seemed to be expected of us, and the class received these impressionistic
revelations in silence. I was bored, so I began a letter to Dill. Miss Caroline
caught me writing and told me to tell my father to stop teaching me. “Besides,”
she said. “We don’t write in the first grade, we print. You won’t learn to write
until you’re in the third grade.”
Calpurnia was to blame for this. It kept me from driving her crazy on rainy days, I
guess. She would set me a writing task by scrawling the alphabet firmly across the
top of a tablet, then copying out a chapter of the Bible beneath. If I reproduced
her penmanship satisfactorily, she rewarded me with an open-faced sandwich of
bread and butter and sugar. In Calpurnia’s teaching, there was no sentimentality: I
seldom pleased her and she seldom rewarded me.
“Everybody who goes home to lunch hold up your hands,” said Miss Caroline,
breaking into my new grudge against Calpurnia.
The town children did so, and she looked us over.
“Everybody who brings his lunch put it on top of his desk.”
Molasses buckets appeared from nowhere, and the ceiling danced with metallic
light. Miss Caroline walked up and down the rows peering and poking into lunch
containers, nodding if the contents pleased her, frowning a little at others. She
stopped at Walter Cunningham’s desk. “Where’s yours?” she asked.
Walter Cunningham’s face told everybody in the first grade he had hookworms.
His absence of shoes told us how he got them. People caught hookworms going
barefooted in barnyards and hog wallows. If Walter had owned any shoes he
would have worn them the first day of school and then discarded them until midwinter. He did have on a clean shirt and neatly mended overalls.
“Did you forget your lunch this morning?” asked Miss Caroline.
Walter looked straight ahead. I saw a muscle jump in his skinny jaw.
“Did you forget it this morning?” asked Miss Caroline. Walter’s jaw twitched
again.
“Yeb’m,” he finally mumbled.
Miss Caroline went to her desk and opened her purse. “Here’s a quarter,” she said
to Walter. “Go and eat downtown today. You can pay me back tomorrow.”Walter shook his head. “Nome thank you ma’am,” he drawled softly.
Impatience crept into Miss Caroline’s voice: “Here Walter, come get it.”
Walter shook his head again.
When Walter shook his head a third time someone whispered, “Go on and tell
her, Scout.”
I turned around and saw most of the town people and the entire bus delegation
looking at me. Miss Caroline and I had conferred twice already, and they were
looking at me in the innocent assurance that familiarity breeds understanding.
I rose graciously on Walter’s behalf: “Ah—Miss Caroline?”
“What is it, Jean Louise?”
“Miss Caroline, he’s a Cunningham.”
I sat back down.
“What, Jean Louise?”
I thought I had made things sufficiently clear. It was clear enough to the rest of
us: Walter Cunningham was sitting there lying his head off. He didn’t forget his
lunch, he didn’t have any. He had none today nor would he have any tomorrow or
the next day. He had probably never seen three quarters together at the same time
in his life.
I tried again: “Walter’s one of the Cunninghams, Miss Caroline.”
“I beg your pardon, Jean Louise?”
“That’s okay, ma’am, you’ll get to know all the county folks after a while. The
Cunninghams never took anything they can’t pay back—no church baskets and no
scrip stamps. They never took anything off of anybody, they get along on what
they have. They don’t have much, but they get along on it.”
My special knowledge of the Cunningham tribe—one branch, that is—was gained
from events of last winter. Walter’s father was one of Atticus’s clients. After a
dreary conversation in our livingroom one night about his entailment, before Mr.
Cunningham left he said, “Mr. Finch, I don’t know when I’ll ever be able to pay
you.”
“Let that be the least of your worries, Walter,” Atticus said.
When I asked Jem what entailment was, and Jem described it as a condition of
having your tail in a crack, I asked Atticus if Mr. Cunningham would ever pay us.
“Not in money,” Atticus said, “but before the year’s out I’ll have been paid. You
watch.”
We watched. One morning Jem and I found a load of stovewood in the back yard.
Later, a sack of hickory nuts appeared on the back steps. With Christmas came a
crate of smilax and holly. That spring when we found a crokersack full of turnip
greens, Atticus said Mr. Cunningham had more than paid him.
“Why does he pay you like that?” I asked.
“Because that’s the only way he can pay me. He has no money.”
“Are we poor, Atticus?”
Atticus nodded. “We are indeed.”
Jem’s nose wrinkled. “Are we as poor as the Cunninghams?”
“Not exactly. The Cunninghams are country folks, farmers, and the crash hit them
hardest.”
Atticus said professional people were poor because the farmers were poor. As
Maycomb County was farm country, nickels and dimes were hard to come by for
doctors and dentists and lawyers. Entailment was only a part of Mr.
Cunningham’s vexations. The acres not entailed were mortgaged to the hilt, and
the little cash he made went to interest. If he held his mouth right, Mr.
Cunningham could get a WPA job, but his land would go to ruin if he left it, and
he was willing to go hungry to keep his land and vote as he pleased. Mr.
Cunningham, said Atticus, came from a set breed of men.
As the Cunninghams had no money to pay a lawyer, they simply paid us with
what they had. “Did you know,” said Atticus, “that Dr. Reynolds works the same
way? He charges some folks a bushel of potatoes for delivery of a baby. Miss
Scout, if you give me your attention I’ll tell you what entailment is. Jem’s
definitions are very nearly accurate sometimes.”
If I could have explained these things to Miss Caroline, I would have saved
myself some inconvenience and Miss Caroline subsequent mortification, but it
was beyond my ability to explain things as well as Atticus, so I said, “You’re shamin‘ him, Miss Caroline. Walter hasn’t got a quarter at home to bring you, and
you can’t use any stovewood.”
Miss Caroline stood stock still, then grabbed me by the collar and hauled me back
to her desk. “Jean Louise, I’ve had about enough of you this morning,” she said.
“You’re starting off on the wrong foot in every way, my dear. Hold out your
hand.”
I thought she was going to spit in it, which was the only reason anybody in
Maycomb held out his hand: it was a time-honored method of sealing oral
contracts. Wondering what bargain we had made, I turned to the class for an
answer, but the class looked back at me in puzzlement. Miss Caroline picked up
her ruler, gave me half a dozen quick little pats, then told me to stand in the
corner. A storm of laughter broke loose when it finally occurred to the class that
Miss Caroline had whipped me.
When Miss Caroline threatened it with a similar fate the first grade exploded
again, becoming cold sober only when the shadow of Miss Blount fell over them.
Miss Blount, a native Maycombian as yet uninitiated in the mysteries of the
Decimal System, appeared at the door hands on hips and announced: “If I hear
another sound from this room I’ll burn up everybody in it. Miss Caroline, the
sixth grade cannot concentrate on the pyramids for all this racket!”
My sojourn in the corner was a short one. Saved by the bell, Miss Caroline
watched the class file out for lunch. As I was the last to leave, I saw her sink
down into her chair and bury her head in her arms. Had her conduct been more
friendly toward me, I would have felt sorry for her. She was a pretty little thing.