64 pages • 2 hours read
Lynda RutledgeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Content Warning: This section discusses racism and racial violence.
Corky goes to the drugstore thinking about her parents’ fight and feeling frustrated. She remembers how after her fight with a school bully, her father was pleased she defended herself. He also tells her she can be anything she wants in life, which makes her wonder why her mother cannot.
Noah Boatwright IV—the oldest member of the Boatwright family—comes into the drugstore. He and Cal were classmates at school with a long history of enmity. Since much of their land has been sold over the years, the Boatwrights’ fortune is now purely monetary. Noah IV has two sons, Bubba and Tad. Noah IV previously struggled with an alcohol addiction and abused Bubba, but recently recovered and became a deacon of the Baptist church. Traumatized by his father’s violence, Bubba also developed an alcohol addiction and bullies other kids at school where he has a contentious rivalry with Mack. Corky feels alarmed overhearing Noah IV murmuring to her father that civil rights protests are causing trouble.
As Corky gets ready to leave, Tad appears on his bike. The two are friends despite their brothers’ rivalry, though adolescence has changed their friendship. Now Tad smiles at her and she looks at him differently. Tad tells her to let him take her home. On the road, he stops. The two kiss and Corky experiences “a dizzy new feeling” (56). At her house, he invites her to a party being thrown by a girl in the 9th grade.
Corky meets Mack at home and they go to the field. Mack is now the new coach of the girls’ team. Even though they are not good this year, they are willing to play. America arrives, and spectators gather as the team starts training. After seeing America’s skills, Methodist Reverend Doug protests that they also have a right to take a player from the Southside.
Mack wants to drive America home, but she hesitates. Corky feels strange as they cross the tracks to the Southside. On the way, she notices the differences in housing. America asks Mack to stop before they reach her house and Corky hands her To Kill a Mockingbird. At home, they find their mother alone, listening to music.
At home, America finds her mother staring out the window. She does not notice America’s new shoes or the book. Her father is away looking for work and America remembers he was worried before he left. America says she had fun at the practice and goes to her room, excited to start reading.
America enjoys the “author’s voice” in To Kill a Mockingbird, noting that it’s more contemporary than the classic books she used to read and found boring. She feels drawn into the world and invested in the characters, but fears that something horrible is about to happen in the story. When she reads that a white mob attacks a Black man intending to lynch him, she throws the book away, upset and restless. She goes out alone in the middle of the night and runs fast toward the railroad tracks. She thinks of her day at the softball field and her place on the team might mean for her future. Despite her parents’ love and protection, she’s deeply aware of the challenges she faces as a Black girl in Texas. She feels Lee’s novel was “too much” for her as it transported her “into a dangerous past world” (71). She wants to cross the railroad tracks toward the Northside but fear causes her to turn back. Instead, she goes into the church and calms down.
America returns home and finds the book on the floor. She puts it under her bed and lies down, hoping to sleep.
After hearing about America joining the softball team, the Baptist Women’s Missionary Union decides to come to the Corcoran’s house. When America arrives, Corky realizes she’s angry. America asks why Corky would she give her a book about lynching and tells her she stopped reading it. Corky feels confused and says that there’s no such thing in the story. America tells her she’ll return the book soon. They practice softball for a while until the Missionary Union women arrive. Corky still feels America’s anger.
Corky and America help Belle serve the women. The ladies speak well to America and talk with Belle about the Union’s upcoming charities. However, one of the women feels concerned about America playing on the softball team and tells Belle she shouldn’t allow Corky to play with a Black girl. Other women disagree. Corky overhears the discussion.
Bubba and Tad Boatwright stop by the house to pick up their mother. Bubba asks Corky where Mack is, but she ignores him since she’s focused on Tad. After the Union’s meeting, Belle tells Corky she should not play with the team this summer. Corky protests and asks if it’s because of America and what the women said. Belle tells her that the sport is not “ladylike.” She says that Corky asks too many questions and people will not like her. Corky thinks of America and the way Lee’s novel enraged her. Miss Delilah Yoakum, Corky’s music teacher at the elementary school appears outside the house, late for the Missionary Union meeting. Miss Yoakum is retired and lives alone, so Corky accompanies her back home. Miss Yoakum sees that Corky is upset and Corky confesses that she’s worried because her friend was hurt by a book Corky gave her. Miss Yoakum understands, saying that books are “personal” because people “bring [their] own story to everything [they] read” (81).
Corky wonders about America’s story and the ways it differs from her own. She realizes that the world does not revolve around her as “everybody’s got their own story” and one must be open to learning them (82).
Corky attends a fundraising talent show for the American Legion with a friend. She feels bored and spies on Tad, sitting a few rows in front of her, until Noah IV performs “Ol’ Man River” with his face painted black. The crowd is frustrated and Corky connects their discomfort and Noah IV’s blackface performance with racism. After the show, Noah IV calls Corky and asks if America’s invitation to the softball team was her idea. Despite knowing it was Pastor Pete’s idea, Corky tells him it was hers. Noah IV says it’s wrong, but Corky feels unconcerned at his reproach and wonders instead if Tad will kiss her again. At home, Corky tells her parents what happened and Cal laughs at Noah IV.
