To Kill a Mockingbird pdfdrive com

First  Reader  and  the  stock-market  quotations  from  The  Mobile  Register  aloud,
she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste.
Miss  Caroline  told  me  to  tell  my  father  not  to  teach  me  any  more,  it  would
interfere with my reading.
“Teach me?” I said in surprise. “He hasn’t taught me anything, Miss Caroline.
Atticus  ain’t  got  time  to  teach  me  anything,”  I  added,  when  Miss  Caroline
smiled  and  shook  her  head.  “Why,  he’s  so  tired  at  night  he  just  sits  in  the
livingroom and reads.”
“If  he  didn’t  teach  you,  who  did?”  Miss  Caroline  asked  good-naturedly.
“Somebody did. You weren’t born reading The Mobile Register.”
“Jem says I was. He read in a book where I was a Bullfinch instead of a Finch.
Jem says my name’s really Jean Louise Bullfinch, that I got swapped when I was
born and I’m really a—”
Miss Caroline apparently thought I was lying. “Let’s not let our imaginations
run away with us, dear,” she said. “Now you tell your father not to teach you any
more.  It’s  best  to  begin  reading  with  a  fresh  mind.  You  tell  him  I’ll  take  over

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from here and try to undo the damage.”
“Ma’am?”
“Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now.”
I  mumbled  that  I  was  sorry  and  retired  meditating  upon  my  crime.  I  never
deliberately  learned  to  read,  but  somehow  I  had  been  wallowing  illicitly  in  the
daily  papers.  In  the  long  hours  of  church—was  it  then  I  learned?  I  could  not
remember  not  being  able  to  read  hymns.  Now  that  I  was  compelled  to  think
about  it,  reading  was  something  that  just  came  to  me,  as  learning  to  fasten  the
seat  of  my  union  suit  without  looking  around,  or  achieving  two  bows  from  a
snarl of shoelaces. I could not remember when the lines above Atticus’s moving
finger  separated  into  words,  but  I  had  stared  at  them  all  the  evenings  in  my
memory,  listening  to  the  news  of  the  day,  Bills  to  Be  Enacted  into  Laws,  the
diaries  of  Lorenzo  Dow—anything  Atticus  happened  to  be  reading  when  I
crawled into his lap every night. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to
read. One does not love breathing.
I knew I had annoyed Miss Caroline, so I let well enough alone and stared out
the window until recess when Jem cut me from the covey of first-graders in the
schoolyard. He asked how I was getting along. I told him.
“If  I  didn’t  have  to  stay  I’d  leave.  Jem,  that  damn  lady  says  Atticus’s  been
teaching me to read and for him to stop it.”
“Don’t worry, Scout,” Jem comforted me. “Our teacher says Miss Caroline’s
introducing a new way of teaching. She learned about it in college. It’ll be in all
the grades soon. You don’t have to learn much out of books that way—it’s like if
you wanta learn about cows, you go milk one, see?”
“Yeah Jem, but I don’t wanta study cows, I—”
“Sure  you  do.  You  hafta  know  about  cows,  they’re  a  big  part  of  life  in
Maycomb County.”
I contented myself with asking Jem if he’d lost his mind.
“I’m  just  trying  to  tell  you  the  new  way  they’re  teachin‘  the  first  grade,
stubborn. It’s the Dewey Decimal System.”
Having  never  questioned  Jem’s  pronouncements,  I  saw  no  reason  to  begin
now.  The  Dewey  Decimal  System  consisted,  in  part,  of  Miss  Caroline  waving
cards  at  us  on  which  were  printed  “the,”  “cat,”  “rat,”  “man,”  and  “you.”  No
comment  seemed  to  be  expected  of  us,  and  the  class  received  these
impressionistic  revelations  in  silence.  I  was  bored,  so  I  began  a  letter  to  Dill.
Miss Caroline caught me writing and told me to tell my father to stop teaching

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me. “Besides,” she said. “We don’t write in the first grade, we print. You won’t
learn to write until you’re in the third grade.”
Calpurnia  was  to  blame  for  this.  It  kept  me  from  driving  her  crazy  on  rainy
days, I guess. She would set me a writing task by scrawling the alphabet firmly
across  the  top  of  a  tablet,  then  copying  out  a  chapter  of  the  Bible  beneath.  If  I
reproduced her penmanship satisfactorily, she rewarded me with an open-faced
sandwich  of  bread  and  butter  and  sugar.  In  Calpurnia’s  teaching,  there  was  no
sentimentality: I seldom pleased her and she seldom rewarded me.
“Everybody who goes home to lunch hold up your hands,” said Miss Caroline,
breaking into my new grudge against Calpurnia.
The town children did so, and she looked us over.
“Everybody who brings his lunch put it on top of his desk.”
Molasses  buckets  appeared  from  nowhere,  and  the  ceiling  danced  with
metallic light. Miss Caroline walked up and down the rows peering and poking
into  lunch  containers,  nodding  if  the  contents  pleased  her,  frowning  a  little  at
others. She stopped at Walter Cunningham’s desk. “Where’s yours?” she asked.
Walter  Cunningham’s  face  told  everybody  in  the  first  grade  he  had
hookworms.  His  absence  of  shoes  told  us  how  he  got  them.  People  caught
hookworms  going  barefooted  in  barnyards  and  hog  wallows.  If  Walter  had
owned  any  shoes  he  would  have  worn  them  the  first  day  of  school  and  then
discarded them until mid-winter. He did have on a clean shirt and neatly mended
overalls.
“Did you forget your lunch this morning?” asked Miss Caroline.
Walter looked straight ahead. I saw a muscle jump in his skinny jaw.
“Did you forget it this morning?” asked Miss Caroline. Walter’s jaw twitched
again.
“Yeb’m,” he finally mumbled.
Miss Caroline went to her desk and opened her purse. “Here’s a quarter,” she
said to Walter. “Go and eat downtown today. You can pay me back tomorrow.”
Walter shook his head. “Nome thank you ma’am,” he drawled softly.
Impatience crept into Miss Caroline’s voice: “Here Walter, come get it.”
Walter shook his head again.
When Walter shook his head a third time someone whispered, “Go on and tell
her, Scout.”

---

I turned around and saw most of the town people and the entire bus delegation
looking at me. Miss Caroline and I had conferred twice already, and they were
looking at me in the innocent assurance that familiarity breeds understanding.
I rose graciously on Walter’s behalf: “Ah—Miss Caroline?”
“What is it, Jean Louise?”
“Miss Caroline, he’s a Cunningham.”
I sat back down.
“What, Jean Louise?”
I thought I had made things sufficiently clear. It was clear enough to the rest
of us: Walter Cunningham was sitting there lying his head off. He didn’t forget
his  lunch,  he  didn’t  have  any.  He  had  none  today  nor  would  he  have  any
tomorrow or the next day. He had probably never seen three quarters together at
the same time in his life.
I tried again: “Walter’s one of the Cunninghams, Miss Caroline.”
“I beg your pardon, Jean Louise?”
“That’s  okay,  ma’am,  you’ll  get  to  know  all  the  county  folks  after  a  while.
The Cunninghams never took anything they can’t pay back—no church baskets
and no scrip stamps. They never took anything off of anybody, they get along on
what they have. They don’t have much, but they get along on it.”
My  special  knowledge  of  the  Cunningham  tribe—one  branch,  that  is—was
gained  from  events  of  last  winter.  Walter’s  father  was  one  of  Atticus’s  clients.
After  a  dreary  conversation  in  our  livingroom  one  night  about  his  entailment,
before Mr. Cunningham left he said, “Mr. Finch, I don’t know when I’ll ever be
able to pay you.”
“Let that be the least of your worries, Walter,” Atticus said.
When I asked Jem what entailment was, and Jem described it as a condition of
having your tail in a crack, I asked Atticus if Mr. Cunningham would ever pay
us.
“Not in  money,”  Atticus  said,  “but  before the  year’s  out  I’ll  have  been  paid.
You watch.”
We watched. One morning Jem and I found a load of stovewood in the back
yard. Later, a sack of hickory nuts appeared on the back steps. With Christmas
came a crate of smilax and holly. That spring when we found a crokersack full of
turnip greens, Atticus said Mr. Cunningham had more than paid him.
“Why does he pay you like that?” I asked.

---

“Because that’s the only way he can pay me. He has no money.”
“Are we poor, Atticus?”
Atticus nodded. “We are indeed.”
Jem’s nose wrinkled. “Are we as poor as the Cunninghams?”
“Not exactly. The Cunninghams are country folks, farmers, and the crash hit
them hardest.”
Atticus said professional people were poor because the farmers were poor. As
Maycomb County was farm country, nickels and dimes were hard to come by for
doctors  and  dentists  and  lawyers.  Entailment  was  only  a  part  of  Mr.
Cunningham’s vexations. The acres not entailed were mortgaged to the hilt, and
the  little  cash  he  made  went  to  interest.  If  he  held  his  mouth  right,  Mr.
Cunningham could get a WPA job, but his land would go to ruin if he left it, and
he  was  willing  to  go  hungry  to  keep  his  land  and  vote  as  he  pleased.  Mr.
Cunningham, said Atticus, came from a set breed of men.
As the Cunninghams had no money to pay a lawyer, they simply paid us with
what they had. “Did you know,” said Atticus, “that Dr. Reynolds works the same
way?  He  charges  some  folks  a  bushel  of  potatoes  for  delivery  of  a  baby.  Miss
Scout,  if  you  give  me  your  attention  I’ll  tell  you  what  entailment  is.  Jem’s
definitions are very nearly accurate sometimes.”
If  I  could  have  explained  these  things  to  Miss  Caroline,  I  would  have  saved
myself  some  inconvenience  and  Miss  Caroline  subsequent  mortification,  but  it
was  beyond  my  ability  to  explain  things  as  well  as  Atticus,  so  I  said,  “You’re
shamin‘  him,  Miss  Caroline.  Walter  hasn’t  got  a  quarter  at  home  to  bring  you,
and you can’t use any stovewood.”
Miss Caroline stood stock still, then grabbed me by the collar and hauled me
back to her desk. “Jean Louise, I’ve had about enough of you this morning,” she
said.  “You’re  starting  off  on  the  wrong  foot  in  every  way,  my  dear.  Hold  out
your hand.”
I  thought  she  was  going  to  spit  in  it,  which  was  the  only  reason  anybody  in
Maycomb  held  out  his  hand:  it  was  a  time-honored  method  of  sealing  oral
contracts.  Wondering  what  bargain  we  had  made,  I  turned  to  the  class  for  an
answer, but the class looked back at me in puzzlement. Miss Caroline picked up
her  ruler,  gave  me  half  a  dozen  quick  little  pats,  then  told  me  to  stand  in  the
corner. A storm of laughter broke loose when it finally occurred to the class that
Miss Caroline had whipped me.
When Miss Caroline threatened it with a similar fate the first grade exploded

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again,  becoming  cold  sober  only  when  the  shadow  of  Miss  Blount  fell  over
them.  Miss  Blount,  a  native  Maycombian  as  yet  uninitiated  in  the  mysteries  of
the  Decimal  System,  appeared  at  the  door  hands  on  hips  and  announced:  “If  I
hear another sound from this room I’ll burn up everybody in it. Miss Caroline,
the sixth grade cannot concentrate on the pyramids for all this racket!”
My  sojourn  in  the  corner  was  a  short  one.  Saved  by  the  bell,  Miss  Caroline
watched  the  class  file  out  for  lunch.  As  I  was  the  last  to  leave,  I  saw  her  sink
down into her chair and bury her head in her arms. Had her conduct been more
friendly toward me, I would have felt sorry for her. She was a pretty little thing.

---

3
C
atching  Walter  Cunningham  in  the  schoolyard  gave  me  some  pleasure,  but
when  I  was  rubbing  his  nose  in  the  dirt  Jem  came  by  and  told  me  to  stop.
“You’re bigger’n he is,” he said.
“He’s as old as you, nearly,” I said. “He made me start off on the wrong foot.”
“Let him go, Scout. Why?”
“He didn’t have any lunch,” I said, and explained my involvement in Walter’s
dietary affairs.
Walter  had  picked  himself  up  and  was  standing  quietly  listening  to  Jem  and
me.  His  fists  were  half  cocked,  as  if  expecting  an  onslaught  from  both  of  us.  I
stomped at him to chase him away, but Jem put out his hand and stopped me. He
examined  Walter  with  an  air  of  speculation.  “Your  daddy  Mr.  Walter
Cunningham from Old Sarum?” he asked, and Walter nodded.
Walter looked as if he had been raised on fish food: his eyes, as blue as Dill
Harris’s, were red-rimmed and watery. There was no color in his face except at
the  tip  of  his  nose,  which  was  moistly  pink.  He  fingered  the  straps  of  his
overalls, nervously picking at the metal hooks.
Jem suddenly grinned at him. “Come on home to dinner with us, Walter,” he
said. “We’d be glad to have you.”
Walter’s face brightened, then darkened.
Jem said, “Our daddy’s a friend of your daddy’s. Scout here, she’s crazy—she
won’t fight you any more.”
“I  wouldn’t  be  too  certain  of  that,”  I  said.  Jem’s  free  dispensation  of  my
pledge  irked  me,  but  precious  noontime  minutes  were  ticking  away.  “Yeah
Walter, I won’t jump on you again. Don’t you like butterbeans? Our Cal’s a real
good cook.”
Walter  stood  where  he  was,  biting  his  lip.  Jem  and  I  gave  up,  and  we  were
nearly to the Radley Place when Walter called, “Hey, I’m comin‘!”
When  Walter  caught  up  with  us,  Jem  made  pleasant  conversation  with  him.
“A hain’t lives there,” he said cordially, pointing to the Radley house. “Ever hear
about him, Walter?”

---

“Reckon I have,” said Walter. “Almost died first year I come to school and et
them pecans—folks say he pizened ‘em and put ’em over on the school side of
the fence.”
Jem  seemed  to  have  little  fear  of  Boo  Radley  now  that  Walter  and  I  walked
beside  him.  Indeed,  Jem  grew  boastful:  “I  went  all  the  way  up  to  the  house
once,” he said to Walter.
“Anybody who went up to the house once oughta not to still run every time he
passes it,” I said to the clouds above.
“And who’s runnin‘, Miss Priss?”
“You are, when ain’t anybody with you.”
By  the  time  we  reached  our  front  steps  Walter  had  forgotten  he  was  a
Cunningham.  Jem  ran  to  the  kitchen  and  asked  Calpurnia  to  set  an  extra  plate,
we  had  company.  Atticus  greeted  Walter  and  began  a  discussion  about  crops
neither Jem nor I could follow.
“Reason  I  can’t  pass  the  first  grade,  Mr.  Finch,  is  I’ve  had  to  stay  out  ever‘
spring an’  help Papa  with  the choppin‘,  but there’s  another’n  at the  house  now
that’s field size.”
“Did  you  pay  a  bushel  of  potatoes  for  him?”  I  asked,  but  Atticus  shook  his
head at me.
While Walter piled food on his plate, he and Atticus talked together like two
men,  to  the  wonderment  of  Jem  and  me.  Atticus  was  expounding  upon  farm
problems when Walter interrupted to ask if there was any molasses in the house.
Atticus summoned Calpurnia, who returned bearing the syrup pitcher. She stood
waiting  for  Walter  to  help  himself.  Walter  poured  syrup  on  his  vegetables  and
meat with a generous hand. He would probably have poured it into his milk glass
had I not asked what the sam hill he was doing.
The  silver  saucer  clattered  when  he  replaced  the  pitcher,  and  he  quickly  put
his hands in his lap. Then he ducked his head.
Atticus shook his head at me again. “But he’s gone and drowned his dinner in
syrup,” I protested. “He’s poured it all over—”
It was then that Calpurnia requested my presence in the kitchen.
She  was  furious,  and  when  she  was  furious  Calpurnia’s  grammar  became
erratic.  When  in  tranquility,  her  grammar  was  as  good  as  anybody’s  in
Maycomb. Atticus said Calpurnia had more education than most colored folks.
When  she  squinted  down  at  me  the  tiny  lines  around  her  eyes  deepened.

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“There’s  some  folks  who  don’t  eat  like  us,”  she  whispered  fiercely,  “but  you
ain’t  called  on  to  contradict  ‘em  at  the  table  when  they  don’t.  That  boy’s  yo’
comp’ny and if he wants to eat up the table cloth you let him, you hear?”
“He ain’t company, Cal, he’s just a Cunningham—”
“Hush  your  mouth!  Don’t  matter  who  they  are,  anybody  sets  foot  in  this
house’s  yo‘  comp’ny,  and  don’t  you  let  me  catch  you  remarkin’  on  their  ways
like you was so high and mighty! Yo‘ folks might be better’n the Cunninghams
but it don’t count for nothin’ the way you’re disgracin‘ ’em—if you can’t act fit
to eat at the table you can just set here and eat in the kitchen!”
Calpurnia  sent  me  through  the  swinging  door  to  the  diningroom  with  a
stinging smack. I retrieved my plate and finished dinner in the kitchen, thankful,
though, that I was spared the humiliation of facing them again. I told Calpurnia
to just wait, I’d fix her: one of these days when she wasn’t looking I’d go off and
drown myself in Barker’s Eddy and then she’d be sorry. Besides, I added, she’d
already gotten me in trouble once today: she had taught me to write and it was
all her fault. “Hush your fussin‘,” she said.
Jem  and  Walter  returned  to  school  ahead  of  me:  staying  behind  to  advise
Atticus  of  Calpurnia’s  iniquities  was  worth  a  solitary  sprint  past  the  Radley
Place.  “She  likes  Jem  better’n  she  likes  me,  anyway,”  I  concluded,  and
suggested that Atticus lose no time in packing her off.
“Have  you  ever  considered  that  Jem  doesn’t  worry  her  half  as  much?”
Atticus’s voice was flinty. “I’ve no intention of getting rid of her, now or ever.
We  couldn’t  operate  a  single  day  without  Cal,  have  you  ever  thought  of  that?
You think about how much Cal does for you, and you mind her, you hear?”
I  returned  to  school  and  hated  Calpurnia  steadily  until  a  sudden  shriek
shattered  my  resentments.  I  looked  up  to  see  Miss  Caroline  standing  in  the
middle of the room, sheer horror flooding her face. Apparently she had revived
enough to persevere in her profession.
“It’s alive!” she screamed.
The  male  population  of  the  class  rushed  as  one  to  her  assistance.  Lord,  I
thought,  she’s  scared  of  a  mouse.  Little  Chuck  Little,  whose  patience  with  all
living things was phenomenal, said, “Which way did he go, Miss Caroline? Tell
us where he went, quick! D.C.,” he turned to a boy behind him—“D.C., shut the
door and we’ll catch him. Quick, ma’am, where’d he go?”
Miss Caroline pointed a shaking finger not at the floor nor at a desk, but to a
hulking  individual  unknown  to  me.  Little  Chuck’s  face  contracted  and  he  said

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gently,  “You  mean  him,  ma’am?  Yessum,  he’s  alive.  Did  he  scare  you  some
way?”
Miss Caroline said desperately, “I was just walking by when it crawled out of
his hair . . . just crawled out of his hair.”
Little  Chuck  grinned  broadly.  “There  ain’t  no  need  to  fear  a  cootie,  ma’am.
Ain’t you ever seen one? Now don’t you be afraid, you just go back to your desk
and teach us some more.”
Little  Chuck  Little  was  another  member  of  the  population  who  didn’t  know
where his next meal was coming from, but he was a born gentleman. He put his
hand  under  her  elbow  and  led  Miss  Caroline  to  the  front  of  the  room.  “Now
don’t  you  fret,  ma’am,”  he  said.  “There  ain’t  no  need  to  fear  a  cootie.  I’ll  just
fetch you some cool water.” The cootie’s host showed not the faintest interest in
the furor he had wrought. He searched the scalp above his forehead, located his
guest and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger.
Miss Caroline watched the process in horrid fascination. Little Chuck brought
water  in  a  paper  cup,  and  she  drank  it  gratefully.  Finally  she  found  her  voice.
“What is your name, son?” she asked softly.
The boy blinked. “Who, me?” Miss Caroline nodded.
“Burris Ewell.”
Miss Caroline inspected her roll-book. “I have a Ewell here, but I don’t have a
first name . . . would you spell your first name for me?”
“Don’t know how. They call me Burris’t home.”
“Well, Burris,” said Miss Caroline, “I think we’d better excuse you for the rest
of the afternoon. I want you to go home and wash your hair.”
From her desk she produced a thick volume, leafed through its pages and read
for  a  moment.  “A  good  home  remedy  for—Burris,  I  want  you  to  go  home  and
wash  your  hair  with  lye  soap.  When  you’ve  done  that,  treat  your  scalp  with
kerosene.”
“What fer, missus?”
“To get rid of the—er, cooties. You see, Burris, the other children might catch
them, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?”
The boy stood up. He was the filthiest human I had ever seen. His neck was
dark gray, the backs of his hands were rusty, and his fingernails were black deep
into the quick. He peered  at Miss Caroline from a  fist-sized clean space on  his
face.  No  one  had  noticed  him,  probably,  because  Miss  Caroline  and  I  had

---

entertained the class most of the morning.
“And  Burris,”  said  Miss  Caroline,  “please  bathe  yourself  before  you  come
back tomorrow.”
The  boy  laughed  rudely.  “You  ain’t  sendin‘  me  home,  missus.  I  was  on  the
verge of leavin’—I done done my time for this year.”
Miss Caroline looked puzzled. “What do you mean by that?”
The boy did not answer. He gave a short contemptuous snort.
One  of  the  elderly  members  of  the  class  answered  her:  “He’s  one  of  the
Ewells, ma’am,” and I wondered if this explanation would be as unsuccessful as
my attempt. But Miss Caroline seemed willing to listen. “Whole school’s full of
‘em.  They  come  first  day  every  year  and  then  leave.  The  truant  lady  gets  ’em
here  ‘cause  she  threatens  ’em  with  the  sheriff,  but  she’s  give  up  tryin‘  to  hold
’em. She reckons she’s carried out the law just gettin‘ their names on the roll and
runnin’ ‘em here the first day. You’re supposed to mark ’em absent the rest  of
the year . . .”
“But what about their parents?” asked Miss Caroline, in genuine concern.
“Ain’t got no mother,” was the answer, “and their paw’s right contentious.”
Burris Ewell was flattered by the recital. “Been comin‘ to the first day o’ the
first  grade  fer  three  year  now,”  he  said  expansively.  “Reckon  if  I’m  smart  this
year they’ll promote me to the second . . .”
Miss Caroline said, “Sit back down, please, Burris,” and the moment she said
it  I  knew  she  had  made  a  serious  mistake.  The  boy’s  condescension  flashed  to
anger.
“You try and make me, missus.”
Little Chuck Little got to his feet. “Let him go, ma’am,” he said. “He’s a mean
one,  a  hard-down  mean  one.  He’s  liable  to  start  somethin‘,  and  there’s  some
little folks here.”
He  was  among  the  most  diminutive  of  men,  but  when  Burris  Ewell  turned
toward  him,  Little  Chuck’s  right  hand  went  to  his  pocket.  “Watch  your  step,
Burris,” he said. “I’d soon’s kill you as look at you. Now go home.”
Burris seemed to be afraid of a child half his height, and Miss Caroline took
advantage  of  his  indecision:  “Burris,  go  home.  If  you  don’t  I’ll  call  the
principal,” she said. “I’ll have to report this, anyway.”
The boy snorted and slouched leisurely to the door.
Safely  out  of  range,  he  turned  and  shouted:  “Report  and  be  damned  to  ye!

