To Kill a Mockingbird pdfdrive com

PART TWO

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12
J
em was twelve. He was difficult to live with, inconsistent, moody. His appetite
was appalling, and he told me so many times to stop pestering him I consulted
Atticus:  “Reckon  he’s  got  a  tapeworm?”  Atticus  said  no,  Jem  was  growing.  I
must be patient with him and disturb him as little as possible.
This  change  in  Jem  had  come  about  in  a  matter  of  weeks.  Mrs.  Dubose  was
not cold in her grave—Jem had seemed grateful enough for my company when
he  went  to  read  to  her.  Overnight,  it  seemed,  Jem  had  acquired  an  alien  set  of
values and was trying to impose them on me: several times he went so far as to
tell  me  what  to  do.  After  one  altercation  when  Jem  hollered,  “It’s  time  you
started bein‘ a girl and acting right!” I burst into tears and fled to Calpurnia.
“Don’t you fret too much over Mister Jem—” she began.
“Mister Jem?”
“Yeah, he’s just about Mister Jem now.”
“He  ain’t  that  old,”  I  said.  “All  he  needs  is  somebody  to  beat  him  up,  and  I
ain’t big enough.”
“Baby,” said Calpurnia, “I just can’t help it if Mister Jem’s growin‘ up. He’s
gonna want to be off to himself a lot now, doin’ whatever boys do, so you just
come right on in the kitchen when you feel lonesome. We’ll find lots of things to
do in here.”
The  beginning  of  that  summer  boded  well:  Jem  could  do  as  he  pleased;
Calpurnia would do until Dill came. She seemed glad to see me when I appeared
in  the  kitchen,  and  by  watching  her  I  began  to  think  there  was  some  skill
involved in being a girl.
But  summer  came  and  Dill  was  not  there.  I  received  a  letter  and  a  snapshot
from him. The letter said he had a new father whose picture was enclosed, and
he would have to stay in Meridian because they planned to build a fishing boat.
His father was a lawyer like Atticus, only much younger. Dill’s new father had a
pleasant  face,  which  made  me  glad  Dill  had  captured  him,  but  I  was  crushed.
Dill concluded by saying he would love me forever and not to worry, he would
come get me and marry me as soon as he got enough money together, so please

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write.
The fact that I had a permanent fiancé was little compensation for his absence:
I  had  never  thought  about  it,  but  summer  was  Dill  by  the  fishpool  smoking
string,  Dill’s  eyes  alive  with  complicated  plans  to  make  Boo  Radley  emerge;
summer  was  the  swiftness  with  which  Dill  would  reach  up  and  kiss  me  when
Jem was not looking, the longings we sometimes felt each other feel. With him,
life  was  routine;  without  him,  life  was  unbearable.  I  stayed  miserable  for  two
days.
As  if  that  were  not  enough,  the  state  legislature  was  called  into  emergency
session and Atticus left us for two weeks. The Governor was eager to scrape  a
few barnacles off the ship of state; there were sit-down strikes in Birmingham;
bread  lines  in  the  cities  grew  longer,  people  in  the  country  grew  poorer.  But
these were events remote from the world of Jem and me.
We  were  surprised  one  morning  to  see  a  cartoon  in  the  Montgomery
Advertiser above the caption, “Maycomb’s Finch.” It showed Atticus barefooted
and in short pants, chained to a desk: he was diligently writing on a slate while
some frivolous-looking girls yelled, “Yoo-hoo!” at him.
“That’s a compliment,” explained Jem. “He spends his time doin‘ things that
wouldn’t get done if nobody did ’em.”
“Huh?”
In  addition  to  Jem’s  newly  developed  characteristics,  he  had  acquired  a
maddening air of wisdom.
“Oh,  Scout,  it’s  like  reorganizing  the  tax  systems  of  the  counties  and  things.
That kind of thing’s pretty dry to most men.”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, go on and leave me alone. I’m readin‘ the paper.”
Jem got his wish. I departed for the kitchen.
While she was shelling peas, Calpurnia suddenly said, “What am I gonna do
about you all’s church this Sunday?”
“Nothing, I reckon. Atticus left us collection.”
Calpurnia’s eyes narrowed and I could tell what was going through her mind.
“Cal,” I said, “you know we’ll behave. We haven’t done anything in church in
years.”
Calpurnia  evidently  remembered  a  rainy  Sunday  when  we  were  both
fatherless  and  teacherless.  Left  to  its  own  devices,  the  class  tied  Eunice  Ann

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Simpson to a chair and placed her in the furnace room. We forgot her, trooped
upstairs  to  church,  and  were  listening  quietly  to  the  sermon  when  a  dreadful
banging issued from the radiator pipes, persisting until someone investigated and
brought forth Eunice Ann saying she didn’t want to play Shadrach any more—
Jem  Finch  said  she  wouldn’t  get  burnt  if  she  had  enough  faith,  but  it  was  hot
down there.
“Besides, Cal, this isn’t the first time Atticus has left us,” I protested.
“Yeah, but he makes certain your teacher’s gonna be there. I didn’t hear him
say this time—reckon he forgot it.” Calpurnia scratched her head. Suddenly she
smiled. “How’d you and Mister Jem like to come to church with me tomorrow?”
“Really?”
“How ‘bout it?” grinned Calpurnia.
If Calpurnia had ever bathed me roughly before, it was nothing compared to
her  supervision  of  that  Saturday  night’s  routine.  She  made  me  soap  all  over
twice, drew fresh water in the tub for each rinse; she stuck my head in the basin
and washed it with Octagon soap and castile. She had trusted Jem for years, but
that  night  she  invaded  his  privacy  and  provoked  an  outburst:  “Can’t  anybody
take a bath in this house without the whole family lookin‘?”
Next  morning  she  began  earlier  than  usual,  to  “go  over  our  clothes.”  When
Calpurnia stayed overnight with us she slept on a folding cot in the kitchen; that
morning  it  was  covered  with  our  Sunday  habiliments.  She  had  put  so  much
starch in my dress it came up like a tent when I sat down. She made me wear a
petticoat  and  she  wrapped  a  pink  sash  tightly  around  my  waist.  She  went  over
my patent-leather shoes with a cold biscuit until she saw her face in them.
“It’s like we were goin‘ to Mardi Gras,” said Jem. “What’s all this for, Cal?”
“I  don’t  want  anybody  sayin‘  I  don’t  look  after  my  children,”  she  muttered.
“Mister Jem, you absolutely can’t wear that tie with that suit. It’s green.”
“‘smatter with that?”
“Suit’s blue. Can’t you tell?”
“Hee hee,” I howled, “Jem’s color blind.”
His  face  flushed  angrily,  but  Calpurnia  said,  “Now  you  all  quit  that.  You’re
gonna go to First Purchase with smiles on your faces.”
First Purchase African M.E. Church was in the Quarters outside the southern
town limits, across the old sawmill tracks. It was an ancient paint-peeled frame
building,  the  only  church  in  Maycomb  with  a  steeple  and  bell,  called  First

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Purchase because it was paid for from the first earnings of freed slaves. Negroes
worshiped in it on Sundays and white men gambled in it on weekdays.
The  churchyard  was  brick-hard  clay,  as  was  the  cemetery  beside  it.  If
someone died during a dry spell, the body was covered with chunks of ice until
rain  softened  the  earth.  A  few  graves  in  the  cemetery  were  marked  with
crumbling tombstones; newer ones were outlined with brightly colored glass and
broken  Coca-Cola  bottles.  Lightning  rods  guarding  some  graves  denoted  dead
who  rested  uneasily;  stumps  of  burned-out  candles  stood  at  the  heads  of  infant
graves. It was a happy cemetery.
The  warm  bittersweet  smell  of  clean  Negro  welcomed  us  as  we  entered  the
churchyard—Hearts of Love hairdressing mingled with asafoetida, snuff, Hoyt’s
Cologne, Brown’s Mule, peppermint, and lilac talcum.
When  they  saw  Jem  and  me  with  Calpurnia,  the  men  stepped  back  and  took
off their hats; the women crossed their arms at their waists, weekday gestures of
respectful  attention.  They  parted  and  made  a  small  pathway  to  the  church  door
for us. Calpurnia walked between Jem and me, responding to the greetings of her
brightly clad neighbors.
“What you up to, Miss Cal?” said a voice behind us.
Calpurnia’s hands went to our shoulders and we stopped and looked around:
standing in the path behind us was a tall Negro woman. Her weight was on one
leg; she rested her left elbow in the curve of her hip, pointing at us with upturned
palm.  She  was  bullet-headed  with  strange  almond-shaped  eyes,  straight  nose,
and an Indian-bow mouth. She seemed seven feet high.
I  felt  Calpurnia’s  hand  dig  into  my  shoulder.  “What  you  want,  Lula?”  she
asked, in tones I had never heard her use. She spoke quietly, contemptuously.
“I wants to know why you bringin‘ white chillun to nigger church.”
“They’s my comp’ny,” said Calpurnia. Again I thought her voice strange: she
was talking like the rest of them.
“Yeah, an‘ I reckon you’s comp’ny at the Finch house durin’ the week.”
A  murmur  ran  through  the  crowd.  “Don’t  you  fret,”  Calpurnia  whispered  to
me, but the roses on her hat trembled indignantly.
When Lula came up the pathway toward us Calpurnia said, “Stop right there,
nigger.”
Lula stopped, but she said, “You ain’t got no business bringin‘ white chillun
here—they got their church, we got our’n. It is our church, ain’t it, Miss Cal?”

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Calpurnia said, “It’s the same God, ain’t it?”
Jem said, “Let’s go home, Cal, they don’t want us here—”
I  agreed:  they  did  not  want  us  here.  I  sensed,  rather  than  saw,  that  we  were
being  advanced  upon.  They  seemed  to  be  drawing  closer  to  us,  but  when  I
looked up at Calpurnia there was amusement in her eyes. When I looked down
the  pathway  again,  Lula  was  gone.  In  her  place  was  a  solid  mass  of  colored
people.
One  of  them  stepped  from  the  crowd.  It  was  Zeebo,  the  garbage  collector.
“Mister  Jem,”  he  said,  “we’re  mighty  glad  to  have  you  all  here.  Don’t  pay  no
‘tention to Lula, she’s contentious because Reverend Sykes threatened to church
her.  She’s  a  troublemaker  from  way  back,  got  fancy  ideas  an’  haughty  ways—
we’re mighty glad to have you all.”
With  that,  Calpurnia  led  us  to  the  church  door  where  we  were  greeted  by
Reverend Sykes, who led us to the front pew.
First  Purchase  was  unceiled  and  unpainted  within.  Along  its  walls  unlighted
kerosene lamps hung on brass brackets; pine benches served as pews. Behind the
rough oak pulpit a faded pink silk banner proclaimed God Is Love, the church’s
only  decoration  except  a  rotogravure  print  of  Hunt’s  The  Light  of  the  World.
There was no sign of piano, organ, hymn-books, church programs—the familiar
ecclesiastical impedimenta we saw every Sunday. It was dim inside, with a damp
coolness  slowly  dispelled  by  the  gathering  congregation.  At  each  seat  was  a
cheap cardboard fan bearing a garish Garden of Gethsemane, courtesy Tyndal’s
Hardware Co. (You-Name-It-We-Sell-It).
Calpurnia  motioned  Jem  and  me  to  the  end  of  the  row  and  placed  herself
between us.  She  fished in  her  purse, drew  out  her handkerchief,  and  untied the
hard  wad  of  change  in  its  corner.  She  gave  a  dime  to  me  and  a  dime  to  Jem.
“We’ve  got  ours,”  he  whispered.  “You  keep  it,”  Calpurnia  said,  “you’re  my
company.” Jem’s face showed brief indecision on the ethics of withholding his
own dime, but his innate courtesy won and he shifted his dime to his pocket. I
did likewise with no qualms.
“Cal,” I whispered, “where are the hymn-books?”
“We don’t have any,” she said.
“Well how—?”
“Sh-h,”  she  said.  Reverend  Sykes  was  standing  behind  the  pulpit  staring  the
congregation  to  silence.  He  was  a  short,  stocky  man  in  a  black  suit,  black  tie,
white  shirt,  and  a  gold  watch-chain  that  glinted  in  the  light  from  the  frosted

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windows.
He said, “Brethren and sisters, we are particularly glad to have company with
us  this  morning.  Mister  and  Miss  Finch.  You  all  know  their  father.  Before  I
begin I will read some announcements.”
Reverend Sykes shuffled some papers, chose one and held it at arm’s length.
“The  Missionary  Society  meets  in  the  home  of  Sister  Annette  Reeves  next
Tuesday. Bring your sewing.”
He  read  from  another  paper.  “You  all  know  of  Brother  Tom  Robinson’s
trouble. He has been a faithful member of First Purchase since he was a boy. The
collection taken up today and for the next three Sundays will go to Helen—his
wife, to help her out at home.”
I punched Jem. “That’s the Tom Atticus’s de—”
“Sh-h!”
I turned to Calpurnia but was hushed before I opened my mouth. Subdued, I
fixed  my  attention  upon  Reverend  Sykes,  who  seemed  to  be  waiting  for  me  to
settle down. “Will the music superintendent lead us in the first hymn,” he said.
Zeebo rose from his pew and walked down the center aisle, stopping in front
of  us  and  facing  the  congregation.  He  was  carrying  a  battered  hymn-book.  He
opened it and said, “We’ll sing number two seventy-three.”
This was too much for me. “How’re we gonna sing it if there ain’t any hymn-
books?”
Calpurnia smiled. “Hush baby,” she whispered, “you’ll see in a minute.”
Zeebo cleared his throat and read in a voice like the rumble of distant artillery:
“There’s a land beyond the river.”
Miraculously  on  pitch,  a  hundred  voices  sang  out  Zeebo’s  words.  The  last
syllable, held to a husky hum, was followed by Zeebo saying, “That we call the
sweet forever.”
Music  again  swelled  around  us;  the  last  note  lingered  and  Zeebo  met  it  with
the next line: “And we only reach that shore by faith’s decree.”
The congregation hesitated, Zeebo repeated the line carefully, and it was sung.
At  the  chorus  Zeebo  closed  the  book,  a  signal  for  the  congregation  to  proceed
without his help.
On the dying notes of “Jubilee,” Zeebo said, “In that far-off sweet forever, just
beyond the shining river.”

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Line  for  line,  voices  followed  in  simple  harmony  until  the  hymn  ended  in  a
melancholy murmur.
I  looked  at  Jem,  who  was  looking  at  Zeebo  from  the  corners  of  his  eyes.  I
didn’t believe it either, but we had both heard it.
Reverend Sykes then called on the Lord to bless the sick and the suffering, a
procedure no different from our church practice, except Reverend Sykes directed
the Deity’s attention to several specific cases.
His sermon was a forthright denunciation of sin, an austere declaration of the
motto  on  the  wall  behind  him:  he  warned  his  flock  against  the  evils  of  heady
brews, gambling, and strange women. Bootleggers caused enough trouble in the
Quarters, but women were worse. Again, as I had often met it in my own church,
I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy
all clergymen.
Jem  and  I  had  heard  the  same  sermon  Sunday  after  Sunday,  with  only  one
exception.  Reverend  Sykes  used  his  pulpit  more  freely  to  express  his  views  on
individual  lapses  from  grace:  Jim  Hardy  had  been  absent  from  church  for  five
Sundays and he wasn’t sick; Constance Jackson had better watch her ways—she
was in grave danger for quarreling with her neighbors; she had erected the only
spite fence in the history of the Quarters.
Reverend  Sykes  closed  his  sermon.  He  stood  beside  a  table  in  front  of  the
pulpit and requested the morning offering, a proceeding that was strange to Jem
and  me.  One  by  one,  the  congregation  came  forward  and  dropped  nickels  and
dimes into a black enameled coffee can. Jem and I followed suit, and received a
soft, “Thank you, thank you,” as our dimes clinked.
To our amazement, Reverend Sykes emptied the can onto the table and raked
the  coins  into  his  hand.  He  straightened  up  and  said,  “This  is  not  enough,  we
must have ten dollars.”
The  congregation  stirred.  “You  all  know  what  it’s  for—Helen  can’t  leave
those children to work while Tom’s in jail. If everybody gives one more dime,
we’ll  have  it—”  Reverend  Sykes  waved  his  hand  and  called  to  someone  in  the
back  of  the  church.  “Alec,  shut  the  doors.  Nobody  leaves  here  till  we  have  ten
dollars.”
Calpurnia scratched in her handbag and brought forth a battered leather coin
purse.  “Naw  Cal,”  Jem  whispered,  when  she  handed  him  a  shiny  quarter,  “we
can put ours in. Gimme your dime, Scout.”
The church was becoming stuffy, and it occurred to me that Reverend Sykes

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intended to sweat the amount due out of his flock. Fans crackled, feet shuffled,
tobacco-chewers were in agony.
Reverend Sykes startled me by saying sternly, “Carlow Richardson, I haven’t
seen you up this aisle yet.”
A  thin  man  in  khaki  pants  came  up  the  aisle  and  deposited  a  coin.  The
congregation murmured approval.
Reverend  Sykes  then  said,  “I  want  all  of  you  with  no  children  to  make  a
sacrifice and give one more dime apiece. Then we’ll have it.”
Slowly, painfully, the ten dollars was collected. The door was opened, and the
gust of warm air revived us. Zeebo lined On Jordan’s Stormy Banks, and church
was over.
I wanted to stay and explore, but Calpurnia propelled me up the aisle ahead of
her. At the church door, while she paused to talk with Zeebo and his family, Jem
and I chatted with Reverend Sykes. I was bursting with questions, but decided I
would wait and let Calpurnia answer them.
“We  were  ‘specially  glad  to  have  you  all  here,”  said  Reverend  Sykes.  “This
church has no better friend than your daddy.”
My  curiosity  burst:  “Why  were  you  all  takin‘  up  collection  for  Tom
Robinson’s wife?”
“Didn’t  you  hear  why?”  asked  Reverend  Sykes.  “Helen’s  got  three  little’uns
and she can’t go out to work—”
“Why can’t she take ‘em with her, Reverend?” I asked. It was customary for
field  Negroes  with  tiny  children  to  deposit  them  in  whatever  shade  there  was
while  their  parents  worked—usually  the  babies  sat  in  the  shade  between  two
rows  of  cotton.  Those  unable  to  sit  were  strapped  papoose-style  on  their
mothers’ backs, or resided in extra cotton bags.
Reverend  Sykes  hesitated.  “To  tell  you  the  truth,  Miss  Jean  Louise,  Helen’s
finding  it  hard  to  get  work  these  days  .  .  .  when  it’s  picking  time,  I  think  Mr.
Link Deas’ll take her.”
“Why not, Reverend?”
Before  he  could  answer,  I  felt  Calpurnia’s  hand  on  my  shoulder.  At  its
pressure  I  said,  “We  thank  you  for  lettin‘  us  come.”  Jem  echoed  me,  and  we
made our way homeward.
“Cal, I know Tom Robinson’s in jail an‘ he’s done somethin’ awful, but why
won’t folks hire Helen?” I asked.

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Calpurnia, in her navy voile dress and tub of a hat, walked between Jem and
me. “It’s because of what folks say Tom’s done,” she said. “Folks aren’t anxious
to—to have anything to do with any of his family.”
“Just what did he do, Cal?”
Calpurnia sighed. “Old Mr. Bob Ewell accused him of rapin‘ his girl an’ had
him arrested an‘ put in jail—”
“Mr.  Ewell?”  My  memory  stirred.  “Does  he  have  anything  to  do  with  those
Ewells that come every first day of school an‘ then go home? Why, Atticus said
they  were  absolute  trash—I  never  heard  Atticus  talk  about  folks  the  way  he
talked about the Ewells. He said—”
“Yeah, those are the ones.”
“Well,  if  everybody  in  Maycomb  knows  what  kind  of  folks  the  Ewells  are
they’d be glad to hire Helen . . . what’s rape, Cal?”
“It’s somethin‘ you’ll have to ask Mr. Finch about,” she said. “He can explain
it better than I can. You all hungry? The Reverend took a long time unwindin’
this morning, he’s not usually so tedious.”
“He’s just like our preacher,” said Jem, “but why do you all sing hymns that
way?”
“Linin‘?” she asked.
“Is that what it is?”
“Yeah, it’s called linin‘. They’ve done it that way as long as I can remember.”
Jem said it looked like they could save the collection money for a year and get
some hymn-books.
Calpurnia laughed. “Wouldn’t do any good,” she said. “They can’t read.”
“Can’t read?” I asked. “All those folks?”
“That’s  right,”  Calpurnia  nodded.  “Can’t  but  about  four  folks  in  First
Purchase read . . . I’m one of ‘em.”
“Where’d you go to school, Cal?” asked Jem.
“Nowhere.  Let’s  see  now,  who  taught  me  my  letters?  It  was  Miss  Maudie
Atkinson’s aunt, old Miss Buford—”
“Are you that old?”
“I’m  older  than  Mr.  Finch,  even.”  Calpurnia  grinned.  “Not  sure  how  much,
though. We started rememberin‘ one time, trying to figure out how old I was—I
can remember back just a few years more’n he can, so I’m not much older, when

---

you take off the fact that men can’t remember as well as women.”
“What’s your birthday, Cal?”
“I just have it on Christmas, it’s easier to remember that way—I don’t have a
real birthday.”
“But Cal,” Jem protested, “you don’t look even near as old as Atticus.”
“Colored folks don’t show their ages so fast,” she said.
“Maybe because they can’t read. Cal, did you teach Zeebo?”
“Yeah,  Mister  Jem.  There  wasn’t  a  school  even  when  he  was  a  boy.  I  made
him learn, though.”
Zeebo was Calpurnia’s eldest son. If I had ever thought about it, I would have
known  that  Calpurnia  was  of  mature  years—Zeebo  had  half-grown  children—
but then I had never thought about it.
“Did you teach him out of a primer, like us?” I asked.
“No, I made him get a page of the Bible every day, and there was a book Miss
Buford taught me out of—bet you don’t know where I got it,” she said.
We didn’t know.
Calpurnia said, “Your Granddaddy Finch gave it to me.”
“Were you from the Landing?” Jem asked. “You never told us that.”
“I  certainly  am,  Mister  Jem.  Grew  up  down  there  between  the  Buford  Place
and the Landin‘. I’ve spent all my days workin’ for the Finches or the Bufords,
an‘ I moved to Maycomb when your daddy and your mamma married.”
“What was the book, Cal?” I asked.
“Blackstone’s Commentaries.”
Jem was thunderstruck. “You mean you taught Zeebo outa that?”
“Why  yes  sir,  Mister  Jem.”  Calpurnia  timidly  put  her  fingers  to  her  mouth.
“They  were  the  only  books  I  had.  Your  grandaddy  said  Mr.  Blackstone  wrote
fine English—”
“That’s why you don’t talk like the rest of ‘em,” said Jem.
“The rest of who?”
“Rest of the colored folks. Cal, but you talked like they did in church . . .”
That  Calpurnia  led  a  modest  double  life  never  dawned  on  me.  The  idea  that
she  had  a  separate  existence  outside  our  household  was  a  novel  one,  to  say
nothing of her having command of two languages. “Cal,” I asked, “why do you

---

talk nigger-talk to the—to your folks when you know it’s not right?”
“Well, in the first place I’m black—”
“That doesn’t mean you hafta talk that way when you know better,” said Jem.
Calpurnia  tilted  her  hat  and  scratched  her  head,  then  pressed  her  hat  down
carefully over her ears. “It’s right hard to say,” she said. “Suppose you and Scout
talked colored-folks’ talk at home it’d be out of place, wouldn’t it? Now what if
I talked white-folks’ talk at church, and with my neighbors? They’d think I was
puttin‘ on airs to beat Moses.”
“But Cal, you know better,” I said.
“It’s not necessary to tell all you know. It’s not ladylike—in the second place,
folks  don’t  like  to  have  somebody  around  knowin‘  more  than  they  do.  It
aggravates ’em. You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin‘ right, they’ve
got  to  want  to  learn  themselves,  and  when  they  don’t  want  to  learn  there’s
nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.”
“Cal, can I come to see you sometimes?”
She looked down at me. “See me, honey? You see me every day.”
“Out to your house,” I said. “Sometimes after work? Atticus can get me.”
“Any time you want to,” she said. “We’d be glad to have you.”
We were on the sidewalk by the Radley Place.
“Look on the porch yonder,” Jem said.
I  looked  over  to  the  Radley  Place,  expecting  to  see  its  phantom  occupant
sunning himself in the swing. The swing was empty.
“I mean our porch,” said Jem.
I  looked  down  the  street.  Enarmored,  upright,  uncompromising,  Aunt
Alexandra was sitting in a rocking chair exactly as if she had sat there every day
of her life.

---

13
"P
ut  my  bag  in  the  front  bedroom,  Calpurnia,”  was  the  first  thing  Aunt
Alexandra said. “Jean Louise, stop scratching your head,” was the second thing
she said.
Calpurnia  picked  up  Aunty’s  heavy  suitcase  and  opened  the  door.  “I’ll  take
it,” said Jem, and took it. I heard the suitcase hit the bedroom floor with a thump.
The sound had a dull permanence about it. “Have you come for a visit, Aunty?”
I asked. Aunt Alexandra’s visits from the Landing were rare, and she traveled in
state. She owned a bright green square Buick and a black chauffeur, both kept in
an unhealthy state of tidiness, but today they were nowhere to be seen.
“Didn’t your father tell you?” she asked.
Jem and I shook our heads.
“Probably he forgot. He’s not in yet, is he?”
“Nome, he doesn’t usually get back till late afternoon,” said Jem.
“Well,  your  father  and  I  decided  it  was  time  I  came  to  stay  with  you  for  a
while.”
“For  a  while”  in  Maycomb  meant  anything  from  three  days  to  thirty  years.
Jem and I exchanged glances.
“Jem’s growing up now and you are too,” she said to me. “We decided that it
would be best for you to have some feminine influence. It won’t be many years,
Jean Louise, before you become interested in clothes and boys—”
I could have made several answers to this: Cal’s a girl, it would be many years
before I would be interested in boys, I would never be interested in clothes . . .
but I kept quiet.
“What about Uncle Jimmy?” asked Jem. “Is he comin‘, too?”
“Oh no, he’s staying at the Landing. He’ll keep the place going.”
The  moment  I  said,  “Won’t  you  miss  him?”  I  realized  that  this  was  not  a
tactful  question.  Uncle  Jimmy  present  or  Uncle  Jimmy  absent  made  not  much
difference, he never said anything. Aunt Alexandra ignored my question.
I  could  think  of  nothing  else  to  say  to  her.  In  fact  I  could  never  think  of

---

anything to say to her, and I sat thinking of past painful conversations between
us: How are you, Jean Louise? Fine, thank you ma’am, how are you? Very well,
thank  you,  what  have  you  been  doing  with  yourself?  Nothin‘.  Don’t  you  do
anything? Nome. Certainly you have friends? Yessum. Well what do you all do?
Nothin’.
It was plain that Aunty thought me dull in the extreme, because I once heard
her tell Atticus that I was sluggish.
There  was  a  story  behind  all  this,  but  I  had  no  desire  to  extract  it  from  her
then.  Today  was  Sunday,  and  Aunt  Alexandra  was  positively  irritable  on  the
Lord’s Day. I guess it was her Sunday corset. She was not fat, but solid, and she
chose protective garments that drew up her bosom to giddy heights, pinched in
her waist, flared out her rear, and managed to suggest that Aunt Alexandra’s was
once an hour-glass figure. From any angle, it was formidable.
The  remainder  of  the  afternoon  went  by  in  the  gentle  gloom  that  descends
when  relatives  appear,  but  was  dispelled  when  we  heard  a  car  turn  in  the
driveway.  It  was  Atticus,  home  from  Montgomery.  Jem,  forgetting  his  dignity,
ran  with  me  to  meet  him.  Jem  seized  his  briefcase  and  bag,  I  jumped  into  his
arms,  felt  his  vague  dry  kiss  and  said,  “‘d  you  bring  me  a  book?  ’d  you  know
Aunty’s here?”
Atticus answered both questions in the affirmative. “How’d you like for her to
come live with us?”
I  said  I  would  like  it  very  much,  which  was  a  lie,  but  one  must  lie  under
certain circumstances and at all times when one can’t do anything about them.
“We felt it was time you children needed—well, it’s like this, Scout,” Atticus
said. “Your aunt’s doing me a favor as well as you all. I can’t stay here all day
with you, and the summer’s going to be a hot one.”
“Yes  sir,”  I  said,  not  understanding  a  word  he  said.  I  had  an  idea,  however,
that Aunt Alexandra’s appearance on the scene was not so much Atticus’s doing
as  hers.  Aunty  had  a  way  of  declaring  What  Is  Best  For  The  Family,  and  I
suppose her coming to live with us was in that category.
Maycomb welcomed her. Miss Maudie Atkinson baked a Lane cake so loaded
with  shinny  it  made  me  tight;  Miss  Stephanie  Crawford  had  long  visits  with
Aunt  Alexandra,  consisting  mostly  of  Miss  Stephanie  shaking  her  head  and
saying,  “Uh,  uh,  uh.”  Miss  Rachel  next  door  had  Aunty  over  for  coffee  in  the
afternoons, and Mr. Nathan Radley went so far as to come up in the front yard
and say he was glad to see her.

---

When she settled in with us and life resumed its daily pace, Aunt Alexandra
seemed as if she had always lived with us. Her Missionary Society refreshments
added  to  her  reputation  as  a  hostess  (she  did  not  permit  Calpurnia  to  make  the
delicacies  required  to  sustain  the  Society  through  long  reports  on  Rice
Christians);  she  joined  and  became  Secretary  of  the  Maycomb  Amanuensis
Club.  To  all  parties  present  and  participating  in  the  life  of  the  county,  Aunt
Alexandra  was  one  of  the  last  of  her  kind:  she  had  river-boat,  boarding-school
manners; let any moral come along and she would uphold it; she was born in the
objective  case;  she  was  an  incurable  gossip.  When  Aunt  Alexandra  went  to
school,  self-doubt  could  not  be  found  in  any  textbook,  so  she  knew  not  its
meaning.  She  was  never  bored,  and  given  the  slightest  chance  she  would
exercise her royal prerogative: she would arrange, advise, caution, and warn.
She never let a chance escape her to point out the shortcomings of other tribal
groups  to  the  greater  glory  of  our  own,  a  habit  that  amused  Jem  rather  than
annoyed  him:  “Aunty  better  watch  how  she  talks—scratch  most  folks  in
Maycomb and they’re kin to us.”
Aunt  Alexandra,  in  underlining  the  moral  of  young  Sam  Merriweather’s
suicide, said it was caused by a morbid streak in the family. Let a sixteen-year-
old girl giggle in the choir and Aunty would say, “It just goes to show you, all
the  Penfield  women  are  flighty.”  Everybody  in  Maycomb,  it  seemed,  had  a
Streak: a Drinking Streak, a Gambling Streak, a Mean Streak, a Funny Streak.
Once,  when  Aunty  assured  us  that  Miss  Stephanie  Crawford’s  tendency  to
mind  other  people’s  business  was  hereditary,  Atticus  said,  “Sister,  when  you
stop  to  think  about  it,  our  generation’s  practically  the  first  in  the  Finch  family
not to marry its cousins. Would you say the Finches have an Incestuous Streak?”
Aunty said no, that’s where we got our small hands and feet.
I  never  understood  her  preoccupation  with  heredity.  Somewhere,  I  had
received the impression that Fine Folks were people who did the best they could
with  the  sense  they  had,  but  Aunt  Alexandra  was  of  the  opinion,  obliquely
expressed, that the longer a family had been squatting on one patch of land the
finer it was.
“That makes the Ewells fine folks, then,” said Jem. The tribe of which Burris
Ewell and his brethren consisted had lived on the same plot of earth behind the
Maycomb  dump,  and  had  thrived  on  county  welfare  money  for  three
generations.
Aunt Alexandra’s theory had something behind it, though. Maycomb was an
ancient town. It was twenty miles east of Finch’s Landing, awkwardly inland for

---

such an old town. But Maycomb would have been closer to the river had it not
been  for  the  nimble-wittedness  of  one  Sinkfield,  who  in  the  dawn  of  history
operated  an  inn  where  two  pig-trails  met,  the  only  tavern  in  the  territory.
Sinkfield,  no  patriot,  served  and  supplied  ammunition  to  Indians  and  settlers
alike, neither knowing or caring whether he was a part of the Alabama Territory
or the Creek Nation so long as business was good. Business was excellent when
Governor  William  Wyatt  Bibb,  with  a  view  to  promoting  the  newly  created
county’s domestic tranquility, dispatched a team of surveyors to locate its exact
center  and  there  establish  its  seat  of  government.  The  surveyors,  Sinkfield’s
guests, told their host that he was in the territorial confines of Maycomb County,
and showed him the probable spot where the county seat would be built. Had not
Sinkfield made a bold stroke to preserve his holdings, Maycomb would have sat
in  the  middle  of  Winston  Swamp,  a  place  totally  devoid  of  interest.  Instead,
Maycomb  grew  and  sprawled  out  from  its  hub,  Sinkfield’s  Tavern,  because
Sinkfield reduced his guests to myopic drunkenness one evening, induced them
to bring forward their maps and charts, lop off a little here, add a bit there, and
adjust the center of the county to meet his requirements. He sent them packing
next day armed with their charts and five quarts of shinny in their saddlebags—
two apiece and one for the Governor.
Because  its  primary  reason  for  existence  was  government,  Maycomb  was
spared  the  grubbiness  that  distinguished  most  Alabama  towns  its  size.  In  the
beginning  its  buildings  were  solid,  its  courthouse  proud,  its  streets  graciously
wide. Maycomb’s proportion of professional people ran high: one went there to
have his teeth pulled, his wagon fixed, his heart listened to, his money deposited,
his  soul  saved,  his  mules  vetted.  But  the  ultimate  wisdom  of  Sinkfield’s
maneuver is open to question. He placed the young town too far away from the
only kind of public transportation in those days—river-boat—and it took a man
from the north end of the county two days to travel to Maycomb for store-bought
goods.  As  a  result  the  town  remained  the  same  size  for  a  hundred  years,  an
island in a patchwork sea of cottonfields and timberland.
Although  Maycomb  was  ignored  during  the  War  Between  the  States,
Reconstruction rule and economic ruin forced the town to grow. It grew inward.
New people so rarely settled there, the same families married the same families
until the members of the community looked faintly alike. Occasionally someone
would return from Montgomery or Mobile with an outsider, but the result caused
only  a  ripple  in  the  quiet  stream  of  family  resemblance.  Things  were  more  or
less the same during my early years.
There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked this

---

way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by
side  for  years  and  years,  were  utterly  predictable  to  one  another:  they  took  for
granted  attitudes,  character  shadings,  even  gestures,  as  having  been  repeated  in
each  generation  and  refined  by  time.  Thus  the  dicta  No  Crawford  Minds  His
Own  Business,  Every  Third  Merriweather  Is  Morbid,  The  Truth  Is  Not  in  the
Delafields, All the Bufords Walk Like That, were simply guides to daily living:
never  take  a  check  from  a  Delafield  without  a  discreet  call  to  the  bank;  Miss
Maudie  Atkinson’s  shoulder  stoops  because  she  was  a  Buford;  if  Mrs.  Grace
Merriweather sips gin out of Lydia E. Pinkham bottles it’s nothing unusual—her
mother did the same.
Aunt Alexandra fitted into the world of Maycomb like a hand into a glove, but
never  into  the  world  of  Jem  and  me.  I  so  often  wondered  how  she  could  be
Atticus’s  and  Uncle  Jack’s  sister  that  I  revived  half-remembered  tales  of
changelings and mandrake roots that Jem had spun long ago.
These  were  abstract  speculations  for  the  first  month  of  her  stay,  as  she  had
little to say to Jem or me, and we saw her only at mealtimes and at night before
we  went  to  bed.  It  was  summer  and  we  were  outdoors.  Of  course  some
afternoons  when  I  would  run  inside  for  a  drink  of  water,  I  would  find  the
livingroom  overrun  with  Maycomb  ladies,  sipping,  whispering,  fanning,  and  I
would be called: “Jean Louise, come speak to these ladies.”
When  I  appeared  in  the  doorway,  Aunty  would  look  as  if  she  regretted  her
request; I was usually mud-splashed or covered with sand.
“Speak  to  your  Cousin  Lily,”  she  said  one  afternoon,  when  she  had  trapped
me in the hall.
“Who?” I said.
“Your Cousin Lily Brooke,” said Aunt Alexandra.
“She our cousin? I didn’t know that.”
Aunt Alexandra managed to smile in a way that conveyed a gentle apology to
Cousin Lily and firm disapproval to me. When Cousin Lily Brooke left I knew I
was in for it.
It  was  a  sad  thing  that  my  father  had  neglected  to  tell  me  about  the  Finch
Family,  or  to  install  any  pride  into  his  children.  She  summoned  Jem,  who  sat
warily  on  the  sofa  beside  me.  She  left  the  room  and  returned  with  a  purple-
covered book on which Meditations of Joshua S. St. Clair was stamped in gold.
“Your  cousin  wrote  this,”  said  Aunt  Alexandra.  “He  was  a  beautiful
character.”

