To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee (CHAPTER 27)

Chapter 27
Things did settle down, after a fashion, as Atticus said they would. By the middle
of October, 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 a way they did.
The first thing was that Mr. Bob Ewell acquired and lost a job in a matter of days
and probably made himself unique in the annals of the nineteen-thirties: he was
the only man I ever heard of who was fired from the WPA for laziness. I suppose his brief burst of fame brought on a briefer burst of industry, but his job lasted
only as long as his notoriety: Mr. Ewell found himself as forgotten as Tom
Robinson. Thereafter, he resumed his regular weekly appearances at the welfare
office for his check, and received it with no grace amid obscure mutterings that
the bastards who thought they ran this town wouldn’t permit an honest man to
make a living. Ruth Jones, the welfare lady, said Mr. Ewell openly accused
Atticus of getting his job. She was upset enough to walk down to Atticus’s office
and tell him about it. Atticus told Miss Ruth not to fret, that if Bob 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-night
churchgoer: Mrs. Taylor was. Judge Taylor savored his Sunday night hour alone
in his big house, and churchtime found him holed up in his study reading the
writings of Bob Taylor (no kin, but the judge would have been proud to claim it).
One Sunday night, lost in fruity metaphors and florid diction, Judge Taylor’s
attention was wrenched from the page by an irritating scratching noise. “Hush,”
he said to Ann Taylor, his fat nondescript dog. Then he realized he was speaking
to an empty room; the scratching noise was coming from the rear of the house.
Judge Taylor clumped to the back porch to let Ann out and found the screen door
swinging open. A shadow on the corner of the house caught his eye, and that was
all he saw of his visitor. Mrs. Taylor came home from church to find her husband
in his chair, lost in the writings of Bob Taylor, with a shotgun across his lap.
The third thing happened to Helen Robinson, Tom’s widow. If Mr. Ewell was as
forgotten as Tom Robinson, Tom Robinson was as forgotten as Boo Radley. But
Tom was 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. I never knew who took care of her children while Helen
was away. Calpurnia said it was hard on Helen, because she had to walk nearly a
mile out of her way to avoid the Ewells, who, according to Helen, “chunked at
her” the first time she tried to use the public road. Mr. Link Deas eventually
received the impression that Helen was coming to work each morning from the
wrong direction, and dragged the reason out of her. “Just let it be, Mr. Link,
please suh,” Helen begged. “The hell I will,” said Mr. Link. He told her to come
by his store that afternoon before she left. She did, and Mr. Link closed his store, put his hat firmly on his head, and walked Helen home. He walked her the short
way, 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 have you 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 same distance 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. Thoroughly frightened, 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’re leanin’ on it an‘ I can’t afford fresh paint for it. Second thing you can do
is stay away from 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’t enough to keep you locked up awhile, I’ll get you in on the Ladies’ Law, so
get outa my sight! 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
these events. “That man seems to have a permanent running grudge against
everybody connected with that case. I know how that kind are about paying off
grudges, but I don’t understand 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 very few people in Maycomb really believed his and Mayella’s yarns. He
thought he’d be a hero, but all he got for his pain was… was, okay, we’ll convict
this Negro but get back to your 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
John was home or he wouldn’t‘ve tried. Only lights John shows on Sunday nights
are on the front 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 time Ewell was on the stand I couldn’t dare look at John and keep a
straight face. John looked at him as if he were a three-legged chicken or a square
egg. Don’t tell me judges don’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 our classmates mercifully let us forget our father’s eccentricities. Cecil
Jacobs asked me one time if Atticus was a Radical. When I asked Atticus, Atticus
was so amused I was rather annoyed, but he said he wasn’t laughing at me. He
said, “You tell Cecil I’m about as radical as Cotton Tom Heflin.”
Aunt Alexandra was thriving. Miss Maudie must have silenced the whole
missionary society at one blow, for Aunty again ruled that roost. Her refreshments
grew even more delicious. 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. A child had as many fathers as there were men in the
community, as many mothers as there were women. J. Grimes Everett was doing
his utmost to change this state of affairs, 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 and automobiles the stickers that said NRA—WE DO OUR PART. I
asked Atticus why, and he said it was because the National Recovery Act was
dead. I asked who killed it: he said 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 unorganizedset them in motion three times, he finally guessed the truth. By noontime that day,
there was not a barefooted child to be seen in Maycomb and nobody took off his
shoes until the hounds were returned.
So the Maycomb ladies said things would be different this year. The high-school
auditorium would be open, there would be a pageant for the grown-ups; applebobbing, taffy-pulling, pinning the tail on the donkey for the children. There
would also be a prize of 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
the thing. Jem considered himself too old for Halloween anyway; he said he
wouldn’t be caught anywhere near the high school at something like that. Oh
well, I thought, Atticus would 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 some of the children were costumed to represent the
county’s agricultural products: Cecil Jacobs would be dressed up to look like a
cow; Agnes Boone would make a lovely butterbean, 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
from stage 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 would sing, “Maycomb County, Maycomb County, we will aye be true
to thee,” as the grand finale, 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 as much imagination as Mrs. Merriweather. Mrs. Crenshaw took some
chicken wire and bent it into the shape of a cured ham. This she covered with
brown cloth, and painted it to resemble the original. I could duck under and
someone would pull the contraption down over my head. It came almost to my
knees. Mrs. Crenshaw thoughtfully left two peepholes 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 I couldn’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
watch me perform, but I was disappointed. Atticus said as tactfully as he could
that he just didn’t think he could stand a pageant tonight, he was all in. He had
been in Montgomery for a week and had come home late that afternoon. He
thought Jem might escort me if I asked him.
Aunt Alexandra said she just had to get to bed early, she’d been decorating the
stage all afternoon and was worn out—she stopped short in the middle of her
sentence. She closed 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
away from her whatever it was that gave her a pinprick of apprehension, and
suggested that I give 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 would have 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
wanted to go across the street to show Miss Maudie, but Jem said she’d probably
be at the pageant anyway.
After that, it didn’t matter whether they went or not. Jem said he would take me.
Thus began our longest journey together.