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“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee

2

Part One
Chapter 1
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow
...
His left arm was somewhat shorter than his
right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his
thumb parallel to his thigh
...

When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes
discussed the events leading to his accident
...
He said it began the
summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come
out
...
If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would
never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t? We were far
too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus
...

Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we
had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings
...
In England, Simon was irritated by the persecution of those who called
themselves Methodists at the hands of their more liberal brethren, and as Simon called
himself a Methodist, he worked his way across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to
Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up the Saint Stephens
...
So
Simon, having forgotten his teacher’s dictum on the possession of human chattels,
bought three slaves and with their aid established a homestead on the banks of the
Alabama River some forty miles above Saint Stephens
...

Simon lived to an impressive age and died rich
...
The place was self-sufficient: modest in
comparison with the empires around it, the Landing nevertheless produced everything
required to sustain life except ice, wheat flour, and articles of clothing, supplied by riverboats from Mobile
...
Their sister Alexandra was the Finch who remained at the
Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock by
the river wondering if his trot-lines were full
...
Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch’s Landing, was the county seat of
Maycomb County
...
His first two clients were
the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail
...
The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb’s leading

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee

3

blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare,
were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that theson-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody
...

During his first five years in Maycomb, Atticus practiced economy more than anything;
for several years thereafter he invested his earnings in his brother’s education
...
He liked Maycomb, he was Maycomb
County born and bred; he knew his people, they knew him, and because of Simon
Finch’s industry, Atticus was related by blood or marriage to nearly every family in the
town
...
In rainy
weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse
sagged in the square
...
Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning
...

People moved slowly then
...
A day was twenty-four hours long but
seemed longer
...
But it
was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently
been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself
...
Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated
us with courteous detachment
...
She was all angles and bones; she was
nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard
...
Our
battles were epic and one-sided
...
She had been with us ever since Jem was born, and I had felt her
tyrannical presence as long as I could remember
...
She was a Graham from
Montgomery; Atticus met her when he was first elected to the state legislature
...
Jem was the product of their first
year of marriage; four years later I was born, and two years later our mother died from a
sudden heart attack
...
I did not miss her, but I think Jem did
...
When he was like that, I
knew better than to bother him
...
Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house two doors to
the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south
...
The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the mere
description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end; Mrs
...

That was the summer Dill came to us
...
We went to the
wire fence to see if there was a puppy—Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was expecting—
instead we found someone sitting looking at us
...
We stared at him until he spoke:
“Hey
...

“I’m Charles Baker Harris,” he said
...
”
“So what?” I said
...
You got anything needs readin‘ I can do
it…”
“How old are you,” asked Jem, “four-and-a-half?”
“Goin‘ on seven
...
“Scout yonder’s been
readin‘ ever since she was born, and she ain’t even started to school yet
...
”
“I’m little but I’m old,” he said
...
“Why don’t you come over, Charles
Baker Harris?” he said
...
”
“‘s not any funnier’n yours
...
”
Jem scowled
...
“Your name’s longer’n you are
...
”
“Folks call me Dill,” said Dill, struggling under the fence
...
“Where’d you come from?”
Dill was from Meridian, Mississippi, was spending the summer with his aunt, Miss
Rachel, and would be spending every summer in Maycomb from now on
...
She gave the
money to Dill, who went to the picture show twenty times on it
...
“Ever see anything good?”
Dill had seen Dracula, a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginning of
respect
...

Dill was a curiosity
...
As he told us the old tale his blue eyes would lighten and darken; his laugh
was sudden and happy; he habitually pulled at a cowlick in the center of his forehead
...
”
“I haven’t got one
...
Thereafter the summer passed in routine contentment
...
In this matter we were lucky to have
Dill
...

Crabtree in The Rover Boys, Mr
...
Thus we came to know Dill as a
pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint
fancies
...

The Radley Place fascinated Dill
...
There he would stand, his arm around the fat pole,
staring and wondering
...
Walking south, one
faced its porch; the sidewalk turned and ran beside the lot
...
Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the
veranda; oak trees kept the sun away
...

Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom
...
People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and
peeped in windows
...
Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work
...
A Negro would not pass the Radley Place at
night, he would cut across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked
...
A baseball hit into the Radley
yard was a lost ball and no questions asked
...
The
Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilection unforgivable in
Maycomb
...
Radley seldom if ever crossed the street for a mid-morning coffee break with
her neighbors, and certainly never joined a missionary circle
...
Radley walked to town
at eleven-thirty every morning and came back promptly at twelve, sometimes carrying a
brown paper bag that the neighborhood assumed contained the family groceries
...
Radley made his living—Jem said he “bought cotton,” a polite term for
doing nothing—but Mr
...

The shutters and doors of the Radley house were closed on Sundays, another thing
alien to Maycomb’s ways: closed doors meant illness and cold weather only
...
But to climb the Radley front steps and call, “He-y,” of a Sunday
afternoon was something their neighbors never did
...
I once asked Atticus if it ever had any; Atticus said yes, but before I was born
...
They did little, but enough to be discussed by
the town and publicly warned from three pulpits: they hung around the barbershop; they
rode the bus to Abbottsville on Sundays and went to the picture show; they attended
dances at the county’s riverside gambling hell, the Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing Camp; they
experimented with stumphole whiskey
...
Radley that his boy was in with the wrong crowd
...
Conner, and
locked him in the courthouse outhouse
...
Conner said he knew who each and every one of them was, and he was bound and
determined they wouldn’t get away with it, so the boys came before the probate judge
on charges of disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, assault and battery, and using
abusive and profane language in the presence and hearing of a female
...
Conner why he included the last charge; Mr
...
The judge decided to send the boys to
the state industrial school, where boys were sometimes sent for no other reason than to
provide them with food and decent shelter: it was no prison and it was no disgrace
...

Radley thought it was
...
Radley would see to it that
Arthur gave no further trouble
...
Radley’s word was his bond, the judge
was glad to do so
...
The doors of the Radley house were closed on weekdays
as well as Sundays, and Mr
...

But there came a day, barely within Jem’s memory, when Boo Radley was heard from
and was seen by several people, but not by Jem
...
”
So Jem received most of his information from Miss Stephanie Crawford, a
neighborhood scold, who said she knew the whole thing
...
His father entered the room
...
Radley passed by, Boo
drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and
resumed his activities
...
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
...

Miss Stephanie said old Mr
...
Boo wasn’t crazy,
he was high-strung at times
...
Radley conceded, but
insisted that Boo not be charged with anything: he was not a criminal
...

Boo’s transition from the basement to back home was nebulous in Jem’s memory
...
Radley that if he didn’t
take Boo back, Boo would die of mold from the damp
...

Nobody knew what form of intimidation Mr
...
Radley kept him chained to the bed most of the time
...

My memory came alive to see Mrs
...
But every day Jem and I would
see Mr
...
He was a thin leathery man with colorless
eyes, so colorless they did not reflect light
...
Miss Stephanie Crawford said he was
so upright he took the word of God as his only law, and we believed her, because Mr
...

He never spoke to us
...
Mr
...
From the day Mr
...

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
...
Radley was dying
...
Wooden sawhorses blocked the road at each end of the
Radley lot, straw was put down on the sidewalk, traffic was diverted to the back street
...
Reynolds parked his car in front of our house and walked to the Radley’s every time

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee

7

he called
...
At last the sawhorses were taken
away, and we stood watching from the front porch when Mr
...

“There goes the meanest man ever God blew breath into,” murmured Calpurnia, and
she spat meditatively into the yard
...

The neighborhood thought when Mr
...

Radley’s place
...
Jem
said Mr
...
Mr
...

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
...
“Looks like he’d just stick his head
out the door
...
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
...

“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
...

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
...

“Let’s try to make him come out,” said Dill
...
”
Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he had to do was go up and knock on
the front door
...
In all his life, Jem
had never declined a dare
...
I suppose he loved honor more than his head, for
Dill wore him down easily: “You’re scared,” Dill said, the first day
...
The next day Dill said, “You’re too scared even to put your big toe
in the front yard
...

“Always runnin‘,” I said
...

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
...
“Don’t blame me when he gouges your eyes out
...
”
“You’re still scared,” murmured Dill patiently
...
” Besides, Jem
had his little sister to think of
...
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

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee

8

asked
...

“You gonna run out on a dare?” asked Dill
...
“Lemme think a minute… it’s
sort of like making a turtle come out…”
“How’s that?” asked Dill
...
”
I told Jem if he set fire to the Radley house I was going to tell Atticus on him
...

“Ain’t hateful, just persuades him—‘s not like you’d chunk him in the fire,” Jem
growled
...

“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
...
“Touch the house, that all?”
Dill nodded
...
”
“Yeah, that’s all,” said Dill
...
”
We left the corner, crossed the side street that ran in front of the Radley house, and
stopped at the gate
...
”
“I’m going,” said Jem, “don’t hurry me
...

Then I sneered at him
...
Dill and I followed
on his heels
...

The old house was the same, droopy and sick, but as we stared down the street we
thought we saw an inside shutter move
...
A tiny, almost invisible movement, and
the house was still
...
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
...
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
...

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
...
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
...
In short, I was to leave him alone
...

“We’ll do like we always do at home,” he said, “but you’ll see—school’s different
...
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
...
She had bright auburn hair, pink cheeks,
and wore crimson fingernail polish
...
She looked and smelled like a peppermint drop
...

Miss Caroline printed her name on the blackboard and said, “This says I am Miss
Caroline Fisher
...
” The class murmured
apprehensively, should she prove to harbor her share of the peculiarities indigenous to
that region
...
) North
Alabama was full of Liquor Interests, Big Mules, steel companies, Republicans,
professors, and other persons of no background
...
The cats had long
conversations with one another, they wore cunning little clothes and lived in a warm
house beneath a kitchen stove
...
Cat called the drugstore for an order of
chocolate malted mice the class was wriggling like a bucketful of catawba worms
...
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
...
Miss
Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my
reading
...
“He hasn’t taught me anything, Miss Caroline
...
“Why, he’s so tired at night he just sits in the livingroom and reads
...
“Somebody did
...
”
“Jem says I was
...
Jem
says my name’s really Jean Louise Bullfinch, that I got swapped when I was born and
I’m really a-”
Miss Caroline apparently thought I was lying
...
“Now you tell your father not to teach you any more
...
You tell him I’ll take over from here and try to undo the
damage-”
“Ma’am?”
“Your father does not know how to teach
...
”
I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime
...
In the
long hours of church—was it then I learned? I could not remember not being able to
read hymns
...
I could not remember when the lines

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 10

above Atticus’s moving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all the
evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws,
the diaries of Lorenzo Dow—anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled
into his lap every night
...
One does not
love breathing
...

He asked how I was getting along
...

“If I didn’t have to stay I’d leave
...
“Our teacher says Miss Caroline’s
introducing a new way of teaching
...
It’ll be in all the
grades soon
...
You hafta know about cows, they’re a big part of life in Maycomb
County
...

“I’m just trying to tell you the new way they’re teachin‘ the first grade, stubborn
...
”
Having never questioned Jem’s pronouncements, I saw no reason to begin now
...
” No comment seemed to be expected of
us, and the class received these impressionistic revelations in silence
...
Miss Caroline caught me writing and told me to tell my father to
stop teaching me
...
“We don’t write in the first grade, we print
...
”
Calpurnia was to blame for this
...
She would set me a writing task by scrawling the alphabet firmly across the top
of a tablet, then copying out a chapter of the Bible beneath
...
In Calpurnia’s teaching, there was no sentimentality: I seldom pleased
her and she seldom rewarded me
...

The town children did so, and she looked us over
...
”
Molasses buckets appeared from nowhere, and the ceiling danced with metallic light
...
She stopped at Walter
Cunningham’s desk
...

Walter Cunningham’s face told everybody in the first grade he had hookworms
...
People caught hookworms going barefooted
in barnyards and hog wallows
...
He did have on a
clean shirt and neatly mended overalls
...

Walter looked straight ahead
...

“Did you forget it this morning?” asked Miss Caroline
...

“Yeb’m,” he finally mumbled
...
“Here’s a quarter,” she said to
Walter
...
You can pay me back tomorrow
...
“Nome thank you ma’am,” he drawled softly
...
”
Walter shook his head again
...
”
I turned around and saw most of the town people and the entire bus delegation
looking at me
...

I rose graciously on Walter’s behalf: “Ah—Miss Caroline?”
“What is it, Jean Louise?”
“Miss Caroline, he’s a Cunningham
...

“What, Jean Louise?”
I thought I had made things sufficiently clear
...
He didn’t forget his lunch, he
didn’t have any
...

He had probably never seen three quarters together at the same time in his life
...
”
“I beg your pardon, Jean Louise?”
“That’s okay, ma’am, you’ll get to know all the county folks after a while
...
They never took anything off of anybody, they get along on what they have
...
”
My special knowledge of the Cunningham tribe—one branch, that is—was gained
from events of last winter
...
After a dreary
conversation in our livingroom one night about his entailment, before Mr
...
Finch, I don’t know when I’ll ever be able to pay you
...

When I asked Jem what entailment was, and Jem described it as a condition of having
your tail in a crack, I asked Atticus if Mr
...

“Not in money,” Atticus said, “but before the year’s out I’ll have been paid
...
”
We watched
...

Later, a sack of hickory nuts appeared on the back steps
...
That spring when we found a crokersack full of turnip greens, Atticus
said Mr
...

“Why does he pay you like that?” I asked
...
He has no money
...
“We are indeed
...
“Are we as poor as the Cunninghams?”
“Not exactly
...
”
Atticus said professional people were poor because the farmers were poor
...
Entailment was only a part of Mr
...

The acres not entailed were mortgaged to the hilt, and the little cash he made went to
interest
...
Cunningham could get a WPA job, but his land
would go to ruin if he left it, and he was willing to go hungry to keep his land and vote as
he pleased
...
Cunningham, said Atticus, came from a set breed of men
...
“Did you know,” said Atticus, “that Dr
...
Miss Scout, if you give
me your attention I’ll tell you what entailment is
...
”
If I could have explained these things to Miss Caroline, I would have saved myself
some inconvenience and Miss Caroline subsequent mortification, but it was beyond my
ability to explain things as well as Atticus, so I said, “You’re shamin‘ him, Miss Caroline
...
”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 12

Miss Caroline stood stock still, then grabbed me by the collar and hauled me back to
her desk
...
“You’re
starting off on the wrong foot in every way, my dear
...
”
I thought she was going to spit in it, which was the only reason anybody in Maycomb
held out his hand: it was a time-honored method of sealing oral contracts
...
Miss Caroline picked up her ruler, gave me half a dozen
quick little pats, then told me to stand in the corner
...