---

Ain’t no snot-nosed slut of a schoolteacher ever born c’n make me do nothin‘!
You  ain’t  makin’  me  go  nowhere,  missus.  You  just  remember  that,  you  ain’t
makin‘ me go nowhere!”
He  waited  until  he  was  sure  she  was  crying,  then  he  shuffled  out  of  the
building.
Soon  we  were  clustered  around  her  desk,  trying  in  our  various  ways  to
comfort her. He was a real mean one . . . below the belt . . . you ain’t called on to
teach folks like that . . . them ain’t Maycomb’s ways, Miss Caroline, not really . .
. now don’t you fret, ma’am. Miss Caroline, why don’t you read us a story? That
cat thing was real fine this mornin‘ . . .
Miss  Caroline  smiled,  blew  her  nose,  said,  “Thank  you,  darlings,”  dispersed
us,  opened  a  book  and  mystified  the  first  grade  with  a  long  narrative  about  a
toadfrog that lived in a hall.
When I passed the Radley Place for the fourth time that day—twice at a full
gallop—my  gloom  had  deepened  to  match  the  house.  If  the  remainder  of  the
school  year  were  as  fraught  with  drama  as  the  first  day,  perhaps  it  would  be
mildly  entertaining,  but  the  prospect  of  spending  nine  months  refraining  from
reading and writing made me think of running away.
By late afternoon most of my traveling plans were complete; when Jem and I
raced  each  other  up  the  sidewalk  to  meet  Atticus  coming  home  from  work,  I
didn’t give him much of a race. It was our habit to run meet Atticus the moment
we saw him round the post office corner in the distance. Atticus seemed to have
forgotten  my  noontime  fall  from  grace;  he  was  full  of  questions  about  school.
My replies were monosyllabic and he did not press me.
Perhaps Calpurnia sensed that my day had been a grim one: she let me watch
her  fix  supper.  “Shut  your  eyes  and  open  your  mouth  and  I’ll  give  you  a
surprise,” she said.
It  was  not  often  that  she  made  crackling  bread,  she  said  she  never  had  time,
but  with  both  of  us  at  school  today  had  been  an  easy  one  for  her.  She  knew  I
loved crackling bread.
“I missed you today,” she said. “The house got so lonesome ‘long about two
o’clock I had to turn on the radio.”
“Why? Jem’n me ain’t ever in the house unless it’s rainin‘.”
“I know,” she said, “But one of you’s always in callin‘ distance. I wonder how
much of the day I spend just callin’ after you. Well,” she said, getting up from
the kitchen chair, “it’s enough time to make a pan of cracklin‘ bread, I reckon.

---

You run along now and let me get supper on the table.”
Calpurnia  bent  down  and  kissed  me.  I  ran  along,  wondering  what  had  come
over her. She had wanted to make up with me, that was it. She had always been
too hard on me, she had at last seen the error of her fractious ways, she was sorry
and too stubborn to say so. I was weary from the day’s crimes.
After  supper,  Atticus  sat  down  with  the  paper  and  called,  “Scout,  ready  to
read?” The Lord sent me more than I could bear, and I went to the front porch.
Atticus followed me.
“Something wrong, Scout?”
I told Atticus I didn’t feel very well and didn’t think I’d go to school any more
if it was all right with him.
Atticus  sat  down  in  the  swing  and  crossed  his  legs.  His  fingers  wandered  to
his  watchpocket;  he  said  that  was  the  only  way  he  could  think.  He  waited  in
amiable  silence,  and  I  sought  to  reinforce  my  position:  “You  never  went  to
school  and  you  do  all  right,  so  I’ll  just  stay  home  too.  You  can  teach  me  like
Granddaddy taught you ‘n’ Uncle Jack.”
“No I can’t,” said Atticus. “I have to make a living. Besides, they’d put me in
jail  if  I  kept  you  at  home—dose  of  magnesia  for  you  tonight  and  school
tomorrow.”
“I’m feeling all right, really.”
“Thought so. Now what’s the matter?”
Bit by bit, I told him the day’s misfortunes. “—and she said you taught me all
wrong, so we can’t ever read any more, ever. Please don’t send me back, please
sir.”
Atticus stood up and walked to the end of the porch. When he completed his
examination of the wisteria vine he strolled back to me.
“First of all,” he said, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along
a  lot  better  with  all  kinds  of  folks.  You  never  really  understand  a  person  until
you consider things from his point of view—”
“Sir?”
“—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
Atticus said I had learned many things today, and Miss Caroline had learned
several things herself. She had learned not to hand something to a Cunningham,
for one thing, but if Walter and I had put ourselves in her shoes we’d have seen
it  was  an  honest  mistake  on  her  part.  We  could  not  expect  her  to  learn  all

---

Maycomb’s  ways  in  one  day,  and  we  could  not  hold  her  responsible  when  she
knew no better.
“I’ll be dogged,” I said. “I didn’t know no better than not to read to her, and
she  held  me  responsible—listen  Atticus,  I  don’t  have  to  go  to  school!”  I  was
bursting with a sudden thought. “Burris Ewell, remember? He just goes to school
the first day. The truant lady reckons she’s carried out the law when she gets his
name on the roll.”
“You  can’t  do  that,  Scout,”  Atticus  said.  “Sometimes  it’s  better  to  bend  the
law a little in special cases. In your case, the law remains rigid. So to school you
must go.”
“I don’t see why I have to when he doesn’t.”
“Then listen.”
Atticus  said  the  Ewells  had  been  the  disgrace  of  Maycomb  for  three
generations. None of them had done an honest day’s work in his recollection. He
said that some Christmas, when he was getting rid of the tree, he would take me
with  him  and  show  me  where  and  how  they  lived.  They  were  people,  but  they
lived  like  animals.  “They  can  go  to  school  any  time  they  want  to,  when  they
show  the  faintest  symptom  of  wanting  an  education,”  said  Atticus.  “There  are
ways  of  keeping  them  in  school  by  force,  but  it’s  silly  to  force  people  like  the
Ewells into a new environment.”
“If I didn’t go to school tomorrow, you’d force me to.”
“Let us leave it at this,” said Atticus dryly. “You, Miss Scout Finch, are of the
common folk. You must obey the law.” He said that the Ewells were members of
an  exclusive  society  made  up  of  Ewells.  In  certain  circumstances  the  common
folk  judiciously  allowed  them  certain  privileges  by  the  simple  method  of
becoming  blind  to  some  of  the  Ewells’  activities.  They  didn’t  have  to  go  to
school,  for  one  thing.  Another  thing,  Mr.  Bob  Ewell,  Burris’s  father,  was
permitted to hunt and trap out of season.
“Atticus, that’s bad,” I said. In Maycomb County, hunting out of season was a
misdemeanor at law, a capital felony in the eyes of the populace.
“It’s  against  the  law,  all  right,”  said  my  father,  “and  it’s  certainly  bad,  but
when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way
of  crying  from  hunger  pains.  I  don’t  know  of  any  landowner  around  here  who
begrudges those children any game their father can hit.”
“Mr. Ewell shouldn’t do that—”
“Of  course  he  shouldn’t,  but  he’ll  never  change  his  ways.  Are  you  going  to

---

take out your disapproval on his children?”
“No  sir,”  I  murmured,  and  made  a  final  stand:  “But  if  I  keep  on  goin‘  to
school, we can’t ever read any more . . .”
“That’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir.”
When Atticus looked down at me I saw the expression on his face that always
made me expect something. “Do you know what a compromise is?” he asked.
“Bending the law?”
“No,  an  agreement  reached  by  mutual  concessions.  It  works  this  way,”  he
said.  “If  you’ll  concede  the  necessity  of  going  to  school,  we’ll  go  on  reading
every night just as we always have. Is it a bargain?”
“Yes sir!”
“We’ll consider it sealed without the usual formality,” Atticus said, when he
saw me preparing to spit.
As  I  opened  the  front  screen  door  Atticus  said,  “By  the  way,  Scout,  you’d
better not say anything at school about our agreement.”
“Why not?”
“I’m afraid our activities would be received with considerable disapprobation
by the more learned authorities.”
Jem and I were accustomed to our father’s last-will-and-testament diction, and
we were at all times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond
our understanding.
“Huh, sir?”
“I  never  went  to  school,”  he  said,  “but  I  have  a  feeling  that  if  you  tell  Miss
Caroline we read every night she’ll get after me, and I wouldn’t want her after
me.”
Atticus kept us in fits that evening, gravely reading columns of print about a
man who sat on a flagpole for no discernible reason, which was reason enough
for Jem to spend the following Saturday aloft in the treehouse. Jem sat from after
breakfast  until  sunset  and  would  have  remained  overnight  had  not  Atticus
severed  his  supply  lines.  I  had  spent  most  of  the  day  climbing  up  and  down,
running  errands  for  him,  providing  him  with  literature,  nourishment  and  water,
and  was  carrying  him  blankets  for  the  night  when  Atticus  said  if  I  paid  no
attention to him, Jem would come down. Atticus was right.

---

4
T
he  remainder  of  my  schooldays  were  no  more  auspicious  than  the  first.
Indeed,  they  were  an  endless  Project  that  slowly  evolved  into  a  Unit,  in  which
miles  of  construction  paper  and  wax  crayon  were  expended  by  the  State  of
Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics.
What Jem called the Dewey Decimal System was school-wide by the end of my
first  year,  so  I  had  no  chance  to  compare  it  with  other  teaching  techniques.  I
could only look around me: Atticus and my uncle, who went to school at home,
knew  everything—at  least,  what  one  didn’t  know  the  other  did.  Furthermore,  I
couldn’t help noticing that my father had served for years in the state legislature,
elected  each  time  without  opposition,  innocent  of  the  adjustments  my  teachers
thought  essential  to  the  development  of  Good  Citizenship.  Jem,  educated  on  a
half-Decimal  half-Duncecap  basis,  seemed  to  function  effectively  alone  or  in  a
group,  but  Jem  was  a  poor  example:  no  tutorial  system  devised  by  man  could
have stopped him from getting at books. As for me, I knew nothing except what
I gathered from Time magazine and reading everything I could lay hands on at
home,  but  as  I  inched  sluggishly  along  the  treadmill  of  the  Maycomb  County
school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated
out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years
of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.
As the year passed, released from school thirty minutes before Jem, who had
to  stay  until  three  o’clock,  I  ran  by  the  Radley  Place  as  fast  as  I  could,  not
stopping until I reached the safety of our front porch. One afternoon as I raced
by,  something  caught  my  eye  and  caught  it  in  such  a  way  that  I  took  a  deep
breath, a long look around, and went back.
Two live oaks stood at the edge of the Radley lot; their roots reached out into
the side-road and made it bumpy. Something about one of the trees attracted my
attention.
Some tinfoil was sticking in a knot-hole just above my eye level, winking at
me  in  the  afternoon  sun.  I  stood  on  tiptoe,  hastily  looked  around  once  more,
reached  into  the  hole,  and  withdrew  two  pieces  of  chewing  gum  minus  their
outer wrappers.

---

My  first  impulse  was  to  get  it  into  my  mouth  as  quickly  as  possible,  but  I
remembered  where  I  was.  I  ran  home,  and  on  our  front  porch  I  examined  my
loot.  The  gum  looked  fresh.  I  sniffed  it  and  it  smelled  all  right.  I  licked  it  and
waited for a while. When I did not die I crammed it into my mouth: Wrigley’s
Double-Mint.
When Jem came home he asked me where I got such a wad. I told him I found
it.
“Don’t eat things you find, Scout.”
“This wasn’t on the ground, it was in a tree.”
Jem growled.
“Well it was,” I said. “It was sticking in that tree yonder, the one comin‘ from
school.”
“Spit it out right now!”
I spat it out. The tang was fading, anyway. “I’ve been chewin‘ it all afternoon
and I ain’t dead yet, not even sick.”
Jem stamped his foot. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to even touch the
trees over there? You’ll get killed if you do!”
“You touched the house once!”
“That was different! You go gargle—right now, you hear me?”
“Ain’t neither, it’ll take the taste outa my mouth.”
“You don’t ‘n’ I’ll tell Calpurnia on you!”
Rather  than  risk  a  tangle  with  Calpurnia,  I  did  as  Jem  told  me.  For  some
reason, my  first  year  of school  had  wrought  a great  change  in  our  relationship:
Calpurnia’s  tyranny,  unfairness,  and  meddling  in  my  business  had  faded  to
gentle  grumblings  of  general  disapproval.  On  my  part,  I  went  to  much  trouble,
sometimes, not to provoke her.
Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was
our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to
sleep  in  the  treehouse;  summer  was  everything  good  to  eat;  it  was  a  thousand
colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.
The authorities released us early the last day of school, and Jem and I walked
home together. “Reckon old Dill’ll be coming home tomorrow,” I said.
“Probably day after,” said Jem. “Mis’sippi turns ‘em loose a day later.”
As we came to the live oaks at the Radley Place I raised my finger to point for

---

the hundredth time to the knot-hole where I had found the chewing gum, trying
to make Jem believe I had found it there, and found myself pointing at another
piece of tinfoil.
“I see it, Scout! I see it—”
Jem looked around, reached up, and gingerly pocketed a tiny shiny package.
We ran home, and on the front porch we looked at a small box patchworked with
bits  of  tinfoil  collected  from  chewing-gum  wrappers.  It  was  the  kind  of  box
wedding rings came in, purple velvet with a minute catch. Jem flicked open the
tiny  catch.  Inside  were  two  scrubbed  and  polished  pennies,  one  on  top  of  the
other. Jem examined them.
“Indian-heads,”  he  said.  “Nineteen-six  and  Scout,  one  of  em’s  nineteen-
hundred. These are real old.”
“Nineteen-hundred,” I echoed. “Say—”
“Hush a minute, I’m thinkin‘.”
“Jem, you reckon that’s somebody’s hidin‘ place?”
“Naw,  don’t  anybody  much  but  us  pass  by  there,  unless  it’s  some  grown
person’s—”
“Grown  folks  don’t  have  hidin‘  places.  You  reckon  we  ought  to  keep  ’em,
Jem?”
“I don’t know what we could do, Scout. Who’d we give ‘em back to? I know
for  a  fact  don’t  anybody  go  by  there—Cecil  goes  by  the  back  street  an’  all  the
way around by town to get home.”
Cecil Jacobs, who lived at the far end of our street next door to the post office,
walked a total of one mile per school day to avoid the Radley Place and old Mrs.
Henry  Lafayette  Dubose.  Mrs.  Dubose  lived  two  doors  up  the  street  from  us;
neighborhood  opinion  was  unanimous  that  Mrs.  Dubose  was  the  meanest  old
woman  who  ever  lived.  Jem  wouldn’t  go  by  her  place  without  Atticus  beside
him.
“What you reckon we oughta do, Jem?”
Finders were keepers unless title was proven. Plucking an occasional camellia,
getting a squirt of hot milk from Miss Maudie Atkinson’s cow on a summer day,
helping ourselves to someone’s scuppernongs was part of our ethical culture, but
money was different.
“Tell you what,” said Jem. “We’ll keep ‘em till school starts, then go around
and  ask  everybody  if  they’re  theirs.  They’re  some  bus  child’s,  maybe—he  was

---

too  taken  up  with  gettin’  outa  school  today  an‘  forgot  ’em.  These  are
somebody’s,  I  know  that.  See  how  they’ve  been  slicked  up?  They’ve  been
saved.”
“Yeah,  but  why  should  somebody  wanta  put  away  chewing  gum  like  that?
You know it doesn’t last.”
“I don’t know, Scout. But these are important to somebody . . .”
“How’s that, Jem . . .?”
“Well,  Indian-heads—well,  they  come  from  the  Indians.  They’re  real  strong
magic,  they  make  you  have  good  luck.  Not  like  fried  chicken  when  you’re  not
lookin‘ for it, but things like long life ’n‘ good health, ’n‘ passin’ six-weeks tests
. . . these are real valuable to somebody. I’m gonna put em in my trunk.”
Before Jem went to his room, he looked for a long time at the Radley Place.
He seemed to be thinking again.
Two  days  later  Dill  arrived  in  a  blaze  of  glory:  he  had  ridden  the  train  by
himself  from  Meridian  to  Maycomb  Junction  (a  courtesy  title—Maycomb
Junction  was  in  Abbott  County)  where  he  had  been  met  by  Miss  Rachel  in
Maycomb’s  one  taxi;  he  had  eaten  dinner  in  the  diner,  he  had  seen  two  twins
hitched  together  get  off  the  train  in  Bay  St.  Louis  and  stuck  to  his  story
regardless  of  threats.  He  had  discarded  the  abominable  blue  shorts  that  were
buttoned  to  his  shirts  and  wore  real  short  pants  with  a  belt;  he  was  somewhat
heavier,  no  taller,  and  said  he  had  seen  his  father.  Dill’s  father  was  taller  than
ours, he had a black beard (pointed), and was president of the L & N Railroad.
“I helped the engineer for a while,” said Dill, yawning.
“In a pig’s ear you did, Dill. Hush,” said Jem. “What’ll we play today?”
“Tom and Sam and Dick,” said Dill. “Let’s go in the front yard.” Dill wanted
the Rover Boys because there were three respectable parts. He was clearly tired
of being our character man.
“I’m tired of those,” I said. I was tired of playing Tom Rover, who suddenly
lost his memory in the middle of a picture show and was out of the script until
the end, when he was found in Alaska.
“Make us up one, Jem,” I said.
“I’m tired of makin‘ ’em up.”
Our  first  days  of  freedom,  and  we  were  tired.  I  wondered  what  the  summer
would bring.
We had strolled to the front yard, where Dill stood looking down the street at

---

the  dreary  face  of  the  Radley  Place.  “I—smell—death,”  he  said.  “I  do,  I  mean
it,” he said, when I told him to shut up.
“You mean when somebody’s dyin‘ you can smell it?”
“No, I mean I can smell somebody an‘ tell if they’re gonna die. An old lady
taught  me  how.”  Dill  leaned  over  and  sniffed  me.  “Jean—Louise—Finch,  you
are going to die in three days.”
“Dill if you don’t hush I’ll knock you bowlegged. I mean it, now—”
“Yawl hush,” growled Jem, “you act like you believe in Hot Steams.”
“You act like you don’t,” I said.
“What’s a Hot Steam?” asked Dill.
“Haven’t you ever walked along a lonesome road at night and passed by a hot
place?” Jem asked Dill. “A Hot Steam’s somebody who can’t get to heaven, just
wallows around on lonesome roads an‘ if you walk through him, when you die
you’ll be one too, an’ you’ll go around at night suckin‘ people’s breath—”
“How can you keep from passing through one?”
“You  can’t,”  said  Jem.  “Sometimes  they  stretch  all  the  way  across  the  road,
but if you hafta go through one you say, ‘Angel-bright, life-in-death; get off the
road, don’t suck my breath.’ That keeps ‘em from wrapping around you—”
“Don’t you believe a word he says, Dill,” I said. “Calpurnia says that’s nigger-
talk.”
Jem  scowled  darkly  at  me,  but  said,  “Well,  are  we  gonna  play  anything  or
not?”
“Let’s roll in the tire,” I suggested.
Jem sighed. “You know I’m too big.”
“You c’n push.”
I  ran  to  the  back  yard  and  pulled  an  old  car  tire  from  under  the  house.  I
slapped it up to the front yard. “I’m first,” I said.
Dill said he ought to be first, he just got here.
Jem arbitrated, awarded me first push with an extra time for Dill, and I folded
myself inside the tire.
Until it happened I did not realize that Jem was offended by my contradicting
him on Hot Steams, and that he was patiently awaiting an opportunity to reward
me. He did, by pushing the tire down the sidewalk with all the force in his body.
Ground,  sky  and  houses  melted  into  a  mad  palette,  my  ears  throbbed,  I  was

---

suffocating. I could not put out my hands to stop, they were wedged between my
chest and knees. I could only hope that Jem would outrun the tire and me, or that
I would be stopped by a bump in the sidewalk. I heard him behind me, chasing
and shouting.
The  tire  bumped  on  gravel,  skeetered  across  the  road,  crashed  into  a  barrier
and  popped  me  like  a  cork  onto  pavement.  Dizzy  and  nauseated,  I  lay  on  the
cement  and  shook  my  head  still,  pounded  my  ears  to  silence,  and  heard  Jem’s
voice: “Scout, get away from there, come on!”
I raised my head and stared at the Radley Place steps in front of me. I froze.
“Come  on,  Scout,  don’t  just  lie  there!”  Jem  was  screaming.  “Get  up,
can’tcha?”
I got to my feet, trembling as I thawed.
“Get  the  tire!”  Jem  hollered.  “Bring  it  with  you!  Ain’t  you  got  any  sense  at
all?”
When I was able to navigate, I ran back to them as fast as my shaking knees
would carry me.
“Why didn’t you bring it?” Jem yelled.
“Why don’t you get it?” I screamed.
Jem was silent.
“Go  on,  it  ain’t  far  inside  the  gate.  Why,  you  even  touched  the  house  once,
remember?”
Jem looked at me furiously, could not decline, ran down the sidewalk, treaded
water at the gate, then dashed in and retrieved the tire.
“See  there?”  Jem  was  scowling  triumphantly.  “Nothin‘  to  it.  I  swear,  Scout,
sometimes you act so much like a girl it’s mortifyin’.”
There was more to it than he knew, but I decided not to tell him.
Calpurnia appeared in the front door and yelled, “Lemonade time! You all get
in outa that hot sun ‘fore you fry alive!” Lemonade in the middle of the morning
was a summertime ritual. Calpurnia set a pitcher and three glasses on the porch,
then went about her business. Being out of Jem’s good graces did not worry me
especially. Lemonade would restore his good humor.
Jem gulped down his second glassful and slapped his chest. “I know what we
are going to play,” he announced. “Something new, something different.”
“What?” asked Dill.

---

“Boo Radley.”
Jem’s  head  at  times  was  transparent:  he  had  thought  that  up  to  make  me
understand he wasn’t afraid of Radleys in any shape or form, to contrast his own
fearless heroism with my cowardice.
“Boo Radley? How?” asked Dill.
Jem said, “Scout, you can be Mrs. Radley—”
“I declare if I will. I don’t think—”
“‘Smatter?” said Dill. “Still scared?”
“He can get out at night when we’re all asleep . . .” I said.
Jem hissed. “Scout, how’s he gonna know what we’re doin‘? Besides, I don’t
think he’s still there. He died years ago and they stuffed him up the chimney.”
Dill said, “Jem, you and me can play and Scout can watch if she’s scared.”
I was fairly sure Boo Radley was inside that house, but I couldn’t prove it, and
felt  it  best  to  keep  my  mouth  shut  or  I  would  be  accused  of  believing  in  Hot
Steams, phenomena I was immune to in the daytime.
Jem parceled out our roles: I was Mrs. Radley, and all I had to do was come
out and sweep the porch. Dill was old Mr. Radley: he walked up and down the
sidewalk and coughed when Jem spoke to him. Jem, naturally, was Boo: he went
under the front steps and shrieked and howled from time to time.
As  the  summer  progressed,  so  did  our  game.  We  polished  and  perfected  it,
added dialogue and plot until we had manufactured a small play upon which we
rang changes every day.
Dill was a villain’s villain: he could get into any character part assigned him,
and appear tall if height was part of the devilry required. He was as good as his
worst  performance;  his  worst  performance  was  Gothic.  I  reluctantly  played
assorted ladies who entered the script. I never thought it as much fun as Tarzan,
and I played that summer with more than vague anxiety despite Jem’s assurances
that  Boo  Radley  was  dead  and  nothing  would  get  me,  with  him  and  Calpurnia
there in the daytime and Atticus home at night.
Jem was a born hero.
It  was  a  melancholy  little  drama,  woven  from  bits  and  scraps  of  gossip  and
neighborhood  legend:  Mrs.  Radley  had  been  beautiful  until  she  married  Mr.
Radley and lost all her money. She also lost most of her teeth, her hair, and her
right  forefinger  (Dill’s  contribution.  Boo  bit  it  off  one  night  when  he  couldn’t
find any cats and squirrels to eat.); she sat in the livingroom and cried most of

---

the time, while Boo slowly whittled away all the furniture in the house.
The three of us were the boys who got into trouble; I was the probate judge,
for a change; Dill led Jem away and crammed him beneath the steps, poking him
with the brushbroom. Jem would reappear as needed in the shapes of the sheriff,
assorted  townsfolk,  and  Miss  Stephanie  Crawford,  who  had  more  to  say  about
the Radleys than anybody in Maycomb.
When  it  was  time  to  play  Boo’s  big  scene,  Jem  would  sneak  into  the  house,
steal  the  scissors  from  the  sewing-machine  drawer  when  Calpurnia’s  back  was
turned, then sit in the swing and cut up newspapers. Dill would walk by, cough
at  Jem,  and  Jem  would  fake  a  plunge  into  Dill’s  thigh.  From  where  I  stood  it
looked real.
When Mr. Nathan Radley passed us on his daily trip to town, we would stand
still and silent until he was out of sight, then wonder what he would do to us if
he suspected. Our activities halted when any of the neighbors appeared, and once
I  saw  Miss  Maudie  Atkinson  staring  across  the  street  at  us,  her  hedge  clippers
poised in midair.
One  day  we  were  so  busily  playing  Chapter  XXV,  Book  II  of  One  Man’s
Family, we did not see Atticus standing on the sidewalk looking at us, slapping a
rolled magazine against his knee. The sun said twelve noon.
“What are you all playing?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Jem.
Jem’s evasion told me our game was a secret, so I kept quiet.
“What  are  you  doing  with  those  scissors,  then?  Why  are  you  tearing  up  that
newspaper? If it’s today’s I’ll tan you.”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing what?” said Atticus.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Give me those scissors,” Atticus said. “They’re no things to play with. Does
this by any chance have anything to do with the Radleys?”
“No sir,” said Jem, reddening.
“I hope it doesn’t,” he said shortly, and went inside the house.
“Je-m . . .”
“Shut up! He’s gone in the livingroom, he can hear us in there.”
Safely in the yard, Dill asked Jem if we could play any more.