---

Jem examined the small volume. “Is this the Cousin Joshua who was locked
up for so long?”
Aunt Alexandra said, “How did you know that?”
“Why, Atticus said he went round the bend at the University. Said he tried to
shoot  the  president.  Said  Cousin  Joshua  said  he  wasn’t  anything  but  a  sewer-
inspector and tried to shoot him with an old flintlock pistol, only it just blew up
in his hand. Atticus said it cost the family five hundred dollars to get him out of
that one—”
Aunt Alexandra was standing stiff as a stork. “That’s all,” she said. “We’ll see
about this.”
Before  bedtime  I  was  in  Jem’s  room  trying  to  borrow  a  book,  when  Atticus
knocked and entered. He sat on the side of Jem’s bed, looked at us soberly, then
he grinned.
“Er—h’rm,“ he said. He was beginning to preface some things he said with a
throaty  noise,  and  I  thought  he  must  at  last  be  getting  old,  but  he  looked  the
same. ”I don’t exactly know how to say this,“ he began.
“Well, just say it,” said Jem. “Have we done something?”
Our  father  was  actually  fidgeting.  “No,  I  just  want  to  explain  to  you  that—
your Aunt Alexandra asked me . . . son, you know you’re a Finch, don’t you?”
“That’s  what  I’ve  been  told.”  Jem  looked  out  of  the  corners  of  his  eyes.  His
voice rose uncontrollably, “Atticus, what’s the matter?”
Atticus crossed his knees and folded his arms. “I’m trying to tell you the facts
of life.”
Jem’s disgust deepened. “I know all that stuff,” he said.
Atticus  suddenly  grew  serious.  In  his  lawyer’s  voice,  without  a  shade  of
inflection,  he  said:  “Your  aunt  has  asked  me  to  try  and  impress  upon  you  and
Jean  Louise  that  you  are  not  from  run-of-the-mill  people,  that  you  are  the
product of several generations’ gentle breeding—” Atticus paused, watching me
locate an elusive redbug on my leg.
“Gentle breeding,” he continued, when I had found and scratched it, “and that
you should try to live up to your name—” Atticus persevered in spite of us: “She
asked  me  to  tell  you  you  must  try  to  behave  like  the  little  lady  and  gentleman
that  you  are.  She  wants  to  talk  to  you  about  the  family  and  what  it’s  meant  to
Maycomb County through the years, so you’ll have some idea of who you are,
so you might be moved to behave accordingly,” he concluded at a gallop.

---

Stunned, Jem and I looked at each other, then at Atticus, whose collar seemed
to worry him. We did not speak to him.
Presently  I  picked  up  a  comb  from  Jem’s  dresser  and  ran  its  teeth  along  the
edge.
“Stop that noise,” Atticus said.
His curtness stung me. The comb was midway in its journey, and I banged it
down.  For  no  reason  I  felt  myself  beginning  to  cry,  but  I  could  not  stop.  This
was  not  my  father.  My  father  never  thought  these  thoughts.  My  father  never
spoke so. Aunt Alexandra had put him up to this, somehow. Through my tears I
saw Jem standing in a similar pool of isolation, his head cocked to one side.
There  was  nowhere  to  go,  but  I  turned  to  go  and  met  Atticus’s  vest  front.  I
buried my head in it and listened to the small internal noises that went on behind
the light blue cloth: his watch ticking, the faint crackle of his starched shirt, the
soft sound of his breathing.
“Your stomach’s growling,” I said.
“I know it,” he said.
“You better take some soda.”
“I will,” he said.
“Atticus, is all this behavin‘ an’ stuff gonna make things different? I mean are
you—?”
I felt his hand on the back of my head. “Don’t you worry about anything,” he
said. “It’s not time to worry.” When I heard that, I knew he had come back to us.
The  blood  in  my  legs  began  to  flow  again,  and  I  raised  my  head.  “You  really
want us to do all that? I can’t remember everything Finches are supposed to do .
. .”
“I don’t want you to remember it. Forget it.”
He  went  to  the  door  and  out  of  the  room,  shutting  the  door  behind  him.  He
nearly slammed it, but caught himself at the last minute and closed it softly. As
Jem  and  I  stared,  the  door  opened  again  and  Atticus  peered  around.  His
eyebrows  were  raised,  his  glasses  had  slipped.  “Get  more  like  Cousin  Joshua
every  day,  don’t  I?  Do  you  think  I’ll  end  up  costing  the  family  five  hundred
dollars?”
I know now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a
woman to do that kind of work.

---

14
A
lthough we heard no more about the Finch family from Aunt Alexandra, we
heard  plenty  from  the  town.  On  Saturdays,  armed  with  our  nickels,  when  Jem
permitted me to accompany him (he was now positively allergic to my presence
when  in  public),  we  would  squirm  our  way  through  sweating  sidewalk  crowds
and  sometimes  hear,  “There’s  his  chillun,”  or,  “Yonder’s  some  Finches.”
Turning  to  face  our  accusers,  we  would  see  only  a  couple  of  farmers  studying
the enema bags in the Mayco Drugstore window. Or two dumpy countrywomen
in straw hats sitting in a Hoover cart.
“They  c’n  go  loose  and  rape  up  the  countryside  for  all  of  ‘em  who  run  this
county  care,”  was  one  obscure  observation  we  met  head  on  from  a  skinny
gentleman when he passed us. Which reminded me that I had a question to ask
Atticus.
“What’s rape?” I asked him that night.
Atticus  looked  around  from  behind  his  paper.  He  was  in  his  chair  by  the
window. As we grew older, Jem and I thought it generous to allow Atticus thirty
minutes to himself after supper.
He  sighed,  and  said  rape  was  carnal  knowledge  of  a  female  by  force  and
without consent.
“Well if that’s all it is why did Calpurnia dry me up when I asked her what it
was?”
Atticus looked pensive. “What’s that again?”
“Well,  I  asked  Calpurnia  comin‘  from  church  that  day  what  it  was  and  she
said ask you but I forgot to and now I’m askin’ you.”
His paper was now in his lap. “Again, please,” he said.
I told him in detail about our trip to church with Calpurnia. Atticus seemed to
enjoy  it,  but  Aunt  Alexandra,  who  was  sitting  in  a  corner  quietly  sewing,  put
down her embroidery and stared at us.
“You all were coming back from Calpurnia’s church that Sunday?”
Jem said, “Yessum, she took us.”

---

I remembered something. “Yessum, and she promised me I could come out to
her house some afternoon. Atticus. I’ll go next Sunday if it’s all right, can I? Cal
said she’d come get me if you were off in the car.”
“You may not.”
Aunt Alexandra said it. I wheeled around, startled, then turned back to Atticus
in time to catch his swift glance at her, but it was too late. I said, “I didn’t ask
you!”
For a big man, Atticus could get up and down from a chair faster than anyone
I ever knew. He was on his feet. “Apologize to your aunt,” he said.
“I didn’t ask her, I asked you—”
Atticus turned his head and pinned me to the wall with his good eye. His voice
was deadly: “First, apologize to your aunt.”
“I’m sorry, Aunty,” I muttered.
“Now then,” he said. “Let’s get this clear: you do as Calpurnia tells you, you
do as I tell you, and as long as your aunt’s in this house, you will do as she tells
you. Understand?”
I understood, pondered a while, and concluded that the only way I could retire
with a shred of dignity was to go to the bathroom, where I stayed long enough to
make  them  think  I  had  to  go.  Returning,  I  lingered  in  the  hall  to  hear  a  fierce
discussion going on in the livingroom. Through the door I could see Jem on the
sofa with a football magazine in front of his face, his head turning as if its pages
contained a live tennis match.
“. . . you’ve got to do something about her,” Aunty was saying. “You’ve let
things go on too long, Atticus, too long.”
“I don’t see any harm in letting her go out there. Cal’d look after her there as
well as she does here.”
Who  was  the  “her”  they  were  talking  about?  My  heart  sank:  me.  I  felt  the
starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me, and for the second
time in my life I thought of running away. Immediately.
“Atticus, it’s all right to be soft-hearted, you’re an easy man, but you have a
daughter to think of. A daughter who’s growing up.”
“That’s what I am thinking of.”
“And  don’t  try  to  get  around  it.  You’ve  got  to  face  it  sooner  or  later  and  it
might as well be tonight. We don’t need her now.”
Atticus’s voice was even: “Alexandra, Calpurnia’s not leaving this house until

---

she wants to. You may think otherwise, but I couldn’t have got along without her
all these years. She’s a faithful member of this family and you’ll simply have to
accept  things  the  way  they  are.  Besides,  sister,  I  don’t  want  you  working  your
head off for us—you’ve no reason to do that. We still need Cal as much as we
ever did.”
“But Atticus—”
“Besides,  I  don’t  think  the  children’ve  suffered  one  bit  from  her  having
brought  them  up.  If  anything,  she’s  been  harder  on  them  in  some  ways  than  a
mother would have been . . . she’s never let them get away with anything, she’s
never indulged them the way most colored nurses do. She tried to bring them up
according to her lights, and Cal’s lights are pretty good—and another thing, the
children love her.”
I breathed again. It wasn’t me, it was only Calpurnia they were talking about.
Revived,  I  entered  the  livingroom.  Atticus  had  retreated  behind  his  newspaper
and Aunt Alexandra was worrying her embroidery. Punk, punk, punk, her needle
broke the taut circle. She stopped, and pulled the cloth tighter: punk-punk-punk.
She was furious.
Jem got up and padded across the rug. He motioned me to follow. He led me
to his room and closed the door. His face was grave.
“They’ve been fussing, Scout.”
Jem  and  I  fussed  a  great  deal  these  days,  but  I  had  never  heard  of  or  seen
anyone quarrel with Atticus. It was not a comfortable sight.
“Scout, try not to antagonize Aunty, hear?”
Atticus’s  remarks  were  still  rankling,  which  made  me  miss  the  request  in
Jem’s question. My feathers rose again. “You tryin‘ to tell me what to do?”
“Naw, it’s—he’s got a lot on his mind now, without us worrying him.”
“Like what?” Atticus didn’t appear to have anything especially on his mind.
“It’s this Tom Robinson case that’s worryin‘ him to death—”
I said Atticus didn’t worry about anything. Besides, the case never bothered us
except about once a week and then it didn’t last.
“That’s  because  you  can’t  hold  something  in  your  mind  but  a  little  while,”
said Jem. “It’s different with grown folks, we—”
His  maddening  superiority  was  unbearable  these  days.  He  didn’t  want  to  do
anything  but  read  and  go  off  by  himself.  Still,  everything  he  read  he  passed
along  to  me,  but  with  this  difference:  formerly,  because  he  thought  I’d  like  it;

---

now, for my edification and instruction.
“Jee crawling hova, Jem! Who do you think you are?”
“Now I mean it, Scout, you antagonize Aunty and I’ll—I’ll spank you.”
With that, I was gone. “You damn morphodite, I’ll kill you!” He was sitting
on the bed, and it was easy to grab his front hair and land one on his mouth. He
slapped me and I tried another left, but a punch in the stomach sent me sprawling
on the floor. It nearly knocked the breath out of me, but it didn’t matter because I
knew he was fighting, he was fighting me back. We were still equals.
“Ain’t so high and mighty now, are you!” I screamed, sailing in again. He was
still on the bed and I couldn’t get a firm stance, so I threw myself at him as hard
as  I  could,  hitting,  pulling,  pinching,  gouging.  What  had  begun  as  a  fist-fight
became a brawl. We were still struggling when Atticus separated us.
“That’s all,” he said. “Both of you go to bed right now.”
“Taah!” I said at Jem. He was being sent to bed at my bedtime.
“Who started it?” asked Atticus, in resignation.
“Jem did. He was tryin‘ to tell me what to do. I don’t have to mind him now,
do I?”
Atticus  smiled.  “Let’s  leave  it  at  this:  you  mind  Jem  whenever  he  can  make
you. Fair enough?”
Aunt Alexandra was present but silent, and when she went down the hall with
Atticus we heard her say, “. . . just one of the things I’ve been telling you about,”
a phrase that united us again.
Ours were adjoining rooms; as I shut the door between them Jem said, “Night,
Scout.”
“Night,” I murmured, picking my way across the room to turn on the light. As
I  passed  the  bed  I  stepped  on  something  warm,  resilient,  and  rather  smooth.  It
was  not  quite  like  hard  rubber,  and  I  had  the  sensation  that  it  was  alive.  I  also
heard it move.
I  switched  on  the  light  and  looked  at  the  floor  by  the  bed.  Whatever  I  had
stepped on was gone. I tapped on Jem’s door.
“What,” he said.
“How does a snake feel?”
“Sort of rough. Cold. Dusty. Why?”
“I think there’s one under my bed. Can you come look?”

---

“Are you bein‘ funny?” Jem opened the door. He was in his pajama bottoms. I
noticed  not  without  satisfaction  that  the  mark  of  my  knuckles  was  still  on  his
mouth. When he saw I meant what I said, he said, “If you think I’m gonna put
my face down to a snake you’ve got another think comin’. Hold on a minute.”
He went to the kitchen and fetched the broom. “You better get up on the bed,”
he said.
“You reckon it’s really one?” I asked. This was an occasion. Our houses had
no cellars; they were built on stone blocks a few feet above the ground, and the
entry  of  reptiles  was  not  unknown  but  was  not  commonplace.  Miss  Rachel
Haverford’s excuse for a glass of neat whiskey every morning was that she never
got  over  the  fright  of  finding  a  rattler  coiled  in  her  bedroom  closet,  on  her
washing, when she went to hang up her negligee.
Jem  made  a  tentative  swipe  under  the  bed.  I  looked  over  the  foot  to  see  if  a
snake would come out. None did. Jem made a deeper swipe.
“Do snakes grunt?”
“It ain’t a snake,” Jem said. “It’s somebody.”
Suddenly  a  filthy  brown  package  shot  from  under  the  bed.  Jem  raised  the
broom and missed Dill’s head by an inch when it appeared.
“God Almighty.” Jem’s voice was reverent.
We watched Dill emerge by degrees. He was a tight fit. He stood up and eased
his shoulders, turned his feet in their ankle sockets, rubbed the back of his neck.
His circulation restored, he said, “Hey.”
Jem petitioned God again. I was speechless.
“I’m ‘bout to perish,” said Dill. “Got anything to eat?”
In a dream, I went to the kitchen. I brought him back some milk and half a pan
of  corn  bread  left  over  from  supper.  Dill  devoured  it,  chewing  with  his  front
teeth, as was his custom.
I finally found my voice. “How’d you get here?”
By  an  involved  route.  Refreshed  by  food,  Dill  recited  this  narrative:  having
been  bound  in  chains  and  left  to  die  in  the  basement  (there  were  basements  in
Meridian)  by  his  new  father,  who  disliked  him,  and  secretly  kept  alive  on  raw
field peas by a passing farmer who heard his cries for help (the good man poked
a bushel pod by pod through the ventilator), Dill worked himself free by pulling
the chains from the wall. Still in wrist manacles, he wandered two miles out of
Meridian  where  he  discovered  a  small  animal  show  and  was  immediately

---

engaged to wash the camel. He traveled with the show all over Mississippi until
his infallible sense of direction told him he was in Abbott County, Alabama, just
across the river from Maycomb. He walked the rest of the way.
“How’d you get here?” asked Jem.
He had taken thirteen dollars from his mother’s purse, caught the nine o’clock
from Meridian and got off at Maycomb Junction. He had walked ten or eleven of
the  fourteen  miles  to  Maycomb,  off  the  highway  in  the  scrub  bushes  lest  the
authorities be seeking him, and had ridden the remainder of the way clinging to
the backboard of a cotton wagon. He had been under the bed for two hours, he
thought;  he  had  heard  us  in  the  diningroom,  and  the  clink  of  forks  on  plates
nearly  drove  him  crazy.  He  thought  Jem  and  I  would  never  go  to  bed;  he  had
considered emerging and helping me beat Jem, as Jem had grown far taller, but
he knew Mr. Finch would break it up soon, so he thought it best to stay where he
was. He was worn out, dirty beyond belief, and home.
“They  must  not  know  you’re  here,”  said  Jem.  “We’d  know  if  they  were
lookin‘ for you . . .”
“Think they’re still searchin‘ all the picture shows in Meridian.” Dill grinned.
“You oughta let your mother know where you are,” said Jem. “You oughta let
her know you’re here . . .”
Dill’s  eyes  flickered  at  Jem,  and  Jem  looked  at  the  floor.  Then  he  rose  and
broke the remaining code of our childhood. He went out of the room and down
the hall. “Atticus,” his voice was distant, “can you come here a minute, sir?”
Beneath its sweat-streaked dirt Dill’s face went white. I felt sick. Atticus was
in the doorway.
He  came  to  the  middle  of  the  room  and  stood  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,
looking down at Dill.
I  finally  found  my  voice:  “It’s  okay,  Dill.  When  he  wants  you  to  know
somethin‘, he tells you.”
Dill  looked  at  me.  “I  mean  it’s  all  right,”  I  said.  “You  know  he  wouldn’t
bother you, you know you ain’t scared of Atticus.”
“I’m not scared . . .” Dill muttered.
“Just hungry, I’ll bet.” Atticus’s voice had its usual pleasant dryness. “Scout,
we can do better than a pan of cold corn bread, can’t we? You fill this fellow up
and when I get back we’ll see what we can see.”
“Mr. Finch, don’t tell Aunt Rachel, don’t make me go back, please sir! I’ll run

---

off again—!”
“Whoa, son,” said Atticus. “Nobody’s about to make you go anywhere but to
bed pretty soon. I’m just going over to tell Miss Rachel you’re here and ask her
if  you  could  spend  the  night  with  us—you’d  like  that,  wouldn’t  you?  And  for
goodness’ sake put some of the county back where it belongs, the soil erosion’s
bad enough as it is.”
Dill stared at my father’s retreating figure.
“He’s tryin‘ to be funny,” I said. “He means take a bath. See there, I told you
he wouldn’t bother you.”
Jem  was  standing  in  a  corner  of  the  room,  looking  like  the  traitor  he  was.
“Dill, I had to tell him,” he said. “You can’t run three hundred miles off without
your mother knowin‘.”
We left him without a word.
Dill  ate,  and  ate,  and  ate.  He  hadn’t  eaten  since  last  night.  He  used  all  his
money for a ticket, boarded the train as he had done many times, coolly chatted
with the conductor, to whom Dill was a familiar sight, but he had not the nerve
to invoke the rule on small children traveling a distance alone if you’ve lost your
money  the  conductor  will  lend  you  enough  for  dinner  and  your  father  will  pay
him back at the end of the line.
Dill  made  his  way  through  the  leftovers  and  was  reaching  for  a  can  of  pork
and beans in the pantry when Miss Rachel’s Do-oo Je-sus went off in the hall.
He shivered like a rabbit.
He bore with fortitude her Wait Till I Get You Home, Your Folks Are Out of
Their  Minds  Worryin‘,  was  quite  calm  during  That’s  All  the  Harris  in  You
Coming  Out,  smiled  at  her  Reckon  You  Can  Stay  One  Night,  and  returned  the
hug at long last bestowed upon him.
Atticus pushed up his glasses and rubbed his face.
“Your father’s tired,” said Aunt Alexandra, her first words in hours, it seemed.
She had been there, but I suppose struck dumb most of the time. “You children
get to bed now.”
We left them in the diningroom, Atticus still mopping his face. “From rape to
riot to runaways,” we heard him chuckle. “I wonder what the next two hours will
bring.”
Since things appeared to have worked out pretty well, Dill and I decided to be
civil  to  Jem.  Besides,  Dill  had  to  sleep  with  him  so  we  might  as  well  speak  to
him.

---

I  put  on  my  pajamas,  read  for  a  while  and  found  myself  suddenly  unable  to
keep my eyes open. Dill and Jem were quiet; when I turned off my reading lamp
there was no strip of light under the door to Jem’s room.
I  must  have  slept  a  long  time,  for  when  I  was  punched  awake  the  room  was
dim with the light of the setting moon.
“Move over, Scout.”
“He thought he had to,” I mumbled. “Don’t stay mad with him.”
Dill got in bed beside me. “I ain’t,” he said. “I just wanted to sleep with you.
Are you waked up?”
By this time I was, but lazily so. “Why’d you do it?”
No answer. “I said why’d you run off? Was he really hateful like you said?”
“Naw . . .”
“Didn’t you all build that boat like you wrote you were gonna?”
“He just said we would. We never did.”
I raised up on my elbow, facing Dill’s outline. “It’s no reason to run off. They
don’t get around to doin‘ what they say they’re gonna do half the time . . .”
“That wasn’t it, he—they just wasn’t interested in me.”
This was the weirdest reason for flight I had ever heard. “How come?”
“Well, they stayed gone all the time, and when they were home, even, they’d
get off in a room by themselves.”
“What’d they do in there?”
“Nothin‘, just sittin’ and readin‘—but they didn’t want me with ’em.”
I pushed the pillow to the headboard and sat up. “You know something? I was
fixin‘ to run off tonight because there they all were. You don’t want ’em around
you all the time, Dill—”
Dill breathed his patient breath, a half-sigh.
“—good night, Atticus’s gone all day and sometimes half the night and off in
the legislature and I don’t know what—you don’t want ‘em around all the time,
Dill, you couldn’t do anything if they were.”
“That’s not it.”
As Dill explained, I found myself wondering what life would be if Jem were
different,  even  from  what  he  was  now;  what  I  would  do  if  Atticus  did  not  feel
the necessity of my presence, help and advice. Why, he couldn’t get along a day

---

without me. Even Calpurnia couldn’t get along unless I was there. They needed
me.
“Dill,  you  ain’t  telling  me  right—your  folks  couldn’t  do  without  you.  They
must be just mean to you. Tell you what to do about that—”
Dill’s voice went on steadily in the darkness: “The thing is, what I’m tryin‘ to
say is—they do get on a lot better without me, I can’t help them any. They ain’t
mean.  They  buy  me  everything  I  want,  but  it’s  now—you’ve-got-it-go-play-
with-it. You’ve got a roomful of things. I-got-you-that-book-so-go-read-it.” Dill
tried to deepen his voice. “You’re not a boy. Boys get out and play baseball with
other boys, they don’t hang around the house worryin’ their folks.”
Dill’s voice was his own again: “Oh, they ain’t mean. They kiss you and hug
you  good  night  and  good  mornin‘  and  good-bye  and  tell  you  they  love  you—
Scout, let’s get us a baby.”
“Where?”
There was a man Dill had heard of who had a boat that he rowed across to a
foggy island where all these babies were; you could order one—
“That’s  a  lie.  Aunty  said  God  drops  ‘em  down  the  chimney.  At  least  that’s
what I think she said.” For once, Aunty’s diction had not been too clear.
“Well that ain’t so. You get babies from each other. But there’s this man, too
—he has all these babies just waitin‘ to wake up, he breathes life into ’em . . .”
Dill  was  off  again.  Beautiful  things  floated  around  in  his  dreamy  head.  He
could  read  two  books  to  my  one,  but  he  preferred  the  magic  of  his  own
inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his
own  twilight  world,  a  world  where  babies  slept,  waiting  to  be  gathered  like
morning lilies. He was slowly talking himself to sleep and taking me with him,
but  in  the  quietness  of  his  foggy  island  there  rose  the  faded  image  of  a  gray
house with sad brown doors.
“Dill?”
“Mm?”
“Why do you reckon Boo Radley’s never run off?”
Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me.
“Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run off to . . .”

---

15
A
fter  many  telephone  calls,  much  pleading  on  behalf  of  the  defendant,  and  a
long forgiving letter from his mother, it was decided that Dill could stay. We had
a week of peace together. After that, little, it seemed. A nightmare was upon us.
It began one evening after supper. Dill was over; Aunt Alexandra was in her
chair  in  the  corner,  Atticus  was  in  his;  Jem  and  I  were  on  the  floor  reading.  It
had been a placid week: I had minded Aunty; Jem had outgrown the treehouse,
but  helped  Dill  and  me  construct  a  new  rope  ladder  for  it;  Dill  had  hit  upon  a
foolproof  plan  to  make  Boo  Radley  come  out  at  no  cost  to  ourselves  (place  a
trail of lemon drops from the back door to the front yard and he’d follow it, like
an  ant).  There  was  a  knock  on  the  front  door,  Jem  answered  it  and  said  it  was
Mr. Heck Tate.
“Well, ask him to come in,” said Atticus.
“I already did. There’s some men outside in the yard, they want you to come
out.”
In Maycomb, grown men stood outside in the front yard for only two reasons:
death and politics. I wondered who had died. Jem and I went to the front door,
but Atticus called, “Go back in the house.”
Jem turned out the livingroom lights and pressed his nose to a window screen.
Aunt Alexandra protested. “Just for a second, Aunty, let’s see who it is,” he said.
Dill and I took another window. A crowd of men was standing around Atticus.
They all seemed to be talking at once.
“. . . movin‘ him to the county jail tomorrow,” Mr. Tate was saying, “I don’t
look for any trouble, but I can’t guarantee there won’t be any . . .”
“Don’t be foolish, Heck,” Atticus said. “This is Maycomb.”
“. . . said I was just uneasy.”
“Heck, we’ve gotten one postponement of this case just to make sure there’s
nothing to be uneasy about. This is Saturday,” Atticus said. “Trial’ll probably be
Monday.  You  can  keep  him  one  night,  can’t  you?  I  don’t  think  anybody  in
Maycomb’ll begrudge me a client, with times this hard.”
There  was  a  murmur  of  glee  that  died  suddenly  when  Mr.  Link  Deas  said,

---

“Nobody  around  here’s  up  to  anything,  it’s  that  Old  Sarum  bunch  I’m  worried
about . . . can’t you get a—what is it, Heck?”
“Change of venue,” said Mr. Tate. “Not much point in that, now is it?”
Atticus said something inaudible. I turned to Jem, who waved me to silence.
“—besides,” Atticus was saying, “you’re not scared of that crowd, are you?”
“. . . know how they do when they get shinnied up.”
“They don’t usually drink on Sunday, they go to church most of the day . . .”
Atticus said.
“This is a special occasion, though . . .” someone said.
They  murmured  and  buzzed  until  Aunty  said  if  Jem  didn’t  turn  on  the
livingroom lights he would disgrace the family. Jem didn’t hear her.
“—don’t see why you touched it in the first place,” Mr. Link Deas was saying.
“You’ve got everything to lose from this, Atticus. I mean everything.”
“Do you really think so?”
This  was  Atticus’s  dangerous  question.  “Do  you  really  think  you  want  to
move there, Scout?” Bam, bam, bam, and the checkerboard was swept clean of
my men. “Do you really think that, son? Then read this.” Jem would struggle the
rest of an evening through the speeches of Henry W. Grady.
“Link, that boy might go to the chair, but he’s not going till the truth’s told.”
Atticus’s voice was even. “And you know what the truth is.”
There  was  a  murmur  among  the  group  of  men,  made  more  ominous  when
Atticus moved back to the bottom front step and the men drew nearer to him.
Suddenly Jem screamed, “Atticus, the telephone’s ringing!”
The  men  jumped  a  little  and  scattered;  they  were  people  we  saw  every  day:
merchants, in-town farmers; Dr. Reynolds was there; so was Mr. Avery.
“Well, answer it, son,” called Atticus.
Laughter broke them up. When Atticus switched on the overhead light in the
livingroom  he  found  Jem  at  the  window,  pale  except  for  the  vivid  mark  of  the
screen on his nose.
“Why on earth are you all sitting in the dark?” he asked.
Jem watched him go to his chair and pick up the evening paper. I sometimes
think Atticus subjected every crisis of his life to tranquil evaluation behind The
Mobile Register, The Birmingham News and The Montgomery Advertiser.
“They were after you, weren’t they?” Jem went to him. “They wanted to get

---

you, didn’t they?”
Atticus lowered the paper and gazed at Jem. “What have you been reading?”
he asked. Then he said gently, “No son, those were our friends.”
“It wasn’t a—a gang?” Jem was looking from the corners of his eyes.
Atticus tried to stifle a smile but didn’t make it. “No, we don’t have mobs and
that nonsense in Maycomb. I’ve never heard of a gang in Maycomb.”
“Ku Klux got after some Catholics one time.”
“Never  heard  of  any  Catholics  in  Maycomb  either,”  said  Atticus,  “you’re
confusing that with something else. Way back about nineteen-twenty there was a
Klan,  but  it  was  a  political  organization  more  than  anything.  Besides,  they
couldn’t  find  anybody  to  scare.  They  paraded  by  Mr.  Sam  Levy’s  house  one
night, but Sam just stood on his porch and told ‘em things had come to a pretty
pass, he’d sold ’em the very sheets on their backs. Sam made ‘em so ashamed of
themselves they went away.”
The Levy family met all criteria for being Fine Folks: they did the best they
could  with  the  sense  they  had,  and  they  had  been  living  on  the  same  plot  of
ground in Maycomb for five generations.
“The Ku Klux’s gone,” said Atticus. “It’ll never come back.”
I  walked  home  with  Dill  and  returned  in  time  to  overhear  Atticus  saying  to
Aunty, “. . . in favor of Southern womanhood as much as anybody, but not for
preserving  polite  fiction  at  the  expense  of  human  life,”  a  pronouncement  that
made me suspect they had been fussing again.
I sought Jem and found him in his room, on the bed deep in thought. “Have
they been at it?” I asked.
“Sort  of.  She  won’t  let  him  alone  about  Tom  Robinson.  She  almost  said
Atticus was disgracin‘ the family. Scout . . . I’m scared.”
“Scared’a what?”
“Scared  about  Atticus.  Somebody  might  hurt  him.”  Jem  preferred  to  remain
mysterious; all he would say to my questions was go on and leave him alone.
Next  day  was  Sunday.  In  the  interval  between  Sunday  School  and  Church
when the congregation stretched its legs, I saw Atticus standing in the yard with
another knot of men. Mr. Heck Tate was present, and I wondered if he had seen
the  light.  He  never  went  to  church.  Even  Mr.  Underwood  was  there.  Mr.
Underwood  had  no  use  for  any  organization  but  The  Maycomb  Tribune,  of
which  he  was  the  sole  owner,  editor,  and  printer.  His  days  were  spent  at  his

---

linotype,  where  he  refreshed  himself  occasionally  from  an  ever-present  gallon
jug  of  cherry  wine.  He  rarely  gathered  news;  people  brought  it  to  him.  It  was
said that he made up every edition of The Maycomb Tribune out of his own head
and  wrote  it  down  on  the  linotype.  This  was  believable.  Something  must  have
been up to haul Mr. Underwood out.
I  caught  Atticus  coming  in  the  door,  and  he  said  that  they’d  moved  Tom
Robinson to the Maycomb jail. He also said, more to himself than to me, that if
they’d  kept  him  there  in  the  first  place  there  wouldn’t  have  been  any  fuss.  I
watched  him  take  his  seat  on  the  third  row  from  the  front,  and  I  heard  him
rumble, “Nearer my God to thee,” some notes behind the rest of us. He never sat
with Aunty, Jem and me. He liked to be by himself in church.
The fake peace that prevailed on Sundays was made more irritating by Aunt
Alexandra’s  presence.  Atticus  would  flee  to  his  office  directly  after  dinner,
where if we sometimes looked in on him, we would find him sitting back in his
swivel chair reading. Aunt Alexandra composed herself for a two-hour nap and
dared us to make any noise in the yard, the neighborhood was resting. Jem in his
old age had taken to his room with a stack of football magazines. So Dill and I
spent our Sundays creeping around in Deer’s Pasture.
Shooting  on  Sundays  was  prohibited,  so  Dill  and  I  kicked  Jem’s  football
around the pasture for a while, which was no fun. Dill asked if I’d like to have a
poke at Boo Radley. I said I didn’t think it’d be nice to bother him, and spent the
rest of the afternoon filling Dill in on last winter’s events. He was considerably
impressed.
We parted at suppertime, and after our meal Jem and I were settling down to a
routine evening, when Atticus did something that interested us: he came into the
livingroom carrying a long electrical extension cord. There was a light bulb on
the end.
“I’m  going  out  for  a  while,”  he  said.  “You  folks’ll  be  in  bed  when  I  come
back, so I’ll say good night now.”
With that, he put his hat on and went out the back door.
“He’s takin‘ the car,” said Jem.
Our father had a few peculiarities: one was, he never ate desserts; another was
that  he  liked  to  walk.  As  far  back  as  I  could  remember,  there  was  always  a
Chevrolet in excellent condition in the carhouse, and Atticus put many miles on
it in business trips, but in Maycomb he walked to and from his office four times
a  day,  covering  about  two  miles.  He  said  his  only  exercise  was  walking.  In
Maycomb,  if  one  went  for  a  walk  with  no  definite  purpose  in  mind,  it  was

---

correct to believe one’s mind incapable of definite purpose.
Later  on,  I  bade  my  aunt  and  brother  good  night  and  was  well  into  a  book
when  I  heard  Jem  rattling  around  in  his  room.  His  go-to-bed  noises  were  so
familiar to me that I knocked on his door: “Why ain’t you going to bed?”
“I’m goin‘ downtown for a while.” He was changing his pants.
“Why? It’s almost ten o’clock, Jem.”
He knew it, but he was going anyway.
“Then I’m goin‘ with you. If you say no you’re not, I’m goin’ anyway, hear?”
Jem saw that he would have to fight me to keep me home, and I suppose he
thought a fight would antagonize Aunty, so he gave in with little grace.
I  dressed  quickly.  We  waited  until  Aunty’s  light  went  out,  and  we  walked
quietly down the back steps. There was no moon tonight.
“Dill’ll wanta come,” I whispered.
“So he will,” said Jem gloomily.
We  leaped  over  the  driveway  wall,  cut  through  Miss  Rachel’s  side  yard  and
went  to  Dill’s  window.  Jem  whistled  bob-white.  Dill’s  face  appeared  at  the
screen, disappeared, and five minutes later he unhooked the screen and crawled
out.  An  old  campaigner,  he  did  not  speak  until  we  were  on  the  sidewalk.
“What’s up?”
“Jem’s  got  the  look-arounds,”  an  affliction  Calpurnia  said  all  boys  caught  at
his age.
“I’ve just got this feeling,” Jem said, “just this feeling.”
We  went  by  Mrs.  Dubose’s  house,  standing  empty  and  shuttered,  her
camellias grown up in weeds and johnson grass. There were eight more houses
to the post office corner.
The  south  side  of  the  square  was  deserted.  Giant  monkey-puzzle  bushes
bristled on each corner, and between them an iron hitching rail glistened under
the  street  lights.  A  light  shone  in  the  county  toilet,  otherwise  that  side  of  the
courthouse  was  dark.  A  larger  square  of  stores  surrounded  the  courthouse
square; dim lights burned from deep within them.
Atticus’s  office  was  in  the  courthouse  when  he  began  his  law  practice,  but
after  several  years  of  it  he  moved  to  quieter  quarters  in  the  Maycomb  Bank
building. When we rounded the corner of the square, we saw the car parked in
front of the bank. “He’s in there,” said Jem.