When Miss Caroline threatened it with a similar fate the first grade exploded again,
becoming cold sober only when the shadow of Miss Blount fell over them
...
Miss Caroline, the sixth grade cannot concentrate on the
pyramids for all this racket!”
My sojourn in the corner was a short one
...
As I was the last to leave, I saw her sink down into her chair
and bury her head in her arms
...
She was a pretty little thing
...
“You’re bigger’n he
is,” he said
...
“He made me start off on the wrong foot
...
Why?”
“He didn’t have any lunch,” I said, and explained my involvement in Walter’s dietary
affairs
...
His
fists were half cocked, as if expecting an onslaught from both of us
...
He examined Walter with
an air of speculation
...
Walter Cunningham from Old Sarum?” he asked,
and Walter nodded
...
There was no color in his face except at the tip of his
nose, which was moistly pink
...

Jem suddenly grinned at him
...

“We’d be glad to have you
...

Jem said, “Our daddy’s a friend of your daddy’s
...
”
“I wouldn’t be too certain of that,” I said
...
“Yeah Walter, I won’t jump on
you again
...
”
Walter stood where he was, biting his lip
...
“A hain’t
lives there,” he said cordially, pointing to the Radley house
...
“Almost died first year I come to school and et them
pecans—folks say he pizened ‘em and put ’em over on the school side of the fence
...
Indeed, Jem grew boastful: “I went all the way up to the house once,” he said to

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 13

Walter
...

“And who’s runnin‘, Miss Priss?”
“You are, when ain’t anybody with you
...

Jem ran to the kitchen and asked Calpurnia to set an extra plate, we had company
...

“Reason I can’t pass the first grade, Mr
...
”
“Did you pay a bushel of potatoes for him?” I asked, but Atticus shook his head at me
...
Atticus was expounding upon farm problems when
Walter interrupted to ask if there was any molasses in the house
...
She stood waiting for Walter to help
himself
...
He
would probably have poured it into his milk glass had I not asked what the sam hill he
was doing
...
Then he ducked his head
...
“But he’s gone and drowned his dinner in syrup,” I
protested
...

She was furious, and when she was furious Calpurnia’s grammar became erratic
...
Atticus said
Calpurnia had more education than most colored folks
...
“There’s
some folks who don’t eat like us,” she whispered fiercely, “but you ain’t called on to
contradict ‘em at the table when they don’t
...

I retrieved my plate and finished dinner in the kitchen, thankful, though, that I was
spared the humiliation of facing them again
...
Besides, I added, she’d already gotten me in trouble once today:
she had taught me to write and it was all her fault
...

Jem and Walter returned to school ahead of me: staying behind to advise Atticus of
Calpurnia’s iniquities was worth a solitary sprint past the Radley Place
...

“Have you ever considered that Jem doesn’t worry her half as much?” Atticus’s voice
was flinty
...
We couldn’t operate a
single day without Cal, have you ever thought of that? You think about how much Cal
does for you, and you mind her, you hear?”
I returned to school and hated Calpurnia steadily until a sudden shriek shattered my
resentments
...
Apparently she had revived enough to persevere in her
profession
...

The male population of the class rushed as one to her assistance
...
Little Chuck Little, whose patience with all living things was
phenomenal, said, “Which way did he go, Miss Caroline? Tell us where he went, quick!
D
...
-” he turned to a boy behind him—“D
...
, shut the door and we’ll catch him
...
Little Chuck’s face contracted and he said gently, “You mean
him, ma’am? Yessum, he’s alive
...
“There ain’t no need to fear a cootie, ma’am
...
”
Little Chuck Little was another member of the population who didn’t know where his
next meal was coming from, but he was a born gentleman
...
“Now don’t you fret, ma’am,” he
said
...
I’ll just fetch you some cool water
...
He searched
the scalp above his forehead, located his guest and pinched it between his thumb and
forefinger
...
Little Chuck brought water in
a paper cup, and she drank it gratefully
...
“What is your
name, son?” she asked softly
...
“Who, me?” Miss Caroline nodded
...
”
Miss Caroline inspected her roll-book
...
They call me Burris’t home
...
I want you to go home and wash your hair
...
“A good home remedy for—Burris, I want you to go home and wash your hair
with lye soap
...
”
“What fer, missus?”
“To get rid of the—er, cooties
...
He was the filthiest human I had ever seen
...
He peered at Miss Caroline from a fist-sized clean space on his face
...

“And Burris,” said Miss Caroline, “please bathe yourself before you come back
tomorrow
...
“You ain’t sendin‘ me home, missus
...
”
Miss Caroline looked puzzled
...
He gave a short contemptuous snort
...
But
Miss Caroline seemed willing to listen
...
They come first day
every year and then leave
...
She reckons she’s carried out the law just
gettin‘ their names on the roll and runnin’ ‘em here the first day
...

“Ain’t got no mother,” was the answer, “and their paw’s right contentious
...
“Been comin‘ to the first day o’ the first grade
fer three year now,” he said expansively
...
The boy’s condescension flashed to anger
...
”
Little Chuck Little got to his feet
...
“He’s a mean one, a
hard-down mean one
...
”
He was among the most diminutive of men, but when Burris Ewell turned toward him,
Little Chuck’s right hand went to his pocket
...
“I’d
soon’s kill you as look at you
...
”
Burris seemed to be afraid of a child half his height, and Miss Caroline took advantage
of his indecision: “Burris, go home
...
“I’ll have
to report this, anyway
...

Safely out of range, he turned and shouted: “Report and be damned to ye! Ain’t no
snot-nosed slut of a schoolteacher ever born c’n make me do nothin‘! You ain’t makin’
me go nowhere, missus
...

Soon we were clustered around her desk, trying in our various ways to comfort her
...
Miss
Caroline, why don’t you read us a story? That cat thing was real fine this mornin‘…
Miss Caroline smiled, blew her nose, said, “Thank you, darlings,” dispersed us,
opened a book and mystified the first grade with a long narrative about a toadfrog that
lived in a hall
...
If the remainder of the school year were
as fraught with drama as the first day, perhaps it would be mildly entertaining, but the
prospect of spending nine months refraining from reading and writing made me think of
running away
...
It was our habit to run meet Atticus the moment we saw him round the
post office corner in the distance
...
My replies were monosyllabic and he
did not press me
...
“Shut your eyes and open your mouth and I’ll give you a surprise,” she said
...
She knew I loved crackling
bread
...
“The house got so lonesome ‘long about two o’clock I
had to turn on the radio
...
”
“I know,” she said, “But one of you’s always in callin‘ distance
...
Well,” she said, getting up from the kitchen chair,
“it’s enough time to make a pan of cracklin‘ bread, I reckon
...
”
Calpurnia bent down and kissed me
...

She had wanted to make up with me, that was it
...
I was weary from the day’s crimes
...
Atticus followed me
...

Atticus sat down in the swing and crossed his legs
...
He waited in amiable
silence, and I sought to reinforce my position: “You never went to school and you do all
right, so I’ll just stay home too
...
”
“No I can’t,” said Atticus
...
Besides, they’d put me in jail if I kept
you at home—dose of magnesia for you tonight and school tomorrow
...
”
“Thought so
...
“-and she said you taught me all wrong, so
we can’t ever read any more, ever
...
”
Atticus stood up and walked to the end of the porch
...

“First of all,” he said, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better
with all kinds of folks
...
”
Atticus said I had learned many things today, and Miss Caroline had learned several
things herself
...
We could not expect her to learn all Maycomb’s ways in one day,
and we could not hold her responsible when she knew no better
...
“I didn’t know no better than not to read to her, and she held
me responsible—listen Atticus, I don’t have to go to school!” I was bursting with a
sudden thought
...
The
truant lady reckons she’s carried out the law when she gets his name on the roll-” “You
can’t do that, Scout,” Atticus said
...
In your case, the law remains rigid
...
”
“I don’t see why I have to when he doesn’t
...
”
Atticus said the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations
...
He said that some
Christmas, when he was getting rid of the tree, he would take me with him and show me
where and how they lived
...
“They can go
to school any time they want to, when they show the faintest symptom of wanting an
education,” said Atticus
...
”
“Let us leave it at this,” said Atticus dryly
...
You must obey the law
...
In certain circumstances the common folk judiciously allowed
them certain privileges by the simple method of becoming blind to some of the Ewells’
activities
...
Another thing, Mr
...

“Atticus, that’s bad,” I said
...

“It’s against the law, all right,” said my father, “and it’s certainly bad, but when a man
spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger
pains
...
”
“Mr
...
Are you going to take out
your disapproval on his children?”
“No sir,” I murmured, and made a final stand: “But if I keep on goin‘ to school, we can’t
ever read any more…”
“That’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir
...
“Do you know what a compromise is?” he asked
...
It works this way,” he said
...
Is it a bargain?”
“Yes sir!”
“We’ll consider it sealed without the usual formality,” Atticus said, when he saw me
preparing to spit
...
”
“Why not?”
“I’m afraid our activities would be received with considerable disapprobation by the
more learned authorities
...

“Huh, sir?”
“I never went to school,” he said, “but I have a feeling that if you tell Miss Caroline we
read every night she’ll get after me, and I wouldn’t want her after me
...
Jem sat from after breakfast until sunset
and would have remained overnight had not Atticus severed his supply lines
...
Atticus was right
...
Indeed, they
were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction
paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but
fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics
...
I could only look around me: Atticus and my uncle, who
went to school at home, knew everything—at least, what one didn’t know the other did
...
Jem, educated on a
half-Decimal half-Duncecap basis, seemed to function effectively alone or in a group,
but Jem was a poor example: no tutorial system devised by man could have stopped
him from getting at books
...
Out of what I knew
not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 18

state had in mind for me
...
One afternoon as I raced by, something caught
my eye and caught it in such a way that I took a deep breath, a long look around, and
went back
...
Something about one of the trees attracted my attention
...
I stood on tiptoe, hastily looked around once more, reached into the hole,
and withdrew two pieces of chewing gum minus their outer wrappers
...
I ran home, and on our front porch I examined my loot
...
I sniffed it and it smelled all right
...
When I did not
die I crammed it into my mouth: Wrigley’s Double-Mint
...
I told him I found it
...
”
“This wasn’t on the ground, it was in a tree
...

“Well it was,” I said
...
”
“Spit it out right now!”
I spat it out
...
“I’ve been chewin‘ it all afternoon and I ain’t
dead yet, not even sick
...
“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to even touch the trees
over there? You’ll get killed if you do!”
“You touched the house once!”
“That was different! You go gargle—right now, you hear me?”
“Ain’t neither, it’ll take the taste outa my mouth
...
For some reason, my
first year of school had wrought a great change in our relationship: Calpurnia’s tyranny,
unfairness, and meddling in my business had faded to gentle grumblings of general
disapproval
...

Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience
...

The authorities released us early the last day of school, and Jem and I walked home
together
...

“Probably day after,” said Jem
...
”
As we came to the live oaks at the Radley Place I raised my finger to point for the
hundredth time to the knot-hole where I had found the chewing gum, trying to make Jem
believe I had found it there, and found myself pointing at another piece of tinfoil
...
We ran
home, and on the front porch we looked at a small box patchworked with bits of tinfoil
collected from chewing-gum wrappers
...
Jem flicked open the tiny catch
...
Jem examined them
...
“Nineteen-six and Scout, one of em’s nineteen-hundred
...
”
“Nineteen-hundred,” I echoed
...
”
“Jem, you reckon that’s somebody’s hidin‘ place?”
“Naw, don’t anybody much but us pass by there, unless it’s some grown person’s-”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 19

“Grown folks don’t have hidin‘ places
...
Who’d we give ‘em back to? I know for a fact
don’t anybody go by there—Cecil goes by the back street an’ all the way around by town
to get home
...
Henry
Lafayette Dubose
...
Dubose lived two doors up the street from us; neighborhood
opinion was unanimous that Mrs
...

Jem wouldn’t go by her place without Atticus beside him
...
Plucking an occasional camellia, getting
a squirt of hot milk from Miss Maudie Atkinson’s cow on a summer day, helping
ourselves to someone’s scuppernongs was part of our ethical culture, but money was
different
...
“We’ll keep ‘em till school starts, then go around and ask
everybody if they’re theirs
...
These are somebody’s, I know that
...
”
“Yeah, but why should somebody wanta put away chewing gum like that? You know it
doesn’t last
...
But these are important to somebody…”
“How’s that, Jem…?”
“Well, Indian-heads—well, they come from the Indians
...
Not like fried chicken when you’re not lookin‘ for it, but things
like long life ’n‘ good health, ’n‘ passin’ six-weeks tests… these are real valuable to
somebody
...
”
Before Jem went to his room, he looked for a long time at the Radley Place
...

Two days later Dill arrived in a blaze of glory: he had ridden the train by himself from
Meridian to Maycomb Junction (a courtesy title—Maycomb Junction was in Abbott
County) where he had been met by Miss Rachel in Maycomb’s one taxi; he had eaten
dinner in the diner, he had seen two twins hitched together get off the train in Bay St
...
He had discarded the abominable
blue shorts that were buttoned to his shirts and wore real short pants with a belt; he was
somewhat heavier, no taller, and said he had seen his father
...

“I helped the engineer for a while,” said Dill, yawning
...
Hush,” said Jem
...
“Let’s go in the front yard
...
He was clearly tired of being our
character man
...
I was tired of playing Tom Rover, who suddenly lost his
memory in the middle of a picture show and was out of the script until the end, when he
was found in Alaska
...

“I’m tired of makin‘ ’em up
...
I wondered what the summer would
bring
...
“I—smell—death,” he said
...

“You mean when somebody’s dyin‘ you can smell it?”
“No, I mean I can smell somebody an‘ tell if they’re gonna die
...
” Dill leaned over and sniffed me
...
”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 20

“Dill if you don’t hush I’ll knock you bowlegged
...
”
“You act like you don’t,” I said
...

“Haven’t you ever walked along a lonesome road at night and passed by a hot place?”
Jem asked Dill
...
“Sometimes they stretch all the way across the road, but if you
hafta go through one you say, ‘Angel-bright, life-in-death; get off the road, don’t suck my
breath
...
“Calpurnia says that’s nigger-talk
...

Jem sighed
...
”
“You c’n push
...
I slapped it up
to the front yard
...

Dill said he ought to be first, he just got here
...

