Chapter 27: Chapter 27
Things did settle down, after a fashion, as Atticus said they would. By the middle ofOctober, only two small things out of the ordinary happened to two Maycomb citizens.
No, there were three things, and they did not directly concern us—the Finches—but in away they did.
The first thing was that Mr. Bob Ewell acquired and lost a job in a matter of days andprobably made himself unique in the annals of the nineteen-thirties: he was the onlyman I ever heard of who was fired from the WPA for laziness. I suppose his brief burstof fame brought on a briefer burst of industry, but his job lasted only as long as hisnotoriety: Mr. Ewell found himself as forgotten as Tom Robinson. Thereafter, heresumed his regular weekly appearances at the welfare office for his check, andreceived it with no grace amid obscure mutterings that the bastards who thought theyran this town wouldn't permit an honest man to make a living. Ruth Jones, the welfarelady, said Mr. Ewell openly accused Atticus of getting his job. She was upset enough towalk down to Atticus's office and tell him about it. Atticus told Miss Ruth not to fret, that ifBob Ewell wanted to discuss Atticus's "getting" his job, he knew the way to the office.
The second thing happened to Judge Taylor. Judge Taylor was not a Sunday-nightchurchgoer: Mrs. Taylor was. Judge Taylor savored his Sunday night hour alone in hisbig house, and churchtime found him holed up in his study reading the writings of BobTaylor (no kin, but the judge would have been proud to claim it). One Sunday night, lostin fruity metaphors and florid diction, Judge Taylor's attention was wrenched from thepage by an irritating scratching noise. "Hush," he said to Ann Taylor, his fat nondescriptdog. Then he realized he was speaking to an empty room; the scratching noise wascoming from the rear of the house. Judge Taylor clumped to the back porch to let Annout and found the screen door swinging open. A shadow on the corner of the housecaught his eye, and that was all he saw of his visitor. Mrs. Taylor came home fromchurch to find her husband in his chair, lost in the writings of Bob Taylor, with a shotgunacross his lap.
The third thing happened to Helen Robinson, Tom's widow. If Mr. Ewell was asforgotten as Tom Robinson, Tom Robinson was as forgotten as Boo Radley. But Tomwas not forgotten by his employer, Mr. Link Deas. Mr. Link Deas made a job for Helen.
He didn't really need her, but he said he felt right bad about the way things turned out. Inever knew who took care of her children while Helen was away. Calpurnia said it washard on Helen, because she had to walk nearly a mile out of her way to avoid theEwells, who, according to Helen, "chunked at her" the first time she tried to use thepublic road. Mr. Link Deas eventually received the impression that Helen was coming towork each morning from the wrong direction, and dragged the reason out of her. "Justlet it be, Mr. Link, please suh," Helen begged. "The hell I will," said Mr. Link. He told herto come by his store that afternoon before she left. She did, and Mr. Link closed hisstore, put his hat firmly on his head, and walked Helen home. He walked her the shortway, by the Ewells'. On his way back, Mr. Link stopped at the crazy gate.
"Ewell?" he called. "I say Ewell!"
The windows, normally packed with children, were empty.
"I know every last one of you's in there a-layin' on the floor! Now hear me, Bob Ewell:
if I hear one more peep outa my girl Helen about not bein' able to walk this road I'll haveyou in jail before sundown!" Mr. Link spat in the dust and walked home.
Helen went to work next morning and used the public road. Nobody chunked at her,but when she was a few yards beyond the Ewell house, she looked around and saw Mr.
Ewell walking behind her. She turned and walked on, and Mr. Ewell kept the samedistance behind her until she reached Mr. Link Deas's house. All the way to the house,Helen said, she heard a soft voice behind her, crooning foul words. Thoroughlyfrightened, she telephoned Mr. Link at his store, which was not too far from his house.
As Mr. Link came out of his store he saw Mr. Ewell leaning on the fence. Mr. Ewell said,"Don't you look at me, Link Deas, like I was dirt. I ain't jumped your—"
"First thing you can do, Ewell, is get your stinkin' carcass off my property. You'releanin' on it an' I can't afford fresh paint for it. Second thing you can do is stay awayfrom my cook or I'll have you up for assault—"
"I ain't touched her, Link Deas, and ain't about to go with no nigger!"
