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Maycomb Tribune to paste in his scrapbook. His father entered the room. As Mr.
Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out,
wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities.
Mrs. Radley ran screaming into the street that Arthur was killing them all, but
when the sheriff arrived he found Boo still sitting in the livingroom, cutting up
the Tribune. He was thirty-three years old then.
Miss Stephanie said old Mr. Radley said no Radley was going to any asylum,
when it was suggested that a season in Tuscaloosa might be helpful to Boo. Boo
wasn’t  crazy,  he  was  high-strung  at  times.  It  was  all  right  to  shut  him  up,  Mr.
Radley conceded, but insisted that Boo not be charged with anything: he was not
a criminal. The sheriff hadn’t the heart to put him in jail alongside Negroes, so
Boo was locked in the courthouse basement.
Boo’s  transition  from  the  basement  to  back  home  was  nebulous  in  Jem’s
memory.  Miss  Stephanie  Crawford  said  some  of  the  town  council  told  Mr.
Radley that if he didn’t take Boo back, Boo would die of mold from the damp.
Besides, Boo could not live forever on the bounty of the county.
Nobody  knew  what  form  of  intimidation  Mr.  Radley  employed  to  keep  Boo
out of sight, but Jem figured that Mr. Radley kept him chained to the bed most of
the time. Atticus said no, it wasn’t that sort of thing, that there were other ways
of making people into ghosts.
My memory came alive to see Mrs. Radley occasionally open the front door,
walk to the edge of the porch, and pour water on her cannas. But every day Jem
and I would see Mr. Radley walking to and from town. He was a thin leathery
man with colorless eyes, so colorless they did not reflect light. His cheekbones
were  sharp  and  his  mouth  was  wide,  with  a  thin  upper  lip  and  a  full  lower  lip.
Miss Stephanie Crawford said he was so upright he took the word of God as his
only  law,  and  we  believed  her,  because  Mr.  Radley’s  posture  was  ramrod
straight.
He never spoke to us. When he passed we would look at the ground and say,
“Good morning, sir,” and he would cough in reply. Mr. Radley’s elder son lived
in Pensacola; he came home at Christmas, and he was one of the few persons we
ever saw enter or leave the place. From the day Mr. Radley took Arthur home,
people said the house died.
But there came a day when Atticus told us he’d wear us out if we made any
noise  in  the  yard  and  commissioned  Calpurnia  to  serve  in  his  absence  if  she
heard a sound out of us. Mr. Radley was dying.
He took his time about it. Wooden sawhorses blocked the road at each end of

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the Radley lot, straw was put down on the sidewalk, traffic was diverted to the
back street. Dr. Reynolds parked his car in front of our house and walked to the
Radley’s every time he called. Jem and I crept around the yard for days. At last
the  sawhorses  were  taken  away,  and  we  stood  watching  from  the  front  porch
when Mr. Radley made his final journey past our house.
“There  goes  the  meanest  man  ever  God  blew  breath  into,”  murmured
Calpurnia, and she spat meditatively into the yard. We looked at her in surprise,
for Calpurnia rarely commented on the ways of white people.
The neighborhood thought when Mr. Radley went under Boo would come out,
but  it  had  another  think  coming:  Boo’s  elder  brother  returned  from  Pensacola
and  took  Mr.  Radley’s  place.  The  only  difference  between  him  and  his  father
was  their  ages.  Jem  said  Mr.  Nathan  Radley  “bought  cotton,”  too.  Mr.  Nathan
would  speak  to  us,  however,  when  we  said  good  morning,  and  sometimes  we
saw him coming from town with a magazine in his hand.
The  more  we  told  Dill  about  the  Radleys,  the  more  he  wanted  to  know,  the
longer he would stand hugging the light-pole on the corner, the more he would
wonder.
“Wonder  what  he  does  in  there,”  he  would  murmur.  “Looks  like  he’d  just
stick his head out the door.”
Jem  said,  “He  goes  out,  all  right,  when  it’s  pitch  dark.  Miss  Stephanie
Crawford  said  she  woke  up  in  the  middle  of  the  night  one  time  and  saw  him
looking  straight  through  the  window  at  her  .  .  .  said  his  head  was  like  a  skull
lookin‘ at her. Ain’t you ever waked up at night and heard him, Dill? He walks
like this—” Jem slid his feet through the gravel. “Why do you think Miss Rachel
locks up so tight at night? I’ve seen his tracks in our back yard many a mornin’,
and one night I heard him scratching on the back screen, but he was gone time
Atticus got there.”
“Wonder what he looks like?” said Dill.
Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet
tall,  judging  from  his  tracks;  he  dined  on  raw  squirrels  and  any  cats  he  could
catch,  that’s  why  his  hands  were  bloodstained—if  you  ate  an  animal  raw,  you
could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his
face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled
most of the time.
“Let’s  try  to  make  him  come  out,”  said  Dill.  “I’d  like  to  see  what  he  looks
like.”

