My Father and Atticus Finch (19 page)

   Chapter 32

I
T WAS DURING
that December of 1938 that the relationship between my parents began to change. They had been seeing each other for at least three years by then, but my father, concerned about his declining law practice, had still not proposed marriage, and my mother, who worried far less than he did about money, was becoming impatient.

I learned about those tensions years later from my beloved Aunt Frances, who feared my mother was not going to wait much longer in a town that had never really been her home and was over a hundred miles from Weogufka and her mother, Mrs. Stewart.

S
OMETIME BEFORE
school let out for Christmas in 1938, Frances arranged for the three of them to meet for supper. Miss Pauline would be at prayer meeting at the Baptist church until at least nine o'clock and didn't mind if Bertha used the kitchen and dining room as long as she cleaned up. Frances came early and cooked the chicken dumplings for which she was famous; Bertha made peach cobbler, her only good dish.

“I can't afford a wife right now, Frances,” Foster whispered while Bertha was getting the plates and silverware, for a brief moment out of earshot. “My clients who can pay cash money have cut back.” He paused and shook his head. “The business people say I'm being ‘stiff-necked.' ”

“The ones who say that don't know their Bible,” Bertha said, overhearing the accusation as she returned with the dishes and began to set the table. Electricity, though still unavailable in much of rural Coffee County, had come to the town of Enterprise, though it was new and used sparingly by Miss Pauline, who grew up at a time when oil lamps were required in the evenings. Knowing Miss Pauline would be at church for another two hours, Bertha had gleefully turned on the ceiling light that hung over the dining table. “God told Moses His people acted stiff-necked when they disobeyed His laws by making the Golden Calf. You don't disobey any of the laws, Foster.”

“He may not disobey but he can be stubborn,” Frances said in good humor. It had begun to storm, and the wind blew the rain in gusts against the bay window in the dining room. “But I can't see why your being stubborn would make them want to bring you down. It's what you did for a colored man they don't like, not your attitude.”

“Frances, listen to me. Daddy warned me about all this last summer. He said the good white people want to change but are afraid to change too fast. Daddy said that jury would think I was trying to change things too fast and resent it coming from one of their own. And I've come to think Daddy was right, even though he was drinking right there on the office porch, in broad daylight, even though some of it made no sense. You know how he can be.”

Frances did not confirm or deny. “What else did he say?”

“He has this idea that today's good Southern white people are
deep-down ashamed of how their granddaddies fought to defend slavery.”

Frances turned to Bertha and laughed. “He's talking about
south
Alabama granddaddies, not the ones where you're from up in north Alabama.” She was thinking of the scalawag Stewart ancestors, who had had no slaves and refused to fight for the Confederacy.

“Oh, but we had that on the Rayfield side,” Bertha said. “Great-granddaddy Rayfield didn't have any slaves, but he still managed to lose a leg for General Lee.”

Outside, the rain whipped in bursts against the window. A sudden flash of light was followed quickly by explosive thunder, signaling that the storm was close, and for a moment the room went dark; then the electric light came back on. Foster lit the oil lamp, just in case. “Daddy said I understand ideas but not people.”

“Maybe he was right, Foster. I mean, about the need to understand people. Maybe they
are
ashamed and think you are judging them and they don't like it one bit.”

“I'm not judging anybody, Bertha. I'm just doing what the Constitution and a decent society requires, defending a Negro entitled to a lawyer—”

“But maybe what they don't like,” she interrupted, “is not that you defended him. They could put up with that. It's because you haven't forgiven them. They see that as . . . as un-Christian of you.”

The charge took Foster by surprise. After a pause, he said, “I don't know what on earth you are talking about, Bertha. Forgiving them? I'm a lawyer, not a preacher, and I—”

“If you went to church some you would know about forgiveness,” she again interrupted. “Maybe all they really want is to be seen as ordinary Americans, guilty of other sins, yes, just like all ordinary Americans are, but forgiven for the unique historic sins of their
grandfathers. Maybe that's why they embrace Christianity so fervently, with its promise of forgiveness.”

