Chapter 3
Catching Walter Cunningham in the schoolyard gave me some pleasure, but when
I was rubbing his nose in the dirt Jem came by and told me to stop. “You’re
bigger’n he is,” he said.
“He’s as old as you, nearly,” I said. “He made me start off on the wrong foot.”
“Let him go, Scout. Why?”
“He didn’t have any lunch,” I said, and explained my involvement in Walter’s
dietary affairs.
Walter had picked himself up and was standing quietly listening to Jem and me.
His fists were half cocked, as if expecting an onslaught from both of us. I stomped
at him to chase him away, but Jem put out his hand and stopped me. He examined
Walter with an air of speculation. “Your daddy Mr. Walter Cunningham from Old
Sarum?” he asked, and Walter nodded.
Walter looked as if he had been raised on fish food: his eyes, as blue as Dill
Harris’s, were red-rimmed and watery. There was no color in his face except at
the tip of his nose, which was moistly pink. He fingered the straps of his overalls,
nervously picking at the metal hooks.
Jem suddenly grinned at him. “Come on home to dinner with us, Walter,” he said.
“We’d be glad to have you.”
Walter’s face brightened, then darkened.
Jem said, “Our daddy’s a friend of your daddy’s. Scout here, she’s crazy—she
won’t fight you any more.”
“I wouldn’t be too certain of that,” I said. Jem’s free dispensation of my pledge
irked me, but precious noontime minutes were ticking away. “Yeah Walter, I
won’t jump on you again. Don’t you like butterbeans? Our Cal’s a real good
cook.”
Walter stood where he was, biting his lip. Jem and I gave up, and we were nearly
to the Radley Place when Walter called, “Hey, I’m comin‘!”
When Walter caught up with us, Jem made pleasant conversation with him. “A
hain’t lives there,” he said cordially, pointing to the Radley house. “Ever hear
about him, Walter?”
“Reckon I have,” said Walter. “Almost died first year I come to school and et
them pecans—folks say he pizened ‘em and put ’em over on the school side of the
fence.”
Jem seemed to have little fear of Boo Radley now that Walter and I walked beside
him. Indeed, Jem grew boastful: “I went all the way up to the house once,” he said
to Walter.
“Anybody who went up to the house once oughta not to still run every time he
passes it,” I said to the clouds above.
“And who’s runnin‘, Miss Priss?”
“You are, when ain’t anybody with you.”
By the time we reached our front steps Walter had forgotten he was a
Cunningham. Jem ran to the kitchen and asked Calpurnia to set an extra plate, we
had company. Atticus greeted Walter and began a discussion about crops neither
Jem nor I could follow.
“Reason I can’t pass the first grade, Mr. Finch, is I’ve had to stay out ever‘ spring
an’ help Papa with the choppin‘, but there’s another’n at the house now that’s
field size.”
“Did you pay a bushel of potatoes for him?” I asked, but Atticus shook his head at
me.
While Walter piled food on his plate, he and Atticus talked together like two men,
to the wonderment of Jem and me. Atticus was expounding upon farm problems
when Walter interrupted to ask if there was any molasses in the house. Atticus
summoned Calpurnia, who returned bearing the syrup pitcher. She stood waiting
for Walter to help himself. Walter poured syrup on his vegetables and meat with a
generous hand. He would probably have poured it into his milk glass had I not
asked what the sam hill he was doing.
The silver saucer clattered when he replaced the pitcher, and he quickly put his
hands in his lap. Then he ducked his head.
Atticus shook his head at me again. “But he’s gone and drowned his dinner in
syrup,” I protested. “He’s poured it all over-”
It was then that Calpurnia requested my presence in the kitchen.
She was furious, and when she was furious Calpurnia’s grammar became erratic.
When in tranquility, her grammar was as good as anybody’s in Maycomb. Atticus
said Calpurnia had more education than most colored folks.
When she squinted down at me the tiny lines around her eyes deepened. “There’s
some folks who don’t eat like us,” she whispered fiercely, “but you ain’t called on
to contradict ‘em at the table when they don’t. That boy’s yo’ comp’ny and if he
wants to eat up the table cloth you let him, you hear?”
“He ain’t company, Cal, he’s just a Cunningham-”
“Hush your mouth! Don’t matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house’s
yo‘ comp’ny, and don’t you let me catch you remarkin’ on their ways like you
was so high and mighty! Yo‘ folks might be better’n the Cunninghams but it
don’t count for nothin’ the way you’re disgracin‘ ’em—if you can’t act fit to eat
at the table you can just set here and eat in the kitchen!”