Until it happened I did not realize that Jem was offended by my contradicting him on
Hot Steams, and that he was patiently awaiting an opportunity to reward me
...
Ground, sky and
houses melted into a mad palette, my ears throbbed, I was suffocating
...
I could only
hope that Jem would outrun the tire and me, or that I would be stopped by a bump in the
sidewalk
...

The tire bumped on gravel, skeetered across the road, crashed into a barrier and
popped me like a cork onto pavement
...
I froze
...
“Get up, can’tcha?”
I got to my feet, trembling as I thawed
...
“Bring it with you! Ain’t you got any sense at all?”
When I was able to navigate, I ran back to them as fast as my shaking knees would
carry me
...

“Why don’t you get it?” I screamed
...

“Go on, it ain’t far inside the gate
...

“See there?” Jem was scowling triumphantly
...
I swear, Scout, sometimes
you act so much like a girl it’s mortifyin’
...

Calpurnia appeared in the front door and yelled, “Lemonade time! You all get in outa
that hot sun ‘fore you fry alive!” Lemonade in the middle of the morning was a
summertime ritual
...
Being out of Jem’s good graces did not worry me especially
...

Jem gulped down his second glassful and slapped his chest
...
“Something new, something different
...

“Boo Radley
...

“Boo Radley? How?” asked Dill
...
Radley-”
“I declare if I will
...
“Still scared?”
“He can get out at night when we’re all asleep…” I said
...
“Scout, how’s he gonna know what we’re doin‘? Besides, I don’t think
he’s still there
...
”
Dill said, “Jem, you and me can play and Scout can watch if she’s scared
...

Jem parceled out our roles: I was Mrs
...
Dill was old Mr
...
Jem, naturally, was Boo: he went under the front
steps and shrieked and howled from time to time
...
We polished and perfected it, added
dialogue and plot until we had manufactured a small play upon which we rang changes
every day
...
He was as good as his worst
performance; his worst performance was Gothic
...
I never thought it as much fun as Tarzan, and I played that
summer with more than vague anxiety despite Jem’s assurances that Boo Radley was
dead and nothing would get me, with him and Calpurnia there in the daytime and Atticus
home at night
...

It was a melancholy little drama, woven from bits and scraps of gossip and
neighborhood legend: Mrs
...
Radley and
lost all her money
...
Boo bit it off one night when he couldn’t find any cats and squirrels to
eat
...

The three of us were the boys who got into trouble; I was the probate judge, for a
change; Dill led Jem away and crammed him beneath the steps, poking him with the
brushbroom
...

When it was time to play Boo’s big scene, Jem would sneak into the house, steal the
scissors from the sewing-machine drawer when Calpurnia’s back was turned, then sit in
the swing and cut up newspapers
...
From where I stood it looked real
...
Nathan Radley passed us on his daily trip to town, we would stand still and
silent until he was out of sight, then wonder what he would do to us if he suspected
...

One day we were so busily playing Chapter XXV, Book II of One Man’s Family, we did
not see Atticus standing on the sidewalk looking at us, slapping a rolled magazine
against his knee
...

“What are you all playing?” he asked
...

Jem’s evasion told me our game was a secret, so I kept quiet
...
”
“Nothing
...

“Nothing, sir
...
“They’re no things to play with
...

“I hope it doesn’t,” he said shortly, and went inside the house
...
”
Safely in the yard, Dill asked Jem if we could play any more
...
Atticus didn’t say we couldn’t-”
“Jem,” I said, “I think Atticus knows it anyway
...
If he did he’d say he did
...

“All right, you just keep it up then,” I said
...
”
Atticus’s arrival was the second reason I wanted to quit the game
...
Through all the head-shaking,
quelling of nausea and Jem-yelling, I had heard another sound, so low I could not have
heard it from the sidewalk
...

Chapter 5
My nagging got the better of Jem eventually, as I knew it would, and to my relief we
slowed down the game for a while
...

Dill was in hearty agreement with this plan of action
...
He had asked me earlier in the summer to marry him,
then he promptly forgot about it
...
I beat him up twice but it did no
good, he only grew closer to Jem
...
But I kept aloof from their
more foolhardy schemes for a while, and on pain of being called a girl, I spent most of
the remaining twilights that summer sitting with Miss Maudie Atkinson on her front
porch
...
Until Jem and Dill excluded
me from their plans, she was only another lady in the neighborhood, but a relatively
benign presence
...

Miss Maudie hated her house: time spent indoors was time wasted
...

She loved everything that grew in God’s earth, even the weeds
...
If

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 23

she found a blade of nut grass in her yard it was like the Second Battle of the Marne:
she swooped down upon it with a tin tub and subjected it to blasts from beneath with a
poisonous substance she said was so powerful it’d kill us all if we didn’t stand out of the
way
...

“Pull it up, child, pull it up?” She picked up the limp sprout and squeezed her thumb up
its tiny stalk
...
“Why, one sprig of nut grass can ruin a
whole yard
...
When it comes fall this dries up and the wind blows it all over
Maycomb County!” Miss Maudie’s face likened such an occurrence unto an Old
Testament pestilence
...
She called us by all our
names, and when she grinned she revealed two minute gold prongs clipped to her
eyeteeth
...
” With a click of her tongue she thrust out her bridgework, a gesture of
cordiality that cemented our friendship
...
She made the best cakes in the neighborhood
...

In summertime, twilights are long and peaceful
...

“Miss Maudie,” I said one evening, “do you think Boo Radley’s still alive?”
“His name’s Arthur and he’s alive,” she said
...
“Do you smell my mimosa? It’s like angels’ breath this evening
...
How do you know?”
“Know what, child?”
“That B—Mr
...
But I suppose it’s a morbid subject
...
”
“Maybe he died and they stuffed him up the chimney
...
”
“S-ss-ss
...
”
Miss Maudie had known Uncle Jack Finch, Atticus’s brother, since they were children
...
Miss Maudie was
the daughter of a neighboring landowner, Dr
...
Dr
...

Uncle Jack Finch confined his passion for digging to his window boxes in Nashville and
stayed rich
...
Miss Maudie would yell back, “Call a little
louder, Jack Finch, and they’ll hear you at the post office, I haven’t heard you yet!” Jem
and I thought this a strange way to ask for a lady’s hand in marriage, but then Uncle
Jack was rather strange
...

“Arthur Radley just stays in the house, that’s all,” said Miss Maudie
...
Why doesn’t he?”
Miss Maudie’s eyes narrowed
...
”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 24

“I never heard why, though
...
”
Miss Maudie settled her bridgework
...
Radley was a foot-washing
Baptist-”
“That’s what you are, ain’t it?”
“My shell’s not that hard, child
...
”
“Don’t you all believe in foot-washing?”
“We do
...
”
“But we can’t have communion with you all-”
Apparently deciding that it was easier to define primitive baptistry than closed
communion, Miss Maudie said: “Foot-washers believe anything that’s pleasure is a sin
...
They’d burn right with me
...
”
My confidence in pulpit Gospel lessened at the vision of Miss Maudie stewing forever
in various Protestant hells
...
But
while no one with a grain of sense trusted Miss Stephanie, Jem and I had considerable
faith in Miss Maudie
...
She was our friend
...

“That ain’t right, Miss Maudie
...
”
Miss Maudie grinned
...
Thing is, foot-washers think women are a
sin by definition
...
”
“Is that why Mr
...
”
“It doesn’t make sense to me
...
Arthur was hankerin‘ after heaven he’d
come out on the porch at least
...
“You are too young to
understand it,” she said, “but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than
a whiskey bottle in the hand of—oh, of your father
...
“Atticus doesn’t drink whiskey,” I said
...
He said he drank some one time and didn’t like it
...
“Wasn’t talking about your father,” she said
...
There are just some kind of men who—who’re so busy worrying about the
next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street
and see the results
...
Arthur?”
“What things?”
I told her
...
“Stephanie Crawford even told me once she woke up in the middle of the
night and found him looking in the window at her
...
”
I was sure it did
...

“No, child,” she said, “that is a sad house
...
He always spoke nicely to me, no matter what folks said he did
...
”
“You reckon he’s crazy?”
Miss Maudie shook her head
...
The things that happen
to people we never really know
...

“Gracious child, I was raveling a thread, wasn’t even thinking about your father, but
now that I am I’ll say this: Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public
streets
...

Next morning when I awakened I found Jem and Dill in the back yard deep in
conversation
...

“Will not
...
I got just as much right to
play in it as you have
...

“We-ll,” I said, “who’s so high and mighty all of a sudden?”
“If you don’t say you’ll do what we tell you, we ain’t gonna tell you anything,” Dill
continued
...
”
“Just how?” I was trying to fight down the automatic terror rising in me
...
It was different for us
...
If anyone came along, Dill would ring the bell
...
In it was my mother’s silver dinner-bell
...
“We looked yesterday from
across the street, and there’s a shutter loose
...
”
“Jem-”
“Now you’re in it and you can’t get out of it, you’ll just stay in it, Miss Priss!”
“Okay, okay, but I don’t wanta watch
...
That clear?”
“All right then
...
”
“You all’ve gone crazy, he’ll kill us!”
Dill said, “It’s my idea
...
”
“How do you know he don’t feel good?”
“Well how’d you feel if you’d been shut up for a hundred years with nothin‘ but cats to
eat? I bet he’s got a beard down to here-” “Like your daddy’s?”
“He ain’t got a beard, he-” Dill stopped, as if trying to remember
...
“You said ‘fore you were off the train good your daddy
had a black beard-”
“If it’s all the same to you he shaved it off last summer! Yeah, an‘ I’ve got the letter to
prove it—he sent me two dollars, too!”
“Keep on—I reckon he even sent you a mounted police uniform! That’n never showed
up, did it? You just keep on tellin‘ ’em, son-”
Dill Harris could tell the biggest ones I ever heard
...

“You all hush,” said Jem
...
“Reckon this is long enough to reach from the sidewalk?”
“Anybody who’s brave enough to go up and touch the house hadn’t oughta use a
fishin‘ pole,” I said
...
The three of us walked
cautiously toward the old house
...
I walked
beyond Jem and stood where I could see around the curve
...
“Not a soul in sight
...

Jem attached the note to the end of the fishing pole, let the pole out across the yard
and pushed it toward the window he had selected
...
I watched him making
jabbing motions for so long, I abandoned my post and went to him
...
G’on back
down the street, Scout
...
Occasionally I looked back
at Jem, who was patiently trying to place the note on the window sill
...
I was looking down the street when the dinner-bell rang
...

Jem looked so awful I didn’t have the heart to tell him I told him so
...

Atticus said, “Stop ringing that bell
...
Atticus pushed his hat to the back of his head and put his hands on his hips
...
”
“I don’t want any of that
...
”
“I was—we were just tryin‘ to give somethin’ to Mr
...
”
“What were you trying to give him?”
“Just a letter
...
”
Jem held out a filthy piece of paper
...
“Why do you
want Mr
...

“Son,” he said to Jem, “I’m going to tell you something and tell you one time: stop
tormenting that man
...
”
What Mr
...
If he wanted to come out, he would
...
How would
we like it if Atticus barged in on us without knocking, when we were in our rooms at
night? We were, in effect, doing the same thing to Mr
...
What Mr
...
Furthermore, had it never
occurred to us that the civil way to communicate with another being was by the front
door instead of a side window? Lastly, we were to stay away from that house until we
were invited there, we were not to play an asinine game he had seen us playing or
make fun of anybody on this street or in this town“We weren’t makin‘ fun of him, we weren’t laughin’ at him,” said Jem, “we were just-”
“So that was what you were doing, wasn’t it?”
“Makin‘ fun of him?”
“No,” said Atticus, “putting his life’s history on display for the edification of the
neighborhood
...
“I didn’t say we were doin‘ that, I didn’t say it!”
Atticus grinned dryly
...
“You stop this nonsense right now,
every one of you
...

“You want to be a lawyer, don’t you?” Our father’s mouth was suspiciously firm, as if

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 27

he were trying to hold it in line
...
When Atticus went inside
the house to retrieve a file he had forgotten to take to work that morning, Jem finally
realized that he had been done in by the oldest lawyer’s trick on record
...
When Atticus was out of earshot Jem yelled after him: “I thought I wanted
to be a lawyer but I ain’t so sure now!”
Chapter 6
“Yes,” said our father, when Jem asked him if we could go over and sit by Miss
Rachel’s fishpool with Dill, as this was his last night in Maycomb
...
”
We leaped over the low wall that separated Miss Rachel’s yard from our driveway
...

“Not a breath blowing,” said Jem
...
”
He pointed to the east
...

“That makes it seem hotter,” he said
...
He was constructing a cigarette from
newspaper and string
...
Don’t light that thing, Dill, you’ll stink up this whole end of town
...
She sat at a dresser combing her hair
...
“Reckon we better watch for Mr
...
Avery boarded across the street from Mrs
...

Besides making change in the collection plate every Sunday, Mr
...
One evening we were privileged to witness a
performance by him which seemed to have been his positively last, for he never did it
again so long as we watched
...
” He pointed across the street
...
Jem said Mr
...

Dill stretched, yawned, and said altogether too casually
...
”
He sounded fishy to me
...
“Where to, Dill?”
Dill jerked his head in a southerly direction
...
” When I protested, he said sweetly, “You don’t have to come along,
Angel May
...
Remember-”
Jem was not one to dwell on past defeats: it seemed the only message he got from
Atticus was insight into the art of cross examination
...
”
We strolled silently down the sidewalk, listening to porch swings creaking with the
weight of the neighborhood, listening to the soft night-murmurs of the grown people on
our street
...

“Well?” said Dill
...
“Why don’t you go on home, Scout?”
“What are you gonna do?”
Dill and Jem were simply going to peep in the window with the loose shutter to see if
they could get a look at Boo Radley, and if I didn’t want to go with them I could go
straight home and keep my fat flopping mouth shut, that was all
...
We thought it was better to go under the
high wire fence at the rear of the Radley lot, we stood less chance of being seen
...

Jem held up the bottom wire and motioned Dill under it
...
It was a tight squeeze for him
...
“Don’t
get in a row of collards whatever you do, they’ll wake the dead
...
I moved faster when I
saw Jem far ahead beckoning in the moonlight
...
Jem touched it
...

“Spit on it,” whispered Dill
...
“We can’t get out of here so easy
...
Spit on it, Scout
...
We were in the back yard
...

Instead of a column, a rough two-by-four supported one end of the roof
...

“Ar-r,” said Jem softly, lifting his foot
...