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Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he had to do was go up and
knock on the front door.
Our first raid came to pass only because Dill bet Jem The Gray Ghost against
two Tom Swifts that Jem wouldn’t get any farther than the Radley gate. In all his
life, Jem had never declined a dare.
Jem  thought  about  it  for  three  days.  I  suppose  he  loved  honor  more  than  his
head,  for  Dill  wore  him  down  easily:  “You’re  scared,”  Dill  said,  the  first  day.
“Ain’t  scared,  just  respectful,”  Jem  said.  The  next  day  Dill  said,  “You’re  too
scared  even  to  put  your  big  toe  in  the  front  yard.”  Jem  said  he  reckoned  he
wasn’t, he’d passed the Radley Place every school day of his life.
“Always runnin‘,” I said.
But  Dill  got  him  the  third  day,  when  he  told  Jem  that  folks  in  Meridian
certainly  weren’t  as  afraid  as  the  folks  in  Maycomb,  that  he’d  never  seen  such
scary folks as the ones in Maycomb.
This  was  enough  to  make  Jem  march  to  the  corner,  where  he  stopped  and
leaned against the light-pole, watching the gate hanging crazily on its homemade
hinge.
“I hope you’ve got it through your head that he’ll kill us each and every one,
Dill Harris,” said Jem, when we joined him. “Don’t blame me when he gouges
your eyes out. You started it, remember.”
“You’re still scared,” murmured Dill patiently.
Jem wanted Dill to know once and for all that he wasn’t scared of anything:
“It’s just that I can’t think of a way to make him come out without him gettin‘
us.” Besides, Jem had his little sister to think of.
When he said that, I knew he was afraid. Jem had his little sister to think of
the  time  I  dared  him  to  jump  off  the  top  of  the  house:  “If  I  got  killed,  what’d
become  of  you?”  he  asked.  Then  he  jumped,  landed  unhurt,  and  his  sense  of
responsibility left him until confronted by the Radley Place.
“You gonna run out on a dare?” asked Dill. “If you are, then—”
“Dill, you have to think about these things,” Jem said. “Lemme think a minute
. . . it’s sort of like making a turtle come out . . .”
“How’s that?” asked Dill.
“Strike a match under him.”
I told Jem if he set fire to the Radley house I was going to tell Atticus on him.
Dill said striking a match under a turtle was hateful.

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“Ain’t hateful, just persuades him—‘s not like you’d chunk him in the fire,”
Jem growled.
“How do you know a match don’t hurt him?”
“Turtles can’t feel, stupid,” said Jem.
“Were you ever a turtle, huh?”
“My stars, Dill! Now lemme think . . . reckon we can rock him . . .”
Jem stood in thought so long that Dill made a mild concession: “I won’t say
you  ran  out  on  a  dare  an‘  I’ll  swap  you  The  Gray  Ghost  if  you  just  go  up  and
touch the house.”
Jem brightened. “Touch the house, that all?”
Dill nodded.
“Sure  that’s  all,  now?  I  don’t  want  you  hollerin‘  something  different  the
minute I get back.”
“Yeah, that’s all,” said Dill. “He’ll probably come out after you when he sees
you in the yard, then Scout’n‘ me’ll jump on him and hold him down till we can
tell him we ain’t gonna hurt him.”
We left the corner, crossed the side street that ran in front of the Radley house,
and stopped at the gate.
“Well go on,” said Dill, “Scout and me’s right behind you.”
“I’m going,” said Jem, “don’t hurry me.”
He walked to the corner of the lot, then back again, studying the simple terrain
as if deciding how best to effect an entry, frowning and scratching his head.
Then I sneered at him.
Jem threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house, slapped it with his
palm and ran back past us, not waiting to see if his foray was successful. Dill and
I  followed  on  his  heels.  Safely  on  our  porch,  panting  and  out  of  breath,  we
looked back.
The old house was the same, droopy and sick, but as we stared down the street
we  thought  we  saw  an  inside  shutter  move.  Flick.  A  tiny,  almost  invisible
movement, and the house was still.

