Go Set a Watchman (To Kill a Mockingbird #2)

“As you please.”

“You double-dealing, ring-tailed old son of a bitch! You just sit there and say ‘As you please’ when you’ve knocked me down and stomped on me and spat on me, you just sit there and say ‘As you please’ when everything I ever loved in this world’s-you just sit there and say ‘As you please’-you love me! You son of a bitch!”

“That’ll do, Jean Louise.”

That’ll do, his general call to order in the days when she believed. So he kills me and gives it a twist… how can he taunt me so? How can he treat me so? God in heaven, take me away from here… God in heaven, take me away…

PART VII

18

SHE NEVER KNEW how she got the car started, how she held it in the road, how she got home without a serious accident.

I love you. As you please. Had he not said that, perhaps she would have survived. If he had fought her fairly, she could have flung his words back at him, but she could not catch mercury and hold it in her hands.

She went to her room and threw her suitcase onto the bed. I was born right where this suitcase is. Why didn’t you throttle me then? Why did you let me live this long?

“Jean Louise, what are you doing?”

“Packing, Aunty.”

Alexandra came to the side of the bed. “You have ten more days with us. Is something wrong?”

“Aunty, leave me alone for Christ’s sake!”

Alexandra bridled. “I’ll thank you not to use that Yankee expression in this house! What’s wrong?”

Jean Louise went to the closet, snatched her dresses from their hangers, returned to the bed, and crammed them into her suitcase.

“That’s no way to pack,” said Alexandra.

“It’s my way.”

She scooped up her shoes from beside the bed and threw them in after her dresses.

“What is it, Jean Louise?”

“Aunty, you may issue a communiqué to the effect that I am going so far away from Maycomb County it’ll take me a hundred years to get back! I never want to see it or anybody in it again, and that goes for every one of you, the undertaker, the probate judge, and the chairman of the board of the Methodist Church!”

“You’ve had a fight with Atticus, haven’t you?”

“I have.”

Alexandra sat on the bed and clasped her hands. “Jean Louise, I don’t know what it was about, and the way you look it must have been bad, but I do know this. No Finch runs.”

She turned to her aunt: “Jesus Christ, don’t you go telling me what a Finch does and what a Finch doesn’t do! I’m up to here with what Finches do, and I can’t take it one second longer! You’ve been ramming that down my throat ever since I was born-your father this, the Finches that! My father’s something unspeakable and Uncle Jack’s like Alice in Wonderland! And you, you are a pompous, narrow-minded old-”

Jean Louise stopped, fascinated by the tears running down Alexandra’s cheeks. She had never seen Alexandra cry; Alexandra looked like other people when she cried.

“Aunty, please forgive me. Please say it-I hit you below the belt.”

Alexandra’s fingers pulled tufts of tatting from the bedspread. “That’s all right. Don’t you worry about it.”

Jean Louise kissed her aunt’s cheek. “I haven’t been on the track today. I guess when you’re hurt your first instinct’s to hurt back. I’m not much of a lady, Aunty, but you are.”

“You’re mistaken, Jean Louise, if you think you’re no lady,” said Alexandra. She wiped her eyes. “But you are right peculiar sometimes.”

Jean Louise closed her suitcase. “Aunty, you go on thinking I’m a lady, just for a little while, just until five o’clock when Atticus comes home. Then you’ll find out different. Well, goodbye.”

She was carrying her suitcase to the car when she saw the town’s one white taxi drive up and deposit Dr. Finch on the sidewalk.

Come to me. When you can’t stand it any longer, come to me. Well, I can’t stand you any longer. I just can’t take any more of your parables and diddering around. Leave me alone. You are fun and sweet and all that, but please leave me alone.

From the corner of her eye, she watched her uncle tacking peacefully up the driveway. He takes such long steps for a short man, she thought. That is one of the things I will remember about him. She turned and put a key in the lock of the trunk, the wrong key, and she tried another one. It worked, and she raised the lid.

“Going somewhere?”

“Yes sir.”

“Where?”

“I’m gonna get in this car and drive it to Maycomb Junction and sit there until the first train comes along and get on it. Tell Atticus if he wants his car back he can send after it.”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself and listen to me.”

“Uncle Jack, I am so sick and damn tired of listening to the lot of you I could yell bloody murder! Won’t you leave me alone? Can’t you get off my back for one minute?”

She slammed down the trunk lid, snatched out the key, and straightened up to catch Dr. Finch’s savage backhand swipe full on the mouth.