At night, Corky waits for her dog to sneak into her room as usual. She gazes out the window and sees the car of Sunny and Sandy, two girls who have a crush on Mack. They call out to him as they pass by the house. Behind them, Corky spots Bubba’s car which soon vanishes. However, she also sees a truck—with a flatbed and a broken taillight—heading in Bubba’s direction before slowing down close to her house. The truck makes another circle around the block and Corky feels scared. The truck leaves without further incident.
In 1964, there are no leash laws in High Cotton and Roy Rogers wanders free around the town. The dog wakes up in Corky’s room and runs outside. He waits for Belle to pet him and give him his breakfast, then walks around the neighborhood. He sees other dogs he knows and listens to people’s conversations. Two women from the Missionary Union talk about America’s place on the softball team. Roy Rogers passes by the library and the school before reaching the church. A man argues with Pastor Pete about America playing on the girls’ team. Roy Rogers senses anger and does not like it. He leaves the church and finds the school bully, Dwayne, with a friend. Dwayne tries to run Roy Rogers over with his car, but the dog chases a cat up a tree and escapes.
Roy Rogers passes by a house where a lonely chihuahua lives, then heads home. On the way he smells the fumes coming by the truck that scared Corky the night before. Intuitively, he senses that something is wrong and tries to follow the smell but it vanishes. He reaches his house, sees Corky and Belle getting into the car and stands sentry, sensing that something is coming.
Rutledge opens the section with Corky’s reflections on her parents’ fight, highlighting the theme of Racial Justice and Women’s Rights in the 1960s. The inherent contradictions between her father’s views on traditional gender roles and his actions toward Corky help her begin to separate his personal character from entrenched gender prejudice and expectations. While Cal expects his wife to lead a domestic life and wants Corky to be “ladylike” at work, he enjoys her “tomboy” behavior and encourages to defend herself against bullies at school. Corky struggles to parse Cal’s support of her aspirations—“You can be anything you want, and don’t let anyone tell you different”—and his rigid attitude toward her mother and brother (50).
Rutledge uses the prejudice of Noah IV and the history of entrenched racism in High Cotton to undergird Corky’s personal reckoning. Noah IV’s status as a wealthy “descendant of a post–Civil War cotton plantation owner” (84) and a Baptist deacon provides him with the social and economic capital to perpetuate a legacy of racism in the town. Noah IV’s blackface performance in the town’s talent show epitomizes the racist worldview he embodies in the text. The Boatwrights maintain their power in the community through the perpetuation of both institutionalized and interpersonal white supremist ideology and authority. Corky has her first kiss with Boatright’s younger son, Tad, but the family’s legacy complicates this formative romantic experience through Corky’s burgeoning understanding of the family’s hand in upholding racism.
Corky’s character arc runs parallel to the development of her social consciousness. The disparate reactions to America’s inclusion on the Baptist softball team escalates High Cotton’s simmering racial tension. With America on the team, the other girls accept her with enthusiasm, and do better in training: “[T]he whole team [is] jubilant” for America, who draws spectators during the practice—residents of people witnessing the team’s integration for the first time (61). The theme of Coming of Age in a Transformative Era recurs with Corky’s visit to the Southside when Mack drives America home. With segregation laws are still in effect in the South, Corky feels she is doing something “forbidden” in crossing the railroad tracks where she’s immediately confronted with her own privilege. In contrast her neighborhood on the Northside, the Southside has dirt roads and the “shotgun houses” (66). Corky encounters a new world of racial and class division that her privilege previously allowed her to ignore.
In this section, Rutledge switches to America’s narrative point of view to reveal her perspective. While America feels happy about her new activities with the softball team, her family struggles as her father still away looking for work, leaving her mother provide for their family while he’s gone. Structurally, Rutledge anchors the perspective shift in the handoff of To Kill a Mockingbird from Corky to America. Like Corky, America initially feels excited to read a contemporary “author’s voice,” different from the classic stories about “boring British people’s problems,” which never interest her (69). However, Corky and America’s vastly different reactions to the same novel provide a microcosm of the broader differences in their experiences and perspectives on the world. When America realizes that “something ominous threaten[s] to happen on the pages of the story” and a white mob prepares to lynch a Black man, she immediately stops reading (70). America’s reading of the book shows her awareness of and experiences with racialized violence. She confronts Corky, asking her why she gave her a book “about lynching,” and challenges her perception of reality (74). This confrontation exemplifies the ways in which Corky is Developing Consciousness Through Friendship and Literature, as the girls’ different worldviews emerge and force Corky toward a new understanding. Her former music teacher helps her understand that people “bring [themselves], [their] own story, to everything [they] read” (81), supporting Corky’s transformative journey toward greater empathy and compassion.
Rutledge establishes a menacing narrative tone as the section comes to a close with the appearance of an unknown truck with “a decrepit flatbed” outside Corky’s house, underscoring America’s ominous feelings (87). Rutledge switches to the point of view of Corky’s dog, Roy Rogers, personifying him and assigning instinctual emotions to him as he observes the neighborhood, reinforcing the sense of imminent danger. Roy roams around freely unaware of divisive lines between the two parts of the town. He “[senses] something he [doesn’t] like: anger” (90). Throughout the Northside, people discuss America’s participation in the softball game, revealing resentment and prejudice. The dog dislikes the anger he feels from the humans and the truck fumes he smells in the air foreshadow the attack against America and Mack, building up tension through the threat of racial hate.