---

“I don’t know. Atticus didn’t say we couldn’t—”
“Jem,” I said, “I think Atticus knows it anyway.”
“No he don’t. If he did he’d say he did.”
I  was  not  so  sure,  but  Jem  told  me  I  was  being  a  girl,  that  girls  always
imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving
like one I could just go off and find some to play with.
“All right, you just keep it up then,” I said. “You’ll find out.”
Atticus’s  arrival  was  the  second  reason  I  wanted  to  quit  the  game.  The  first
reason  happened  the  day  I  rolled  into  the  Radley  front  yard.  Through  all  the
head-shaking, quelling of nausea and Jem-yelling, I had heard another sound, so
low I could not have heard it from the sidewalk. Someone inside the house was
laughing.

---

5
M
y  nagging  got  the  better  of  Jem  eventually,  as  I  knew  it  would,  and  to  my
relief we slowed down the game for a while. He still maintained, however, that
Atticus hadn’t said we couldn’t, therefore we could; and if Atticus ever said we
couldn’t,  Jem  had  thought  of  a  way  around  it:  he  would  simply  change  the
names of the characters and then we couldn’t be accused of playing anything.
Dill  was  in  hearty  agreement  with  this  plan  of  action.  Dill  was  becoming
something  of  a  trial  anyway,  following  Jem  about.  He  had  asked  me  earlier  in
the  summer  to  marry  him,  then  he  promptly  forgot  about  it.  He  staked  me  out,
marked  as  his  property,  said  I  was  the  only  girl  he  would  ever  love,  then  he
neglected me. I beat him up twice but it did no good, he only grew closer to Jem.
They spent days together in the treehouse plotting and planning, calling me only
when  they  needed  a  third  party.  But  I  kept  aloof  from  their  more  foolhardy
schemes  for  a  while,  and  on  pain  of  being  called  a  girl,  I  spent  most  of  the
remaining twilights that summer sitting with Miss Maudie Atkinson on her front
porch.
Jem and I had always enjoyed the free run of Miss Maudie’s yard if we kept
out  of  her  azaleas,  but  our  contact  with  her  was  not  clearly  defined.  Until  Jem
and  Dill  excluded  me  from  their  plans,  she  was  only  another  lady  in  the
neighborhood, but a relatively benign presence.
Our tacit treaty with Miss Maudie was that we could play on her lawn, eat her
scuppernongs  if  we  didn’t  jump  on  the  arbor,  and  explore  her  vast  back  lot,
terms  so  generous  we  seldom  spoke  to  her,  so  careful  were  we  to  preserve  the
delicate balance of our relationship, but Jem and Dill drove me closer to her with
their behavior.
Miss Maudie hated her house: time spent indoors was time wasted. She was a
widow, a chameleon lady who worked in her flower beds in an old straw hat and
men’s  coveralls,  but  after  her  five  o’clock  bath  she  would  appear  on  the  porch
and reign over the street in magisterial beauty.
She  loved  everything  that  grew  in  God’s  earth,  even  the  weeds.  With  one
exception.  If  she  found  a  blade  of  nut  grass  in  her  yard  it  was  like  the  Second
Battle of the Marne: she swooped down upon it with a tin tub and subjected it to

---

blasts from beneath with a poisonous substance she said was so powerful it’d kill
us all if we didn’t stand out of the way.
“Why  can’t  you  just  pull  it  up?”  I  asked,  after  witnessing  a  prolonged
campaign against a blade not three inches high.
“Pull it up, child, pull it up?” She picked up the limp sprout and squeezed her
thumb  up  its  tiny  stalk.  Microscopic  grains  oozed  out.  “Why,  one  sprig  of  nut
grass can ruin a whole yard. Look here. When it comes fall this dries up and the
wind blows it all over Maycomb County!” Miss Maudie’s face likened such an
occurrence unto an Old Testament pestilence.
Her speech was crisp for a Maycomb County inhabitant. She called us by all
our names, and when she grinned she revealed two minute gold prongs clipped
to her eyeteeth. When I admired them and hoped I would have some eventually,
she said, “Look here.” With a click of her tongue she thrust out her bridgework,
a gesture of cordiality that cemented our friendship.
Miss Maudie’s benevolence extended to Jem and Dill, whenever they paused
in  their  pursuits:  we  reaped  the  benefits  of  a  talent  Miss  Maudie  had  hitherto
kept  hidden  from  us.  She  made  the  best  cakes  in  the  neighborhood.  When  she
was admitted into our confidence, every time she baked she made a big cake and
three little ones, and she would call across the street: “Jem Finch, Scout Finch,
Charles Baker Harris, come here!” Our promptness was always rewarded.
In  summertime,  twilights  are  long  and  peaceful.  Often  as  not,  Miss  Maudie
and I would sit silently on her porch, watching the sky go from yellow to pink as
the  sun  went  down,  watching  flights  of  martins  sweep  low  over  the
neighborhood and disappear behind the schoolhouse rooftops.
“Miss Maudie,” I said one evening, “do you think Boo Radley’s still alive?”
“His name’s Arthur and he’s alive,” she said. She was rocking slowly in her
big oak chair. “Do you smell my mimosa? It’s like angels’ breath this evening.”
“Yessum. How do you know?”
“Know what, child?”
“That B—Mr. Arthur’s still alive?”
“What  a  morbid  question.  But  I  suppose  it’s  a  morbid  subject.  I  know  he’s
alive, Jean Louise, because I haven’t seen him carried out yet.”
“Maybe he died and they stuffed him up the chimney.”
“Where did you get such a notion?”
“That’s what Jem said he thought they did.”

---

“S-ss-ss. He gets more like Jack Finch every day.”
Miss Maudie had known Uncle Jack Finch, Atticus’s brother, since they were
children. Nearly the same age, they had grown up together at Finch’s Landing.
Miss  Maudie  was  the  daughter  of  a  neighboring  landowner,  Dr.  Frank  Buford.
Dr. Buford’s profession was medicine and his obsession was anything that grew
in  the  ground,  so  he  stayed  poor.  Uncle  Jack  Finch  confined  his  passion  for
digging to his  window boxes  in Nashville  and stayed  rich. We  saw Uncle Jack
every  Christmas,  and  every  Christmas  he  yelled  across  the  street  for  Miss
Maudie to come marry him. Miss Maudie would yell back, “Call a little louder,
Jack Finch, and they’ll hear you at the post office, I haven’t heard you yet!” Jem
and  I  thought  this  a  strange  way  to  ask  for  a  lady’s  hand  in  marriage,  but  then
Uncle Jack was rather strange. He said he was trying to get Miss Maudie’s goat,
that he had been trying unsuccessfully for forty years, that he was the last person
in  the  world  Miss  Maudie  would  think  about  marrying  but  the  first  person  she
thought  about  teasing,  and  the  best  defense  to  her  was  spirited  offense,  all  of
which we understood clearly.
“Arthur  Radley  just  stays  in  the  house,  that’s  all,”  said  Miss  Maudie.
“Wouldn’t you stay in the house if you didn’t want to come out?”
“Yessum, but I’d wanta come out. Why doesn’t he?”
Miss Maudie’s eyes narrowed. “You know that story as well as I do.”
“I never heard why, though. Nobody ever told me why.”
Miss Maudie settled her bridgework. “You know old Mr. Radley was a foot-
washing Baptist.”
“That’s what you are, ain’t it?”
“My shell’s not that hard, child. I’m just a Baptist.”
“Don’t you all believe in foot-washing?”
“We do. At home in the bathtub.”
“But we can’t have communion with you all—”
Apparently deciding that it was easier to define primitive baptistry than closed
communion,  Miss  Maudie  said:  “Foot-washers  believe  anything  that’s  pleasure
is  a  sin.  Did  you  know  some  of  ‘em  came  out  of  the  woods  one  Saturday  and
passed by this place and told me me and my flowers were going to hell?”
“Your flowers, too?”
“Yes ma’am. They’d burn right with me. They thought I spent too much time
in God’s outdoors and not enough time inside the house reading the Bible.”

---

My confidence in pulpit Gospel lessened at the vision of Miss Maudie stewing
forever  in  various  Protestant  hells.  True  enough,  she  had  an  acid  tongue  in  her
head,  and  she  did  not  go  about  the  neighborhood  doing  good,  as  did  Miss
Stephanie  Crawford.  But  while  no  one  with  a  grain  of  sense  trusted  Miss
Stephanie, Jem and I had considerable faith in Miss Maudie. She had never told
on us, had never played cat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in
our private lives. She was our friend. How so reasonable a creature could live in
peril of everlasting torment was incomprehensible.
“That ain’t right, Miss Maudie. You’re the best lady I know.”
Miss  Maudie  grinned.  “Thank  you  ma’am.  Thing  is,  foot-washers  think
women are a sin by definition. They take the Bible literally, you know.”
“Is that why Mr. Arthur stays in the house, to keep away from women?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“It  doesn’t  make  sense  to  me.  Looks  like  if  Mr.  Arthur  was  hankerin‘  after
heaven he’d come out on the porch at least. Atticus says God’s loving folks like
you love yourself—”
Miss Maudie stopped rocking, and her voice hardened. “You are too young to
understand  it,”  she  said,  “but  sometimes  the  Bible  in  the  hand  of  one  man  is
worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of—oh, of your father.”
I  was  shocked.  “Atticus  doesn’t  drink  whiskey,”  I  said.  “He  never  drunk  a
drop in his life—nome, yes he did. He said he drank some one time and didn’t
like it.”
Miss  Maudie  laughed.  “Wasn’t  talking  about  your  father,”  she  said.  “What  I
meant was, if Atticus Finch drank until he was drunk he wouldn’t be as hard as
some  men  are  at  their  best.  There  are  just  some  kind  of  men  who—who’re  so
busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and
you can look down the street and see the results.”
“Do you think they’re true, all those things they say about B—Mr. Arthur?”
“What things?”
I told her.
“That is three-fourths colored folks and one-fourth Stephanie Crawford,” said
Miss Maudie grimly. “Stephanie Crawford even told me once she woke up in the
middle of the night and found him looking in the window at her. I said what did
you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him? That shut her
up a while.”

---

I was sure it did. Miss Maudie’s voice was enough to shut anybody up.
“No, child,” she said, “that is a sad house. I remember Arthur Radley when he
was  a  boy.  He  always  spoke  nicely  to  me,  no  matter  what  folks  said  he  did.
Spoke as nicely as he knew how.”
“You reckon he’s crazy?”
Miss  Maudie  shook  her  head.  “If  he’s  not  he  should  be  by  now.  The  things
that  happen  to  people  we  never  really  know.  What  happens  in  houses  behind
closed doors, what secrets—”
“Atticus don’t ever do anything to Jem and me in the house that he don’t do in
the yard,” I said, feeling it my duty to defend my parent.
“Gracious  child,  I  was  raveling  a  thread,  wasn’t  even  thinking  about  your
father, but now that I am I’ll say this: Atticus Finch is the same in his house as
he is on the public streets. How’d you like some fresh poundcake to take home?”
I liked it very much.
Next morning when I awakened I found Jem and Dill in the back yard deep in
conversation. When I joined them, as usual they said go away.
“Will  not.  This  yard’s  as  much  mine  as  it  is  yours,  Jem  Finch.  I  got  just  as
much right to play in it as you have.”
Dill and Jem emerged from a brief huddle: “If you stay you’ve got to do what
we tell you,” Dill warned.
“We-ll,” I said, “who’s so high and mighty all of a sudden?”
“If  you  don’t  say  you’ll  do  what  we  tell  you,  we  ain’t  gonna  tell  you
anything,” Dill continued.
“You act like you grew ten inches in the night! All right, what is it?”
Jem said placidly, “We are going to give a note to Boo Radley.”
“Just  how?”  I  was  trying  to  fight  down  the  automatic  terror  rising  in  me.  It
was all right for Miss Maudie to talk—she was old and snug on her porch. It was
different for us.
Jem was merely going to put the note on the end of a fishing pole and stick it
through the shutters. If anyone came along, Dill would ring the bell.
Dill raised his right hand. In it was my mother’s silver dinner-bell.
“I’m goin‘ around to the side of the house,” said Jem. “We looked yesterday
from  across  the  street,  and  there’s  a  shutter  loose.  Think  maybe  I  can  make  it

---

stick on the window sill, at least.”
“Jem—”
“Now you’re in it and you can’t get out of it, you’ll just stay in it, Miss Priss!”
“Okay, okay, but I don’t wanta watch. Jem, somebody was—”
“Yes you will, you’ll watch the back end of the lot and Dill’s gonna watch the
front of the house an‘ up the street, an’ if anybody comes he’ll ring the bell. That
clear?”
“All right then. What’d you write him?”
Dill said, “We’re askin‘ him real politely to come out sometimes, and tell us
what he does in there—we said we wouldn’t hurt him and we’d buy him an ice
cream.”
“You all’ve gone crazy, he’ll kill us!”
Dill  said,  “It’s  my  idea.  I  figure  if  he’d  come  out  and  sit  a  spell  with  us  he
might feel better.”
“How do you know he don’t feel good?”
“Well how’d you feel if you’d been shut up for a hundred years with nothin‘
but cats to eat? I bet he’s got a beard down to here.”
“Like your daddy’s?”
“He ain’t got a beard, he—” Dill stopped, as if trying to remember.
“Uh huh, caughtcha,” I said. “You said ‘fore you were off the train good your
daddy had a black beard.”
“If it’s all the same to you he shaved it off last summer! Yeah, an‘ I’ve got the
letter to prove it—he sent me two dollars, too!”
“Keep on—I reckon he even sent you a mounted police uniform! That’n never
showed up, did it? You just keep on tellin‘ ’em, son—”
Dill  Harris  could  tell  the  biggest  ones  I  ever  heard.  Among  other  things,  he
had been up in a mail plane seventeen times, he had been to Nova Scotia, he had
seen  an  elephant,  and  his  granddaddy  was  Brigadier  General  Joe  Wheeler  and
left him his sword.
“You all hush,” said Jem. He scuttled beneath the house and came out with a
yellow bamboo pole. “Reckon this is long enough to reach from the sidewalk?”
“Anybody  who’s  brave  enough  to  go  up  and  touch  the  house  hadn’t  oughta
use a fishin‘ pole,” I said. “Why don’t you just knock the front door down?”
“This—is—different,” said Jem, “how many times do I have to tell you that?”

---

Dill took a piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to Jem. The three of us
walked  cautiously  toward  the  old  house.  Dill  remained  at  the  light-pole  on  the
front  corner  of  the  lot,  and  Jem  and  I  edged  down  the  sidewalk  parallel  to  the
side of the house. I walked beyond Jem and stood where I could see around the
curve.
“All clear,” I said. “Not a soul in sight.”
Jem looked up the sidewalk to Dill, who nodded.
Jem attached the note to the end of the fishing pole, let the pole out across the
yard and pushed it toward the window he had selected. The pole lacked several
inches of being long enough, and Jem leaned over as far as he could. I watched
him making jabbing motions for so long, I abandoned my post and went to him.
“Can’t get it off the pole,” he muttered, “or if I got it off I can’t make it stay.
G’on back down the street, Scout.”
I  returned  and  gazed  around  the  curve  at  the  empty  road.  Occasionally  I
looked  back  at  Jem,  who  was  patiently  trying  to  place  the  note  on  the  window
sill. It would flutter to the ground and Jem would jab it up, until I thought if Boo
Radley  ever  received  it  he  wouldn’t  be  able  to  read  it.  I  was  looking  down  the
street when the dinner-bell rang.
Shoulder  up,  I  reeled  around  to  face  Boo  Radley  and  his  bloody  fangs;
instead, I saw Dill ringing the bell with all his might in Atticus’s face.
Jem  looked  so  awful  I  didn’t  have  the  heart  to  tell  him  I  told  him  so.  He
trudged along, dragging the pole behind him on the sidewalk.
Atticus said, “Stop ringing that bell.”
Dill  grabbed  the  clapper;  in  the  silence  that  followed,  I  wished  he’d  start
ringing it again. Atticus pushed his hat to the back of his head and put his hands
on his hips. “Jem,” he said, “what were you doing?”
“Nothin‘, sir.”
“I don’t want any of that. Tell me.”
“I was—we were just tryin‘ to give somethin’ to Mr. Radley.”
“What were you trying to give him?”
“Just a letter.”
“Let me see it.”
Jem held out a filthy piece of paper. Atticus took it and tried to read it. “Why
do you want Mr. Radley to come out?”

---

Dill  said,  “We  thought  he  might  enjoy  us  .  .  .”  and  dried  up  when  Atticus
looked at him.
“Son,” he said to Jem, “I’m going to tell you something and tell you one time:
stop tormenting that man. That goes for the other two of you.”
What  Mr.  Radley  did  was  his  own  business.  If  he  wanted  to  come  out,  he
would. If he wanted to stay inside his own house he had the right to stay inside
free  from  the  attentions  of  inquisitive  children,  which  was  a  mild  term  for  the
likes of us. How would we like it if Atticus barged in on us without knocking,
when we were in our rooms at night? We were, in effect, doing the same thing to
Mr. Radley. What Mr. Radley did might seem peculiar to us, but it did not seem
peculiar  to  him.  Furthermore,  had  it  never  occurred  to  us  that  the  civil  way  to
communicate  with  another  being  was  by  the  front  door  instead  of  a  side
window?  Lastly,  we  were  to  stay  away  from  that  house  until  we  were  invited
there, we were not to play an asinine game he had seen us playing or make fun
of anybody on this street or in this town-
“We weren’t makin‘ fun of him, we weren’t laughin’ at him,” said Jem, “we
were just—”
“So that was what you were doing, wasn’t it?”
“Makin‘ fun of him?”
“No,” said Atticus, “putting his life’s history on display for the edification of
the neighborhood.”
Jem seemed to swell a little. “I didn’t say we were doin‘ that, I didn’t say it!”
Atticus  grinned  dryly.  “You  just  told  me,”  he  said.  “You  stop  this  nonsense
right now, every one of you.”
Jem gaped at him.
“You  want  to  be  a  lawyer,  don’t  you?”  Our  father’s  mouth  was  suspiciously
firm, as if he were trying to hold it in line.
Jem  decided  there  was  no  point  in  quibbling,  and  was  silent.  When  Atticus
went  inside  the  house  to  retrieve  a  file  he  had  forgotten  to  take  to  work  that
morning,  Jem  finally  realized  that  he  had  been  done  in  by  the  oldest  lawyer’s
trick  on  record.  He  waited  a  respectful  distance  from  the  front  steps,  watched
Atticus leave the house and walk toward town. When Atticus was out of earshot
Jem yelled after him: “I thought I wanted to be a lawyer but I ain’t so sure now!”

---

6
“Y
es,”  said  our  father,  when  Jem  asked  him  if  we  could  go  over  and  sit  by
Miss  Rachel’s  fishpool  with  Dill,  as  this  was  his  last  night  in  Maycomb.  “Tell
him so long for me, and we’ll see him next summer.”
We  leaped  over  the  low  wall  that  separated  Miss  Rachel’s  yard  from  our
driveway. Jem whistled bob-white and Dill answered in the darkness.
“Not a breath blowing,” said Jem. “Looka yonder.”
He  pointed  to  the  east.  A  gigantic  moon  was  rising  behind  Miss  Maudie’s
pecan trees. “That makes it seem hotter,” he said.
“Cross  in  it  tonight?”  asked  Dill,  not  looking  up.  He  was  constructing  a
cigarette from newspaper and string.
“No, just the lady. Don’t light that thing, Dill, you’ll stink up this whole end
of town.”
There was a lady in the moon in Maycomb. She sat at a dresser combing her
hair.
“We’re  gonna  miss  you,  boy,”  I  said.  “Reckon  we  better  watch  for  Mr.
Avery?”
Mr.  Avery  boarded  across  the  street  from  Mrs.  Henry  Lafayette  Dubose’s
house. Besides making change in the collection plate every Sunday, Mr. Avery
sat  on  the  porch  every  night  until  nine  o’clock  and  sneezed.  One  evening  we
were privileged to witness a performance by him which seemed to have been his
positively last, for he never did it again so long as we watched. Jem and I were
leaving Miss Rachel’s front steps one night when Dill stopped us: “Golly, looka
yonder.”  He  pointed  across  the  street.  At  first  we  saw  nothing  but  a  kudzu-
covered front porch, but a closer inspection revealed an arc of water descending
from  the  leaves  and  splashing  in  the  yellow  circle  of  the  street  light,  some  ten
feet from source to earth, it seemed to us. Jem said Mr. Avery misfigured, Dill
said he must drink a gallon a day, and the ensuing contest to determine relative
distances  and  respective  prowess  only  made  me  feel  left  out  again,  as  I  was
untalented in this area.
Dill  stretched,  yawned,  and  said  altogether  too  casually.  “I  know  what,  let’s

---

go for a walk.”
He sounded fishy to me. Nobody in Maycomb just went for a walk. “Where
to, Dill?”
Dill jerked his head in a southerly direction.
Jem  said,  “Okay.”  When  I  protested,  he  said  sweetly,  “You  don’t  have  to
come along, Angel May.”
“You don’t have to go. Remember—”
Jem was not one to dwell on past defeats: it seemed the only message he got
from  Atticus  was  insight  into  the  art  of  cross  examination.  “Scout,  we  ain’t
gonna do anything, we’re just goin‘ to the street light and back.”
We  strolled  silently  down  the  sidewalk,  listening  to  porch  swings  creaking
with the weight of the neighborhood, listening to the soft night-murmurs of the
grown  people  on  our  street.  Occasionally  we  heard  Miss  Stephanie  Crawford
laugh.
“Well?” said Dill.
“Okay,” said Jem. “Why don’t you go on home, Scout?”
“What are you gonna do?”
Dill and Jem were simply going to peep in the window with the loose shutter
to  see  if  they  could  get  a  look  at  Boo  Radley,  and  if  I  didn’t  want  to  go  with
them I could go straight home and keep my fat flopping mouth shut, that was all.
“But what in the sam holy hill did you wait till tonight?”
Because nobody could see them at night, because Atticus would be so deep in
a  book  he  wouldn’t  hear  the  Kingdom  coming,  because  if  Boo  Radley  killed
them  they’d  miss  school  instead  of  vacation,  and  because  it  was  easier  to  see
inside a dark house in the dark than in the daytime, did I understand?
“Jem, please—”
“Scout, I’m tellin‘ you for the last time, shut your trap or go home—I declare
to the Lord you’re gettin’ more like a girl every day!”
With  that,  I  had  no  option  but  to  join  them.  We  thought  it  was  better  to  go
under the high wire fence at the rear of the Radley lot, we stood less chance of
being seen. The fence enclosed a large garden and a narrow wooden outhouse.
Jem held up the bottom wire and motioned Dill under it. I followed, and held
up  the  wire  for  Jem.  It  was  a  tight  squeeze  for  him.  “Don’t  make  a  sound,”  he
whispered.  “Don’t  get  in  a  row  of  collards  whatever  you  do,  they’ll  wake  the

---

dead.”
With this thought in mind, I made perhaps one step per minute. I moved faster
when I saw Jem far ahead beckoning in the moonlight. We came to the gate that
divided the garden from the back yard. Jem touched it. The gate squeaked.
“Spit on it,” whispered Dill.
“You’ve got us in a box, Jem,” I muttered. “We can’t get out of here so easy.”
“Sh-h. Spit on it, Scout.”
We  spat  ourselves  dry,  and  Jem  opened  the  gate  slowly,  lifting  it  aside  and
resting it on the fence. We were in the back yard.
The  back  of  the  Radley  house  was  less  inviting  than  the  front:  a  ramshackle
porch  ran  the  width  of  the  house;  there  were  two  doors  and  two  dark  windows
between the doors. Instead of a column, a rough two-by-four supported one end
of the roof. An old Franklin stove sat in a corner of the porch; above it a hat-rack
mirror caught the moon and shone eerily.
“Ar-r,” said Jem softly, lifting his foot.
“‘Smatter?”
“Chickens,” he breathed.
That  we  would  be  obliged  to  dodge  the  unseen  from  all  directions  was
confirmed when Dill ahead of us spelled G-o-d in a whisper. We crept to the side
of the house, around to the window with the hanging shutter. The sill was several
inches taller than Jem.
“Give you a hand up,” he muttered to Dill. “Wait, though.” Jem grabbed his
left wrist and my right wrist, I grabbed my left wrist and Jem’s right wrist, we
crouched, and Dill sat on our saddle. We raised him and he caught the window
sill.
“Hurry,” Jem whispered, “we can’t last much longer.”
Dill punched my shoulder, and we lowered him to the ground.
“What’d you see?”
“Nothing. Curtains. There’s a little teeny light way off somewhere, though.”
“Let’s get away from here,” breathed Jem. “Let’s go ‘round in back again. Sh-
h,” he warned me, as I was about to protest.
“Let’s try the back window.”
“Dill, no,” I said.
Dill stopped and let Jem go ahead. When Jem put his foot on the bottom step,

---

the step squeaked. He stood still, then tried his weight by degrees. The step was
silent. Jem skipped two steps, put his foot on the porch, heaved himself to it, and
teetered a long moment. He regained his balance and dropped to his knees. He
crawled to the window, raised his head and looked in.
Then I saw the shadow. It was the shadow of a man with a hat on. At first I
thought  it  was  a  tree,  but  there  was  no  wind  blowing,  and  tree-trunks  never
walked. The back porch was bathed in moonlight, and the shadow, crisp as toast,
moved across the porch toward Jem.
Dill saw it next. He put his hands to his face.
When  it  crossed  Jem,  Jem  saw  it.  He  put  his  arms  over  his  head  and  went
rigid.
The shadow stopped about a foot beyond Jem. Its arm came out from its side,
dropped, and was still. Then it turned and moved back across Jem, walked along
the porch and off the side of the house, returning as it had come.
Jem  leaped  off  the  porch  and  galloped  toward  us.  He  flung  open  the  gate,
danced  Dill  and  me  through,  and  shooed  us  between  two  rows  of  swishing
collards.  Halfway  through  the  collards  I  tripped;  as  I  tripped  the  roar  of  a
shotgun shattered the neighborhood.
Dill  and  Jem  dived  beside  me.  Jem’s  breath  came  in  sobs:  “Fence  by  the
schoolyard!—hurry, Scout!”
Jem held the bottom wire; Dill and I rolled through and were halfway to the
shelter  of  the  schoolyard’s  solitary  oak  when  we  sensed  that  Jem  was  not  with
us. We ran back and found him struggling in the fence, kicking his pants off to
get loose. He ran to the oak tree in his shorts.
Safely behind it, we gave way to numbness, but Jem’s mind was racing: “We
gotta get home, they’ll miss us.”
We  ran  across  the  schoolyard,  crawled  under  the  fence  to  Deer’s  Pasture
behind our house, climbed our back fence and were at the back steps before Jem
would let us pause to rest.
Respiration normal, the three of us strolled as casually as we could to the front
yard.  We  looked  down  the  street  and  saw  a  circle  of  neighbors  at  the  Radley
front gate.
“We  better  go  down  there,”  said  Jem.  “They’ll  think  it’s  funny  if  we  don’t
show up.”
Mr. Nathan Radley was standing inside his gate, a shotgun broken across his
arm.  Atticus  was  standing  beside  Miss  Maudie  and  Miss  Stephanie  Crawford.

