To Kill a Mockingbird pdfdrive com

parts  formerly  thrust  upon  me—the  ape  in  Tarzan,  Mr.  Crabtree  in  The  Rover
Boys, Mr. Damon in Tom Swift. Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin,
whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.
But  by  the  end  of  August  our  repertoire  was  vapid  from  countless
reproductions, and it was then that Dill gave us the idea of making Boo Radley
come out.
The Radley Place fascinated Dill. In spite of our warnings and explanations it
drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no nearer than the light-pole
on  the  corner,  a  safe  distance  from  the  Radley  gate.  There  he  would  stand,  his
arm around the fat pole, staring and wondering.
The Radley Place jutted into a sharp curve beyond our house. Walking south,
one  faced  its  porch;  the  sidewalk  turned  and  ran  beside  the  lot.  The  house  was

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low, was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago
darkened  to  the  color  of  the  slate-gray  yard  around  it.  Rain-rotted  shingles
drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains
of  a  picket  drunkenly  guarded  the  front  yard—a  “swept”  yard  that  was  never
swept—where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance.
Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom. People said he existed, but Jem
and I had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon was
down,  and  peeped  in  windows.  When  people’s  azaleas  froze  in  a  cold  snap,  it
was because he had breathed on them. Any stealthy small crimes committed in
Maycomb  were  his  work.  Once  the  town  was  terrorized  by  a  series  of  morbid
nocturnal  events:  people’s  chickens  and  household  pets  were  found  mutilated;
although  the  culprit  was  Crazy  Addie,  who  eventually  drowned  himself  in
Barker’s Eddy, people still looked at the Radley Place, unwilling to discard their
initial suspicions. A Negro would not pass the Radley Place at night, he would
cut  across  to  the  sidewalk  opposite  and  whistle  as  he  walked.  The  Maycomb
school grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chickenyard
tall pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched
by  the  children:  Radley  pecans  would  kill  you.  A  baseball  hit  into  the  Radley
yard was a lost ball and no questions asked.
The misery of that house began many years before Jem and I were born. The
Radleys,  welcome  anywhere  in  town,  kept  to  themselves,  a  predilection
unforgivable  in  Maycomb.  They  did  not  go  to  church,  Maycomb’s  principal
recreation, but worshiped at home; Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street
for a mid-morning coffee break with her neighbors, and certainly never joined a
missionary circle. Mr. Radley walked to town at eleven-thirty every morning and
came  back  promptly  at  twelve,  sometimes  carrying  a  brown  paper  bag  that  the
neighborhood  assumed  contained  the  family  groceries.  I  never  knew  how  old
Mr.  Radley  made  his  living—Jem  said  he  “bought  cotton,”  a  polite  term  for
doing nothing—but Mr. Radley and his wife had lived there with their two sons
as long as anybody could remember.
The shutters and doors of the Radley house were closed on Sundays, another
thing  alien  to  Maycomb’s  ways:  closed  doors  meant  illness  and  cold  weather
only. Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore
corsets,  men  wore  coats,  children  wore  shoes.  But  to  climb  the  Radley  front
steps  and  call,  “He-y,”  of  a  Sunday  afternoon  was  something  their  neighbors
never did. The Radley house had no screen doors. I once asked Atticus if it ever
had any; Atticus said yes, but before I was born.
According to neighborhood legend, when the younger Radley boy was in his

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teens he became acquainted with some of the Cunninghams from Old Sarum, an
enormous and confusing tribe domiciled in the northern part of the county, and
they formed the nearest thing to a gang ever seen in Maycomb. They did little,
but enough to be discussed by the town and publicly warned from three pulpits:
they hung around the barbershop; they rode the bus to Abbottsville on Sundays
and  went  to  the  picture  show;  they  attended  dances  at  the  county’s  riverside
gambling  hell,  the  Dew-Drop  Inn  &  Fishing  Camp;  they  experimented  with
stumphole whiskey. Nobody in Maycomb had nerve enough to tell Mr. Radley
that his boy was in with the wrong crowd.
One  night,  in  an  excessive  spurt  of  high  spirits,  the  boys  backed  around  the
square in a borrowed flivver, resisted arrest by Maycomb’s ancient beadle, Mr.
Conner,  and  locked  him  in  the  courthouse  outhouse.  The  town  decided
something had to be done; Mr. Conner said he knew who each and every one of
them was, and he was bound and determined they wouldn’t get away with it, so
the  boys  came  before  the  probate  judge  on  charges  of  disorderly  conduct,
disturbing  the  peace,  assault  and  battery,  and  using  abusive  and  profane
language in the presence and hearing of a female. The judge asked Mr. Conner
why  he  included  the  last  charge;  Mr.  Conner  said  they  cussed  so  loud  he  was
sure every lady in Maycomb heard them. The judge decided to send the boys to
the state industrial school, where boys were sometimes sent for no other reason
than to provide them with food and decent shelter: it was no prison and it was no
disgrace.  Mr.  Radley  thought  it  was.  If  the  judge  released  Arthur,  Mr.  Radley
would see to it that Arthur gave no further trouble. Knowing that Mr. Radley’s
word was his bond, the judge was glad to do so.
The other boys attended the industrial school and received the best secondary
education to be had in the state; one of them eventually worked his way through
engineering  school  at  Auburn.  The  doors  of  the  Radley  house  were  closed  on
weekdays  as  well  as  Sundays,  and  Mr.  Radley’s  boy  was  not  seen  again  for
fifteen years.
But  there  came  a  day,  barely  within  Jem’s  memory,  when  Boo  Radley  was
heard  from  and  was  seen  by  several  people,  but  not  by  Jem.  He  said  Atticus
never  talked  much  about  the  Radleys:  when  Jem  would  question  him  Atticus’s
only  answer  was  for  him  to  mind  his  own  business  and  let  the  Radleys  mind
theirs, they had a right to; but when it happened Jem said Atticus shook his head
and said, “Mm, mm, mm.”
So  Jem  received  most  of  his  information  from  Miss  Stephanie  Crawford,  a
neighborhood  scold,  who  said  she  knew  the  whole  thing.  According  to  Miss
Stephanie,  Boo  was  sitting  in  the  livingroom  cutting  some  items  from  The

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