Setting Up a Watchman: Read Chapter 1 - Interactive

Since leaving Atlanta, she has been looking out of the window of the food truck with heartfelt happiness. After breakfast and coffee, she took one last look at the georgian hills receding, the red earth appearing, the tin roof in the middle of the yard, the inevitable crazy long verbena in the yard, surrounded by whitewashed tires. When she first saw the television antennas on the unpainted Negro's house, she smiled; they grew more and more, and she rejoiced.

Joan Louise Finch always traveled by plane, but this time she decided to take the train from New York to Mayon City on her fifth-year journey home. The reason was that she was terrified the last time she flew: the pilot flew past the tornado. Flying home, on the other hand, meant that her father, after a long day at work, had to get up at 3 a.m. and drive a hundred miles to Mobile to pick her up: He's now seventy-two, and it's so unfair.

She was happy with her decision to take the train. The train had changed from her childhood, and the novelty of the experience amused her: when she pressed a button on the wall, a flight attendant who looked like a fat elf came; at her command, a stainless steel washbasin popped out of the other wall, and a toilet that could hold a man's feet. Determined not to be intimidated by the words printed around her cubicle, they called it a small private room. But when she went to bed the night before, she managed to fold herself against the wall because she ignored the ban to "put this lever on the scaffold", and the flight attendants made amends for her, embarrassing her, and she was generally only used to going to bed in her pajamas.

Luckily, when the trap snapped and shut her inside, he happened to be patrolling the hallway: "I'll save you, miss," he replied with a clap coming from inside. "No," she said. "I can turn it over with my back," he said, and did it.

When she woke up in the morning, the train was passing by Atlanta Station and the wrong train rumbled, but she obeyed another signal in her box, and she lay in bed until the moment of the flash of the university campus. She got dressed and put on her Meigang town outfit: gray slacks, a black sleeveless shirt, white socks and casual shoes. Although four hours had passed, she could still hear her aunt's scornful disapproval.

As she began her fourth cup of coffee, the Crescent Express's horn sounded like a giant goose beside its northbound companion, rumbling across the Chathutch River all the way to Alabama.

The Chathutch River is wide, flat and muddy. Today it has very little water flow; the yellow sandbar makes it a trickle. Maybe it would sing in the winter, she thought: I don't remember the poem. Sharp singing fell on a desolate valley? No, is he writing about water birds, or waterfalls?

When she felt that Sidney Lanier was almost certainly her long-departed cousin, she suppressed herself, Joshua Singleton St. Clair, whose private literary collection ranged from Black Streamers to Bayura Batri. Joan Louise's aunt often referred to her cousin as an example of a family that was not easily opposed: he was a fine man, he was a poet, he suddenly disappeared in his heyday, and Joan Louise could not forget that he belonged to the family. His photograph is in the home. Cousin Joshua looked like a poorly dressed Argynon Swinborne.

Joan Louise remembered some other things her father had told her, and she laughed. Cousin Joshua disappeared, well, not to let God's hand, but to let Caesar's master.

In college, cousin Joshua studied too hard and thought too much, in fact, he taught himself the literature of the nineteenth century directly. He liked to wear a loose tunic with a round neck cape, long boots, and iron ornaments of his own design. When he fired a shot at the university president, his cousin Joshua was arrested by the authorities, who he thought was at best a sewage treatment specialist. This is undoubtedly true, but it is only an irresponsible excuse to attack with a lethal weapon. After giving a lot of money, cousin Joshua was transferred to a slum and placed in an unreliable place, where he spent the rest of his life. They said he was normal in every way, until someone mentioned the headmaster's name, his face would become distorted, he would hold his head high like an American crane and stay on for 8 hours or more, and no one and things would be able to bend his legs until he forgot about the man. On a clear day, his cousin Joshua read Greek, and he left behind a thin collection of poems that had been privately printed by a company in Tuscaloosa. Poetry was so ahead of its time that no one had yet been able to decipher it, but Joan Louise's aunt kept it, casually and conspicuously placed on the living room table.

Joan Louise let out a loud laugh, then looked around to see if anyone heard her laughing. Her father somehow ruined his sister's speech of any given Finch's innate superiority: he always told his daughter something else, to be quiet and solemn, but Joan Louise sometimes thought she had found a clear blasphemy flickering in Atticus Finch's eyes, or just the light hitting his glasses? She never knew.