That we would be obliged to dodge the unseen from all directions was confirmed when
Dill ahead of us spelled G-o-d in a whisper
...
The sill was several inches taller than Jem
...
“Wait, though
...
We raised him and he caught the window sill
...
”
Dill punched my shoulder, and we lowered him to the ground
...
Curtains
...
”
“Let’s get away from here,” breathed Jem
...
Sh-h,” he
warned me, as I was about to protest
...
”
“Dill, no,” I said
...
When Jem put his foot on the bottom step, the
step squeaked
...
The step was silent
...
He regained his balance and dropped to his knees
...

Then I saw the shadow
...
At first I thought it
was a tree, but there was no wind blowing, and tree-trunks never walked
...

Dill saw it next
...

When it crossed Jem, Jem saw it
...

The shadow stopped about a foot beyond Jem
...
Then it turned and moved back across Jem, walked along the
porch and off the side of the house, returning as it had come
...
He flung open the gate, danced Dill
and me through, and shooed us between two rows of swishing collards
...

Dill and Jem dived beside me
...
We ran back
and found him struggling in the fence, kicking his pants off to get loose
...

Safely behind it, we gave way to numbness, but Jem’s mind was racing: “We gotta get
home, they’ll miss us
...

Respiration normal, the three of us strolled as casually as we could to the front yard
...

“We better go down there,” said Jem
...
”
Mr
...

Atticus was standing beside Miss Maudie and Miss Stephanie Crawford
...
Avery were near by
...

We eased in beside Miss Maudie, who looked around
...

“Mr
...
”
“Oh
...
“Shot in the air
...
Says if anybody
sees a white nigger around, that’s the one
...

Atticus spoke
...
”
It was no use
...
I sighed
...
Finch?”
In the glare from the streetlight, I could see Dill hatching one: his eyes widened, his fat
cherub face grew rounder
...

“Ah—I won ‘em from him,” he said vaguely
...
He brought it forward and across his forehead
...

Jem and I relaxed
...
But what was
strip poker?
We had no chance to find out: Miss Rachel went off like the town fire siren: “Do-o-o
Jee-sus, Dill Harris! Gamblin‘ by my fishpool? I’ll strip-poker you, sir!”
Atticus saved Dill from immediate dismemberment
...
“I’ve never heard of ‘em doing that before
...
”
I admired my brother
...

“Jem, Scout,” said Atticus, “I don’t want to hear of poker in any form again
...
Settle it yourselves
...

He’ll talk her out of it
...
Listen… you hear?”
We stopped, and heard Atticus’s voice:“…not serious… they all go through it, Miss
Rachel…”
Dill was comforted, but Jem and I weren’t
...

“‘d give you some of mine,” said Dill, as we came to Miss Rachel’s steps
...
We said good-bye, and Dill went inside the
house
...
“Yawl write, hear?” he bawled after us
...
Every
night-sound I heard from my cot on the back porch was magnified three-fold; every
scratch of feet on gravel was Boo Radley seeking revenge, every passing Negro
laughing in the night was Boo Radley loose and after us; insects splashing against the
screen were Boo Radley’s insane fingers picking the wire to pieces; the chinaberry trees
were malignant, hovering, alive
...

“Sleep, Little Three-Eyes?”
“Are you crazy?”
“Sh-h
...
”
In the waning moonlight I saw Jem swing his feet to the floor
...

I sat upright
...
I won’t let you
...
“I’ve got to
...
”
“You do and I’ll kill you
...
I tried to reason with him
...
Nathan’s
gonna find ‘em in the morning, Jem
...
When he shows ‘em to
Atticus it’ll be pretty bad, that’s all there is to it
...
”
“That’s what I know,” said Jem
...
”
I began to feel sick
...
Nathan had the other barrel waiting for the next sound he heard, be it
nigger, dog… Jem knew that better than I
...
A lickin‘ hurts but it doesn’t last
...
Please…”
He blew out his breath patiently
...
“Atticus ain’t
ever whipped me since I can remember
...
”
This was a thought
...
“You mean
he’s never caught you at anything
...
We shouldn’a done that tonight,
Scout
...
Sometimes I did
not understand him, but my periods of bewilderment were short-lived
...
“Please,” I pleaded, “can’tcha just think about it for a minute—by yourself on that
place—”
“Shut up!”
“It’s not like he’d never speak to you again or somethin‘… I’m gonna wake him up,
Jem, I swear I am—”
Jem grabbed my pajama collar and wrenched it tight
...

“No you ain’t, you’ll just make noise
...
I unlatched the back door and held it while he crept down the steps
...
The moon was setting and the lattice-work shadows were
fading into fuzzy nothingness
...
A faint breeze stirred and cooled
the sweat running down my sides
...
It would take longer, so
it was not time to worry yet
...

Radley’s shotgun
...
It was wishful thinking
...
I held my breath
...
He said he often woke up during
the night, checked on us, and read himself back to sleep
...
It stayed off, and I breathed again
...

There he was, returning to me
...
He came up the back steps, latched the door behind him, and sat on his
cot
...
He lay down, and for a while I heard his cot
trembling
...
I did not hear him stir again
...
As Atticus had once advised me to do, I tried
to climb into Jem’s skin and walk around in it: if I had gone alone to the Radley Place at
two in the morning, my funeral would have been held the next afternoon
...

School started
...
Miss Caroline’s progress next
door could be estimated by the frequency of laughter; however, the usual crew had
flunked the first grade again, and were helpful in keeping order
...

One afternoon when we were crossing the schoolyard toward home, Jem suddenly
said: “There’s something I didn’t tell you
...
”
“You’ve never told me anything about that night,” I said
...
He was silent for a while, then he said,
“When I went back for my breeches—they were all in a tangle when I was gettin‘ out of
’em, I couldn’t get ‘em loose
...
“When I
went back, they were folded across the fence… like they were expectin’ me
...
“Show you when we get home
...
Not like a lady sewed ‘em, like somethin’ I’d try to do
...
It’s
almost like—”
“—somebody knew you were comin‘ back for ’em
...
“Like somebody was readin‘ my mind… like somebody could tell what
I was gonna do
...
I reassured him: “Can’t anybody tell what you’re gonna
do lest they live in the house with you, and even I can’t tell sometimes
...
In its knot-hole rested a ball of gray twine
...
“This is somebody’s hidin‘ place
...
”
“Yes it is
...
Listen, let’s leave it
and wait a couple of days
...
“It must be some little kid’s place—hides his
things from the bigger folks
...
”
“Yeah,” I said, “but we never go by here in the summertime
...
Next morning the twine was where we had left it
...
From then on, we considered everything we
found in the knot-hole our property
...
The sixth grade seemed to please him from
the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me—he tried to walk
flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot
behind the other
...

There are no clearly defined seasons in South Alabama; summer drifts into autumn,
and autumn is sometimes never followed by winter, but turns to a days-old spring that
melts into summer again
...

Jem and I were trotting in our orbit one mild October afternoon when our knot-hole
stopped us again
...

Jem let me do the honors: I pulled out two small images carved in soap
...
Before I remembered that there was no
such thing as hoo-dooing, I shrieked and threw them down
...
“What’s the matter with you?” he yelled
...
“These are good,” he said
...
”
He held them down to me
...
The
boy had on shorts, and a shock of soapy hair fell to his eyebrows
...
A
point of straight brown hair kicked downwards from his part
...
Jem looked from the girl-doll to me
...
So did I
...

“Who did ‘em, you reckon?”
“Who do we know around here who whittles?” he asked
...
Avery
...
Avery just does like this
...
”
Mr
...

“There’s old Miss Stephanie Crawford’s sweetheart,” I said
...
When would he ever pay any
attention to us?”
“Maybe he sits on the porch and looks at us instead of Miss Stephanie
...
”
Jem stared at me so long I asked what was the matter, but got Nothing, Scout for an
answer
...

Less than two weeks later we found a whole package of chewing gum, which we
enjoyed, the fact that everything on the Radley Place was poison having slipped Jem’s
memory
...
Jem showed it to Atticus,
who said it was a spelling medal, that before we were born the Maycomb County
schools had spelling contests and awarded medals to the winners
...
Jem asked Atticus if he remembered anybody who
ever won one, and Atticus said no
...
It was a pocket watch that wouldn’t run, on
a chain with an aluminum knife
...
I’ll show it to Atticus
...

“Did you swap with somebody at school?” he asked
...
On the days he carried the watch, Jem walked on eggs
...
Maybe I can fix it
...

He did a fair job, only one spring and two tiny pieces left over, but the watch would not
run
...
Scout—?”
“Huh?”
“You reckon we oughta write a letter to whoever’s leaving us these things?”
“That’d be right nice, Jem, we can thank ‘em—what’s wrong?”
Jem was holding his ears, shaking his head from side to side
...
“I’ve gotta good
mind to tell Atticus—no, I reckon not
...
”
“No, don’t do that, Scout
...
He changed it again
...
”
“Here, let’s write a letter
...

“Okay
...
”
“Ar-r, Miss Maudie can’t chew gum—” Jem broke into a grin
...
One time I asked her to have a chew and she said no thanks,
that—chewing gum cleaved to her palate and rendered her speechless,” said Jem
carefully
...
She wouldn’t have a watch and chain
anyway
...
“We appreciate the—no, we appreciate everything which you
have put into the tree for us
...
”
“He won’t know who you are if you sign it like that, Jem
...
” I signed, “Jean Louise Finch (Scout),”
beneath it
...

Next morning on the way to school he ran ahead of me and stopped at the tree
...

“Scout!”
I ran to him
...

“Don’t you cry, now, Scout… don’t cry now, don’t you worry-” he muttered at me all the
way to school
...
I followed him
...

Next day Jem repeated his vigil and was rewarded
...
Nathan,” he said
...
Radley, as he went by
...
Radley,” said Jem
...
Radley turned around
...
Radley, ah—did you put cement in that hole in that tree down yonder?”
“Yes,” he said
...
”
“Why’d you do it, sir?”
“Tree’s dying
...
You ought to know that,
Jem
...
When we passed our tree he gave
it a meditative pat on its cement, and remained deep in thought
...

As usual, we met Atticus coming home from work that evening
...
”
“What tree, son?”
“The one on the corner of the Radley lot comin‘ from school
...
Look at the leaves, they’re all green and full, no brown
patches anywhere—”
“It ain’t even sick?”
“That tree’s as healthy as you are, Jem
...
Nathan Radley said it was dyin‘
...
I’m sure Mr
...
”
Atticus left us on the porch
...

“Do you itch, Jem?” I asked as politely as I could
...
“Come on in,
Jem,” I said
...
”
He stood there until nightfall, and I waited for him
...

Chapter 8
For reasons unfathomable to the most experienced prophets in Maycomb County,
autumn turned to winter that year
...
Mr
...

Old Mrs
...
Jem and I
decided that Boo had got her at last, but when Atticus returned from the Radley house
he said she died of natural causes, to our disappointment
...

“You ask him, you’re the oldest
...
”
“Atticus,” I said, “did you see Mr
...
”
Jem restrained me from further questions
...
Jem had a notion that Atticus
thought our activities that night last summer were not solely confined to strip poker
...

Next morning I awoke, looked out the window and nearly died of fright
...

“The world’s endin‘, Atticus! Please do something—!” I dragged him to the window and
pointed
...
“It’s snowing
...
Jem had never seen snow either, but he knew

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 35

what it was
...
“I think,
though, if it’s watery like that, it’ll turn to rain
...
“That was Eula
May,” he said when he returned
...
’”
Eula May was Maycomb’s leading telephone operator
...
Reynolds was away
...
“I don’t want you all to be disappointed, but I
doubt if there’ll be enough snow for a snowball, even
...
When we ran to the back yard,
it was covered with a feeble layer of soggy snow
...
“Look, every step you take’s wasting it
...
Jem said if we waited until it snowed some more
we could scrape it all up for a snowman
...
It
burned
...
Now don’t eat it, Scout, you’re wasting it
...
”
“But I want to walk in it
...
”
Jem hopped across the front yard
...
When we were on the
sidewalk in front of Miss Maudie’s, Mr
...
He had a pink face and a big
stomach below his belt
...
“Hasn’t snowed in Maycomb since Appomattox
...
”
I wondered if Mr
...
I did not wonder where Mr
...

“Jem Finch, you Jem Finch!”
“Miss Maudie’s callin‘ you, Jem
...
There’s some thrift buried under the snow near
the porch
...
“It’s beautiful, ain’t it, Miss Maudie?”
“Beautiful my hind foot! If it freezes tonight it’ll carry off all my azaleas!”
Miss Maudie’s old sunhat glistened with snow crystals
...
Jem asked her what she was doing that
for
...

“How can flowers keep warm? They don’t circulate
...
All I know is if it freezes tonight these
plants’ll freeze, so you cover ‘em up
...
Miss Maudie?”
“What, sir?”
“Could Scout and me borrow some of your snow?”
“Heavens alive, take it all! There’s an old peach basket under the house, haul it off in
that
...
“Jem Finch, what are you going to do with my
snow?”
“You’ll see,” said Jem, and we transferred as much snow as we could from Miss
Maudie’s yard to ours, a slushy operation
...

“You’ll see,” he said
...
Walk back in your tracks, though,” he cautioned
...
Gotta work hard, now
...
He went in the house, returned
with the laundry hamper, filled it with earth and carried it to the front yard
...

“Don’t you think this is kind of a mess?” I asked
...

Jem scooped up an armful of dirt, patted it into a mound on which he added another
load, and another until he had constructed a torso
...

“He won’t be black long,” he grunted
...

“He looks like Stephanie Crawford with her hands on her hips,” I said
...
”
“I’ll make ‘em bigger
...
He
looked thoughtfully at it for a moment, then he molded a big stomach below the figure’s
waistline
...
Avery’s sort of shaped like a
snowman, ain’t he?”
Jem scooped up some snow and began plastering it on
...
Gradually Mr
...

Using bits of wood for eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons, Jem succeeded in making Mr
...
A stick of stovewood completed the picture
...

“It’s lovely, Jem,” I said
...
”
“It is, ain’t it?” he said shyly
...
He seemed surprised when he saw most of the back yard in the
front yard, but he said we had done a jim-dandy job
...
”
Jem’s ears reddened from Atticus’s compliment, but he looked up sharply when he
saw Atticus stepping back
...
He grinned, then
laughed
...
You’ve perpetrated a near libel here in the front yard
...
”
Atticus suggested that Jem hone down his creation’s front a little, swap a broom for
the stovewood, and put an apron on him
...

“I don’t care what you do, so long as you do something,” said Atticus
...
”
“Ain’t a characterture,” said Jem
...
”
“Mr
...
”
“I know what!” said Jem
...
He stuck her sunhat on the snowman’s head and
jammed her hedge-clippers into the crook of his arm
...