---

Miss Rachel and Mr. Avery were near by. None of them saw us come up.
We eased in beside Miss Maudie, who looked around. “Where were you all,
didn’t you hear the commotion?”
“What happened?” asked Jem.
“Mr. Radley shot at a Negro in his collard patch.”
“Oh. Did he hit him?”
“No,” said Miss Stephanie. “Shot in the air. Scared him pale, though. Says if
anybody sees a white nigger around, that’s the one. Says he’s got the other barrel
waitin‘  for  the  next  sound  he  hears  in  that  patch,  an’  next  time  he  won’t  aim
high, be it dog, nigger, or—Jem Finch!”
“Ma’am?” asked Jem.
Atticus spoke. “Where’re your pants, son?”
“Pants, sir?”
“Pants.”
It was no use. In his shorts before God and everybody. I sighed.
“Ah—Mr. Finch?”
In  the  glare  from  the  streetlight,  I  could  see  Dill  hatching  one:  his  eyes
widened, his fat cherub face grew rounder.
“What is it, Dill?” asked Atticus.
“Ah—I won ‘em from him,” he said vaguely.
“Won them? How?”
Dill’s hand sought the back of his head. He brought it forward and across his
forehead. “We were playin‘ strip poker up yonder by the fishpool,” he said.
Jem  and  I  relaxed.  The  neighbors  seemed  satisfied:  they  all  stiffened.  But
what was strip poker?
We had no chance to find out: Miss Rachel went off like the town fire siren:
“Do-o-o  Jee-sus,  Dill  Harris!  Gamblin‘  by  my  fishpool?  I’ll  strip-poker  you,
sir!”
Atticus  saved  Dill  from  immediate  dismemberment.  “Just  a  minute,  Miss
Rachel,”  he  said.  “I’ve  never  heard  of  ‘em  doing  that  before.  Were  you  all
playing cards?”
Jem fielded Dill’s fly with his eyes shut: “No sir, just with matches.”
I admired my brother. Matches were dangerous, but cards were fatal.

---

“Jem, Scout,” said Atticus, “I don’t want to hear of poker in any form again.
Go by Dill’s and get your pants, Jem. Settle it yourselves.”
“Don’t worry, Dill,” said Jem, as we trotted up the sidewalk, “she ain’t gonna
get you. He’ll talk her out of it. That was fast thinkin‘, son. Listen . . . you hear?”
We  stopped,  and  heard  Atticus’s  voice:  “.  .  .  not  serious  .  .  .  they  all  go
through it, Miss Rachel . . .”
Dill  was  comforted,  but  Jem  and  I  weren’t.  There  was  the  problem  of  Jem
showing up some pants in the morning.
“‘d give you some of mine,” said Dill, as we came to Miss Rachel’s steps. Jem
said  he  couldn’t  get  in  them,  but  thanks  anyway.  We  said  good-bye,  and  Dill
went inside the house. He evidently remembered he was engaged to me, for he
ran  back  out  and  kissed  me  swiftly  in  front  of  Jem.  “Yawl  write,  hear?”  he
bawled after us.
Had  Jem’s  pants  been  safely  on  him,  we  would  not  have  slept  much  anyway.
Every night-sound I heard from my cot on the back porch was magnified three-
fold;  every  scratch  of  feet  on  gravel  was  Boo  Radley  seeking  revenge,  every
passing Negro laughing in the night was Boo Radley loose and after us; insects
splashing against the screen were Boo Radley’s insane fingers picking the wire
to  pieces;  the  chinaberry  trees  were  malignant,  hovering,  alive.  I  lingered
between sleep and wakefulness until I heard Jem murmur.
“Sleep, Little Three-Eyes?”
“Are you crazy?”
“Sh-h. Atticus’s light’s out.”
In the waning moonlight I saw Jem swing his feet to the floor.
“I’m goin‘ after ’em,” he said.
I sat upright. “You can’t. I won’t let you.”
He was struggling into his shirt. “I’ve got to.”
“You do an‘ I’ll wake up Atticus.”
“You do and I’ll kill you.”
I  pulled  him  down  beside  me  on  the  cot.  I  tried  to  reason  with  him.  “Mr.
Nathan’s gonna find ‘em in the morning, Jem. He knows you lost ’em. When he
shows  ‘em  to  Atticus  it’ll  be  pretty  bad,  that’s  all  there  is  to  it.  Go’n  back  to
bed.”

---

“That’s what I know,” said Jem. “That’s why I’m goin‘ after ’em.”
I began to feel sick. Going back to that place by himself—I remembered Miss
Stephanie: Mr. Nathan had the other barrel waiting for the next sound he heard,
be it nigger, dog . . . Jem knew that better than I.
I  was  desperate:  “Look,  it  ain’t  worth  it,  Jem.  A  lickin‘  hurts  but  it  doesn’t
last. You’ll get your head shot off, Jem. Please . . .”
He  blew  out  his  breath  patiently.  “I—it’s  like  this,  Scout,”  he  muttered.
“Atticus ain’t ever whipped me since I can remember. I wanta keep it that way.”
This  was  a  thought.  It  seemed  that  Atticus  threatened  us  every  other  day.
“You mean he’s never caught you at anything.”
“Maybe so, but—I just wanta keep it that way, Scout. We shouldn’a done that
tonight, Scout.”
It was then, I suppose, that Jem and I first began to part company. Sometimes
I did not understand him, but my periods of bewilderment were short-lived. This
was beyond me. “Please,” I pleaded, “can’tcha just think about it for a minute—
by yourself on that place—”
“Shut up!”
“It’s not like he’d never speak to you again or somethin‘ . . . I’m gonna wake
him up, Jem, I swear I am—”
Jem  grabbed  my  pajama  collar  and  wrenched  it  tight.  “Then  I’m  goin‘  with
you—” I choked.
“No you ain’t, you’ll just make noise.”
It was no use. I unlatched the back door and held it while he crept down the
steps. It must have been two o’clock. The moon was setting and the lattice-work
shadows  were  fading  into  fuzzy  nothingness.  Jem’s  white  shirt-tail  dipped  and
bobbed like a small ghost dancing away to escape the coming morning. A faint
breeze stirred and cooled the sweat running down my sides.
He  went  the  back  way,  through  Deer’s  Pasture,  across  the  schoolyard  and
around  to  the  fence,  I  thought—at  least  that  was  the  way  he  was  headed.  It
would take longer, so it was not time to worry yet. I waited until it was time to
worry  and  listened  for  Mr.  Radley’s  shotgun.  Then  I  thought  I  heard  the  back
fence squeak. It was wishful thinking.
Then  I  heard  Atticus  cough.  I  held  my  breath.  Sometimes  when  we  made  a
midnight  pilgrimage  to  the  bathroom  we  would  find  him  reading.  He  said  he
often woke up during the night, checked on us, and read himself back to sleep. I

---

waited for his light to go on, straining my eyes to see it flood the hall. It stayed
off,  and  I  breathed  again.  The  night-crawlers  had  retired,  but  ripe  chinaberries
drummed on the roof when the wind stirred, and the darkness was desolate with
the barking of distant dogs.
There he was, returning to me. His white shirt bobbed over the back fence and
slowly grew larger. He came up the back steps, latched the door behind him, and
sat on his cot. Wordlessly, he held up his pants. He lay down, and for a while I
heard his cot trembling. Soon he was still. I did not hear him stir again.

---

7
J
em stayed moody and silent for a week. As Atticus had once advised me to do,
I tried to climb into Jem’s skin and walk around in it: if I had gone alone to the
Radley Place at two in the morning, my funeral would have been held the next
afternoon. So I left Jem alone and tried not to bother him.
School  started.  The  second  grade  was  as  bad  as  the  first,  only  worse—they
still  flashed  cards  at  you  and  wouldn’t  let  you  read  or  write.  Miss  Caroline’s
progress next door could be estimated by the frequency of laughter; however, the
usual crew had flunked the first grade again, and were helpful in keeping order.
The only  thing  good  about  the  second  grade  was that  this  year  I  had  to  stay  as
late as Jem, and we usually walked home together at three o’clock.
One  afternoon  when  we  were  crossing  the  schoolyard  toward  home,  Jem
suddenly said: “There’s something I didn’t tell you.”
As  this  was  his  first  complete  sentence  in  several  days,  I  encouraged  him:
“About what?”
“About that night.”
“You’ve never told me anything about that night,” I said.
Jem waved my words away as if fanning gnats. He was silent for a while, then
he said, “When I went back for my breeches—they were all in a tangle when I
was gettin‘ out of ’em, I couldn’t get ‘em loose. When I went back—” Jem took
a  deep  breath.  “When  I  went  back,  they  were  folded  across  the  fence  .  .  .  like
they were expectin’ me.”
“Across—”
“And something else—” Jem’s voice was flat. “Show you when we get home.
They’d been sewed up. Not like a lady sewed ‘em, like somethin’ I’d try to do.
All crooked. It’s almost like—”
“—somebody knew you were comin‘ back for ’em.”
Jem  shuddered.  “Like  somebody  was  readin‘  my  mind  .  .  .  like  somebody
could tell what I was gonna do. Can’t anybody tell what I’m gonna do lest they
know me, can they, Scout?”
Jem’s  question  was  an  appeal.  I  reassured  him:  “Can’t  anybody  tell  what

---

you’re  gonna  do  lest  they  live  in  the  house  with  you,  and  even  I  can’t  tell
sometimes.”
We were walking past our tree. In its knot-hole rested a ball of gray twine.
“Don’t take it, Jem,” I said. “This is somebody’s hidin‘ place.”
“I don’t think so, Scout.”
“Yes it is. Somebody like Walter Cunningham comes down here every recess
and hides his things—and we come along and take ‘em away from him. Listen,
let’s leave it and wait a couple of days. If it ain’t gone then, we’ll take it, okay?”
“Okay,  you  might  be  right,”  said  Jem.  “It  must  be  some  little  kid’s  place—
hides his things from the bigger folks. You know it’s only when school’s in that
we’ve found things.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but we never go by here in the summertime.”
We  went  home.  Next  morning  the  twine  was  where  we  had  left  it.  When  it
was  still  there  on  the  third  day,  Jem  pocketed  it.  From  then  on,  we  considered
everything we found in the knot-hole our property. -
The  second  grade  was  grim,  but  Jem  assured  me  that  the  older  I  got  the  better
school  would  be,  that  he  started  off  the  same  way,  and  it  was  not  until  one
reached  the  sixth  grade  that  one  learned  anything  of  value.  The  sixth  grade
seemed  to  please  him  from  the  beginning:  he  went  through  a  brief  Egyptian
Period  that  baffled  me—he  tried  to  walk  flat  a  great  deal,  sticking  one  arm  in
front  of  him  and  one  in  back  of  him,  putting  one  foot  behind  the  other.  He
declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn’t see how they got
anything  done,  but  Jem  said  they  accomplished  more  than  the  Americans  ever
did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would
we be today if they hadn’t? Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have
the facts.
There  are  no  clearly  defined  seasons  in  South  Alabama;  summer  drifts  into
autumn, and autumn is sometimes never followed by winter, but turns to a days-
old  spring  that  melts  into  summer  again.  That  fall  was  a  long  one,  hardly  cool
enough for a light jacket. Jem and I were trotting in our orbit one mild October
afternoon when our knot-hole stopped us again. Something white was inside this
time.
Jem let me do the honors: I pulled out two small images carved in soap. One
was the figure of a boy, the other wore a crude dress. Before I remembered that
there was no such thing as hoo-dooing, I shrieked and threw them down.

---

Jem  snatched  them  up.  “What’s  the  matter  with  you?”  he  yelled.  He  rubbed
the figures free of red dust. “These are good,” he said. “I’ve never seen any these
good.”
He  held  them  down  to  me.  They  were  almost  perfect  miniatures  of  two
children. The boy had on shorts, and a shock of soapy hair fell to his eyebrows. I
looked  up  at  Jem.  A  point  of  straight  brown  hair  kicked  downwards  from  his
part. I had never noticed it before. Jem looked from the girl-doll to me. The girl-
doll wore bangs. So did I.
“These are us,” he said.
“Who did ‘em, you reckon?”
“Who do we know around here who whittles?” he asked.
“Mr. Avery.”
“Mr. Avery just does like this. I mean carves.”
Mr.  Avery  averaged  a  stick  of  stovewood  per  week;  he  honed  it  down  to  a
toothpick and chewed it.
“There’s old Miss Stephanie Crawford’s sweetheart,” I said.
“He carves all right, but he lives down the country. When would he ever pay
any attention to us?”
“Maybe  he  sits  on  the  porch  and  looks  at  us  instead  of  Miss  Stephanie.  If  I
was him, I would.”
Jem stared at me so long I asked what was the matter, but got Nothing, Scout
for an answer. When we went home, Jem put the dolls in his trunk.
Less than two weeks later we found a whole package of chewing gum, which
we  enjoyed,  the  fact  that  everything  on  the  Radley  Place  was  poison  having
slipped Jem’s memory.
The following week the knot-hole yielded a tarnished medal. Jem showed it to
Atticus,  who  said  it  was  a  spelling  medal,  that  before  we  were  born  the
Maycomb  County  schools  had  spelling  contests  and  awarded  medals  to  the
winners. Atticus said someone must have lost it, and had we asked around? Jem
camel-kicked me when I tried to say where we had found it. Jem asked Atticus if
he remembered anybody who ever won one, and Atticus said no.
Our  biggest  prize  appeared  four  days  later.  It  was  a  pocket  watch  that
wouldn’t run, on a chain with an aluminum knife.
“You reckon it’s white gold, Jem?”

---

“Don’t know. I’ll show it to Atticus.”
Atticus said it would probably be worth ten dollars, knife, chain and all, if it
were new. “Did you swap with somebody at school?” he asked.
“Oh, no sir!” Jem pulled out his grandfather’s watch that Atticus let him carry
once a week if Jem were careful with it. On the days he carried the watch, Jem
walked  on  eggs.  “Atticus,  if  it’s  all  right  with  you,  I’d  rather  have  this  one
instead. Maybe I can fix it.”
When  the  new  wore  off  his  grandfather’s  watch,  and  carrying  it  became  a
day’s burdensome task, Jem no longer felt the necessity of ascertaining the hour
every five minutes.
He did a fair job, only one spring and two tiny pieces left over, but the watch
would not run. “Oh-h,” he sighed, “it’ll never go. Scout—?”
“Huh?”
“You reckon we oughta write a letter to whoever’s leaving us these things?”
“That’d be right nice, Jem, we can thank ‘em—what’s wrong?”
Jem was holding his ears, shaking his head from side to side. “I don’t get it, I
just  don’t  get  it—I  don’t  know  why,  Scout  .  .  .”  He  looked  toward  the
livingroom. “I’ve gotta good mind to tell Atticus—no, I reckon not.”
“I’ll tell him for you.”
“No, don’t do that, Scout. Scout?”
“Wha-t?”
He had been on the verge of telling me something all evening; his face would
brighten  and  he  would  lean  toward  me,  then  he  would  change  his  mind.  He
changed it again. “Oh, nothin‘.”
“Here, let’s write a letter.” I pushed a tablet and pencil under his nose.
“Okay. Dear Mister . . .”
“How do you know it’s a man? I bet it’s Miss Maudie—been bettin‘ that for a
long time.”
“Ar-r,  Miss  Maudie  can’t  chew  gum—”  Jem  broke  into  a  grin.  “You  know,
she can talk real pretty sometimes. One time I asked her to have a chew and she
said  no  thanks,  that—chewing  gum  cleaved  to  her  palate  and  rendered  her
speechless,” said Jem carefully. “Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“Yeah,  she  can  say  nice  things  sometimes.  She  wouldn’t  have  a  watch  and
chain anyway.”

---

“Dear sir,” said Jem. “We appreciate the—no, we appreciate everything which
you have put into the tree for us. Yours very truly, Jeremy Atticus Finch.”
“He won’t know who you are if you sign it like that, Jem.”
Jem  erased  his  name  and  wrote,  “Jem  Finch.”  I  signed,  “Jean  Louise  Finch
(Scout),” beneath it. Jem put the note in an envelope.
Next morning on the way to school he ran ahead of me and stopped at the tree.
Jem was facing me when he looked up, and I saw him go stark white.
“Scout!”
I ran to him.
Someone had filled our knot-hole with cement.
“Don’t  you  cry,  now,  Scout  .  .  .  don’t  cry  now,  don’t  you  worry—”  he
muttered at me all the way to school.
When  we  went  home  for  dinner  Jem  bolted  his  food,  ran  to  the  porch  and
stood on the steps. I followed him. “Hasn’t passed by yet,” he said.
Next day Jem repeated his vigil and was rewarded.
“Hidy do, Mr. Nathan,” he said.
“Morning Jem, Scout,” said Mr. Radley, as he went by.
“Mr. Radley,” said Jem.
Mr. Radley turned around.
“Mr. Radley, ah—did you put cement in that hole in that tree down yonder?”
“Yes,” he said. “I filled it up.”
“Why’d you do it, sir?”
“Tree’s  dying.  You  plug  ‘em  with  cement  when  they’re  sick.  You  ought  to
know that, Jem.”
Jem said nothing more about it until late afternoon. When we passed our tree
he  gave  it  a  meditative  pat  on  its  cement,  and  remained  deep  in  thought.  He
seemed to be working himself into a bad humor, so I kept my distance.
As  usual,  we  met  Atticus  coming  home  from  work  that  evening.  When  we
were at our steps Jem said, “Atticus, look down yonder at that tree, please sir.”
“What tree, son?”
“The one on the corner of the Radley lot comin‘ from school.”
“Yes?”
“Is that tree dyin‘?”

---

“Why no, son, I don’t think so. Look at the leaves, they’re all green and full,
no brown patches anywhere—”
“It ain’t even sick?”
“That tree’s as healthy as you are, Jem. Why?”
“Mr. Nathan Radley said it was dyin‘.”
“Well maybe it is. I’m sure Mr. Radley knows more about his trees than we
do.”
Atticus  left  us  on  the  porch.  Jem  leaned  on  a  pillar,  rubbing  his  shoulders
against it.
“Do you itch, Jem?” I asked as politely as I could. He did not answer. “Come
on in, Jem,” I said.
“After while.”
He  stood  there  until  nightfall,  and  I  waited  for  him.  When  we  went  in  the
house  I  saw  he  had  been  crying;  his  face  was  dirty  in  the  right  places,  but  I
thought it odd that I had not heard him.

---

8
F
or  reasons  unfathomable  to  the  most  experienced  prophets  in  Maycomb
County,  autumn  turned  to  winter  that  year.  We  had  two  weeks  of  the  coldest
weather  since  1885,  Atticus  said.  Mr.  Avery  said  it  was  written  on  the  Rosetta
Stone  that  when  children  disobeyed  their  parents,  smoked  cigarettes  and  made
war on each other, the seasons would change: Jem and I were burdened with the
guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to
our neighbors and discomfort to ourselves.
Old  Mrs.  Radley  died  that  winter,  but  her  death  caused  hardly  a  ripple—the
neighborhood seldom saw her, except when she watered her cannas. Jem and I
decided that Boo had got her at last, but when Atticus returned from the Radley
house he said she died of natural causes, to our disappointment.
“Ask him,” Jem whispered.
“You ask him, you’re the oldest.”
“That’s why you oughta ask him.”
“Atticus,” I said, “did you see Mr. Arthur?”
Atticus looked sternly around his newspaper at me: “I did not.”
Jem restrained me from further questions. He said Atticus was still touchous
about us and the Radleys and it wouldn’t do to push him any. Jem had a notion
that  Atticus  thought  our  activities  that  night  last  summer  were  not  solely
confined to strip poker. Jem had no firm basis for his ideas, he said it was merely
a twitch.
Next morning I awoke, looked out the window and nearly died of fright. My
screams brought Atticus from his bathroom half-shaven.
“The  world’s  endin‘,  Atticus!  Please  do  something—!”  I  dragged  him  to  the
window and pointed.
“No it’s not,” he said. “It’s snowing.”
Jem asked Atticus would it keep up. Jem had never seen snow either, but he
knew  what  it  was.  Atticus  said  he  didn’t  know  any  more  about  snow  than  Jem
did. “I think, though, if it’s watery like that, it’ll turn to rain.”