Calpurnia sent me through the swinging door to the diningroom with a stinging
smack. I retrieved my plate and finished dinner in the kitchen, thankful, though,
that I was spared the humiliation of facing them again. I told Calpurnia to just
wait, I’d fix her: one of these days when she wasn’t looking I’d go off and drown
myself in Barker’s Eddy and then she’d be sorry. Besides, I added, she’d already
gotten me in trouble once today: she had taught me to write and it was all her
fault. “Hush your fussin‘,” she said.
Jem and Walter returned to school ahead of me: staying behind to advise Atticus
of Calpurnia’s iniquities was worth a solitary sprint past the Radley Place. “She
likes Jem better’n she likes me, anyway,” I concluded, and suggested that Atticus
lose no time in packing her off.
“Have you ever considered that Jem doesn’t worry her half as much?” Atticus’s
voice was flinty. “I’ve no intention of getting rid of her, now or ever. We couldn’t
operate a single day without Cal, have you ever thought of that? You think about
how much Cal does for you, and you mind her, you hear?”
I returned to school and hated Calpurnia steadily until a sudden shriek shattered
my resentments. I looked up to see Miss Caroline standing in the middle of the
room, sheer horror flooding her face. Apparently she had revived enough to
persevere in her profession.
“It’s alive!” she screamed.
The male population of the class rushed as one to her assistance. Lord, I thought,
she’s scared of a mouse. Little Chuck Little, whose patience with all living things
was phenomenal, said, “Which way did he go, Miss Caroline? Tell us where he
went, quick! D.C.-” he turned to a boy behind him—“D.C., shut the door and
we’ll catch him. Quick, ma’am, where’d he go?”
Miss Caroline pointed a shaking finger not at the floor nor at a desk, but to a
hulking individual unknown to me. Little Chuck’s face contracted and he said
gently, “You mean him, ma’am? Yessum, he’s alive. Did he scare you some
way?”
Miss Caroline said desperately, “I was just walking by when it crawled out of his
hair… just crawled out of his hair-”
Little Chuck grinned broadly. “There ain’t no need to fear a cootie, ma’am. Ain’t
you ever seen one? Now don’t you be afraid, you just go back to your desk and
teach us some more.”
Little Chuck Little was another member of the population who didn’t know where
his next meal was coming from, but he was a born gentleman. He put his hand
under her elbow and led Miss Caroline to the front of the room. “Now don’t you
fret, ma’am,” he said. “There ain’t no need to fear a cootie. I’ll just fetch you
some cool water.” The cootie’s host showed not the faintest interest in the furor
he had wrought. He searched the scalp above his forehead, located his guest and
pinched it between his thumb and forefinger.
Miss Caroline watched the process in horrid fascination. Little Chuck brought
water in a paper cup, and she drank it gratefully. Finally she found her voice.
“What is your name, son?” she asked softly.
The boy blinked. “Who, me?” Miss Caroline nodded.
“Burris Ewell.”
Miss Caroline inspected her roll-book. “I have a Ewell here, but I don’t have a
first name… would you spell your first name for me?”
“Don’t know how. They call me Burris’t home.”
“Well, Burris,” said Miss Caroline, “I think we’d better excuse you for the rest of
the afternoon. I want you to go home and wash your hair.”
From her desk she produced a thick volume, leafed through its pages and read for
a moment. “A good home remedy for—Burris, I want you to go home and wash
your hair with lye soap. When you’ve done that, treat your scalp with kerosene.”
“What fer, missus?”
“To get rid of the—er, cooties. You see, Burris, the other children might catch
them, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?”
The boy stood up. He was the filthiest human I had ever seen. His neck was dark
gray, the backs of his hands were rusty, and his fingernails were black deep into
the quick. He peered at Miss Caroline from a fist-sized clean space on his face.
No one had noticed him, probably, because Miss Caroline and I had entertained
the class most of the morning.
“And Burris,” said Miss Caroline, “please bathe yourself before you come back
tomorrow.”
The boy laughed rudely. “You ain’t sendin‘ me home, missus. I was on the verge
of leavin’—I done done my time for this year.”
Miss Caroline looked puzzled. “What do you mean by that?”
The boy did not answer. He gave a short contemptuous snort.
One of the elderly members of the class answered her: “He’s one of the Ewells,
ma’am,” and I wondered if this explanation would be as unsuccessful as my
attempt. But Miss Caroline seemed willing to listen. “Whole school’s full of ‘em.