---

But he wasn’t. His office was reached by a long hallway. Looking down the
hall, we should have seen Atticus Finch, Attorney-at-Law in small sober letters
against the light from behind his door. It was dark.
Jem peered in the bank door to make sure. He turned the knob. The door was
locked. “Let’s go up the street. Maybe he’s visitin‘ Mr. Underwood.”
Mr. Underwood not only ran The Maycomb Tribune office, he lived in it. That
is, above it. He covered the courthouse and jailhouse news simply by looking out
his  upstairs  window.  The  office  building  was  on  the  northwest  corner  of  the
square, and to reach it we had to pass the jail.
The  Maycomb  jail  was  the  most  venerable  and  hideous  of  the  county’s
buildings. Atticus said it was like something Cousin Joshua St. Clair might have
designed.  It  was  certainly  someone’s  dream.  Starkly  out  of  place  in  a  town  of
square-faced stores and steep-roofed houses, the Maycomb jail was a miniature
Gothic joke one cell wide and two cells high, complete with tiny battlements and
flying buttresses. Its fantasy was heightened by its red brick facade and the thick
steel  bars  at  its  ecclesiastical  windows.  It  stood  on  no  lonely  hill,  but  was
wedged  between  Tyndal’s  Hardware  Store  and  The  Maycomb  Tribune  office.
The  jail  was  Maycomb’s  only  conversation  piece:  its  detractors  said  it  looked
like  a  Victorian  privy;  its  supporters  said  it  gave  the  town  a  good  solid
respectable look, and no stranger would ever suspect that it was full of niggers.
As we walked up the sidewalk, we saw a solitary light burning in the distance.
“That’s funny,” said Jem, “jail doesn’t have an outside light.”
“Looks like it’s over the door,” said Dill.
A  long  extension  cord  ran  between  the  bars  of  a  second-floor  window  and
down the side of the building. In the light from its bare bulb, Atticus was sitting
propped against the front door. He was sitting in one of his office chairs, and he
was reading, oblivious of the nightbugs dancing over his head.
I made to run, but Jem caught me. “Don’t go to him,” he said, “he might not
like it. He’s all right, let’s go home. I just wanted to see where he was.”
We  were  taking  a  short  cut  across  the  square  when  four  dusty  cars  came  in
from  the  Meridian  highway,  moving  slowly  in  a  line.  They  went  around  the
square, passed the bank building, and stopped in front of the jail.
Nobody  got  out.  We  saw  Atticus  look  up  from  his  newspaper.  He  closed  it,
folded it deliberately, dropped it in his lap, and pushed his hat to the back of his
head. He seemed to be expecting them.
“Come on,” whispered Jem. We streaked across the square, across the street,

---

until  we  were  in  the  shelter  of  the  Jitney  Jungle  door.  Jem  peeked  up  the
sidewalk.  “We  can  get  closer,”  he  said.  We  ran  to  Tyndal’s  Hardware  door—
near enough, at the same time discreet.
In  ones  and  twos,  men  got  out  of  the  cars.  Shadows  became  substance  as
lights revealed solid shapes moving toward the jail door. Atticus remained where
he was. The men hid him from view.
“He in there, Mr. Finch?” a man said.
“He is,” we heard Atticus answer, “and he’s asleep. Don’t wake him up.”
In  obedience  to  my  father,  there  followed  what  I  later  realized  was  a
sickeningly  comic  aspect  of  an  unfunny  situation:  the  men  talked  in  near-
whispers.
“You know what we want,” another man said. “Get aside from the door, Mr.
Finch.”
“You  can  turn  around  and  go  home  again,  Walter,”  Atticus  said  pleasantly.
“Heck Tate’s around somewhere.”
“The hell he is,” said another man. “Heck’s bunch’s so deep in the woods they
won’t get out till mornin‘.”
“Indeed? Why so?”
“Called ‘em off on a snipe hunt,” was the succinct answer. “Didn’t you think
a’that, Mr. Finch?”
“Thought about it, but didn’t believe it. Well then,” my father’s voice was still
the same, “that changes things, doesn’t it?”
“It do,” another deep voice said. Its owner was a shadow.
“Do you really think so?”
This was the second time I heard Atticus ask that question in two days, and it
meant  somebody’s  man  would  get  jumped.  This  was  too  good  to  miss.  I  broke
away from Jem and ran as fast as I could to Atticus.
Jem shrieked and tried to catch me, but I had a lead on him and Dill. I pushed
my way through dark smelly bodies and burst into the circle of light.
“H-ey, Atticus!”
I thought he would have a fine surprise, but his face killed my joy. A flash of
plain  fear  was  going  out  of  his  eyes,  but  returned  when  Dill  and  Jem  wriggled
into the light.
There  was  a  smell  of  stale  whiskey  and  pigpen  about,  and  when  I  glanced

---

around  I  discovered  that  these  men  were  strangers.  They  were  not  the  people  I
saw  last  night.  Hot  embarrassment  shot  through  me:  I  had  leaped  triumphantly
into a ring of people I had never seen before.
Atticus got up from his chair, but he was moving slowly, like an old man. He
put  the  newspaper  down  very  carefully,  adjusting  its  creases  with  lingering
fingers. They were trembling a little.
“Go home, Jem,” he said. “Take Scout and Dill home.”
We  were  accustomed  to  prompt,  if  not  always  cheerful  acquiescence  to
Atticus’s  instructions,  but  from  the  way  he  stood  Jem  was  not  thinking  of
budging.
“Go home, I said.”
Jem shook his head. As Atticus’s fists went to his hips, so did Jem’s, and as
they  faced  each  other  I  could  see  little  resemblance  between  them:  Jem’s  soft
brown  hair  and  eyes,  his  oval  face  and  snug-fitting  ears  were  our  mother’s,
contrasting oddly with Atticus’s graying black hair and square-cut features, but
they were somehow alike. Mutual defiance made them alike.
“Son, I said go home.”
Jem shook his head.
“I’ll  send  him  home,”  a  burly  man  said,  and  grabbed  Jem  roughly  by  the
collar. He yanked Jem nearly off his feet.
“Don’t you touch him!” I kicked the man swiftly. Barefooted, I was surprised
to see him fall back in real pain. I intended to kick his shin, but aimed too high.
“That’ll  do,  Scout.”  Atticus  put  his  hand  on  my  shoulder.  “Don’t  kick  folks.
No—” he said, as I was pleading justification.
“Ain’t nobody gonna do Jem that way,” I said.
“All right, Mr. Finch, get ‘em outa here,” someone growled. “You got fifteen
seconds to get ’em outa here.”
In the midst of this strange assembly, Atticus stood trying to make Jem mind
him.  “I  ain’t  going,”  was  his  steady  answer  to  Atticus’s  threats,  requests,  and
finally, “Please Jem, take them home.”
I was getting a bit tired of that, but felt Jem had his own reasons for doing as
he did, in view of his prospects once Atticus did get him home. I looked around
the crowd. It was a summer’s night, but the men were dressed, most of them, in
overalls and denim shirts buttoned up to the collars. I thought they must be cold-
natured, as their sleeves were unrolled and buttoned at the cuffs. Some wore hats

---

pulled firmly down over their ears. They were sullen-looking, sleepy-eyed men
who seemed unused to late hours. I sought once more for a familiar face, and at
the center of the semi-circle I found one.
“Hey, Mr. Cunningham.”
The man did not hear me, it seemed.
“Hey, Mr. Cunningham. How’s your entailment gettin‘ along?”
Mr.  Walter  Cunningham’s  legal  affairs  were  well  known  to  me;  Atticus  had
once  described  them  at  length.  The  big  man  blinked  and  hooked  his  thumbs  in
his  overall  straps.  He  seemed  uncomfortable;  he  cleared  his  throat  and  looked
away. My friendly overture had fallen flat.
Mr.  Cunningham  wore  no  hat,  and  the  top  half  of  his  forehead  was  white  in
contrast to his sunscorched face, which led me to believe that he wore one most
days. He shifted his feet, clad in heavy work shoes.
“Don’t  you  remember  me,  Mr.  Cunningham?  I’m  Jean  Louise  Finch.  You
brought us some hickory nuts one time, remember?” I began to sense the futility
one feels when unacknowledged by a chance acquaintance.
“I go to school with Walter,” I began again. “He’s your boy, ain’t he?  Ain’t
he, sir?”
Mr. Cunningham was moved to a faint nod. He did know me, after all.
“He’s  in  my  grade,”  I  said,  “and  he  does  right  well.  He’s  a  good  boy,”  I
added,  “a  real  nice  boy.  We  brought  him  home  for  dinner  one  time.  Maybe  he
told you about me, I beat him up one time but he was real nice about it. Tell him
hey for me, won’t you?”
Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were
interested in, not about what you were interested in. Mr. Cunningham displayed
no interest in his son, so I tackled his entailment once more in a last-ditch effort
to make him feel at home.
“Entailments  are  bad,”  I  was  advising  him,  when  I  slowly  awoke  to  the  fact
that  I  was  addressing  the  entire  aggregation.  The  men  were  all  looking  at  me,
some had their mouths half-open. Atticus had stopped poking at Jem: they were
standing together beside Dill. Their attention amounted to fascination. Atticus’s
mouth, even, was half-open, an attitude he had once described as uncouth. Our
eyes met and he shut it.
“Well, Atticus, I was just sayin‘ to Mr. Cunningham that entailments are bad
an’ all that, but you said not to worry, it takes a long time sometimes . . . that you
all’d ride it out together . . .” I was slowly drying up, wondering what idiocy I

---

had committed. Entailments seemed all right enough for livingroom talk.
I began to feel sweat gathering at the edges of my hair; I could stand anything
but a bunch of people looking at me. They were quite still.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
Atticus said nothing. I looked around and up at Mr. Cunningham, whose face
was equally impassive. Then he did a peculiar thing. He squatted down and took
me by both shoulders.
“I’ll tell him you said hey, little lady,” he said.
Then  he  straightened  up  and  waved  a  big  paw.  “Let’s  clear  out,”  he  called.
“Let’s get going, boys.”
As they had come, in ones and twos the men shuffled back to their ramshackle
cars. Doors slammed, engines coughed, and they were gone.
I turned to Atticus, but Atticus had gone to the jail and was leaning against it
with his face to the wall. I went to him and pulled his sleeve. “Can we go home
now?”  He  nodded,  produced  his  handkerchief,  gave  his  face  a  going-over  and
blew his nose violently.
“Mr. Finch?”
A soft husky voice came from the darkness above: “They gone?”
Atticus  stepped  back  and  looked  up.  “They’ve  gone,”  he  said.  “Get  some
sleep, Tom. They won’t bother you any more.”
From  a  different  direction,  another  voice  cut  crisply  through  the  night:
“You’re damn tootin‘ they won’t. Had you covered all the time, Atticus.”
Mr. Underwood and a double-barreled shotgun were leaning out his window
above The Maycomb Tribune office.
It  was  long  past  my  bedtime  and  I  was  growing  quite  tired;  it  seemed  that
Atticus and Mr. Underwood would talk for the rest of the night, Mr. Underwood
out the window and Atticus up at him. Finally Atticus returned, switched off the
light above the jail door, and picked up his chair.
“Can  I  carry  it  for  you,  Mr.  Finch?”  asked  Dill.  He  had  not  said  a  word  the
whole time.
“Why, thank you, son.”
Walking  toward  the  office,  Dill  and  I  fell  into  step  behind  Atticus  and  Jem.
Dill  was  encumbered  by  the  chair,  and  his  pace  was  slower.  Atticus  and  Jem
were  well  ahead  of  us,  and  I  assumed  that  Atticus  was  giving  him  hell  for  not

---

going home, but I was wrong. As they passed under a streetlight, Atticus reached
out and massaged Jem’s hair, his one gesture of affection.

---

16
J
em  heard  me.  He  thrust  his  head  around  the  connecting  door.  As  he  came  to
my bed Atticus’s light flashed on. We stayed where we were until it went off; we
heard him turn over, and we waited until he was still again.
Jem took me to his room and put me in bed beside him. “Try to go to sleep,”
he said, “It’ll be all over after tomorrow, maybe.”
We had come in quietly, so as not to wake Aunty. Atticus killed the engine in
the driveway and coasted to the carhouse; we went in the back door and to our
rooms  without  a  word.  I  was  very  tired,  and  was  drifting  into  sleep  when  the
memory  of  Atticus  calmly  folding  his  newspaper  and  pushing  back  his  hat
became Atticus standing in the middle of an empty waiting street, pushing up his
glasses.  The  full  meaning  of  the  night’s  events  hit  me  and  I  began  crying.  Jem
was awfully nice about it: for once he didn’t remind me that people nearly nine
years old didn’t do things like that.
Everybody’s appetite was delicate this morning, except Jem’s: he ate his way
through three eggs. Atticus watched in frank admiration; Aunt Alexandra sipped
coffee  and  radiated  waves  of  disapproval.  Children  who  slipped  out  at  night
were  a  disgrace  to  the  family.  Atticus  said  he  was  right  glad  his  disgraces  had
come along, but Aunty said, “Nonsense, Mr. Underwood was there all the time.”
“You  know,  it’s  a  funny  thing  about  Braxton,”  said  Atticus.  “He  despises
Negroes, won’t have one near him.”
Local opinion held Mr. Underwood to be an intense, profane little man, whose
father  in  a  fey  fit  of  humor  christened  Braxton  Bragg,  a  name  Mr.  Underwood
had  done  his  best  to  live  down.  Atticus  said  naming  people  after  Confederate
generals made slow steady drinkers.
Calpurnia was serving Aunt Alexandra more coffee, and she shook her head at
what  I  thought  was  a  pleading  winning  look.  “You’re  still  too  little,”  she  said.
“I’ll tell you when you ain’t.” I said it might help my stomach. “All right,” she
said, and got a cup from the sideboard. She poured one tablespoonful of coffee
into it and filled the cup to the brim with milk. I thanked her by sticking out my
tongue  at  it,  and  looked  up  to  catch  Aunty’s  warning  frown.  But  she  was
frowning at Atticus.

---

She waited until Calpurnia was in the kitchen, then she said, “Don’t talk like
that in front of them.”
“Talk like what in front of whom?” he asked.
“Like  that  in  front  of  Calpurnia.  You  said  Braxton  Underwood  despises
Negroes right in front of her.”
“Well, I’m sure Cal knows it. Everybody in Maycomb knows it.”
I was beginning to notice a subtle change in my father these days, that came
out  when  he  talked  with  Aunt  Alexandra.  It  was  a  quiet  digging  in,  never
outright  irritation.  There  was  a  faint  starchiness  in  his  voice  when  he  said,
“Anything  fit  to  say  at  the  table’s  fit  to  say  in  front  of  Calpurnia.  She  knows
what she means to this family.”
“I don’t think  it’s a good  habit, Atticus.  It encourages them.  You know  how
they talk  among themselves.  Every thing  that happens  in this  town’s out  to  the
Quarters before sundown.”
My father put down his knife. “I don’t know of any law that says they can’t
talk. Maybe if we didn’t give them so much to talk about they’d be quiet. Why
don’t you drink your coffee, Scout?”
I was playing in it with the spoon. “I thought Mr. Cunningham was a friend of
ours. You told me a long time ago he was.”
“He still is.”
“But last night he wanted to hurt you.”
Atticus  placed  his  fork  beside  his  knife  and  pushed  his  plate  aside.  “Mr.
Cunningham’s basically a good man,” he said, “he just has his blind spots along
with the rest of us.”
Jem spoke. “Don’t call that a blind spot. He’da killed you last night when he
first went there.”
“He  might  have  hurt  me  a  little,”  Atticus  conceded,  “but  son,  you’ll
understand  folks  a  little  better  when  you’re  older.  A  mob’s  always  made  up  of
people,  no  matter  what.  Mr.  Cunningham  was  part  of  a  mob  last  night,  but  he
was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of
people you know—doesn’t say much for them, does it?”
“I’ll say not,” said Jem.
“So it took an eight-year-old child to bring ‘em to their senses, didn’t it?” said
Atticus.  “That  proves  something—that  a  gang  of  wild  animals  can  be  stopped,
simply  because  they’re  still  human.  Hmp,  maybe  we  need  a  police  force  of

---

children . . . you children last night made Walter Cunningham stand in my shoes
for a minute. That was enough.”
Well, I hoped Jem would understand folks a little better when he was older; I
wouldn’t. “First day Walter comes back to school’ll be his last,” I affirmed.
“You  will  not  touch  him,”  Atticus  said  flatly.  “I  don’t  want  either  of  you
bearing a grudge about this thing, no matter what happens.”
“You see, don’t you,” said Aunt Alexandra, “what comes of things like this.
Don’t say I haven’t told you.”
Atticus said he’d never say that, pushed out his chair and got up. “There’s a
day  ahead,  so  excuse  me.  Jem,  I  don’t  want  you  and  Scout  downtown  today,
please.”
As Atticus departed, Dill came bounding down the hall into the diningroom.
“It’s  all  over  town  this  morning,”  he  announced,  “all  about  how  we  held  off  a
hundred folks with our bare hands . . .” Aunt Alexandra stared him to silence. “It
was not a hundred folks,” she said, “and nobody held anybody off. It was just a
nest of those Cunninghams, drunk and disorderly.”
“Aw, Aunty, that’s just Dill’s way,” said Jem. He signaled us to follow him.
“You  all  stay  in  the  yard  today,”  she  said,  as  we  made  our  way  to  the  front
porch.
It  was  like  Saturday.  People  from  the  south  end  of  the  county  passed  our
house in a leisurely but steady stream.
Mr.  Dolphus  Raymond  lurched  by  on  his  thoroughbred.  “Don’t  see  how  he
stays in the saddle,” murmured Jem. “How c’n you stand to get drunk ‘fore eight
in the morning?”
A  wagonload  of  ladies  rattled  past  us.  They  wore  cotton  sunbonnets  and
dresses with long sleeves. A bearded man in a wool hat drove them. “Yonder’s
some Mennonites,” Jem said to Dill. “They don’t have buttons.” They lived deep
in  the  woods,  did  most  of  their  trading  across  the  river,  and  rarely  came  to
Maycomb. Dill was interested. “They’ve all got blue eyes,” Jem explained, “and
the men can’t shave after they marry. Their wives like for ‘em to tickle ’em with
their beards.”
Mr. X Billups rode by on a mule and waved to us. “He’s a funny man,” said
Jem. “X’s his name, not his initial. He was in court one time and they asked him
his  name.  He  said  X  Billups.  Clerk  asked  him  to  spell  it  and  he  said  X.  Asked
him again and he said X. They kept at it till he wrote X on a sheet of paper and
held it up for everybody to see. They asked him where he got his name and he

---

said that’s the way his folks signed him up when he was born.”
As the county went by us, Jem gave Dill the histories and general attitudes of
the  more  prominent  figures:  Mr.  Tensaw  Jones  voted  the  straight  Prohibition
ticket; Miss Emily Davis dipped snuff in private; Mr. Byron Waller could play
the violin; Mr. Jake Slade was cutting his third set of teeth.
A  wagonload  of  unusually  stern-faced  citizens  appeared.  When  they  pointed
to  Miss  Maudie  Atkinson’s  yard,  ablaze  with  summer  flowers,  Miss  Maudie
herself came out on the porch. There was an odd thing about Miss Maudie—on
her porch she was too far away for us to see her features clearly, but we could
always  catch  her  mood  by  the  way  she  stood.  She  was  now  standing  arms
akimbo, her shoulders drooping a little, her head cocked to one side, her glasses
winking in the sunlight. We knew she wore a grin of the uttermost wickedness.
The  driver  of  the  wagon  slowed  down  his  mules,  and  a  shrill-voiced  woman
called out: “He that cometh in vanity departeth in darkness!”
Miss Maudie answered: “A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance!”
I guess that the foot-washers thought that the Devil was quoting Scripture for
his  own  purposes,  as  the  driver  speeded  his  mules.  Why  they  objected  to  Miss
Maudie’s yard was a mystery, heightened in my mind because for someone who
spent all the daylight hours outdoors, Miss Maudie’s command of Scripture was
formidable.
“You goin‘ to court this morning?” asked Jem. We had strolled over.
“I am not,” she said. “I have no business with the court this morning.”
“Aren’t you goin‘ down to watch?” asked Dill.
“I am not. ‘t’s morbid, watching a poor devil on trial for his life. Look at all
those folks, it’s like a Roman carnival.”
“They  hafta  try  him  in  public,  Miss  Maudie,”  I  said.  “Wouldn’t  be  right  if
they didn’t.”
“I’m quite aware of that,” she said. “Just because it’s public, I don’t have to
go, do I?”
Miss Stephanie Crawford came by. She wore a hat and gloves. “Um, um, um,”
she  said.  “Look  at  all  those  folks—you’d  think  William  Jennings  Bryan  was
speakin‘.”
“And where are you going, Stephanie?” inquired Miss Maudie.
“To the Jitney Jungle.”
Miss Maudie said she’d never seen Miss Stephanie go to the Jitney Jungle in a

---

hat in her life.
“Well,” said Miss Stephanie, “I thought I might just look in at the courthouse,
to see what Atticus’s up to.”
“Better be careful he doesn’t hand you a subpoena.”
We asked Miss Maudie to elucidate: she said Miss Stephanie seemed to know
so much about the case she might as well be called on to testify.
We  held  off  until  noon,  when  Atticus  came  home  to  dinner  and  said  they’d
spent  the  morning  picking  the  jury.  After  dinner,  we  stopped  by  for  Dill  and
went to town.
It  was  a  gala  occasion.  There  was  no  room  at  the  public  hitching  rail  for
another animal, mules and wagons were parked under every available tree. The
courthouse  square  was  covered  with  picnic  parties  sitting  on  newspapers,
washing  down  biscuit  and  syrup  with  warm  milk  from  fruit  jars.  Some  people
were  gnawing  on  cold  chicken  and  cold  fried  pork  chops.  The  more  affluent
chased their food with drugstore Coca-Cola in bulb-shaped soda glasses. Greasy-
faced  children  popped-the-whip  through  the  crowd,  and  babies  lunched  at  their
mothers’ breasts.
In  a  far  corner  of  the  square,  the  Negroes  sat  quietly  in  the  sun,  dining  on
sardines,  crackers,  and  the  more  vivid  flavors  of  Nehi  Cola.  Mr.  Dolphus
Raymond sat with them.
“Jem,” said Dill, “he’s drinkin‘ out of a sack.”
Mr.  Dolphus  Raymond  seemed  to  be  so  doing:  two  yellow  drugstore  straws
ran from his mouth to the depths of a brown paper bag.
“Ain’t ever seen anybody do that,” murmured Dill.
“How does he keep what’s in it in it?”
Jem giggled. “He’s got a Co-Cola bottle full of whiskey in there. That’s so’s
not  to  upset  the  ladies.  You’ll  see  him  sip  it  all  afternoon,  he’ll  step  out  for  a
while and fill it back up.”
“Why’s he sittin‘ with the colored folks?”
“Always  does.  He  likes  ‘em  better’n  he  likes  us,  I  reckon.  Lives  by  himself
way down near the county line. He’s got a colored woman and all sorts of mixed
chillun. Show you some of ’em if we see ‘em.”
“He doesn’t look like trash,” said Dill.
“He’s not, he owns all one side of the riverbank down there, and he’s from a
real old family to boot.”

---

“Then why does he do like that?”
“That’s just his way,” said Jem. “They say he never got over his weddin‘. He
was supposed to marry one of the—the Spencer ladies, I think. They were gonna
have a huge weddin’, but they didn’t—after the rehearsal the bride went upstairs
and blew her head off. Shotgun. She pulled the trigger with her toes.”
“Did they ever know why?”
“No,” said Jem, “nobody ever knew quite why but Mr. Dolphus. They said it
was because she found out about his colored woman, he reckoned he could keep
her  and  get  married  too.  He’s  been  sorta  drunk  ever  since.  You  know,  though,
he’s real good to those chillun—”
“Jem,” I asked, “what’s a mixed child?”
“Half white, half colored. You’ve seen ‘em, Scout. You know that red-kinky-
headed one that delivers for the drugstore. He’s half white. They’re real sad.”
“Sad, how come?”
“They don’t belong anywhere. Colored folks won’t have ‘em because they’re
half white; white folks won’t have ’em cause they’re colored, so they’re just in-
betweens, don’t belong anywhere. But Mr. Dolphus, now, they say he’s shipped
two of his up north. They don’t mind ‘em up north. Yonder’s one of ’em.”
A  small  boy  clutching  a  Negro  woman’s  hand  walked  toward  us.  He  looked
all Negro to me: he was rich chocolate with flaring nostrils and beautiful teeth.
Sometimes  he  would  skip  happily,  and  the  Negro  woman  tugged  his  hand  to
make him stop.
Jem waited until they passed us. “That’s one of the little ones,” he said.
“How can you tell?” asked Dill. “He looked black to me.”
“You  can’t  sometimes,  not  unless  you  know  who  they  are.  But  he’s  half
Raymond, all right.”
“But how can you tell?” I asked.
“I told you, Scout, you just hafta know who they are.”
“Well how do you know we ain’t Negroes?”
“Uncle Jack Finch says we really don’t know. He says as far as he can trace
back the Finches we ain’t, but for all he knows we mighta come straight out of
Ethiopia durin‘ the Old Testament.”
“Well if we came out durin‘ the Old Testament it’s too long ago to matter.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Jem, “but around here once you have a drop of

---

Negro blood, that makes you all black. Hey, look—”
Some invisible signal had made the lunchers on the square rise and scatter bits
of  newspaper,  cellophane,  and  wrapping  paper.  Children  came  to  mothers,
babies were cradled on hips as men in sweat-stained hats collected their families
and herded them through the courthouse doors. In the far corner of the square the
Negroes  and  Mr.  Dolphus  Raymond  stood  up  and  dusted  their  breeches.  There
were few women and children among them, which seemed to dispel the holiday
mood. They waited patiently at the doors behind the white families.
“Let’s go in,” said Dill.
“Naw, we better wait till they get in, Atticus might not like it if he sees us,”
said Jem.
The Maycomb County courthouse was faintly reminiscent of Arlington in one
respect:  the  concrete  pillars  supporting  its  south  roof  were  too  heavy  for  their
light  burden.  The  pillars  were  all  that  remained  standing  when  the  original
courthouse  burned  in  1856.  Another  courthouse  was  built  around  them.  It  is
better  to  say,  built  in  spite  of  them.  But  for  the  south  porch,  the  Maycomb
County  courthouse  was  early  Victorian,  presenting  an  unoffensive  vista  when
seen  from  the  north.  From  the  other  side,  however,  Greek  revival  columns
clashed  with  a  big  nineteenth-century  clock  tower  housing  a  rusty  unreliable
instrument,  a  view  indicating  a  people  determined  to  preserve  every  physical
scrap of the past.
To  reach  the  courtroom,  on  the  second  floor,  one  passed  sundry  sunless
county  cubbyholes:  the  tax  assessor,  the  tax  collector,  the  county  clerk,  the
county solicitor, the circuit clerk, the judge of probate lived in cool dim hutches
that smelled of decaying record books mingled with old damp cement and stale
urine. It was necessary to turn on the lights in the daytime; there was always a
film  of  dust  on  the  rough  floorboards.  The  inhabitants  of  these  offices  were
creatures of their environment: little gray-faced men, they seemed untouched by
wind or sun.
We knew there was a crowd, but we had not bargained for the multitudes in
the  first-floor  hallway.  I  got  separated  from  Jem  and  Dill,  but  made  my  way
toward the wall by the stairwell, knowing Jem would come for me eventually. I
found myself in the middle of the Idlers’ Club and made myself as unobtrusive
as possible. This was a group of white-shirted, khaki-trousered, suspendered old
men who had spent their lives doing nothing and passed their twilight days doing
same  on  pine  benches  under  the  live  oaks  on  the  square.  Attentive  critics  of
courthouse  business,  Atticus  said  they  knew  as  much  law  as  the  Chief  Justice,

---

from long years of observation. Normally, they were the court’s only spectators,
and today they seemed resentful of the interruption of their comfortable routine.
When  they  spoke,  their  voices  sounded  casually  important.  The  conversation
was about my father.
“. . . thinks he knows what he’s doing,” one said.
“Oh-h now, I wouldn’t say that,” said another. “Atticus Finch’s a deep reader,
a mighty deep reader.”
“He reads all right, that’s all he does.” The club snickered.
“Lemme  tell  you  somethin‘  now,  Billy,”  a  third  said,  “you  know  the  court
appointed him to defend this nigger.”
“Yeah, but Atticus aims to defend him. That’s what I don’t like about it.”
This  was  news,  news  that  put  a  different  light  on  things:  Atticus  had  to,
whether he wanted to or not. I thought it odd that he hadn’t said anything to us
about it—we could have used it many times in defending him and ourselves. He
had to, that’s why he was doing it, equaled fewer fights and less fussing. But did
that  explain  the  town’s  attitude?  The  court  appointed  Atticus  to  defend  him.
Atticus  aimed  to  defend  him.  That’s  what  they  didn’t  like  about  it.  It  was
confusing.
The  Negroes,  having  waited  for  the  white  people  to  go  upstairs,  began  to
come  in.  “Whoa  now,  just  a  minute,”  said  a  club  member,  holding  up  his
walking stick. “Just don’t start up them there stairs yet awhile.”
The club began its stiff-jointed climb and ran into Dill and Jem on their way
down  looking  for  me.  They  squeezed  past  and  Jem  called,  “Scout,  come  on,
there ain’t a seat left. We’ll hafta stand up.”
“Looka there, now.” he said irritably, as the black people surged upstairs. The
old men ahead of them would take most of the standing room. We were out of
luck and it was my fault, Jem informed me. We stood miserably by the wall.
“Can’t you all get in?”
Reverend Sykes was looking down at us, black hat in hand.
“Hey, Reverend,” said Jem. “Naw, Scout here messed us up.”
“Well, let’s see what we can do.”
Reverend  Sykes  edged  his  way  upstairs.  In  a  few  moments  he  was  back.
“There’s not a seat downstairs. Do you all reckon it’ll be all right if you all came
to the balcony with me?”
“Gosh  yes,”  said  Jem.  Happily,  we  sped  ahead  of  Reverend  Sykes  to  the

---

courtroom floor. There, we went up a covered staircase and waited at the door.
Reverend Sykes came puffing behind us, and steered us gently through the black
people in the balcony. Four Negroes rose and gave us their front-row seats.
The  Colored  balcony  ran  along  three  walls  of  the  courtroom  like  a  second-
story veranda, and from it we could see everything.
The jury sat to the left, under long windows. Sunburned, lanky, they seemed
to  be  all  farmers,  but  this  was  natural:  townfolk  rarely  sat  on  juries,  they  were
either struck or excused. One or two of the jury looked vaguely like dressed-up
Cunninghams. At this stage they sat straight and alert.
The circuit solicitor and another man, Atticus and Tom Robinson sat at tables
with their backs to us. There was a brown book and some yellow tablets on the
solicitor’s  table;  Atticus’s  was  bare.  Just  inside  the  railing  that  divided  the
spectators  from  the  court,  the  witnesses  sat  on  cowhide-bottomed  chairs.  Their
backs were to us.
Judge Taylor was on the bench, looking like a sleepy old shark, his pilot fish
writing  rapidly  below  in  front  of  him.  Judge  Taylor  looked  like  most  judges  I
had  ever  seen:  amiable,  white-haired,  slightly  ruddy-faced,  he  was  a  man  who
ran  his  court  with  an  alarming  informality—he  sometimes  propped  his  feet  up,
he  often  cleaned  his  fingernails  with  his  pocket  knife.  In  long  equity  hearings,
especially  after  dinner,  he  gave  the  impression  of  dozing,  an  impression
dispelled forever when a lawyer once deliberately pushed a pile of books to the
floor  in  a  desperate  effort  to  wake  him  up.  Without  opening  his  eyes,  Judge
Taylor  murmured,  “Mr.  Whitley,  do  that  again  and  it’ll  cost  you  one  hundred
dollars.”
He  was  a  man  learned  in  the  law,  and  although  he  seemed  to  take  his  job
casually, in reality he kept a firm grip on any proceedings that came before him.
Only once was Judge Taylor ever seen at a dead standstill in open court, and the
Cunninghams  stopped  him.  Old  Sarum,  their  stamping  grounds,  was  populated
by  two  families  separate  and  apart  in  the  beginning,  but  unfortunately  bearing
the same name. The Cunninghams married the Coninghams until the spelling of
the names was academic—academic until a Cunningham disputed a Coningham
over land titles and took to the law. During a controversy of this character, Jeems
Cunningham  testified  that  his  mother  spelled  it  Cunningham  on  deeds  and
things, but she was really a Coningham, she was an uncertain speller, a seldom
reader, and was given to looking far away sometimes when she sat on the front
gallery in the evening. After nine hours of listening to the eccentricities of Old
Sarum’s inhabitants, Judge Taylor threw the case out of court. When asked upon

---

what  grounds,  Judge  Taylor  said,  “Champertous  connivance,”  and  declared  he
hoped  to  God  the  litigants  were  satisfied  by  each  having  had  their  public  say.
They were. That was all they had wanted in the first place.
Judge  Taylor  had  one  interesting  habit.  He  permitted  smoking  in  his
courtroom but did not himself indulge: sometimes, if one was lucky, one had the
privilege  of  watching  him  put  a  long  dry  cigar  into  his  mouth  and  munch  it
slowly  up.  Bit  by  bit  the  dead  cigar  would  disappear,  to  reappear  some  hours
later as a flat slick mess, its essence extracted and mingling with Judge Taylor’s
digestive  juices.  I  once  asked  Atticus  how  Mrs.  Taylor  stood  to  kiss  him,  but
Atticus said they didn’t kiss much.
The  witness  stand  was  to  the  right  of  Judge  Taylor,  and  when  we  got  to  our
seats Mr. Heck Tate was already on it.

