No More Learning

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Chapter 21
She stopped shyly at the railing and waited to get Judge Taylor’s attention. She was in a fresh apron and she carried an envelope in her hand.
Judge Taylor saw her and said, “It’s Calpurnia, isn’t it? ”
“Yes sir,” she said. “Could I just pass this note to Mr. Finch, please sir? It hasn’t got anything to do with—with the trial. ”
Judge Taylor nodded and Atticus took the envelope from Calpurnia. He opened it, read its contents and said, “Judge, I—this note is from my sister. She says my children are missing, haven’t turned up since noon. . . I. . . could you—”
“I know where they are, Atticus. ” Mr. Underwood spoke up. “They’re right up yonder in the colored balcony—been there since precisely one-eighteen P. M. ”
Our father turned around and looked up. “Jem, come down from there,” he called. Then he said something to the Judge we didn’t hear. We climbed across Reverend Sykes and made our way to the staircase.
Atticus and Calpurnia met us downstairs. Calpurnia looked peeved, but Atticus looked exhausted.
Jem was jumping in excitement. “We’ve won, haven’t we? ”
“I’ve no idea,” said Atticus shortly. “You’ve been here all afternoon? Go home with Calpurnia and get your supper—and stay home. ”
“Aw, Atticus, let us come back,” pleaded Jem. “Please let us hear the verdict, please sir. ”
“The jury might be out and back in a minute, we don’t know—” but we could tell Atticus was relenting. “Well, you’ve heard it all, so you might as well hear the rest. Tell you what, you all can come back when you’ve eaten your supper—eat slowly, now, you won’t miss anything important—and if the jury’s still out, you can wait with us. But I expect it’ll be over before you get back. ”
“You think they’ll acquit him that fast? ” asked Jem. Atticus opened his mouth to answer, but shut it and left us.
I prayed that Reverend Sykes would save our seats for us, but stopped praying when I remembered that people got up and left in droves when the jury was out— tonight, they’d overrun the drugstore, the O. K. Café and the hotel, that is, unless they had brought their suppers too.
Calpurnia marched us home: “—skin every one of you alive, the very idea, you children listenin‘ to all that! Mister Jem, don’t you know better’n to take your little sister to that trial? Miss Alexandra’ll absolutely have a stroke of paralysis when she finds out! Ain’t fittin’ for children to hear. . . ”
The streetlights were on, and we glimpsed Calpurnia’s indignant profile as we passed beneath them. “Mister Jem, I thought you was gettin‘ some kinda head on your shoulders—the very idea, she’s your little sister! The very idea, sir! You oughta be perfectly ashamed of yourself—ain’t you got any sense at all? ”
I was exhilarated. So many things had happened so fast I felt it would take years to sort them out, and now here was Calpurnia giving her precious Jem down the country—what new marvels would the evening bring?
Jem was chuckling. “Don’t you want to hear about it, Cal? ”
“Hush your mouth, sir! When you oughta be hangin‘ your head in shame you go along laughin’—” Calpurnia revived a series of rusty threats that moved Jem to little remorse, and she sailed up the front steps with her classic, “If Mr. Finch don’t wear you out, I will—get in that house, sir! ”
Jem went in grinning, and Calpurnia nodded tacit consent to having Dill in to supper. “You all call Miss Rachel right now and tell her where you are,” she told him. “She’s run distracted lookin‘ for you—you watch out she don’t ship you back to Meridian first thing in the mornin’. ”
Aunt Alexandra met us and nearly fainted when Calpurnia told her where we were. I guess it hurt her when we told her Atticus said we could go back, because she didn’t say a word during supper. She just rearranged food on her plate, looking at it sadly while Calpurnia served Jem, Dill and me with a vengeance. Calpurnia poured milk, dished out potato salad and ham, muttering, “‘shamed of
yourselves,” in varying degrees of intensity. “Now you all eat slow,” was her final command.
Reverend Sykes had saved our places. We were surprised to find that we had been gone nearly an hour, and were equally surprised to find the courtroom exactly as we had left it, with minor changes: the jury box was empty, the defendant was gone; Judge Taylor had been gone, but he reappeared as we were seating ourselves.
“Nobody’s moved, hardly,” said Jem.
“They moved around some when the jury went out,” said Reverend Sykes. “The menfolk down there got the womenfolk their suppers, and they fed their babies. ”
“How long have they been out? ” asked Jem.