The countryside and the train vanished with a gentle roll, and all she could see was the pastures and black cows that swept across the horizon from the window. She was amazed at why she had never felt so beautiful about her hometown.

Montgomery Station, located at a bend in Alabama, got off the train and stretched her limbs, returning to the familiar tedious, bright, and strange smell that came over her face. Something is still missing, he thought. Gearbox, that's it. A man with a crowbar walked under the train. There was a clanging sound, and soon there would be a trace of white smoke, and you felt that you were in a hot pot. These things now live on oil.

An old fear for no reason tormented her. She hadn't been to this station in 20 years, but when she was a child, and atticus went to the capital, she was terrified, lest the wobbly train overturn on the riverbank and drown all of them. But when she boarded the train home again, she forgot about it.

The train rattled past a pine forest, and with a mocking whistle, changed direction and headed into an empty strip of land next to an ornate museum painted with bell-shaped funnels. Those worrisome rumbles were nasty, and the Crescent Express endured all the extra private rooms. Greenville, Evergreen, Meigang Town Station.

She had told the conductor not to forget to let her off the train, because the conductor was an old man, and she was expecting his joke: he would rush like a bat from hell to the Meigang town station, stop the train a quarter of a mile away from the small station, and then when he said goodbye to her, he would say he was sorry, he almost forgot. Trains have changed, but the conductors have never changed. The sense of humor of the young lady at the main stop was a professional sign, and for Atticus, he could predict the behavior of every conductor from New Orleans to Cincinnati, waiting for more than six steps to reach the place where she got off the train.

The hometown of Meigang is an area about seventy miles long and thirty miles wide at its widest, and a wilderness is dotted with small settlements, the largest of which is Meigang Town, the seat of the county seat. Until a relatively recent period in history, the town of Meigang was crossed from other states, and some of its residents, unaware of the political preferences of the South over the past 90 years, still voted republicans. No train to get there. Meigang Junction Station, a nice name, is located in Albert County, twenty miles away. Bus services are precarious and seem to have nowhere to go, but the federal government has planned one or two highways to cross the swamp, giving residents the opportunity to go out freely. However, few people take advantage of this road, why? If you don't want too much, the original is enough.

The county and town were named After Coronel Mason Maegan, a confident and solipsistic wayward man who brought confusion and confusion, and all those who rode the frontier with him, were caught up in the Creek Indian War. He operated an area that stretched from the looming hills in the north and the plains in the south, to the edges of the coastal plains. Coronel Megan believed that the Indians hated fighting on flat lands and searched for them in the northern parts of the territory. When his general found Megon wandering up a hill, the Creeks lurked in every pine bush in the south, and he sent a friendly Indian with a letter to Megon, damn it, and rolled to the south. Megan was convinced that this was just a plot by the Cricks to frame him (wasn't there a blue-eyed, red-haired demon leading them there?). He took the friendly Indian messengers and moved further north until his army was desperately lost in the primeval forest, where they missed the war in considerable confusion.

Years later, Colonel Maygang believed that the news might indeed be true, and he began to march toward his targets in the south, and along the way his troops encountered migrants who had moved inland, and were told that the Indian War was over. The friendship between the army and the settlers became the ancestors of Jean-Louis Finch, and Colonel Maygon's use of what is now called mobility to preserve his merits and gain his due credit. The version that records history does not correspond to the truth, but these are facts, because they have been handed down after years of word of mouth, and every Meigang person knows this.

“...... "Your luggage, mademoiselle," said the waiter. Jean Louise followed him from the upper class trunk to her compartment. She took two dollars out of her wallet: one was the regular tip, and the other was putting down her tip last night. The train, of course, rushed through the train station like a bat out of hell and came to a stop 440 yards away. The conductor came, grinning, and said he was sorry that he had almost forgotten. Jean Louise smiled and waited impatiently for the waiter to put the yellow step away. He helped her out of the car, and she gave him two bills.

Her father wasn't waiting for her.

She looked in the direction of the station and saw a tall man standing on a small platform. He jumped off the platform and ran to find her.

He grabbed her, gave her a hug, pushed her away again, kissed her the mouth, and then kissed her softly again. "Don't be here, Hank," she whispered, with excitement.