---

The telephone rang and Atticus left the breakfast table to answer it. “That was
Eula  May,”  he  said  when  he  returned.  “I  quote—‘As  it  has  not  snowed  in
Maycomb County since 1885, there will be no school today.’”
Eula May was Maycomb’s leading telephone operator. She was entrusted with
issuing public announcements, wedding invitations, setting off the fire siren, and
giving first-aid instructions when Dr. Reynolds was away.
When Atticus finally called us to order and bade us look at our plates instead
of out the windows, Jem asked, “How do you make a snowman?”
“I  haven’t  the  slightest  idea,”  said  Atticus.  “I  don’t  want  you  all  to  be
disappointed, but I doubt if there’ll be enough snow for a snowball, even.”
Calpurnia  came  in  and  said  she  thought  it  was  sticking.  When  we  ran  to  the
back yard, it was covered with a feeble layer of soggy snow.
“We  shouldn’t  walk  about  in  it,”  said  Jem.  “Look,  every  step  you  take’s
wasting it.”
I looked back at my mushy footprints. Jem said if we waited until it snowed
some more we could scrape it all up for a snowman. I stuck out my tongue and
caught a fat flake. It burned.
“Jem, it’s hot!”
“No  it  ain’t,  it’s  so  cold  it  burns.  Now  don’t  eat  it,  Scout,  you’re  wasting  it.
Let it come down.”
“But I want to walk in it.”
“I know what, we can go walk over at Miss Maudie’s.”
Jem hopped across the front yard. I followed in his tracks. When we were on
the  sidewalk  in  front  of  Miss  Maudie’s,  Mr.  Avery  accosted  us.  He  had  a  pink
face and a big stomach below his belt.
“See  what  you’ve  done?”  he  said.  “Hasn’t  snowed  in  Maycomb  since
Appomattox. It’s bad children like you makes the seasons change.”
I  wondered  if  Mr.  Avery  knew  how  hopefully  we  had  watched  last  summer
for him to repeat his performance, and reflected that if this was our reward, there
was  something  to  say  for  sin.  I  did  not  wonder  where  Mr.  Avery  gathered  his
meteorological statistics: they came straight from the Rosetta Stone.
“Jem Finch, you Jem Finch!”
“Miss Maudie’s callin‘ you, Jem.”
“You all stay in the middle of the yard. There’s some thrift buried under the

---

snow near the porch. Don’t step on it!”
“Yessum!” called Jem. “It’s beautiful, ain’t it, Miss Maudie?”
“Beautiful my hind foot! If it freezes tonight it’ll carry off all my azaleas!”
Miss Maudie’s old sunhat glistened with snow crystals. She was bending over
some small bushes, wrapping them in burlap bags. Jem asked her what she was
doing that for.
“Keep ‘em warm,” she said.
“How can flowers keep warm? They don’t circulate.”
“I cannot answer that question, Jem Finch. All I know is if it freezes tonight
these plants’ll freeze, so you cover ‘em up. Is that clear?”
“Yessum. Miss Maudie?”
“What, sir?”
“Could Scout and me borrow some of your snow?”
“Heavens alive, take it all! There’s an old peach basket under the house, haul
it off in that.” Miss Maudie’s eyes narrowed. “Jem Finch, what are you going to
do with my snow?”
“You’ll  see,”  said  Jem,  and  we  transferred  as  much  snow  as  we  could  from
Miss Maudie’s yard to ours, a slushy operation.
“What are we gonna do, Jem?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said. “Now get the basket and haul all the snow you can rake
up  from  the  back  yard  to  the  front.  Walk  back  in  your  tracks,  though,”  he
cautioned.
“Are we gonna have a snow baby, Jem?”
“No, a real snowman. Gotta work hard, now.”
Jem ran to the back yard, produced the garden hoe and began digging quickly
behind  the  woodpile,  placing  any  worms  he  found  to  one  side.  He  went  in  the
house, returned with the laundry hamper, filled it with earth and carried it to the
front yard.
When we had five baskets of earth and two baskets of snow, Jem said we were
ready to begin.
“Don’t you think this is kind of a mess?” I asked.
“Looks messy now, but it won’t later,” he said.
Jem scooped up an armful of dirt, patted it into a mound on which he added

---

another load, and another until he had constructed a torso.
“Jem, I ain’t ever heard of a nigger snowman,” I said.
“He won’t be black long,” he grunted.
Jem procured some peachtree switches from the back yard, plaited them, and
bent them into bones to be covered with dirt.
“He looks like Stephanie Crawford with her hands on her hips,” I said. “Fat in
the middle and little-bitty arms.”
“I’ll make ‘em bigger.” Jem sloshed water over the mud man and added more
dirt.  He  looked  thoughtfully  at  it  for  a  moment,  then  he  molded  a  big  stomach
below  the  figure’s  waistline.  Jem  glanced  at  me,  his  eyes  twinkling:  “Mr.
Avery’s sort of shaped like a snowman, ain’t he?”
Jem  scooped  up  some  snow  and  began  plastering  it  on.  He  permitted  me  to
cover  only  the  back,  saving  the  public  parts  for  himself.  Gradually  Mr.  Avery
turned white.
Using  bits  of  wood  for  eyes,  nose,  mouth,  and  buttons,  Jem  succeeded  in
making Mr. Avery look cross. A stick of stovewood completed the picture. Jem
stepped back and viewed his creation.
“It’s lovely, Jem,” I said. “Looks almost like he’d talk to you.”
“It is, ain’t it?” he said shyly.
We could not wait for Atticus to come home for dinner, but called and said we
had a big surprise for him. He seemed surprised when he saw most of the back
yard in the front yard, but he said we had done a jim-dandy job. “I didn’t know
how you were going to do it,” he said to Jem, “but from now on I’ll never worry
about what’ll become of you, son, you’ll always have an idea.”
Jem’s  ears  reddened  from  Atticus’s  compliment,  but  he  looked  up  sharply
when he saw Atticus stepping back. Atticus squinted at the snowman a while. He
grinned, then laughed. “Son, I can’t tell what you’re going to be—an engineer, a
lawyer,  or  a  portrait  painter.  You’ve  perpetrated  a  near  libel  here  in  the  front
yard. We’ve got to disguise this fellow.”
Atticus  suggested  that  Jem  hone  down  his  creation’s  front  a  little,  swap  a
broom for the stovewood, and put an apron on him.
Jem explained that if he did, the snowman would become muddy and cease to
be a snowman.
“I don’t care what you do, so long as you do something,” said Atticus. “You
can’t go around making caricatures of the neighbors.”

---

“Ain’t a characterture,” said Jem. “It looks just like him.”
“Mr. Avery might not think so.”
“I  know  what!”  said  Jem.  He  raced  across  the  street,  disappeared  into  Miss
Maudie’s  back  yard  and  returned  triumphant.  He  stuck  her  sunhat  on  the
snowman’s  head  and  jammed  her  hedge-clippers  into  the  crook  of  his  arm.
Atticus said that would be fine.
Miss  Maudie  opened  her  front  door  and  came  out  on  the  porch.  She  looked
across  the  street  at  us.  Suddenly  she  grinned.  “Jem  Finch,”  she  called.  “You
devil, bring me back my hat, sir!”
Jem looked up at Atticus, who shook his head. “She’s just fussing,” he said.
“She’s really impressed with your—accomplishments.”
Atticus  strolled  over  to  Miss  Maudie’s  sidewalk,  where  they  engaged  in  an
arm-waving conversation, the only phrase of which I caught was “. . . erected an
absolute morphodite in that yard! Atticus, you’ll never raise ‘em!”
The snow stopped in the afternoon, the temperature dropped, and by nightfall
Mr.  Avery’s  direst  predictions  came  true:  Calpurnia  kept  every  fireplace  in  the
house blazing, but we were cold. When Atticus came home that evening he said
we were in for it, and asked Calpurnia if she wanted to stay with us for the night.
Calpurnia glanced up at the high ceilings and long windows and said she thought
she’d be warmer at her house. Atticus drove her home in the car.
Before I went to sleep Atticus put more coal on the fire in my room. He said
the thermometer registered sixteen, that it was the coldest night in his memory,
and that our snowman outside was frozen solid.
Minutes  later,  it  seemed,  I  was  awakened  by  someone  shaking  me.  Atticus’s
overcoat was spread across me. “Is it morning already?”
“Baby, get up.”
Atticus  was  holding  out  my  bathrobe  and  coat.  “Put  your  robe  on  first,”  he
said.
Jem  was  standing  beside  Atticus,  groggy  and  tousled.  He  was  holding  his
overcoat  closed  at  the  neck,  his  other  hand  was  jammed  into  his  pocket.  He
looked strangely overweight.
“Hurry, hon,” said Atticus. “Here’re your shoes and socks.”
Stupidly, I put them on. “Is it morning?”
“No, it’s a little after one. Hurry now.”
That something was wrong finally got through to me. “What’s the matter?”

---

By then he did not have to tell me. Just as the birds know where to go when it
rains,  I  knew  when  there  was  trouble  in  our  street.  Soft  taffeta-like  sounds  and
muffled scurrying sounds filled me with helpless dread.
“Whose is it?”
“Miss Maudie’s, hon,” said Atticus gently.
At  the  front  door,  we  saw  fire  spewing  from  Miss  Maudie’s  diningroom
windows. As if to confirm what we saw, the town fire siren wailed up the scale
to a treble pitch and remained there, screaming.
“It’s gone, ain’t it?” moaned Jem.
“I  expect  so,”  said  Atticus.  “Now  listen,  both  of  you.  Go  down  and  stand  in
front of the Radley Place. Keep out of the way, do you hear? See which way the
wind’s blowing?”
“Oh,” said Jem. “Atticus, reckon we oughta start moving the furniture out?”
“Not yet, son. Do as I tell you. Run now. Take care of Scout, you hear? Don’t
let her out of your sight.”
With  a  push,  Atticus  started  us  toward  the  Radley  front  gate.  We  stood
watching  the  street  fill  with  men  and  cars  while  fire  silently  devoured  Miss
Maudie’s  house.  “Why  don’t  they  hurry,  why  don’t  they  hurry  .  .  .”  muttered
Jem.
We  saw  why.  The  old  fire  truck,  killed  by  the  cold,  was  being  pushed  from
town by a crowd of men. When the men attached its hose to a hydrant, the hose
burst and water shot up, tinkling down on the pavement.
“Oh-h Lord, Jem . . .”
Jem put his arm around me. “Hush, Scout,” he said. “It ain’t time to worry yet.
I’ll let you know when.”
The men of Maycomb, in all degrees of dress and undress, took furniture from
Miss  Maudie’s  house  to  a  yard  across  the  street.  I  saw  Atticus  carrying  Miss
Maudie’s heavy  oak rocking  chair, and  thought it  sensible of  him to  save  what
she valued most.
Sometimes  we  heard  shouts.  Then  Mr.  Avery’s  face  appeared  in  an  upstairs
window.  He  pushed  a  mattress  out  the  window  into  the  street  and  threw  down
furniture until men shouted, “Come down from there, Dick! The stairs are going!
Get outta there, Mr. Avery!”
Mr. Avery began climbing through the window.
“Scout, he’s stuck . . .” breathed Jem. “Oh God . . .”

---

Mr. Avery was wedged tightly. I buried my head under Jem’s arm and didn’t
look again until Jem cried, “He’s got loose, Scout! He’s all right!”
I looked up to see Mr. Avery cross the upstairs porch. He swung his legs over
the railing and was sliding down a pillar when he slipped. He fell, yelled, and hit
Miss Maudie’s shrubbery.
Suddenly  I  noticed  that  the  men  were  backing  away  from  Miss  Maudie’s
house,  moving  down  the  street  toward  us.  They  were  no  longer  carrying
furniture.  The  fire  was  well  into  the  second  floor  and  had  eaten  its  way  to  the
roof: window frames were black against a vivid orange center.
“Jem, it looks like a pumpkin—”
“Scout, look!”
Smoke  was  rolling  off  our  house  and  Miss  Rachel’s  house  like  fog  off  a
riverbank,  and  men  were  pulling  hoses  toward  them.  Behind  us,  the  fire  truck
from Abbottsville screamed around the curve and stopped in front of our house.
“That book . . .” I said.
“What?” said Jem.
“That Tom Swift book, it ain’t mine, it’s Dill’s . . .”
“Don’t worry, Scout, it ain’t time to worry yet,” said Jem. He pointed. “Looka
yonder.”
In a group of neighbors, Atticus was standing with his hands in his overcoat
pockets. He might have been watching a football game. Miss Maudie was beside
him.
“See there, he’s not worried yet,” said Jem.
“Why ain’t he on top of one of the houses?”
“He’s too old, he’d break his neck.”
“You think we oughta make him get our stuff out?”
“Let’s don’t pester him, he’ll know when it’s time,” said Jem.
The Abbottsville fire truck began pumping water on our house; a man on the
roof  pointed  to  places  that  needed  it  most.  I  watched  our  Absolute  Morphodite
go black and crumble; Miss Maudie’s sunhat settled on top of the heap. I could
not  see  her  hedge-clippers.  In  the  heat  between  our  house,  Miss  Rachel’s  and
Miss Maudie’s, the men had long ago shed coats and bathrobes. They worked in
pajama  tops  and  nightshirts  stuffed  into  their  pants,  but  I  became  aware  that  I
was slowly freezing where I stood. Jem tried to keep me warm, but his arm was

---

not enough. I pulled free of it and clutched my shoulders. By dancing a little, I
could feel my feet.
Another  fire  truck  appeared  and  stopped  in  front  of  Miss  Stephanie
Crawford’s.  There  was  no  hydrant  for  another  hose,  and  the  men  tried  to  soak
her house with hand extinguishers.
Miss Maudie’s tin roof quelled the flames. Roaring, the house collapsed; fire
gushed  everywhere,  followed  by  a  flurry  of  blankets  from  men  on  top  of  the
adjacent houses, beating out sparks and burning chunks of wood.
It was dawn before the men began to leave, first one by one, then in groups.
They  pushed  the  Maycomb  fire  truck  back  to  town,  the  Abbottsville  truck
departed,  the  third  one  remained.  We  found  out  next  day  it  had  come  from
Clark’s Ferry, sixty miles away.
Jem and I slid across the street. Miss Maudie was staring at the smoking black
hole in her yard, and Atticus shook his head to tell us she did not want to talk.
He led us home, holding onto our shoulders to cross the icy street. He said Miss
Maudie would stay with Miss Stephanie for the time being.
“Anybody  want  some  hot  chocolate?”  he  asked.  I  shuddered  when  Atticus
started a fire in the kitchen stove.
As  we  drank  our  cocoa  I  noticed  Atticus  looking  at  me,  first  with  curiosity,
then with sternness. “I thought I told you and Jem to stay put,” he said.
“Why, we did. We stayed—”
“Then whose blanket is that?”
“Blanket?”
“Yes ma’am, blanket. It isn’t ours.”
I  looked  down  and  found  myself  clutching  a  brown  woolen  blanket  I  was
wearing around my shoulders, squaw-fashion.
“Atticus, I don’t know, sir . . . I—”
I turned to Jem for an answer, but Jem was even more bewildered than I. He
said he didn’t know how it got there, we did exactly as Atticus had told us, we
stood down by the Radley gate away from everybody, we didn’t move an inch—
Jem stopped.
“Mr.  Nathan  was  at  the  fire,”  he  babbled,  “I  saw  him,  I  saw  him,  he  was
tuggin‘ that mattress—Atticus, I swear . . .”
“That’s  all  right,  son.”  Atticus  grinned  slowly.  “Looks  like  all  of  Maycomb
was out tonight, in one way or another. Jem, there’s some wrapping paper in the

---

pantry, I think. Go get it and we’ll—”
“Atticus, no sir!”
Jem seemed to have lost his mind. He began pouring out our secrets right and
left  in  total  disregard  for  my  safety  if  not  for  his  own,  omitting  nothing,  knot-
hole, pants and all.
“. . . Mr. Nathan put cement in that tree, Atticus, an‘ he did it to stop us findin’
things—he’s crazy, I reckon, like they say, but Atticus, I swear to God he ain’t
ever harmed us, he ain’t ever hurt us, he coulda cut my throat from ear to ear that
night but he tried to mend my pants instead . . . he ain’t ever hurt us, Atticus—”
Atticus  said,  “Whoa,  son,”  so  gently  that  I  was  greatly  heartened.  It  was
obvious  that  he  had  not  followed  a  word  Jem  said,  for  all  Atticus  said  was,
“You’re  right.  We’d  better  keep  this  and  the  blanket  to  ourselves.  Someday,
maybe, Scout can thank him for covering her up.”
“Thank who?” I asked.
“Boo Radley. You were so busy looking at the fire you didn’t know it when
he put the blanket around you.”
My  stomach  turned  to  water  and  I  nearly  threw  up  when  Jem  held  out  the
blanket  and  crept  toward  me.  “He  sneaked  out  of  the  house—turn  ‘round—
sneaked up, an’ went like this!”
Atticus said dryly, “Do not let this inspire you to further glory, Jeremy.”
Jem scowled, “I ain’t gonna do anything to him,” but I watched the spark of
fresh adventure leave his eyes. “Just think, Scout,” he said, “if you’d just turned
around, you’da seen him.”
Calpurnia  woke  us  at  noon.  Atticus  had  said  we  need  not  go  to  school  that
day, we’d learn nothing after no sleep. Calpurnia said for us to try and clean up
the front yard.
Miss Maudie’s sunhat was suspended in a thin layer of ice, like a fly in amber,
and  we  had  to  dig  under  the  dirt  for  her  hedge-clippers.  We  found  her  in  her
back  yard,  gazing  at  her  frozen  charred  azaleas.  “We’re  bringing  back  your
things, Miss Maudie,” said Jem. “We’re awful sorry.”
Miss Maudie looked around, and the shadow of her old grin crossed her face.
“Always wanted a smaller house, Jem Finch. Gives me more yard. Just think, I’ll
have more room for my azaleas now!”
“You ain’t grievin‘, Miss Maudie?” I asked, surprised. Atticus said her house
was nearly all she had.

---

“Grieving, child? Why, I hated that old cow barn. Thought of settin‘ fire to it a
hundred times myself, except they’d lock me up.”
“But—”
“Don’t  you  worry  about  me,  Jean  Louise  Finch.  There  are  ways  of  doing
things  you  don’t  know  about.  Why,  I’ll  build  me  a  little  house  and  take  me  a
couple  of  roomers  and—gracious,  I’ll  have  the  finest  yard  in  Alabama.  Those
Bellingraths’ll look plain puny when I get started!”
Jem and I looked at each other. “How’d it catch, Miss Maudie?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Jem. Probably the flue in the kitchen. I kept a fire in there last
night for my potted plants. Hear you had some unexpected company last night,
Miss Jean Louise.”
“How’d you know?”
“Atticus told me on his way to town this morning. Tell you the truth, I’d like
to’ve been with you. And I’d‘ve had sense enough to turn around, too.”
Miss Maudie puzzled me. With most of her possessions gone and her beloved
yard  a  shambles,  she  still  took  a  lively  and  cordial  interest  in  Jem’s  and  my
affairs.
She must have seen my perplexity. She said, “Only thing I worried about last
night  was  all  the  danger  and  commotion  it  caused.  This  whole  neighborhood
could  have  gone  up.  Mr.  Avery’ll  be  in  bed  for  a  week—he’s  right  stove  up.
He’s too old to do things like that and I told him so. Soon as I can get my hands
clean  and  when  Stephanie  Crawford’s  not  looking,  I’ll  make  him  a  Lane  cake.
That Stephanie’s been after my recipe for thirty years, and if she thinks I’ll give
it to her just because I’m staying with her she’s got another think coming.”
I reflected that if Miss Maudie broke down and gave it to her, Miss Stephanie
couldn’t  follow  it  anyway.  Miss  Maudie  had  once  let  me  see  it:  among  other
things, the recipe called for one large cup of sugar.
It was a still day. The air was so cold and clear we heard the courthouse clock
clank, rattle and strain before it struck the hour. Miss Maudie’s nose was a color
I had never seen before, and I inquired about it.
“I’ve been out here since six o’clock,” she said. “Should be frozen by now.”
She  held  up  her  hands.  A  network  of  tiny  lines  crisscrossed  her  palms,  brown
with dirt and dried blood.
“You’ve  ruined  ‘em,”  said  Jem.  “Why  don’t  you  get  a  colored  man?”  There
was  no  note  of  sacrifice  in  his  voice  when  he  added,  “Or  Scout’n’me,  we  can
help you.”

---

Miss  Maudie  said,  “Thank  you  sir,  but  you’ve  got  a  job  of  your  own  over
there.” She pointed to our yard.
“You mean the Morphodite?” I asked. “Shoot, we can rake him up in a jiffy.”
Miss  Maudie  stared  down  at  me,  her  lips  moving  silently.  Suddenly  she  put
her hands to her head and whooped. When we left her, she was still chuckling.
Jem  said  he  didn’t  know  what  was  the  matter  with  her—that  was  just  Miss
Maudie.

---

9
“Y
ou can just take that back, boy!”
This  order,  given  by  me  to  Cecil  Jacobs,  was  the  beginning  of  a  rather  thin
time for Jem and me. My fists were clenched and I was ready to let fly. Atticus
had  promised  me  he  would  wear  me  out  if  he  ever  heard  of  me  fighting  any
more;  I  was  far  too  old  and  too  big  for  such  childish  things,  and  the  sooner  I
learned to hold in, the better off everybody would be. I soon forgot.
Cecil  Jacobs  made  me  forget.  He  had  announced  in  the  schoolyard  the  day
before that Scout Finch’s daddy defended niggers. I denied it, but told Jem.
“What’d he mean sayin‘ that?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Jem said. “Ask Atticus, he’ll tell you.”
“Do you defend niggers, Atticus?” I asked him that evening.
“Of course I do. Don’t say nigger, Scout. That’s common.”
“‘s what everybody at school says.”
“From now on it’ll be everybody less one—”
“Well if you don’t want me to grow up talkin‘ that way, why do you send me
to school?”
My  father  looked  at  me  mildly,  amusement  in  his  eyes.  Despite  our
compromise, my campaign to avoid school had continued in one form or another
since my first day’s dose of it: the beginning of last September had brought on
sinking spells, dizziness, and mild gastric complaints. I went so far as to pay a
nickel  for  the  privilege  of  rubbing  my  head  against  the  head  of  Miss  Rachel’s
cook’s son, who was afflicted with a tremendous ringworm. It didn’t take.
But  I  was  worrying  another  bone.  “Do  all  lawyers  defend  n-Negroes,
Atticus?”
“Of course they do, Scout.”
“Then  why  did  Cecil  say  you  defended  niggers?  He  made  it  sound  like  you
were runnin‘ a still.”
Atticus  sighed.  “I’m  simply  defending  a  Negro—his  name’s  Tom  Robinson.
He  lives  in  that  little  settlement  beyond  the  town  dump.  He’s  a  member  of

---

Calpurnia’s church, and Cal knows his family well. She says they’re clean-living
folks.  Scout,  you  aren’t  old  enough  to  understand  some  things  yet,  but  there’s
been  some  high  talk  around  town  to  the  effect  that  I  shouldn’t  do  much  about
defending  this  man.  It’s  a  peculiar  case—it  won’t  come  to  trial  until  summer
session. John Taylor was kind enough to give us a postponement . . .”
“If you shouldn’t be defendin‘ him, then why are you doin’ it?”
“For  a  number  of  reasons,”  said  Atticus.  “The  main  one  is,  if  I  didn’t  I
couldn’t  hold  up  my  head  in  town,  I  couldn’t  represent  this  county  in  the
legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again.”
“You mean if you didn’t defend that man, Jem and me wouldn’t have to mind
you any more?”
“That’s about right.”
“Why?”
“Because I could never ask you to mind me again. Scout, simply by the nature
of the work, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him
personally. This one’s mine, I guess. You might hear some ugly talk about it at
school,  but  do  one  thing  for  me  if  you  will:  you  just  hold  your  head  high  and
keep  those  fists  down.  No  matter  what  anybody  says  to  you,  don’t  you  let  ‘em
get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change . . . it’s a good one, even
if it does resist learning.”
“Atticus, are we going to win it?”
“No, honey.”
“Then why—”
“Simply  because  we  were  licked  a  hundred  years  before  we  started  is  no
reason for us not to try to win,” Atticus said.
“You  sound  like  Cousin  Ike  Finch,”  I  said.  Cousin  Ike  Finch  was  Maycomb
County’s  sole  surviving  Confederate  veteran.  He  wore  a  General  Hood  type
beard of which he was inordinately vain. At least once a year Atticus, Jem and I
called  on  him,  and  I  would  have  to  kiss  him.  It  was  horrible.  Jem  and  I  would
listen respectfully to Atticus and Cousin Ike rehash the war. “Tell you, Atticus,”
Cousin  Ike  would  say,  “the  Missouri  Compromise  was  what  licked  us,  but  if  I
had  to  go  through  it  agin  I’d  walk  every  step  of  the  way  there  an‘  every  step
back jist like I did before an’ furthermore we’d whip ‘em this time . . . now in
1864,  when  Stonewall  Jackson  came  around  by—I  beg  your  pardon,  young
folks. Ol’ Blue Light was in heaven then, God rest his saintly brow . . .”
“Come here, Scout,” said Atticus. I crawled into his lap and tucked my head