---

17
“J
em,” I said, “are those the Ewells sittin‘ down yonder?”
“Hush,” said Jem, “Mr. Heck Tate’s testifyin‘.”
Mr.  Tate  had  dressed  for  the  occasion.  He  wore  an  ordinary  business  suit,
which made him look somehow like every other man: gone were his high boots,
lumber  jacket,  and  bullet-studded  belt.  From  that  moment  he  ceased  to  terrify
me. He was sitting forward in the witness chair, his hands clasped between his
knees, listening attentively to the circuit solicitor.
The  solicitor,  a  Mr.  Gilmer,  was  not  well  known  to  us.  He  was  from
Abbottsville;  we  saw  him  only  when  court  convened,  and  that  rarely,  for  court
was of no special interest to Jem and me. A balding, smooth-faced man, he could
have  been  anywhere  between  forty  and  sixty.  Although  his  back  was  to  us,  we
knew he had a slight cast in one of his eyes which he used to his advantage: he
seemed  to  be  looking  at  a  person  when  he  was  actually  doing  nothing  of  the
kind,  thus  he  was  hell  on  juries  and  witnesses.  The  jury,  thinking  themselves
under close scrutiny, paid attention; so did the witnesses, thinking likewise.
“. . . in your own words, Mr. Tate,” Mr. Gilmer was saying.
“Well,” said Mr. Tate, touching his glasses and speaking to his knees, “I was
called—”
“Could you say it to the jury, Mr. Tate? Thank you. Who called you?”
Mr.  Tate  said,  “I  was  fetched  by  Bob—by  Mr.  Bob  Ewell  yonder,  one  night
—”
“What night, sir?”
Mr. Tate said, “It was the night of November twenty-first. I was just leaving
my  office  to  go  home  when  B—Mr.  Ewell  came  in,  very  excited  he  was,  and
said get out to his house quick, some nigger’d raped his girl.”
“Did you go?”
“Certainly. Got in the car and went out as fast as I could.”
“And what did you find?”
“Found her lying on the floor in the middle of the front room, one on the right

---

as you go in. She was pretty well beat up, but I heaved her to her feet and she
washed her face in a bucket in the corner and said she was all right. I asked her
who hurt her and she said it was Tom Robinson—”
Judge Taylor, who had been concentrating on his fingernails, looked up as if
he were expecting an objection, but Atticus was quiet.
“—asked her if he beat her like that, she said yes he had. Asked her if he took
advantage of her and she said yes he did. So I went down to Robinson’s house
and brought him back. She identified him as the one, so I took him in. That’s all
there was to it.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Gilmer.
Judge Taylor said, “Any questions, Atticus?”
“Yes,” said my father. He was sitting behind his table; his chair was skewed to
one side, his legs were crossed and one arm was resting on the back of his chair.
“Did you call a doctor, Sheriff? Did anybody call a doctor?” asked Atticus.
“No sir,” said Mr. Tate.
“Didn’t call a doctor?”
“No sir,” repeated Mr. Tate.
“Why not?” There was an edge to Atticus’s voice.
“Well  I  can  tell  you  why  I  didn’t.  It  wasn’t  necessary,  Mr.  Finch.  She  was
mighty banged up. Something sho‘ happened, it was obvious.”
“But you didn’t call a doctor? While you were there did anyone send for one,
fetch one, carry her to one?”
“No sir—”
Judge  Taylor  broke  in.  “He’s  answered  the  question  three  times,  Atticus.  He
didn’t call a doctor.”
Atticus said, “I just wanted to make sure, Judge,” and the judge smiled.
Jem’s  hand,  which  was  resting  on  the  balcony  rail,  tightened  around  it.  He
drew  in  his  breath  suddenly.  Glancing  below,  I  saw  no  corresponding  reaction,
and  wondered  if  Jem  was  trying  to  be  dramatic.  Dill  was  watching  peacefully,
and so was Reverend Sykes beside him.
“What is it?” I whispered, and got a terse, “Sh-h!”
“Sheriff,”  Atticus  was  saying,  “you  say  she  was  mighty  banged  up.  In  what
way?”
“Well—”

---

“Just describe her injuries, Heck.”
“Well, she was beaten around the head. There was already bruises comin‘ on
her arms, and it happened about thirty minutes before—”
“How do you know?”
Mr.  Tate  grinned.  “Sorry,  that’s  what  they  said.  Anyway,  she  was  pretty
bruised up when I got there, and she had a black eye comin‘.”
“Which eye?”
Mr.  Tate  blinked  and  ran  his  hands  through  his  hair.  “Let’s  see,”  he  said
softly, then he looked at Atticus as if he considered the question childish. “Can’t
you remember?” Atticus asked.
Mr.  Tate  pointed  to  an  invisible  person  five  inches  in  front  of  him  and  said,
“Her left.”
“Wait a minute, Sheriff,” said Atticus. “Was it her left facing you or her left
looking the same way you were?”
Mr.  Tate  said,  “Oh  yes,  that’d  make  it  her  right.  It  was  her  right  eye,  Mr.
Finch. I remember now, she was bunged up on that side of her face . . .”
Mr. Tate blinked again, as if something had suddenly been made plain to him.
Then he turned his head and looked around at Tom Robinson. As if by instinct,
Tom Robinson raised his head.
Something had been made plain to Atticus also, and it brought him to his feet.
“Sheriff, please repeat what you said.”
“It was her right eye, I said.”
“No  .  .  .”  Atticus  walked  to  the  court  reporter’s  desk  and  bent  down  to  the
furiously  scribbling  hand.  It  stopped,  flipped  back  the  shorthand  pad,  and  the
court reporter said, “‘Mr. Finch. I remember now she was bunged up on that side
of the face.’”
Atticus looked up at Mr. Tate. “Which side again, Heck?”
“The right side, Mr. Finch, but she had more bruises—you wanta hear about
‘em?”
Atticus seemed to be bordering on another question, but he thought better of it
and  said,  “Yes,  what  were  her  other  injuries?”  As  Mr.  Tate  answered,  Atticus
turned and looked at Tom Robinson as if to say this was something they hadn’t
bargained for.
“. . . her arms were bruised, and she showed me her neck. There were definite

---

finger marks on her gullet—”
“All around her throat? At the back of her neck?”
“I’d say they were all around, Mr. Finch.”
“You would?”
“Yes sir, she had a small throat, anybody could’a reached around it with—”
“Just  answer  the  question  yes  or  no,  please,  Sheriff,”  said  Atticus  dryly,  and
Mr. Tate fell silent.
Atticus sat down and nodded to the circuit solicitor, who shook his head at the
judge,  who  nodded  to  Mr.  Tate,  who  rose  stiffly  and  stepped  down  from  the
witness stand.
Below  us,  heads  turned,  feet  scraped  the  floor,  babies  were  shifted  to
shoulders,  and  a  few  children  scampered  out  of  the  courtroom.  The  Negroes
behind us whispered softly among themselves; Dill was asking Reverend Sykes
what  it  was  all  about,  but  Reverend  Sykes  said  he  didn’t  know.  So  far,  things
were  utterly  dull:  nobody  had  thundered,  there  were  no  arguments  between
opposing counsel, there was no drama; a grave disappointment to all present, it
seemed.  Atticus  was  proceeding  amiably,  as  if  he  were  involved  in  a  title
dispute.  With  his  infinite  capacity  for  calming  turbulent  seas,  he  could  make  a
rape case as dry as a sermon. Gone was the terror in my mind of stale whiskey
and barnyard smells, of sleepy-eyed sullen men, of a husky voice calling in the
night,  “Mr.  Finch?  They  gone?”  Our  nightmare  had  gone  with  daylight,
everything would come out all right.
All  the  spectators  were  as  relaxed  as  Judge  Taylor,  except  Jem.  His  mouth
was  twisted  into  a  purposeful  half-grin,  and  his  eyes  happy  about,  and  he  said
something  about  corroborating  evidence,  which  made  me  sure  he  was  showing
off.
“. . . Robert E. Lee Ewell!”
In answer to the clerk’s booming voice, a little bantam cock of a man rose and
strutted  to  the  stand,  the  back  of  his  neck  reddening  at  the  sound  of  his  name.
When he turned around to take the oath, we saw that his face was as red as his
neck.  We  also  saw  no  resemblance  to  his  namesake.  A  shock  of  wispy  new-
washed hair stood up from his forehead; his nose was thin, pointed, and shiny;
he had no chin to speak of—it seemed to be part of his crepey neck.
“—so help me God,” he crowed.
Every town the size of Maycomb had families like the Ewells. No economic
fluctuations  changed  their  status—people  like  the  Ewells  lived  as  guests  of  the

---

county in prosperity as well as in the depths of a depression. No truant officers
could  keep  their  numerous  offspring  in  school;  no  public  health  officer  could
free  them  from  congenital  defects,  various  worms,  and  the  diseases  indigenous
to filthy surroundings.
Maycomb’s Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a
Negro  cabin.  The  cabin’s  plank  walls  were  supplemented  with  sheets  of
corrugated iron, its roof shingled with tin cans hammered flat, so only its general
shape suggested its original design: square, with four tiny rooms opening onto a
shotgun  hall,  the  cabin  rested  uneasily  upon  four  irregular  lumps  of  limestone.
Its  windows  were  merely  open  spaces  in  the  walls,  which  in  the  summertime
were  covered  with  greasy  strips  of  cheesecloth  to  keep  out  the  varmints  that
feasted on Maycomb’s refuse.
The varmints had a lean time of it, for the Ewells gave the dump a thorough
gleaning  every  day,  and  the  fruits  of  their  industry  (those  that  were  not  eaten)
made  the  plot  of  ground  around  the  cabin  look  like  the  playhouse  of  an  insane
child:  what  passed  for  a  fence  was  bits  of  tree-limbs,  broomsticks  and  tool
shafts, all tipped with rusty hammer-heads, snaggle-toothed rake heads, shovels,
axes  and  grubbing  hoes,  held  on  with  pieces  of  barbed  wire.  Enclosed  by  this
barricade was a dirty yard containing the remains of a Model-T Ford (on blocks),
a discarded dentist’s chair, an ancient icebox, plus lesser items: old shoes, worn-
out  table  radios,  picture  frames,  and  fruit  jars,  under  which  scrawny  orange
chickens pecked hopefully.
One corner of the yard, though, bewildered Maycomb. Against the fence, in a
line, were six chipped-enamel slop jars holding brilliant red geraniums, cared for
as  tenderly  as  if  they  belonged  to  Miss  Maudie  Atkinson,  had  Miss  Maudie
deigned  to  permit  a  geranium  on  her  premises.  People  said  they  were  Mayella
Ewell’s.
Nobody  was  quite  sure  how  many  children  were  on  the  place.  Some  people
said  six,  others  said  nine;  there  were  always  several  dirty-faced  ones  at  the
windows  when  anyone  passed  by.  Nobody  had  occasion  to  pass  by  except  at
Christmas,  when  the  churches  delivered  baskets,  and  when  the  mayor  of
Maycomb  asked  us  to  please  help  the  garbage  collector  by  dumping  our  own
trees and trash.
Atticus took us with him last Christmas when he complied with the mayor’s
request. A dirt road ran from the highway past the dump, down to a small Negro
settlement some five hundred yards beyond the Ewells‘. It was necessary either
to back out to the highway or go the full length of the road and turn around; most

---

people turned around in the Negroes’ front yards. In the frosty December dusk,
their cabins looked neat and snug with pale blue smoke rising from the chimneys
and doorways glowing amber from the fires inside. There were delicious smells
about: chicken, bacon frying crisp as the twilight air. Jem and I detected squirrel
cooking,  but  it  took  an  old  countryman  like  Atticus  to  identify  possum  and
rabbit, aromas that vanished when we rode back past the Ewell residence.
All the little man on the witness stand had that made him any better than his
nearest neighbors was, that if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin
was white.
“Mr. Robert Ewell?” asked Mr. Gilmer.
“That’s m’name, cap’n,” said the witness.
Mr. Gilmer’s back stiffened a little, and I felt sorry for him. Perhaps I’d better
explain something now. I’ve heard that lawyers’ children, on seeing their parents
in court in the heat of argument, get the wrong idea: they think opposing counsel
to be the personal enemies of their parents, they suffer agonies, and are surprised
to see them often go out arm-in-arm with their tormenters during the first recess.
This  was  not  true  of  Jem  and  me.  We  acquired  no  traumas  from  watching  our
father win or lose. I’m sorry that I can’t provide any drama in this respect; if I
did,  it  would  not  be  true.  We  could  tell,  however,  when  debate  became  more
acrimonious  than  professional,  but  this  was  from  watching  lawyers  other  than
our  father.  I  never  heard  Atticus  raise  his  voice  in  my  life,  except  to  a  deaf
witness.  Mr.  Gilmer  was  doing  his  job,  as  Atticus  was  doing  his.  Besides,  Mr.
Ewell was Mr. Gilmer’s witness, and he had no business being rude to him of all
people.
“Are you the father of Mayella Ewell?” was the next question.
“Well,  if  I  ain’t  I  can’t  do  nothing  about  it  now,  her  ma’s  dead,”  was  the
answer.
Judge Taylor stirred. He turned slowly in his swivel chair and looked benignly
at  the  witness.  “Are  you  the  father  of  Mayella  Ewell?”  he  asked,  in  a  way  that
made the laughter below us stop suddenly.
“Yes sir,” Mr. Ewell said meekly.
Judge Taylor went on in tones of good will: “This the first time you’ve ever
been in court? I don’t recall ever seeing you here.” At the witness’s affirmative
nod  he  continued,  “Well,  let’s  get  something  straight.  There  will  be  no  more
audibly obscene speculations on any subject from anybody in this courtroom as
long as I’m sitting here. Do you understand?”

---

Mr. Ewell nodded, but I don’t think he did. Judge Taylor sighed and said, “All
right, Mr. Gilmer?”
“Thank  you,  sir.  Mr.  Ewell,  would  you  tell  us  in  your  own  words  what
happened on the evening of November twenty-first, please?”
Jem  grinned  and  pushed  his  hair  back.  Just-in-your-own  words  was  Mr.
Gilmer’s  trademark.  We  often  wondered  who  else’s  words  Mr.  Gilmer  was
afraid his witness might employ.
“Well,  the  night  of  November  twenty-one  I  was  comin‘  in  from  the  woods
with  a  load  o’kindlin’  and  just  as  I  got  to  the  fence  I  heard  Mayella  screamin‘
like a stuck hog inside the house—”
Here Judge Taylor glanced sharply at the witness and must have decided his
speculations devoid of evil intent, for he subsided sleepily.
“What time was it, Mr. Ewell?”
“Just  ‘fore  sundown.  Well,  I  was  sayin’  Mayella  was  screamin‘  fit  to  beat
Jesus—” another glance from the bench silenced Mr. Ewell.
“Yes? She was screaming?” said Mr. Gilmer.
Mr.  Ewell  looked  confusedly  at  the  judge.  “Well,  Mayella  was  raisin‘  this
holy  racket  so  I  dropped  m’load  and  run  as  fast  as  I  could  but  I  run  into  th’
fence,  but  when  I  got  distangled  I  run  up  to  th‘  window  and  I  seen—”  Mr.
Ewell’s face grew scarlet. He stood up and pointed his finger at Tom Robinson.
“—I seen that black nigger yonder ruttin’ on my Mayella!”
So  serene  was  Judge  Taylor’s  court,  that  he  had  few  occasions  to  use  his
gavel, but he hammered fully five minutes. Atticus was on his feet at the bench
saying  something  to  him,  Mr.  Heck  Tate  as  first  officer  of  the  county  stood  in
the  middle  aisle  quelling  the  packed  courtroom.  Behind  us,  there  was  an  angry
muffled groan from the colored people.
Reverend  Sykes  leaned  across  Dill  and  me,  pulling  at  Jem’s  elbow.  “Mr.
Jem,” he said, “you better take Miss Jean Louise home. Mr. Jem, you hear me?”
Jem turned his head. “Scout, go home. Dill, you’n‘Scout go home.”
“You gotta make me first,” I said, remembering Atticus’s blessed dictum.
Jem scowled furiously at me, then said to Reverend Sykes, “I think it’s okay,
Reverend, she doesn’t understand it.”
I was mortally offended. “I most certainly do, I c’n understand anything you
can.”
“Aw hush. She doesn’t understand it, Reverend, she ain’t nine yet.”

---

Reverend Sykes’s black eyes were anxious. “Mr. Finch know you all are here?
This ain’t fit for Miss Jean Louise or you boys either.”
Jem shook his head. “He can’t see us this far away. It’s all right, Reverend.”
I knew Jem would win, because I knew nothing could make him leave now.
Dill and I were safe, for a while: Atticus could see us from where he was, if he
looked.
As  Judge  Taylor  banged  his  gavel,  Mr.  Ewell  was  sitting  smugly  in  the
witness  chair,  surveying  his  handiwork.  With  one  phrase  he  had  turned  happy
picknickers  into  a  sulky,  tense,  murmuring  crowd,  being  slowly  hypnotized  by
gavel taps lessening in intensity until the only sound in the courtroom was a dim
pink-pink-pink: the judge might have been rapping the bench with a pencil.
In  possession  of  his  court  once  more,  Judge  Taylor  leaned  back  in  his  chair.
He  looked  suddenly  weary;  his  age  was  showing,  and  I  thought  about  what
Atticus  had  said—he  and  Mrs.  Taylor  didn’t  kiss  much—he  must  have  been
nearly seventy.
“There has been a request,” Judge Taylor said, “that this courtroom be cleared
of spectators, or at least of women and children, a request that will be denied for
the  time  being.  People  generally  see  what  they  look  for,  and  hear  what  they
listen for, and they have the right to subject their children to it, but I can assure
you of one thing: you will receive what you see and hear in silence or you will
leave this courtroom, but you won’t leave it until the whole boiling of you come
before me on contempt charges. Mr. Ewell, you will keep your testimony within
the confines of Christian English usage, if that is possible. Proceed, Mr. Gilmer.”
Mr.  Ewell  reminded  me  of  a  deaf-mute.  I  was  sure  he  had  never  heard  the
words Judge Taylor directed at him—his mouth struggled silently with them—
but  their  import  registered  on  his  face.  Smugness  faded  from  it,  replaced  by  a
dogged earnestness that fooled Judge Taylor not at all: as long as Mr. Ewell was
on  the  stand,  the  judge  kept  his  eyes  on  him,  as  if  daring  him  to  make  a  false
move.
Mr.  Gilmer  and  Atticus  exchanged  glances.  Atticus  was  sitting  down  again,
his  fist  rested  on  his  cheek  and  we  could  not  see  his  face.  Mr.  Gilmer  looked
rather desperate. A question from Judge Taylor made him relax: “Mr. Ewell, did
you see the defendant having sexual intercourse with your daughter?”
“Yes, I did.”
The  spectators  were  quiet,  but  the  defendant  said  something.  Atticus
whispered to him, and Tom Robinson was silent.

---

“You say you were at the window?” asked Mr. Gilmer.
“Yes sir.”
“How far is it from the ground?”
“‘bout three foot.”
“Did you have a clear view of the room?”
“Yes sir.”
“How did the room look?”
“Well, it was all slung about, like there was a fight.”
“What did you do when you saw the defendant?”
“Well,  I  run  around  the  house  to  get  in,  but  he  run  out  the  front  door  just
ahead of me. I sawed who he was, all right. I was too distracted about Mayella to
run after’im. I run in the house and she was lyin‘ on the floor squallin’—”
“Then what did you do?”
“Why,  I  run  for  Tate  quick  as  I  could.  I  knowed  who  it  was,  all  right,  lived
down yonder in that nigger-nest, passed the house every day. Jedge, I’ve asked
this  county  for  fifteen  years  to  clean  out  that  nest  down  yonder,  they’re
dangerous to live around ‘sides devaluin’ my property—”
“Thank you, Mr. Ewell,” said Mr. Gilmer hurriedly.
The witness made a hasty descent from the stand and ran smack into Atticus,
who had risen to question him. Judge Taylor permitted the court to laugh.
“Just  a  minute,  sir,”  said  Atticus  genially.  “Could  I  ask  you  a  question  or
two?”
Mr.  Ewell  backed  up  into  the  witness  chair,  settled  himself,  and  regarded
Atticus  with  haughty  suspicion,  an  expression  common  to  Maycomb  County
witnesses when confronted by opposing counsel.
“Mr.  Ewell,”  Atticus  began,  “folks  were  doing  a  lot  of  running  that  night.
Let’s see, you say you ran to the house, you ran to the window, you ran inside,
you ran to Mayella, you ran for Mr. Tate. Did you, during all this running, run
for a doctor?”
“Wadn’t no need to. I seen what happened.”
“But  there’s  one  thing  I  don’t  understand,”  said  Atticus.  “Weren’t  you
concerned with Mayella’s condition?”
“I most positively was,” said Mr. Ewell. “I seen who done it.”

---

“No,  I  mean  her  physical  condition.  Did  you  not  think  the  nature  of  her
injuries warranted immediate medical attention?”
“What?”
“Didn’t you think she should have had a doctor, immediately?”
The witness said he never thought of it, he had never called a doctor to any of
his’n in his life, and if he had it would have cost him five dollars. “That all?” he
asked.
“Not  quite,”  said  Atticus  casually.  “Mr.  Ewell,  you  heard  the  sheriff’s
testimony, didn’t you?”
“How’s that?”
“You  were  in  the  courtroom  when  Mr.  Heck  Tate  was  on  the  stand,  weren’t
you? You heard everything he said, didn’t you?”
Mr.  Ewell  considered  the  matter  carefully,  and  seemed  to  decide  that  the
question was safe.
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you agree with his description of Mayella’s injuries?”
“How’s that?”
Atticus  looked  around  at  Mr.  Gilmer  and  smiled.  Mr.  Ewell  seemed
determined not to give the defense the time of day.
“Mr.  Tate  testified  that  her  right  eye  was  blackened,  that  she  was  beaten
around the—”
“Oh yeah,” said the witness. “I hold with everything Tate said.”
“You  do?”  asked  Atticus  mildly.  “I  just  want  to  make  sure.”  He  went  to  the
court reporter, said something, and the reporter entertained us for some minutes
by  reading  Mr.  Tate’s  testimony  as  if  it  were  stock-market  quotations:  “.  .  .
which eye her left oh yes that’d make it her right it was her right eye Mr. Finch I
remember  now  she  was  bunged.”  He  flipped  the  page.  “Up  on  that  side  of  the
face Sheriff please repeat what you said it was her right eye I said—”
“Thank you, Bert,” said Atticus. “You heard it again, Mr. Ewell. Do you have
anything to add to it? Do you agree with the sheriff?”
“I holds with Tate. Her eye was blacked and she was mighty beat up.”
The  little  man  seemed  to  have  forgotten  his  previous  humiliation  from  the
bench.  It  was  becoming  evident  that  he  thought  Atticus  an  easy  match.  He
seemed to grow ruddy again; his chest swelled, and once more he was a red little

---

rooster. I thought he’d burst his shirt at Atticus’s next question:
“Mr. Ewell, can you read and write?”
Mr.  Gilmer  interrupted.  “Objection,”  he  said.  “Can’t  see  what  witness’s
literacy has to do with the case, irrelevant’n‘immaterial.”
Judge Taylor was about to speak but Atticus said, “Judge, if you’ll allow the
question plus another one you’ll soon see.”
“All  right,  let’s  see,”  said  Judge  Taylor,  “but  make  sure  we  see,  Atticus.
Overruled.”
Mr. Gilmer seemed as curious as the rest of us as to what bearing the state of
Mr. Ewell’s education had on the case.
“I’ll repeat the question,” said Atticus. “Can you read and write?”
“I most positively can.”
“Will you write your name and show us?”
“I most positively will. How do you think I sign my relief checks?”
Mr.  Ewell  was  endearing  himself  to  his  fellow  citizens.  The  whispers  and
chuckles below us probably had to do with what a card he was.
I was becoming nervous. Atticus seemed to know what he was doing—but it
seemed to me that he’d gone frog-sticking without a light. Never, never, never,
on  cross-examination  ask  a  witness  a  question  you  don’t  already  know  the
answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with my baby-food. Do it, and you’ll often get
an answer you don’t want, an answer that might wreck your case.
Atticus  was  reaching  into  the  inside  pocket  of  his  coat.  He  drew  out  an
envelope, then reached into his vest pocket and unclipped his fountain pen. He
moved  leisurely,  and  had  turned  so  that  he  was  in  full  view  of  the  jury.  He
unscrewed the fountain-pen cap and placed it gently on his table. He shook the
pen  a  little,  then  handed  it  with  the  envelope  to  the  witness.  “Would  you  write
your name for us?” he asked. “Clearly now, so the jury can see you do it.”
Mr. Ewell wrote on the back of the envelope and looked up complacently to
see  Judge  Taylor  staring  at  him  as  if  he  were  some  fragrant  gardenia  in  full
bloom  on  the  witness  stand,  to  see  Mr.  Gilmer  half-sitting,  half-standing  at  his
table. The jury was watching him, one man was leaning forward with his hands
over the railing.
“What’s so interestin‘?” he asked.
“You’re left-handed, Mr. Ewell,” said Judge Taylor. Mr. Ewell turned angrily
to the judge and said he didn’t see what his being left-handed had to do with it,

---

that he was a Christ-fearing man and Atticus Finch was taking advantage of him.
Tricking lawyers like Atticus Finch took advantage of him all the time with their
tricking  ways.  He  had  told  them  what  happened,  he’d  say  it  again  and  again—
which  he  did.  Nothing  Atticus  asked  him  after  that  shook  his  story,  that  he’d
looked  through  the  window,  then  ran  the  nigger  off,  then  ran  for  the  sheriff.
Atticus finally dismissed him.
Mr. Gilmer asked him one more question. “About your writing with your left
hand, are you ambidextrous, Mr. Ewell?”
“I  most  positively  am  not,  I  can  use  one  hand  good  as  the  other.  One  hand
good as the other,” he added, glaring at the defense table.
Jem seemed to be having a quiet fit. He was pounding the balcony rail softly,
and once he whispered, “We’ve got him.”
I didn’t think so: Atticus was trying to show, it seemed to me, that Mr. Ewell
could  have  beaten  up  Mayella.  That  much  I  could  follow.  If  her  right  eye  was
blacked and she was beaten mostly on the right side of the face, it would tend to
show  that  a  left-handed  person  did  it.  Sherlock  Holmes  and  Jem  Finch  would
agree. But Tom Robinson could easily be left-handed, too. Like Mr. Heck Tate, I
imagined  a  person  facing  me,  went  through  a  swift  mental  pantomime,  and
concluded that he might have held her with his right hand and pounded her with
his  left.  I  looked  down  at  him.  His  back  was  to  us,  but  I  could  see  his  broad
shoulders and bull-thick neck. He could easily have done it. I thought Jem was
counting his chickens.

---

18
B
ut someone was booming again.
“Mayella Violet Ewell—!”
A young girl walked to the witness stand. As she raised her hand and swore
that the evidence she gave would be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the  truth  so  help  her  God,  she  seemed  somehow  fragile-looking,  but  when  she
sat facing us in the witness chair she became what she was, a thick-bodied girl
accustomed to strenuous labor.
In  Maycomb  County,  it  was  easy  to  tell  when  someone  bathed  regularly,  as
opposed  to  yearly  lavations:  Mr.  Ewell  had  a  scalded  look;  as  if  an  overnight
soaking  had  deprived  him  of  protective  layers  of  dirt,  his  skin  appeared  to  be
sensitive to the elements. Mayella looked as if she tried to keep clean, and I was
reminded of the row of red geraniums in the Ewell yard.
Mr. Gilmer asked Mayella to tell the jury in her own words what happened on
the evening of November twenty-first of last year, just in her own words, please.
Mayella sat silently.
“Where were you at dusk on that evening?” began Mr. Gilmer patiently.
“On the porch.”
“Which porch?”
“Ain’t but one, the front porch.”
“What were you doing on the porch?”
“Nothin‘.”
Judge Taylor said, “Just tell us what happened. You can do that, can’t you?”
Mayella  stared  at  him  and  burst  into  tears.  She  covered  her  mouth  with  her
hands  and  sobbed.  Judge  Taylor  let  her  cry  for  a  while,  then  he  said,  “That’s
enough now. Don’t be ‘fraid of anybody here, as long as you tell the truth. All
this is strange to you, I know, but you’ve nothing to be ashamed of and nothing
to fear. What are you scared of?”
Mayella said something behind her hands. “What was that?” asked the judge.
“Him,” she sobbed, pointing at Atticus.

---

“Mr. Finch?”
She nodded vigorously, saying, “Don’t want him doin‘ me like he done Papa,
tryin’ to make him out lefthanded . . .”
Judge  Taylor  scratched  his  thick  white  hair.  It  was  plain  that  he  had  never
been confronted with a problem of this kind. “How old are you?” he asked.
“Nineteen-and-a-half,” Mayella said.
Judge Taylor cleared his throat and tried unsuccessfully to speak in soothing
tones.  “Mr.  Finch  has  no  idea  of  scaring  you,”  he  growled,  “and  if  he  did,  I’m
here to stop him. That’s one thing I’m sitting up here for. Now you’re a big girl,
so you just sit up straight and tell the—tell us what happened to you. You can do
that, can’t you?”
I whispered to Jem, “Has she got good sense?”
Jem was squinting down at the witness stand. “Can’t tell yet,” he said. “She’s
got  enough  sense  to  get  the  judge  sorry  for  her,  but  she  might  be  just—oh,  I
don’t know.”
Mollified,  Mayella  gave  Atticus  a  final  terrified  glance  and  said  to  Mr.
Gilmer,  “Well  sir,  I  was  on  the  porch  and—and  he  came  along  and,  you  see,
there  was  this  old  chiffarobe  in  the  yard  Papa’d  brought  in  to  chop  up  for
kindlin‘—Papa  told  me  to  do  it  while  he  was  off  in  the  woods  but  I  wadn’t
feelin’ strong enough then, so he came by—”
“Who is ‘he’?”
Mayella pointed to Tom Robinson. “I’ll have to ask you to be more specific,
please,” said Mr. Gilmer. “The reporter can’t put down gestures very well.”
“That’n yonder,” she said. “Robinson.”
“Then what happened?”
“I said come here, nigger, and bust up this chiffarobe for me, I gotta nickel for
you. He coulda done it easy enough, he could. So he come in the yard an‘ I went
in the house to get him the nickel and I turned around an ’fore I knew it he was
on me. Just run up behind me, he did. He got me round the neck, cussin‘ me an’
sayin‘ dirt—I fought’n’hollered, but he had me round the neck. He hit me agin
an‘ agin—”
Mr.  Gilmer  waited  for  Mayella  to  collect  herself:  she  had  twisted  her
handkerchief  into  a  sweaty  rope;  when  she  opened  it  to  wipe  her  face  it  was  a
mass  of  creases  from  her  hot  hands.  She  waited  for  Mr.  Gilmer  to  ask  another
question, but when he didn’t, she said, “-he chunked me on the floor an‘ choked

---

me’n took advantage of me.”
“Did you scream?” asked Mr. Gilmer. “Did you scream and fight back?”
“Reckon  I  did,  hollered  for  all  I  was  worth,  kicked  and  hollered  loud  as  I
could.”
“Then what happened?”
“I  don’t  remember  too  good,  but  next  thing  I  knew  Papa  was  in  the  room
a’standing over me hollerin‘ who done it, who done it? Then I sorta fainted an’
the next thing I knew Mr. Tate was pullin‘ me up offa the floor and leadin’ me to
the water bucket.”
Apparently  Mayella’s  recital  had  given  her  confidence,  but  it  was  not  her
father’s brash kind: there was something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed
cat with a twitchy tail.
“You  say  you  fought  him  off  as  hard  as  you  could?  Fought  him  tooth  and
nail?” asked Mr. Gilmer.
“I positively did,” Mayella echoed her father.
“You are positive that he took full advantage of you?”
Mayella’s face contorted, and I was afraid that she would cry again. Instead,
she said, “He done what he was after.”
Mr. Gilmer called attention to the hot day by wiping his head with his hand.
“That’s all for the time being,” he said pleasantly, “but you stay there. I expect
big bad Mr. Finch has some questions to ask you.”
“State  will  not  prejudice  the  witness  against  counsel  for  the  defense,”
murmured Judge Taylor primly, “at least not at this time.”
Atticus got up grinning but instead of walking to the witness stand, he opened
his  coat  and  hooked  his  thumbs  in  his  vest,  then  he  walked  slowly  across  the
room  to  the  windows.  He  looked  out,  but  didn’t  seem  especially  interested  in
what  he  saw,  then  he  turned  and  strolled  back  to  the  witness  stand.  From  long
years  of  experience,  I  could  tell  he  was  trying  to  come  to  a  decision  about
something.
“Miss  Mayella,”  he  said,  smiling,  “I  won’t  try  to  scare  you  for  a  while,  not
yet. Let’s just get acquainted. How old are you?”
“Said  I  was  nineteen,  said  it  to  the  judge  yonder.”  Mayella  jerked  her  head
resentfully at the bench.
“So you did, so you did, ma’am. You’ll have to bear with me, Miss Mayella,
I’m getting along and can’t remember as well as I used to. I might ask you things

---

you’ve already said before, but you’ll give me an answer, won’t you? Good.”
I  could  see  nothing  in  Mayella’s  expression  to  justify  Atticus’s  assumption
that  he  had  secured  her  wholehearted  cooperation.  She  was  looking  at  him
furiously.
“Won’t answer a word you say long as you keep on mockin‘ me,” she said.
“Ma’am?” asked Atticus, startled.
“Long’s you keep on makin‘ fun o’me.”
Judge  Taylor  said,  “Mr.  Finch  is  not  making  fun  of  you.  What’s  the  matter
with you?”
Mayella  looked  from  under  lowered  eyelids  at  Atticus,  but  she  said  to  the
judge:  “Long’s  he  keeps  on  callin‘  me  ma’am  an  sayin’  Miss  Mayella.  I  don’t
hafta take his sass, I ain’t called upon to take it.”
Atticus  resumed  his  stroll  to  the  windows  and  let  Judge  Taylor  handle  this
one. Judge Taylor was not the kind of figure that ever evoked pity, but I did feel
a  pang  for  him  as  he  tried  to  explain.  “That’s  just  Mr.  Finch’s  way,”  he  told
Mayella. “We’ve done business in this court for years and years, and Mr. Finch
is always courteous to everybody. He’s not trying to mock you, he’s trying to be
polite. That’s just his way.”
The  judge  leaned  back.  “Atticus,  let’s  get  on  with  these  proceedings,  and  let
the record show that the witness has not been sassed, her views to the contrary.”
I wondered if anybody had ever called her “ma’am,” or “Miss Mayella” in her
life; probably not, as she took offense to routine courtesy. What on earth was her
life like? I soon found out.
“You say you’re nineteen,” Atticus resumed. “How many sisters and brothers
have you?” He walked from the windows back to the stand.
“Seb’m,”  she  said,  and  I  wondered  if  they  were  all  like  the  specimen  I  had
seen the first day I started to school.
“You the eldest? The oldest?”
“Yes.”
“How long has your mother been dead?”
“Don’t know—long time.”
“Did you ever go to school?”
“Read’n‘write good as Papa yonder.”
Mayella sounded like a Mr. Jingle in a book I had been reading.

---

“How long did you go to school?”
“Two year—three year—dunno.”
Slowly  but  surely  I  began  to  see  the  pattern  of  Atticus’s  questions:  from
questions  that  Mr.  Gilmer  did  not  deem  sufficiently  irrelevant  or  immaterial  to
object to, Atticus was quietly building up before the jury a picture of the Ewells’
home life. The jury learned the following things: their relief check was far from
enough to feed the family, and there was strong suspicion that Papa drank it up
anyway—he sometimes went off in the swamp for days and came home sick; the
weather  was  seldom  cold  enough  to  require  shoes,  but  when  it  was,  you  could
make dandy ones from strips of old tires; the family hauled its water in buckets
from  a  spring  that  ran  out  at  one  end  of  the  dump—they  kept  the  surrounding
area  clear  of  trash—and  it  was  everybody  for  himself  as  far  as  keeping  clean
went:  if  you  wanted  to  wash  you  hauled  your  own  water;  the  younger  children
had perpetual colds and suffered from chronic ground-itch; there was a lady who
came around sometimes and asked Mayella why she didn’t stay in school—she
wrote  down  the  answer;  with  two  members  of  the  family  reading  and  writing,
there was no need for the rest of them to learn—Papa needed them at home.
“Miss Mayella,” said Atticus, in spite of himself, “a nineteen-year-old girl like
you must have friends. Who are your friends?”
The witness frowned as if puzzled. “Friends?”
“Yes, don’t you know anyone near your age, or older, or younger? Boys and
girls? Just ordinary friends?”
Mayella’s  hostility,  which  had  subsided  to  grudging  neutrality,  flared  again.
“You makin‘ fun o’me agin, Mr. Finch?”
Atticus let her question answer his
“Do you love your father, Miss Mayella?” was his next.
“Love him, whatcha mean?”
“I mean, is he good to you, is he easy to get along with?”
“He does tollable, ‘cept when—”
“Except when?”
Mayella looked at her father, who was sitting with his chair tipped against the
railing. He sat up straight and waited for her to answer.
“Except when nothin‘,” said Mayella. “I said he does tollable.”
Mr. Ewell leaned back again.