They come first day every year and then leave. The truant lady gets ’em here
‘cause she threatens ’em with the sheriff, but she’s give up tryin‘ to hold ’em. She
reckons she’s carried out the law just gettin‘ their names on the roll and runnin’
‘em here the first day. You’re supposed to mark ’em absent the rest of the year…”
“But what about their parents?” asked Miss Caroline, in genuine concern.
“Ain’t got no mother,” was the answer, “and their paw’s right contentious.”
Burris Ewell was flattered by the recital. “Been comin‘ to the first day o’ the first
grade fer three year now,” he said expansively. “Reckon if I’m smart this year
they’ll promote me to the second…”
Miss Caroline said, “Sit back down, please, Burris,” and the moment she said it I
knew she had made a serious mistake. The boy’s condescension flashed to anger.
“You try and make me, missus.”
Little Chuck Little got to his feet. “Let him go, ma’am,” he said. “He’s a mean
one, a hard-down mean one. He’s liable to start somethin‘, and there’s some little
folks here.”
He was among the most diminutive of men, but when Burris Ewell turned toward
him, Little Chuck’s right hand went to his pocket. “Watch your step, Burris,” he
said. “I’d soon’s kill you as look at you. Now go home.”
Burris seemed to be afraid of a child half his height, and Miss Caroline took
advantage of his indecision: “Burris, go home. If you don’t I’ll call the principal,”
she said. “I’ll have to report this, anyway.”
The boy snorted and slouched leisurely to the door.
Safely out of range, he turned and shouted: “Report and be damned to ye! Ain’t
no snot-nosed slut of a schoolteacher ever born c’n make me do nothin‘! You
ain’t makin’ me go nowhere, missus. You just remember that, you ain’t makin‘
me go nowhere!”
He waited until he was sure she was crying, then he shuffled out of the building.
Soon we were clustered around her desk, trying in our various ways to comfort
her. He was a real mean one… below the belt… you ain’t called on to teach folks
like that… them ain’t Maycomb’s ways, Miss Caroline, not really… now don’t
you fret, ma’am. Miss Caroline, why don’t you read us a story? That cat thing
was real fine this mornin‘…
Miss Caroline smiled, blew her nose, said, “Thank you, darlings,” dispersed us,
opened a book and mystified the first grade with a long narrative about a toadfrog
that lived in a hall.
When I passed the Radley Place for the fourth time that day—twice at a full gallop
—my gloom had deepened to match the house. If the remainder of the school year
were as fraught with drama as the first day, perhaps it would be mildly
entertaining, but the prospect of spending nine months refraining from reading
and writing made me think of running away.
By late afternoon most of my traveling plans were complete; when Jem and I
raced each other up the sidewalk to meet Atticus coming home from work, I
didn’t give him much of a race. It was our habit to run meet Atticus the moment
we saw him round the post office corner in the distance. Atticus seemed to have
forgotten my noontime fall from grace; he was full of questions about school. My
replies were monosyllabic and he did not press me.
Perhaps Calpurnia sensed that my day had been a grim one: she let me watch her
fix supper. “Shut your eyes and open your mouth and I’ll give you a surprise,” she
said.
It was not often that she made crackling bread, she said she never had time, but
with both of us at school today had been an easy one for her. She knew I loved
crackling bread.
“I missed you today,” she said. “The house got so lonesome ‘long about two
o’clock I had to turn on the radio.”
“Why? Jem’n me ain’t ever in the house unless it’s rainin‘.”
“I know,” she said, “But one of you’s always in callin‘ distance. I wonder how
much of the day I spend just callin’ after you. Well,” she said, getting up from the
kitchen chair, “it’s enough time to make a pan of cracklin‘ bread, I reckon. You
run along now and let me get supper on the table.”
Calpurnia bent down and kissed me. I ran along, wondering what had come over
her. She had wanted to make up with me, that was it. She had always been too
hard on me, she had at last seen the error of her fractious ways, she was sorry and
too stubborn to say so. I was weary from the day’s crimes.
After supper, Atticus sat down with the paper and called, “Scout, ready to read?”
The Lord sent me more than I could bear, and I went to the front porch. Atticus
followed me.
“Something wrong, Scout?”
I told Atticus I didn’t feel very well and didn’t think I’d go to school any more if
it was all right with him.
Atticus sat down in the swing and crossed his legs. His fingers wandered to his
watchpocket; he said that was the only way he could think. He waited in amiable
silence, and I sought to reinforce my position: “You never went to school and you
do all right, so I’ll just stay home too. You can teach me like Granddaddy taught
you ‘n’ Uncle Jack.”
