She stared at her brother. His hair was damp and he smelled of the strong soap in the schoolhouse locker rooms. Better start it first, she thought.
“Huh, you’ve been smoking,” she said. “Smell it a mile.”
“Haven’t.”
“Don’t see how you can play in the line anyway. You’re too skinny.”
Jem smiled and declined her gambit. They’ve told him, she thought.
Jem patted his M. “Old Never-Miss-’Em-Finch, that’s me. Caught seven out of ten this afternoon,” he said.
He went to the table and picked up a football magazine, opened it, thumbed through it, and was thumbing through it again when he said: “Scout, if there’s ever anything that happens to you or something—you know—something you might not want to tell Atticus about—”
“Huh?”
“You know, if you get in trouble at school or anything—you just let me know. I’ll take care of you.”
Jem sauntered from the livingroom, leaving Jean Louise wide-eyed and wondering if she were fully awake.
12
SUNLIGHT ROUSED HER. She looked at her watch. Five o’clock. Someone had covered her up during the night. She threw off the spread, put her feet to the floor, and sat gazing at her long legs, startled to find them twenty-six years old. Her loafers were standing at attention where she had stepped out of them twelve hours ago. One sock was lying beside her shoes and she discovered its mate on her foot. She removed the sock and padded softly to the dressing table, where she caught sight of herself in the mirror.
She looked ruefully at her reflection. You have had what Mr. Burgess would call “The ’Orrors,” she told it. Golly, I haven’t waked up like this for fifteen years. Today is Monday, I’ve been home since Saturday, I have eleven days of my vacation left, and I wake up with the screamin’ meemies. She laughed at herself: well, it was the longest on record—longer than elephants and nothing to show for it.
She picked up a package of cigarettes and three kitchen matches, stuffed the matches behind the cellophane wrapper, and walked quietly into the hall. She opened the wooden door, then the screen door.
On any other day she would have stood barefoot on the wet grass listening to the mockingbirds’ early service; she would have pondered over the meaninglessness of silent, austere beauty renewing itself with every sunrise and going ungazed at by half the world. She would have walked beneath yellow-ringed pines rising to a brilliant eastern sky, and her senses would have succumbed to the joy of the morning.
It was waiting to receive her, but she neither looked nor listened. She had two minutes of peace before yesterday returned: nothing can kill the pleasure of one’s first cigarette on a new morning. Jean Louise blew smoke carefully into the still air.
She touched yesterday cautiously, then withdrew. I don’t dare think about it now, until it goes far enough away. It is weird, she thought, this must be like physical pain. They say when you can’t stand it your body is its own defense, you black out and you don’t feel any more. The Lord never sends you more than you can bear—
That was an ancient Maycomb phrase employed by its fragile ladies who sat up with corpses, supposed to be profoundly comforting to the bereaved. Very well, she would be comforted. She would sit out her two weeks home in polite detachment, saying nothing, asking nothing, blaming not. She would do as well as could be expected under the circumstances.
She put her arms on her knees and her head in her arms. I wish to God I had caught you both at a jook with two sleazy women—the lawn needs mowing.
Jean Louise walked to the garage and raised the sliding door. She rolled out the gasoline motor, unscrewed the fuel cap, and inspected the tank. She replaced the cap, flicked a tiny lever, placed one foot on the mower, braced the other firmly in the grass, and yanked the cord quickly. The motor choked twice and died.
Damn it to hell, I’ve flooded it.
She wheeled the mower into the sun and returned to the garage where she armed herself with heavy hedge clippers. She went to the culvert at the entrance to the driveway and snipped the sturdier grass growing at its two mouths. Something moved at her feet, and she closed her cupped left hand over a cricket. She edged her right hand beneath the creature and scooped it up. The cricket beat frantically against her palms and she let it down again. “You were out too late,” she said. “Go home to your mamma.”
A truck drove up the hill and stopped in front of her. A Negro boy jumped from the running-board and handed her three quarts of milk. She carried the milk to the front steps, and on her way back to the culvert she gave the mower another tug. This time it started.
She glanced with satisfaction at the neat swath behind her. The grass lay crisply cut and smelled like a creek bank. The course of English Literature would have been decidedly different had Mr. Wordsworth owned a power mower, she thought.