Go Set a Watchman
Page 52

Jem danced his duty dance with Jean Louise, told her she was doing fine but her nose was shining, to which she replied he had lipstick on his mouth. The number ended and Jem left her with Henry. “I can’t believe you’re going in the Army in June,” she said. It makes you sound so old.”
Henry opened his mouth to answer, suddenly goggled, and clasped her to him in a clinch.
“What’s the matter, Hank?”
“Don’t you think it’s hot in here? Let’s go out.”
Jean Louise tried to break away, but he held her close and danced her out the side door into the night.
“What’s eating you, Hank? Have I said something—”
He took her hand and walked her around to the front of the school building.
“Ah—” said Henry. He held both her hands. “Honey,” he said. “Look at your front.”
“It’s pitch dark. I can’t see anything.”
“Then feel.”
She felt, and gasped. Her right false bosom was in the center of her chest and the other was nearly under her left armpit. She jerked them back into position and burst into tears.
She sat down on the schoolhouse steps; Henry sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. When she stopped crying she said, “When did you notice it?”
“Just then, I swear.”
“Do you suppose they’ve been laughing at me long?”
Henry shook his head. “I don’t think anybody noticed it, Scout. Listen, Jem danced with you just before I did, and if he’d noticed it he’da certainly told you.”
“All Jem’s got on his mind’s Irene. He wouldn’t see a cyclone if it was comin’ at him.” She was crying again, softly. “I’ll never be able to face them again.”
Henry squeezed her shoulder. “Scout, I swear they slipped when we were dancing. Be logical—if anybody’d seen they’d’ve told you, you know that.”
“No I don’t. They’d just whisper and laugh. I know how they do.”
“Not the seniors,” said Henry sedately. “You’ve been dancing with the football team ever since Jem came in.”
She had. The team, one by one, had requested the pleasure: it was Jem’s quiet way of making sure she had a good time.
“Besides,” continued Henry, “I don’t like ’em anyway. You don’t look like yourself in them.”
Stung, she said, “You mean I look funny in ’em? I look funny without ’em, too.”
“I mean you’re just not Jean Louise.” He added, “You don’t look funny at all, you look fine to me.”
“You’re nice to say that, Hank, but you’re just saying it. I’m all fat in the wrong places, and—”
Henry hooted. “How old are you? Goin’ on fifteen still. You haven’t even stopped growing yet. Say, you remember Gladys Grierson? Remember how they used to call her ‘Happy Butt’?”
“Ha-ank!”
“Well, look at her now.”
Gladys Grierson, one of the more delectable ornaments of the senior class, had been afflicted to a greater extent with Jean Louise’s complaint. “She’s downright slinky now, isn’t she?”
Henry said masterfully, “Listen, Scout, they’ll worry you the rest of the night. You better take ’em off.”
“No. Let’s go home.”
“We’re not going home, we’re going back in and have a good time.”
“No!”
“Damn it, Scout, I said we’re going back, so take ’em off!”
“Take me home, Henry.”
With furious, disinterested fingers, Henry reached beneath the neck of her dress, drew out the offending appurtenances, and flung them as far as he could into the night.
“Now shall we go in?”
No one seemed to notice the change in her appearance, which proved, Henry said, that she was vain as a peacock, thinking everybody was looking at her all the time.
The next day was a school day, and the dance broke up at eleven. Henry coasted the Ford down the Finch driveway and brought it to a stop under the chinaberry trees. He and Jean Louise walked to the front door, and before he opened it for her, Henry put his arms around her lightly and kissed her. She felt her cheeks grow hot.
“Once more for good luck,” he said.
He kissed her again, shut the door behind her, and she heard him whistling as he ran across the street to his room.
Hungry, she tiptoed down the hall to the kitchen. Passing her father’s room, she saw a strip of light under his door. She knocked and went in. Atticus was in bed reading.
“Have a good time?”
“I had a won-derful time,” she said. “Atticus?”
“Hm?”
“Do you think Hank’s too old for me?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Goodnight.”
SHE SAT THROUGH roll call the next morning under the weight of her crush on Henry, coming to attention only when her homeroom teacher announced that there would be a special assembly of the junior and senior schools immediately after the first-period bell.
She went to the auditorium with nothing more on her mind than the prospect of seeing Henry, and weak curiosity as to what Miss Muffett had to say. Probably another war bond drive.
The Maycomb County High School principal was a Mr. Charles Tuffett, who to compensate for his name, habitually wore an expression that made him resemble the Indian on a five-cent piece. The personality of Mr. Tuffett was less inspiring: he was a disappointed man, a frustrated professor of education with no sympathy for young people. He was from the hills of Mississippi, which placed him at a disadvantage in Maycomb: hard-headed hill folk do not understand coastal-plain dreamers, and Mr. Tuffett was no exception. When he came to Maycomb he lost no time in making known to the parents that their children were the most ill-mannered lot he had ever seen, that vocational agriculture was all they were fit to learn, that football and basketball were a waste of time, and that he, happily, had no use for clubs and extracurricular activities because school, like life, was a business proposition.