"You don't have to touch her, all you have to do is make her afraid, an' if assault ain'tenough to keep you locked up awhile, I'll get you in on the Ladies' Law, so get outa mysight! If you don't think I mean it, just bother that girl again!"
Mr. Ewell evidently thought he meant it, for Helen reported no further trouble.
"I don't like it, Atticus, I don't like it at all," was Aunt Alexandra's assessment of theseevents. "That man seems to have a permanent running grudge against everybodyconnected with that case. I know how that kind are about paying off grudges, but I don'tunderstand why he should harbor one—he had his way in court, didn't he?"
"I think I understand," said Atticus. "It might be because he knows in his heart that veryfew people in Maycomb really believed his and Mayella's yarns. He thought he'd be ahero, but all he got for his pain was… was, okay, we'll convict this Negro but get back toyour dump. He's had his fling with about everybody now, so he ought to be satisfied.
He'll settle down when the weather changes."
"But why should he try to burgle John Taylor's house? He obviously didn't know Johnwas home or he wouldn't've tried. Only lights John shows on Sunday nights are on thefront porch and back in his den…"
"You don't know if Bob Ewell cut that screen, you don't know who did it," said Atticus.
"But I can guess. I proved him a liar but John made him look like a fool. All the timeEwell was on the stand I couldn't dare look at John and keep a straight face. Johnlooked at him as if he were a three-legged chicken or a square egg. Don't tell me judgesdon't try to prejudice juries," Atticus chuckled.
By the end of October, our lives had become the familiar routine of school, play, study.
Jem seemed to have put out of his mind whatever it was he wanted to forget, and ourclassmates mercifully let us forget our father's eccentricities. Cecil Jacobs asked meone time if Atticus was a Radical. When I asked Atticus, Atticus was so amused I wasrather annoyed, but he said he wasn't laughing at me. He said, "You tell Cecil I'm aboutas radical as Cotton Tom Heflin."
Aunt Alexandra was thriving. Miss Maudie must have silenced the whole missionarysociety at one blow, for Aunty again ruled that roost. Her refreshments grew even moredelicious. I learned more about the poor Mrunas' social life from listening to Mrs.
Merriweather: they had so little sense of family that the whole tribe was one big family. Achild had as many fathers as there were men in the community, as many mothers asthere were women. J. Grimes Everett was doing his utmost to change this state ofaffairs, and desperately needed our prayers.
Maycomb was itself again. Precisely the same as last year and the year before that,with only two minor changes. Firstly, people had removed from their store windows andautomobiles the stickers that said NRA—WE DO OUR PART. I asked Atticus why, andhe said it was because the National Recovery Act was dead. I asked who killed it: hesaid nine old men.
The second change in Maycomb since last year was not one of national significance.
Until then, Halloween in Maycomb was a completely unorganized affair. Each child didwhat he wanted to do, with assistance from other children if there was anything to bemoved, such as placing a light buggy on top of the livery stable. But parents thoughtthings went too far last year, when the peace of Miss Tutti and Miss Frutti wasshattered.
Misses Tutti and Frutti Barber were maiden ladies, sisters, who lived together in theonly Maycomb residence boasting a cellar. The Barber ladies were rumored to beRepublicans, having migrated from Clanton, Alabama, in 1911. Their ways were strangeto us, and why they wanted a cellar nobody knew, but they wanted one and they dugone, and they spent the rest of their lives chasing generations of children out of it.
Misses Tutti and Frutti (their names were Sarah and Frances), aside from theirYankee ways, were both deaf. Miss Tutti denied it and lived in a world of silence, butMiss Frutti, not about to miss anything, employed an ear trumpet so enormous that Jemdeclared it was a loudspeaker from one of those dog Victrolas.
With these facts in mind and Halloween at hand, some wicked children had waiteduntil the Misses Barber were thoroughly asleep, slipped into their livingroom (nobody butthe Radleys locked up at night), stealthily made away with every stick of furnituretherein, and hid it in the cellar. I deny having taken part in such a thing.