---

under his chin. He put his arms around me and rocked me gently. “It’s different
this time,” he said. “This time we aren’t fighting the Yankees, we’re fighting our
friends.  But  remember  this,  no  matter  how  bitter  things  get,  they’re  still  our
friends and this is still our home.”
With  this  in  mind,  I  faced  Cecil  Jacobs  in  the  schoolyard  next  day:  “You
gonna take that back, boy?”
“You  gotta  make  me  first!”  he  yelled.  “My  folks  said  your  daddy  was  a
disgrace an‘ that nigger oughta hang from the water-tank!”
I  drew  a  bead  on  him,  remembered  what  Atticus  had  said,  then  dropped  my
fists  and  walked  away,  “Scout’s  a  cow—ward!”  ringing  in  my  ears.  It  was  the
first time I ever walked away from a fight.
Somehow, if I fought Cecil I would let Atticus down. Atticus so rarely asked
Jem and me to do something for him, I could take being called a coward for him.
I  felt  extremely  noble  for  having  remembered,  and  remained  noble  for  three
weeks. Then Christmas came and disaster struck.
Jem and I viewed Christmas with mixed feelings. The good side was the tree and
Uncle  Jack  Finch.  Every  Christmas  Eve  day  we  met  Uncle  Jack  at  Maycomb
Junction, and he would spend a week with us.
A flip of the coin revealed the uncompromising lineaments of Aunt Alexandra
and Francis.
I suppose I should include Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Alexandra’s husband, but as he
never spoke a word to me in my life except to say, “Get off the fence,” once, I
never saw any reason to take notice of him. Neither did Aunt Alexandra. Long
ago,  in  a  burst  of  friendliness,  Aunty  and  Uncle  Jimmy  produced  a  son  named
Henry, who left home as soon as was humanly possible, married, and produced
Francis.  Henry  and  his  wife  deposited  Francis  at  his  grandparents’  every
Christmas, then pursued their own pleasures.
No  amount  of  sighing  could  induce  Atticus  to  let  us  spend  Christmas  day  at
home.  We  went  to  Finch’s  Landing  every  Christmas  in  my  memory.  The  fact
that Aunty was a good cook was some compensation for being forced to spend a
religious  holiday  with  Francis  Hancock.  He  was  a  year  older  than  I,  and  I
avoided him on principle: he enjoyed everything I disapproved of, and disliked
my ingenuous diversions.
Aunt Alexandra was Atticus’s sister, but when Jem told me about changelings
and siblings, I decided that she had been swapped at birth, that my grandparents

---

had  perhaps  received  a  Crawford  instead  of  a  Finch.  Had  I  ever  harbored  the
mystical notions about mountains that seem to obsess lawyers and judges, Aunt
Alexandra  would  have  been  analogous  to  Mount  Everest:  throughout  my  early
life, she was cold and there.
When Uncle Jack jumped down from the train Christmas Eve day, we had to
wait for the porter to hand him two long packages. Jem and I always thought it
funny  when  Uncle  Jack  pecked  Atticus  on  the  cheek;  they  were  the  only  two
men we ever saw kiss each other. Uncle Jack shook hands with Jem and swung
me high, but not high enough: Uncle Jack was a head shorter than Atticus; the
baby of the family, he was younger than Aunt Alexandra. He and Aunty looked
alike,  but  Uncle  Jack  made  better  use  of  his  face:  we  were  never  wary  of  his
sharp nose and chin.
He  was  one  of  the  few  men  of  science  who  never  terrified  me,  probably
because he never behaved like a doctor. Whenever he performed a minor service
for Jem and me, as removing a splinter from a foot, he would tell us exactly what
he  was  going  to  do,  give  us  an  estimation  of  how  much  it  would  hurt,  and
explain  the  use  of  any  tongs  he  employed.  One  Christmas  I  lurked  in  corners
nursing a twisted splinter in my foot, permitting no one to come near me. When
Uncle Jack caught me, he kept me laughing about a preacher who hated going to
church  so  much  that  every  day  he  stood  at  his  gate  in  his  dressing-gown,
smoking  a  hookah  and  delivering  five-minute  sermons  to  any  passers-by  who
desired spiritual comfort. I interrupted to make Uncle Jack let me know when he
would pull it out, but he held up a bloody splinter in a pair of tweezers and said
he yanked it while I was laughing, that was what was known as relativity.
“What’s in those packages?” I asked him, pointing to the long thin parcels the
porter had given him.
“None of your business,” he said.
Jem said, “How’s Rose Aylmer?”
Rose Aylmer was Uncle Jack’s cat. She was a beautiful yellow female Uncle
Jack  said  was  one  of  the  few  women  he  could  stand  permanently.  He  reached
into his coat pocket and brought out some snapshots. We admired them.
“She’s gettin‘ fat,” I said.
“I should think so. She eats all the leftover fingers and ears from the hospital.”
“Aw, that’s a damn story,” I said.
“I beg your pardon?”
Atticus said, “Don’t pay any attention to her, Jack. She’s trying you out. Cal

---

says  she’s  been  cussing  fluently  for  a  week,  now.”  Uncle  Jack  raised  his
eyebrows and said nothing. I was proceeding on the dim theory, aside from the
innate attractiveness of such words, that if Atticus discovered I had picked them
up at school he wouldn’t make me go.
But  at  supper  that  evening  when  I  asked  him  to  pass  the  damn  ham,  please,
Uncle Jack pointed at me. “See me afterwards, young lady,” he said.
When supper was over, Uncle Jack went to the livingroom and sat down. He
slapped his thighs for me to come sit on his lap. I liked to smell him: he was like
a  bottle  of  alcohol  and  something  pleasantly  sweet.  He  pushed  back  my  bangs
and looked at me. “You’re more like Atticus than your mother,” he said. “You’re
also growing out of your pants a little.”
“I reckon they fit all right.”
“You like words like damn and hell now, don’t you?”
I said I reckoned so.
“Well  I  don’t,”  said  Uncle  Jack,  “not  unless  there’s  extreme  provocation
connected with ‘em. I’ll be here a week, and I don’t want to hear any words like
that while I’m here. Scout, you’ll get in trouble if you go around saying things
like that. You want to grow up to be a lady, don’t you?”
I said not particularly.
“Of course you do. Now let’s get to the tree.”
We decorated the tree until bedtime, and that night I dreamed of the two long
packages  for  Jem  and  me.  Next  morning  Jem  and  I  dived  for  them:  they  were
from Atticus, who had written Uncle Jack to get them for us, and they were what
we had asked for.
“Don’t point them in the house,” said Atticus, when Jem aimed at a picture on
the wall.
“You’ll have to teach ‘em to shoot,” said Uncle Jack.
“That’s your job,” said Atticus. “I merely bowed to the inevitable.”
It took Atticus’s courtroom voice to drag us away from the tree. He declined
to  let  us  take  our  air  rifles  to  the  Landing  (I  had  already  begun  to  think  of
shooting Francis) and said if we made one false move he’d take them away from
us for good.
Finch’s  Landing  consisted  of  three  hundred  and  sixty-six  steps  down  a  high
bluff and ending in a jetty. Farther down stream, beyond the bluff, were traces of
an  old  cotton  landing,  where  Finch  Negroes  had  loaded  bales  and  produce,

---

unloaded blocks of ice, flour and sugar, farm equipment, and feminine apparel.
A two-rut road ran from the riverside and vanished among dark trees. At the end
of  the  road  was  a  two-storied  white  house  with  porches  circling  it  upstairs  and
downstairs.  In  his  old  age,  our  ancestor  Simon  Finch  had  built  it  to  please  his
nagging wife; but with the porches all resemblance to ordinary houses of its era
ended. The internal arrangements of the Finch house were indicative of Simon’s
guilelessness and the absolute trust with which he regarded his offspring.
There were six bedrooms upstairs, four for the eight female children, one for
Welcome Finch, the sole son, and one for visiting relatives. Simple enough; but
the daughters’ rooms could be reached only by one staircase, Welcome’s room
and the guestroom only by another. The Daughters’ Staircase was in the ground-
floor  bedroom  of  their  parents,  so  Simon  always  knew  the  hours  of  his
daughters’ nocturnal comings and goings.
There  was  a  kitchen  separate  from  the  rest  of  the  house,  tacked  onto  it  by  a
wooden  catwalk;  in  the  back  yard  was  a  rusty  bell  on  a  pole,  used  to  summon
field  hands  or  as  a  distress  signal;  a  widow’s  walk  was  on  the  roof,  but  no
widows walked there—from it, Simon oversaw his overseer, watched the river-
boats, and gazed into the lives of surrounding landholders.
There  went  with  the  house  the  usual  legend  about  the  Yankees:  one  Finch
female, recently engaged, donned her complete trousseau to save it from raiders
in  the  neighborhood;  she  became  stuck  in  the  door  to  the  Daughters’  Staircase
but was doused with water and finally pushed through. When we arrived at the
Landing,  Aunt  Alexandra  kissed  Uncle  Jack,  Francis  kissed  Uncle  Jack,  Uncle
Jimmy  shook  hands  silently  with  Uncle  Jack,  Jem  and  I  gave  our  presents  to
Francis,  who  gave  us  a  present.  Jem  felt  his  age  and  gravitated  to  the  adults,
leaving me to entertain our cousin. Francis was eight and slicked back his hair.
“What’d you get for Christmas?” I asked politely.
“Just what I asked for,” he said. Francis had requested a pair of knee-pants, a
red leather booksack, five shirts and an untied bow tie.
“That’s nice,” I lied. “Jem and me got air rifles, and Jem got a chemistry set
—”
“A toy one, I reckon.”
“No, a real one. He’s gonna make me some invisible ink, and I’m gonna write
to Dill in it.”
Francis asked what was the use of that.
“Well, can’t you just see his face when he gets a letter from me with nothing

---

in it? It’ll drive him nuts.”
Talking  to  Francis  gave  me  the  sensation  of  settling  slowly  to  the  bottom  of
the  ocean.  He  was  the  most  boring  child  I  ever  met.  As  he  lived  in  Mobile,  he
could not inform on me to school authorities, but he managed to tell everything
he  knew  to  Aunt  Alexandra,  who  in  turn  unburdened  herself  to  Atticus,  who
either forgot it or gave me hell, whichever struck his fancy. But the only time I
ever  heard  Atticus  speak  sharply  to  anyone  was  when  I  once  heard  him  say,
“Sister,  I  do  the  best  I  can  with  them!”  It  had  something  to  do  with  my  going
around in overalls.
Aunt Alexandra was fanatical on the subject of my attire. I could not possibly
hope to be a lady if I wore breeches; when I said I could do nothing in a dress,
she  said  I  wasn’t  supposed  to  be  doing  things  that  required  pants.  Aunt
Alexandra’s  vision  of  my  deportment  involved  playing  with  small  stoves,  tea
sets,  and  wearing  the  Add-A-Pearl  necklace  she  gave  me  when  I  was  born;
furthermore, I should be a ray of sunshine in my father’s lonely life. I suggested
that one could be a ray of sunshine in pants just as well, but Aunty said that one
had to behave like a sunbeam, that I was born good but had grown progressively
worse  every  year.  She  hurt  my  feelings  and  set  my  teeth  permanently  on  edge,
but when I asked Atticus about it, he said there were already enough sunbeams
in the family and to go on about my business, he didn’t mind me much the way I
was.
At Christmas dinner, I sat at the little table in the diningroom; Jem and Francis
sat  with  the  adults  at  the  dining  table.  Aunty  had  continued  to  isolate  me  long
after  Jem  and  Francis  graduated  to  the  big  table.  I  often  wondered  what  she
thought I’d do, get up and throw something? I sometimes thought of asking her
if she would let me sit at the big table with the rest of them just once, I would
prove to her how civilized I could be; after all, I ate at home every day with no
major mishaps. When I begged Atticus to use his influence, he said he had none
—we  were  guests,  and  we  sat  where  she  told  us  to  sit.  He  also  said  Aunt
Alexandra didn’t understand girls much, she’d never had one.
But  her  cooking  made  up  for  everything:  three  kinds  of  meat,  summer
vegetables  from  her  pantry  shelves;  peach  pickles,  two  kinds  of  cake  and
ambrosia constituted a modest Christmas dinner. Afterwards, the adults made for
the livingroom and sat around in a dazed condition. Jem lay on the floor, and I
went to the back yard. “Put on your coat,” said Atticus dreamily, so I didn’t hear
him.
Francis sat beside me on the back steps. “That was the best yet,” I said.

---

“Grandma’s a wonderful cook,” said Francis. “She’s gonna teach me how.”
“Boys don’t cook.” I giggled at the thought of Jem in an apron.
“Grandma says all men should learn to cook, that men oughta be careful with
their wives and wait on ‘em when they don’t feel good,” said my cousin.
“I don’t want Dill waitin‘ on me,” I said. “I’d rather wait on him.”
“Dill?”
“Yeah. Don’t say anything about it yet, but we’re gonna get married as soon
as we’re big enough. He asked me last summer.”
Francis hooted.
“What’s the matter with him?” I asked. “Ain’t anything the matter with him.”
“You  mean  that  little  runt  Grandma  says  stays  with  Miss  Rachel  every
summer?”
“That’s exactly who I mean.”
“I know all about him,” said Francis.
“What about him?”
“Grandma says he hasn’t got a home—”
“Has too, he lives in Meridian.”
“—he just gets passed around from relative to relative, and Miss Rachel keeps
him every summer.”
“Francis, that’s not so!”
Francis grinned at me. “You’re mighty dumb sometimes, Jean Louise. Guess
you don’t know any better, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“If Uncle Atticus lets you run around with stray dogs, that’s his own business,
like  Grandma  says,  so  it  ain’t  your  fault.  I  guess  it  ain’t  your  fault  if  Uncle
Atticus  is  a  nigger-lover  besides,  but  I’m  here  to  tell  you  it  certainly  does
mortify the rest of the family—”
“Francis, what the hell do you mean?”
“Just what I said. Grandma says it’s bad enough he lets you all run wild, but
now  he’s  turned  out  a  nigger-lover  we’ll  never  be  able  to  walk  the  streets  of
Maycomb agin. He’s ruinin‘ the family, that’s what he’s doin’.”
Francis  rose  and  sprinted  down  the  catwalk  to  the  old  kitchen.  At  a  safe
distance he called, “He’s nothin‘ but a nigger-lover!”

---

“He is not!” I roared. “I don’t know what you’re talkin‘ about, but you better
cut it out this red hot minute!”
I leaped off the steps and ran down the catwalk. It was easy to collar Francis. I
said take it back quick.
Francis jerked loose and sped into the old kitchen. “Nigger-lover!” he yelled.
When  stalking  one’s  prey,  it  is  best  to  take  one’s  time.  Say  nothing,  and  as
sure as eggs he will become curious and emerge. Francis appeared at the kitchen
door. “You still mad, Jean Louise?” he asked tentatively.
“Nothing to speak of,” I said.
Francis came out on the catwalk.
“You  gonna  take  it  back,  Fra—ancis?”  But  I  was  too  quick  on  the  draw.
Francis shot back into the kitchen, so I retired to the steps. I could wait patiently.
I  had  sat  there  perhaps  five  minutes  when  I  heard  Aunt  Alexandra  speak:
“Where’s Francis?”
“He’s out yonder in the kitchen.”
“He knows he’s not supposed to play in there.”
Francis came to the door and yelled, “Grandma, she’s got me in here and she
won’t let me out!”
“What is all this, Jean Louise?”
I  looked  up  at  Aunt  Alexandra.  “I  haven’t  got  him  in  there,  Aunty,  I  ain’t
holdin‘ him.”
“Yes she is,” shouted Francis, “she won’t let me out!”
“Have you all been fussing?”
“Jean Louise got mad at me, Grandma,” called Francis.
“Francis, come out of there! Jean Louise, if I hear another word out of you I’ll
tell your father. Did I hear you say hell a while ago?”
“Nome.”
“I thought I did. I’d better not hear it again.”
Aunt Alexandra was a back-porch listener. The moment she was out of sight
Francis came out head up and grinning. “Don’t you fool with me,” he said.
He jumped into the yard and kept his distance, kicking tufts of grass, turning
around occasionally to smile at me. Jem appeared on the porch, looked at us, and
went  away.  Francis  climbed  the  mimosa  tree,  came  down,  put  his  hands  in  his
pockets  and  strolled  around  the  yard.  “Hah!”  he  said.  I  asked  him  who  he

---

thought he was, Uncle Jack? Francis said he reckoned I got told, for me to just
sit there and leave him alone.
“I ain’t botherin‘ you,” I said.
Francis  looked  at  me  carefully,  concluded  that  I  had  been  sufficiently
subdued, and crooned softly, “Nigger-lover . . .”
This time, I split my knuckle to the bone on his front teeth. My left impaired, I
sailed in with my right, but not for long. Uncle Jack pinned my arms to my sides
and said, “Stand still!”
Aunt  Alexandra  ministered  to  Francis,  wiping  his  tears  away  with  her
handkerchief, rubbing his hair, patting his cheek. Atticus, Jem, and Uncle Jimmy
had come to the back porch when Francis started yelling.
“Who started this?” said Uncle Jack.
Francis and I pointed at each other. “Grandma,” he bawled, “she called me a
whore-lady and jumped on me!”
“Is that true, Scout?” said Uncle Jack.
“I reckon so.”
When  Uncle  Jack  looked  down  at  me,  his  features  were  like  Aunt
Alexandra’s. “You know I told you you’d get in trouble if you used words like
that? I told you, didn’t I?”
“Yes sir, but—”
“Well, you’re in trouble now. Stay there.”
I  was  debating  whether  to  stand  there  or  run,  and  tarried  in  indecision  a
moment  too  long:  I  turned  to  flee  but  Uncle  Jack  was  quicker.  I  found  myself
suddenly looking at a tiny ant struggling with a bread crumb in the grass.
“I’ll never speak to you again as long as I live! I hate you an‘ despise you an’
hope  you  die  tomorrow!”  A  statement  that  seemed  to  encourage  Uncle  Jack,
more than anything. I ran to Atticus for comfort, but he said I had it coming and
it was high time we went home. I climbed into the back seat of the car without
saying  good-bye  to  anyone,  and  at  home  I  ran  to  my  room  and  slammed  the
door. Jem tried to say something nice, but I wouldn’t let him.
When I surveyed the damage there were only seven or eight red marks, and I
was reflecting upon relativity when someone knocked on the door. I asked who
it was; Uncle Jack answered.
“Go away!”

---

Uncle Jack said if I talked like that he’d lick me again, so I was quiet. When
he entered the room I retreated to a corner and turned my back on him. “Scout,”
he said, “do you still hate me?”
“Go on, please sir.”
“Why, I didn’t think you’d hold it against me,” he said. “I’m disappointed in
you—you had that coming and you know it.”
“Didn’t either.”
“Honey, you can’t go around calling people—”
“You ain’t fair,” I said, “you ain’t fair.”
Uncle Jack’s eyebrows went up. “Not fair? How not?”
“You’re real nice, Uncle Jack, an‘ I reckon I love you even after what you did,
but you don’t understand children much.”
Uncle Jack put his hands on his hips and looked down at me. “And why do I
not understand children, Miss Jean Louise? Such conduct as yours required little
understanding. It was obstreperous, disorderly and abusive—”
“You gonna give me a chance to tell you? I don’t mean to sass you, I’m just
tryin‘ to tell you.”
Uncle Jack sat down on the bed. His eyebrows came together, and he peered
up at me from under them. “Proceed,” he said.
I  took  a  deep  breath.  “Well,  in  the  first  place  you  never  stopped  to  gimme  a
chance to tell you my side of it—you just lit right into me. When Jem an‘ I fuss
Atticus doesn’t ever just listen to Jem’s side of it, he hears mine too, an’ in the
second  place  you  told  me  never  to  use  words  like  that  except  in  ex-extreme
provocation, and Francis provocated me enough to knock his block off—”
Uncle Jack scratched his head. “What was your side of it, Scout?”
“Francis called Atticus somethin‘, an’ I wasn’t about to take it off him.”
“What did Francis call him?”
“A nigger-lover. I ain’t very sure what it means, but the way Francis said it—
tell you one thing right now, Uncle Jack, I’ll be—I swear before God if I’ll sit
there and let him say somethin‘ about Atticus.”
“He called Atticus that?”
“Yes sir, he did, an‘ a lot more. Said Atticus’d be the ruination of the family
an’ he let Jem an me run wild . . .”
From the look on Uncle Jack’s face, I thought I was in for it again. When he

---

said, “We’ll see about this,” I knew Francis was in for it. “I’ve a good mind to
go out there tonight.”
“Please sir, just let it go. Please.”
“I’ve  no  intention  of  letting  it  go,”  he  said.  “Alexandra  should  know  about
this. The idea of—wait’ll I get my hands on that boy . . .”
“Uncle Jack, please promise me somethin‘, please sir. Promise you won’t tell
Atticus about this. He—he asked me one time not to let anything I heard about
him  make  me  mad,  an’  I’d  ruther  him  think  we  were  fightin‘  about  somethin’
else instead. Please promise . . .”
“But I don’t like Francis getting away with something like that—”
“He didn’t. You reckon you could tie up my hand? It’s still bleedin‘ some.”
“Of course I will, baby. I know of no hand I would be more delighted to tie
up. Will you come this way?”
Uncle  Jack  gallantly  bowed  me  to  the  bathroom.  While  he  cleaned  and
bandaged my knuckles, he entertained me with a tale about a funny nearsighted
old  gentleman  who  had  a  cat  named  Hodge,  and  who  counted  all  the  cracks  in
the sidewalk when he went to town. “There now,” he said. “You’ll have a very
unladylike scar on your wedding-ring finger.”
“Thank you sir. Uncle Jack?”
“Ma’am?”
“What’s a whore-lady?”
Uncle Jack plunged into another long tale about an old Prime Minister who sat
in  the  House  of  Commons  and  blew  feathers  in  the  air  and  tried  to  keep  them
there when all about him men were losing their heads. I guess he was trying to
answer my question, but he made no sense whatsoever.
Later, when I was supposed to be in bed, I went down the hall for a drink of
water and heard Atticus and Uncle Jack in the livingroom: “I shall never marry,
Atticus.”
“Why?”
“I might have children.”
Atticus said, “You’ve a lot to learn, Jack.”
“I  know.  Your  daughter  gave  me  my  first  lessons  this  afternoon.  She  said  I
didn’t understand children much and told me why. She was quite right. Atticus,
she told me how I should have treated her—oh dear, I’m so sorry I romped on

---

her.”
Atticus chuckled. “She earned it, so don’t feel too remorseful.”
I  waited,  on  tenterhooks,  for  Uncle  Jack  to  tell  Atticus  my  side  of  it.  But  he
didn’t. He simply murmured, “Her use of bathroom invective leaves nothing to
the imagination. But she doesn’t know the meaning of half she says—she asked
me what a whore-lady was . . .”
“Did you tell her?”
“No, I told her about Lord Melbourne.”
“Jack! When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But
don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion
quicker  than  adults,  and  evasion  simply  muddles  ‘em.  No,”  my  father  mused,
“you had the right answer this afternoon, but the wrong reasons. Bad language is
a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not
attracting attention with it. Hotheadedness isn’t. Scout’s got to learn to keep her
head and learn soon, with what’s in store for her these next few months. She’s
coming along, though. Jem’s getting older and she follows his example a good
bit now. All she needs is assistance sometimes.”
“Atticus, you’ve never laid a hand on her.”
“I admit that. So far I’ve been able to get by with threats. Jack, she minds me
as well as she can. Doesn’t come up to scratch half the time, but she tries.”
“That’s not the answer,” said Uncle Jack.
“No,  the  answer  is  she  knows  I  know  she  tries.  That’s  what  makes  the
difference. What bothers me is that she and Jem will have to absorb some ugly
things pretty soon. I’m not worried about Jem keeping his head, but Scout’d just
as soon jump on someone as look at him if her pride’s at stake . . .”
I waited for Uncle Jack to break his promise. He still didn’t.
“Atticus,  how  bad  is  this  going  to  be?  You  haven’t  had  too  much  chance  to
discuss it.”
“It couldn’t be worse, Jack. The only thing we’ve got is a black man’s word
against  the  Ewells‘.  The  evidence  boils  down  to  you-did—I-didn’t.  The  jury
couldn’t  possibly  be  expected  to  take  Tom  Robinson’s  word  against  the
Ewells’—are you acquainted with the Ewells?”
Uncle Jack said yes, he remembered them. He described them to Atticus, but
Atticus said, “You’re a generation off. The present ones are the same, though.”
“What are you going to do, then?”