“‘bout thirty minutes. Mr. Finch and Mr. Gilmer did some more talkin’, and Judge Taylor charged the jury. ”
“How was he? ” asked Jem.
“What say? Oh, he did right well. I ain’t complainin‘ one bit—he was mighty fair- minded. He sorta said if you believe this, then you’ll have to return one verdict, but if you believe this, you’ll have to return another one. I thought he was leanin’ a little to our side—” Reverend Sykes scratched his head.
Jem smiled. “He’s not supposed to lean, Reverend, but don’t fret, we’ve won it,” he said wisely. “Don’t see how any jury could convict on what we heard—”
“Now don’t you be so confident, Mr. Jem, I ain’t ever seen any jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man. . . ” But Jem took exception to Reverend Sykes, and we were subjected to a lengthy review of the evidence with Jem’s ideas on the law regarding rape: it wasn’t rape if she let you, but she had to be eighteen—in Alabama, that is—and Mayella was nineteen. Apparently you had to kick and holler, you had to be overpowered and stomped on, preferably knocked stone cold. If you were under eighteen, you didn’t have to go through all this.
“Mr. Jem,” Reverend Sykes demurred, “this ain’t a polite thing for little ladies to hear. . . ”
“Aw, she doesn’t know what we’re talkin‘ about,” said Jem. “Scout, this is too old for you, ain’t it? ”
“It most certainly is not, I know every word you’re saying. ” Perhaps I was too convincing, because Jem hushed and never discussed the subject again.
“What time is it, Reverend? ” he asked. “Gettin‘ on toward eight. ”
I looked down and saw Atticus strolling around with his hands in his pockets: he made a tour of the windows, then walked by the railing over to the jury box. He looked in it, inspected Judge Taylor on his throne, then went back to where he started. I caught his eye and waved to him. He acknowledged my salute with a nod, and resumed his tour.
Mr. Gilmer was standing at the windows talking to Mr. Underwood. Bert, the court reporter, was chain-smoking: he sat back with his feet on the table.
But the officers of the court, the ones present—Atticus, Mr. Gilmer, Judge Taylor sound asleep, and Bert, were the only ones whose behavior seemed normal. I had never seen a packed courtroom so still. Sometimes a baby would cry out fretfully, and a child would scurry out, but the grown people sat as if they were in church. In the balcony, the Negroes sat and stood around us with biblical patience.
The old courthouse clock suffered its preliminary strain and struck the hour, eight deafening bongs that shook our bones.
When it bonged eleven times I was past feeling: tired from fighting sleep, I allowed myself a short nap against Reverend Sykes’s comfortable arm and shoulder. I jerked awake and made an honest effort to remain so, by looking down and concentrating on the heads below: there were sixteen bald ones, fourteen men that could pass for redheads, forty heads varying between brown and black, and— I remembered something Jem had once explained to me when he went through a brief period of psychical research: he said if enough people—a stadium full, maybe—were to concentrate on one thing, such as setting a tree afire in the woods, that the tree would ignite of its own accord. I toyed with the idea of asking everyone below to concentrate on setting Tom Robinson free, but thought if they were as tired as I, it wouldn’t work.
Dill was sound asleep, his head on Jem’s shoulder, and Jem was quiet. “Ain’t it a long time? ” I asked him.
“Sure is, Scout,” he said happily.
“Well, from the way you put it, it’d just take five minutes. ”
Jem raised his eyebrows. “There are things you don’t understand,” he said, and I was too weary to argue.
But I must have been reasonably awake, or I would not have received the impression that was creeping into me. It was not unlike one I had last winter, and I shivered, though the night was hot. The feeling grew until the atmosphere in the courtroom was exactly the same as a cold February morning, when the mockingbirds were still, and the carpenters had stopped hammering on Miss Maudie’s new house, and every wood door in the neighborhood was shut as tight as the doors of the Radley Place. A deserted, waiting, empty street, and the courtroom was packed with people. A steaming summer night was no different from a winter morning. Mr. Heck Tate, who had entered the courtroom and was talking to Atticus, might have been wearing his high boots and lumber jacket. Atticus had stopped his tranquil journey and had put his foot onto the bottom rung of a chair; as he listened to what Mr. Tate was saying, he ran his hand slowly up and down his thigh. I expected Mr. Tate to say any minute, “Take him, Mr. Finch. . . ”
But Mr. Tate said, “This court will come to order,” in a voice that rang with authority, and the heads below us jerked up. Mr. Tate left the room and returned with Tom Robinson. He steered Tom to his place beside Atticus, and stood there. Judge Taylor had roused himself to sudden alertness and was sitting up straight, looking at the empty jury box.