"I heard 'em!" was the cry that awoke the Misses Barber's neighbors at dawn nextmorning. "Heard 'em drive a truck up to the door! Stomped around like horses. They'rein New Orleans by now!"
Miss Tutti was sure those traveling fur sellers who came through town two days agohad purloined their furniture. "Da-rk they were," she said. "Syrians."
Mr. Heck Tate was summoned. He surveyed the area and said he thought it was alocal job. Miss Frutti said she'd know a Maycomb voice anywhere, and there were noMaycomb voices in that parlor last night—rolling their r's all over her premises, theywere. Nothing less than the bloodhounds must be used to locate their furniture, MissTutti insisted, so Mr. Tate was obliged to go ten miles out the road, round up the countyhounds, and put them on the trail.
Mr. Tate started them off at the Misses Barber's front steps, but all they did was runaround to the back of the house and howl at the cellar door. When Mr. Tate set them inmotion three times, he finally guessed the truth. By noontime that day, there was not abarefooted child to be seen in Maycomb and nobody took off his shoes until the houndswere returned.
So the Maycomb ladies said things would be different this year. The high-schoolauditorium would be open, there would be a pageant for the grown-ups; apple-bobbing,taffy-pulling, pinning the tail on the donkey for the children. There would also be a prizeof twenty-five cents for the best Halloween costume, created by the wearer.
Jem and I both groaned. Not that we'd ever done anything, it was the principle of thething. Jem considered himself too old for Halloween anyway; he said he wouldn't becaught anywhere near the high school at something like that. Oh well, I thought, Atticuswould take me.
I soon learned, however, that my services would be required on stage that evening.
Mrs. Grace Merriweather had composed an original pageant entitled Maycomb County:
Ad Astra Per Aspera, and I was to be a ham. She thought it would be adorable if someof the children were costumed to represent the county's agricultural products: CecilJacobs would be dressed up to look like a cow; Agnes Boone would make a lovelybutterbean, another child would be a peanut, and on down the line until Mrs.
Merriweather's imagination and the supply of children were exhausted.
Our only duties, as far as I could gather from our two rehearsals, were to enter fromstage left as Mrs. Merriweather (not only the author, but the narrator) identified us.
When she called out, "Pork," that was my cue. Then the assembled company wouldsing, "Maycomb County, Maycomb County, we will aye be true to thee," as the grandfinale, and Mrs. Merriweather would mount the stage with the state flag.
My costume was not much of a problem. Mrs. Crenshaw, the local seamstress, had asmuch imagination as Mrs. Merriweather. Mrs. Crenshaw took some chicken wire andbent it into the shape of a cured ham. This she covered with brown cloth, and painted itto resemble the original. I could duck under and someone would pull the contraptiondown over my head. It came almost to my knees. Mrs. Crenshaw thoughtfully left twopeepholes for me. She did a fine job. Jem said I looked exactly like a ham with legs.
There were several discomforts, though: it was hot, it was a close fit; if my nose itched Icouldn't scratch, and once inside I could not get out of it alone.
When Halloween came, I assumed that the whole family would be present to watchme perform, but I was disappointed. Atticus said as tactfully as he could that he justdidn't think he could stand a pageant tonight, he was all in. He had been in Montgomeryfor a week and had come home late that afternoon. He thought Jem might escort me if Iasked him.
Aunt Alexandra said she just had to get to bed early, she'd been decorating the stageall afternoon and was worn out—she stopped short in the middle of her sentence. Sheclosed her mouth, then opened it to say something, but no words came.
"'s matter, Aunty?" I asked.
"Oh nothing, nothing," she said, "somebody just walked over my grave." She put awayfrom her whatever it was that gave her a pinprick of apprehension, and suggested that Igive the family a preview in the livingroom. So Jem squeezed me into my costume,stood at the livingroom door, called out "Po-ork," exactly as Mrs. Merriweather wouldhave done, and I marched in. Atticus and Aunt Alexandra were delighted.
I repeated my part for Calpurnia in the kitchen and she said I was wonderful. I wantedto go across the street to show Miss Maudie, but Jem said she'd probably be at thepageant anyway.
After that, it didn't matter whether they went or not. Jem said he would take me. Thusbegan our longest journey together.
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