Miss Maudie opened her front door and came out on the porch
...
Suddenly she grinned
...
“You devil, bring me back
my hat, sir!”
Jem looked up at Atticus, who shook his head
...
“She’s
really impressed with your—accomplishments
...

Avery’s direst predictions came true: Calpurnia kept every fireplace in the house blazing,
but we were cold
...
Calpurnia glanced up at the
high ceilings and long windows and said she thought she’d be warmer at her house
...

Before I went to sleep Atticus put more coal on the fire in my room
...

Minutes later, it seemed, I was awakened by someone shaking me
...
“Is it morning already?”
“Baby, get up
...
“Put your robe on first,” he said
...
He was holding his overcoat
closed at the neck, his other hand was jammed into his pocket
...

“Hurry, hon,” said Atticus
...
”
Stupidly, I put them on
...
Hurry now
...
“What’s the matter?”
By then he did not have to tell me
...
Soft taffeta-like sounds and muffled scurrying
sounds filled me with helpless dread
...

At the front door, we saw fire spewing from Miss Maudie’s diningroom windows
...

“It’s gone, ain’t it?” moaned Jem
...
“Now listen, both of you
...
Keep out of the way, do you hear? See which way the wind’s blowing?”
“Oh,” said Jem
...
Do as I tell you
...
Take care of Scout, you hear? Don’t let her
out of your sight
...
We stood watching the
street fill with men and cars while fire silently devoured Miss Maudie’s house
...

We saw why
...
When the men attached its hose to a hydrant, the hose burst and water
shot up, tinkling down on the pavement
...
“Hush, Scout,” he said
...
I’ll let
you know when
...
I saw Atticus carrying Miss Maudie’s heavy
oak rocking chair, and thought it sensible of him to save what she valued most
...
Then Mr
...

He pushed a mattress out the window into the street and threw down furniture until men
shouted, “Come down from there, Dick! The stairs are going! Get outta there, Mr
...
Avery began climbing through the window
...
“Oh God…”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 38

Mr
...
I buried my head under Jem’s arm and didn’t look again
until Jem cried, “He’s got loose, Scout! He’s all right!”
I looked up to see Mr
...
He swung his legs over the
railing and was sliding down a pillar when he slipped
...

Suddenly I noticed that the men were backing away from Miss Maudie’s house,
moving down the street toward us
...
The fire was
well into the second floor and had eaten its way to the roof: window frames were black
against a vivid orange center
...
Behind us, the fire truck from Abbottsville
screamed around the curve and stopped in front of our house
...

“What?” said Jem
...
He pointed
...
”
In a group of neighbors, Atticus was standing with his hands in his overcoat pockets
...
Miss Maudie was beside him
...

“Why ain’t he on top of one of the houses?”
“He’s too old, he’d break his neck
...

The Abbottsville fire truck began pumping water on our house; a man on the roof
pointed to places that needed it most
...
I could not see her hedgeclippers
...
They worked in pajama tops and nightshirts stuffed
into their pants, but I became aware that I was slowly freezing where I stood
...
I pulled free of it and clutched my
shoulders
...

Another fire truck appeared and stopped in front of Miss Stephanie Crawford’s
...

Miss Maudie’s tin roof quelled the flames
...

It was dawn before the men began to leave, first one by one, then in groups
...
We found out next day it had come from Clark’s Ferry, sixty miles away
...
Miss Maudie was staring at the smoking black hole in
her yard, and Atticus shook his head to tell us she did not want to talk
...
He said Miss Maudie would stay with
Miss Stephanie for the time being
...
I shuddered when Atticus started a
fire in the kitchen stove
...
“I thought I told you and Jem to stay put,” he said
...
We stayed—”
“Then whose blanket is that?”
“Blanket?”
“Yes ma’am, blanket
...
”
I looked down and found myself clutching a brown woolen blanket I was wearing

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 39

around my shoulders, squaw-fashion
...
He said he
didn’t know how it got there, we did exactly as Atticus had told us, we stood down by the
Radley gate away from everybody, we didn’t move an inch—Jem stopped
...
Nathan was at the fire,” he babbled, “I saw him, I saw him, he was tuggin‘ that
mattress—Atticus, I swear…”
“That’s all right, son
...
“Looks like all of Maycomb was out
tonight, in one way or another
...

Go get it and we’ll—”
“Atticus, no sir!”
Jem seemed to have lost his mind
...

“…Mr
...
It was obvious that
he had not followed a word Jem said, for all Atticus said was, “You’re right
...
Someday, maybe, Scout can thank him for
covering her up
...

“Boo Radley
...
”
My stomach turned to water and I nearly threw up when Jem held out the blanket and
crept toward me
...
”
Jem scowled, “I ain’t gonna do anything to him,” but I watched the spark of fresh
adventure leave his eyes
...
”
Calpurnia woke us at noon
...
Calpurnia said for us to try and clean up the front yard
...
We found her in her back yard, gazing
at her frozen charred azaleas
...
“We’re awful sorry
...
“Always
wanted a smaller house, Jem Finch
...
Just think, I’ll have more
room for my azaleas now!”
“You ain’t grievin‘, Miss Maudie?” I asked, surprised
...

“Grieving, child? Why, I hated that old cow barn
...
”
“But—”
“Don’t you worry about me, Jean Louise Finch
...
Why, I’ll build me a little house and take me a couple of roomers
and—gracious, I’ll have the finest yard in Alabama
...
“How’d it catch, Miss Maudie?” he asked
...
Probably the flue in the kitchen
...
Hear you had some unexpected company last night, Miss Jean
Louise
...
Tell you the truth, I’d like to’ve been

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 40

with you
...
”
Miss Maudie puzzled me
...

She must have seen my perplexity
...
This whole neighborhood could have gone
up
...
Avery’ll be in bed for a week—he’s right stove up
...
Soon as I can get my hands clean and when Stephanie
Crawford’s not looking, I’ll make him a Lane cake
...
”
I reflected that if Miss Maudie broke down and gave it to her, Miss Stephanie couldn’t
follow it anyway
...

It was a still day
...
Miss Maudie’s nose was a color I had never
seen before, and I inquired about it
...
“Should be frozen by now
...
A network of tiny lines crisscrossed her palms, brown with dirt and dried
blood
...
“Why don’t you get a colored man?” There was no note
of sacrifice in his voice when he added, “Or Scout’n’me, we can help you
...
” She
pointed to our yard
...
“Shoot, we can rake him up in a jiffy
...
Suddenly she put her hands
to her head and whooped
...

Jem said he didn’t know what was the matter with her—that was just Miss Maudie
...
My fists were clenched and I was ready to let fly
...
I soon forgot
...
He had announced in the schoolyard the day before
that Scout Finch’s daddy defended niggers
...

“What’d he mean sayin‘ that?” I asked
...
“Ask Atticus, he’ll tell you
...

“Of course I do
...
That’s common
...
”
“From now on it’ll be everybody less one—”
“Well if you don’t want me to grow up talkin‘ that way, why do you send me to school?”
My father looked at me mildly, amusement in his eyes
...
I went so far as to pay a nickel for the privilege of rubbing my
head against the head of Miss Rachel’s cook’s son, who was afflicted with a tremendous
ringworm
...

But I was worrying another bone
...
”
“Then why did Cecil say you defended niggers? He made it sound like you were
runnin‘ a still
...
“I’m simply defending a Negro—his name’s Tom Robinson
...
He’s a member of Calpurnia’s church, and
Cal knows his family well
...
Scout, you aren’t old
enough to understand some things yet, but there’s been some high talk around town to
the effect that I shouldn’t do much about defending this man
...
John Taylor was kind enough to give us a
postponement…”
“If you shouldn’t be defendin‘ him, then why are you doin’ it?”
“For a number of reasons,” said Atticus
...
”
“You mean if you didn’t defend that man, Jem and me wouldn’t have to mind you any
more?”
“That’s about right
...
Scout, simply by the nature of the
work, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally
...
You might hear some ugly talk about it at school, but do one thing
for me if you will: you just hold your head high and keep those fists down
...
Try fighting with your head
for a change… it’s a good one, even if it does resist learning
...
”
“Then why—”
“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us
not to try to win,” Atticus said
...
Cousin Ike Finch was Maycomb County’s
sole surviving Confederate veteran
...
At least once a year Atticus, Jem and I called on him, and I would
have to kiss him
...
Jem and I would listen respectfully to Atticus and
Cousin Ike rehash the war
...
Ol’ Blue Light was in heaven then, God rest his saintly brow…”
“Come here, Scout,” said Atticus
...
He put his arms around me and rocked me gently
...

“This time we aren’t fighting the Yankees, we’re fighting our friends
...
”
With this in mind, I faced Cecil Jacobs in the schoolyard next day: “You gonna take
that back, boy?”
“You gotta make me first!” he yelled
...
It was the first time I ever
walked away from a fight
...
Atticus so rarely asked Jem and
me to do something for him, I could take being called a coward for him
...
Then Christmas
came and disaster struck
...
The good side was the tree and
Uncle Jack Finch
...

A flip of the coin revealed the uncompromising lineaments of Aunt Alexandra and

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 42

Francis
...
Neither did Aunt Alexandra
...
Henry and his wife
deposited Francis at his grandparents’ every Christmas, then pursued their own
pleasures
...
We
went to Finch’s Landing every Christmas in my memory
...
He was a year older than I, and I avoided him on principle: he enjoyed
everything I disapproved of, and disliked my ingenuous diversions
...
Had I ever harbored the mystical
notions about mountains that seem to obsess lawyers and judges, Aunt Alexandra
would have been analogous to Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold
and there
...
Jem and I always thought it funny when
Uncle Jack pecked Atticus on the cheek; they were the only two men we ever saw kiss
each other
...
He and Aunty looked alike, but Uncle Jack made better use of his face:
we were never wary of his sharp nose and chin
...
Whenever he performed a minor service for Jem and me,
as removing a splinter from a foot, he would tell us exactly what he was going to do,
give us an estimation of how much it would hurt, and explain the use of any tongs he
employed
...
When Uncle Jack caught me, he kept me laughing
about a preacher who hated going to church so much that every day he stood at his
gate in his dressing-gown, smoking a hookah and delivering five-minute sermons to any
passers-by who desired spiritual comfort
...

“What’s in those packages?” I asked him, pointing to the long thin parcels the porter
had given him
...

Jem said, “How’s Rose Aylmer?”
Rose Aylmer was Uncle Jack’s cat
...
He reached into his coat pocket
and brought out some snapshots
...

“She’s gettin‘ fat,” I said
...
She eats all the leftover fingers and ears from the hospital
...

“I beg your pardon?”
Atticus said, “Don’t pay any attention to her, Jack
...
Cal says she’s
been cussing fluently for a week, now
...
I was proceeding on the dim theory, aside from the innate attractiveness of
such words, that if Atticus discovered I had picked them up at school he wouldn’t make
me go
...
“See me afterwards, young lady,” he said
...
He slapped
his thighs for me to come sit on his lap
...
He pushed back my bangs and looked at me
...
“You’re also growing out of your
pants a little
...
”
“You like words like damn and hell now, don’t you?”
I said I reckoned so
...
I’ll be here a week, and I don’t want to hear any words like that while I’m here
...
You want to grow up
to be a lady, don’t you?”
I said not particularly
...
Now let’s get to the tree
...
Next morning Jem and I dived for them: they were from
Atticus, who had written Uncle Jack to get them for us, and they were what we had
asked for
...

“You’ll have to teach ‘em to shoot,” said Uncle Jack
...
“I merely bowed to the inevitable
...
He declined to let us
take our air rifles to the Landing (I had already begun to think of shooting Francis) and
said if we made one false move he’d take them away from us for good
...
Farther down stream, beyond the bluff, were traces of an old cotton
landing, where Finch Negroes had loaded bales and produce, unloaded blocks of ice,
flour and sugar, farm equipment, and feminine apparel
...
At the end of the road was a two-storied white
house with porches circling it upstairs and downstairs
...
The internal arrangements of the Finch house were
indicative of Simon’s guilelessness and the absolute trust with which he regarded his
offspring
...
Simple enough; but the daughters’
rooms could be reached only by one staircase, Welcome’s room and the guestroom
only by another
...

There was a kitchen separate from the rest of the house, tacked onto it by a wooden
catwalk; in the back yard was a rusty bell on a pole, used to summon field hands or as a
distress signal; a widow’s walk was on the roof, but no widows walked there—from it,
Simon oversaw his overseer, watched the river-boats, and gazed into the lives of
surrounding landholders
...
When we arrived at the Landing, Aunt
Alexandra kissed Uncle Jack, Francis kissed Uncle Jack, Uncle Jimmy shook hands
silently with Uncle Jack, Jem and I gave our presents to Francis, who gave us a present
...
Francis
was eight and slicked back his hair
...

“Just what I asked for,” he said
...

“That’s nice,” I lied
...
”
“No, a real one
...
”
Francis asked what was the use of that
...
”
Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean
...
As he lived in Mobile, he could not inform on
me to school authorities, but he managed to tell everything he knew to Aunt Alexandra,
who in turn unburdened herself to Atticus, who either forgot it or gave me hell,
whichever struck his fancy
...

Aunt Alexandra was fanatical on the subject of my attire
...
Aunt Alexandra’s vision of my
deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl
necklace she gave me when I was born; furthermore, I should be a ray of sunshine in
my father’s lonely life
...
She hurt my feelings and set my teeth
permanently on edge, but when I asked Atticus about it, he said there were already
enough sunbeams in the family and to go on about my business, he didn’t mind me
much the way I was
...
Aunty had continued to isolate me long after Jem and
Francis graduated to the big table
...
When I begged Atticus to use his
influence, he said he had none—we were guests, and we sat where she told us to sit
...

But her cooking made up for everything: three kinds of meat, summer vegetables from
her pantry shelves; peach pickles, two kinds of cake and ambrosia constituted a modest
Christmas dinner
...
Jem lay on the floor, and I went to the back yard
...

Francis sat beside me on the back steps
...

“Grandma’s a wonderful cook,” said Francis
...
”
“Boys don’t cook
...

