The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee (10 page)

The way she phrased that, I thought, sounded like something out of the British histories they read. I pictured the two sisters in the white wigs worn by British jurists.

I wasn’t feeling all that brave. Would they think the story was fair? I thought so, but I couldn’t be sure. Accurate? Better be. But so much conflicting information had been published about Nelle Harper over the years. I was wary that an incorrect date or a long-exaggerated anecdote could survive the fact-checking I had done, somewhat awkwardly, by fax.

I figured a few things in the story might bother Nelle. But they came from Alice and their preacher friend, Tom Butts, speaking on the record. Already, I was feeling the uneasy tug between inquisitive journalist and protective friend.

The story, “A Life Apart: Harper Lee, the Complex Woman Behind ‘a Delicious Mystery,’” took up the front page of the section and another two full pages inside. The section front included a large, close-up photo of Nelle, gazing with those penetrating eyes, arthritic hands folded in front of her on an unseen restaurant table at Radley’s.

The story traced Harper Lee’s path to being such a famously private author and gave details of her day-to-day life in Monroeville with Alice, from feeding the ducks to collecting mail at the post office. It described the toll the press of attention had taken on both sisters. One sidebar story described the fishing outing, another Nelle’s long friendship with Gregory Peck. Per our agreement, I did not include my meeting with Nelle.

While they read it, I left to photocopy an essay about local history that Alice wanted me to read. Not everything in the story was flattering, though much of it was. I didn’t know how Nelle would feel about all Alice had said on the record. I dallied by the photocopier so they could read the piece without my standing there.

When I returned to Alice’s office, Nelle looked up from the newspaper. She read quietly for a few more minutes. “B plus,” she said when she finished. From Alice, “Good job.” They seemed generally pleased, perhaps relieved.

Nelle did have one complaint, about the way I described Alice’s accent in this sentence: “‘Nelle Harper is very independent. She always was,’ says Alice Lee, who, with her Alabama inflections, pronounces the name ‘Nail Hah-puh.’”

Wrong. “Nail Hah-puh” was closer to the way some people I interviewed pronounced her name, but not Alice. There was something soft, something Southern, in her pronunciation, but it was more subtle than I had been able to capture phonetically. I’d seen her name spelled phonetically like this in other stories and remembered the moment I
sat at my desk quietly repeating aloud the name as I remembered Alice saying it. Not quite it, I thought to myself at the time. But as close as I’m going to get. Now I regretted it.

“You dropped her two social classes with one syllable,” Nelle said.

I was chagrined. Even so, I had to admire her admonishment. It was succinct and delivered its sting with a dash of wit. Classic Nelle.

I tried to imagine the correction the
Tribune
could run. “An article in the September 13
Chicago Tribune
mischaracterized the way Alice Lee pronounces the name of her sister Nelle Harper Lee. Alice Lee says ‘Nelle Harper,’ not ‘Nail Hah-puh.’ The
Tribune
regrets the error.”

Absurd? Maybe I could come up with a better way to word it. Maybe not.

Don’t bother, Nelle said. She’d rather leave it be. I let it go. But I made note, ever after, of the myriad accents freighted with meaning within the 1,035 square miles of Monroe County, Alabama.

Chapter Seven

T
he Lees invited me on a drive the following day to see one of their favorite historical spots: the grave of Creek Indian Chief William “Red Eagle” Weatherford. Dale and Tom would join us as well. Nelle drove Alice, Dale, and me. Tom trailed us in his Buick. About an hour out of Monroeville, we came across the small town of Stockton and the Stagecoach Cafe.

The decor of the Stagecoach Cafe was pegged to its history as a stopping place for the covered wagons making their way across this part of the state. Even the salad bar was shaped to resemble a giant (and very long) covered wagon. The five of us sat at a long pine table with a red-and-white-checked cloth. We ordered sweet tea and baskets of fried oysters.

Nelle ate the last of her oysters with relish. She pushed her chair back with a small groan. They were good, and they were filling. Alice took small bites from her plate. It took her longer to eat less. Before we left, Alice rose to use the ladies’ room. I went with her.

It isn’t easy navigating a restroom with a walker. By the time Alice made her way to one of the sinks, I had washed and dried my hands. The surface around the sinks had the usual splashes of water, and stray
strands of hair. You wouldn’t want to set down a pocketbook there. The paper towel dispenser was on the wall, several steps from where Alice stood. To reach it, she would have had to grip her walker with wet hands. I handed her a paper towel.

Alice dried her hands and then matter-of-factly wiped clean the area around the sink. This hadn’t occurred to me to do. I was in a hurry or someone else left the mess or I was paying no attention. Pick your reason. But this was routine for Alice, an extension of being a good citizen, really. It was a small thing. And yet it wasn’t.

She ruined me for leaving public sinks the way I find them. Years later, I’ll be in the ladies’ room at a restaurant or the movies and notice the counter around the sink is wet. “Oh, forget it this once,” I’ll think and begin to walk away. Then, ashamed, I’ll turn around and dry the sink.

Fortified by our big lunch, we climbed back into the two vehicles and pointed toward the main destination that day: the grave of Creek Indian Chief Red Eagle. A green Baldwin County park sign pointed the way to the grave.

We had talked, on country drives, of the heritage of the area, of Creek Indians and white settlers, many of them Scottish, Irish, and English. Of the people who arrived not by choice but by slave ship and melded African traditions with those forged in the hardships of their new existence.

“There’s a reason for the Southern tradition of storytelling,” Nelle explained. “We are Celtic,” she said, “and African.”