“No I can’t,” said Atticus. “I have to make a living. Besides, they’d put me in jail
if I kept you at home—dose of magnesia for you tonight and school tomorrow.”
“I’m feeling all right, really.”
“Thought so. Now what’s the matter?”
Bit by bit, I told him the day’s misfortunes. “-and she said you taught me all
wrong, so we can’t ever read any more, ever. Please don’t send me back, please
sir.”
Atticus stood up and walked to the end of the porch. When he completed his
examination of the wisteria vine he strolled back to me.
“First of all,” he said, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot
better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you
consider things from his point of view-”
“Sir?”
“-until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
Atticus said I had learned many things today, and Miss Caroline had learned
several things herself. She had learned not to hand something to a Cunningham,
for one thing, but if Walter and I had put ourselves in her shoes we’d have seen it
was an honest mistake on her part. We could not expect her to learn all
Maycomb’s ways in one day, and we could not hold her responsible when she
knew no better.
“I’ll be dogged,” I said. “I didn’t know no better than not to read to her, and she
held me responsible—listen Atticus, I don’t have to go to school!” I was bursting
with a sudden thought. “Burris Ewell, remember? He just goes to school the first
day. The truant lady reckons she’s carried out the law when she gets his name on
the roll-” “You can’t do that, Scout,” Atticus said. “Sometimes it’s better to bend
the law a little in special cases. In your case, the law remains rigid. So to school
you must go.”
“I don’t see why I have to when he doesn’t.”
“Then listen.”
Atticus said the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations.
None of them had done an honest day’s work in his recollection. He said that
some Christmas, when he was getting rid of the tree, he would take me with him
and show me where and how they lived. They were people, but they lived like
animals. “They can go to school any time they want to, when they show the
faintest symptom of wanting an education,” said Atticus. “There are ways of
keeping them in school by force, but it’s silly to force people like the Ewells into
a new environment-”
“If I didn’t go to school tomorrow, you’d force me to.”
“Let us leave it at this,” said Atticus dryly. “You, Miss Scout Finch, are of the
common folk. You must obey the law.” He said that the Ewells were members of
an exclusive society made up of Ewells. In certain circumstances the common
folk judiciously allowed them certain privileges by the simple method of
becoming blind to some of the Ewells’ activities. They didn’t have to go to
school, for one thing. Another thing, Mr. Bob Ewell, Burris’s father, was
permitted to hunt and trap out of season.
“Atticus, that’s bad,” I said. In Maycomb County, hunting out of season was a
misdemeanor at law, a capital felony in the eyes of the populace.
“It’s against the law, all right,” said my father, “and it’s certainly bad, but when a
man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying
from hunger pains. I don’t know of any landowner around here who begrudges
those children any game their father can hit.”
“Mr. Ewell shouldn’t do that-”
“Of course he shouldn’t, but he’ll never change his ways. Are you going to take
out your disapproval on his children?”
“No sir,” I murmured, and made a final stand: “But if I keep on goin‘ to school,
we can’t ever read any more…”
“That’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir.”
When Atticus looked down at me I saw the expression on his face that always
made me expect something. “Do you know what a compromise is?” he asked.
“Bending the law?”
“No, an agreement reached by mutual concessions. It works this way,” he said. “If
you’ll concede the necessity of going to school, we’ll go on reading every night
just as we always have. Is it a bargain?”
“Yes sir!”
“We’ll consider it sealed without the usual formality,” Atticus said, when he saw
me preparing to spit.
As I opened the front screen door Atticus said, “By the way, Scout, you’d better
not say anything at school about our agreement.”
“Why not?”
“I’m afraid our activities would be received with considerable disapprobation by
the more learned authorities.”
Jem and I were accustomed to our father’s last-will-and-testament diction, and we
were at all times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our
understanding.
“Huh, sir?”
“I never went to school,” he said, “but I have a feeling that if you tell Miss
Caroline we read every night she’ll get after me, and I wouldn’t want her after
me.”
Atticus kept us in fits that evening, gravely reading columns of print about a man
who sat on a flagpole for no discernible reason, which was reason enough for Jem
to spend the following Saturday aloft in the treehouse. Jem sat from after
breakfast until sunset and would have remained overnight had not Atticus severed
his supply lines. I had spent most of the day climbing up and down, running
errands for him, providing him with literature, nourishment and water, and was
carrying him blankets for the night when Atticus said if I paid no attention to him,
Jem would come down. Atticus was right.