---

“Except when he’s drinking?” asked Atticus so gently that Mayella nodded.
“Does he ever go after you?”
“How you mean?”
“When he’s—riled, has he ever beaten you?”
Mayella looked around, down at the court reporter, up at the judge. “Answer
the question, Miss Mayella,” said Judge Taylor.
“My paw’s never touched a hair o’my head in my life,” she declared firmly.
“He never touched me.”
Atticus’s  glasses  had  slipped  a  little,  and  he  pushed  them  up  on  his  nose.
“We’ve had a good visit, Miss Mayella, and now I guess we’d better get to the
case. You say you asked Tom Robinson to come chop up a—what was it?”
“A chiffarobe, a old dresser full of drawers on one side.”
“Was Tom Robinson well known to you?”
“Whaddya mean?”
“I mean did you know who he was, where he lived?”
Mayella nodded. “I knowed who he was, he passed the house every day.”
“Was this the first time you asked him to come inside the fence?”
Mayella  jumped  slightly  at  the  question.  Atticus  was  making  his  slow
pilgrimage to the windows, as he had been doing: he would ask a question, then
look  out,  waiting  for  an  answer.  He  did  not  see  her  involuntary  jump,  but  it
seemed  to  me  that  he  knew  she  had  moved.  He  turned  around  and  raised  his
eyebrows. “Was—” he began again.
“Yes it was.”
“Didn’t you ever ask him to come inside the fence before?”
She was prepared now. “I did not, I certainly did not.”
“One  did  not’s  enough,”  said  Atticus  serenely.  “You  never  asked  him  to  do
odd jobs for you before?”
“I mighta,” conceded Mayella. “There was several niggers around.”
“Can you remember any other occasions?”
“No.”
“All right, now to what happened. You said Tom Robinson was behind you in
the room when you turned around, that right?”
“Yes.”

---

“You  said  he  ‘got  you  around  the  neck  cussing  and  saying  dirt’—is  that
right?”
“‘t’s right.”
Atticus’s  memory  had  suddenly  become  accurate.  “You  say  ‘he  caught  me
and choked me and took advantage of me’—is that right?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Do you remember him beating you about the face?”
The witness hesitated.
“You  seem  sure  enough  that  he  choked  you.  All  this  time  you  were  fighting
back,  remember?  You  ‘kicked  and  hollered  as  loud  as  you  could.’  Do  you
remember him beating you about the face?”
Mayella was silent. She seemed to be trying to get something clear to herself.
I  thought  for  a  moment  she  was  doing  Mr.  Heck  Tate’s  and  my  trick  of
pretending there was a person in front of us. She glanced at Mr. Gilmer.
“It’s an easy question, Miss Mayella, so I’ll try again. Do you remember him
beating you about the face?” Atticus’s voice had lost its comfortableness; he was
speaking  in  his  arid,  detached  professional  voice.  “Do  you  remember  him
beating you about the face?”
“No, I don’t recollect if he hit me. I mean yes I do, he hit me.”
“Was your last sentence your answer?”
“Huh?  Yes,  he  hit—I  just  don’t  remember,  I  just  don’t  remember  .  .  .  it  all
happened so quick.”
Judge Taylor looked sternly at Mayella. “Don’t you cry, young woman—” he
began,  but  Atticus  said,  “Let  her  cry  if  she  wants  to,  Judge.  We’ve  got  all  the
time in the world.”
Mayella  sniffed  wrathfully  and  looked  at  Atticus.  “I’ll  answer  any  question
you got—get me up here an‘ mock me, will you? I’ll answer any question you
got—”
“That’s fine,” said Atticus. “There’re only a few more. Miss Mayella, not to
be  tedious,  you’ve  testified  that  the  defendant  hit  you,  grabbed  you  around  the
neck, choked you, and took advantage of you. I want you to be sure you have the
right man. Will you identify the man who raped you?”
“I will, that’s him right yonder.”
Atticus  turned  to  the  defendant.  “Tom,  stand  up.  Let  Miss  Mayella  have  a

---

good long look at you. Is this the man, Miss Mayella?”
Tom  Robinson’s  powerful  shoulders  rippled  under  his  thin  shirt.  He  rose  to
his feet and stood with his right hand on the back of his chair. He looked oddly
off balance, but it was not from the way he was standing. His left arm was fully
twelve inches shorter than his right, and hung dead at his side. It ended in a small
shriveled  hand,  and  from  as  far  away  as  the  balcony  I  could  see  that  it  was  no
use to him.
“Scout,” breathed Jem. “Scout, look! Reverend, he’s crippled!”
Reverend Sykes leaned across me and whispered to Jem. “He got it caught in
a cotton gin, caught it in Mr. Dolphus Raymond’s cotton gin when he was a boy
. . . like to bled to death . . . tore all the muscles loose from his bones—”
Atticus said, “Is this the man who raped you?”
“It most certainly is.”
Atticus’s next question was one word long. “How?”
Mayella was raging. “I don’t know how he done it, but he done it—I said it all
happened so fast I—”
“Now let’s consider this calmly—” began Atticus, but Mr. Gilmer interrupted
with  an  objection:  he  was  not  irrelevant  or  immaterial,  but  Atticus  was
browbeating the witness.
Judge  Taylor  laughed  outright.  “Oh  sit  down,  Horace,  he’s  doing  nothing  of
the sort. If anything, the witness’s browbeating Atticus.”
Judge  Taylor  was  the  only  person  in  the  courtroom  who  laughed.  Even  the
babies  were  still,  and  I  suddenly  wondered  if  they  had  been  smothered  at  their
mothers’ breasts.
“Now,”  said  Atticus,  “Miss  Mayella,  you’ve  testified  that  the  defendant
choked  and  beat  you—you  didn’t  say  that  he  sneaked  up  behind  you  and
knocked you cold, but you turned around and there he was—” Atticus was back
behind his table, and he emphasized his words by tapping his knuckles on it. “—
do you wish to reconsider any of your testimony?”
“You want me to say something that didn’t happen?”
“No ma’am, I want you to say something that did happen. Tell us once more,
please, what happened?”
“I told’ja what happened.”
“You testified that you turned around and there he was. He choked you then?”

---

“Yes.”
“Then he released your throat and hit you?”
“I said he did.”
“He blacked your left eye with his right fist?”
“I ducked and it—it glanced, that’s what it did. I ducked and it glanced off.”
Mayella had finally seen the light.
“You’re  becoming  suddenly  clear  on  this  point.  A  while  ago  you  couldn’t
remember too well, could you?”
“I said he hit me.”
“All right. He choked you, he hit you, then he raped you, that right?”
“It most certainly is.”
“You’re a strong girl, what were you doing all the time, just standing there?”
“I told’ja I hollered’n‘kicked’n’fought—”
Atticus  reached  up  and  took  off  his  glasses,  turned  his  good  right  eye  to  the
witness, and rained questions on her. Judge Taylor said, “One question at a time,
Atticus. Give the witness a chance to answer.”
“All right, why didn’t you run?”
“I tried . . .”
“Tried to? What kept you from it?”
“I—he slung me down. That’s what he did, he slung me down’n got on top of
me.”
“You were screaming all this time?”
“I certainly was.”
“Then  why  didn’t  the  other  children  hear  you?  Where  were  they?  At  the
dump?”
“Where were they?”
No answer.
“Why didn’t your screams make them come running? The dump’s closer than
the woods, isn’t it?”
No answer.
“Or  didn’t  you  scream  until  you  saw  your  father  in  the  window?  You  didn’t
think to scream until then, did you?”

---

No answer.
“Did  you  scream  first  at  your  father  instead  of  at  Tom  Robinson?  Was  that
it?”
No answer.
“Who beat you up? Tom Robinson or your father?”
No answer.
“What did your father see in the window, the crime of rape or the best defense
to it? Why don’t you tell the truth, child, didn’t Bob Ewell beat you up?”
When Atticus turned away from Mayella he looked like his stomach hurt, but
Mayella’s  face  was  a  mixture  of  terror  and  fury.  Atticus  sat  down  wearily  and
polished his glasses with his handkerchief.
Suddenly Mayella became articulate. “I got somethin‘ to say,” she said.
Atticus raised his head. “Do you want to tell us what happened?”
But she did not hear the compassion in his invitation. “I got somethin‘ to say
an’ then I ain’t gonna say no more. That nigger yonder took advantage of me an‘
if  you  fine  fancy  gentlemen  don’t  wanta  do  nothin’  about  it  then  you’re  all
yellow stinkin‘ cowards, stinkin’ cowards, the lot of you. Your fancy airs don’t
come  to  nothin‘—your  ma’amin’  and  Miss  Mayellerin‘  don’t  come  to  nothin’,
Mr. Finch—”
Then she burst into real tears. Her shoulders shook with angry sobs. She was
as  good  as  her  word.  She  answered  no  more  questions,  even  when  Mr.  Gilmer
tried to get her back on the track. I guess if she hadn’t been so poor and ignorant,
Judge Taylor would have put her under the jail for the contempt she had shown
everybody  in  the  courtroom.  Somehow,  Atticus  had  hit  her  hard  in  a  way  that
was not clear to me, but it gave him no pleasure to do so. He sat with his head
down, and I never saw anybody glare at anyone with the hatred Mayella showed
when she left the stand and walked by Atticus’s table.
When  Mr.  Gilmer  told  Judge  Taylor  that  the  state  rested,  Judge  Taylor  said,
“It’s time we all did. We’ll take ten minutes.”
Atticus and Mr. Gilmer met in front of the bench and whispered, then they left
the courtroom by a door behind the witness stand, which was a signal for us all
to stretch. I discovered that I had been sitting on the edge of the long bench, and
I was somewhat numb. Jem got up and yawned, Dill did likewise, and Reverend
Sykes wiped his face on his hat. The temperature was an easy ninety, he said.
Mr. Braxton Underwood, who had been sitting quietly in a chair reserved for

---

the  Press,  soaking  up  testimony  with  his  sponge  of  a  brain,  allowed  his  bitter
eyes to rove over the colored balcony, and they met mine. He gave a snort and
looked away.
“Jem,” I said, “Mr. Underwood’s seen us.”
“That’s okay. He won’t tell Atticus, he’ll just put it on the social side of the
Tribune.” Jem turned back to Dill, explaining, I suppose, the finer points of the
trial to him, but I wondered what they were. There had been no lengthy debates
between  Atticus  and  Mr.  Gilmer  on  any  points;  Mr.  Gilmer  seemed  to  be
prosecuting almost reluctantly; witnesses had been led by the nose as asses are,
with  few  objections.  But  Atticus  had  once  told  us  that  in  Judge  Taylor’s  court
any  lawyer  who  was  a  strict  constructionist  on  evidence  usually  wound  up
receiving strict instructions from the bench. He distilled this for me to mean that
Judge  Taylor  might  look  lazy  and  operate  in  his  sleep,  but  he  was  seldom
reversed,  and  that  was  the  proof  of  the  pudding.  Atticus  said  he  was  a  good
judge.
Presently Judge Taylor returned and climbed into his swivel chair. He took a
cigar from his vest pocket and examined it thoughtfully. I punched Dill. Having
passed the judge’s inspection, the cigar suffered a vicious bite. “We come down
sometimes  to  watch  him,”  I  explained.  “It’s  gonna  take  him  the  rest  of  the
afternoon,  now.  You  watch.”  Unaware  of  public  scrutiny  from  above,  Judge
Taylor  disposed  of  the  severed  end  by  propelling  it  expertly  to  his  lips  and
saying, “Fhluck!” He hit a spittoon so squarely we could hear it slosh. “Bet he
was hell with a spitball,” murmured Dill.
As a rule, a recess meant a general exodus, but today people weren’t moving.
Even  the  Idlers  who  had  failed  to  shame  younger  men  from  their  seats  had
remained  standing  along  the  walls.  I  guess  Mr.  Heck  Tate  had  reserved  the
county toilet for court officials.
Atticus and Mr. Gilmer returned, and Judge Taylor looked at his watch. “It’s
gettin‘ on to four,” he said, which was intriguing, as the courthouse clock must
have struck the hour at least twice. I had not heard it or felt its vibrations.
“Shall we try to wind up this afternoon?” asked Judge Taylor. “How ‘bout it,
Atticus?”
“I think we can,” said Atticus.
“How many witnesses you got?”
“One.”
“Well, call him.”

---

19
T
homas Robinson reached around, ran his fingers under his left arm and lifted
it.  He  guided  his  arm  to  the  Bible  and  his  rubber-like  left  hand  sought  contact
with  the  black  binding.  As  he  raised  his  right  hand,  the  useless  one  slipped  off
the  Bible  and  hit  the  clerk’s  table.  He  was  trying  again  when  Judge  Taylor
growled,  “That’ll  do,  Tom.”  Tom  took  the  oath  and  stepped  into  the  witness
chair. Atticus very quickly induced him to tell us: Tom was twenty-five years of
age;  he  was  married  with  three  children;  he  had  been  in  trouble  with  the  law
before: he once received thirty days for disorderly conduct.
“It must have been disorderly,” said Atticus. “What did it consist of?”
“Got in a fight with another man, he tried to cut me.”
“Did he succeed?”
“Yes  suh,  a  little,  not  enough  to  hurt.  You  see,  I—”  Tom  moved  his  left
shoulder.
“Yes,” said Atticus. “You were both convicted?”
“Yes  suh,  I  had  to  serve  ‘cause  I  couldn’t  pay  the  fine.  Other  fellow  paid
his’n.”
Dill leaned across me and asked Jem what Atticus was doing. Jem said Atticus
was showing the jury that Tom had nothing to hide.
“Were you acquainted with Mayella Violet Ewell?” asked Atticus.
“Yes suh, I had to pass her place goin‘ to and from the field every day.”
“Whose field?”
“I picks for Mr. Link Deas.”
“Were you picking cotton in November?”
“No suh, I works in his yard fall an‘ wintertime. I works pretty steady for him
all year round, he’s got a lot of pecan trees’n things.”
“You say you had to pass the Ewell place to get to and from work. Is there any
other way to go?”
“No suh, none’s I know of.”

---

“Tom, did she ever speak to you?”
“Why,  yes  suh,  I’d  tip  m’hat  when  I’d  go  by,  and  one  day  she  asked  me  to
come inside the fence and bust up a chiffarobe for her.”
“When did she ask you to chop up the—the chiffarobe?”
“Mr. Finch, it was way last spring. I remember it because it was choppin‘ time
and I had my hoe with me. I said I didn’t have nothin’ but this hoe, but she said
she  had  a  hatchet.  She  give  me  the  hatchet  and  I  broke  up  the  chiffarobe.  She
said, ‘I reckon I’ll hafta give you a nickel, won’t I?’ an‘ I said, ’No ma’am, there
ain’t  no  charge.‘  Then  I  went  home.  Mr.  Finch,  that  was  way  last  spring,  way
over a year ago.”
“Did you ever go on the place again?”
“Yes suh.”
“When?”
“Well, I went lots of times.”
Judge  Taylor  instinctively  reached  for  his  gavel,  but  let  his  hand  fall.  The
murmur below us died without his help.
“Under what circumstances?”
“Please, suh?”
“Why did you go inside the fence lots of times?”
Tom Robinson’s forehead relaxed. “She’d call me in, suh. Seemed like every
time  I  passed  by  yonder  she’d  have  some  little  somethin‘  for  me  to  do—
choppin’ kindlin‘, totin’ water for her. She watered them red flowers every day
—”
“Were you paid for your services?”
“No suh, not after she offered me a nickel the first time. I was glad to do it,
Mr.  Ewell  didn’t  seem  to  help  her  none,  and  neither  did  the  chillun,  and  I
knowed she didn’t have no nickels to spare.”
“Where were the other children?”
“They was always around, all over the place. They’d watch me work, some of
‘em, some of ’em’d set in the window.”
“Would Miss Mayella talk to you?”
“Yes sir, she talked to me.”
As Tom Robinson gave his testimony, it came to me that Mayella Ewell must
have  been  the  loneliest  person  in  the  world.  She  was  even  lonelier  than  Boo

---

Radley, who had not been out of the house in twenty-five years. When Atticus
asked  had  she  any  friends,  she  seemed  not  to  know  what  he  meant,  then  she
thought he was making fun of her. She was as sad, I thought, as what Jem called
a mixed child: white people wouldn’t have anything to do with her because she
lived  among  pigs;  Negroes  wouldn’t  have  anything  to  do  with  her  because  she
was  white.  She  couldn’t  live  like  Mr.  Dolphus  Raymond,  who  preferred  the
company of Negroes, because she didn’t own a riverbank and she wasn’t from a
fine  old  family.  Nobody  said,  “That’s  just  their  way,”  about  the  Ewells.
Maycomb  gave  them  Christmas  baskets,  welfare  money,  and  the  back  of  its
hand. Tom Robinson was probably the only person who was ever decent to her.
But she said he took advantage of her, and when she stood up she looked at him
as if he were dirt beneath her feet.
“Did  you  ever,”  Atticus  interrupted  my  meditations,  “at  any  time,  go  on  the
Ewell property—did you ever set foot on the Ewell property without an express
invitation from one of them?”
“No suh, Mr. Finch, I never did. I wouldn’t do that, suh.”
Atticus  sometimes  said  that  one  way  to  tell  whether  a  witness  was  lying  or
telling the truth was to listen rather than watch: I applied his test—Tom denied it
three times in one breath, but quietly, with no hint of whining in his voice, and I
found myself believing him in spite of his protesting too much. He seemed to be
a  respectable  Negro,  and  a  respectable  Negro  would  never  go  up  into
somebody’s yard of his own volition.
“Tom, what happened to you on the evening of November twenty-first of last
year?”
Below us, the spectators drew a collective breath and leaned forward. Behind
us, the Negroes did the same.
Tom was a black-velvet Negro, not shiny, but soft black velvet. The whites of
his eyes shone in his face, and when he spoke we saw flashes of his teeth. If he
had been whole, he would have been a fine specimen of a man.
“Mr.  Finch,”  he  said,  “I  was  goin‘  home  as  usual  that  evenin’,  an‘  when  I
passed the Ewell place Miss Mayella were on the porch, like she said she were.
It seemed real quiet like, an’ I didn’t quite know why. I was studyin‘ why, just
passin’ by, when she says for me to come there and help her a minute. Well, I
went  inside  the  fence  an‘  looked  around  for  some  kindlin’  to  work  on,  but  I
didn’t see none, and she says, ‘Naw, I got somethin’ for you to do in the house.
Th‘  old  door’s  off  its  hinges  an’  fall’s  comin‘  on  pretty  fast.’  I  said  you  got  a
screwdriver, Miss Mayella? She said she sho‘ had. Well, I went up the steps an’

---

she motioned me to come inside, and I went in the front room an‘ looked at the
door.  I  said  Miss  Mayella,  this  door  look  all  right.  I  pulled  it  back’n  forth  and
those hinges was all right. Then she shet the door in my face. Mr. Finch, I was
wonderin’ why it was so quiet like, an‘ it come to me that there weren’t a chile
on the place, not a one of ’em, and I said Miss Mayella, where the chillun?”
Tom’s black velvet skin had begun to shine, and he ran his hand over his face.
“I say where the chillun?” he continued, “an‘ she says—she was laughin’, sort
of—she says they all gone to town to get ice creams. She says, ‘took me a slap
year to save seb’m nickels, but I done it. They all gone to town.’”
Tom’s discomfort was not from the humidity. “What did you say then, Tom?”
asked Atticus.
“I  said  somethin‘  like,  why  Miss  Mayella,  that’s  right  smart  o’you  to  treat
’em.  An‘  she  said,  ’You  think  so?‘  I  don’t  think  she  understood  what  I  was
thinkin’—I  meant  it  was  smart  of  her  to  save  like  that,  an‘  nice  of  her  to  treat
em.”
“I understand you, Tom. Go on,” said Atticus.
“Well, I said I best be goin‘, I couldn’t do nothin’ for her, an‘ she says oh yes
I could, an’ I ask her what, and she says to just step on that chair yonder an‘ git
that box down from on top of the chiffarobe.”
“Not the same chiffarobe you busted up?” asked Atticus.
The  witness  smiled.  “Naw  suh,  another  one.  Most  as  tall  as  the  room.  So  I
done what she told me, an‘ I was just reachin’ when the next thing I knows she
—she’d grabbed me round the legs, grabbed me round th‘ legs, Mr. Finch. She
scared  me  so  bad  I  hopped  down  an’  turned  the  chair  over—that  was  the  only
thing,  only  furniture,  ‘sturbed  in  that  room,  Mr.  Finch,  when  I  left  it.  I  swear
’fore God.”
“What happened after you turned the chair over?”
Tom  Robinson  had  come  to  a  dead  stop.  He  glanced  at  Atticus,  then  at  the
jury, then at Mr. Underwood sitting across the room.
“Tom, you’re sworn to tell the whole truth. Will you tell it?”
Tom ran his hand nervously over his mouth.
“What happened after that?”
“Answer  the  question,”  said  Judge  Taylor.  One-third  of  his  cigar  had
vanished.
“Mr. Finch, I got down offa that chair an‘ turned around an’ she sorta jumped

---

on me.”
“Jumped on you? Violently?”
“No suh, she—she hugged me. She hugged me round the waist.”
This  time  Judge  Taylor’s  gavel  came  down  with  a  bang,  and  as  it  did  the
overhead  lights  went  on  in  the  courtroom.  Darkness  had  not  come,  but  the
afternoon sun had left the windows. Judge Taylor quickly restored order.
“Then what did she do?”
The witness swallowed hard. “She reached up an‘ kissed me ’side of th‘ face.
She  says  she  never  kissed  a  grown  man  before  an’  she  might  as  well  kiss  a
nigger. She says what her papa do to her don’t count. She says, ‘Kiss me back,
nigger.’ I say Miss Mayella lemme outa here an‘ tried to run but she got her back
to the door an’ I’da had to push her. I didn’t wanta harm her, Mr. Finch, an‘ I say
lemme  pass,  but  just  when  I  say  it  Mr.  Ewell  yonder  hollered  through  th’
window.”
“What did he say?”
Tom Robinson swallowed again, and his eyes widened. “Somethin‘ not fittin’
to say—not fittin‘ for these folks’n chillun to hear—”
“What did he say, Tom? You must tell the jury what he said.”
Tom Robinson shut his eyes tight. “He says you goddamn whore, I’ll kill ya.”
“Then what happened?”
“Mr. Finch, I was runnin‘ so fast I didn’t know what happened.”
“Tom, did you rape Mayella Ewell?”
“I did not, suh.”
“Did you harm her in any way?”
“I did not, suh.”
“Did you resist her advances?”
“Mr. Finch, I tried. I tried to ‘thout bein’ ugly to her. I didn’t wanta be ugly, I
didn’t wanta push her or nothin‘.”
It  occurred  to  me  that  in  their  own  way,  Tom  Robinson’s  manners  were  as
good as Atticus’s. Until my father explained it to me later, I did not understand
the  subtlety  of  Tom’s  predicament:  he  would  not  have  dared  strike  a  white
woman  under  any  circumstances  and  expect  to  live  long,  so  he  took  the  first
opportunity to run—a sure sign of guilt.
“Tom, go back once more to Mr. Ewell,” said Atticus. “Did he say anything to

---

you?”
“Not anything, suh. He mighta said somethin‘, but I weren’t there—”
“That’ll do,” Atticus cut in sharply. “What you did hear, who was he talking
to?”
“Mr. Finch, he were talkin‘ and lookin’ at Miss Mayella.”
“Then you ran?”
“I sho‘ did, suh.”
“Why did you run?”
“I was scared, suh.”
“Why were you scared?”
“Mr. Finch, if you was a nigger like me, you’d be scared, too.”
Atticus  sat  down.  Mr.  Gilmer  was  making  his  way  to  the  witness  stand,  but
before he got there Mr. Link Deas rose from the audience and announced: “I just
want the whole lot of you to know one thing right now. That boy’s worked for
me eight years an‘ I ain’t had a speck o’trouble outa him. Not a speck.”
“Shut  your  mouth,  sir!”  Judge  Taylor  was  wide  awake  and  roaring.  He  was
also  pink  in  the  face.  His  speech  was  miraculously  unimpaired  by  his  cigar.
“Link  Deas,”  he  yelled,  “if  you  have  anything  you  want  to  say  you  can  say  it
under  oath  and  at  the  proper  time,  but  until  then  you  get  out  of  this  room,  you
hear me? Get out of this room, sir, you hear me? I’ll be damned if I’ll listen to
this case again!”
Judge Taylor looked daggers at Atticus, as if daring him to speak, but Atticus
had ducked his head and was laughing into his lap. I remembered something he
had  said  about  Judge  Taylor’s  ex  cathedra  remarks  sometimes  exceeding  his
duty,  but  that  few  lawyers  ever  did  anything  about  them.  I  looked  at  Jem,  but
Jem shook his head. “It ain’t like one of the jurymen got up and started talking,”
he said. “I think it’d be different then. Mr. Link was just disturbin‘ the peace or
something.”
Judge  Taylor  told  the  reporter  to  expunge  anything  he  happened  to  have
written down after Mr. Finch if you were a nigger like me you’d be scared too,
and told the jury to disregard the interruption. He looked suspiciously down the
middle aisle and waited, I suppose, for Mr. Link Deas to effect total departure.
Then he said, “Go ahead, Mr. Gilmer.”
“You  were  given  thirty  days  once  for  disorderly  conduct,  Robinson?”  asked
Mr. Gilmer.

---

“Yes suh.”
“What’d the nigger look like when you got through with him?”
“He beat me, Mr. Gilmer.”
“Yes, but you were convicted, weren’t you?”
Atticus raised his head. “It was a misdemeanor and it’s in the record, Judge.” I
thought he sounded tired.
“Witness’ll answer, though,” said Judge Taylor, just as wearily.
“Yes suh, I got thirty days.”
I  knew  that  Mr.  Gilmer  would  sincerely  tell  the  jury  that  anyone  who  was
convicted  of  disorderly  conduct  could  easily  have  had  it  in  his  heart  to  take
advantage of Mayella Ewell, that was the only reason he cared. Reasons like that
helped.
“Robinson, you’re pretty good at busting up chiffarobes and kindling with one
hand, aren’t you?”
“Yes, suh, I reckon so.”
“Strong  enough  to  choke  the  breath  out  of  a  woman  and  sling  her  to  the
floor?”
“I never done that, suh.”
“But you are strong enough to?”
“I reckon so, suh.”
“Had your eye on her a long time, hadn’t you, boy?”
“No suh, I never looked at her.”
“Then  you  were  mighty  polite  to  do  all  that  chopping  and  hauling  for  her,
weren’t you, boy?”
“I was just tryin‘ to help her out, suh.”
“That was mighty generous of you, you had chores at home after your regular
work, didn’t you?”
“Yes suh.”
“Why didn’t you do them instead of Miss Ewell’s?”
“I done ‘em both, suh.”
“You must have been pretty busy. Why?”
“Why what, suh?”

---

“Why were you so anxious to do that woman’s chores?”
Tom  Robinson  hesitated,  searching  for  an  answer.  “Looked  like  she  didn’t
have nobody to help her, like I says—”
“With Mr. Ewell and seven children on the place, boy?”
“Well, I says it looked like they never help her none—”
“You did all this chopping and work from sheer goodness, boy?”
“Tried to help her, I says.”
Mr. Gilmer smiled grimly at the jury. “You’re a mighty good fellow, it seems
—did all this for not one penny?”
“Yes, suh. I felt right sorry for her, she seemed to try more’n the rest of ‘em
—”
“You  felt  sorry  for  her,  you  felt  sorry  for  he?”  Mr.  Gilmer  seemed  ready  to
rise to the ceiling.
The  witness  realized  his  mistake  and  shifted  uncomfortably  in  the  chair.  But
the  damage  was  done.  Below  us,  nobody  liked  Tom  Robinson’s  answer.  Mr.
Gilmer paused a long time to let it sink in.
“Now  you  went  by  the  house  as  usual,  last  November  twenty-first,”  he  said,
“and she asked you to come in and bust up a chiffarobe?”
“No suh.”
“Do you deny that you went by the house?”
“No suh—she said she had somethin‘ for me to do inside the house—”
“She says she asked you to bust up a chiffarobe, is that right?”
“No suh, it ain’t.”
“Then you say she’s lying, boy?”
Atticus was on his feet, but Tom Robinson didn’t need him. “I don’t say she’s
lyin‘, Mr. Gilmer, I say she’s mistaken in her mind.”
To  the  next  ten  questions,  as  Mr.  Gilmer  reviewed  Mayella’s  version  of
events, the witness’s steady answer was that she was mistaken in her mind.
“Didn’t Mr. Ewell run you off the place, boy?”
“No suh, I don’t think he did.”
“Don’t think, what do you mean?”
“I mean I didn’t stay long enough for him to run me off.”
“You’re very candid about this, why did you run so fast?”

---

“I says I was scared, suh.”
“If you had a clear conscience, why were you scared?”
“Like I says before, it weren’t safe for any nigger to be in a—fix like that.”
“But  you  weren’t  in  a  fix—you  testified  that  you  were  resisting  Miss  Ewell.
Were you so scared that she’d hurt you, you ran, a big buck like you?”
“No suh, I’s scared I’d be in court, just like I am now.”
“Scared of arrest, scared you’d have to face up to what you did?”
“No suh, scared I’d hafta face up to what I didn’t do.”
“Are you being impudent to me, boy?”
“No suh, I didn’t go to be.”
This was as much as I heard of Mr. Gilmer’s cross-examination, because Jem
made  me  take  Dill  out.  For  some  reason  Dill  had  started  crying  and  couldn’t
stop; quietly at first, then his sobs were heard by several people in the balcony.
Jem  said  if  I  didn’t  go  with  him  he’d  make  me,  and  Reverend  Sykes  said  I’d
better go, so I went. Dill had seemed to be all right that day, nothing wrong with
him, but I guessed he hadn’t fully recovered from running away.
“Ain’t you feeling good?” I asked, when we reached the bottom of the stairs.
Dill  tried  to  pull  himself  together  as  we  ran  down  the  south  steps.  Mr.  Link
Deas was a lonely figure on the top step. “Anything happenin‘, Scout?” he asked
as we went by. “No sir,” I answered over my shoulder. “Dill here, he’s sick.”
“Come on out under the trees,” I said. “Heat got you, I expect.” We chose the
fattest live oak and we sat under it.
“It was just him I couldn’t stand,” Dill said.
“Who, Tom?”
“That old Mr. Gilmer doin‘ him thataway, talking so hateful to him—”
“Dill,  that’s  his  job.  Why,  if  we  didn’t  have  prosecutors—well,  we  couldn’t
have defense attorneys, I reckon.”
Dill exhaled patiently. “I know all that, Scout. It was the way he said it made
me sick, plain sick.”
“He’s supposed to act that way, Dill, he was cross—”
“He didn’t act that way when—”
“Dill, those were his own witnesses.”
“Well, Mr. Finch didn’t act that way to Mayella and old man Ewell when he

---

cross-examined  them.  The  way  that  man  called  him  ‘boy’  all  the  time  an‘
sneered at him, an’ looked around at the jury every time he answered—”
“Well, Dill, after all he’s just a Negro.”
“I  don’t  care  one  speck.  It  ain’t  right,  somehow  it  ain’t  right  to  do  ‘em  that
way. Hasn’t anybody got any business talkin’ like that—it just makes me sick.”
“That’s just Mr. Gilmer’s way, Dill, he does ‘em all that way. You’ve never
seen  him  get  good’n  down  on  one  yet.  Why,  when—well,  today  Mr.  Gilmer
seemed to me like he wasn’t half trying. They do ’em all that way, most lawyers,
I mean.”
“Mr. Finch doesn’t.”
“He’s not an example, Dill, he’s—” I was trying to grope in my memory for a
sharp  phrase  of  Miss  Maudie  Atkinson’s.  I  had  it:  “He’s  the  same  in  the
courtroom as he is on the public streets.”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Dill.
“I  know  what  you  mean,  boy,”  said  a  voice  behind  us.  We  thought  it  came
from the tree-trunk, but it belonged to Mr. Dolphus Raymond. He peered around
the trunk at us. “You aren’t thin-hided, it just makes you sick, doesn’t it?”