“I thought you churchgoers believed you had to repent to earn forgiveness. You see any of those whites repenting?”

“You both might have made a preacher, but neither one of you would last long around here,” Frances said the moment they stopped interrupting each other and she could get a word in. She was hoping to break the rising tension, but Bertha did not laugh and Foster did not even smile.

“You're not from around here, Bertha,” he said. “There are no Negroes in Weogufka. South Alabama's different. The whites around here are outnumbered and afraid of change that comes too fast.”

“Maybe that's just an excuse.”

“Like I said, you're not . . .” Foster stopped and shook his head. “But you can at least understand this: if you were a Negro, you might want some revenge, not just change. I know I might. The good whites here in Enterprise know that too, and feel trapped, and the thing is, I understand all that. And I hate it that we are trapped like this—”

“But Foster, the final answer can't be that we are forever trapped
,
that we do nothing?”

“That's not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Of course you are doing something, and it is important and brave. I was going to say all that next, but you interrupted—”

“And you interrupted me. You say the answer can't be that we forever do nothing, but then when I do something, you say I'm stiff-necked for not forgiving them—”

“I didn't say you are that way. I said people here think that you are.” Bertha got up and collected the dirty dishes.

After another stretch of silence, Foster began to feel badly about the way he had spoken and to wish he could take some of it back. He
would “forgive” them all—whatever she meant by that—if doing so would bring the town's respect back to her and a return of the modest prosperity he had enjoyed before taking the case, which, like a disease, had paralyzed his little law practice. But instead of saying any of that, he thanked Bertha and Frances for the meal and got up to leave.

“I'm not sure I can keep my practice open much after New Year's,” he blurted out to Frances at the door. It was humiliating; he had vowed to avoid the financial difficulties of his father, and here he was, about to lose everything.

“You know, two can live as cheaply as one,” Frances said, still hoping to salvage the evening.

Foster knew exactly what Frances meant by that but remained silent. He had too much pride to ever let Bertha support him, even if they could get by just on her salary and what little he was still bringing in. Not knowing when, if ever, the town's resentment would subside, he was hesitant to offer her false hope for the future, though he suspected that, even without Frances's hectoring, Bertha was coming to the end of her patience with him. He couldn't blame her.

For her part, Bertha could have strangled Frances for saying two could live as cheaply as one. And she was a little sorry to have argued with Foster about forgiveness and church, but the fact was, she
had
been loyal and supportive throughout the ordeal with Charles White. And besides, things were changing for her, too. Her father's death had left her mother alone and solely responsible for the Weogufka farm. While Mrs. Stewart had cancelled her late husband's subscriptions to science journals and sold off the exotic birds and animals he had bred, without his steady salary as a mail carrier, she barely had enough money for the few necessities she couldn't raise in the pasture or grow in the garden; and always there were the land taxes.

Bertha knew her mother's situation and was sure she could find a teaching position in Rockford or Sylacauga—even Montgomery would be a lot closer to home than Enterprise—and she was beginning to wonder if Foster would ever commit to her, if not for one reason, then for another. She was beginning to resent him for that. At first it had been just a little resentment, but it was growing, and besides, she had her pride and didn't want to keep hint-hinting around.

Foster was the right one for her, she knew that, and he also was likely the only one who would ever appreciate a woman her age who was sometimes described, not necessarily as a compliment, as “regal,” and always pigeonholed as a poor cook and bookish and a little too much on the independent side—for example, wanting to keep her own checkbook. Things like that annoyed other men, so they would never ask her out more than once or twice, much less to marry. Bertha was afraid to bring things to a head with Foster and possibly end their courtship, and yet she was afraid to do nothing and become a year older. In the meantime, she was feeling a need to look after herself.

“I'm going to have to spend more weekends at home,” she said after Foster said he might not be able to keep his office open much after the New Year. “Mama's having a hard time managing by herself.” It was the best she could do for an excuse to end the conversation.