---

“Before  I’m  through,  I  intend  to  jar  the  jury  a  bit—I  think  we’ll  have  a
reasonable  chance  on  appeal,  though.  I  really  can’t  tell  at  this  stage,  Jack.  You
know, I’d hoped to get through life without a case of this kind, but John Taylor
pointed at me and said, ‘You’re It.’”
“Let this cup pass from you, eh?”
“Right.  But  do  you  think  I  could  face  my  children  otherwise?  You  know
what’s going to happen as well as I do, Jack, and I hope and pray I can get Jem
and  Scout  through  it  without  bitterness,  and  most  of  all,  without  catching
Maycomb’s  usual  disease.  Why  reasonable  people  go  stark  raving  mad  when
anything  involving  a  Negro  comes  up,  is  something  I  don’t  pretend  to
understand  .  .  .  I  just  hope  that  Jem  and  Scout  come  to  me  for  their  answers
instead of listening to the town. I hope they trust me enough . . . Jean Louise?”
My scalp jumped. I stuck my head around the corner. “Sir?”
“Go to bed.”
I scurried to my room and went to bed. Uncle Jack was a prince of a fellow
not  to  let  me  down.  But  I  never  figured  out  how  Atticus  knew  I  was  listening,
and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every
word he said.

---

10
A
tticus was feeble: he was nearly fifty. When Jem and I asked him why he was
so old, he said he got started late, which we felt reflected upon his abilities and
manliness.  He  was  much  older  than  the  parents  of  our  school  contemporaries,
and there was nothing Jem or I could say about him when our classmates said,
“My father—”
Jem  was  football  crazy.  Atticus  was  never  too  tired  to  play  keep-away,  but
when Jem wanted to tackle him Atticus would say, “I’m too old for that, son.”
Our  father  didn’t  do  anything.  He  worked  in  an  office,  not  in  a  drugstore.
Atticus did not drive a dump-truck for the county, he was not the sheriff, he did
not  farm,  work  in  a  garage,  or  do  anything  that  could  possibly  arouse  the
admiration of anyone.
Besides that, he wore glasses. He was nearly blind in his left eye, and said left
eyes were the tribal curse of the Finches. Whenever he wanted to see something
well, he turned his head and looked from his right eye.
He did not do the things our schoolmates’ fathers did: he never went hunting,
he  did  not  play  poker  or  fish  or  drink  or  smoke.  He  sat  in  the  livingroom  and
read.
With these attributes, however, he would not remain as inconspicuous as we
wished him to: that year, the school buzzed with talk about him defending Tom
Robinson, none of which was complimentary. After my bout with Cecil Jacobs
when I committed myself to a policy of cowardice, word got around that Scout
Finch wouldn’t fight any more, her daddy wouldn’t let her. This was not entirely
correct: I wouldn’t fight publicly for Atticus, but the family was private ground.
I  would  fight  anyone  from  a  third  cousin  upwards  tooth  and  nail.  Francis
Hancock, for example, knew that.
When he gave us our air-rifles Atticus wouldn’t teach us to shoot. Uncle Jack
instructed us in the rudiments thereof; he said Atticus wasn’t interested in guns.
Atticus said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but
I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em,
but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something,

---

and I asked Miss Maudie about it.
“Your  father’s  right,”  she  said.  “Mockingbirds  don’t  do  one  thing  but  make
music  for  us  to  enjoy.  They  don’t  eat  up  people’s  gardens,  don’t  nest  in
corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s
a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
“Miss Maudie, this is an old neighborhood, ain’t it?”
“Been here longer than the town.”
“Nome,  I  mean  the  folks  on  our  street  are  all  old.  Jem  and  me’s  the  only
children  around  here.  Mrs.  Dubose  is  close  on  to  a  hundred  and  Miss  Rachel’s
old and so are you and Atticus.”
“I  don’t  call  fifty  very  old,”  said  Miss  Maudie  tartly.  “Not  being  wheeled
around  yet,  am  I?  Neither’s  your  father.  But  I  must  say  Providence  was  kind
enough to burn down that old mausoleum of mine, I’m too old to keep it up—
maybe  you’re  right,  Jean  Louise,  this  is  a  settled  neighborhood.  You’ve  never
been around young folks much, have you?”
“Yessum, at school.”
“I  mean  young  grown-ups.  You’re  lucky,  you  know.  You  and  Jem  have  the
benefit  of  your  father’s  age.  If  your  father  was  thirty  you’d  find  life  quite
different.”
“I sure would. Atticus can’t do anything . . .”
“You’d be surprised,” said Miss Maudie. “There’s life in him yet.”
“What can he do?”
“Well,  he  can  make  somebody’s  will  so  airtight  can’t  anybody  meddle  with
it.”
“Shoot . . .”
“Well, did you know he’s the best checker-player in this town? Why, down at
the  Landing  when  we  were  coming  up,  Atticus  Finch  could  beat  everybody  on
both sides of the river.”
“Good Lord, Miss Maudie, Jem and me beat him all the time.”
“It’s about time you found out it’s because he lets you. Did you know he can
play a Jew’s Harp?”
This modest accomplishment served to make me even more ashamed of him.
“Well . . .” she said.
“Well, what, Miss Maudie?”

---

“Well nothing. Nothing—it seems with all that you’d be proud of him. Can’t
everybody play a Jew’s Harp. Now keep out of the way of the carpenters. You’d
better go home, I’ll be in my azaleas and can’t watch you. Plank might hit you.”
I  went  to  the  back  yard  and  found  Jem  plugging  away  at  a  tin  can,  which
seemed  stupid  with  all  the  bluejays  around.  I  returned  to  the  front  yard  and
busied myself for two hours erecting a complicated breastworks at the side of the
porch, consisting of a tire, an orange crate, the laundry hamper, the porch chairs,
and a small U.S. flag Jem gave me from a popcorn box.
When  Atticus  came  home  to  dinner  he  found  me  crouched  down  aiming
across the street. “What are you shooting at?”
“Miss Maudie’s rear end.”
Atticus  turned  and  saw  my  generous  target  bending  over  her  bushes.  He
pushed  his  hat  to  the  back  of  his  head  and  crossed  the  street.  “Maudie,”  he
called, “I thought I’d better warn you. You’re in considerable peril.”
Miss  Maudie  straightened  up  and  looked  toward  me.  She  said,  “Atticus,  you
are a devil from hell.”
When  Atticus  returned  he  told  me  to  break  camp.  “Don’t  you  ever  let  me
catch you pointing that gun at anybody again,” he said.
I  wished  my  father  was  a  devil  from  hell.  I  sounded  out  Calpurnia  on  the
subject. “Mr. Finch? Why, he can do lots of things.”
“Like what?” I asked.
Calpurnia scratched her head. “Well, I don’t rightly know,” she said.
Jem  underlined  it  when  he  asked  Atticus  if  he  was  going  out  for  the
Methodists and Atticus said he’d break his neck if he did, he was just too old for
that sort of thing. The Methodists were trying to pay off their church mortgage,
and  had  challenged  the  Baptists  to  a  game  of  touch  football.  Everybody  in
town’s  father  was  playing,  it  seemed,  except  Atticus.  Jem  said  he  didn’t  even
want  to  go,  but  he  was  unable  to  resist  football  in  any  form,  and  he  stood
gloomily  on  the  sidelines  with  Atticus  and  me  watching  Cecil  Jacobs’s  father
make touchdowns for the Baptists.
One Saturday Jem and I decided to go exploring with our air-rifles to see if we
could find a rabbit or a squirrel. We had gone about five hundred yards beyond
the Radley Place when I noticed Jem squinting at something down the street. He
had turned his head to one side and was looking out of the corners of his eyes.
“Whatcha looking at?”

---

“That old dog down yonder,” he said.
“That’s old Tim Johnson, ain’t it?”
“Yeah.”
Tim  Johnson  was  the  property  of  Mr.  Harry  Johnson  who  drove  the  Mobile
bus  and  lived  on  the  southern  edge  of  town.  Tim  was  a  liver-colored  bird  dog,
the pet of Maycomb.
“What’s he doing?”
“I don’t know, Scout. We better go home.”
“Aw Jem, it’s February.”
“I don’t care, I’m gonna tell Cal.”
We raced home and ran to the kitchen.
“Cal,” said Jem, “can you come down the sidewalk a minute?”
“What for, Jem? I can’t come down the sidewalk every time you want me.”
“There’s somethin‘ wrong with an old dog down yonder.”
Calpurnia sighed. “I can’t wrap up any dog’s foot now. There’s some gauze in
the bathroom, go get it and do it yourself.”
Jem shook his head. “He’s sick, Cal. Something’s wrong with him.”
“What’s he doin‘, trying to catch his tail?”
“No, he’s doin‘ like this.”
Jem  gulped  like  a  goldfish,  hunched  his  shoulders  and  twitched  his  torso.
“He’s goin‘ like that, only not like he means to.”
“Are you telling me a story, Jem Finch?” Calpurnia’s voice hardened.
“No Cal, I swear I’m not.”
“Was he runnin‘?”
“No,  he’s  just  moseyin‘  along,  so  slow  you  can’t  hardly  tell  it.  He’s  comin’
this way.”
Calpurnia  rinsed  her  hands  and  followed  Jem  into  the  yard.  “I  don’t  see  any
dog,” she said.
She followed us beyond the Radley Place and looked where Jem pointed. Tim
Johnson was not much more than a speck in the distance, but he was closer to us.
He  walked  erratically,  as  if  his  right  legs  were  shorter  than  his  left  legs.  He
reminded me of a car stuck in a sandbed.
“He’s gone lopsided,” said Jem.

---

Calpurnia stared, then grabbed us by the shoulders and ran us home. She shut
the  wood  door  behind  us,  went  to  the  telephone  and  shouted,  “Gimme  Mr.
Finch’s office!”
“Mr.  Finch!”  she  shouted.  “This  is  Cal.  I  swear  to  God  there’s  a  mad  dog
down  the  street  a  piece—he’s  comin‘  this  way,  yes  sir,  he’s—Mr.  Finch,  I
declare he is—old Tim Johnson, yes sir . . . yessir . . . yes—”
She  hung  up  and  shook  her  head  when  we  tried  to  ask  her  what  Atticus  had
said.  She  rattled  the  telephone  hook  and  said,  “Miss  Eula  May—now  ma’am,
I’m through talkin‘ to Mr. Finch, please don’t connect me no more—listen, Miss
Eula  May,  can  you  call  Miss  Rachel  and  Miss  Stephanie  Crawford  and
whoever’s  got  a  phone  on  this  street  and  tell  ’em  a  mad  dog’s  comin‘?  Please
ma’am!”
Calpurnia listened. “I know it’s February, Miss Eula May, but I know a mad
dog when I see one. Please ma’am hurry!”
Calpurnia asked Jem, “Radleys got a phone?”
Jem looked in the book and said no. “They won’t come out anyway, Cal.”
“I don’t care, I’m gonna tell ‘em.”
She ran to the front porch, Jem and I at her heels. “You stay in that house!”
she yelled.
Calpurnia’s  message  had  been  received  by  the  neighborhood.  Every  wood
door  within  our  range  of  vision  was  closed  tight.  We  saw  no  trace  of  Tim
Johnson.  We  watched  Calpurnia  running  toward  the  Radley  Place,  holding  her
skirt and apron above her knees. She went up to the front steps and banged on
the  door.  She  got  no  answer,  and  she  shouted,  “Mr.  Nathan,  Mr.  Arthur,  mad
dog’s comin‘! Mad dog’s comin’!”
“She’s supposed to go around in back,” I said.
Jem shook his head. “Don’t make any difference now,” he said.
Calpurnia pounded on the door in vain. No one acknowledged her warning; no
one seemed to have heard it.
As  Calpurnia  sprinted  to  the  back  porch  a  black  Ford  swung  into  the
driveway. Atticus and Mr. Heck Tate got out.
Mr. Heck Tate was the sheriff of Maycomb County. He was as tall as Atticus,
but  thinner.  He  was  long-nosed,  wore  boots  with  shiny  metal  eye-holes,  boot
pants and a lumber jacket. His belt had a row of bullets sticking in it. He carried
a heavy rifle. When he and Atticus reached the porch, Jem opened the door.

---

“Stay inside, son,” said Atticus. “Where is he, Cal?”
“He oughta be here by now,” said Calpurnia, pointing down the street.
“Not runnin‘, is he?” asked Mr. Tate.
“Naw sir, he’s in the twitchin‘ stage, Mr. Heck.”
“Should we go after him, Heck?” asked Atticus.
“We better wait, Mr. Finch. They usually go in a straight line, but you never
can  tell.  He  might  follow  the  curve—hope  he  does  or  he’ll  go  straight  in  the
Radley back yard. Let’s wait a minute.”
“Don’t  think  he’ll  get  in  the  Radley  yard,”  said  Atticus.  “Fence’ll  stop  him.
He’ll probably follow the road . . .”
I  thought  mad  dogs  foamed  at  the  mouth,  galloped,  leaped  and  lunged  at
throats,  and  I  thought  they  did  it  in  August.  Had  Tim  Johnson  behaved  thus,  I
would have been less frightened.
Nothing is more deadly than a deserted, waiting street. The trees were still, the
mockingbirds were silent, the carpenters at Miss Maudie’s house had vanished. I
heard Mr. Tate sniff, then blow his nose. I saw him shift his gun to the crook of
his  arm.  I  saw  Miss  Stephanie  Crawford’s  face  framed  in  the  glass  window  of
her front door. Miss Maudie appeared and stood beside her. Atticus put his foot
on the rung of a chair and rubbed his hand slowly down the side of his thigh.
“There he is,” he said softly.
Tim  Johnson  came  into  sight,  walking  dazedly  in  the  inner  rim  of  the  curve
parallel to the Radley house.
“Look at him,” whispered Jem. “Mr. Heck said they walked in a straight line.
He can’t even stay in the road.”
“He looks more sick than anything,” I said.
“Let anything get in front of him and he’ll come straight at it.”
Mr.  Tate  put  his  hand  to  his  forehead  and  leaned  forward.  “He’s  got  it  all
right, Mr. Finch.”
Tim  Johnson  was  advancing  at  a  snail’s  pace,  but  he  was  not  playing  or
sniffing  at  foliage:  he  seemed  dedicated  to  one  course  and  motivated  by  an
invisible force that was inching him toward us. We could see him shiver like a
horse  shedding  flies;  his  jaw  opened  and  shut;  he  was  alist,  but  he  was  being
pulled gradually toward us.
“He’s lookin‘ for a place to die,” said Jem.

---

Mr. Tate turned around. “He’s far from dead, Jem, he hasn’t got started yet.”
Tim Johnson reached the side street that ran in front of the Radley Place, and
what  remained  of  his  poor  mind  made  him  pause  and  seem  to  consider  which
road  he  would  take.  He  made  a  few  hesitant  steps  and  stopped  in  front  of  the
Radley gate; then he tried to turn around, but was having difficulty.
Atticus  said,  “He’s  within  range,  Heck.  You  better  get  him  before  he  goes
down the side street—Lord knows who’s around the corner. Go inside, Cal.”
Calpurnia opened the screen door, latched it behind her, then unlatched it and
held onto the hook. She tried to block Jem and me with her body, but we looked
out from beneath her arms.
“Take him, Mr. Finch.” Mr. Tate handed the rifle to Atticus; Jem and I nearly
fainted.
“Don’t waste time, Heck,” said Atticus. “Go on.”
“Mr. Finch, this is a one-shot job.”
Atticus shook his head vehemently: “Don’t just stand there, Heck! He won’t
wait all day for you—”
“For God’s sake, Mr. Finch, look where he is! Miss and you’ll go straight into
the Radley house! I can’t shoot that well and you know it!”
“I haven’t shot a gun in thirty years—”
Mr. Tate almost threw the rifle at Atticus. “I’d feel mighty comfortable if you
did now,” he said.
In  a  fog,  Jem  and  I  watched  our  father  take  the  gun  and  walk  out  into  the
middle  of  the  street.  He  walked  quickly,  but  I  thought  he  moved  like  an
underwater swimmer: time had slowed to a nauseating crawl.
When Atticus raised his glasses Calpurnia murmured, “Sweet Jesus help him,”
and put her hands to her cheeks.
Atticus pushed his glasses to his forehead; they slipped down, and he dropped
them in the street. In the silence, I heard them crack. Atticus rubbed his eyes and
chin; we saw him blink hard.
In  front  of  the  Radley  gate,  Tim  Johnson  had  made  up  what  was  left  of  his
mind. He had finally turned himself around, to pursue his original course up our
street. He made two steps forward, then stopped and raised his head. We saw his
body go rigid.
With movements so swift they seemed simultaneous, Atticus’s hand yanked a
ball-tipped lever as he brought the gun to his shoulder.

---

The  rifle  cracked.  Tim  Johnson  leaped,  flopped  over  and  crumpled  on  the
sidewalk in a brown-and-white heap. He didn’t know what hit him.
Mr.  Tate  jumped  off  the  porch  and  ran  to  the  Radley  Place.  He  stopped  in
front  of  the  dog,  squatted,  turned  around  and  tapped  his  finger  on  his  forehead
above his left eye. “You were a little to the right, Mr. Finch,” he called.
“Always was,” answered Atticus. “If I had my ‘druthers I’d take a shotgun.”
He  stooped  and  picked  up  his  glasses,  ground  the  broken  lenses  to  powder
under his heel, and went to Mr. Tate and stood looking down at Tim Johnson.
Doors  opened  one  by  one,  and  the  neighborhood  slowly  came  alive.  Miss
Maudie walked down the steps with Miss Stephanie Crawford.
Jem was paralyzed. I pinched him to get him moving, but when Atticus saw us
coming he called, “Stay where you are.”
When  Mr.  Tate  and  Atticus  returned  to  the  yard,  Mr.  Tate  was  smiling.  “I’ll
have  Zeebo  collect  him,”  he  said.  “You  haven’t  forgot  much,  Mr.  Finch.  They
say it never leaves you.”
Atticus was silent.
“Atticus?” said Jem.
“Yes?”
“Nothin‘.”
“I saw that, One-Shot Finch!”
Atticus wheeled around and faced Miss Maudie. They looked at one another
without saying anything, and Atticus got into the sheriff’s car. “Come here,” he
said  to  Jem.  “Don’t  you  go  near  that  dog,  you  understand?  Don’t  go  near  him,
he’s just as dangerous dead as alive.”
“Yes sir,” said Jem. “Atticus—”
“What, son?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s the matter with you, boy, can’t you talk?” said Mr. Tate, grinning at
Jem. “Didn’t you know your daddy’s—”
“Hush, Heck,” said Atticus, “let’s go back to town.”
When  they  drove  away,  Jem  and  I  went  to  Miss  Stephanie’s  front  steps.  We
sat waiting for Zeebo to arrive in the garbage truck.
Jem  sat  in  numb  confusion,  and  Miss  Stephanie  said,  “Uh,  uh,  uh,  who’da
thought  of  a  mad  dog  in  February?  Maybe  he  wadn’t  mad,  maybe  he  was  just

---

crazy. I’d hate to see Harry Johnson’s face when he gets in from the Mobile run
and  finds  Atticus  Finch’s  shot  his  dog.  Bet  he  was  just  full  of  fleas  from
somewhere—”
Miss Maudie said Miss Stephanie’d be singing a different tune if Tim Johnson
was still coming up the street, that they’d find out soon enough, they’d send his
head to Montgomery.
Jem  became  vaguely  articulate:  “‘d  you  see  him,  Scout?  ’d  you  see  him  just
standin‘ there? . . . ’n‘ all of a sudden he just relaxed all over, an’ it looked like
that gun was a part of him . . . an‘ he did it so quick, like . . . I hafta aim for ten
minutes ’fore I can hit somethin‘ . . .”
Miss Maudie grinned wickedly. “Well now, Miss Jean Louise,” she said, “still
think your father can’t do anything? Still ashamed of him?”
“Nome,” I said meekly.
“Forgot to tell you the other day that besides playing the Jew’s Harp, Atticus
Finch was the deadest shot in Maycomb County in his time.”
“Dead shot . . .” echoed Jem.
“That’s what I said, Jem Finch. Guess you’ll change your tune now. The very
idea,  didn’t  you  know  his  nickname  was  Ol‘  One-Shot  when  he  was  a  boy?
Why, down at the Landing when he was coming up, if he shot fifteen times and
hit fourteen doves he’d complain about wasting ammunition.”
“He never said anything about that,” Jem muttered.
“Never said anything about it, did he?”
“No ma’am.”
“Wonder why he never goes huntin‘ now,” I said.
“Maybe  I  can  tell  you,”  said  Miss  Maudie.  “If  your  father’s  anything,  he’s
civilized  in  his  heart.  Marksmanship’s  a  gift  of  God,  a  talent—oh,  you  have  to
practice to make it perfect, but shootin’s different from playing the piano or the
like.  I  think  maybe  he  put  his  gun  down  when  he  realized  that  God  had  given
him an unfair advantage over most living things. I guess he decided he wouldn’t
shoot till he had to, and he had to today.”
“Looks like he’d be proud of it,” I said.
“People  in  their  right  minds  never  take  pride  in  their  talents,”  said  Miss
Maudie.
We  saw  Zeebo  drive  up.  He  took  a  pitchfork  from  the  back  of  the  garbage
truck  and  gingerly  lifted  Tim  Johnson.  He  pitched  the  dog  onto  the  truck,  then

---

poured  something  from  a  gallon  jug  on  and  around  the  spot  where  Tim  fell.
“Don’t yawl come over here for a while,” he called.
When we went home I told Jem we’d really have something to talk about at
school on Monday. Jem turned on me.
“Don’t say anything about it, Scout,” he said.
“What? I certainly am. Ain’t everybody’s daddy the deadest shot in Maycomb
County.”
Jem  said,  “I  reckon  if  he’d  wanted  us  to  know  it,  he’da  told  us.  If  he  was
proud of it, he’da told us.”
“Maybe it just slipped his mind,” I said.
“Naw, Scout, it’s something you wouldn’t understand. Atticus is real old, but I
wouldn’t  care  if  he  couldn’t  do  anything—I  wouldn’t  care  if  he  couldn’t  do  a
blessed thing.”
Jem picked up a rock and threw it jubilantly at the carhouse. Running after it,
he called back: “Atticus is a gentleman, just like me!”