---

20
“C
ome on round here, son, I got something that’ll settle your stomach.”
As  Mr.  Dolphus  Raymond  was  an  evil  man  I  accepted  his  invitation
reluctantly, but I followed Dill. Somehow, I didn’t think Atticus would like it if
we became friendly with Mr. Raymond, and I knew Aunt Alexandra wouldn’t.
“Here,”  he  said,  offering  Dill  his  paper  sack  with  straws  in  it.  “Take  a  good
sip, it’ll quieten you.”
Dill sucked on the straws, smiled, and pulled at length.
“Hee hee,” said Mr. Raymond, evidently taking delight in corrupting a child.
“Dill, you watch out, now,” I warned.
Dill released the straws and grinned. “Scout, it’s nothing but Coca-Cola.”
Mr.  Raymond  sat  up  against  the  tree-trunk.  He  had  been  lying  on  the  grass.
“You little folks won’t tell on me now, will you? It’d ruin my reputation if you
did.”
“You mean all you drink in that sack’s Coca-Cola? Just plain Coca-Cola?”
“Yes  ma’am,”  Mr.  Raymond  nodded.  I  liked  his  smell:  it  was  of  leather,
horses,  cottonseed.  He  wore  the  only  English  riding  boots  I  had  ever  seen.
“That’s all I drink, most of the time.”
“Then  you  just  pretend  you’re  half—?  I  beg  your  pardon,  sir,”  I  caught
myself. “I didn’t mean to be—”
Mr.  Raymond  chuckled,  not  at  all  offended,  and  I  tried  to  frame  a  discreet
question: “Why do you do like you do?”
“Wh—oh  yes,  you  mean  why  do  I  pretend?  Well,  it’s  very  simple,”  he  said.
“Some  folks  don’t—like  the  way  I  live.  Now  I  could  say  the  hell  with  ‘em,  I
don’t  care  if  they  don’t  like  it.  I  do  say  I  don’t  care  if  they  don’t  like  it,  right
enough—but I don’t say the hell with ’em, see?”
Dill and I said, “No sir.”
“I  try  to  give  ‘em  a  reason,  you  see.  It  helps  folks  if  they  can  latch  onto  a
reason. When I come to town, which is seldom, if I weave a little and drink out
of  this  sack,  folks  can  say  Dolphus  Raymond’s  in  the  clutches  of  whiskey—

---

that’s why he won’t change his ways. He can’t help himself, that’s why he lives
the way he does.”
“That  ain’t  honest,  Mr.  Raymond,  making  yourself  out  badder’n  you  are
already—”
“It ain’t honest but it’s mighty helpful to folks. Secretly, Miss Finch, I’m not
much of a drinker, but you see they could never, never understand that I live like
I do because that’s the way I want to live.”
I  had  a  feeling  that  I  shouldn’t  be  here  listening  to  this  sinful  man  who  had
mixed children and didn’t care who knew it, but he was fascinating. I had never
encountered a being who deliberately perpetrated fraud against himself. But why
had he entrusted us with his deepest secret? I asked him why.
“Because you’re children and you can understand it,” he said, “and because I
heard that one—”
He jerked his head at Dill: “Things haven’t caught up with that one’s instinct
yet.  Let  him  get  a  little  older  and  he  won’t  get  sick  and  cry.  Maybe  things’ll
strike  him  as  being—not  quite  right,  say,  but  he  won’t  cry,  not  when  he  gets  a
few years on him.”
“Cry  about  what,  Mr.  Raymond?”  Dill’s  maleness  was  beginning  to  assert
itself.
“Cry about the simple hell people give other people—without even thinking.
Cry  about  the  hell  white  people  give  colored  folks,  without  even  stopping  to
think that they’re people, too.”
“Atticus says cheatin‘ a colored man is ten times worse than cheatin’ a white
man,” I muttered. “Says it’s the worst thing you can do.”
Mr.  Raymond  said,  “I  don’t  reckon  it’s—Miss  Jean  Louise,  you  don’t  know
your pa’s not a run-of-the-mill man, it’ll take a few years for that to sink in—you
haven’t seen enough of the world yet. You haven’t even seen this town, but all
you gotta do is step back inside the courthouse.”
Which  reminded  me  that  we  were  missing  nearly  all  of  Mr.  Gilmer’s  cross-
examination. I looked at the sun, and it was dropping fast behind the store-tops
on  the  west  side  of  the  square.  Between  two  fires,  I  could  not  decide  which  I
wanted  to  jump  into:  Mr.  Raymond  or  the  5th  Judicial  Circuit  Court.  “C’mon,
Dill,” I said. “You all right, now?”
“Yeah.  Glad  t’ve  metcha,  Mr.  Raymond,  and  thanks  for  the  drink,  it  was
mighty settlin‘.”
We  raced  back  to  the  courthouse,  up  the  steps,  up  two  flights  of  stairs,  and

---

edged our way along the balcony rail. Reverend Sykes had saved our seats.
The courtroom was still, and again I wondered where the babies were. Judge
Taylor’s  cigar  was  a  brown  speck  in  the  center  of  his  mouth;  Mr.  Gilmer  was
writing on one of the yellow pads on his table, trying to outdo the court reporter,
whose hand was jerking rapidly. “Shoot,” I muttered, “we missed it.”
Atticus  was  halfway  through  his  speech  to  the  jury.  He  had  evidently  pulled
some papers from his briefcase that rested beside his chair, because they were on
his table. Tom Robinson was toying with them.
“. . . absence of any corroborative evidence, this man was indicted on a capital
charge and is now on trial for his life . . .”
I punched Jem. “How long’s he been at it?”
“He’s  just  gone  over  the  evidence,”  Jem  whispered,  “and  we’re  gonna  win,
Scout. I don’t see how we can’t. He’s been at it ‘bout five minutes. He made it as
plain and easy as—well, as I’da explained it to you. You could’ve understood it,
even.”
“Did Mr. Gilmer—?”
“Sh-h. Nothing new, just the usual. Hush now.”
We  looked  down  again.  Atticus  was  speaking  easily,  with  the  kind  of
detachment he used when he dictated a letter. He walked slowly up and down in
front  of  the  jury,  and  the  jury  seemed  to  be  attentive:  their  heads  were  up,  and
they followed Atticus’s route with what seemed to be appreciation. I guess it was
because Atticus wasn’t a thunderer.
Atticus  paused,  then  he  did  something  he  didn’t  ordinarily  do.  He  unhitched
his  watch  and  chain  and  placed  them  on  the  table,  saying,  “With  the  court’s
permission—”
Judge  Taylor  nodded,  and  then  Atticus  did  something  I  never  saw  him  do
before  or  since,  in  public  or  in  private:  he  unbuttoned  his  vest,  unbuttoned  his
collar, loosened his tie, and took off his coat. He never loosened a scrap of his
clothing  until  he  undressed  at  bedtime,  and  to  Jem  and  me,  this  was  the
equivalent  of  him  standing  before  us  stark  naked.  We  exchanged  horrified
glances.
Atticus put his hands in his pockets, and as he returned to the jury, I saw his
gold collar button and the tips of his pen and pencil winking in the light.
“Gentlemen,”  he  said.  Jem  and  I  again  looked  at  each  other:  Atticus  might
have  said,  “Scout.”  His  voice  had  lost  its  aridity,  its  detachment,  and  he  was
talking to the jury as if they were folks on the post office corner.

---

“Gentlemen,”  he  was  saying,  “I  shall  be  brief,  but  I  would  like  to  use  my
remaining  time  with  you  to  remind  you  that  this  case  is  not  a  difficult  one,  it
requires no minute sifting of complicated facts, but it does require you to be sure
beyond all reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the defendant. To begin with, this
case should never have come to trial. This case is as simple as black and white.
“The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence to the effect that the
crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place. It has relied instead upon
the  testimony  of  two  witnesses  whose  evidence  has  not  only  been  called  into
serious  question  on  cross-examination,  but  has  been  flatly  contradicted  by  the
defendant. The defendant is not guilty, but somebody in this courtroom is.
“I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the state, but my
pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man’s life at stake, which she has
done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt.
“I  say  guilt,  gentlemen,  because  it  was  guilt  that  motivated  her.  She  has
committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our
society,  a  code  so  severe  that  whoever  breaks  it  is  hounded  from  our  midst  as
unfit to live with. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance, but I cannot
pity  her:  she  is  white.  She  knew  full  well  the  enormity  of  her  offense,  but
because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted
in breaking it. She persisted, and her subsequent reaction is something that all of
us have known at one time or another. She did something every child has done—
she tried to put the evidence of her offense away from her. But in this case she
was no child hiding stolen contraband: she struck out at her victim—of necessity
she must put him away from her—he must be removed from her presence, from
this world. She must destroy the evidence of her offense.
“What was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She
must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was her daily reminder
of what she did. What did she do? She tempted a Negro.
“She  was  white,  and  she  tempted  a  Negro.  She  did  something  that  in  our
society  is  unspeakable:  she  kissed  a  black  man.  Not  an  old  Uncle,  but  a  strong
young  Negro  man.  No  code  mattered  to  her  before  she  broke  it,  but  it  came
crashing down on her afterwards.
“Her father saw it, and the defendant has testified as to his remarks. What did
her  father  do?  We  don’t  know,  but  there  is  circumstantial  evidence  to  indicate
that Mayella Ewell was beaten savagely by someone who led almost exclusively
with  his  left.  We  do  know  in  part  what  Mr.  Ewell  did:  he  did  what  any  God-
fearing, persevering, respectable white man would do under the circumstances—

---

he  swore  out  a  warrant,  no  doubt  signing  it  with  his  left  hand,  and  Tom
Robinson now sits before you, having taken the oath with the only good hand he
possesses—his right hand.
“And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity
to  ‘feel  sorry’  for  a  white  woman  has  had  to  put  his  word  against  two  white
people’s. I need not remind you of their appearance and conduct on the stand—
you saw them for yourselves. The witnesses for the state, with the exception of
the sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to
this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted,
confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption—the
evil  assumption—that  all  Negroes  lie,  that  all  Negroes  are  basically  immoral
beings,  that  all  Negro  men  are  not  to  be  trusted  around  our  women,  an
assumption one associates with minds of their caliber.
“Which,  gentlemen,  we  know  is  in  itself  a  lie  as  black  as  Tom  Robinson’s
skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know the truth, and the truth is
this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to
be trusted around women—black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the
human  race  and  to  no  particular  race  of  men.  There  is  not  a  person  in  this
courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and
there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.”
Atticus paused and took out his handkerchief. Then he took off his glasses and
wiped them, and we saw another “first”: we had never seen him sweat—he was
one of those men whose faces never perspired, but now it was shining tan.
“One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all
men  are  created  equal,  a  phrase  that  the  Yankees  and  the  distaff  side  of  the
Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in
this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to
satisfy  all  conditions.  The  most  ridiculous  example  I  can  think  of  is  that  the
people  who  run  public  education  promote  the  stupid  and  idle  along  with  the
industrious—because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you,
the  children  left  behind  suffer  terrible  feelings  of  inferiority.  We  know  all  men
are  not  created  equal  in  the  sense  some  people  would  have  us  believe—some
people  are  smarter  than  others,  some  people  have  more  opportunity  because
they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make
better cakes than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope
of most men.
“But  there  is  one  way  in  this  country  in  which  all  men  are  created  equal—

---

there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the
stupid  man  the  equal  of  an  Einstein,  and  the  ignorant  man  the  equal  of  any
college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme
Court  of  the  United  States  or  the  humblest  J.P.  court  in  the  land,  or  this
honorable  court  which  you  serve.  Our  courts  have  their  faults,  as  does  any
human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our
courts all men are created equal.
“I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury
system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court
is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only
as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am
confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have
heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name
of God, do your duty.”
Atticus’s  voice  had  dropped,  and  as  he  turned  away  from  the  jury  he  said
something I did not catch. He said it more to himself than to the court. I punched
Jem. “What’d he say?”
“‘In the name of God, believe him,’ I think that’s what he said.”
Dill suddenly reached over me and tugged at Jem. “Looka yonder!”
We followed his finger with sinking hearts. Calpurnia was making her way up
the middle aisle, walking straight toward Atticus.

---

21
S
he stopped shyly at the railing and waited to get Judge Taylor’s attention. She
was in a fresh apron and she carried an envelope in her hand.
Judge Taylor saw her and said, “It’s Calpurnia, isn’t it?”
“Yes  sir,”  she  said.  “Could  I  just  pass  this  note  to  Mr.  Finch,  please  sir?  It
hasn’t got anything to do with—with the trial.”
Judge  Taylor  nodded  and  Atticus  took  the  envelope  from  Calpurnia.  He
opened it, read its contents and said, “Judge, I—this note is from my sister. She
says my children are missing, haven’t turned up since noon . . . I . . . could you
—”
“I know where they are, Atticus.” Mr. Underwood spoke up. “They’re right up
yonder in the colored balcony—been there since precisely one-eighteen P.M.”
Our  father  turned  around  and  looked  up.  “Jem,  come  down  from  there,”  he
called. Then he said something to the Judge we didn’t hear. We climbed across
Reverend Sykes and made our way to the staircase.
Atticus  and  Calpurnia  met  us  downstairs.  Calpurnia  looked  peeved,  but
Atticus looked exhausted.
Jem was jumping in excitement. “We’ve won, haven’t we?”
“I’ve  no  idea,”  said  Atticus  shortly.  “You’ve  been  here  all  afternoon?  Go
home with Calpurnia and get your supper—and stay home.”
“Aw, Atticus, let us come back,” pleaded Jem. “Please let us hear the verdict,
please sir.”
“The jury might be out and back in a minute, we don’t know—” but we could
tell Atticus was relenting. “Well, you’ve heard it all, so you might as well hear
the rest. Tell you what, you all can come back when you’ve eaten your supper—
eat slowly, now, you won’t miss anything important—and if the jury’s still out,
you can wait with us. But I expect it’ll be over before you get back.”
“You think they’ll acquit him that fast?” asked Jem.
Atticus opened his mouth to answer, but shut it and left us.
I prayed that Reverend Sykes would save our seats for us, but stopped praying

---

when I remembered that people got up and left in droves when the jury was out
—tonight,  they’d  overrun  the  drugstore,  the  O.K.  Café  and  the  hotel,  that  is,
unless they had brought their suppers too.
Calpurnia  marched  us  home:  “—skin  every  one  of  you  alive,  the  very  idea,
you  children  listenin‘  to  all  that!  Mister  Jem,  don’t  you  know  better’n  to  take
your  little  sister  to  that  trial?  Miss  Alexandra’ll  absolutely  have  a  stroke  of
paralysis when she finds out! Ain’t fittin’ for children to hear . . .”
The streetlights were on, and we glimpsed Calpurnia’s indignant profile as we
passed beneath them. “Mister Jem, I thought you was gettin‘ some kinda head on
your  shoulders—the  very  idea,  she’s  your  little  sister!  The  very  idea,  sir!  You
oughta be perfectly ashamed of yourself—ain’t you got any sense at all?”
I  was  exhilarated.  So  many  things  had  happened  so  fast  I  felt  it  would  take
years  to  sort  them  out,  and  now  here  was  Calpurnia  giving  her  precious  Jem
down the country—what new marvels would the evening bring?
Jem was chuckling. “Don’t you want to hear about it, Cal?”
“Hush your mouth, sir! When you oughta be hangin‘ your head in shame you
go along laughin’—” Calpurnia revived a series of rusty threats that moved Jem
to little remorse, and she sailed up the front steps with her classic, “If Mr. Finch
don’t wear you out, I will—get in that house, sir!”
Jem went in grinning, and Calpurnia nodded tacit consent to having Dill in to
supper. “You all call Miss Rachel right now and tell her where you are,” she told
him.  “She’s  run  distracted  lookin‘  for  you—you  watch  out  she  don’t  ship  you
back to Meridian first thing in the mornin’.”
Aunt Alexandra met us and nearly fainted when Calpurnia told her where we
were.  I  guess  it  hurt  her  when  we  told  her  Atticus  said  we  could  go  back,
because  she  didn’t  say  a  word  during  supper.  She  just  rearranged  food  on  her
plate,  looking  at  it  sadly  while  Calpurnia  served  Jem,  Dill  and  me  with  a
vengeance. Calpurnia poured milk, dished out potato salad and ham, muttering,
“‘shamed  of  yourselves,”  in  varying  degrees  of  intensity.  “Now  you  all  eat
slow,” was her final command.
Reverend Sykes had saved our places. We were surprised to find that we had
been  gone  nearly  an  hour,  and  were  equally  surprised  to  find  the  courtroom
exactly  as  we  had  left  it,  with  minor  changes:  the  jury  box  was  empty,  the
defendant was gone; Judge Taylor had been gone, but he reappeared as we were
seating ourselves.
“Nobody’s moved, hardly,” said Jem.

---

“They  moved  around  some  when  the  jury  went  out,”  said  Reverend  Sykes.
“The  menfolk  down  there  got  the  womenfolk  their  suppers,  and  they  fed  their
babies.”
“How long have they been out?” asked Jem.
“‘bout  thirty  minutes.  Mr.  Finch  and  Mr.  Gilmer  did  some  more  talkin’,  and
Judge Taylor charged the jury.”
“How was he?” asked Jem.
“What say? Oh, he did right well. I ain’t complainin‘ one bit—he was mighty
fair-minded.  He  sorta  said  if  you  believe  this,  then  you’ll  have  to  return  one
verdict,  but  if  you  believe  this,  you’ll  have  to  return  another  one.  I  thought  he
was leanin’ a little to our side—” Reverend Sykes scratched his head.
Jem smiled. “He’s not supposed to lean, Reverend, but don’t fret, we’ve won
it,” he said wisely. “Don’t see how any jury could convict on what we heard—”
“Now don’t you be so confident, Mr. Jem, I ain’t ever seen any jury decide in
favor  of  a  colored  man  over  a  white  man  .  .  .”  But  Jem  took  exception  to
Reverend Sykes, and we were subjected to a lengthy review of the evidence with
Jem’s ideas on the law regarding rape: it wasn’t rape if she let you, but she had
to be eighteen—in Alabama, that is—and Mayella was nineteen. Apparently you
had  to  kick  and  holler,  you  had  to  be  overpowered  and  stomped  on,  preferably
knocked stone cold. If you were under eighteen, you didn’t have to go through
all this.
“Mr. Jem,” Reverend Sykes demurred, “this ain’t a polite thing for little ladies
to hear . . .”
“Aw, she doesn’t know what we’re talkin‘ about,” said Jem. “Scout, this is too
old for you, ain’t it?”
“It most certainly is not, I know every word you’re saying.” Perhaps I was too
convincing, because Jem hushed and never discussed the subject again.
“What time is it, Reverend?” he asked.
“Gettin‘ on toward eight.”
I looked down and saw Atticus strolling around with his hands in his pockets:
he made a tour of the windows, then walked by the railing over to the jury box.
He looked in it, inspected Judge Taylor on his throne, then went back to where
he started. I caught his eye and waved to him. He acknowledged my salute with
a nod, and resumed his tour.
Mr. Gilmer was standing at the windows talking to Mr. Underwood. Bert, the

---

court reporter, was chain-smoking: he sat back with his feet on the table.
But  the  officers  of  the  court,  the  ones  present—Atticus,  Mr.  Gilmer,  Judge
Taylor  sound  asleep,  and  Bert,  were  the  only  ones  whose  behavior  seemed
normal. I had never seen a packed courtroom so still. Sometimes a baby would
cry out fretfully, and a child would scurry out, but the grown people sat as if they
were in church. In the balcony, the Negroes sat and stood around us with biblical
patience.
The  old  courthouse  clock  suffered  its  preliminary  strain  and  struck  the  hour,
eight deafening bongs that shook our bones.
When  it  bonged  eleven  times  I  was  past  feeling:  tired  from  fighting  sleep,  I
allowed  myself  a  short  nap  against  Reverend  Sykes’s  comfortable  arm  and
shoulder.  I  jerked  awake  and  made  an  honest  effort  to  remain  so,  by  looking
down  and  concentrating  on  the  heads  below:  there  were  sixteen  bald  ones,
fourteen  men  that  could  pass  for  redheads,  forty  heads  varying  between  brown
and black, and—I remembered something Jem had once explained to me when
he went through a brief period of psychical research: he said if enough people—
a stadium full, maybe—were to concentrate on one thing, such as setting a tree
afire in the woods, that the tree would ignite of its own accord. I toyed with the
idea of asking everyone below to concentrate on setting Tom Robinson free, but
thought if they were as tired as I, it wouldn’t work.
Dill was sound asleep, his head on Jem’s shoulder, and Jem was quiet.
“Ain’t it a long time?” I asked him.
“Sure is, Scout,” he said happily.
“Well, from the way you put it, it’d just take five minutes.”
Jem  raised  his  eyebrows.  “There  are  things  you  don’t  understand,”  he  said,
and I was too weary to argue.
But  I  must  have  been  reasonably  awake,  or  I  would  not  have  received  the
impression that was creeping into me. It was not unlike one I had last winter, and
I  shivered,  though  the  night  was  hot.  The  feeling  grew  until  the  atmosphere  in
the  courtroom  was  exactly  the  same  as  a  cold  February  morning,  when  the
mockingbirds  were  still,  and  the  carpenters  had  stopped  hammering  on  Miss
Maudie’s new house, and every wood door in the neighborhood was shut as tight
as  the  doors  of  the  Radley  Place.  A  deserted,  waiting,  empty  street,  and  the
courtroom was packed with people. A steaming summer night was no different
from a winter morning. Mr. Heck Tate, who had entered the courtroom and was
talking  to  Atticus,  might  have  been  wearing  his  high  boots  and  lumber  jacket.

---

Atticus  had  stopped  his  tranquil  journey  and  had  put  his  foot  onto  the  bottom
rung  of  a  chair;  as  he  listened  to  what  Mr.  Tate  was  saying,  he  ran  his  hand
slowly  up  and  down  his  thigh.  I  expected  Mr.  Tate  to  say  any  minute,  “Take
him, Mr. Finch . . .”
But Mr. Tate said, “This court will come to order,” in a voice that rang with
authority, and the heads below us jerked up. Mr. Tate left the room and returned
with Tom Robinson. He steered Tom to his place beside Atticus, and stood there.
Judge Taylor had roused himself to sudden alertness and was sitting up straight,
looking at the empty jury box.
What  happened  after  that  had  a  dreamlike  quality:  in  a  dream  I  saw  the  jury
return, moving like underwater swimmers, and Judge Taylor’s voice came from
far away and was tiny. I saw something only a lawyer’s child could be expected
to see, could be expected to watch for, and it was like watching Atticus walk into
the  street,  raise  a  rifle  to  his  shoulder  and  pull  the  trigger,  but  watching  all  the
time knowing that the gun was empty.
A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in,
not one of them looked at Tom Robinson. The foreman handed a piece of paper
to Mr. Tate who handed it to the clerk who handed it to the judge . . .
I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury: “Guilty . . . guilty . . . guilty
. . . guilty . . .” I peeked at Jem: his hands were white from gripping the balcony
rail,  and  his  shoulders  jerked  as  if  each  “guilty”  was  a  separate  stab  between
them.
Judge  Taylor  was  saying  something.  His  gavel  was  in  his  fist,  but  he  wasn’t
using  it.  Dimly,  I  saw  Atticus  pushing  papers  from  the  table  into  his  briefcase.
He snapped it shut, went to the court reporter and said something, nodded to Mr.
Gilmer,  and  then  went  to  Tom  Robinson  and  whispered  something  to  him.
Atticus  put  his  hand  on  Tom’s  shoulder  as  he  whispered.  Atticus  took  his  coat
off  the  back  of  his  chair  and  pulled  it  over  his  shoulder.  Then  he  left  the
courtroom, but not by his usual exit. He must have wanted to go home the short
way, because he walked quickly down the middle aisle toward the south exit. I
followed the top of his head as he made his way to the door. He did not look up.
Someone  was  punching  me,  but  I  was  reluctant  to  take  my  eyes  from  the
people below us, and from the image of Atticus’s lonely walk down the aisle.
“Miss Jean Louise?”
I looked around. They were standing. All around us and in the balcony on the
opposite  wall,  the  Negroes  were  getting  to  their  feet.  Reverend  Sykes’s  voice
was as distant as Judge Taylor’s:

---

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin‘.”

---

22
I
t was Jem’s turn to cry. His face was streaked with angry tears as we made our
way through the cheerful crowd. “It ain’t right,” he muttered, all the way to the
corner of the square where we found Atticus waiting. Atticus was standing under
the street light looking as though nothing had happened: his vest was buttoned,
his  collar  and  tie  were  neatly  in  place,  his  watch-chain  glistened,  he  was  his
impassive self again.
“It ain’t right, Atticus,” said Jem.
“No son, it’s not right.”
We walked home.
Aunt  Alexandra  was  waiting  up.  She  was  in  her  dressing  gown,  and  I  could
have  sworn  she  had  on  her  corset  underneath  it.  “I’m  sorry,  brother,”  she
murmured. Having never heard her call Atticus “brother” before, I stole a glance
at Jem, but he was not listening. He would look up at Atticus, then down at the
floor,  and  I  wondered  if  he  thought  Atticus  somehow  responsible  for  Tom
Robinson’s conviction.
“Is he all right?” Aunty asked, indicating Jem.
“He’ll be so presently,” said Atticus. “It was a little too strong for him.” Our
father  sighed.  “I’m  going  to  bed,”  he  said.  “If  I  don’t  wake  up  in  the  morning,
don’t call me.”
“I didn’t think it wise in the first place to let them—”
“This is their home, sister,” said Atticus. “We’ve made it this way for them,
they might as well learn to cope with it.”
“But they don’t have to go to the courthouse and wallow in it—”
“It’s just as much Maycomb County as missionary teas.”
“Atticus—”  Aunt  Alexandra’s  eyes  were  anxious.  “You  are  the  last  person  I
thought would turn bitter over this.”
“I’m not bitter, just tired. I’m going to bed.”
“Atticus—” said Jem bleakly.
He turned in the doorway. “What, son?”

---

“How could they do it, how could they?”
“I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did it tonight
and  they’ll  do  it  again  and  when  they  do  it—seems  that  only  children  weep.
Good night.”
But things are always better in the morning. Atticus rose at his usual ungodly
hour  and  was  in  the  livingroom  behind  the  Mobile  Register  when  we  stumbled
in. Jem’s morning face posed the question his sleepy lips struggled to ask.
“It’s  not  time  to  worry  yet,”  Atticus  reassured  him,  as  we  went  to  the
diningroom.  “We’re  not  through  yet.  There’ll  be  an  appeal,  you  can  count  on
that. Gracious alive, Cal, what’s all this?” He was staring at his breakfast plate.
Calpurnia  said,  “Tom  Robinson’s  daddy  sent  you  along  this  chicken  this
morning. I fixed it.”
“You tell him I’m proud to get it—bet they don’t have chicken for breakfast at
the White House. What are these?”
“Rolls,” said Calpurnia. “Estelle down at the hotel sent ‘em.”
Atticus looked up at her, puzzled, and she said, “You better step out here and
see what’s in the kitchen, Mr. Finch.”
We followed him. The kitchen table was loaded with enough food to bury the
family: hunks of salt pork, tomatoes, beans, even scuppernongs. Atticus grinned
when he found a jar of pickled pigs’ knuckles. “Reckon Aunty’ll let me eat these
in the diningroom?”
Calpurnia  said,  “This  was  all  ‘round  the  back  steps  when  I  got  here  this
morning.  They—they  ’preciate  what  you  did,  Mr.  Finch.  They—they  aren’t
oversteppin‘ themselves, are they?”
Atticus’s  eyes  filled  with  tears.  He  did  not  speak  for  a  moment.  “Tell  them
I’m very grateful,” he said. “Tell them—tell them they must never do this again.
Times are too hard . . .”
He  left  the  kitchen,  went  in  the  diningroom  and  excused  himself  to  Aunt
Alexandra, put on his hat and went to town.
We heard Dill’s step in the hall, so Calpurnia left Atticus’s uneaten breakfast
on the table. Between rabbit-bites Dill told us of Miss Rachel’s reaction to last
night,  which  was:  if  a  man  like  Atticus  Finch  wants  to  butt  his  head  against  a
stone wall it’s his head.
“I’da got her told,” growled Dill, gnawing a chicken leg, “but she didn’t look
much like tellin‘ this morning. Said she was up half the night wonderin’ where I

---

was, said she’da had the sheriff after me but he was at the hearing.”
“Dill,  you’ve  got  to  stop  goin‘  off  without  tellin’  her,”  said  Jem.  “It  just
aggravates her.”
Dill sighed patiently. “I told her till I was blue in the face where I was goin‘—
she’s just seein’ too many snakes in the closet. Bet that woman drinks a pint for
breakfast every morning—know she drinks two glasses full. Seen her.”
“Don’t  talk  like  that,  Dill,”  said  Aunt  Alexandra.  “It’s  not  becoming  to  a
child. It’s—cynical.”
“I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin‘ the truth’s not cynical, is it?”
“The way you tell it, it is.”
Jem’s  eyes  flashed  at  her,  but  he  said  to  Dill,  “Let’s  go.  You  can  take  that
runner with you.”
When we went to the front porch, Miss Stephanie Crawford was busy telling it
to Miss Maudie Atkinson and Mr. Avery. They looked around at us and went on
talking. Jem made a feral noise in his throat. I wished for a weapon.
“I  hate  grown  folks  lookin‘  at  you,”  said  Dill.  “Makes  you  feel  like  you’ve
done something.”
Miss Maudie yelled for Jem Finch to come there.
Jem groaned and heaved himself up from the swing. “We’ll go with you,” Dill
said.
Miss  Stephanie’s  nose  quivered  with  curiosity.  She  wanted  to  know  who  all
gave us permission to go to court—she didn’t see us but it was all over town this
morning that we were in the Colored balcony. Did Atticus put us up there as a
sort of—? Wasn’t it right close up there with all those—? Did Scout understand
all the—? Didn’t it make us mad to see our daddy beat?
“Hush,  Stephanie.”  Miss  Maudie’s  diction  was  deadly.  “I’ve  not  got  all  the
morning  to  pass  on  the  porch—Jem  Finch,  I  called  to  find  out  if  you  and  your
colleagues can eat some cake. Got up at five to make it, so you better say yes.
Excuse us, Stephanie. Good morning, Mr. Avery.”
There  was  a  big  cake  and  two  little  ones  on  Miss  Maudie’s  kitchen  table.
There should have been three little ones. It was not like Miss Maudie to forget
Dill, and we must have shown it. But we understood when she cut from the big
cake and gave the slice to Jem.
As we ate, we sensed that this was Miss Maudie’s way of saying that as far as
she  was  concerned,  nothing  had  changed.  She  sat  quietly  in  a  kitchen  chair,

---

watching us.
Suddenly she spoke: “Don’t fret, Jem. Things are never as bad as they seem.”
Indoors, when Miss Maudie wanted to say something lengthy she spread her
fingers on her knees and settled her bridgework. This she did, and we waited.
“I  simply  want  to  tell  you  that  there  are  some  men  in  this  world  who  were
born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them.”
“Oh,” said Jem. “Well.”
“Don’t you oh well me, sir,” Miss Maudie replied, recognizing Jem’s fatalistic
noises, “you are not old enough to appreciate what I said.”
Jem  was  staring  at  his  half-eaten  cake.  “It’s  like  bein‘  a  caterpillar  in  a
cocoon, that’s what it is,” he said. “Like somethin’ asleep wrapped up in a warm
place.  I  always  thought  Maycomb  folks  were  the  best  folks  in  the  world,  least
that’s what they seemed like.”
“We’re  the  safest  folks  in  the  world,”  said  Miss  Maudie.  “We’re  so  rarely
called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus to go for
us.”
Jem grinned ruefully. “Wish the rest of the county thought that.”
“You’d be surprised how many of us do.”
“Who?”  Jem’s  voice  rose.  “Who  in  this  town  did  one  thing  to  help  Tom
Robinson, just who?”
“His  colored  friends  for  one  thing,  and  people  like  us.  People  like  Judge
Taylor.  People  like  Mr.  Heck  Tate.  Stop  eating  and  start  thinking,  Jem.  Did  it
ever  strike  you  that  Judge  Taylor  naming  Atticus  to  defend  that  boy  was  no
accident? That Judge Taylor might have had his reasons for naming him?”
This was a thought. Court-appointed defenses were usually given to Maxwell
Green,  Maycomb’s  latest  addition  to  the  bar,  who  needed  the  experience.
Maxwell Green should have had Tom Robinson’s case.
“You think about that,” Miss Maudie was saying. “It was no accident. I was
sittin‘ there on the porch last night, waiting. I waited and waited to see you all
come down the sidewalk, and as I waited I thought, Atticus Finch won’t win, he
can’t win, but he’s the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in
a case like that. And I thought to myself, well, we’re making a step—it’s just a
baby-step, but it’s a step.”
“‘t’s all right to talk like that—can’t any Christian judges an’ lawyers make up
for heathen juries,” Jem muttered. “Soon’s I get grown—”

---

“That’s something you’ll have to take up with your father,” Miss Maudie said.
We went down Miss Maudie’s cool new steps into the sunshine and found Mr.
Avery  and  Miss  Stephanie  Crawford  still  at  it.  They  had  moved  down  the
sidewalk and were standing in front of Miss Stephanie’s house. Miss Rachel was
walking toward them.
“I think I’ll be a clown when I get grown,” said Dill.
Jem and I stopped in our tracks.
“Yes sir, a clown,” he said. “There ain’t one thing in this world I can do about
folks except laugh, so I’m gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.”
“You got it backwards, Dill,” said Jem. “Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh
at them.”
“Well I’m gonna be a new kind of clown. I’m gonna stand in the middle of the
ring  and  laugh  at  the  folks.  Just  looka  yonder,”  he  pointed.  “Every  one  of  ‘em
oughta be ridin’ broomsticks. Aunt Rachel already does.”
Miss Stephanie and Miss Rachel were waving wildly at us, in a way that did
not give the lie to Dill’s observation.
“Oh gosh,” breathed Jem. “I reckon it’d be ugly not to see ‘em.”
Something  was  wrong.  Mr.  Avery  was  red  in  the  face  from  a  sneezing  spell
and  nearly  blew  us  off  the  sidewalk  when  we  came  up.  Miss  Stephanie  was
trembling with excitement, and Miss Rachel caught Dill’s shoulder. “You get on
in the back yard and stay there,” she said. “There’s danger a’comin‘.”
“‘s matter?” I asked.
“Ain’t you heard yet? It’s all over town—”
At that moment Aunt Alexandra came to the door and called us, but she was
too late. It was Miss Stephanie’s pleasure to tell us: this morning Mr. Bob Ewell
stopped Atticus on the post office corner, spat in his face, and told him he’d get
him if it took the rest of his life.

---

23
“I
wish Bob Ewell wouldn’t chew tobacco,” was all Atticus said about it.
According to Miss Stephanie Crawford, however, Atticus was leaving the post
office when Mr. Ewell approached him, cursed him, spat on him, and threatened
to kill him. Miss Stephanie (who, by the time she had told it twice was there and
had  seen  it  all—passing  by  from  the  Jitney  Jungle,  she  was)—Miss  Stephanie
said Atticus didn’t bat an eye, just took out his handkerchief and wiped his face
and stood there and let Mr. Ewell call him names wild horses could not bring her
to  repeat.  Mr.  Ewell  was  a  veteran  of  an  obscure  war;  that  plus  Atticus’s
peaceful  reaction  probably  prompted  him  to  inquire,  “Too  proud  to  fight,  you
nigger-lovin‘ bastard?” Miss Stephanie said Atticus said, “No, too old,” put his
hands in his pockets and strolled on. Miss Stephanie said you had to hand it to
Atticus Finch, he could be right dry sometimes.
Jem and I didn’t think it entertaining.
“After all, though,” I said, “he was the deadest shot in the county one time. He
could—”
“You  know  he  wouldn’t  carry  a  gun,  Scout.  He  ain’t  even  got  one—”  said
Jem. “You know he didn’t even have one down at the jail that night. He told me
havin‘ a gun around’s an invitation to somebody to shoot you.”
“This is different,” I said. “We can ask him to borrow one.”
We did, and he said, “Nonsense.”
Dill was of the opinion that an appeal to Atticus’s better nature might work:
after all, we would starve if Mr. Ewell killed him, besides be raised exclusively
by Aunt Alexandra, and we all knew the first thing she’d do before Atticus was
under  the  ground  good  would  be  to  fire  Calpurnia.  Jem  said  it  might  work  if  I
cried and flung a fit, being young and a girl. That didn’t work either. But when
he noticed us dragging around the neighborhood, not eating, taking little interest
in  our  normal  pursuits,  Atticus  discovered  how  deeply  frightened  we  were.  He
tempted Jem with a new football magazine one night; when he saw Jem flip the
pages and toss it aside, he said, “What’s bothering you, son?”
Jem came to the point: “Mr. Ewell.”