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2
D
ill left us early in September, to return to Meridian. We saw him off on the
five o’clock bus and I was miserable without him until it occurred to me that I
would be starting to school in a week. I never looked forward more to anything
in my life. Hours of wintertime had found me in the treehouse, looking over at
the schoolyard, spying on multitudes of children through a two-power telescope
Jem  had  given  me,  learning  their  games,  following  Jem’s  red  jacket  through
wriggling  circles  of  blind  man’s  buff,  secretly  sharing  their  misfortunes  and
minor victories. I longed to join them.
Jem  condescended  to  take  me  to  school  the  first  day,  a  job  usually  done  by
one’s  parents,  but  Atticus  had  said  Jem  would  be  delighted  to  show  me  where
my room was. I think some money changed hands in this transaction, for as we
trotted  around  the  corner  past  the  Radley  Place  I  heard  an  unfamiliar  jingle  in
Jem’s  pockets.  When  we  slowed  to  a  walk  at  the  edge  of  the  schoolyard,  Jem
was careful to explain that during school hours I was not to bother him, I was not
to approach him with requests to enact a chapter of Tarzan and the Ant Men, to
embarrass  him  with  references  to  his  private  life,  or  tag  along  behind  him  at
recess and noon. I was to stick with the first grade and he would stick with the
fifth. In short, I was to leave him alone.
“You mean we can’t play any more?” I asked.
“We’ll  do  like  we  always  do  at  home,”  he  said,  “but  you’ll  see—school’s
different.”
It certainly was. Before the first morning was over, Miss Caroline Fisher, our
teacher, hauled me up to the front of the room and patted the palm of my hand
with a ruler, then made me stand in the corner until noon.
Miss Caroline was no more than twenty-one. She had bright auburn hair, pink
cheeks,  and  wore  crimson  fingernail  polish.  She  also  wore  high-heeled  pumps
and  a  red-and-white-striped  dress.  She  looked  and  smelled  like  a  peppermint
drop.  She  boarded  across  the  street  one  door  down  from  us  in  Miss  Maudie
Atkinson’s upstairs front room, and when Miss Maudie introduced us to her, Jem
was in a haze for days.
Miss Caroline printed her name on the blackboard and said, “This says I am

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Miss  Caroline  Fisher.  I  am  from  North  Alabama,  from  Winston  County.”  The
class  murmured  apprehensively,  should  she  prove  to  harbor  her  share  of  the
peculiarities indigenous to that region. (When Alabama seceded from the Union
on January 11, 1861, Winston County seceded from Alabama, and every child in
Maycomb  County  knew  it.)  North  Alabama  was  full  of  Liquor  Interests,  Big
Mules,  steel  companies,  Republicans,  professors,  and  other  persons  of  no
background.
Miss  Caroline  began  the  day  by  reading  us  a  story  about  cats.  The  cats  had
long conversations with one another, they wore cunning little clothes and lived
in  a  warm  house  beneath  a  kitchen  stove.  By  the  time  Mrs.  Cat  called  the
drugstore  for  an  order  of  chocolate  malted  mice  the  class  was  wriggling  like  a
bucketful  of  catawba  worms.  Miss  Caroline  seemed  unaware  that  the  ragged,
denim-shirted  and  floursack-skirted  first  grade,  most  of  whom  had  chopped
cotton  and  fed  hogs  from  the  time  they  were  able  to  walk,  were  immune  to
imaginative literature. Miss Caroline came to the end of the story and said, “Oh,
my, wasn’t that nice?”
Then she went to the blackboard and printed the alphabet in enormous square
capitals, turned to the class and asked, “Does anybody know what these are?”
Everybody did; most of the first grade had failed it last year.
I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a
faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My