"Shhh, girl," he said, holding her face. "I'm going to kiss you on the steps of the courthouse, if I want to."

The man who was going to kiss her on the steps of the court was Henry Clinton, her lifelong friend, her brother's partner, if he kept kissing her, like her husband did. You want to love someone and marry you, and your own touch is a manifesto, equivalent to her nature. Henry Clinton was the type of Joan Louise that moved her, and now she didn't think the manifesto was particularly harsh.

They walked down the tracks arm in arm and put away her suitcase. "How about Atticus?" She said

"It's more appropriate to give him his hands and shoulders today."

"When they do that, he can't drive, can he?"

Henry closed the fingers of his right hand in half and said, "He won't close them, at best." When they were like this, Miss Alexandra had to tie his shoelaces and button up his shirt. He couldn't even hold a razor. ”

Louise shook her head. She was too old to oppose this inequality, but she was too young to accept that her father was seriously ill without some struggle. "What else can they do without that?"

"You know no," Henry said. "He took seventy aspirins a day, and that was it."

Henry picked up her heavy suitcase and they went back to the car. She didn't know how to express the pain her days came with. Unlike Atticus: If you ask him how he feels, he'll tell you, but he never complains; his personality is the same as before, so in order to find out how he feels, you have to ask him.

Only Henry stumbled upon it. One day, while they were sorting out a title deed in the courtroom, Atticus pulled out a heavy mortgage that had turned into a bare white and accidentally dropped it on the ground. "What's wrong?" Henry asked. "Rheumatoid arthritis. Can you help me pick it up? Atticus said. Henry asked him how long he had been, and Atticus said it had been six months. Did Joan Louise know? I don't know. Then he'd better tell her. "If you tell her, she'll come here and take care of me." The only remedy is not to let it beat you. "The theme is gone.

"Want to drive?" Henry asked.

"Don't be silly," she said. Although she was a respected driver, she hated operating any machinery more complex than a safety pin: a chair folding the lawn was the source that stimulated her profoundly; she had never learned to ride a bicycle or use a typewriter; she could only fish with a swing rod. Her favorite game is playing golf because its basic rules include a stick, a small ball, and a mindset.

With great jealousy, she watched Henry drive the car with ease. The car was his servant, she thought. "Power steering? automatic transmission? She said.

"That's right," he said.

"Well, if you turn everything off, you don't have any gears to turn. You're going to be in trouble that way, aren't you? “

"Then don't close anything."

"How do you know?"

"That's trust. Here it is. ”

Trust in General Motors. She rested her head on his shoulder. "Hank," she said after a moment. "What the hell is going on?"

It's an old joke between them. A pink scar remained under his right eye, all the way to the corner of his nose, diagonally across his upper lip. Behind his lips were six false front teeth, and Louise didn't even persuade him to take them out and show them to her. He came back with them from the battlefield. The Germans, even more than anything else, had to express their displeasure at the end of the war, and the butt of his rifle slammed into his face. Joan Louise chose to think of it as a possible story: what gun was fired, it was known at once, B-17s, V-bombs, etc., henry might not be very close to the Germans.

"All right, my dear," he said. "We came to a basement in Berlin. Everyone drank too much, the battle began, and you'd like to hear stories with high credibility, wouldn't you? Will you marry me now? “

"Haven't thought about it yet."

"Why?"

"I'm going to play like Dr. Schweitzer until I'm thirty."

"He played well," Henry said grimly.

Joan-Louise moved under his arm. "You know what I mean," she said.

"Yes."

Everyone in The Town of Maygang said there was no better young man than Henry Clinton. Joan Louise agrees. Henry came from the southern part of the county seat. Soon after his father left, his mother gave birth to Henry, who worked in the small shop for nothing and at night to attend the public school in the town of Meigang. Henry, when he was 12, came to Finch's house across the street, which in itself put him on a higher level: he was his own master, without an authoritative cook, gardener, or parent. He was still in the fourth grade, her senior, and that made a difference. He made fun of her, she adored him. When his mother died when he was fourteen, nothing was left for him. Atticus Finch took care of the little money earned in the store's sales, spent most of it at her funeral, secretly replenished it with his own money, and then gave Henry an after-school job, keeping the money at Jitney Jungle. Henry joined the army after graduation, and after the war he went to university to study law.

