To Kill a Mockingbird

it,” he said. “What was one Negro, more or less, among two hundred of ‘em? He wasn’t Tom to them, he was an escaping prisoner.”
    Atticus leaned against the refrigerator, pushed up his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “We had such a good chance,” he said. “I told him what I thought, but I couldn’t in truth say that we had more than a good chance. I guess Tom was tired of white men’s chances and preferred to take his own. Ready, Cal?”
    “Yessir, Mr. Finch.”
    “Then let’s go.”
    Aunt Alexandra sat down in Calpurnia’s chair and put her hands to her face. She sat quite still; she was so quiet I wondered if she would faint. I heard Miss Maudie breathing as if she had just climbed the steps, and in the diningroom the ladies chattered happily.
    I thought Aunt Alexandra was crying, but when she took her hands away from her face, she was not. She looked weary. She spoke, and her voice was flat.
    “I can’t say I approve of everything he does, Maudie, but he’s my brother, and I just want to know when this will ever end.” Her voice rose: “It tears him to pieces. He doesn’t show it much, but it tears him to pieces. I’ve seen him when—what else do they want from him, Maudie, what else?”
    “What does who want, Alexandra?” Miss Maudie asked.
    “I mean this town. They’re perfectly willing to let him do what they’re too afraid to do themselves—it might lose ‘em a nickel. They’re perfectly willing to let him wreck his health doing what they’re afraid to do, they’re—”
    “Be quiet, they’ll hear you,” said Miss Maudie. “Have you ever thought of it this way, Alexandra? Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we’re paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.”
    “Who?” Aunt Alexandra never knew she was echoing her twelve-year-old nephew.
    “The handful of people in this town who say that fair play is not marked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody, not just us; the handful of people with enough humility to think, when they look at a Negro, there but for the Lord’s kindness am l.” Miss Maudie’s old crispness was returning: “The handful of people in this town with background, that’s who they are.”
    Had I been attentive, I would have had another scrap to add to Jem’s definition of background, but I found myself shaking and couldn’t stop. I had seen Enfield Prison Farm, and Atticus had pointed out the exercise yard to me. It was the size of a football field.
    “Stop that shaking,” commanded Miss Maudie, and I stopped. “Get up, Alexandra, we’ve left ‘em long enough.”
    Aunt Alexandra rose and smoothed the various whalebone ridges along her hips. She took her handkerchief from her belt and wiped her nose. She patted her hair and said, “Do I show it?”
    “Not a sign,” said Miss Maudie. “Are you together again, Jean Louise?”
    “Yes ma’am.”
    “Then let’s join the ladies,” she said grimly.
    Their voices swelled when Miss Maudie opened the door to the diningroom. Aunt Alexandra was ahead of me, and I saw her head go up as she went through the door.
    “Oh, Mrs. Perkins,” she said, “you need some more coffee. Let me get it.”
    “Calpurnia’s on an errand for a few minutes, Grace,” said Miss Maudie. “Let me pass you some more of those dewberry tarts. ‘dyou hear what that cousin of mine did the other day, the one who likes to go fishing?…”
    And so they went, down the row of laughing women, around the diningroom, refilling coffee cups, dishing out goodies as though their only regret was the temporary domestic disaster of losing Calpurnia. The gentle hum began again. “Yes sir, Mrs. Perkins, that J. Grimes Everett is a martyred saint, he… needed to get married so they ran… to the beauty parlor every Saturday afternoon… soon as the sun goes down. He goes to bed with the… chickens, a crate full of sick chickens, Fred says that’s what started it all. Fred says…”
    Aunt Alexandra looked across the room at me and smiled. She looked at a tray of cookies on the table and nodded at them. I carefully picked up the tray and watched myself walk to Mrs. Merriweather. With my best company manners, I asked her if she would have some.
    After all, if Aunty could be a lady at a time like this, so could I.

Chapter 25

    “Don’t do that, Scout. Set him out on the back steps.”
    “Jem, are you crazy?…”
    “I said set him out on the back