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because of his daddy.

    â€œA LL THE SAME , I hope you aren’t taking this Charles White case because of Mr. M. L.,” Bertha cautioned as they continued their stroll from Miss Pauline’s.
    â€œDaddy’s got nothing to do with what I’m doing or not doing about Charles White,” Foster said. He knew that was a bit of a lie. He could not escape who he was and how he was raised. Born legally blind in one eye and weakened by diphtheria as a baby, the smallest of the five children to survive and a favorite of his mother simply because he survived, he had been a shy, serious child, in awe of the tall, strapping, garrulous man that townspeople and visitors alike called Mr. M. L. As an adult, Foster had come to be proud of his father’s intellect and open-mindedness, while deploring his abuse of alcohol, so much so that he barely touched liquor himself.
    â€œBesides, Bertha, you’ve got enough to worry about with your own job. Did you ever talk to the superintendent, find out what he wants?” The superintendent, a powerful man in Enterprise, where Bertha was the high school English teacher, had presided over Coffee County’s schools, white and colored, for more than thirty years. Foster had heard from Frances that Bertha was under pressure from the superintendent about something, and he was trying to change the subject.
    â€œHe wants a better grade for his grandson. I can’t let him make me, but I have to keep my job.”
    Foster knew she had to, and not just for the small salary. Bertha had to keep her job as a teacher. Teaching was what got her wrought up; Bertha believed in teaching Coffee County high school boys and girls King Lear and Great Expectations and Byron, Shelley, and Keatsthe way he believed in defending their parents against the banks. Foster suspected that not even a proposal of marriage would keep Bertha in Enterprise unless she could teach.
    They had walked three blocks from Miss Pauline’s and into the colored section of Enterprise. Foster smiled and nodded hello to an older Negro man, who tipped his hat to Bertha and stepped aside to make room for the white couple to pass. The man was one of a small number of Coffee County Negroes who actually owned the land he farmed, one of an even smaller number of Foster’s clients, white or colored, who paid him in cash for his legal work. Foster had taken great pleasure the previous year in turning away the bank’s effort to foreclose on the man’s farm.
    Foster’s thoughts returned to Bertha. If she didn’t give the superintendent what he wanted for his grandson, she might get fired and would quickly run out of money. He knew she saved little from her teacher’s salary, half of which she was already sending to her mother in Weogufka, and that she was spending too much of what was left on the Book-of-the-Month Club, explaining, when he asked how she could afford so manyof the Club’s selections, that she wanted to “learn what to read from the smart people in New York.” The exception was poetry, about which she felt confident enough to buy on her own.
    â€œYou know, the superintendent’s been in the education field quite some time,” Foster said. “Surely he knows a thing or two about grading an English paper.”
    Bertha did not reply.
    â€œWell, then, if you won’t budge, I guess we’ll both wind up in the poorhouse,” he said, impulsively taking her hand, still hoping to persuade her to give the boy a satisfactory grade.
    â€œWell then yourself, Foster Beck,” Bertha said, freeing her hand. He had no business hint-hinting what to do about her boss, and he knew it. And it was unfair for him to tell her what to do to keep her job while at the same time risking his own career over the Charles White case.
    â€œFoster. Your family’s already done more than anyone in south Alabama for the colored.” She wanted to end the talk of the