And contrary, she added, especially when it comes to edicts from above. “When Southerners know they have to obey the law, they do it, without much enthusiasm. Though segregation has ended, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a terrific social stratum still in place.”

Nelle idled the car by the grave sites. A simple gray slab was
engraved with “Red Eagle” in large letters. “William Weatherford” was carved above it, and his birth and death, “1765–1824,” were below. The slab was embedded in a thick pillar of stones. Next to Red Eagle’s grave was that of his mother, Sehoy Weatherford, with no dates given. A small distance away, a large green plaque contained several paragraphs about Red Eagle’s colorful life. It also gave a short history of the chief’s mother.

I walked the short distance from the car to the plaque and began reading.

“The son of a Scotch trader, Charles Weatherford, and a Creek Indian Princess, Sehoy Tate Weatherford, William was destined to become one of the most powerful leaders of the Wind Clan of the Creek’s Indian Nation.”

I glanced back at the car. Nelle made a motion that indicated “Keep reading. We’re fine.” So I did, trying to concentrate on the words and not the sledgehammer heat or the surprise of being invited on this outing.

“During the early 1800’s conflicts, usually over land, between the Creek Indians and the white settlers erupted into open warfare. After having led his warriors in the attack on Fort Mims, in August of 1813, he was known to have grieved at the viciousness of the attack. Over 500 white settlers, men, women and children, and several hundred Creek Indian Warriors were killed in this historic battle.”

Nelle was captivated by local history. She admitted to feeling the hair on the back of her neck raise sometimes when she drove past the site of the Fort Mims massacre. Her reading of Albert J. Pickett’s two-volume
History of Alabama
brought to life the horrors of the bloodshed between the white settlers and the Creek Indians.

“I feel presences there,” Nelle said.

I was still concentrating on Red Eagle’s story and withering in the
September afternoon sun when Nelle yelled from the car window. “Child, come here immediately,” she commanded. Something in the way she said it made me dash to the car without saying a word.

Another order: “Get in the car.”

Only then did she point out the four-foot rattlesnake that had been curled at my feet.

Smart move, I realized from the safety of the Buick’s backseat. If she had called out, “Rattlesnake—watch out,” I would have been looking around, alarmed, instead of simply darting to safety.

“You scared me to death,” Nelle said. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or relieved. Some of both, I decided.

With me safely in the backseat, Nelle began scolding Tom. The preacher had gotten out of his car. Armed with rocks, the seventy-two-year-old Tom inched a little closer to the snake.

A rattlesnake nearly killed his sharecropper father years ago when he reached his hand into a woodpile and was bitten by the snake. Tom still remembered his father’s arm swelling grotesquely as his sons rushed him to the home of Dr. Carter, the only physician for miles.

This day, the good reverend had a plan. He wanted to stone the snake to death. He gathered rocks, then aimed and missed a couple of times.

“Tom, stop that right now.” This was foolishness.

He complied.

It was frightening for a moment but, more so, it was encouraging as Nelle and Alice both seemed enthusiastic about showing me around the area.

Back in the car, Nelle issued an invitation.

“Do you have plans? Would you like to go to dinner with Tom and me?”

“Well, yes, I’d love to, thank you.”

“Does the South Forty sound all right?”

“That sounds great.”

Alice would stay home since it was after dark, Nelle said, but her sister wanted us to go. Alice liked at least a window of solitude in her day, time to settle into her recliner with no distractions as she tended to her correspondence and read. Tom would go home to change clothing and then drive the three of us to the South Forty.

Nelle did have a request. Would I mind terribly if we bypassed the Best Western until after dinner? It would simplify things if I waited with them at their house while Tom went home to freshen up. That way he’d have to make only one stop.

I sat with the Lees in their living room before going to dinner; they both wanted to get back to the books they were reading. Alice offered me that day’s
Mobile Register,
and motioned to the plaid sofa next to her chair. “Please make yourself comfortable.”

She took her usual spot in the recliner and pulled the lever to raise the leg support. She resumed where she had left off in one of the four books she had going. As usual, Alice’s focus was on nonfiction. “Real life is so interesting.” She appreciated good fiction, of course, as did Nelle, whose reading tastes were more varied.

Alice was the picture of relaxation, somehow, despite the skirt and jacket and pantyhose, her everyday uniform. Her outstretched legs were crossed at her slender ankles. As always, white Reeboks completed the ensemble.

Nelle had gone down the hallway to freshen up. She returned and sank into her reading chair across from Alice with a loud “Oomph. I’m bushed.” We’d had quite a day. Nelle made a face, then brightened and chuckled. She shot a look of—what?—merriment, perhaps, at Alice and then me. Perhaps because their hearing made small talk a hassle, especially across even a small room, they managed to convey a lot with
just a look or a gesture. I was learning to be more comfortable with silence around them, to resist the impulse to begin chatting out of politeness or habit.

Nelle, too, had a side table with a smaller stack of books and some papers. She opened a small hardcover. The only sound in the room was me turning the page of the
Register
as quietly as I could. They were reading peacefully, companionably, as they did so many evenings. Routine for them. Magical for me.

The Lees encouraged me to pay another visit to Monroeville, a social call this time, now that the newspaper story had run. This was new territory for all of us. The work, as such, was completed but a friendship had begun, one that, against the odds, felt natural, unforced. They urged me not to “disappear back to Chicago.”

I was touched by their sincerity. I had loved hearing their stories and, of course, wanted to get to know both of them better. I wasn’t thinking or talking in terms of a book at this juncture, but as a journalist I wanted to continue our conversation. With Alice being ninety-one years old, there was always an urgency to these conversations. In retrospect, I think the Lees and their friends chose to open up to me in part because they knew Alice might not be long for this world.