Go Set a Watchman (Page 42)

“Stop woolgathering and answer me!”

Dr. Finch stood up, leaned on the table, and looked at her. The lines from his nose sprang to his mouth and made a harsh trapezoid. His eyes blazed, but his voice was still quiet:

“Jean Louise, when a man’s looking down the double barrel of a shotgun, he picks up the first weapon he can find to defend himself, be it a stone or a stick of stovewood or a citizens’ council.”

“That is no answer!”

Dr. Finch shut his eyes, opened them, and looked down at the table.

“You’ve been giving me some kind of elaborate runaround, Uncle Jack, and I’ve never known you to do it before. You’ve always given me a straight answer to anything I ever asked you. Why won’t you now?”

“Because I cannot. It is neither within my power nor my province to do so.”

“I’ve never heard you talk like this.”

Dr. Finch opened his mouth and clamped it shut again. He took her by the arm, led her into the next room, and stopped in front of the gilt-framed mirror.

“Look at you,” he said.

She looked.

“What do you see?”

“Myself, and you.” She turned toward her uncle’s reflection. “You know, Uncle Jack, you’re handsome in a horrible sort of way.”

She saw the last hundred years possess her uncle for an instant. He made a cross between a bow and a nod, said, “That’s kind of you, ma’am,” stood behind her, and gripped her shoulders. “Look at you,” he said. “I can only tell you this much. Look at your eyes. Look at your nose. Look at your chin. What do you see?”

“I see myself.”

“I see two people.”

“You mean the tomboy and the woman?”

She saw Dr. Finch’s reflection shake its head. “No-o, child. That’s there all right, but it’s not what I mean.”

“Uncle Jack, I don’t know why you elect to disappear into the mist….”

Dr. Finch scratched his head and a tuft of gray hair stood up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Go ahead. Go ahead and do what you’re going to do. I can’t stop you and I mustn’t stop you, Childe Roland. But it’s such a messy, risky thing. Such a bloody business—”

“Uncle Jack, sweetie, you’re not with us.”

Dr. Finch faced her and held her at arm’s length. “Jean Louise, I want you to listen carefully. What we’ve talked about today—I want to tell you something and see if you can hook it all together. It’s this: what was incidental to the issue in our War Between the States is incidental to the issue in the war we’re in now, and is incidental to the issue in your own private war. Now think it over and tell me what you think I mean.”

Dr. Finch waited.

“You sound like one of the Minor Prophets,” she said.

“I thought so. Very well, now listen again: when you can’t stand it any longer, when your heart is in two, you must come to me. Do you understand? You must come to me. Promise me.” He shook her. “Promise me.”

“Yes sir, I promise, but—”

“Now scat,” said her uncle. “Go off somewhere and play post office with Hank. I’ve got better things to do—”

“Than what?”

“None of your business. Git.”

When Jean Louise went down the steps, she did not see Dr. Finch bite his under lip, go to his kitchen, and tug Rose Aylmer’s fur, or return to his study with his hands in his pockets and walk slowly back and forth across the room until, finally, he picked up the telephone.

PART VI

15

MAD, MAD, MAD as a hatter. Well, that’s the way of all Finches. Difference between Uncle Jack and the rest of ’em, though, is he knows he’s crazy.

She was sitting at a table behind Mr. Cunningham’s ice cream shop, eating from a wax-paper container. Mr. Cunningham, a man of uncompromising rectitude, had given her a pint free of charge for having guessed his name yesterday, one of the tiny things she adored about Maycomb: people remembered their promises.

What was he driving at? Promise me—incidental to the issue—Anglo-Saxon—dirty word—Childe Roland. I hope he doesn’t lose his sense of propriety or they will have to shut him up. He’s so far out of this century he can’t go to the bathroom, he goes to the water closet. But mad or not, he’s the only one of ’em who hasn’t done something or said something—

Why did I come back here? Just to rub it in, I suppose. Just to look at the gravel in the back yard where the trees were, where the carhouse was, and wonder if it was all a dream. Jem parked his fishing car over there, we dug earthworms by the back fence, I planted a bamboo shoot one time and we fought it for twenty years. Mr. Cunningham must have salted the earth where it grew, I don’t see it any more.

Sitting in the one o’clock sun, she rebuilt her house, populated the yard with her father and brother and Calpurnia, put Henry across the street and Miss Rachel next door.

It was the last two weeks of the school year and she was going to her first dance. Traditionally, the members of the senior class invited their younger brothers and sisters to the Commencement Dance, held the night before the Junior-Senior Banquet, which was always the last Friday in May.

Jem’s football sweater had grown increasingly gorgeous—he was captain of the team, the first year Maycomb beat Abbottsville in thirteen seasons. Henry was president of the Senior Debating Society, the only extracurricular activity he had time for, and Jean Louise was a fat fourteen, immersed in Victorian poetry and detective novels.

In those days when it was fashionable to court across the river, Jem was so helplessly in love with a girl from Abbott County he seriously considered spending his senior year at Abbottsville High, but was discouraged by Atticus, who put his foot down and solaced Jem by advancing him sufficient funds to purchase a Model-A coupe. Jem painted his car bright black, achieved the effect of whitewalled tires with more paint, kept his conveyance polished to perfection, and motored to Abbottsville every Friday evening in quiet dignity, oblivious to the fact that his car sounded like an oversized coffee mill, and that wherever he went hound dogs tended to congregate in large numbers.

Jean Louise was sure Jem had made some kind of deal with Henry to take her to the dance, but she did not mind. At first she did not want to go, but Atticus said it would look funny if everybody’s sisters were there except Jem’s, told her she’d have a good time, and that she could go to Ginsberg’s and pick out any dress she wanted.