---

“What has happened?”
“Nothing’s  happened.  We’re  scared  for  you,  and  we  think  you  oughta  do
something about him.”
Atticus smiled wryly. “Do what? Put him under a peace bond?”
“When a man says he’s gonna get you, looks like he means it.”
“He meant it when he said it,” said Atticus. “Jem, see if you can stand in Bob
Ewell’s shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he
had  any  to  begin  with.  The  man  had  to  have  some  kind  of  comeback,  his  kind
always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell
one  extra  beating,  that’s  something  I’ll  gladly  take.  He  had  to  take  it  out  on
somebody and I’d rather it be me than that houseful of children out there. You
understand?”
Jem nodded.
Aunt  Alexandra  entered  the  room  as  Atticus  was  saying,  “We  don’t  have
anything to fear from Bob Ewell, he got it all out of his system that morning.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Atticus,” she said. “His kind’d do anything to
pay off a grudge. You know how those people are.”
“What on earth could Ewell do to me, sister?”
“Something furtive,” Aunt Alexandra said. “You may count on that.”
“Nobody has much chance to be furtive in Maycomb,” Atticus answered.
After that, we were not afraid. Summer was melting away, and we made the
most of it. Atticus assured us that nothing would happen to Tom Robinson until
the  higher  court  reviewed  his  case,  and  that  Tom  had  a  good  chance  of  going
free,  or  at  least  of  having  a  new  trial.  He  was  at  Enfield  Prison  Farm,  seventy
miles away in Chester County. I asked Atticus if Tom’s wife and children were
allowed to visit him, but Atticus said no.
“If he loses his appeal,” I asked one evening, “what’ll happen to him?”
“He’ll  go  to  the  chair,”  said  Atticus,  “unless  the  Governor  commutes  his
sentence. Not time to worry yet, Scout. We’ve got a good chance.”
Jem was sprawled on the sofa reading Popular Mechanics. He looked up. “It
ain’t  right.  He  didn’t  kill  anybody  even  if  he  was  guilty.  He  didn’t  take
anybody’s life.”
“You know rape’s a capital offense in Alabama,” said Atticus.
“Yessir,  but  the  jury  didn’t  have  to  give  him  death—if  they  wanted  to  they

---

could’ve gave him twenty years.”
“Given,” said Atticus. “Tom Robinson’s a colored man, Jem. No jury in this
part  of  the  world’s  going  to  say,  ‘We  think  you’re  guilty,  but  not  very,’  on  a
charge like that. It was either a straight acquittal or nothing.”
Jem was shaking his head. “I know it’s not right, but I can’t figure out what’s
wrong—maybe rape shouldn’t be a capital offense . . .”
Atticus  dropped  his  newspaper  beside  his  chair.  He  said  he  didn’t  have  any
quarrel  with  the  rape  statute,  none  what  ever,  but  he  did  have  deep  misgivings
when  the  state  asked  for  and  the  jury  gave  a  death  penalty  on  purely
circumstantial  evidence.  He  glanced  at  me,  saw  I  was  listening,  and  made  it
easier.  “—I  mean,  before  a  man  is  sentenced  to  death  for  murder,  say,  there
should be one or two eye-witnesses. Some one should be able to say, ‘Yes, I was
there and saw him pull the trigger.’”
“But  lots  of  folks  have  been  hung—hanged—on  circumstantial  evidence,”
said Jem.
“I know, and lots of ‘em probably deserved it, too—but in the absence of eye-
witnesses  there’s  always  a  doubt,  some  times  only  the  shadow  of  a  doubt.  The
law says ’reasonable doubt,‘ but I think a defendant’s entitled to the shadow of a
doubt.  There’s  always  the  possibility,  no  matter  how  improbable,  that  he’s
innocent.”
“Then it all goes back to the jury, then. We oughta do away with juries.” Jem
was adamant.
Atticus tried hard not to smile but couldn’t help it. “You’re rather hard on us,
son.  I  think  maybe  there  might  be  a  better  way.  Change  the  law.  Change  it  so
that only judges have the power of fixing the penalty in capital cases.”
“Then go up to Montgomery and change the law.”
“You’d be surprised how hard that’d be. I won’t live to see the law changed,
and if you live to see it you’ll be an old man.”
This was not good enough for Jem. “No sir, they oughta do away with juries.
He wasn’t guilty in the first place and they said he was.”
“If you had been on that jury, son, and eleven other boys like you, Tom would
be a free man,” said Atticus. “So far nothing in your life has interfered with your
reasoning  process.  Those  are  twelve  reasonable  men  in  everyday  life,  Tom’s
jury, but you saw something come between them and reason. You saw the same
thing that night in front of the jail. When that crew went away, they didn’t go as
reasonable  men,  they  went  because  we  were  there.  There’s  something  in  our

---

world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried. In our
courts,  when  it’s  a  white  man’s  word  against  a  black  man’s,  the  white  man
always wins. They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life.”
“Doesn’t make it right,” said Jem stolidly. He beat his fist softly on his knee.
“You just can’t convict a man on evidence like that—you can’t.”
“You  couldn’t,  but  they  could  and  did.  The  older  you  grow  the  more  of  it
you’ll  see.  The  one  place  where  a  man  ought  to  get  a  square  deal  is  in  a
courtroom,  be  he  any  color  of  the  rainbow,  but  people  have  a  way  of  carrying
their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you’ll see white men
cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t
you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he
is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.”
Atticus was speaking so quietly his last word crashed on our ears. I looked up,
and his face was vehement. “There’s nothing more sickening to me than a low-
grade  white  man  who’ll  take  advantage  of  a  Negro’s  ignorance.  Don’t  fool
yourselves—it’s all adding up and one of these days we’re going to pay the bill
for it. I hope it’s not in you children’s time.”
Jem was scratching his head. Suddenly his eyes widened. “Atticus,” he said,
“why  don’t  people  like  us  and  Miss  Maudie  ever  sit  on  juries?  You  never  see
anybody from Maycomb on a jury—they all come from out in the woods.”
Atticus  leaned  back  in  his  rocking-chair.  For  some  reason  he  looked  pleased
with Jem. “I was wondering when that’d occur to you,” he said. “There are lots
of  reasons.  For  one  thing,  Miss  Maudie  can’t  serve  on  a  jury  because  she’s  a
woman—”
“You mean women in Alabama can’t—?” I was indignant.
“I  do.  I  guess  it’s  to  protect  our  frail  ladies  from  sordid  cases  like  Tom’s.
Besides,” Atticus grinned, “I doubt if we’d ever get a complete case tried—the
ladies’d be interrupting to ask questions.”
Jem and I laughed. Miss Maudie on a jury would be impressive. I thought of
old Mrs. Dubose in her wheelchair—“Stop that rapping, John Taylor, I want to
ask this man something.” Perhaps our forefathers were wise.
Atticus  was  saying,  “With  people  like  us—that’s  our  share  of  the  bill.  We
generally  get  the  juries  we  deserve.  Our  stout  Maycomb  citizens  aren’t
interested, in the first place. In the second place, they’re afraid. Then, they’re—”
“Afraid, why?” asked Jem.
“Well, what if—say, Mr. Link Deas had to decide the amount of damages to

---

award,  say,  Miss  Maudie,  when  Miss  Rachel  ran  over  her  with  a  car.  Link
wouldn’t like the thought of losing either lady’s business at his store, would he?
So he tells Judge Taylor that he can’t serve on the jury because he doesn’t have
anybody  to  keep  store  for  him  while  he’s  gone.  So  Judge  Taylor  excuses  him.
Sometimes he excuses him wrathfully.”
“What’d make him think either one of ‘em’d stop trading with him?” I asked.
Jem  said,  “Miss  Rachel  would,  Miss  Maudie  wouldn’t.  But  a  jury’s  vote’s
secret, Atticus.”
Our  father  chuckled.  “You’ve  many  more  miles  to  go,  son.  A  jury’s  vote’s
supposed to be secret. Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and
declare  himself  about  something.  Men  don’t  like  to  do  that.  Sometimes  it’s
unpleasant.”
“Tom’s jury sho‘ made up its mind in a hurry,” Jem muttered.
Atticus’s  fingers  went  to  his  watchpocket.  “No  it  didn’t,”  he  said,  more  to
himself than to us. “That was the one thing that made me think, well, this may be
the  shadow  of  a  beginning.  That  jury  took  a  few  hours.  An  inevitable  verdict,
maybe,  but  usually  it  takes  ‘em  just  a  few  minutes.  This  time—”  he  broke  off
and looked at us. “You might like to know that there was one fellow who took
considerable  wearing  down—in  the  beginning  he  was  rarin’  for  an  outright
acquittal.”
“Who?” Jem was astonished.
Atticus’s eyes twinkled. “It’s not for me to say, but I’ll tell you this much. He
was one of your Old Sarum friends . . .”
“One of the Cunninghams?” Jem yelped. “One of—I didn’t recognize any of
‘em . . . you’re jokin’.” He looked at Atticus from the corners of his eyes.
“One  of  their  connections.  On  a  hunch,  I  didn’t  strike  him.  Just  on  a  hunch.
Could’ve, but I didn’t.”
“Golly  Moses,”  Jem  said  reverently.  “One  minute  they’re  tryin‘  to  kill  him
and the next they’re tryin’ to turn him loose . . . I’ll never understand those folks
as long as I live.”
Atticus said you just had to know ‘em. He said the Cunninghams hadn’t taken
anything from or off of anybody since they migrated to the New World. He said
the other thing about them was, once you earned their respect they were for you
tooth and nail. Atticus said he had a feeling, nothing more than a suspicion, that
they left the jail that night with considerable respect for the Finches. Then too,
he  said,  it  took  a  thunderbolt  plus  another  Cunningham  to  make  one  of  them

---

change his mind. “If we’d had two of that crowd, we’d’ve had a hung jury.”
Jem said slowly, “You mean you actually put on the jury a man who wanted
to kill you the night before? How could you take such a risk, Atticus, how could
you?”
“When you analyze it, there was little risk. There’s no difference between one
man who’s going to convict and another man who’s going to convict, is there?
There’s  a  faint  difference  between  a  man  who’s  going  to  convict  and  a  man
who’s a little disturbed in his mind, isn’t there? He was the only uncertainty on
the whole list.”
“What kin was that man to Mr. Walter Cunningham?” I asked.
Atticus rose, stretched and yawned. It was not even our bedtime, but we knew
he wanted a chance to read his newspaper. He picked it up, folded it, and tapped
my  head.  “Let’s  see  now,”  he  droned  to  himself.  “I’ve  got  it.  Double  first
cousin.”
“How can that be?”
“Two sisters married two brothers. That’s all I’ll tell you—you figure it out.”
I tortured myself and decided that if I married Jem and Dill had a sister whom
he  married  our  children  would  be  double  first  cousins.  “Gee  minetti,  Jem,”  I
said, when Atticus had gone, “they’re funny folks. ‘d you hear that, Aunty?”
Aunt Alexandra was hooking a rug and not watching us, but she was listening.
She sat in her chair with her workbasket beside it, her rug spread across her lap.
Why ladies hooked woolen rugs on boiling nights never became clear to me.
“I heard it,” she said.
I remembered the distant disastrous occasion when I rushed to young Walter
Cunningham’s  defense.  Now  I  was  glad  I’d  done  it.  “Soon’s  school  starts  I’m
gonna  ask  Walter  home  to  dinner,”  I  planned,  having  forgotten  my  private
resolve  to  beat  him  up  the  next  time  I  saw  him.  “He  can  stay  over  sometimes
after  school,  too.  Atticus  could  drive  him  back  to  Old  Sarum.  Maybe  he  could
spend the night with us sometime, okay, Jem?”
“We’ll see about that,” Aunt Alexandra said, a declaration that with her was
always  a  threat,  never  a  promise.  Surprised,  I  turned  to  her.  “Why  not,  Aunty?
They’re good folks.”
She looked at me over her sewing glasses. “Jean Louise, there is no doubt in
my mind that they’re good folks. But they’re not our kind of folks.”
Jem says, “She means they’re yappy, Scout.”

---

“What’s a yap?”
“Aw, tacky. They like fiddlin‘ and things like that.”
“Well I do too—”
“Don’t  be  silly,  Jean  Louise,”  said  Aunt  Alexandra.  “The  thing  is,  you  can
scrub  Walter  Cunningham  till  he  shines,  you  can  put  him  in  shoes  and  a  new
suit, but he’ll never be like Jem. Besides, there’s a drinking streak in that family
a mile wide. Finch women aren’t interested in that sort of people.”
“Aun-ty,” said Jem, “she ain’t nine yet.”
“She may as well learn it now.”
Aunt Alexandra had spoken. I was reminded vividly of the last time she had
put her foot down. I never knew why. It was when I was absorbed with plans to
visit  Calpurnia’s  house—I  was  curious,  interested;  I  wanted  to  be  her
“company,”  to  see  how  she  lived,  who  her  friends  were.  I  might  as  well  have
wanted to see the other side of the moon. This time the tactics were different, but
Aunt Alexandra’s aim was the same. Perhaps this was why she had come to live
with us—to help us choose our friends. I would hold her off as long as I could:
“If they’re good folks, then why can’t I be nice to Walter?”
“I didn’t say not to be nice to him. You should be friendly and polite to him,
you  should  be  gracious  to  everybody,  dear.  But  you  don’t  have  to  invite  him
home.”
“What if he was kin to us, Aunty?”
“The fact is that he is not kin to us, but if he were, my answer would be the
same.”
“Aunty,”  Jem  spoke  up,  “Atticus  says  you  can  choose  your  friends  but  you
sho‘ can’t choose your family, an’ they’re still kin to you no matter whether you
acknowledge ‘em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don’t.”
“That’s your father all over again,” said Aunt Alexandra, “and I still say that
Jean  Louise  will  not  invite  Walter  Cunningham  to  this  house.  If  he  were  her
double  first  cousin  once  removed  he  would  still  not  be  received  in  this  house
unless he comes to see Atticus on business. Now that is that.”
She  had  said  Indeed  Not,  but  this  time  she  would  give  her  reasons:  “But  I
want to play with Walter, Aunty, why can’t I?”
She  took  off  her  glasses  and  stared  at  me.  “I’ll  tell  you  why,”  she  said.
“Because—he—is—trash, that’s why you can’t play with him. I’ll not have you
around  him,  picking  up  his  habits  and  learning  Lord-knows-what.  You’re

---

enough of a problem to your father as it is.”
I don’t know what I would have done, but Jem stopped me. He caught me by
the  shoulders,  put  his  arm  around  me,  and  led  me  sobbing  in  fury  to  his
bedroom. Atticus heard us and poked his head around the door. “‘s all right, sir,”
Jem said gruffly, “’s not anything.” Atticus went away.
“Have a chew, Scout.” Jem dug into his pocket and extracted a Tootsie Roll. It
took a few minutes to work the candy into a comfortable wad inside my jaw.
Jem was rearranging the objects on his dresser. His hair stuck up behind and
down in front, and I wondered if it would ever look like a man’s—maybe if he
shaved  it  off  and  started  over,  his  hair  would  grow  back  neatly  in  place.  His
eyebrows were becoming heavier, and I noticed a new slimness about his body.
He was growing taller. When he looked around, he must have thought I would
start crying again, for he said, “Show you something if you won’t tell anybody.”
I said what. He unbuttoned his shirt, grinning shyly.
“Well what?”
“Well can’t you see it?”
“Well no.”
“Well it’s hair.”
“Where?”
“There. Right there.”
He  had  been  a  comfort  to  me,  so  I  said  it  looked  lovely,  but  I  didn’t  see
anything. “It’s real nice, Jem.”
“Under my arms, too,” he said. “Goin‘ out for football next year. Scout, don’t
let Aunty aggravate you.”
It seemed only yesterday that he was telling me not to aggravate Aunty.
“You know she’s not used to girls,” said Jem, “leastways, not girls like you.
She’s trying to make you a lady. Can’t you take up sewin‘ or somethin’?”
“Hell no. She doesn’t like me, that’s all there is to it, and I don’t care. It was
her  callin‘  Walter  Cunningham  trash  that  got  me  goin’,  Jem,  not  what  she  said
about being a problem to Atticus. We got that all straight one time, I asked him
if I was a problem and he said not much of one, at most one that he could always
figure out, and not to worry my head a second about botherin‘ him. Naw, it was
Walter—that boy’s not trash, Jem. He ain’t like the Ewells.”
Jem  kicked  off  his  shoes  and  swung  his  feet  to  the  bed.  He  propped  himself
against  a  pillow  and  switched  on  the  reading  light.  “You  know  something,

---

Scout? I’ve got it all figured out, now. I’ve thought about it a lot lately and I’ve
got it figured out. There’s four kinds of folks in the world. There’s the ordinary
kind like us and the neighbors, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams out in the
woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes.”
“What about the Chinese, and the Cajuns down yonder in Baldwin County?”
“I  mean  in  Maycomb  County.  The  thing  about  it  is,  our  kind  of  folks  don’t
like  the  Cunninghams,  the  Cunninghams  don’t  like  the  Ewells,  and  the  Ewells
hate and despise the colored folks.”
I told Jem if that was so, then why didn’t Tom’s jury, made up of folks like
the Cunninghams, acquit Tom to spite the Ewells?“
Jem waved my question away as being infantile.
“You know,” he said, “I’ve seen Atticus pat his foot when there’s fiddlin‘ on
the radio, and he loves pot liquor better’n any man I ever saw—”
“Then  that  makes  us  like  the  Cunninghams,”  I  said.  “I  can’t  see  why  Aunty
—”
“No,  lemme  finish—it  does,  but  we’re  still  different  somehow.  Atticus  said
one time the reason Aunty’s so hipped on the family is because all we’ve got’s
background and not a dime to our names.”
“Well  Jem,  I  don’t  know—Atticus  told  me  one  time  that  most  of  this  Old
Family stuff’s foolishness because everybody’s family’s just as old as everybody
else’s. I said did that include the colored folks and Englishmen and he said yes.”
“Background doesn’t mean Old Family,” said Jem. “I think it’s how long your
family’s been readin‘ and writin’. Scout, I’ve studied this real hard and that’s the
only  reason  I  can  think  of.  Somewhere  along  when  the  Finches  were  in  Egypt
one of ‘em must have learned a hieroglyphic or two and he taught his boy.” Jem
laughed. “Imagine Aunty being proud her great-grandaddy could read an’ write
—ladies pick funny things to be proud of.”
“Well  I’m  glad  he  could,  or  who’da  taught  Atticus  and  them,  and  if  Atticus
couldn’t read, you and me’d be in a fix. I don’t think that’s what background is,
Jem.”
“Well  then,  how  do  you  explain  why  the  Cunninghams  are  different?  Mr.
Walter  can  hardly  sign  his  name,  I’ve  seen  him.  We’ve  just  been  readin‘  and
writin’ longer’n they have.”
“No, everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowin‘. That Walter’s as smart
as  he  can  be,  he  just  gets  held  back  sometimes  because  he  has  to  stay  out  and
help his daddy. Nothin’s wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there’s just one kind

---

of folks. Folks.”
Jem turned around and punched his pillow. When he settled back his face was
cloudy. He was going into one of his declines, and I grew wary. His brows came
together; his mouth became a thin line. He was silent for a while.
“That’s what I thought, too,” he said at last, “when I was your age. If there’s
just  one  kind  of  folks,  why  can’t  they  get  along  with  each  other?  If  they’re  all
alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I’m
beginning  to  understand  something.  I  think  I’m  beginning  to  understand  why
Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time . . . it’s because he wants
to stay inside.”

---

24
C
alpurnia wore her stiffest starched apron. She carried a tray of charlotte. She
backed up to the swinging door and pressed gently. I admired the ease and grace
with which she handled heavy loads of dainty things. So did Aunt Alexandra, I
guess, because she had let Calpurnia serve today.
August  was  on  the  brink  of  September.  Dill  would  be  leaving  for  Meridian
tomorrow; today he was off with Jem at Barker’s Eddy. Jem had discovered with
angry  amazement  that  nobody  had  ever  bothered  to  teach  Dill  how  to  swim,  a
skill Jem considered necessary as walking. They had spent two afternoons at the
creek, they said they were going in naked and I couldn’t come, so I divided the
lonely hours between Calpurnia and Miss Maudie.
Today Aunt Alexandra and her missionary circle were fighting the good fight
all over the house. From the kitchen, I heard Mrs. Grace Merriweather giving a
report  in  the  livingroom  on  the  squalid  lives  of  the  Mrunas,  it  sounded  like  to
me. They put the women out in huts when their time came, whatever that was;
they  had  no  sense  of  family—I  knew  that’d  distress  Aunty—they  subjected
children  to  terrible  ordeals  when  they  were  thirteen;  they  were  crawling  with
yaws  and  earworms,  they  chewed  up  and  spat  out  the  bark  of  a  tree  into  a
communal pot and then got drunk on it.
Immediately thereafter, the ladies adjourned for refreshments.
I didn’t know whether to go into the diningroom or stay out. Aunt Alexandra
told  me  to  join  them  for  refreshments;  it  was  not  necessary  that  I  attend  the
business  part  of  the  meeting,  she  said  it’d  bore  me.  I  was  wearing  my  pink
Sunday  dress,  shoes,  and  a  petticoat,  and  reflected  that  if  I  spilled  anything
Calpurnia  would  have  to  wash  my  dress  again  for  tomorrow.  This  had  been  a
busy day for her. I decided to stay out.
“Can I help you, Cal?” I asked, wishing to be of some service.
Calpurnia paused in the doorway. “You be still as a mouse in that corner,” she
said, “an‘ you can help me load up the trays when I come back.”
The gentle hum of ladies’ voices grew louder as she opened the door: “Why,
Alexandra, I never saw such charlotte . . . just lovely . . . I never can get my crust
like this, never can . . . who’d‘ve thought of little dewberry tarts . . . Calpurnia? .

---

. . who’da thought it . . . anybody tell you that the preacher’s wife’s . . . nooo,
well she is, and that other one not walkin’ yet . . .”
They became quiet, and I knew they had all been served. Calpurnia returned
and  put  my  mother’s  heavy  silver  pitcher  on  a  tray.  “This  coffee  pitcher’s  a
curiosity,” she murmured, “they don’t make ‘em these days.”
“Can I carry it in?”
“If you be careful and don’t drop it. Set it down at the end of the table by Miss
Alexandra. Down there by the cups’n things. She’s gonna pour.”
I  tried  pressing  my  behind  against  the  door  as  Calpurnia  had  done,  but  the
door didn’t budge. Grinning, she held it open for me. “Careful now, it’s heavy.
Don’t look at it and you won’t spill it.”
My journey was successful: Aunt Alexandra smiled brilliantly. “Stay with us,
Jean Louise,” she said. This was a part of her campaign to teach me to be a lady.
It  was  customary  for  every  circle  hostess  to  invite  her  neighbors  in  for
refreshments,  be  they  Baptists  or  Presbyterians,  which  accounted  for  the
presence  of  Miss  Rachel  (sober  as  a  judge),  Miss  Maudie  and  Miss  Stephanie
Crawford. Rather nervous, I took a seat beside Miss Maudie and wondered why
ladies  put  on  their  hats  to  go  across  the  street.  Ladies  in  bunches  always  filled
me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere, but this feeling
was what Aunt Alexandra called being “spoiled.”
The  ladies  were  cool  in  fragile  pastel  prints:  most  of  them  were  heavily
powdered but unrouged; the only lipstick in the room was Tangee Natural. Cutex
Natural sparkled on their fingernails, but some of the younger ladies wore Rose.
They  smelled  heavenly.  I  sat  quietly,  having  conquered  my  hands  by  tightly
gripping the arms of the chair, and waited for someone to speak to me.
Miss  Maudie’s  gold  bridgework  twinkled.  “You’re  mighty  dressed  up,  Miss
Jean Louise,” she said, “Where are your britches today?”
“Under my dress.”
I hadn’t meant to be funny, but the ladies laughed. My cheeks grew hot as I
realized  my  mistake,  but  Miss  Maudie  looked  gravely  down  at  me.  She  never
laughed at me unless I meant to be funny.
In  the  sudden  silence  that  followed,  Miss  Stephanie  Crawford  called  from
across  the  room,  “Whatcha  going  to  be  when  you  grow  up,  Jean  Louise?  A
lawyer?”
“Nome, I hadn’t thought about it . . .” I answered, grateful that Miss Stephanie
was kind enough to change the subject. Hurriedly I began choosing my vocation.

---

Nurse? Aviator? “Well . . .”
“Why shoot, I thought you wanted to be a lawyer, you’ve already commenced
going to court.”
The  ladies  laughed  again.  “That  Stephanie’s  a  card,”  somebody  said.  Miss
Stephanie was encouraged to pursue the subject: “Don’t you want to grow up to
be a lawyer?”
Miss  Maudie’s  hand  touched  mine  and  I  answered  mildly  enough,  “Nome,
just a lady.”
Miss  Stephanie  eyed  me  suspiciously,  decided  that  I  meant  no  impertinence,
and contented herself with, “Well, you won’t get very far until you start wearing
dresses more often.”
Miss  Maudie’s  hand  closed  tightly  on  mine,  and  I  said  nothing.  Its  warmth
was enough.
Mrs. Grace Merriweather sat on my left, and I felt it would be polite to talk to
her.  Mr.  Merriweather,  a  faithful  Methodist  under  duress,  apparently  saw
nothing personal in singing, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a
wretch like me . . .” It was the general opinion of Maycomb, however, that Mrs.
Merriweather had sobered him up and made a reasonably useful citizen of him.
For  certainly  Mrs.  Merriweather  was  the  most  devout  lady  in  Maycomb.  I
searched for a topic of interest to her. “What did you all study this afternoon?” I
asked.
“Oh  child,  those  poor  Mrunas,”  she  said,  and  was  off.  Few  other  questions
would be necessary.
Mrs.  Merriweather’s  large  brown  eyes  always  filled  with  tears  when  she
considered  the  oppressed.  “Living  in  that  jungle  with  nobody  but  J.  Grimes
Everett,” she said. “Not a white person’ll go near ‘em but that saintly J. Grimes
Everett.”
Mrs.  Merriweather  played  her  voice  like  an  organ;  every  word  she  said
received  its  full  measure:  “The  poverty  .  .  .  the  darkness  .  .  .  the  immorality—
nobody but J. Grimes Everett knows. You know, when the church gave me that
trip to the camp grounds J. Grimes Everett said to me—”
“Was he there, ma’am? I thought—”
“Home  on  leave.  J.  Grimes  Everett  said  to  me,  he  said,  ‘Mrs.  Merriweather,
you  have  no  conception,  no  conception  of  what  we  are  fighting  over  there.’
That’s what he said to me.”
“Yes ma’am.”

---

“I  said  to  him,  ‘Mr.  Everett,’  I  said,  ‘the  ladies  of  the  Maycomb  Alabama
Methodist Episcopal Church South are behind you one hundred percent.’ That’s
what I said to him. And you know, right then and there I made a pledge in my
heart. I said to myself, when I go home I’m going to give a course on the Mrunas
and  bring  J.  Grimes  Everett’s  message  to  Maycomb  and  that’s  just  what  I’m
doing.”
“Yes ma’am.”
When  Mrs.  Merriweather  shook  her  head,  her  black  curls  jiggled.  “Jean
Louise,”  she  said,  “you  are  a  fortunate  girl.  You  live  in  a  Christian  home  with
Christian folks in a Christian town. Out there in J. Grimes Everett’s land there’s
nothing but sin and squalor.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Sin and squalor—what was that, Gertrude?” Mrs. Merriweather turned on her
chimes for the lady sitting beside her. “Oh that. Well, I always say forgive and
forget,  forgive  and  forget.  Thing  that  church  ought  to  do  is  help  her  lead  a
Christian life for those children from here on out. Some of the men ought to go
out there and tell that preacher to encourage her.”
“Excuse  me,  Mrs.  Merriweather,”  I  interrupted,  “are  you  all  talking  about
Mayella Ewell?”
“May—? No, child. That darky’s wife. Tom’s wife, Tom—”
“Robinson, ma’am.”
Mrs.  Merriweather  turned  back  to  her  neighbor.  “There’s  one  thing  I  truly
believe, Gertrude,” she continued, “but some people just don’t see it my way. If
we  just  let  them  know  we  forgive  ‘em,  that  we’ve  forgotten  it,  then  this  whole
thing’ll blow over.”
“Ah—Mrs. Merriweather,” I interrupted once more, “what’ll blow over?”
Again, she turned to me. Mrs. Merriweather was one of those childless adults
who  find  it  necessary  to  assume  a  different  tone  of  voice  when  speaking  to
children. “Nothing, Jean Louise,” she said, in stately largo, “the cooks and field
hands  are  just  dissatisfied,  but  they’re  settling  down  now—they  grumbled  all
next day after that trial.”
Mrs.  Merriweather  faced  Mrs.  Farrow:  “Gertrude,  I  tell  you  there’s  nothing
more  distracting  than  a  sulky  darky.  Their  mouths  go  down  to  here.  Just  ruins
your day to have one of ‘em in the kitchen. You know what I said to my Sophy,
Gertrude?  I  said,  ’Sophy,‘  I  said,  ’you  simply  are  not  being  a  Christian  today.
Jesus  Christ  never  went  around  grumbling  and  complaining,‘  and  you  know,  it

---

did  her  good.  She  took  her  eyes  off  that  floor  and  said,  ’Nome,  Miz
Merriweather,  Jesus  never  went  around  grumblin‘.’  I  tell  you,  Gertrude,  you
never ought to let an opportunity go by to witness for the Lord.”
I  was  reminded  of  the  ancient  little  organ  in  the  chapel  at  Finch’s  Landing.
When  I  was  very  small,  and  if  I  had  been  very  good  during  the  day,  Atticus
would let me pump its bellows while he picked out a tune with one finger. The
last  note  would  linger  as  long  as  there  was  air  to  sustain  it.  Mrs.  Merriweather
had run out of air, I judged, and was replenishing her supply while Mrs. Farrow
composed herself to speak.
Mrs.  Farrow  was  a  splendidly  built  woman  with  pale  eyes  and  narrow  feet.
She had a fresh permanent wave, and her hair was a mass of tight gray ringlets.
She  was  the  second  most  devout  lady  in  Maycomb.  She  had  a  curious  habit  of
prefacing everything she said with a soft sibilant sound.
“S-s-s  Grace,”  she  said,  “it’s  just  like  I  was  telling  Brother  Hutson  the  other
day.  ‘S-s-s  Brother  Hutson,’  I  said,  ‘looks  like  we’re  fighting  a  losing  battle,  a
losing battle.’ I said, ‘S-s-s it doesn’t matter to ’em one bit. We can educate ‘em
till we’re blue in the face, we can try till we drop to make Christians out of ’em,
but there’s no lady safe in her bed these nights.‘ He said to me, ’Mrs. Farrow, I
don’t know what we’re coming to down here.‘ S-s-s I told him that was certainly
a fact.”
Mrs.  Merriweather  nodded  wisely.  Her  voice  soared  over  the  clink  of  coffee
cups  and  the  soft  bovine  sounds  of  the  ladies  munching  their  dainties.
“Gertrude,”  she  said,  “I  tell  you  there  are  some  good  but  misguided  people  in
this  town.  Good,  but  misguided.  Folks  in  this  town  who  think  they’re  doing
right, I mean. Now far be it from me to say who, but some of ‘em in this town
thought  they  were  doing  the  right  thing  a  while  back,  but  all  they  did  was  stir
’em up. That’s all they did. Might’ve looked like the right thing to do at the time,
I’m sure I don’t know, I’m not read in that field, but sulky . . . dissatisfied . . . I
tell  you  if  my  Sophy’d  kept  it  up  another  day  I’d  have  let  her  go.  It’s  never
entered  that  wool  of  hers  that  the  only  reason  I  keep  her  is  because  this
depression’s  on  and  she  needs  her  dollar  and  a  quarter  every  week  she  can  get
it.”
“His food doesn’t stick going down, does it?”
Miss Maudie said it. Two tight lines had appeared at the corners of her mouth.
She had been sitting silently beside me, her coffee cup balanced on one knee. I
had lost the thread of conversation long ago, when they quit talking about Tom
Robinson’s  wife,  and  had  contented  myself  with  thinking  of  Finch’s  Landing

---

and  the  river.  Aunt  Alexandra  had  got  it  backwards:  the  business  part  of  the
meeting was blood-curdling, the social hour was dreary.
“Maudie, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” said Mrs. Merriweather.
“I’m sure you do,” Miss Maudie said shortly.
She  said  no  more.  When  Miss  Maudie  was  angry  her  brevity  was  icy.
Something  had  made  her  deeply  angry,  and  her  gray  eyes  were  as  cold  as  her
voice. Mrs. Merriweather reddened, glanced at me, and looked away. I could not
see Mrs. Farrow.
Aunt Alexandra got up from the table and swiftly passed more refreshments,
neatly engaging Mrs. Merriweather and Mrs. Gates in brisk conversation. When
she had them well on the road with Mrs. Perkins, Aunt Alexandra stepped back.
She gave Miss Maudie a look of pure gratitude, and I wondered at the world of
women. Miss Maudie and Aunt Alexandra had never been especially close, and
here was Aunty silently thanking her for something. For what, I knew not. I was
content  to  learn  that  Aunt  Alexandra  could  be  pierced  sufficiently  to  feel
gratitude  for  help  given.  There  was  no  doubt  about  it,  I  must  soon  enter  this
world,  where  on  its  surface  fragrant  ladies  rocked  slowly,  fanned  gently,  and
drank cool water.
But I was more at home in my father’s world. People like Mr. Heck Tate did
not  trap  you  with  innocent  questions  to  make  fun  of  you;  even  Jem  was  not
highly  critical  unless  you  said  something  stupid.  Ladies  seemed  to  live  in  faint
horror of men, seemed unwilling to approve wholeheartedly of them. But I liked
them.  There  was  something  about  them,  no  matter  how  much  they  cussed  and
drank  and  gambled  and  chewed;  no  matter  how  undelectable  they  were,  there
was something about them that I instinctively liked . . . they weren’t—
“Hypocrites,  Mrs.  Perkins,  born  hypocrites,”  Mrs.  Merriweather  was  saying.
“At least we don’t have that sin on our shoulders down here. People up there set
‘em free, but you don’t see ’em settin‘ at the table with ’em. At least we don’t
have the deceit to say to ‘em yes you’re as good as we are but stay away from
us.  Down  here  we  just  say  you  live  your  way  and  we’ll  live  ours.  I  think  that
woman,  that  Mrs.  Roosevelt’s  lost  her  mind—just  plain  lost  her  mind  coming
down  to  Birmingham  and  tryin’  to  sit  with  ‘em.  If  I  was  the  Mayor  of
Birmingham I’d—”
Well,  neither  of  us  was  the  Mayor  of  Birmingham,  but  I  wished  I  was  the
Governor  of  Alabama  for  one  day:  I’d  let  Tom  Robinson  go  so  quick  the
Missionary Society wouldn’t have time to catch its breath. Calpurnia was telling
Miss Rachel’s cook the other day how bad Tom was taking things and she didn’t

---

stop talking when I came into the kitchen. She said there wasn’t a thing Atticus
could  do  to  make  being  shut  up  easier  for  him,  that  the  last  thing  he  said  to
Atticus  before  they  took  him  down  to  the  prison  camp  was,  “Good-bye,  Mr.
Finch,  there  ain’t  nothin‘  you  can  do  now,  so  there  ain’t  no  use  tryin’.”
Calpurnia said Atticus told her that the day they took Tom to prison he just gave
up hope. She said Atticus tried to explain things to him, and that he must do his
best  not  to  lose  hope  because  Atticus  was  doing  his  best  to  get  him  free.  Miss
Rachel’s  cook  asked  Calpurnia  why  didn’t  Atticus  just  say  yes,  you’ll  go  free,
and leave it at that—seemed like that’d be a big comfort to Tom. Calpurnia said,
“Because you ain’t familiar with the law. First thing you learn when you’re in a
lawin‘  family  is  that  there  ain’t  any  definite  answers  to  anything.  Mr.  Finch
couldn’t say somethin’s so when he doesn’t know for sure it’s so.”
The  front  door  slammed  and  I  heard  Atticus’s  footsteps  in  the  hall.
Automatically I wondered what time it was. Not nearly time for him to be home,
and on Missionary Society days he usually stayed downtown until black dark.
He stopped in the doorway. His hat was in his hand, and his face was white.
“Excuse me, ladies,” he said. “Go right ahead with your meeting, don’t let me
disturb  you.  Alexandra,  could  you  come  to  the  kitchen  a  minute?  I  want  to
borrow Calpurnia for a while.”
He  didn’t  go  through  the  diningroom,  but  went  down  the  back  hallway  and
entered  the  kitchen  from  the  rear  door.  Aunt  Alexandra  and  I  met  him.  The
diningroom  door  opened  again  and  Miss  Maudie  joined  us.  Calpurnia  had  half
risen from her chair.
“Cal,” Atticus said, “I want you to go with me out to Helen Robinson’s house
—”
“What’s  the  matter?”  Aunt  Alexandra  asked,  alarmed  by  the  look  on  my
father’s face.
“Tom’s dead.”
Aunt Alexandra put her hands to her mouth.
“They shot him,” said Atticus. “He was running. It was during their exercise
period. They said he just broke into a blind raving charge at the fence and started
climbing over. Right in front of them—”
“Didn’t  they  try  to  stop  him?  Didn’t  they  give  him  any  warning?”  Aunt
Alexandra’s voice shook.
“Oh  yes,  the  guards  called  to  him  to  stop.  They  fired  a  few  shots  in  the  air,
then to kill. They got him just as he went over the fence. They said if he’d had