What happened after that had a dreamlike quality: in a dream I saw the jury return, moving like underwater swimmers, and Judge Taylor’s voice came from far away and was tiny. I saw something only a lawyer’s child could be expected to see, could be expected to watch for, and it was like watching Atticus walk into the street, raise a rifle to his shoulder and pull the trigger, but watching all the time knowing that the gun was empty.
A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson. The foreman handed a piece of paper to Mr. Tate who handed it to the clerk who handed it to the judge. . .
I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury: “Guilty. . . guilty. . . guilty. . . guilty. . . ” I peeked at Jem: his hands were white from gripping the balcony rail, and his shoulders jerked as if each “guilty” was a separate stab between them.
Judge Taylor was saying something. His gavel was in his fist, but he wasn’t using it. Dimly, I saw Atticus pushing papers from the table into his briefcase. He snapped it shut, went to the court reporter and said something, nodded to Mr. Gilmer, and then went to Tom Robinson and whispered something to him. Atticus put his hand on Tom’s shoulder as he whispered. Atticus took his coat off the back of his chair and pulled it over his shoulder. Then he left the courtroom, but not by his usual exit. He must have wanted to go home the short way, because he walked quickly down the middle aisle toward the south exit. I followed the top of his head as he made his way to the door. He did not look up.
Someone was punching me, but I was reluctant to take my eyes from the people below us, and from the image of Atticus’s lonely walk down the aisle.
“Miss Jean Louise? ”
I looked around. They were standing. All around us and in the balcony on the opposite wall, the Negroes were getting to their feet. Reverend Sykes’s voice was as distant as Judge Taylor’s:
“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin‘. ”
Chapter 22
It was Jem’s turn to cry. His face was streaked with angry tears as we made our way through the cheerful crowd. “It ain’t right,” he muttered, all the way to the corner of the square where we found Atticus waiting. Atticus was standing under the street light looking as though nothing had happened: his vest was buttoned, his collar and tie were neatly in place, his watch-chain glistened, he was his
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impassive self again.
“It ain’t right, Atticus,” said Jem. “No son, it’s not right. ”
We walked home.
Aunt Alexandra was waiting up. She was in her dressing gown, and I could have sworn she had on her corset underneath it. “I’m sorry, brother,” she murmured. Having never heard her call Atticus “brother” before, I stole a glance at Jem, but he was not listening.
He would look up at Atticus, then down at the floor, and I wondered if he thought Atticus somehow responsible for Tom Robinson’s conviction.
“Is he all right? ” Aunty asked, indicating Jem.
“He’ll be so presently,” said Atticus. “It was a little too strong for him. ” Our father sighed. “I’m going to bed,” he said. “If I don’t wake up in the morning, don’t call me. ”
“I didn’t think it wise in the first place to let them—”
“This is their home, sister,” said Atticus. “We’ve made it this way for them, they might as well learn to cope with it. ”
“But they don’t have to go to the courthouse and wallow in it—” “It’s just as much Maycomb County as missionary teas. ”
“Atticus—” Aunt Alexandra’s eyes were anxious. “You are the last person I thought would turn bitter over this. ”
“I’m not bitter, just tired. I’m going to bed. ” “Atticus—” said Jem bleakly.
He turned in the doorway. “What, son? ” “How could they do it, how could they? ”
“I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it—seems that only children weep. Good night. ”
But things are always better in the morning. Atticus rose at his usual ungodly hour and was in the livingroom behind the Mobile Register when we stumbled in.
Jem’s morning face posed the question his sleepy lips struggled to ask.
“It’s not time to worry yet,” Atticus reassured him, as we went to the diningroom. “We’re not through yet. There’ll be an appeal, you can count on that. Gracious alive, Cal, what’s all this? ” He was staring at his breakfast plate.
