“Let’s go in the office, then.”
Her father’s office had always been a source of refuge for her. It was friendly. It was a place where, if troubles did not vanish, they were made bearable. She wondered if those were the same abstracts, files, and professional impedimenta on his desk that were there when she would run in, out of breath, desperate for an ice cream cone, and request a nickel. She could see him swing around in his swivel chair and stretch his legs. He would reach down deep into his pocket, pull out a handful of change, and from it select a very special nickel for her. His door was never closed to his children.
He sat slowly and swung around toward her. She saw a flash of pain cross his face and leave it.
“You knew all that about Hank?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand men.”
“We-ll, some men who cheat their wives out of grocery money wouldn’t think of cheating the grocer. Men tend to carry their honesty in pigeonholes, Jean Louise. They can be perfectly honest in some ways and fool themselves in other ways. Don’t be so hard on Hank, he’s coming along. Jack tells me you’re upset about something.”
“Jack told you—”
“Called a while ago and said—among other things—that if you weren’t already on the warpath you’d soon be. From what I heard, you already are.”
So. Uncle Jack told him. She was accustomed now to having her family desert her one by one. Uncle Jack was the last straw and to hell with them all. Very well, she’d tell him. Tell him and go. She would not argue with him; that was useless. He always beat her: she’d never won an argument from him in her life and she did not propose to try now.
“Yes sir, I’m upset about something. That citizens’ councilin’ you’re doing. I think it’s disgusting and I’ll tell you that right now.”
Her father leaned back in his chair. He said, “Jean Louise, you’ve been reading nothing but New York papers. I’ve no doubt all you see is wild threats and bombings and such. The Maycomb council’s not like the North Alabama and Tennessee kinds. Our council’s composed of and led by our own people. I bet you saw nearly every man in the county yesterday, and you knew nearly every man there.”
“Yes sir, I did. Every man from that snake Willoughby on down.”
“Each man there was probably there for a different reason,” said her father.
No war was ever fought for so many different reasons. Who said that? “Yeah, but they all met for one reason.”
“I can tell you the two reasons I was there. The Federal Government and the NAACP. Jean Louise, what was your first reaction to the Supreme Court decision?”
That was a safe question. She would answer him.
“I was furious,” she said.
She was. She had known it was coming, knew what it would be, had thought she was prepared for it, but when she bought a newspaper on the street corner and read it, she stopped at the first bar she came to and drank down a straight bourbon.
“Why?”
“Well sir, there they were, tellin’ us what to do again—”
Her father grinned. “You were merely reacting according to your kind,” he said. “When you started using your head, what did you think?”
“Nothing much, but it scared me. It seemed all backward—they were putting the cart way out in front of the horse.”
“How so?”
He was prodding her. Let him. They were on safe ground. “Well, in trying to satisfy one amendment, it looks like they rubbed out another one. The Tenth. It’s only a small amendment, only one sentence long, but it seemed to be the one that meant the most, somehow.”
“Did you think this out for yourself?”
“Why, yes sir. Atticus, I don’t know anything about the Constitution….”
“You seem to be constitutionally sound so far. Proceed.”
Proceed with what? Tell him she couldn’t look him in the eye? He wanted her views on the Constitution, then he’d have ’em: “Well, it seemed that to meet the real needs of a small portion of the population, the Court set up something horrible that could—that could affect the vast majority of folks. Adversely, that is. Atticus, I don’t know anything about it—all we have is the Constitution between us and anything some smart fellow wants to start, and there went the Court just breezily canceling one whole amendment, it seemed to me. We have a system of checks and balances and things, but when it comes down to it we don’t have much check on the Court, so who’ll bell the cat? Oh dear, I’m soundin’ like the Actors Studio.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m—I’m just trying to say that in trying to do right we’ve left ourselves open for something that could be truly dangerous to our set-up.”
She ran her fingers through her hair. She looked at the rows of brown-and-black bound books, law reports, on the wall opposite. She looked at a faded picture of the Nine Old Men on the wall to the left of her. Is Roberts dead? she wondered. She could not remember.
Her father’s voice was patient: “You were saying—?”
“Yes sir. I was saying that I—I don’t know much about government and economics and all that, and I don’t want to know much, but I do know that the Federal Government to me, to one small citizen, is mostly dreary hallways and waiting around. The more we have, the longer we wait and the tireder we get. Those old mossbacks on the wall up there knew it—but now, instead of going about it through Congress and the state legislatures like we should, when we tried to do right we just made it easier for them to set up more hallways and more waiting—”
Her father sat up and laughed.
“I told you I didn’t know anything about it.”
“Sweet, you’re such a states’ rightist you make me a Roosevelt Liberal by comparison.”
“States’ rightist?”