“All I want’s a nap. Don’t you want some dinner?”
“No ma’am. Uncle Jack’ll give me a sandwich or something.”
“Better not count on it. He eats less and less these days.”
She stopped the car in Dr. Finch’s driveway, climbed the high front steps to his house, knocked on the door, and went in, singing in a raucous voice:
“Old Uncle Jack with his cane and his crutch
When he was young he boogie-woogied too much;
Put the sales tax on it—”
Dr. Finch’s house was small, but the front hallway was enormous. At one time it was a dog-trot hall, but Dr. Finch had sealed it in and built bookshelves around the walls.
He called from the rear of the house, “I heard that, you vulgar girl. I’m in the kitchen.”
She walked down the hall, through a door, and came to what was once an open back porch. It was now something faintly like a study, as were most of the rooms in his house. She had never seen a shelter that reflected so strongly the personality of its owner. An eerie quality of untidiness prevailed amid order: Dr. Finch kept his house militarily spotless, but books tended to pile up wherever he sat down, and because it was his habit to sit down anywhere he got ready, there were small stacks of books in odd places about the house that were a constant curse to his cleaning woman. He would not let her touch them, and he insisted on apple-pie neatness, so the poor creature was obliged to vacuum, dust, and polish around them. One unfortunate maid lost her head and lost his place in Tuckwell’s Pre-Tractarian Oxford, and Dr. Finch shook a broom at her.
When her uncle appeared, Jean Louise thought styles may come and styles may go, but he and Atticus will cling to their vests forever. Dr. Finch was coatless, and in his arms was Rose Aylmer, his old cat.
“Where were you yesterday, in the river again?” He looked at her sharply. “Stick out your tongue.”
Jean Louise stuck out her tongue, and Dr. Finch shifted Rose Aylmer to the crook of his right elbow, fished in his vest pocket, brought out a pair of half-glasses, flicked them open, and clapped them to his face.
“Well, don’t leave it there. Put it back,” he said. “You look like hell. Come on to the kitchen.”
“I didn’t know you had half-glasses, Uncle Jack,” said Jean Louise.
“Hah—I discovered I was wasting money.”
“How?”
“Looking over my old ones. These cost half as much.”
A table stood in the center of Dr. Finch’s kitchen, and on the table was a saucer containing a cracker upon which rested a solitary sardine.
Jean Louise gaped. “Is that your dinner? Honestly, Uncle Jack, can you possibly get any weirder?”
Dr. Finch drew a high stool to the table, deposited Rose Aylmer upon it, and said, “No. Yes.”
Jean Louise and her uncle sat down at the table. Dr. Finch picked up the cracker and sardine and presented them to Rose Aylmer. Rose Aylmer took a small bite, put her head down, and chewed.
“She eats like a human,” said Jean Louise.
“I hope I’ve taught her manners,” said Dr. Finch. “She’s so old now I have to feed her bit by bit.”
“Why don’t you put her to sleep?”
Dr. Finch looked indignantly at his niece. “Why should I? What’s the matter with her? She’s got a good ten years yet.”
Jean Louise silently agreed and wished, comparatively speaking, that she would look as good as Rose Aylmer when she was as old. Rose Aylmer’s yellow coat was in excellent repair; she still had her figure; her eyes were bright. She slept most of her life now, and once a day Dr. Finch walked her around the back yard on a leash.
Dr. Finch patiently persuaded the old cat to finish her lunch, and when she had done so he went to a cabinet over the sink and took out a bottle. Its cap was a medicine dropper. He drew up a mighty portion of the fluid, set the bottle down, caught the back of the cat’s head, and told Rose Aylmer to open her mouth. The cat obeyed. She gulped and shook her head. Dr. Finch drew more fluid into the dropper and said, “Open your mouth,” to Jean Louise.
Jean Louise gulped and spluttered. “Dear Lord, what was that?”
“Vitamin C. I want you to let Allen have a look at you.”
Jean Louise said she would, and asked her uncle what was on his mind these days.
Dr. Finch, stooping at the oven, said, “Sibthorp.”
“Sir?”
Dr. Finch took from the oven a wooden salad bowl filled, to Jean Louise’s amazement, with greens. I hope it wasn’t on.
“Sibthorp, girl. Sibthorp,” he said. “Richard Waldo Sibthorp. Roman Catholic priest. Buried with full Church of England ceremonials. Tryin’ to find another one like him. Highly significant.”
Jean Louise was accustomed to her uncle’s brand of intellectual shorthand: it was his custom to state one or two isolated facts, and a conclusion seemingly unsupported thereby. Slowly and surely, if prodded correctly, Dr. Finch would unwind the reel of his strange lore to reveal reasoning that glittered with a private light of its own.
But she was not there to be entertained with the vacillations of a minor Victorian esthete. She watched her uncle maneuver salad greens, olive oil, vinegar, and several ingredients unknown to her with the same precision and assurances he employed on a difficult osteotomy. He divided the salad into two plates and said, “Eat, child.”
Dr. Finch chewed ferociously on his lunch and eyed his niece, who was arranging lettuce, hunks of avocado, green pepper, and onions in a neat row on her plate. “All right, what’s the matter? Are you pregnant?”
“Gracious no, Uncle Jack.”
“That’s about the only thing I can think of that worries young women these days. Do you want to tell me?” His voice softened. “Come on, old Scout.”
Jean Louise’s eyes blurred with tears. “What’s been happening, Uncle Jack? What is the matter with Atticus? I think Hank and Aunty have lost their minds and I know I’m losing mine.”
“I haven’t noticed anything the matter with them. Should I?”
“You should have seen them sitting in that meeting yesterday—”
Jean Louise looked up at her uncle, who was balancing himself dangerously on the back legs of his chair. He put his hands on the table to steady himself, his incisive features melted, his eyebrows shot up, he laughed loudly. The front legs of his chair came down with a bang, and he subsided into chuckles.
Jean Louise raged. She got up from the table, tipped over her chair, restored it, and walked to the door. “I didn’t come here to be made fun of, Uncle Jack,” she said.