“Grandma says all men should learn to cook, that men oughta be careful with their
wives and wait on ‘em when they don’t feel good,” said my cousin
...
“I’d rather wait on him
...
Don’t say anything about it yet, but we’re gonna get married as soon as we’re
big enough
...
”
Francis hooted
...
“Ain’t anything the matter with him
...
”
“I know all about him,” said Francis
...
”
“—he just gets passed around from relative to relative, and Miss Rachel keeps him
every summer
...
“You’re mighty dumb sometimes, Jean Louise
...
”
“What do you mean?”
“If Uncle Atticus lets you run around with stray dogs, that’s his own business, like
Grandma says, so it ain’t your fault
...
Grandma says it’s bad enough he lets you all run wild, but now he’s
turned out a nigger-lover we’ll never be able to walk the streets of Maycomb agin
...
”
Francis rose and sprinted down the catwalk to the old kitchen
...
“I don’t know what you’re talkin‘ about, but you better cut it out
this red hot minute!”
I leaped off the steps and ran down the catwalk
...
I said
take it back quick
...
“Nigger-lover!” he yelled
...
Say nothing, and as sure as
eggs he will become curious and emerge
...
“You
still mad, Jean Louise?” he asked tentatively
...

Francis came out on the catwalk
...
Francis shot
back into the kitchen, so I retired to the steps
...
I had sat there
perhaps five minutes when I heard Aunt Alexandra speak: “Where’s Francis?”
“He’s out yonder in the kitchen
...
”
Francis came to the door and yelled, “Grandma, she’s got me in here and she won’t
let me out!”
“What is all this, Jean Louise?”
I looked up at Aunt Alexandra
...
”
“Yes she is,” shouted Francis, “she won’t let me out!”
“Have you all been fussing?”
“Jean Louise got mad at me, Grandma,” called Francis
...
Did I hear you say hell a while ago?”
“Nome
...
I’d better not hear it again
...
The moment she was out of sight Francis
came out head up and grinning
...

He jumped into the yard and kept his distance, kicking tufts of grass, turning around
occasionally to smile at me
...

Francis climbed the mimosa tree, came down, put his hands in his pockets and strolled
around the yard
...
I asked him who he thought he was, Uncle Jack?
Francis said he reckoned I got told, for me to just sit there and leave him alone
...

Francis looked at me carefully, concluded that I had been sufficiently subdued, and
crooned softly, “Nigger-lover…”
This time, I split my knuckle to the bone on his front teeth
...
Uncle Jack pinned my arms to my sides and said, “Stand
still!”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 46

Aunt Alexandra ministered to Francis, wiping his tears away with her handkerchief,
rubbing his hair, patting his cheek
...

“Who started this?” said Uncle Jack
...
“Grandma,” he bawled, “she called me a whorelady and jumped on me!”
“Is that true, Scout?” said Uncle Jack
...
”
When Uncle Jack looked down at me, his features were like Aunt Alexandra’s
...
Stay there
...
I found myself suddenly looking at a
tiny ant struggling with a bread crumb in the grass
...
I
ran to Atticus for comfort, but he said I had it coming and it was high time we went
home
...
Jem tried to say something nice, but I
wouldn’t let him
...
I asked who it was; Uncle
Jack answered
...
When he entered
the room I retreated to a corner and turned my back on him
...
”
“Why, I didn’t think you’d hold it against me,” he said
...
”
“Didn’t either
...
”
Uncle Jack’s eyebrows went up
...
”
Uncle Jack put his hands on his hips and looked down at me
...
It was obstreperous, disorderly and abusive—”
“You gonna give me a chance to tell you? I don’t mean to sass you, I’m just tryin‘ to
tell you
...
His eyebrows came together, and he peered up at
me from under them
...

I took a deep breath
...
When Jem an‘ I fuss Atticus doesn’t ever
just listen to Jem’s side of it, he hears mine too, an’ in the second place you told me
never to use words like that except in ex-extreme provocation, and Francis provocated
me enough to knock his block off—”
Uncle Jack scratched his head
...
”
“What did Francis call him?”
“A nigger-lover
...
”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 47

“He called Atticus that?”
“Yes sir, he did, an‘ a lot more
...
When he said,
“We’ll see about this,” I knew Francis was in for it
...
”
“Please sir, just let it go
...
”
“I’ve no intention of letting it go,” he said
...
The idea
of—wait’ll I get my hands on that boy…”
“Uncle Jack, please promise me somethin‘, please sir
...
He—he asked me one time not to let anything I heard about him make me
mad, an’ I’d ruther him think we were fightin‘ about somethin’ else instead
...
You reckon you could tie up my hand? It’s still bleedin‘ some
...
I know of no hand I would be more delighted to tie up
...
While he cleaned and bandaged my
knuckles, he entertained me with a tale about a funny nearsighted old gentleman who
had a cat named Hodge, and who counted all the cracks in the sidewalk when he went
to town
...
“You’ll have a very unladylike scar on your wedding-ring
finger
...
Uncle Jack?”
“Ma’am?”
“What’s a whore-lady?”
Uncle Jack plunged into another long tale about an old Prime Minister who sat in the
House of Commons and blew feathers in the air and tried to keep them there when all
about him men were losing their heads
...

Later, when I was supposed to be in bed, I went down the hall for a drink of water and
heard Atticus and Uncle Jack in the livingroom:
“I shall never marry, Atticus
...
”
Atticus said, “You’ve a lot to learn, Jack
...
Your daughter gave me my first lessons this afternoon
...
She was quite right
...
”
Atticus chuckled
...
”
I waited, on tenterhooks, for Uncle Jack to tell Atticus my side of it
...
He
simply murmured, “Her use of bathroom invective leaves nothing to the imagination
...
”
“Jack! When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake
...
Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than
adults, and evasion simply muddles ‘em
...
Bad language is a stage all children go
through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it
...
Scout’s got to learn to keep her head and learn soon, with what’s
in store for her these next few months
...
Jem’s getting older
and she follows his example a good bit now
...
”
“Atticus, you’ve never laid a hand on her
...
So far I’ve been able to get by with threats
...
Doesn’t come up to scratch half the time, but she tries
...

“No, the answer is she knows I know she tries
...

What bothers me is that she and Jem will have to absorb some ugly things pretty soon
...
He still didn’t
...
”
“It couldn’t be worse, Jack
...
The evidence boils down to you-did—I-didn’t
...
He described them to Atticus, but Atticus
said, “You’re a generation off
...
”
“What are you going to do, then?”
“Before I’m through, I intend to jar the jury a bit—I think we’ll have a reasonable
chance on appeal, though
...
You know, I’d hoped to
get through life without a case of this kind, but John Taylor pointed at me and said,
‘You’re It
...
But do you think I could face my children otherwise? You know what’s going to
happen as well as I do, Jack, and I hope and pray I can get Jem and Scout through it
without bitterness, and most of all, without catching Maycomb’s usual disease
...
I hope they trust me enough… Jean
Louise?”
My scalp jumped
...
“Sir?”
“Go to bed
...
Uncle Jack was a prince of a fellow not to let
me down
...

Chapter 10
Atticus was feeble: he was nearly fifty
...
He
was much older than the parents of our school contemporaries, and there was nothing
Jem or I could say about him when our classmates said, “My father—”
Jem was football crazy
...
”
Our father didn’t do anything
...
Atticus did not
drive a dump-truck for the county, he was not the sheriff, he did not farm, work in a
garage, or do anything that could possibly arouse the admiration of anyone
...
He was nearly blind in his left eye, and said left eyes
were the tribal curse of the Finches
...

He did not do the things our schoolmates’ fathers did: he never went hunting, he did
not play poker or fish or drink or smoke
...

With these attributes, however, he would not remain as inconspicuous as we wished
him to: that year, the school buzzed with talk about him defending Tom Robinson, none
of which was complimentary
...
This was not entirely correct: I wouldn’t fight publicly for Atticus,
but the family was private ground
...
Francis Hancock, for example, knew that
...
Uncle Jack
instructed us in the rudiments thereof; he said Atticus wasn’t interested in guns
...
Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to
kill a mockingbird
...

“Your father’s right,” she said
...
They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one
thing but sing their hearts out for us
...
”
“Miss Maudie, this is an old neighborhood, ain’t it?”
“Been here longer than the town
...
Jem and me’s the only children
around here
...
Dubose is close on to a hundred and Miss Rachel’s old and so are
you and Atticus
...
“Not being wheeled around yet, am
I? Neither’s your father
...
You’ve never been around young folks much, have you?”
“Yessum, at school
...
You’re lucky, you know
...
If your father was thirty you’d find life quite different
...
Atticus can’t do anything…”
“You’d be surprised,” said Miss Maudie
...
”
“What can he do?”
“Well, he can make somebody’s will so airtight can’t anybody meddle with it
...
”
“Good Lord, Miss Maudie, Jem and me beat him all the time
...
Did you know he can play a
Jew’s Harp?”
This modest accomplishment served to make me even more ashamed of him
...

“Well, what, Miss Maudie?”
“Well nothing
...
Can’t everybody
play a Jew’s Harp
...
You’d better go home, I’ll
be in my azaleas and can’t watch you
...
”
I went to the back yard and found Jem plugging away at a tin can, which seemed
stupid with all the bluejays around
...
S
...

When Atticus came home to dinner he found me crouched down aiming across the
street
...
”
Atticus turned and saw my generous target bending over her bushes
...
“Maudie,” he called, “I thought I’d
better warn you
...
”
Miss Maudie straightened up and looked toward me
...
”
When Atticus returned he told me to break camp
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 50

I wished my father was a devil from hell
...
“Mr
...
”
“Like what?” I asked
...
“Well, I don’t rightly know,” she said
...
The
Methodists were trying to pay off their church mortgage, and had challenged the
Baptists to a game of touch football
...
Jem said he didn’t even want to go, but he was unable to resist football
in any form, and he stood gloomily on the sidelines with Atticus and me watching Cecil
Jacobs’s father make touchdowns for the Baptists
...
We had gone about five hundred yards beyond the Radley
Place when I noticed Jem squinting at something down the street
...

“Whatcha looking at?”
“That old dog down yonder,” he said
...
”
Tim Johnson was the property of Mr
...
Tim was a liver-colored bird dog, the pet of
Maycomb
...
We better go home
...
”
“I don’t care, I’m gonna tell Cal
...

“Cal,” said Jem, “can you come down the sidewalk a minute?”
“What for, Jem? I can’t come down the sidewalk every time you want me
...
”
Calpurnia sighed
...
There’s some gauze in the
bathroom, go get it and do it yourself
...
“He’s sick, Cal
...
”
“What’s he doin‘, trying to catch his tail?”
“No, he’s doin‘ like this
...
“He’s goin‘
like that, only not like he means to
...

“No Cal, I swear I’m not
...
He’s comin’ this way
...
“I don’t see any dog,” she
said
...
Tim
Johnson was not much more than a speck in the distance, but he was closer to us
...
He reminded me of
a car stuck in a sandbed
...

Calpurnia stared, then grabbed us by the shoulders and ran us home
...
Finch’s office!”
“Mr
...
“This is Cal
...
Finch, I declare he is—old Tim
Johnson, yes sir… yessir… yes—”
She hung up and shook her head when we tried to ask her what Atticus had said
...
Finch, please don’t connect me no more—listen, Miss Eula May, can you call Miss
Rachel and Miss Stephanie Crawford and whoever’s got a phone on this street and tell
’em a mad dog’s comin‘? Please ma’am!”
Calpurnia listened
...
Please ma’am hurry!”
Calpurnia asked Jem, “Radleys got a phone?”
Jem looked in the book and said no
...
”
“I don’t care, I’m gonna tell ‘em
...
“You stay in that house!” she yelled
...
Every wood door within
our range of vision was closed tight
...
We watched
Calpurnia running toward the Radley Place, holding her skirt and apron above her
knees
...
She got no answer, and
she shouted, “Mr
...
Arthur, mad dog’s comin‘! Mad dog’s comin’!”
“She’s supposed to go around in back,” I said
...
“Don’t make any difference now,” he said
...
No one acknowledged her warning; no one
seemed to have heard it
...
Atticus
and Mr
...

Mr
...
He was as tall as Atticus, but
thinner
...
His belt had a row of bullets sticking in it
...
When
he and Atticus reached the porch, Jem opened the door
...
“Where is he, Cal?”
“He oughta be here by now,” said Calpurnia, pointing down the street
...
Tate
...
Heck
...

“We better wait, Mr
...
They usually go in a straight line, but you never can tell
...
Let’s
wait a minute
...
“Fence’ll stop him
...
Had Tim Johnson behaved thus, I would have been less
frightened
...
The trees were still, the
mockingbirds were silent, the carpenters at Miss Maudie’s house had vanished
...
Tate sniff, then blow his nose
...
I saw
Miss Stephanie Crawford’s face framed in the glass window of her front door
...
Atticus put his foot on the rung of a chair and
rubbed his hand slowly down the side of his thigh
...

Tim Johnson came into sight, walking dazedly in the inner rim of the curve parallel to
the Radley house
...
“Mr
...
He can’t
even stay in the road
...

“Let anything get in front of him and he’ll come straight at it
...
Tate put his hand to his forehead and leaned forward
...

Finch
...
We could see him shiver like a horse shedding flies; his jaw

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 52

opened and shut; he was alist, but he was being pulled gradually toward us
...

Mr
...
“He’s far from dead, Jem, he hasn’t got started yet
...
He made a few hesitant steps and stopped in front of the Radley gate; then he
tried to turn around, but was having difficulty
...
You better get him before he goes down the
side street—Lord knows who’s around the corner
...
”
Calpurnia opened the screen door, latched it behind her, then unlatched it and held
onto the hook
...

“Take him, Mr
...
” Mr
...

“Don’t waste time, Heck,” said Atticus
...
”
“Mr
...
”
Atticus shook his head vehemently: “Don’t just stand there, Heck! He won’t wait all day
for you—”
“For God’s sake, Mr
...
Tate almost threw the rifle at Atticus
...

In a fog, Jem and I watched our father take the gun and walk out into the middle of the
street
...

When Atticus raised his glasses Calpurnia murmured, “Sweet Jesus help him,” and
put her hands to her cheeks
...
In the silence, I heard them crack
...

In front of the Radley gate, Tim Johnson had made up what was left of his mind
...
He made
two steps forward, then stopped and raised his head
...

With movements so swift they seemed simultaneous, Atticus’s hand yanked a balltipped lever as he brought the gun to his shoulder
...
Tim Johnson leaped, flopped over and crumpled on the sidewalk in
a brown-and-white heap
...

Mr
...
He stopped in front of the
dog, squatted, turned around and tapped his finger on his forehead above his left eye
...
Finch,” he called
...
“If I had my ‘druthers I’d take a shotgun
...
Tate and stood looking down at Tim Johnson
...
Miss Maudie
walked down the steps with Miss Stephanie Crawford
...
I pinched him to get him moving, but when Atticus saw us coming
he called, “Stay where you are
...
Tate and Atticus returned to the yard, Mr
...
“I’ll have Zeebo
collect him,” he said
...
Finch
...
”
Atticus was silent
...