---

two  good  arms  he’d  have  made  it,  he  was  moving  that  fast.  Seventeen  bullet
holes in him. They didn’t have to shoot him that much. Cal, I want you to come
out with me and help me tell Helen.”
“Yes  sir,”  she  murmured,  fumbling  at  her  apron.  Miss  Maudie  went  to
Calpurnia and untied it.
“This is the last straw, Atticus,” Aunt Alexandra said.
“Depends on how you look at it,” he said. “What was one Negro, more or less,
among  two  hundred  of  ‘em?  He  wasn’t  Tom  to  them,  he  was  an  escaping
prisoner.”
Atticus leaned against the refrigerator, pushed up his glasses, and rubbed his
eyes.  “We  had  such  a  good  chance,”  he  said.  “I  told  him  what  I  thought,  but  I
couldn’t  in  truth  say  that  we  had  more  than  a  good  chance.  I  guess  Tom  was
tired of white men’s chances and preferred to take his own. Ready, Cal?”
“Yessir, Mr. Finch.”
“Then let’s go.”
Aunt Alexandra sat down in Calpurnia’s chair and put her hands to her face.
She sat quite still; she was so quiet I wondered if she would faint. I heard Miss
Maudie breathing as if she had just climbed the steps, and in the diningroom the
ladies chattered happily.
I thought Aunt Alexandra was crying, but when she took her hands away from
her face, she was not. She looked weary. She spoke, and her voice was flat.
“I can’t say I approve of everything he does, Maudie, but he’s my brother, and
I  just  want  to  know  when  this  will  ever  end.”  Her  voice  rose:  “It  tears  him  to
pieces. He doesn’t show it much, but it tears him to pieces. I’ve seen him when
—what else do they want from him, Maudie, what else?”
“What does who want, Alexandra?” Miss Maudie asked.
“I  mean  this  town.  They’re  perfectly  willing  to  let  him  do  what  they’re  too
afraid to do themselves—it might lose ‘em a nickel. They’re perfectly willing to
let him wreck his health doing what they’re afraid to do, they’re—”
“Be quiet, they’ll hear you,” said Miss Maudie. “Have you ever thought of it
this  way,  Alexandra?  Whether  Maycomb  knows  it  or  not,  we’re  paying  the
highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.”
“Who?”  Aunt  Alexandra  never  knew  she  was  echoing  her  twelve-year-old
nephew.
“The  handful  of  people  in  this  town  who  say  that  fair  play  is  not  marked

---

White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody, not just
us;  the  handful  of  people  with  enough  humility  to  think,  when  they  look  at  a
Negro, there but for the Lord’s kindness am l.” Miss Maudie’s old crispness was
returning: “The handful of people in this town with background, that’s who they
are.”
Had  I  been  attentive,  I  would  have  had  another  scrap  to  add  to  Jem’s
definition  of  background,  but  I  found  myself  shaking  and  couldn’t  stop.  I  had
seen Enfield Prison Farm, and Atticus had pointed out the exercise yard to me. It
was the size of a football field.
“Stop  that  shaking,”  commanded  Miss  Maudie,  and  I  stopped.  “Get  up,
Alexandra, we’ve left ‘em long enough.”
Aunt  Alexandra  rose  and  smoothed  the  various  whalebone  ridges  along  her
hips. She took her handkerchief from her belt and wiped her nose. She patted her
hair and said, “Do I show it?”
“Not a sign,” said Miss Maudie. “Are you together again, Jean Louise?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Then let’s join the ladies,” she said grimly.
Their voices swelled when Miss Maudie opened the door to the diningroom.
Aunt Alexandra was ahead of me, and I saw her head go up as she went through
the door.
“Oh, Mrs. Perkins,” she said, “you need some more coffee. Let me get it.”
“Calpurnia’s on an errand for a few minutes, Grace,” said Miss Maudie. “Let
me pass you some more of those dewberry tarts. ‘dyou hear what that cousin of
mine did the other day, the one who likes to go fishing? . . .”
And so they went, down the row of laughing women, around the diningroom,
refilling  coffee  cups,  dishing  out  goodies  as  though  their  only  regret  was  the
temporary  domestic  disaster  of  losing  Calpurnia.  The  gentle  hum  began  again.
“Yes sir, Mrs. Perkins, that J. Grimes Everett is a martyred saint, he . . . needed
to get married so they ran . . . to the beauty parlor every Saturday afternoon . . .
soon as the sun goes down. He goes to bed with the . . . chickens, a crate full of
sick chickens, Fred says that’s what started it all. Fred says . . .”
Aunt Alexandra looked across the room at me and smiled. She looked at a tray
of  cookies  on  the  table  and  nodded  at  them.  I  carefully  picked  up  the  tray  and
watched myself walk to Mrs. Merriweather. With my best company manners, I
asked her if she would have some.
After all, if Aunty could be a lady at a time like this, so could I.

---

25
“D
on’t do that, Scout. Set him out on the back steps.”
“Jem, are you crazy? . . .”
“I said set him out on the back steps.”
Sighing, I scooped up the small creature, placed him on the bottom step and
went back to my cot. September had come, but not a trace of cool weather with
it, and we were still sleeping on the back screen porch. Lightning bugs were still
about,  the  night  crawlers  and  flying  insects  that  beat  against  the  screen  the
summer long had not gone wherever they go when autumn comes.
A  roly-poly  had  found  his  way  inside  the  house;  I  reasoned  that  the  tiny
varmint had crawled up the steps and under the door. I was putting my book on
the floor beside my cot when I saw him. The creatures are no more than an inch
long, and when you touch them they roll themselves into a tight gray ball.
I  lay  on  my  stomach,  reached  down  and  poked  him.  He  rolled  up.  Then,
feeling  safe,  I  suppose,  he  slowly  unrolled.  He  traveled  a  few  inches  on  his
hundred legs and I touched him again. He rolled up. Feeling sleepy, I decided to
end things. My hand was going down on him when Jem spoke.
Jem was scowling. It was probably a part of the stage he was going through,
and I wished he would hurry up and get through it. He was certainly never cruel
to animals, but I had never known his charity to embrace the insect world.
“Why couldn’t I mash him?” I asked.
“Because  they  don’t  bother  you,”  Jem  answered  in  the  darkness.  He  had
turned out his reading light.
“Reckon  you’re  at  the  stage  now  where  you  don’t  kill  flies  and  mosquitoes
now, I reckon,” I said. “Lemme know when you change your mind. Tell you one
thing, though, I ain’t gonna sit around and not scratch a redbug.”
“Aw dry up,” he answered drowsily.
Jem  was  the  one  who  was  getting  more  like  a  girl  every  day,  not  I.
Comfortable, I lay on my back and waited for sleep, and while waiting I thought
of Dill. He had left us the first of the month with firm assurances that he would
return the minute school was out—he guessed his folks had got the general idea

---

that he liked to spend his summers in Maycomb. Miss Rachel took us with them
in  the  taxi  to  Maycomb  Junction,  and  Dill  waved  to  us  from  the  train  window
until  he  was  out  of  sight.  He  was  not  out  of  mind:  I  missed  him.  The  last  two
days of his time with us, Jem had taught him to swim—
Taught him to swim. I was wide awake, remembering what Dill had told me.
Barker’s  Eddy  is  at  the  end  of  a  dirt  road  off  the  Meridian  highway  about  a
mile from town. It is easy to catch a ride down the highway on a cotton wagon or
from a passing motorist, and the short walk to the creek is easy, but the prospect
of walking all the way back home at dusk, when the traffic is light, is tiresome,
and swimmers are careful not to stay too late.
According to Dill, he and Jem had just come to the highway when they saw
Atticus driving toward them. He looked like he had not seen them, so they both
waved.  Atticus  finally  slowed  down;  when  they  caught  up  with  him  he  said,
“You’d better catch a ride back. I won’t be going home for a while.” Calpurnia
was  in  the  back  seat.  Jem  protested,  then  pleaded,  and  Atticus  said,  “All  right,
you can come with us if you stay in the car.”
On the way to Tom Robinson’s, Atticus told them what had happened.
They  turned  off  the  highway,  rode  slowly  by  the  dump  and  past  the  Ewell
residence, down the narrow lane to the Negro cabins. Dill said a crowd of black
children  were  playing  marbles  in  Tom’s  front  yard.  Atticus  parked  the  car  and
got out. Calpurnia followed him through the front gate.
Dill  heard  him  ask  one  of  the  children,  “Where’s  your  mother,  Sam?”  and
heard Sam say, “She down at Sis Stevens’s, Mr. Finch. Want me run fetch her?”
Dill said Atticus looked uncertain, then he said yes, and Sam scampered off.
“Go on with your game, boys,” Atticus said to the children.
A little girl came to the cabin door and stood looking at Atticus. Dill said her
hair  was  a  wad  of  tiny  stiff  pigtails,  each  ending  in  a  bright  bow.  She  grinned
from ear to ear and walked toward our father, but she was too small to navigate
the  steps.  Dill  said  Atticus  went  to  her,  took  off  his  hat,  and  offered  her  his
finger.  She  grabbed  it  and  he  eased  her  down  the  steps.  Then  he  gave  her  to
Calpurnia.
Sam was trotting behind his mother when they came up. Dill said Helen said,
“‘evenin’,  Mr.  Finch,  won’t  you  have  a  seat?”  But  she  didn’t  say  any  more.
Neither did Atticus.
“Scout,” said Dill, “she just fell down in the dirt. Just fell down in the dirt, like
a giant with a big foot just came along and stepped on her. Just ump—” Dill’s fat

---

foot hit the ground. “Like you’d step on an ant.”
Dill  said  Calpurnia  and  Atticus  lifted  Helen  to  her  feet  and  half  carried,  half
walked  her  to  the  cabin.  They  stayed  inside  a  long  time,  and  Atticus  came  out
alone. When they drove back by the dump, some of the Ewells hollered at them,
but Dill didn’t catch what they said.
Maycomb  was  interested  by  the  news  of  Tom’s  death  for  perhaps  two  days;
two days was enough for the information to spread through the county. “Did you
hear about? . . . No? Well, they say he was runnin‘ fit to beat lightnin’ . . .” To
Maycomb, Tom’s death was typical. Typical of a nigger to cut and run. Typical
of a nigger’s mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future, just run blind
first chance he saw. Funny thing, Atticus Finch might’ve got him off scot free,
but  wait—?  Hell  no.  You  know  how  they  are.  Easy  come,  easy  go.  Just  shows
you, that Robinson boy was legally married, they say he kept himself clean, went
to church and all that, but when it comes down to the line the veneer’s mighty
thin. Nigger always comes out in ‘em.
A  few  more  details,  enabling  the  listener  to  repeat  his  version  in  turn,  then
nothing  to  talk  about  until  The  Maycomb  Tribune  appeared  the  following
Thursday. There was a brief obituary in the Colored News, but there was also an
editorial.
Mr. B. B. Underwood was at his most bitter, and he couldn’t have cared less
who  canceled  advertising  and  subscriptions.  (But  Maycomb  didn’t  play  that
way: Mr. Underwood could holler till he sweated and write whatever he wanted
to, he’d still get his advertising and subscriptions. If he wanted to make a fool of
himself  in  his  paper  that  was  his  business.)  Mr.  Underwood  didn’t  talk  about
miscarriages  of  justice,  he  was  writing  so  children  could  understand.  Mr.
Underwood simply figured it was a sin to kill cripples, be they standing, sitting,
or escaping. He likened Tom’s death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by
hunters and children, and Maycomb thought he was trying to write an editorial
poetical enough to be reprinted in The Montgomery Advertiser.
How  could  this  be  so,  I  wondered,  as  I  read  Mr.  Underwood’s  editorial.
Senseless  killing—Tom  had  been  given  due  process  of  law  to  the  day  of  his
death; he had been tried openly and convicted by twelve good men and true; my
father had fought for him all the way. Then Mr. Underwood’s meaning became
clear: Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson,
but  in  the  secret  courts  of  men’s  hearts  Atticus  had  no  case.  Tom  was  a  dead
man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.
The  name  Ewell  gave  me  a  queasy  feeling.  Maycomb  had  lost  no  time  in

---

getting Mr. Ewell’s views on Tom’s demise and passing them along through that
English Channel of gossip, Miss Stephanie Crawford. Miss Stephanie told Aunt
Alexandra  in  Jem’s  presence  (“Oh  foot,  he’s  old  enough  to  listen.”)  that  Mr.
Ewell said it made one down and about two more to go. Jem told me not to be
afraid,  Mr.  Ewell  was  more  hot  gas  than  anything.  Jem  also  told  me  that  if  I
breathed a word to Atticus, if in any way I let Atticus know I knew, Jem would
personally never speak to me again.

---

26
S
chool started, and so did our daily trips past the Radley Place. Jem was in the
seventh  grade  and  went  to  high  school,  beyond  the  grammar-school  building;  I
was now in the third grade, and our routines were so different I only walked to
school  with  Jem  in  the  mornings  and  saw  him  at  mealtimes.  He  went  out  for
football, but was too slender and too young yet to do anything but carry the team
water  buckets.  This  he  did  with  enthusiasm;  most  afternoons  he  was  seldom
home before dark.
The Radley Place had ceased to terrify me, but it was no less gloomy, no less
chilly under its great oaks, and no less uninviting. Mr. Nathan Radley could still
be seen on a clear day, walking to and from town; we knew Boo was there, for
the  same  old  reason—nobody’d  seen  him  carried  out  yet.  I  sometimes  felt  a
twinge  of  remorse,  when  passing  by  the  old  place,  at  ever  having  taken  part  in
what must have been sheer torment to Arthur Radley—what reasonable recluse
wants children peeping through his shutters, delivering greetings on the end of a
fishing-pole,  wandering  in  his  collards  at  night?  And  yet  I  remembered.  Two
Indian-head  pennies,  chewing  gum,  soap  dolls,  a  rusty  medal,  a  broken  watch
and  chain.  Jem  must  have  put  them  away  somewhere.  I  stopped  and  looked  at
the  tree  one  afternoon:  the  trunk  was  swelling  around  its  cement  patch.  The
patch itself was turning yellow.
We had almost seen him a couple of times, a good enough score for anybody.
But I still looked for him each time I went by. Maybe someday we would see
him.  I  imagined  how  it  would  be:  when  it  happened,  he’d  just  be  sitting  in  the
swing when I came along. “Hidy do, Mr. Arthur,” I would say, as if I had said it
every afternoon of my life. “Evening, Jean Louise,” he would say, as if he had
said it every afternoon of my life, “right pretty spell we’re having, isn’t it?” “Yes
sir, right pretty,” I would say, and go on.
It was only a fantasy. We would never see him. He probably did go out when
the  moon  was  down  and  gaze  upon  Miss  Stephanie  Crawford.  I’d  have  picked
somebody else to look at, but that was his business. He would never gaze at us.
“You  aren’t  starting  that  again,  are  you?”  said  Atticus  one  night,  when  I
expressed a stray desire just to have one good look at Boo Radley before I died.

---

“If you are, I’ll tell you right now: stop it. I’m too old to go chasing you off the
Radley  property.  Besides,  it’s  dangerous.  You  might  get  shot.  You  know  Mr.
Nathan shoots at every shadow he sees, even shadows that leave size-four bare
footprints. You were lucky not to be killed.”
I hushed then and there. At the same time I marveled at Atticus. This was the
first he had let us know he knew a lot more about something than we thought he
knew.  And  it  had  happened  years  ago.  No,  only  last  summer—no,  summer
before  last,  when  .  .  .  time  was  playing  tricks  on  me.  I  must  remember  to  ask
Jem.
So  many  things  had  happened  to  us,  Boo  Radley  was  the  least  of  our  fears.
Atticus said he didn’t see how anything else could happen, that things had a way
of  settling  down,  and  after  enough  time  passed  people  would  forget  that  Tom
Robinson’s existence was ever brought to their attention.
Perhaps  Atticus  was  right,  but  the  events  of  the  summer  hung  over  us  like
smoke in a closed room. The adults in Maycomb never discussed the case with
Jem  and  me;  it  seemed  that  they  discussed  it  with  their  children,  and  their
attitude must have been that neither of us could help having Atticus for a parent,
so  their  children  must  be  nice  to  us  in  spite  of  him.  The  children  would  never
have  thought  that  up  for  themselves:  had  our  classmates  been  left  to  their  own
devices, Jem and I would have had several swift, satisfying fist-fights apiece and
ended the matter for good. As it was, we were compelled to hold our heads high
and be, respectively, a gentleman and a lady. In a way, it was like the era of Mrs.
Henry  Lafayette  Dubose,  without  all  her  yelling.  There  was  one  odd  thing,
though,  that  I  never  understood:  in  spite  of  Atticus’s  shortcomings  as  a  parent,
people  were  content  to  re-elect  him  to  the  state  legislature  that  year,  as  usual,
without  opposition.  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  people  were  just  peculiar,  I
withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to.
I  was  forced  to  one  day  in  school.  Once  a  week,  we  had  a  Current  Events
period.  Each  child  was  supposed  to  clip  an  item  from  a  newspaper,  absorb  its
contents, and reveal them to the class. This practice allegedly overcame a variety
of  evils:  standing  in  front  of  his  fellows  encouraged  good  posture  and  gave  a
child  poise;  delivering  a  short  talk  made  him  word-conscious;  learning  his
current event strengthened his memory; being singled out made him more than
ever anxious to return to the Group.
The idea was profound, but as usual, in Maycomb it didn’t work very well. In
the  first  place,  few  rural  children  had  access  to  newspapers,  so  the  burden  of
Current  Events  was  borne  by  the  town  children,  convincing  the  bus  children

---

more  deeply  that  the  town  children  got  all  the  attention  anyway.  The  rural
children  who  could,  usually  brought  clippings  from  what  they  called  The  Grit
Paper,  a  publication  spurious  in  the  eyes  of  Miss  Gates,  our  teacher.  Why  she
frowned  when  a  child  recited  from  The  Grit  Paper  I  never  knew,  but  in  some
way it was associated with liking fiddling, eating syrupy biscuits for lunch, being
a holy-roller, singing Sweetly Sings the Donkey and pronouncing it dunkey, all
of which the state paid teachers to discourage.
Even  so,  not  many  of  the  children  knew  what  a  Current  Event  was.  Little
Chuck Little, a hundred years old in his knowledge of cows and their habits, was
halfway  through  an  Uncle  Natchell  story  when  Miss  Gates  stopped  him:
“Charles, that is not a current event. That is an advertisement.”
Cecil Jacobs knew what one was, though. When his turn came, he went to the
front of the room and began, “Old Hitler—”
“Adolf Hitler, Cecil,” said Miss Gates. “One never begins with Old anybody.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said. “Old Adolf Hitler has been prosecutin‘ the—”
“Persecuting Cecil . . .”
“Nome,  Miss  Gates,  it  says  here—well  anyway,  old  Adolf  Hitler  has  been
after  the  Jews  and  he’s  puttin‘  ’em  in  prisons  and  he’s  taking  away  all  their
property and he won’t let any of ‘em out of the country and he’s washin’ all the
feeble-minded and—”
“Washing the feeble-minded?”
“Yes  ma’am,  Miss  Gates,  I  reckon  they  don’t  have  sense  enough  to  wash
themselves,  I  don’t  reckon  an  idiot  could  keep  hisself  clean.  Well  anyway,
Hitler’s  started  a  program  to  round  up  all  the  half-Jews  too  and  he  wants  to
register ‘em in case they might wanta cause him any trouble and I think this is a
bad thing and that’s my current event.”
“Very good, Cecil,” said Miss Gates. Puffing, Cecil returned to his seat.
A hand went up in the back of the room. “How can he do that?”
“Who do what?” asked Miss Gates patiently.
“I mean how can Hitler just put a lot of folks in a pen like that, looks like the
govamint’d stop him,” said the owner of the hand.
“Hitler  is  the  government,”  said  Miss  Gates,  and  seizing  an  opportunity  to
make  education  dynamic,  she  went  to  the  blackboard.  She  printed
DEMOCRACY  in  large  letters.  “Democracy,”  she  said.  “Does  anybody  have  a
definition?”

---

“Us,” somebody said.
I raised my hand, remembering an old campaign slogan Atticus had once told
me about.
“What do you think it means, Jean Louise?”
“‘Equal rights for all, special privileges for none,’” I quoted.
“Very  good,  Jean  Louise,  very  good,”  Miss  Gates  smiled.  In  front  of
DEMOCRACY,  she  printed  WE  ARE  A.  “Now  class,  say  it  all  together,  ‘We
are a democracy.’”
We said it. Then Miss Gates said, “That’s the difference between America and
Germany. We are a democracy and Germany is a dictatorship. Dictatorship,” she
said.  “Over  here  we  don’t  believe  in  persecuting  anybody.  Persecution  comes
from people who are prejudiced. Prejudice,” she enunciated carefully. “There are
no better people in the world than the Jews, and why Hitler doesn’t think so is a
mystery to me.”
An  inquiring  soul  in  the  middle  of  the  room  said,  “Why  don’t  they  like  the
Jews, you reckon, Miss Gates?”
“I don’t know, Henry. They contribute to every society they live in, and most
of  all,  they  are  a  deeply  religious  people.  Hitler’s  trying  to  do  away  with
religion, so maybe he doesn’t like them for that reason.”
Cecil spoke up. “Well I don’t know for certain,” he said, “they’re supposed to
change  money  or  somethin‘,  but  that  ain’t  no  cause  to  persecute  ’em.  They’re
white, ain’t they?”
Miss  Gates  said,  “When  you  get  to  high  school,  Cecil,  you’ll  learn  that  the
Jews  have  been  persecuted  since  the  beginning  of  history,  even  driven  out  of
their  own  country.  It’s  one  of  the  most  terrible  stories  in  history.  Time  for
arithmetic, children.”
As  I  had  never  liked  arithmetic,  I  spent  the  period  looking  out  the  window.
The  only  time  I  ever  saw  Atticus  scowl  was  when  Elmer  Davis  would  give  us
the  latest  on  Hitler.  Atticus  would  snap  off  the  radio  and  say,  “Hmp!”  I  asked
him  once  why  he  was  impatient  with  Hitler  and  Atticus  said,  “Because  he’s  a
maniac.”
This would not do, I mused, as the class proceeded with its sums. One maniac
and  millions  of  German  folks.  Looked  to  me  like  they’d  shut  Hitler  in  a  pen
instead of letting him shut them up. There was something else wrong—I would
ask my father about it.
I did, and he said he could not possibly answer my question because he didn’t

---

know the answer.
“But it’s okay to hate Hitler?”
“It is not,” he said. “It’s not okay to hate anybody.”
“Atticus,” I said, “there’s somethin‘ I don’t understand. Miss Gates said it was
awful, Hitler doin’ like he does, she got real red in the face about it—”
“I should think she would.”
“But—”
“Yes?”
“Nothing, sir.” I went away, not sure that I could explain to Atticus what was
on my mind, not sure that I could clarify what was only a feeling. Perhaps Jem
could provide the answer. Jem understood school things better than Atticus.
Jem  was  worn  out  from  a  day’s  water-carrying.  There  were  at  least  twelve
banana  peels  on  the  floor  by  his  bed,  surrounding  an  empty  milk  bottle.
“Whatcha stuffin‘ for?” I asked.
“Coach says if I can gain twenty-five pounds by year after next I can play,” he
said. “This is the quickest way.”
“If you don’t throw it all up. Jem,” I said, “I wanta ask you somethin‘.”
“Shoot.” He put down his book and stretched his legs.
“Miss Gates is a nice lady, ain’t she?”
“Why sure,” said Jem. “I liked her when I was in her room.”
“She hates Hitler a lot . . .”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, she went on today about how bad it was him treatin‘ the Jews like that.
Jem, it’s not right to persecute anybody, is it? I mean have mean thoughts about
anybody, even, is it?”
“Gracious no, Scout. What’s eatin‘ you?”
“Well,  coming  out  of  the  courthouse  that  night  Miss  Gates  was—she  was
goin‘  down  the  steps  in  front  of  us,  you  musta  not  seen  her—she  was  talking
with Miss Stephanie Crawford. I heard her say it’s time somebody taught ’em a
lesson,  they  were  gettin‘  way  above  themselves,  an’  the  next  thing  they  think
they  can  do  is  marry  us.  Jem,  how  can  you  hate  Hitler  so  bad  an‘  then  turn
around and be ugly about folks right at home—”
Jem  was  suddenly  furious.  He  leaped  off  the  bed,  grabbed  me  by  the  collar
and shook me. “I never wanta hear about that courthouse again, ever, ever, you

---

hear me? You hear me? Don’t you ever say one word to me about it again, you
hear? Now go on!”
I was too surprised to cry. I crept from Jem’s room and shut the door softly,
lest undue noise set him off again. Suddenly tired, I wanted Atticus. He was in
the livingroom, and I went to him and tried to get in his lap.
Atticus  smiled.  “You’re  getting  so  big  now,  I’ll  just  have  to  hold  a  part  of
you.”  He  held  me  close.  “Scout,”  he  said  softly,  “don’t  let  Jem  get  you  down.
He’s having a rough time these days. I heard you back there.”
Atticus  said  that  Jem  was  trying  hard  to  forget  something,  but  what  he  was
really doing was storing it away for a while, until enough time passed. Then he
would  be  able  to  think  about  it  and  sort  things  out.  When  he  was  able  to  think
about it, Jem would be himself again.

---

27
T
hings  did  settle  down,  after  a  fashion,  as  Atticus  said  they  would.  By  the
middle  of  October,  only  two  small  things  out  of  the  ordinary  happened  to  two
Maycomb citizens. No, there were three things, and they did not directly concern
us—the Finches—but in a way they did.
The first thing was that Mr. Bob Ewell acquired and lost a job in a matter of
days and probably made himself unique in the annals of the nineteen-thirties: he
was  the  only  man  I  ever  heard  of  who  was  fired  from  the  WPA  for  laziness.  I
suppose his brief burst of fame brought on a briefer burst of industry, but his job
lasted only as long as his notoriety: Mr. Ewell found himself as forgotten as Tom
Robinson. Thereafter, he resumed his regular weekly appearances at the welfare
office for his check, and received it with no grace amid obscure mutterings that
the  bastards  who  thought  they  ran  this  town  wouldn’t  permit  an  honest  man  to
make  a  living.  Ruth  Jones,  the  welfare  lady,  said  Mr.  Ewell  openly  accused
Atticus of getting his job. She was upset enough to walk down to Atticus’s office
and tell him about it. Atticus told Miss Ruth not to fret, that if Bob Ewell wanted
to discuss Atticus’s “getting” his job, he knew the way to the office.
The second thing happened to Judge Taylor. Judge Taylor was not a Sunday-
night churchgoer: Mrs. Taylor was. Judge Taylor savored his Sunday night hour
alone in his big house, and churchtime found him holed up in his study reading
the  writings  of  Bob  Taylor  (no  kin,  but  the  judge  would  have  been  proud  to
claim  it).  One  Sunday  night,  lost  in  fruity  metaphors  and  florid  diction,  Judge
Taylor’s attention was wrenched from the page by an irritating scratching noise.
“Hush,” he said to Ann Taylor, his fat nondescript dog. Then he realized he was
speaking to an empty room; the scratching noise was coming from the rear of the
house.  Judge  Taylor  clumped  to  the  back  porch  to  let  Ann  out  and  found  the
screen door swinging open. A shadow on the corner of the house caught his eye,
and  that  was  all  he  saw  of  his  visitor.  Mrs.  Taylor  came  home  from  church  to
find her husband in his chair, lost in the writings of Bob Taylor, with a shotgun
across his lap.
The third thing happened to Helen Robinson, Tom’s widow. If Mr. Ewell was
as forgotten as Tom Robinson, Tom Robinson was as forgotten as Boo Radley.
But  Tom  was  not  forgotten  by  his  employer,  Mr.  Link  Deas.  Mr.  Link  Deas

---

made  a  job  for  Helen.  He  didn’t  really  need  her,  but  he  said  he  felt  right  bad
about  the  way  things  turned  out.  I  never  knew  who  took  care  of  her  children
while Helen was away. Calpurnia said it was hard on Helen, because she had to
walk nearly a mile out of her way to avoid the Ewells, who, according to Helen,
“chunked  at  her”  the  first  time  she  tried  to  use  the  public  road.  Mr.  Link  Deas
eventually received the impression that Helen was coming to work each morning
from the wrong direction, and dragged the reason out of her. “Just let it be, Mr.
Link, please suh,” Helen begged. “The hell I will,” said Mr. Link. He told her to
come by his store that afternoon before she left. She did, and Mr. Link closed his
store, put his hat firmly on his head, and walked Helen home. He walked her the
short way, by the Ewells‘. On his way back, Mr. Link stopped at the crazy gate.
“Ewell?” he called. “I say Ewell!”
The windows, normally packed with children, were empty.
“I know every last one of you’s in there a-layin‘ on the floor! Now hear me,
Bob Ewell: if I hear one more peep outa my girl Helen about not bein’ able to
walk this road I’ll have you in jail before sundown!” Mr. Link spat in the dust
and walked home.
Helen went to work next morning and used the public road. Nobody chunked
at her, but when she was a few yards beyond the Ewell house, she looked around
and  saw  Mr.  Ewell  walking  behind  her.  She  turned  and  walked  on,  and  Mr.
Ewell  kept  the  same  distance  behind  her  until  she  reached  Mr.  Link  Deas’s
house. All the way to the house, Helen said, she heard a soft voice behind her,
crooning  foul  words.  Thoroughly  frightened,  she  telephoned  Mr.  Link  at  his
store, which was not too far from his house. As Mr. Link came out of his store
he saw Mr. Ewell leaning on the fence. Mr. Ewell said, “Don’t you look at me,
Link Deas, like I was dirt. I ain’t jumped your—”
“First  thing  you  can  do,  Ewell,  is  get  your  stinkin‘  carcass  off  my  property.
You’re leanin’ on it an‘ I can’t afford fresh paint for it. Second thing you can do
is stay away from my cook or I’ll have you up for assault—”
“I ain’t touched her, Link Deas, and ain’t about to go with no nigger!”
“You  don’t  have  to  touch  her,  all  you  have  to  do  is  make  her  afraid,  an‘  if
assault ain’t enough to keep you locked up awhile, I’ll get you in on the Ladies’
Law,  so  get  outa  my  sight!  If  you  don’t  think  I  mean  it,  just  bother  that  girl
again!”
Mr. Ewell evidently thought he meant it, for Helen reported no further trouble.
“I  don’t  like  it,  Atticus,  I  don’t  like  it  at  all,”  was  Aunt  Alexandra’s

---

assessment  of  these  events.  “That  man  seems  to  have  a  permanent  running
grudge  against  everybody  connected  with  that  case.  I  know  how  that  kind  are
about paying off grudges, but I don’t understand why he should harbor one—he
had his way in court, didn’t he?”
“I think I understand,” said Atticus. “It might be because he knows in his heart
that  very  few  people  in  Maycomb  really  believed  his  and  Mayella’s  yarns.  He
thought  he’d  be  a  hero,  but  all  he  got  for  his  pain  was  .  .  .  was,  okay,  we’ll
convict  this  Negro  but  get  back  to  your  dump.  He’s  had  his  fling  with  about
everybody now, so he ought to be satisfied. He’ll settle down when the weather
changes.”
“But  why  should  he  try  to  burgle  John  Taylor’s  house?  He  obviously  didn’t
know John was home or he wouldn’t‘ve tried. Only lights John shows on Sunday
nights are on the front porch and back in his den . . .”
“You  don’t  know  if  Bob  Ewell  cut  that  screen,  you  don’t  know  who  did  it,”
said Atticus. “But I can guess. I proved him a liar but John made him look like a
fool. All the time Ewell was on the stand I couldn’t dare look at John and keep a
straight face. John looked at him as if he were a three-legged chicken or a square
egg. Don’t tell me judges don’t try to prejudice juries,” Atticus chuckled.
By  the  end  of  October,  our  lives  had  become  the  familiar  routine  of  school,
play, study. Jem seemed to have put out of his mind whatever it was he wanted
to forget, and our classmates mercifully let us forget our father’s eccentricities.
Cecil Jacobs asked me one time if Atticus was a Radical. When I asked Atticus,
Atticus was so amused I was rather annoyed, but he said he wasn’t laughing at
me. He said, “You tell Cecil I’m about as radical as Cotton Tom Heflin.”
Aunt  Alexandra  was  thriving.  Miss  Maudie  must  have  silenced  the  whole
missionary  society  at  one  blow,  for  Aunty  again  ruled  that  roost.  Her
refreshments grew even more delicious. I learned more about the poor Mrunas’
social life from listening to Mrs. Merriweather: they had so little sense of family
that  the  whole  tribe  was  one  big  family.  A  child  had  as  many  fathers  as  there
were men in the community, as many mothers as there were women. J. Grimes
Everett  was  doing  his  utmost  to  change  this  state  of  affairs,  and  desperately
needed our prayers.
Maycomb was itself again. Precisely the same as last year and the year before
that, with only two minor changes. Firstly, people had removed from their store
windows  and  automobiles  the  stickers  that  said  NRA—WE  DO  OUR  PART.  I
asked  Atticus  why,  and  he  said  it  was  because  the  National  Recovery  Act  was
dead. I asked who killed it: he said nine old men.

---

The  second  change  in  Maycomb  since  last  year  was  not  one  of  national
significance. Until then, Halloween in Maycomb was a completely unorganized
affair. Each child did what he wanted to do, with assistance from other children
if there was anything to be moved, such as placing a light buggy on top of the
livery stable. But parents thought things went too far last year, when the peace of
Miss Tutti and Miss Frutti was shattered.
Misses Tutti and Frutti Barber were maiden ladies, sisters, who lived together
in  the  only  Maycomb  residence  boasting  a  cellar.  The  Barber  ladies  were
rumored  to  be  Republicans,  having  migrated  from  Clanton,  Alabama,  in  1911.
Their ways were strange to us, and why they wanted a cellar nobody knew, but
they wanted one and they dug one, and they spent the rest of their lives chasing
generations of children out of it.
Misses Tutti and Frutti (their names were Sarah and Frances), aside from their
Yankee  ways,  were  both  deaf.  Miss  Tutti  denied  it  and  lived  in  a  world  of
silence, but Miss Frutti, not about to miss anything, employed an ear trumpet so
enormous  that  Jem  declared  it  was  a  loudspeaker  from  one  of  those  dog
Victrolas.
With  these  facts  in  mind  and  Halloween  at  hand,  some  wicked  children  had
waited  until  the  Misses  Barber  were  thoroughly  asleep,  slipped  into  their
livingroom  (nobody  but  the  Radleys  locked  up  at  night),  stealthily  made  away
with every stick of furniture therein, and hid it in the cellar. I deny having taken