Outside, the rain slacked up; the lightning and thunder had finally moved east, blowing toward the Chattahoochee River and Georgia. By the time Miss Pauline returned from prayer meeting to find the electricity turned off and Bertha and Frances reading by the oil lamps, the sky was clear and cold.

   Chapter 33

“
C
HRISMUS GIF
, young Cap'n. You shore is the spittin' image of the ole Cap'n.”

As a child, I heard that exact greeting from Pete Tate on many a Christmas morning in Glenwood, the custom being that the first one to say “Christmas gift” was supposed to receive one. My father told me that he, too, heard it when he was a boy, a reminder that Glenwood was slow to change. Though some things did change—the dime he always gave Pete Tate had become a quarter from me.

My father enjoyed telling me about Christmases when he was a boy in Glenwood, the home filled with family and other celebrants from throughout the county, the sounds of laughter and carols, the mouthwatering smells. On Christmas mornings, his father, “the ole Cap'n,” would give Pete a good slug of Four Roses, and his mother, Miss Lessie, would fix Pete a big plate of sausage, eggs, biscuits, and ribbon cane syrup, and round up some spare clothes for him and his family. Pete would bestow his own gift by cutting a load of firewood and laying a good fire.

By the time my father tried the Charles White case, Christmases in Glenwood had become more somber occasions. For one thing, Mr. M. L.'s contacts with the local white community had begun to wither, and no wonder. As recorded in our family history, my grandfather, tolerant of different opinions about some issues, would get into nearly violent arguments over others, saying unforgivable things, then act surprised that his former adversary was hurt with him since he himself did not hold grudges and therefore did not expect others would.

The bourbon and cocaine and whatever else my grandfather used to combat his melancholia—both the kind of mental depression he had always suffered and the kind that was new, brought on by advancing age—also took a toll. My father told me that his bouts of optimism one day, pessimism the next, had become steadily more unpredictable and pronounced. Sometimes, he would seem suspended in a lugubrious haze, other times he was vigorous, high as a kite, captured by his own impossible dreams—one of the most memorable being his long fascination with tracts of timber land in Brazil. My grandfather had read somewhere about millions of acres of virgin rain forest in Brazil, and the thought of all those tall trees waiting to be harvested had temporarily restored the old sawmill man's appetite for money and adventure. For years, I was told, books and envelopes containing colorful pamphlets arrived at the house in Glenwood, extolling the beauty and mystery of Brazil and the opportunities there for an experienced lumberman.

F
OSTER WAS SAD
, when he arrived in Glenwood for Christmas in 1938, to see the latest envelopes about Brazil piling up in the hallway
unopened, for that meant his father's final dream was nearing an end. Stepping over stacks of books and magazines in the dimly lit library, he reached to awkwardly hug his father, who was seated in his chair. Mr. M. L. looked up, startled, but did not stand or return the embrace. Instead, he began groping among the unpaid bills on the oak table beside his chair. His shaking hand knocked over the little bell he'd been looking for, and the clatter, as it hit the floor and rolled under the sofa, brought Pete to his side. Mr. M. L. held up a gnarled forefinger, about three inches apart from the crooked thumb he had injured a decade ago at the sawmill—his signal to Pete to pour him three inches of Four Roses. “Shame,” Mr. M. L. muttered as he turned to his son. “Shame eats at us like acid.”

Pete came with the three inches in a crystal glass, part of a set of fine crystal used only on holidays. The set had been part of the marriage dowry of Lessie Mae Beck, née Lessie Mae Moxley, the beautiful and brilliant daughter of Dr. D. N. Moxley, the Confederate Army surgeon, and Sarah Narcissus King. After the war, Dr. Moxley settled near Glenwood and, according to the family history, practiced medicine on horseback within a range of twenty miles, pulling teeth for fifty cents, delivering babies for four dollars, making house calls for one to two dollars plus a small charge per mile, and accumulating fifteen hundred acres of land, including eight hundred acres in the Conecuh River swamp, where he kept a drove of wild hogs. The Moxleys belonged to a higher social class than the Becks, and eyebrows had been raised when Miss Lessie Moxley married Madison Lewis Beck.