Around that time, joan Louise's brother died like that, and after the nightmare, Atticus kept thinking of leaving his job to go to his son to find an opportunity for another young man. Hiring Henry was natural for him, and in due course Henry became Atticus's interview assistant, his eyes, his hands. Henry has always respected Atticus Finch; Soon their feelings grew harmonious, and Henry treated him like a father.

He didn't think Louise was a sister. Over the years he had left the war and college, and she had transformed from an angry, gun-drawn creature in overalls into a replica of a reasonable human being. He began to make an appointment with her for her two weeks of annual home visits, and though she still acted like a thirteen-year-old boy, vowing to give up the most feminine decorations, he found her so intensely feminine that he fell in love. She's good-looking and easy to get along with most of the time, but she's not a simple person in the sense of a word. She was tormented by a mental uneasiness that he could not comprehend, but he knew she was the one he was waiting for. He would protect her, he would marry her.

"Tired of New York?" He said.

"No."

"Let it go for two weeks, and I'll get you bored."

"Is this an inappropriate suggestion?"

"Well, go to hell."

Henry stopped the car. Turn off the ignition switch, turn suddenly, and look at her. She knew that when he took something seriously: his flat head would stand up like an angry brush, and the scars on his face would turn red.

"Honey, do you want me to look like a gentleman?" Miss Joan Louise, I now have a certain economic position to offer doubling my support. I, like the israelis of old, worked in the university's vineyard for seven years, on the ranch in your dad's office for you..."

"I'll tell Atticus to let it last seven years."

"Abominable."

"Besides," she said, "anyway, that's Jacob. No, they are the same. They always changed their names to one-third section. Such as Anti? “

"You know perfectly well that she's been fine for thirty years. Don't change the subject. ”

Louise's eyebrows moved. "Henry," she said solemnly, "I can be lovers with you, but I won't marry you." ”

This is exactly right.

"Don't be so childish, Joan Louise!" Henry said somewhat angrily that he had forgotten the latest configuration of the GM, grabbed the gear lever and stepped on the clutch. But none of this responded, and he violently twisted the ignition switch, pressed some buttons, and the large car slowly slid and smoothly on the highway.

"Slow down, okay?" She said. "You can't drive like this in the city." Henry stared at her. "What do you mean?"

In the next minute, this will develop into a quarrel. He was serious. She'd better make him angry so she can be silent so she can think about it seriously.

"Where did you get this scary tie?" She said.

Right now.

She was almost in love with him. No, it's impossible, she thinks: "whether you do this or you do that. The only thing to love is clear in this world. There are different kinds of love, of course, but it's just about these claims that you love or you don't love.

She is such a person, when faced with a simple matter, but always take a difficult approach. The simple thing to do is marry Hank and have him serve her. A few years later, when the children were waist-high, the man she was supposed to marry in the first place would appear. It makes people feel guilty, hot-headed, irritable, and looking at the steps of the post office for a long time, everyone will feel pain. Screaming and noble character, it's all just another outdated little trick of Birmingham Country Pub, a private hell of self-constructing with the latest Westinghouse appliances. Hank wasn't worth it.

No, for the moment she will pursue the path of celibacy without feelings. She set out to restore peace with honor:

"Honey, I'm sorry, I'm really sorry," she said, from the heart.

"It's all right," Henry said, patting her knee. "It's just that sometimes I might kill you."

"I know I'm hateful."

Henry looked at her. "You're a strange guy, both sweet. And they don't hide themselves. ”

She looked at him. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, as a general rule, most women, before they get them, will smile at their men with an accepting look. They hide their thoughts. That's how you are now, when you think you're hateful, honey, you're hateful. ”

"For a man, can he understand what he is doing?"

"Yes, but don't you know you'll never catch a man that way again?" “

She was obviously biting her tongue and saying, "So how do I become a witch?" “

Henry loved his topic. At the age of thirty, he was a legal adviser. Maybe it's because he's a lawyer. "First of all," he said calmly, "retract your tongue. Don't argue with men, especially when you know you can compete with him. Smile more. Make him feel important. Tell him how great he is and wait for him. ”

She smiled and said, "Hank, I agree with everything you say. You're the sharpest person I've seen in all these years, you're six feet five tall, can I help you light a cigarette? What's wrong with that? “

"Oops."

They became friends again.