“Yes?”
“Nothin‘
...
They looked at one another without
saying anything, and Atticus got into the sheriff’s car
...

“Don’t you go near that dog, you understand? Don’t go near him, he’s just as dangerous
dead as alive
...
“Atticus—”
“What, son?”
“Nothing
...
Tate, grinning at Jem
...
”
When they drove away, Jem and I went to Miss Stephanie’s front steps
...

Jem sat in numb confusion, and Miss Stephanie said, “Uh, uh, uh, who’da thought of a
mad dog in February? Maybe he wadn’t mad, maybe he was just crazy
...
Bet he was just full of fleas from somewhere—”
Miss Maudie said Miss Stephanie’d be singing a different tune if Tim Johnson was still
coming up the street, that they’d find out soon enough, they’d send his head to
Montgomery
...
“Well now, Miss Jean Louise,” she said, “still think your
father can’t do anything? Still ashamed of him?”
“Nome,” I said meekly
...
”
“Dead shot…” echoed Jem
...
Guess you’ll change your tune now
...
”
“He never said anything about that,” Jem muttered
...
”
“Wonder why he never goes huntin‘ now,” I said
...
“If your father’s anything, he’s civilized in his
heart
...
I think maybe he put his
gun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most
living things
...
”
“Looks like he’d be proud of it,” I said
...

We saw Zeebo drive up
...
He pitched the dog onto the truck, then poured something
from a gallon jug on and around the spot where Tim fell
...

When we went home I told Jem we’d really have something to talk about at school on
Monday
...

“Don’t say anything about it, Scout,” he said
...
Ain’t everybody’s daddy the deadest shot in Maycomb County
...
If he was proud of it,
he’da told us
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 54

“Naw, Scout, it’s something you wouldn’t understand
...
”
Jem picked up a rock and threw it jubilantly at the carhouse
...
Henry Lafayette Dubose
...
Previous minor
encounters with her left me with no desire for more, but Jem said I had to grow up some
time
...
Dubose lived alone except for a Negro girl in constant attendance, two doors up
the street from us in a house with steep front steps and a dog-trot hall
...
It was rumored
that she kept a CSA pistol concealed among her numerous shawls and wraps
...
If she was on the porch when we passed, we would be raked by
her wrathful gaze, subjected to ruthless interrogation regarding our behavior, and given
a melancholy prediction on what we would amount to when we grew up, which was
always nothing
...

We could do nothing to please her
...
Dubose,”
I would receive for an answer, “Don’t you say hey to me, you ugly girl! You say good
afternoon, Mrs
...
Once she heard Jem refer to our father as “Atticus” and her reaction
was apoplectic
...
A lovelier lady than our mother never lived, she said, and it was
heartbreaking the way Atticus Finch let her children run wild
...
Dubose shot us this message
...
Countless evenings Atticus would find Jem furious at something Mrs
...

“Easy does it, son,” Atticus would say
...
You just hold
your head high and be a gentleman
...
” Jem would say she must not be very sick, she hollered so
...
Dubose! You look like a picture this evening
...
He would tell her the courthouse news,
and would say he hoped with all his heart she’d have a good day tomorrow
...
It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated
guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived
...
Jem thought he had enough to buy a miniature
steam engine for himself and a twirling baton for me
...
J
...
It was then my burning ambition to grow up
and twirl with the Maycomb County High School band
...
I felt
that I could overcome this defect with a real baton, and I thought it generous of Jem to
buy one for me
...
Dubose was stationed on her porch when we went by
...
“Playing hooky, I
suppose
...

“Aw, it’s Saturday, Mrs
...

“Makes no difference if it’s Saturday,” she said obscurely
...
Dubose, we’ve been goin‘ to town by ourselves since we were this high
...

“Don’t you lie to me!” she yelled
...
She’s going to tell your father and then you’ll
wish you never saw the light of day! If you aren’t sent to the reform school before next
week, my name’s not Dubose!”
Jem, who hadn’t been near Miss Maudie’s scuppernong arbor since last summer, and
who knew Miss Maudie wouldn’t tell Atticus if he had, issued a general denial
...
Dubose bawled
...
K
...
The O
...
Café was a dim organization on the north side of the square
...

“Come on, Scout,” he whispered
...
”
But Mrs
...
Mrs
...
When she drew it away, it trailed a long silver
thread of saliva
...
I pulled at his sleeve, and we were followed up the sidewalk by a
philippic on our family’s moral degeneration, the major premise of which was that half
the Finches were in the asylum anyway, but if our mother were living we would not have
come to such a state
...
Dubose’s
assessment of the family’s mental hygiene
...
But this was the first one coming from an adult
...
Dubose’s attack was only routine
...

Jem bought his steam engine and we went by Elmore’s for my baton
...
On the way home I nearly hit Mr
...
Dubose’s house my baton
was grimy from having picked it up out of the dirt so many times
...

In later years, I sometimes wondered exactly what made Jem do it, what made him
break the bonds of “You just be a gentleman, son,” and the phase of self-conscious
rectitude he had recently entered
...
At the time, however, I thought the only
explanation for what he did was that for a few minutes he simply went mad
...
We had just
come to her gate when Jem snatched my baton and ran flailing wildly up the steps into
Mrs
...
Dubose missed, her girl Jessie
probably wouldn’t
...

Dubose owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves
...

By that time I was shrieking
...
I didn’t shut
up and he kicked me
...
Jem picked me up roughly
but looked like he was sorry
...

We did not choose to meet Atticus coming home that evening
...
By some voo-doo system Calpurnia seemed to
know all about it
...
It tasted like
cotton
...
I picked up a football magazine, found a picture of Dixie
Howell, showed it to Jem and said, “This looks like you
...
He sat by the windows, hunched down in a
rocking chair, scowling, waiting
...

Two geological ages later, we heard the soles of Atticus’s shoes scrape the front
steps
...

Atticus switched on the ceiling light in the livingroom and found us there, frozen still
...
He held out
his other hand; it contained fat camellia buds
...
”
“Why’d you do it?”
Jem said softly, “She said you lawed for niggers and trash
...

“Son, I have no doubt that you’ve been annoyed by your contemporaries about me
lawing for niggers, as you say, but to do something like this to a sick old lady is
inexcusable
...
Dubose,” said
Atticus
...
”
Jem did not move
...
”
I followed Jem out of the livingroom
...
I came
back
...
For the life of me, I did not understand how he could sit there in cold blood and
read a newspaper when his only son stood an excellent chance of being murdered with
a Confederate Army relic
...
Atticus did not seem to realize this, or
if he did he didn’t care
...

“You’re mighty big to be rocked,” he said
...
“You just send him on to get shot at
when all he was doin‘ was standin’ up for you
...
“It’s not time to worry yet,” he said
...
”
I said I didn’t see why we had to keep our heads anyway, that nobody I knew at school
had to keep his head about anything
...
This case, Tom
Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience—Scout,
I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man
...

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience
...
He set
me on my feet, and I made a secret reconnaissance of Jem
...
Perhaps she had given him a dose of
calomel
...
”
“There was no point in saying you were sorry if you aren’t,” said Atticus
...
You can’t hold her responsible for what she says and does
...
”
Jem seemed fascinated by a rose in the carpet
...
”
“Read to her?”
“Yes sir
...
Atticus, do I have to?”
“Certainly
...
”
“Then you’ll do it for a month
...
Finally he
said, “Atticus, it’s all right on the sidewalk but inside it’s—it’s all dark and creepy
...
“That should appeal to your imagination
...
”
The following Monday afternoon Jem and I climbed the steep front steps to Mrs
...
Jem, armed with Ivanhoe and full
of superior knowledge, knocked at the second door on the left
...
Dubose?” he called
...

“Is that you, Jem Finch?” she said
...
I don’t know—”
“Let ‘em both in, Jessie,” said Mrs
...
Jessie admitted us and went off to the
kitchen
...
It always made me afraid, expectant, watchful
...
Dubose
...
She
was lying under a pile of quilts and looked almost friendly
...

“So you brought that dirty little sister of yours, did you?” was her greeting
...

I was expecting a tirade, but all she said was, “You may commence reading, Jeremy
...
I pulled up another one
and sat beside him
...
Dubose
...
”
We moved our chairs forward
...

She was horrible
...
Old-age liver spots dotted her cheeks, and her pale eyes had black pinpoint
pupils
...
Her
bottom plate was not in, and her upper lip protruded; from time to time she would draw
her nether lip to her upper plate and carry her chin with it
...

I didn’t look any more than I had to
...
I tried
to keep up with him, but he read too fast
...
Dubose would catch him and make him spell it out
...
As he read along, I noticed that Mrs
...
She was not listening
...

Something had happened to her
...

Only her head and shoulders were visible
...

From time to time she would open her mouth wide, and I could see her tongue undulate
faintly
...
Her mouth seemed to have a private existence of its own
...

Occasionally it would say, “Pt,” like some viscous substance coming to a boil
...

He looked at me, then at the bed
...
Dubose, are you all right?” She did not hear him
...
A minute later, nerves still tingling, Jem
and I were on the sidewalk headed for home
...

“Shoo,” she said, “you all go home
...

“It’s time for her medicine,” Jessie said
...
Dubose’s bed
...
Atticus had two yellow pencils for me and a
football magazine for Jem, which I suppose was a silent reward for our first day’s
session with Mrs
...
Jem told him what happened
...

“No sir,” said Jem, “but she’s so nasty
...
She spits a lot
...
When people are sick they don’t look nice sometimes
...

Atticus looked at me over his glasses
...
”
The next afternoon at Mrs
...

Dubose would hound Jem for a while on her favorite subjects, her camellias and our
father’s nigger-loving propensities; she would grow increasingly silent, then go away

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 59

from us
...

“Atticus,” I said one evening, “what exactly is a nigger-lover?”
Atticus’s face was grave
...
Dubose calls you that
...

Francis called me that last Christmas, that’s where I first heard it
...

“Yes sir…”
“Then why are you asking me what it means?”
I tried to explain to Atticus that it wasn’t so much what Francis said that had infuriated
me as the way he had said it
...
”
“Scout,” said Atticus, “nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don’t mean
anything—like snot-nose
...
It’s slipped into usage
with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label
somebody
...
I do my best to love everybody… I’m hard put, sometimes—baby, it’s
never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name
...
So don’t let Mrs
...
She has
enough troubles of her own
...
Dubose was correcting him at every turn, when there was a
knock on the door
...

Atticus came in
...
Dubose’s hand
...
“I thought they might still be here
...
Dubose smiled at him
...
“Do you know what time
it is, Atticus?” she said
...
The alarm clock’s set for
five-thirty
...
”
It suddenly came to me that each day we had been staying a little longer at Mrs
...
Today she had antagonized Jem for
nearly two hours with no intention of having a fit, and I felt hopelessly trapped
...

“Only a week longer, I think,” she said, “just to make sure…”
Jem rose
...
On the way home, Jem said he had to do
it just for a month and the month was up and it wasn’t fair
...

“No,” said Jem
...

The following week found us back at Mrs
...
The alarm clock had ceased
sounding, but Mrs
...
Although her fits had
passed off, she was in every other way her old self: when Sir Walter Scott became
involved in lengthy descriptions of moats and castles, Mrs
...
You regret it
now, don’t you?”
Jem would say he certainly did
...
Next time you’ll know how to do it right, won’t you? You’ll pull it
up by the roots, won’t you?”
Jem would say he certainly would
...
Don’t guess
you feel like holding it up, though, with your father what he is
...
Dubose with a face devoid of
resentment
...

At last the day came
...
Dubose said, “That’ll do,” one afternoon, she added,
“And that’s all
...
”
It was over
...

That spring was a good one: the days grew longer and gave us more playing time
...
Every night Atticus would read us the sports pages of the newspapers
...
Atticus was in the middle of Windy Seaton’s
column one evening when the telephone rang
...
“I’m going down to Mrs
...
“I won’t be long
...
When he returned he was
carrying a candy box
...

“What’d she want?” asked Jem
...
Dubose for over a month
...

“She’s dead, son,” said Atticus
...
”
“Oh,” said Jem
...
”
“Well is right,” said Atticus
...
She was sick for a long
time
...

“Mrs
...
“She took it as a pain-killer for
years
...
She’d have spent the rest of her life on it and died
without so much agony, but she was too contrary—”
“Sir?” said Jem
...
Dr
...
Her business affairs were in perfect order but
she said, ‘There’s still one thing out of order
...

“She said she was going to leave this world beholden to nothing and nobody
...
She said she meant to break herself of it before she died, and that’s
what she did
...
Most of the time you were reading to her I doubt if she
heard a word you said
...
If you hadn’t fallen into her hands, I’d have made you go read to her anyway
...
There was another reason—”
“Did she die free?” asked Jem
...
“She was conscious to the last, almost
...
She still disapproved heartily of my doings,
and said I’d probably spend the rest of my life bailing you out of jail
...
He handed it to Jem
...
Inside, surrounded by wads of damp cotton, was a white, waxy,
perfect camellia
...

Jem’s eyes nearly popped out of his head
...
“Why can’t she leave me alone?”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 61

In a flash Atticus was up and standing over him
...
“Sh-h,” he said
...
You know, she was a great lady
...
His face was scarlet
...
She had her own views about things, a lot different from mine, maybe…
son, I told you that if you hadn’t lost your head I’d have made you go read to her
...
It’s when you
know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no
matter what
...
Mrs
...
According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody
...
”
Jem picked up the candy box and threw it in the fire
...
Atticus was reading the
paper
...
He was difficult to live with, inconsistent, moody
...
I must be patient with
him and disturb him as little as possible
...
Mrs
...
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
...

“Don’t you fret too much over Mister Jem—” she began
...
”
“He ain’t that old,” I said
...
”
“Baby,” said Calpurnia, “I just can’t help it if Mister Jem’s growin‘ up
...
We’ll find lots of things to do in here
...
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
...
I received a letter and a snapshot from him
...
His father was a lawyer
like Atticus, only much younger
...
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 write
...
With him, life was routine; without him, life was
unbearable
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 62

As if that were not enough, the state legislature was called into emergency session
and Atticus left us for two weeks
...
But these were events remote from the
world of Jem and me
...
” 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
...
“He spends his time doin‘ things that wouldn’t
get done if nobody did ’em
...

“Oh, Scout, it’s like reorganizing the tax systems of the counties and things
...
”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, go on and leave me alone
...
”
Jem got his wish
...

While she was shelling peas, Calpurnia suddenly said, “What am I gonna do about
you all’s church this Sunday?”
“Nothing, I reckon
...
”
Calpurnia’s eyes narrowed and I could tell what was going through her mind
...
We haven’t done anything in church in years
...
Left to its own devices, the class tied Eunice Ann Simpson to a chair and
placed her in the furnace room
...