Calpurnia said, “Tom Robinson’s daddy sent you along this chicken this morning. I fixed it. ”
“You tell him I’m proud to get it—bet they don’t have chicken for breakfast at the White House. What are these? ”
“Rolls,” said Calpurnia. “Estelle down at the hotel sent ‘em. ”
Atticus looked up at her, puzzled, and she said, “You better step out here and see what’s in the kitchen, Mr. Finch. ”
We followed him. The kitchen table was loaded with enough food to bury the family: hunks of salt pork, tomatoes, beans, even scuppernongs. Atticus grinned when he found a jar of pickled pigs’ knuckles. “Reckon Aunty’ll let me eat these in the diningroom? ”
Calpurnia said, “This was all ‘round the back steps when I got here this morning. They—they ’preciate what you did, Mr. Finch. They—they aren’t oversteppin‘ themselves, are they? ”
Atticus’s eyes filled with tears. He did not speak for a moment. “Tell them I’m very grateful,” he said. “Tell them—tell them they must never do this again. Times are too hard. . . ”
He left the kitchen, went in the diningroom and excused himself to Aunt Alexandra, put on his hat and went to town.
We heard Dill’s step in the hall, so Calpurnia left Atticus’s uneaten breakfast on the table. Between rabbit-bites Dill told us of Miss Rachel’s reaction to last night, which was: if a man like Atticus Finch wants to butt his head against a stone wall it’s his head.
“I’da got her told,” growled Dill, gnawing a chicken leg, “but she didn’t look much like tellin‘ this morning. Said she was up half the night wonderin’ where I was, said she’da had the sheriff after me but he was at the hearing. ”
“Dill, you’ve got to stop goin‘ off without tellin’ her,” said Jem. “It just
aggravates her. ”
Dill sighed patiently. “I told her till I was blue in the face where I was goin‘— she’s just seein’ too many snakes in the closet. Bet that woman drinks a pint for breakfast every morning—know she drinks two glasses full. Seen her. ”
“Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra. “It’s not becoming to a child. It’s —cynical. ”
“I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin‘ the truth’s not cynical, is it? ” “The way you tell it, it is. ”
Jem’s eyes flashed at her, but he said to Dill, “Let’s go. You can take that runner with you. ”
When we went to the front porch, Miss Stephanie Crawford was busy telling it to Miss Maudie Atkinson and Mr. Avery. They looked around at us and went on talking. Jem made a feral noise in his throat. I wished for a weapon.
“I hate grown folks lookin‘ at you,” said Dill. “Makes you feel like you’ve done something. ”
Miss Maudie yelled for Jem Finch to come there.
Jem groaned and heaved himself up from the swing. “We’ll go with you,” Dill said.
Miss Stephanie’s nose quivered with curiosity. She wanted to know who all gave us permission to go to court—she didn’t see us but it was all over town this morning that we were in the Colored balcony. Did Atticus put us up there as a sort of—? Wasn’t it right close up there with all those—? Did Scout understand all the —? Didn’t it make us mad to see our daddy beat?
“Hush, Stephanie. ” Miss Maudie’s diction was deadly. “I’ve not got all the morning to pass on the porch—Jem Finch, I called to find out if you and your colleagues can eat some cake. Got up at five to make it, so you better say yes. Excuse us, Stephanie. Good morning, Mr. Avery. ”
There was a big cake and two little ones on Miss Maudie’s kitchen table. There should have been three little ones. It was not like Miss Maudie to forget Dill, and we must have shown it. But we understood when she cut from the big cake and gave the slice to Jem.
As we ate, we sensed that this was Miss Maudie’s way of saying that as far as she was concerned, nothing had changed. She sat quietly in a kitchen chair, watching us.
Suddenly she spoke: “Don’t fret, Jem. Things are never as bad as they seem. ”
Indoors, when Miss Maudie wanted to say something lengthy she spread her fingers on her knees and settled her bridgework. This she did, and we waited.
“I simply want to tell you that there are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them. ”
“Oh,” said Jem. “Well. ”
“Don’t you oh well me, sir,” Miss Maudie replied, recognizing Jem’s fatalistic noises, “you are not old enough to appreciate what I said. ”
Jem was staring at his half-eaten cake. “It’s like bein‘ a caterpillar in a cocoon, that’s what it is,” he said. “Like somethin’ asleep wrapped up in a warm place. I always thought Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that’s what they seemed like. ”
“We’re the safest folks in the world,” said Miss Maudie. “We’re so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus to go for us. ”
Jem grinned ruefully. “Wish the rest of the county thought that. ” “You’d be surprised how many of us do. ”
“Who? ” Jem’s voice rose. “Who in this town did one thing to help Tom Robinson, just who? ”
“His colored friends for one thing, and people like us. People like Judge Taylor. People like Mr. Heck Tate. Stop eating and start thinking, Jem. Did it ever strike you that Judge Taylor naming Atticus to defend that boy was no accident? That Judge Taylor might have had his reasons for naming him? ”
This was a thought. Court-appointed defenses were usually given to Maxwell Green, Maycomb’s latest addition to the bar, who needed the experience. Maxwell Green should have had Tom Robinson’s case.
