee, Scout?"
I was playing in it with the spoon. "I thought Mr. Cunningham was
a friend of ours. You told me a long time ago he was."
"He still is."
"But last night he wanted to hurt you."
Atticus placed his fork beside his knife and pushed his plate aside.
Mr. Cunningham's basically a good man, he said, "he just has his
blind spots along with the rest of us."
Jem spoke. "Don't call that a blind spot. He'da killed you last
night when he first went there."
"He might have hurt me a little," Atticus conceded, "but son, you'll
understand folks a little better when you're older. A mob's always
made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob
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 c*cked 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
children among them, which seemed to dispel the holiday mood. They
waited patiently at the doors behind the white families.
"Let's go in," said Dill.
"Naw, we better wait till they get in, Atticus might not like it
if he sees us," said Jem.
The Maycomb County courthouse was faintly reminiscent of Arlington
in one respect: the concrete pillars supporting its south roof were
too heavy for their light burden. The pillars were all that remained
standing when the original courthouse burned in 1856. Another
courthouse was built around them. It is better to say, built in
spite of them. But for the south porch, the Maycomb County
courthouse was early Victorian, presenting an unoffensive vista when
seen from the north. From the other side, however, Greek revival
columns clashed with a big nineteenth-century clock tower housing a
rusty unreliable instrument, a view indicating a people determined
to preserve every physical scrap of the past.
To reach the courtroom, on the second floor, one passed sundry
sunless county cubbyholes: the tax assessor, the tax collector, the
county clerk, the county solicitor, the circuit clerk, the judge of
probate lived in cool dim hutches that smelled of decaying record
books mingled with old damp cement and stale urine. It was necessary
to turn on the lights in the daytime; there was always a film of
dust on the rough floorboards. The inhabitants of these offices were
creatures of their environment: little gray-faced men, they seemed
untouched by wind or sun.
We knew there was a crowd, but we had not bargained for the
multitudes in the first-floor hallway. I got separated from Jem and
Dill, but made my way toward the wall by the stairwell, knowing Jem
would come for me eventually. I found myself in the middle of the
Idlers' Club and made myself as unobtrusive as possible. This was a
group of white-shirted, khaki-trousered, suspendered old men who had
spent their lives doing nothing and passed their twilight days doing
same on pine benches under the live oaks on the square. Attentive
critics of courthouse business, Atticus said they knew as much law
as the Chief Justice, from long years of observation. Normally, they
were the court's only spectators, and today they seemed resentful of
the interruption of their comfortable routine. When they spoke,
their voices sounded casually important. The conversation was about my
father.
"...thinks he knows what he's doing," one said.
"Oh-h now, I wouldn't say that," said another. "Atticus Finch's a
deep reader, a mighty deep reader."
"He reads all right, that's all he does." The club snickered.
"Lemme tell you somethin' now, Billy," a third said, "you know the
court appointed him to defend this n*gger."
"Yeah, but Atticus aims to defend him. That's what I don't like
about it."
This was news, news that put a different light on things: Atticus
had to, whether he wanted to or not. I thought it odd that he hadn't
said anything to us about it- we could have used it many times in
defending him and ourselves. He had to, that's why he was doing it,
equaled fewer fights and less fussing. But did that explain the town's
attitude? The court appointed Atticus to defend him. Atticus aimed
to defend him. That's what they didn't like about it. It was
confusing.
The Negroes, having waited for the white people to go upstairs,
began to come in. "Whoa now, just a minute," said a club member,
holding up his walking stick. "Just don't start up them there stairs
yet awhile."
The club began its stiff-jointed climb and ran into Dill and Jem
on their way down looking for me. They squeezed past and Jem called,
Scout, come on, there ain't a seat left. We'll hafta stand up.
"Looka there, now." he said irritably, as the black people surged
upstairs. The old men ahead of them would take most of the standing
room. We were out of luck and it was my fault, Jem informed me. We
stood miserably by the wall.
"Can't you all get in?"
Reverend Sykes was looking down at us, black hat in hand.
"Hey, Reverend," said Jem. "Naw, Scout here messed us up."
"Well, let's see what we can do."
Reverend Sykes edged his way upstairs. In a few moments he was back.
"There's not a seat downstairs. Do you all reckon it'll be all right
if you all came to the balcony with me?"
"Gosh yes," said Jem. Happily, we sped ahead of Reverend Sykes to
the courtroom floor. There, we went up a covered staircase and
waited at the door. Reverend Sykes came puffing behind us, and steered
us gently through the black people in the balcony. Four Negroes rose
and gave us their front-row seats.
The Colored balcony ran along three walls of the courtroom like a
second-story veranda, and from it we could see everything.
The jury sat to the left, under long windows. Sunburned, lanky, they
seemed to be all farmers, but this was natural: townfolk rarely sat on
juries, they were either struck or excused. One or two of the jury
looked vaguely like dressed-up Cunninghams. At this stage they sat
straight and alert.
The circuit solicitor and another man, Atticus and Tom Robinson
sat at tables with their backs to us. There was a brown book and
some yellow tablets on the solicitor's table; Atticus's was bare.
Just inside the railing that divided the spectators from the
court, the witnesses sat on cowhide-bottomed chairs. Their backs
were to us.
Judge Taylor was on the bench, looking like a sleepy old shark,
his pilot fish writing rapidly below in front of him. Judge Taylor
looked like most judges I had ever seen: amiable, white-haired,
slightly ruddy-faced, he was a man who ran his court with an
alarming informality- he sometimes propped his feet up, he often
cleaned his fingernails with his pocket knife. In long equity
hearings, especially after dinner, he gave the impression of dozing,
an impression dispelled forever when a lawyer once deliberately pushed
a pile of books to the floor in a desperate effort to wake him up.
Without opening his eyes, Judge Taylor murmured, "Mr. Whitley, do that
again and it'll cost you one hundred dollars."
He was a man learned in the law, and although he seemed to take
his job casually, in reality he kept a firm grip on any proceedings
that came before him. Only once was Judge Taylor ever seen at a dead
standstill in open court, and the Cunninghams stopped him. Old
Sarum, their stamping grounds, was populated by two families
separate and apart in the beginning, but unfortunately bearing the
same name. The Cunninghams married the Coninghams until the spelling
of the names was academic- academic until a Cunningham disputed a
Coningham over land titles and took to the law. During a controversy
of this character, Jeems Cunningham testified that his mother
spelled it Cunningham on deeds and things, but she was really a
Coningham, she was an uncertain speller, a seldom reader, and was
given to looking far away sometimes when she sat on the front
gallery in the evening. After nine hours of listening to the
eccentricities of Old Sarum's inhabitants, Judge Taylor threw the case
out of court. When asked upon what grounds, Judge Taylor said,
Champertous connivance, and declared he hoped to God the litigants
were satisfied by each having had their public say. They were. That
was all they had wanted in the first place.
Judge Taylor had one interesting habit. He permitted smoking in
his courtroom but did not himself indulge: sometimes, if one was
lucky, one had the privilege of watching him put a long dry cigar into
his mouth and munch it slowly up. Bit by bit the dead cigar would
disappear, to reappear some hours later as a flat slick mess, its
essence extracted and mingling with Judge Taylor's digestive juices. I
once asked Atticus how Mrs. Taylor stood to kiss him, but Atticus said
they didn't kiss much.
The witness stand was to the right of Judge Taylor, and when we
got to our seats Mr. Heck Tate was already on it.