The Jury and Maycomb's Classes — To Kill a Mockingbird

The household turns Bob Ewell's threat over like a stone. Alexandra wants it treated as danger. The children want to know whether a man who spat in their father's face will come further than the post office. Atticus will not build a fortress. He would rather Bob spend that rage on him than on the children. A man stripped in public, he says, has to have some kind of comeback, and if the comeback stops at Atticus, the rest of the house may be spared. The family is not soothed. They only understand that he will not answer spit with a show of force.

He then explains the jury. The long wait was not empty time. A Cunningham was the holdout, a man from the same family as the mob that came to the jail. That matters to Atticus: Scout's talk in the dark reached the jury room. He also names who may sit in judgement. Women cannot serve on juries. Scout wants a reason that sounds like sense. What she gets is custom dressed as protection: the law stays a men's room. Under that rule sits a harder one. In a case like Tom's, the racial line decides the verdict before the evidence does.

Alexandra draws her own line when Scout wants Walter Cunningham to dinner again. The Cunninghams, she says, are trash. Scout hears a door shutting on a child she likes. Jem and Scout try to chart Maycomb: Finches near the top of the white order, Cunninghams poor but proud, Ewells beneath that, and Black families held in a separate caste no white ladder will admit. Jem thinks naming the rungs might explain the verdict, and that Boo stays inside because the street is where kinds collide and kindness loses. Scout is not satisfied. The chart feels too neat and too cruel. She still wants Walter at the table. She still wants one kind of folk.