“You think about that,” Miss Maudie was saying. “It was no accident. I was sittin‘ there on the porch last night, waiting. I waited and waited to see you all come
down the sidewalk, and as I waited I thought, Atticus Finch won’t win, he can’t win, but he’s the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that. And I thought to myself, well, we’re making a step—it’s just a baby- step, but it’s a step. ”
“‘t’s all right to talk like that—can’t any Christian judges an’ lawyers make up for heathen juries,” Jem muttered. “Soon’s I get grown—”
“That’s something you’ll have to take up with your father,” Miss Maudie said.
We went down Miss Maudie’s cool new steps into the sunshine and found Mr. Avery and Miss Stephanie Crawford still at it. They had moved down the sidewalk and were standing in front of Miss Stephanie’s house. Miss Rachel was walking toward them.
“I think I’ll be a clown when I get grown,” said Dill. Jem and I stopped in our tracks.
“Yes sir, a clown,” he said. “There ain’t one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I’m gonna join the circus and laugh my head off. ”
“You got it backwards, Dill,” said Jem. “Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them. ”
“Well I’m gonna be a new kind of clown. I’m gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks. Just looka yonder,” he pointed. “Every one of ‘em oughta be ridin’ broomsticks. Aunt Rachel already does. ”
Miss Stephanie and Miss Rachel were waving wildly at us, in a way that did not give the lie to Dill’s observation.
“Oh gosh,” breathed Jem. “I reckon it’d be ugly not to see ‘em. ”
Something was wrong. Mr. Avery was red in the face from a sneezing spell and nearly blew us off the sidewalk when we came up. Miss Stephanie was trembling with excitement, and Miss Rachel caught Dill’s shoulder. “You get on in the back yard and stay there,” she said. “There’s danger a’comin‘. ”
“‘s matter? ” I asked.
“Ain’t you heard yet? It’s all over town—”
At that moment Aunt Alexandra came to the door and called us, but she was too
late. It was Miss Stephanie’s pleasure to tell us: this morning Mr. Bob Ewell stopped Atticus on the post office corner, spat in his face, and told him he’d get him if it took the rest of his life.
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Chapter 23
“I wish Bob Ewell wouldn’t chew tobacco,” was all Atticus said about it.
According to Miss Stephanie Crawford, however, Atticus was leaving the post office when Mr. Ewell approached him, cursed him, spat on him, and threatened to kill him. Miss Stephanie (who, by the time she had told it twice was there and had seen it all—passing by from the Jitney Jungle, she was)—Miss Stephanie said Atticus didn’t bat an eye, just took out his handkerchief and wiped his face and stood there and let Mr. Ewell call him names wild horses could not bring her to repeat. Mr. Ewell was a veteran of an obscure war; that plus Atticus’s peaceful reaction probably prompted him to inquire, “Too proud to fight, you nigger-lovin‘ bastard? ” Miss Stephanie said Atticus said, “No, too old,” put his hands in his pockets and strolled on. Miss Stephanie said you had to hand it to Atticus Finch, he could be right dry sometimes.
Jem and I didn’t think it entertaining.
“After all, though,” I said, “he was the deadest shot in the county one time. He could—”
“You know he wouldn’t carry a gun, Scout. He ain’t even got one—” said Jem. “You know he didn’t even have one down at the jail that night. He told me havin‘ a gun around’s an invitation to somebody to shoot you. ”
“This is different,” I said. “We can ask him to borrow one. ”
We did, and he said, “Nonsense. ”
Dill was of the opinion that an appeal to Atticus’s better nature might work: after
all, we would starve if Mr. Ewell killed him, besides be raised exclusively by Aunt Alexandra, and we all knew the first thing she’d do before Atticus was under the ground good would be to fire Calpurnia. Jem said it might work if I cried and flung a fit, being young and a girl. That didn’t work either. But when he noticed us dragging around the neighborhood, not eating, taking little interest in our normal pursuits, Atticus discovered how deeply frightened we were. He tempted Jem with a new football magazine one night; when he saw Jem flip the pages and toss it aside, he said, “What’s bothering you, son? ”
Jem came to the point: “Mr. Ewell. ” “What has happened? ”
“Nothing’s happened. We’re scared for you, and we think you oughta do something about him. ”
Atticus smiled wryly. “Do what? Put him under a peace bond?