“Mr. Fred, Maycomb’s just like any other little town. You take a cross-section—”
“It’s not, Jean Louise. You know that.”
“You’re right,” she nodded.
It was not because this was where your life began. It was because this was where people were born and born and born until finally the result was you, drinking a Coke in the Jitney Jungle.
Now she was aware of a sharp apartness, a separation, not from Atticus and Henry merely. All of Maycomb and Maycomb County were leaving her as the hours passed, and she automatically blamed herself.
She bumped her head getting into the car. I shall never become accustomed to these things. Uncle Jack has a few major points in his philosophy.
ALEXANDRA TOOK THE groceries from the back seat. Jean Louise leaned over and opened the door for her father; she reached across him and shut it.
“Want the car this morning, Aunty?”
“No, dear. Going somewhere?”
“Yessum. I won’t be gone long.”
She watched the street closely. I can do anything but look at him and listen to him and talk to him.
When she stopped in front of the barbershop she said, “Ask Mr. Fred how much we owe him. I forgot to take the slip out of the sack. Said you’d pay him.”
When she opened the door for him, he stepped into the street.
“Be careful!”
Atticus waved to the driver of the passing car. “It didn’t hit me,” he said.
She drove around the square and out the Meridian highway until she came to a fork in the road. This is where it must have happened, she thought.
There were dark patches in the red gravel where the pavement ended, and she drove the car over Mr. Healy’s blood. When she came to a fork in the dirt road she turned right, and drove down a lane so narrow the big car left no room on either side. She went on until she could go no farther.
The road was blocked by a line of cars standing aslant halfway in the ditch. She parked behind the last one and got out. She walked down the row past a 1939 Ford, a Chevrolet of ambiguous vintage, a Willys, and a robin’s-egg blue hearse with the words HEAVENLY REST picked out in a chromium semicircle on its front door. She was startled, and she peered inside: in the back there were rows of chairs screwed to the floor and no place for a recumbent body, quick or dead. This is a taxi, she thought.
She pulled a wire ring off the gatepost and went inside. Calpurnia’s was a swept yard: Jean Louise could tell it had been swept recently, brushbroom scratches were still visible between smooth footprints.
She looked up, and on the porch of Calpurnia’s little house stood Negroes in various states of public attire: a couple of women wore their best, one had on a calico apron, one was dressed in her field clothes. Jean Louise identified one of the men as Professor Chester Sumpter, principal of the Mt. Sinai Trade Institute, Maycomb County’s largest Negro school. Professor Sumpter was clad, as he always was, in black. The other black-suited man was a stranger to her, but Jean Louise knew he was a minister. Zeebo wore his work clothes.
When they saw her, they stood straight and retreated from the edge of the porch, becoming as one. The men removed their hats and caps, the woman wearing the apron folded her hands beneath it.
“Morning, Zeebo,” said Jean Louise.
Zeebo broke the pattern by stepping forward. “Howdy do, Miss Jean Louise. We didn’t know you was home.”
Jean Louise was acutely conscious that the Negroes were watching her. They stood silent, respectful, and were watching her intently. She said, “Is Calpurnia home?”
“Yessum, Miss Jean Louise, Mamma in the house. Want me to fetch her?”
“May I go in, Zeebo?”
“Yessum.”
The black people parted for her to enter the front door. Zeebo, unsure of protocol, opened the door and stood back to let her enter. “Lead the way, Zeebo,” she said.
She followed him into a dark parlor to which clung the musky sweet smell of clean Negro, snuff, and Hearts of Love hairdressing. Several shadowy forms rose when she entered.
“This way, Miss Jean Louise.”
They walked down a tiny hallway, and Zeebo tapped at an unpainted pine door. “Mamma,” he said. “Miss Jean Louise here.”
The door opened softly, and Zeebo’s wife’s head appeared around it. She came out into the hall, which was scarcely large enough to contain the three of them.
“Hello, Helen,” said Jean Louise. “How is Calpurnia?”
“She taking it mighty hard, Miss Jean Louise. Frank, he never had any trouble before….”
So, it was Frank. Of all her multifarious descendants, Calpurnia took most pride in Frank. He was on the waiting list for Tuskegee Institute. He was a born plumber, could fix anything water ran through.
Helen, heavy with a pendulous stomach from having carried so many children, leaned against the wall. She was barefooted.
“Zeebo,” said Jean Louise, “you and Helen living together again?”
“Yessum,” said Helen placidly. “He’s done got old.”
Jean Louise smiled at Zeebo, who looked sheepish. For the life of her, Jean Louise could not disentangle Zeebo’s domestic history. She thought Helen must be Frank’s mother, but she was not sure. She was positive Helen was Zeebo’s first wife, and was equally sure she was his present wife, but how many were there in between?
She remembered Atticus telling of the pair in his office, years ago when they appeared seeking a divorce. Atticus, trying to reconcile them, asked Helen would she take her husband back. “Naw sir, Mr. Finch,” was her slow reply. “Zeebo, he been goin’ around enjoyin’ other women. He don’t enjoy me none, and I don’t want no man who don’t enjoy his wife.”
“Could I see Calpurnia, Helen?”
“Yessum, go right in.”
Calpurnia was sitting in a wooden rocking chair in a corner of the room by the fireplace. The room contained an iron bedstead covered with a faded quilt of a Double Wedding Ring pattern. There were three huge gilt-framed photographs of Negroes and a Coca-Cola calendar on the wall. A rough mantelpiece teemed with small bright objets d’art made of plaster, porcelain, clay, and milk glass. A naked light bulb burned on a cord swinging from the ceiling, casting sharp shadows on the wall behind the mantelpiece, and in the corner where Calpurnia sat.
How small she looks, thought Jean Louise. She used to be so tall.
Calpurnia was old and she was bony. Her sight was failing, and she wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses which stood out in harsh contrast to her warm brown skin. Her big hands were resting in her lap, and she raised them and spread her fingers when Jean Louise entered.