---

11
W
hen  we  were  small,  Jem  and  I  confined  our  activities  to  the  southern
neighborhood,  but  when  I  was  well  into  the  second  grade  at  school  and
tormenting Boo Radley became passe, the business section of Maycomb drew us
frequently up the street past the real property of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose. It
was  impossible  to  go  to  town  without  passing  her  house  unless  we  wished  to
walk a mile out of the way. Previous minor encounters with her left me with no
desire for more, but Jem said I had to grow up some time.
Mrs.  Dubose  lived  alone  except  for  a  Negro  girl  in  constant  attendance,  two
doors up the street from us in a house with steep front steps and a dog-trot hall.
She  was  very  old;  she  spent  most  of  each  day  in  bed  and  the  rest  of  it  in  a
wheelchair.  It  was  rumored  that  she  kept  a  CSA  pistol  concealed  among  her
numerous shawls and wraps.
Jem  and  I  hated  her.  If  she  was  on  the  porch  when  we  passed,  we  would  be
raked  by  her  wrathful  gaze,  subjected  to  ruthless  interrogation  regarding  our
behavior, and given a melancholy prediction on what we would amount to when
we grew up, which was always nothing. We had long ago given up the idea of
walking  past  her  house  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  street;  that  only  made  her
raise her voice and let the whole neighborhood in on it.
We could do nothing to please her. If I said as sunnily as I could, “Hey, Mrs.
Dubose,”  I  would  receive  for  an  answer,  “Don’t  you  say  hey  to  me,  you  ugly
girl! You say good afternoon, Mrs. Dubose!”
She was vicious. Once she heard Jem refer to our father as “Atticus” and her
reaction was apoplectic. Besides being the sassiest, most disrespectful mutts who
ever  passed  her  way,  we  were  told  that  it  was  quite  a  pity  our  father  had  not
remarried after our mother’s death. A lovelier lady than our mother never lived,
she  said,  and  it  was  heartbreaking  the  way  Atticus  Finch  let  her  children  run
wild. I did not remember our mother, but Jem did—he would tell me about her
sometimes—and he went livid when Mrs. Dubose shot us this message.
Jem, having survived Boo Radley, a mad dog and other terrors, had concluded
that  it  was  cowardly  to  stop  at  Miss  Rachel’s  front  steps  and  wait,  and  had
decreed  that  we  must  run  as  far  as  the  post  office  corner  each  evening  to  meet

---

Atticus  coming  from  work.  Countless  evenings  Atticus  would  find  Jem  furious
at something Mrs. Dubose had said when we went by.
“Easy does it, son,” Atticus would say. “She’s an old lady and she’s ill. You
just hold your head high and be a gentleman. Whatever she says to you, it’s your
job not to let her make you mad.” Jem would say she must not be very sick, she
hollered so. When the three of us came to her house, Atticus would sweep off his
hat, wave gallantly to her and say, “Good evening, Mrs. Dubose! You look like a
picture this evening.”
I  never  heard  Atticus  say  like  a  picture  of  what.  He  would  tell  her  the
courthouse news, and would say he hoped with all his heart she’d have a good
day tomorrow. He would return his hat to his head, swing me to his shoulders in
her very presence, and we would go home in the twilight. It was times like these
when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was
the bravest man who ever lived.
The day after Jem’s twelfth birthday his money was burning up his pockets, so
we headed for town in the early afternoon. Jem thought he had enough to buy a
miniature steam engine for himself and a twirling baton for me.
I had long had my eye on that baton: it was at V. J. Elmore’s, it was bedecked
with sequins and tinsel, it cost seventeen cents. It was then my burning ambition
to  grow  up  and  twirl  with  the  Maycomb  County  High  School  band.  Having
developed  my  talent  to  where  I  could  throw  up  a  stick  and  almost  catch  it
coming  down,  I  had  caused  Calpurnia  to  deny  me  entrance  to  the  house  every
time she saw me with a stick in my hand. I felt that I could overcome this defect
with a real baton, and I thought it generous of Jem to buy one for me.
Mrs. Dubose was stationed on her porch when we went by.
“Where are you two going at this time of day?” she shouted. “Playing hooky, I
suppose.  I’ll  just  call  up  the  principal  and  tell  him!”  She  put  her  hands  on  the
wheels of her chair and executed a perfect right face.
“Aw, it’s Saturday, Mrs. Dubose,” said Jem.
“Makes no difference if it’s Saturday,” she said obscurely. “I wonder if your
father knows where you are?”
“Mrs.  Dubose,  we’ve  been  goin‘  to  town  by  ourselves  since  we  were  this
high.” Jem placed his hand palm down about two feet above the sidewalk.
“Don’t you lie to me!” she yelled. “Jeremy Finch, Maudie Atkinson told me
you  broke  down  her  scuppernong  arbor  this  morning.  She’s  going  to  tell  your
father and then you’ll wish you never saw the light of day! If you aren’t sent to

---

the reform school before next week, my name’s not Dubose!”
Jem,  who  hadn’t  been  near  Miss  Maudie’s  scuppernong  arbor  since  last
summer,  and  who  knew  Miss  Maudie  wouldn’t  tell  Atticus  if  he  had,  issued  a
general denial.
“Don’t you contradict me!” Mrs. Dubose bawled. “And you—” she pointed an
arthritic finger at me—“what are you doing in those overalls? You should be in a
dress and camisole, young lady! You’ll grow up waiting on tables if somebody
doesn’t change your ways—a Finch waiting on tables at the O.K. Café—hah!”
I was terrified. The O.K. Café was a dim organization on the north side of the
square. I grabbed Jem’s hand but he shook me loose.
“Come  on,  Scout,”  he  whispered.  “Don’t  pay  any  attention  to  her,  just  hold
your head high and be a gentleman.”
But Mrs. Dubose held us: “Not only a Finch waiting on tables but one in the
courthouse lawing for niggers!”
Jem stiffened. Mrs. Dubose’s shot had gone home and she knew it:
“Yes  indeed,  what  has  this  world  come  to  when  a  Finch  goes  against  his
raising? I’ll tell you!” She put her hand to her mouth. When she drew it away, it
trailed  a  long  silver  thread  of  saliva.  “Your  father’s  no  better  than  the  niggers
and trash he works for!”
Jem was scarlet. I pulled at his sleeve, and we were followed up the sidewalk
by  a  philippic  on  our  family’s  moral  degeneration,  the  major  premise  of  which
was  that  half  the  Finches  were  in  the  asylum  anyway,  but  if  our  mother  were
living we would not have come to such a state.
I  wasn’t  sure  what  Jem  resented  most,  but  I  took  umbrage  at  Mrs.  Dubose’s
assessment of the family’s mental hygiene. I had become almost accustomed to
hearing insults aimed at Atticus. But this was the first one coming from an adult.
Except  for  her  remarks  about  Atticus,  Mrs.  Dubose’s  attack  was  only  routine.
There was a hint of summer in the air—in the shadows it was cool, but the sun
was warm, which meant good times coming: no school and Dill.
Jem  bought  his  steam  engine  and  we  went  by  Elmore’s  for  my  baton.  Jem
took  no  pleasure  in  his  acquisition;  he  jammed  it  in  his  pocket  and  walked
silently beside me toward home. On the way home I nearly hit Mr. Link Deas,
who  said,  “Look  out  now,  Scout!”  when  I  missed  a  toss,  and  when  we
approached Mrs. Dubose’s house my baton was grimy from having picked it up
out of the dirt so many times.
She was not on the porch.

---

In later years, I sometimes wondered exactly what made Jem do it, what made
him  break  the  bonds  of  “You  just  be  a  gentleman,  son,”  and  the  phase  of  self-
conscious  rectitude  he  had  recently  entered.  Jem  had  probably  stood  as  much
guff about Atticus lawing for niggers as had I, and I took it for granted that he
kept his temper—he had a naturally tranquil disposition and a slow fuse. At the
time, however, I thought the only explanation for what he did was that for a few
minutes he simply went mad.
What Jem did was something I’d do as a matter of course had I not been under
Atticus’s interdict, which I assumed included not fighting horrible old ladies. We
had just come to her gate when Jem snatched my baton and ran flailing wildly up
the steps into Mrs. Dubose’s front yard, forgetting everything Atticus had said,
forgetting  that  she  packed  a  pistol  under  her  shawls,  forgetting  that  if  Mrs.
Dubose missed, her girl Jessie probably wouldn’t.
He  did  not  begin  to  calm  down  until  he  had  cut  the  tops  off  every  camellia
bush  Mrs.  Dubose  owned,  until  the  ground  was  littered  with  green  buds  and
leaves. He bent my baton against his knee, snapped it in two and threw it down.
By that time I was shrieking. Jem yanked my hair, said he didn’t care, he’d do
it again if he got a chance, and if I didn’t shut up he’d pull every hair out of my
head. I didn’t shut up and he kicked me. I lost my balance and fell on my face.
Jem  picked  me  up  roughly  but  looked  like  he  was  sorry.  There  was  nothing  to
say.
We  did  not  choose  to  meet  Atticus  coming  home  that  evening.  We  skulked
around  the  kitchen  until  Calpurnia  threw  us  out.  By  some  voo-doo  system
Calpurnia seemed to know all about it. She was a less than satisfactory source of
palliation, but she did give Jem a hot biscuit-and-butter which he tore in half and
shared with me. It tasted like cotton.
We went to the livingroom. I picked up a football magazine, found a picture
of Dixie Howell, showed it to Jem and said, “This looks like you.” That was the
nicest  thing  I  could  think  to  say  to  him,  but  it  was  no  help.  He  sat  by  the
windows, hunched down in a rocking chair, scowling, waiting. Daylight faded.
Two  geological  ages  later,  we  heard  the  soles  of  Atticus’s  shoes  scrape  the
front steps. The screen door slammed, there was a pause—Atticus was at the hat
rack  in  the  hall—and  we  heard  him  call,  “Jem!”  His  voice  was  like  the  winter
wind.
Atticus  switched  on  the  ceiling  light  in  the  livingroom  and  found  us  there,
frozen still. He carried my baton in one hand; its filthy yellow tassel trailed on
the rug. He held out his other hand; it contained fat camellia buds.

---

“Jem,” he said, “are you responsible for this?”
“Yes sir.”
“Why’d you do it?”
Jem said softly, “She said you lawed for niggers and trash.”
“You did this because she said that?”
Jem’s lips moved, but his, “Yes sir,” was inaudible.
“Son,  I  have  no  doubt  that  you’ve  been  annoyed  by  your  contemporaries
about me lawing for niggers, as you say, but to do something like this to a sick
old  lady  is  inexcusable.  I  strongly  advise  you  to  go  down  and  have  a  talk  with
Mrs. Dubose,” said Atticus. “Come straight home afterward.”
Jem did not move.
“Go on, I said.”
I followed Jem out of the livingroom. “Come back here,” Atticus said to me. I
came back.
Atticus picked up the Mobile Press and sat down in the rocking chair Jem had
vacated. For the life of me, I did not understand how he could sit there in cold
blood  and  read  a  newspaper  when  his  only  son  stood  an  excellent  chance  of
being murdered with a Confederate Army relic. Of course Jem antagonized me
sometimes until I could kill him, but when it came down to it he was all I had.
Atticus did not seem to realize this, or if he did he didn’t care.
I hated him for that, but when you are in trouble you become easily tired: soon
I was hiding in his lap and his arms were around me.
“You’re mighty big to be rocked,” he said.
“You  don’t  care  what  happens  to  him,”  I  said.  “You  just  send  him  on  to  get
shot at when all he was doin‘ was standin’ up for you.”
Atticus pushed my head under his chin. “It’s not time to worry yet,” he said.
“I never thought Jem’d be the one to lose his head over this—thought I’d have
more trouble with you.”
I said I didn’t see why we had to keep our heads anyway, that nobody I knew
at school had to keep his head about anything.
“Scout,”  said  Atticus,  “when  summer  comes  you’ll  have  to  keep  your  head
about  far  worse  things  .  .  .  it’s  not  fair  for  you  and  Jem,  I  know  that,  but
sometimes  we  have  to  make  the  best  of  things,  and  the  way  we  conduct
ourselves when the chips are down—well, all I can say is, when you and Jem are

---

grown, maybe you’ll look back on this with some compassion and some feeling
that  I  didn’t  let  you  down.  This  case,  Tom  Robinson’s  case,  is  something  that
goes to the essence of a man’s conscience—Scout, I couldn’t go to church and
worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.”
“Atticus, you must be wrong . . .”
“How’s that?”
“Well, most folks seem to think they’re right and you’re wrong . . .”
“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for
their  opinions,”  said  Atticus,  “but  before  I  can  live  with  other  folks  I’ve  got  to
live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s
conscience.”
When  Jem  returned,  he  found  me  still  in  Atticus’s  lap,  “Well,  son?”  said
Atticus.  He  set  me  on  my  feet,  and  I  made  a  secret  reconnaissance  of  Jem.  He
seemed to be all in one piece, but he had a queer look on his face. Perhaps she
had given him a dose of calomel.
“I cleaned it up for her and said I was sorry, but I ain’t, and that I’d work on
‘em ever Saturday and try to make ’em grow back out.”
“There  was  no  point  in  saying  you  were  sorry  if  you  aren’t,”  said  Atticus.
“Jem,  she’s  old  and  ill.  You  can’t  hold  her  responsible  for  what  she  says  and
does. Of course, I’d rather she’d have said it to me than to either of you, but we
can’t always have our ‘druthers.”
Jem seemed fascinated by a rose in the carpet. “Atticus,” he said, “she wants
me to read to her.”
“Read to her?”
“Yes  sir.  She  wants  me  to  come  every  afternoon  after  school  and  Saturdays
and read to her out loud for two hours. Atticus, do I have to?”
“Certainly.”
“But she wants me to do it for a month.”
“Then you’ll do it for a month.”
Jem  planted  his  big  toe  delicately  in  the  center  of  the  rose  and  pressed  it  in.
Finally  he  said,  “Atticus,  it’s  all  right  on  the  sidewalk  but  inside  it’s—it’s  all
dark and creepy. There’s shadows and things on the ceiling . . .”
Atticus smiled grimly. “That should appeal to your imagination. Just pretend
you’re inside the Radley house.”

---

The following Monday afternoon Jem and I climbed the steep front steps to Mrs.
Dubose’s  house  and  padded  down  the  open  hallway.  Jem,  armed  with  Ivanhoe
and full of superior knowledge, knocked at the second door on the left.
“Mrs. Dubose?” he called.
Jessie opened the wood door and unlatched the screen door.
“Is  that  you,  Jem  Finch?”  she  said.  “You  got  your  sister  with  you.  I  don’t
know—”
“Let ‘em both in, Jessie,” said Mrs. Dubose. Jessie admitted us and went off to
the kitchen.
An oppressive odor met us when we crossed the threshold, an odor I had met
many  times  in  rain-rotted  gray  houses  where  there  are  coal-oil  lamps,  water
dippers,  and  unbleached  domestic  sheets.  It  always  made  me  afraid,  expectant,
watchful.
In the corner of the room was a brass bed, and in the bed was Mrs. Dubose. I
wondered if Jem’s activities had put her there, and for a moment I felt sorry for
her. She was lying under a pile of quilts and looked almost friendly.
There  was  a  marble-topped  washstand  by  her  bed;  on  it  were  a  glass  with  a
teaspoon  in  it,  a  red  ear  syringe,  a  box  of  absorbent  cotton,  and  a  steel  alarm
clock standing on three tiny legs.
“So you brought that dirty little sister of yours, did you?” was her greeting.
Jem said quietly, “My sister ain’t dirty and I ain’t scared of you,” although I
noticed his knees shaking.
I was expecting a tirade, but all she said was, “You may commence reading,
Jeremy.”
Jem sat down in a cane-bottom chair and opened Ivanhoe. I pulled up another
one and sat beside him.
“Come closer,” said Mrs. Dubose. “Come to the side of the bed.”
We  moved  our  chairs  forward.  This  was  the  nearest  I  had  ever  been  to  her,
and the thing I wanted most to do was move my chair back again.
She was horrible. Her face was the color of a dirty pillowcase, and the corners
of  her  mouth  glistened  with  wet,  which  inched  like  a  glacier  down  the  deep
grooves enclosing her chin. Old-age liver spots dotted her cheeks, and her pale
eyes  had  black  pinpoint  pupils.  Her  hands  were  knobby,  and  the  cuticles  were
grown  up  over  her  fingernails.  Her  bottom  plate  was  not  in,  and  her  upper  lip

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protruded;  from  time  to  time  she  would  draw  her  nether  lip  to  her  upper  plate
and carry her chin with it. This made the wet move faster.
I  didn’t  look  any  more  than  I  had  to.  Jem  reopened  Ivanhoe  and  began
reading. I tried to keep up with him, but he read too fast. When Jem came to a
word he didn’t know, he skipped it, but Mrs. Dubose would catch him and make
him  spell  it  out.  Jem  read  for  perhaps  twenty  minutes,  during  which  time  I
looked at the soot-stained mantelpiece, out the window, anywhere to keep from
looking at her. As he read along, I noticed that Mrs. Dubose’s corrections grew
fewer and farther between, that Jem had even left one sentence dangling in mid-
air. She was not listening.
I looked toward the bed.
Something had happened to her. She lay on her back, with the quilts up to her
chin.  Only  her  head  and  shoulders  were  visible.  Her  head  moved  slowly  from
side to side. From time to time she would open her mouth wide, and I could see
her tongue undulate faintly. Cords of saliva would collect on her lips; she would
draw them in, then open her mouth again. Her mouth seemed to have a private
existence of its own. It worked separate and apart from the rest of her, out and
in,  like  a  clam  hole  at  low  tide.  Occasionally  it  would  say,  “Pt,”  like  some
viscous substance coming to a boil.
I pulled Jem’s sleeve.
He looked at me, then at the bed. Her head made its regular sweep toward us,
and Jem said, “Mrs. Dubose, are you all right?” She did not hear him.
The  alarm  clock  went  off  and  scared  us  stiff.  A  minute  later,  nerves  still
tingling, Jem and I were on the sidewalk headed for home. We did not run away,
Jessie sent us: before the clock wound down she was in the room pushing Jem
and me out of it.
“Shoo,” she said, “you all go home.”
Jem hesitated at the door.
“It’s time for her medicine,” Jessie said. As the door swung shut behind us I
saw Jessie walking quickly toward Mrs. Dubose’s bed.
It was only three forty-five when we got home, so Jem and I drop-kicked in
the back yard until it was time to meet Atticus. Atticus had two yellow pencils
for me and a football magazine for Jem, which I suppose was a silent reward for
our first day’s session with Mrs. Dubose. Jem told him what happened.
“Did she frighten you?” asked Atticus.
“No sir,” said Jem, “but she’s so nasty. She has fits or somethin‘. She spits a

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lot.”
“She can’t help that. When people are sick they don’t look nice sometimes.”
“She scared me,” I said.
Atticus  looked  at  me  over  his  glasses.  “You  don’t  have  to  go  with  Jem,  you
know.”
The next afternoon at Mrs. Dubose’s was the same as the first, and so was the
next, until gradually a pattern emerged: everything would begin normally—that
is,  Mrs.  Dubose  would  hound  Jem  for  a  while  on  her  favorite  subjects,  her
camellias  and  our  father’s  nigger-loving  propensities;  she  would  grow
increasingly  silent,  then  go  away  from  us.  The  alarm  clock  would  ring,  Jessie
would shoo us out, and the rest of the day was ours.
“Atticus,” I said one evening, “what exactly is a nigger-lover?”
Atticus’s face was grave. “Has somebody been calling you that?”
“No  sir,  Mrs.  Dubose  calls  you  that.  She  warms  up  every  afternoon  calling
you that. Francis called me that last Christmas, that’s where I first heard it.”
“Is that the reason you jumped on him?” asked Atticus.
“Yes sir . . .”
“Then why are you asking me what it means?”
I tried to explain to Atticus that it wasn’t so much what Francis said that had
infuriated  me  as  the  way  he  had  said  it.  “It  was  like  he’d  said  snot-nose  or
somethin‘.”
“Scout,” said Atticus, “nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don’t mean
anything—like  snot-nose.  It’s  hard  to  explain—ignorant,  trashy  people  use  it
when they think somebody’s favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It’s
slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common,
ugly term to label somebody.”
“You aren’t really a nigger-lover, then, are you?”
“I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody . . . I’m hard put, sometimes—
baby, it’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just
shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you. So don’t let Mrs. Dubose
get you down. She has enough troubles of her own.”
One  afternoon  a  month  later  Jem  was  ploughing  his  way  through  Sir  Walter
Scout,  as  Jem  called  him,  and  Mrs.  Dubose  was  correcting  him  at  every  turn,
when there was a knock on the door. “Come in!” she screamed.

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Atticus  came  in.  He  went  to  the  bed  and  took  Mrs.  Dubose’s  hand.  “I  was
coming  from  the  office  and  didn’t  see  the  children,”  he  said.  “I  thought  they
might still be here.”
Mrs. Dubose smiled at him. For the life of me I could not figure out how she
could  bring  herself  to  speak  to  him  when  she  seemed  to  hate  him  so.  “Do  you
know  what  time  it  is,  Atticus?”  she  said.  “Exactly  fourteen  minutes  past  five.
The alarm clock’s set for five-thirty. I want you to know that.”
It  suddenly  came  to  me  that  each  day  we  had  been  staying  a  little  longer  at
Mrs. Dubose’s, that the alarm clock went off a few minutes later every day, and
that  she  was  well  into  one  of  her  fits  by  the  time  it  sounded.  Today  she  had
antagonized Jem for nearly two hours with no intention of having a fit, and I felt
hopelessly trapped. The alarm clock was the signal for our release; if one day it
did not ring, what would we do?
“I have a feeling that Jem’s reading days are numbered,” said Atticus.
“Only a week longer, I think,” she said, “just to make sure . . .”
Jem rose. “But—”
Atticus  put  out  his  hand  and  Jem  was  silent.  On  the  way  home,  Jem  said  he
had to do it just for a month and the month was up and it wasn’t fair.
“Just one more week, son,” said Atticus.
“No,” said Jem. “Yes,” said Atticus.
The  following  week  found  us  back  at  Mrs.  Dubose’s.  The  alarm  clock  had
ceased sounding, but Mrs. Dubose would release us with, “That’ll do,” so late in
the  afternoon  Atticus  would  be  home  reading  the  paper  when  we  returned.
Although her fits had passed off, she was in every other way her old self: when
Sir  Walter  Scott  became  involved  in  lengthy  descriptions  of  moats  and  castles,
Mrs. Dubose would become bored and pick on us:
“Jeremy  Finch,  I  told  you  you’d  live  to  regret  tearing  up  my  camellias.  You
regret it now, don’t you?”
Jem would say he certainly did.
“Thought  you  could  kill  my  Snow-on-the-Mountain,  did  you?  Well,  Jessie
says the top’s growing back out. Next time you’ll know how to do it right, won’t
you? You’ll pull it up by the roots, won’t you?”
Jem would say he certainly would.
“Don’t  you  mutter  at  me,  boy!  You  hold  up  your  head  and  say  yes  ma’am.
Don’t guess you feel like holding it up, though, with your father what he is.”

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Jem’s  chin  would  come  up,  and  he  would  gaze  at  Mrs.  Dubose  with  a  face
devoid  of  resentment.  Through  the  weeks  he  had  cultivated  an  expression  of
polite and detached interest, which he would present to her in answer to her most
blood-curdling inventions.
At  last  the  day  came.  When  Mrs.  Dubose  said,  “That’ll  do,”  one  afternoon,
she added, “And that’s all. Good-day to you.”
It was over. We bounded down the sidewalk on a spree of sheer relief, leaping
and howling.
That spring was a good one: the days grew longer and gave us more playing
time. Jem’s mind was occupied mostly with the vital statistics of every college
football player in the nation. Every night Atticus would read us the sports pages
of the newspapers. Alabama might go to the Rose Bowl again this year, judging
from its prospects, not one of whose names we could pronounce. Atticus was in
the middle of Windy Seaton’s column one evening when the telephone rang.
He answered it, then went to the hat rack in the hall. “I’m going down to Mrs.
Dubose’s for a while,” he said. “I won’t be long.”
But Atticus stayed away until long past my bedtime. When he returned he was
carrying a candy box. Atticus sat down in the livingroom and put the box on the
floor beside his chair.
“What’d she want?” asked Jem.
We had not seen Mrs. Dubose for over a month. She was never on the porch
any more when we passed.
“She’s dead, son,” said Atticus. “She died a few minutes ago.”
“Oh,” said Jem. “Well.”
“Well is right,” said Atticus. “She’s not suffering any more. She was sick for a
long time. Son, didn’t you know what her fits were?”
Jem shook his head.
“Mrs.  Dubose  was  a  morphine  addict,”  said  Atticus.  “She  took  it  as  a  pain-
killer for years. The doctor put her on it. She’d have spent the rest of her life on
it and died without so much agony, but she was too contrary—”
“Sir?” said Jem.
Atticus  said,  “Just  before  your  escapade  she  called  me  to  make  her  will.  Dr.
Reynolds told her she had only a few months left. Her business affairs were in
perfect order but she said, ‘There’s still one thing out of order.’”
“What was that?” Jem was perplexed.

---

“She said she was going to leave this world beholden to nothing and nobody.
Jem, when you’re sick as she was, it’s all right to take anything to make it easier,
but it wasn’t all right for her. She said she meant to break herself of it before she
died, and that’s what she did.”
Jem said, “You mean that’s what her fits were?”
“Yes, that’s what they were. Most of the time you were reading to her I doubt
if  she  heard  a  word  you  said.  Her  whole  mind  and  body  were  concentrated  on
that alarm clock. If you hadn’t fallen into her hands, I’d have made you go read
to her anyway. It may have been some distraction. There was another reason—”
“Did she die free?” asked Jem.
“As  the  mountain  air,”  said  Atticus.  “She  was  conscious  to  the  last,  almost.
Conscious,” he smiled, “and cantankerous. She still disapproved heartily of my
doings,  and  said  I’d  probably  spend  the  rest  of  my  life  bailing  you  out  of  jail.
She had Jessie fix you this box—”
Atticus reached down and picked up the candy box. He handed it to Jem.
Jem opened the box. Inside, surrounded by wads of damp cotton, was a white,
waxy, perfect camellia. It was a Snow-on-the-Mountain.
Jem’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Old hell-devil, old hell-devil!” he
screamed, flinging it down. “Why can’t she leave me alone?”
In  a  flash  Atticus  was  up  and  standing  over  him.  Jem  buried  his  face  in
Atticus’s shirt front. “Sh-h,” he said. “I think that was her way of telling you—
everything’s  all  right  now,  Jem,  everything’s  all  right.  You  know,  she  was  a
great lady.”
“A lady?” Jem raised his head. His face was scarlet. “After all those things she
said about you, a lady?”
“She  was.  She  had  her  own  views  about  things,  a  lot  different  from  mine,
maybe . . . son, I told you that if you hadn’t lost your head I’d have made you go
read to her. I wanted you to see something about her—I wanted you to see what
real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his
hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway
and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
Mrs.  Dubose  won,  all  ninety-eight  pounds  of  her.  According  to  her  views,  she
died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.”
Jem  picked  up  the  candy  box  and  threw  it  in  the  fire.  He  picked  up  the
camellia, and when I went off to bed I saw him fingering the wide petals. Atticus
was reading the paper

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