“Besides, Cal, this isn’t the first time Atticus has left us,” I protested
...
I didn’t hear him say this
time—reckon he forgot it
...
Suddenly she smiled
...

If Calpurnia had ever bathed me roughly before, it was nothing compared to her
supervision of that Saturday night’s routine
...
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
...
She had put so much starch in my dress it came
up like a tent when I sat down
...
She went over my patent-leather shoes with a cold biscuit
until she saw her face in them
...
“What’s all this for, Cal?”
“I don’t want anybody sayin‘ I don’t look after my children,” she muttered
...
It’s green
...
Can’t you tell?”
“Hee hee,” I howled, “Jem’s color blind
...
You’re gonna go to
First Purchase with smiles on your faces
...
E
...
It was an ancient paint-peeled frame building, the
only church in Maycomb with a steeple and bell, called First Purchase because it was
paid for from the first earnings of freed slaves
...

The churchyard was brick-hard clay, as was the cemetery beside it
...

A few graves in the cemetery were marked with crumbling tombstones; newer ones
were outlined with brightly colored glass and broken Coca-Cola bottles
...
It was a happy cemetery
...

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
...
Calpurnia
walked between Jem and me, responding to the greetings of her brightly clad neighbors
...

Calpurnia’s hands went to our shoulders and we stopped and looked around: standing
in the path behind us was a tall Negro woman
...
She was bulletheaded with strange almond-shaped eyes, straight nose, and an Indian-bow mouth
...

I felt Calpurnia’s hand dig into my shoulder
...
She spoke quietly, contemptuously
...
”
“They’s my comp’ny,” said Calpurnia
...

“Yeah, an‘ I reckon you’s comp’ny at the Finch house durin’ the week
...
“Don’t you fret,” Calpurnia whispered to me, but the
roses on her hat trembled indignantly
...
”
Lula stopped, but she said, “You ain’t got no business bringin‘ white chillun here—they
got their church, we got our’n
...
I sensed, rather than saw, that we were being
advanced upon
...
When I looked down the pathway again,
Lula was gone
...

One of them stepped from the crowd
...
“Mister
Jem,” he said, “we’re mighty glad to have you all here
...
She’s a
troublemaker from way back, got fancy ideas an’ haughty ways—we’re mighty glad to
have you all
...

First Purchase was unceiled and unpainted within
...
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
...
It was dim inside, with a damp coolness slowly dispelled by the gathering
congregation
...
(You-Name-It-We-Sell-It)
...

She fished in her purse, drew out her handkerchief, and untied the hard wad of change
in its corner
...
“We’ve got ours,” he
whispered
...
” 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
...

“Cal,” I whispered, “where are the hymn-books?”
“We don’t have any,” she said
...
Reverend Sykes was standing behind the pulpit staring the
congregation to silence
...

He said, “Brethren and sisters, we are particularly glad to have company with us this
morning
...
You all know their father
...
”
Reverend Sykes shuffled some papers, chose one and held it at arm’s length
...
Bring
your sewing
...
“You all know of Brother Tom Robinson’s trouble
...
The collection taken up
today and for the next three Sundays will go to Helen—his wife, to help her out at
home
...
“That’s the Tom Atticus’s de—”
“Sh-h!”
I turned to Calpurnia but was hushed before I opened my mouth
...
“Will
the music superintendent lead us in the first hymn,” he said
...
He was carrying a battered hymn-book
...
”
This was too much for me
...
“Hush baby,” she whispered, “you’ll see in a minute
...
”
Miraculously on pitch, a hundred voices sang out Zeebo’s words
...
”
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
...
At the
chorus Zeebo closed the book, a signal for the congregation to proceed without his help
...
”
Line for line, voices followed in simple harmony until the hymn ended in a melancholy
murmur
...
I didn’t
believe it either, but we had both heard it
...

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
...
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
...

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
...
He stood beside a table in front of the pulpit and
requested the morning offering, a proceeding that was strange to Jem and me
...
Jem and I followed suit, and received a soft, “Thank you, thank
you,” as our dimes clinked
...
He straightened up and said, “This is not enough, we must have ten
dollars
...
“You all know what it’s for—Helen can’t leave those children
to work while Tom’s in jail
...
“Alec, shut the
doors
...
”
Calpurnia scratched in her handbag and brought forth a battered leather coin purse
...

Gimme your dime, Scout
...
Fans crackled, feet shuffled, tobacco-chewers
were in agony
...
”
A thin man in khaki pants came up the aisle and deposited a coin
...

Reverend Sykes then said, “I want all of you with no children to make a sacrifice and
give one more dime apiece
...
”
Slowly, painfully, the ten dollars was collected
...
Zeebo lined On Jordan’s Stormy Banks, and church was over
...
At
the church door, while she paused to talk with Zeebo and his family, Jem and I chatted
with Reverend Sykes
...

“We were ‘specially glad to have you all here,” said Reverend Sykes
...
”
My curiosity burst: “Why were you all takin‘ up collection for Tom Robinson’s wife?”
“Didn’t you hear why?” asked Reverend Sykes
...
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
...

Reverend Sykes hesitated
...
Link Deas’ll take her
...
At its pressure I said,
“We thank you for lettin‘ us come
...

“Cal, I know Tom Robinson’s in jail an‘ he’s done somethin’ awful, but why won’t folks
hire Helen?” I asked
...
“It’s
because of what folks say Tom’s done,” she said
...
”
“Just what did he do, Cal?”
Calpurnia sighed
...
Bob Ewell accused him of rapin‘ his girl an’ had him
arrested an‘ put in jail—”
“Mr
...
“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
...
”
“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
...
“He can explain it better
than I can
...
”
“He’s just like our preacher,” said Jem, “but why do you all sing hymns that way?”
“Linin‘?” she asked
...
They’ve done it that way as long as I can remember
...

Calpurnia laughed
...
“They can’t read
...
“All those folks?”
“That’s right,” Calpurnia nodded
...
”
“Where’d you go to school, Cal?” asked Jem
...
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
...
” Calpurnia grinned
...
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
...
”
“But Cal,” Jem protested, “you don’t look even near as old as Atticus
...

“Maybe because they can’t read
...
There wasn’t a school even when he was a boy
...
”
Zeebo was Calpurnia’s eldest son
...

“Did you teach him out of a primer, like us?” I asked
...

We didn’t know
...
”
“Were you from the Landing?” Jem asked
...
”
“I certainly am, Mister Jem
...
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
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 67

“Blackstone’s Commentaries
...
“You mean you taught Zeebo outa that?”
“Why yes sir, Mister Jem
...
“They were
the only books I had
...
Blackstone wrote fine English—”
“That’s why you don’t talk like the rest of ‘em,” said Jem
...
Cal, but you talked like they did in church…”
That Calpurnia led a modest double life never dawned on me
...
“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
...
“It’s right hard to say,” she said
...
”
“But Cal, you know better,” I said
...
It’s not ladylike—in the second place, folks
don’t like to have somebody around knowin‘ more than they do
...

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
...
“See me, honey? You see me every day
...
“Sometimes after work? Atticus can get me
...
“We’d be glad to have you
...

“Look on the porch yonder,” Jem said
...
The swing was empty
...

I looked down the street
...

Chapter 13
“Put my bag in the front bedroom, Calpurnia,” was the first thing Aunt Alexandra said
...

Calpurnia picked up Aunty’s heavy suitcase and opened the door
...
I heard the suitcase hit the bedroom floor with a thump
...
“Have you come for a visit, Aunty?” I asked
...
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
...

Jem and I shook our heads
...
He’s not in yet, is he?”
“Nome, he doesn’t usually get back till late afternoon,” said Jem
...
”
“For a while” in Maycomb meant anything from three days to thirty years
...

“Jem’s growing up now and you are too,” she said to me
...
It won’t be many years, Jean Louise,
before you become interested in clothes and boys—”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 68

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
...
“Is he comin‘, too?”
“Oh no, he’s staying at the Landing
...
”
The moment I said, “Won’t you miss him?” I realized that this was not a tactful
question
...
Aunt Alexandra ignored my question
...
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‘
...
Certainly you have
friends? Yessum
...

It was plain that Aunty thought me dull in the extreme, because I once heard her tell
Atticus that I was sluggish
...
Today
was Sunday, and Aunt Alexandra was positively irritable on the Lord’s Day
...
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
...

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
...
Jem, forgetting his dignity, ran with me to meet him
...
“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
...
“Your
aunt’s doing me a favor as well as you all
...
”
“Yes sir,” I said, not understanding a word he said
...
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
...
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
...
Nathan Radley
went so far as to come up in the front yard and say he was glad to see her
...
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
...
When Aunt Alexandra went to
school, self-doubt could not be found in any textbook, so she knew not its meaning
...

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

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 69

us
...
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
...

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
...

I never understood her preoccupation with heredity
...

“That makes the Ewells fine folks, then,” said Jem
...

Aunt Alexandra’s theory had something behind it, though
...
It was twenty miles east of Finch’s Landing, awkwardly inland for such an old
town
...
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
...
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
...
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
...

Because its primary reason for existence was government, Maycomb was spared the
grubbiness that distinguished most Alabama towns its size
...
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
...
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 storebought goods
...

Although Maycomb was ignored during the War Between the States, Reconstruction
rule and economic ruin forced the town to grow
...
New people so rarely
settled there, the same families married the same families until the members of the
community looked faintly alike
...
Things were more or less the same during my early years
...
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
...
Pinkham bottles it’s nothing unusual—her mother
did the same
...
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
...
It was summer and we were outdoors
...
”
When I appeared in the doorway, Aunty would look as if she regretted her request; I
was usually mud-splashed or covered with sand
...

“Who?” I said
...

“She our cousin? I didn’t know that
...
When Cousin Lily Brooke left I knew I was in for it
...
She summoned Jem, who sat warily on the sofa
beside me
...
St
...

“Your cousin wrote this,” said Aunt Alexandra
...
”
Jem examined the small volume
...
Said he tried to shoot the
president
...
Atticus said it
cost the family five hundred dollars to get him out of that one—”
Aunt Alexandra was standing stiff as a stork
...
“We’ll see about
this
...
He sat on the side of Jem’s bed, looked at us soberly, then he grinned
...
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
...

“Well, just say it,” said Jem
...
“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
...
His voice rose
uncontrollably, “Atticus, what’s the matter?”
Atticus crossed his knees and folded his arms
...
”
Jem’s disgust deepened
...

Atticus suddenly grew serious
...

“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
...

Stunned, Jem and I looked at each other, then at Atticus, whose collar seemed to
worry him
...

Presently I picked up a comb from Jem’s dresser and ran its teeth along the edge
...

His curtness stung me
...

For no reason I felt myself beginning to cry, but I could not stop
...

My father never thought these thoughts
...
Aunt Alexandra had
put him up to this, somehow
...

There was nowhere to go, but I turned to go and met Atticus’s vest front
...

“Your stomach’s growling,” I said
...

“You better take some soda
...

“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
...
“It’s
not time to worry
...
The blood in my
legs began to flow again, and I raised my head
...
Forget it
...
He nearly
slammed it, but caught himself at the last minute and closed it softly
...
His eyebrows were raised,
his glasses had slipped
...
It takes a woman to
do that kind of work
...
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
...
Or
two dumpy countrywomen in straw hats sitting in a Hoover cart
...
Which reminded me that I had a question to ask Atticus
...

Atticus looked around from behind his paper
...
As
we grew older, Jem and I thought it generous to allow Atticus thirty minutes to himself
after supper
...

“Well if that’s all it is why did Calpurnia dry me up when I asked her what it was?”
Atticus looked pensive
...
”
His paper was now in his lap
...

I told him in detail about our trip to church with Calpurnia
...

“You all were coming back from Calpurnia’s church that Sunday?”
Jem said, “Yessum, she took us
...
“Yessum, and she promised me I could come out to her
house some afternoon
...
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
...
”
Aunt Alexandra said it
...
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
...
“Apologize to your aunt,” he said
...
His voice was
deadly: “First, apologize to your aunt
...

“Now then,” he said
...
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
...
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 let things go on
too long, Atticus, too long
...
Cal’d look after her there as well as
she does here
...
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
...

“Atticus, it’s all right to be soft-hearted, you’re an easy man, but you have a daughter
to think of
...
”
“That’s what I am thinking of
...
You’ve got to face it sooner or later and it might as well
be tonight
...
”
Atticus’s voice was even: “Alexandra, Calpurnia’s not leaving this house until she
wants to
...
She’s a faithful member of this family and you’ll simply have to accept things the
way they are
...
We still need Cal as much as we ever did
...
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
...
”
I breathed again
...
Revived,

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 73

I entered the livingroom
...
Punk, punk, punk, her needle broke the taut
circle
...
She was furious
...
He motioned me to follow
...
His face was grave
...
”
Jem and I fussed a great deal these days, but I had never heard of or seen anyone
quarrel with Atticus
...

“Scout, try not to antagonize Aunty, hear?”
Atticus’s remarks were still rankling, which made me miss the request in Jem’s
question
...
“You tryin‘ to tell me what to do?”
“Naw, it’s—he’s got a lot on his mind now, without us worrying him
...

“It’s this Tom Robinson case that’s worryin‘ him to death—”
I said Atticus didn’t worry about anything
...

“That’s because you can’t hold something in your mind but a little while,” said Jem
...
He didn’t want to do anything
but read and go off by himself
...

“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
...
“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
...
It nearly
knocked the breath out of me, but it didn’t matter because I knew he was fighting, he
was fighting me back
...

“Ain’t so high and mighty now, are you!” I screamed, sailing in again
...
What had begun as a fist-fight became a brawl
...

“That’s all,” he said
...
”
“Taah!” I said at Jem
...

“Who started it?” asked Atticus, in resignation
...
He was tryin‘ to tell me what to do
...
“Let’s leave it at this: you mind Jem whenever he can make you
...

Ours were adjoining rooms; as I shut the door between them Jem said, “Night, Scout
...
As I passed
the bed I stepped on something warm, resilient, and rather smooth
...
I also heard it move
...
Whatever I had stepped on
was gone
...

“What,” he said
...
Cold
...
Why?”
“I think there’s one under my bed
...
He was in his pajama bottoms
...
When he
saw I meant what I said, he said, “If you think I’m gonna put my face down to a snake

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 74

you’ve got another think comin’
...
”
He went to the kitchen and fetched the broom
...

“You reckon it’s really one?” I asked
...
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
...

Jem made a tentative swipe under the bed
...
None did
...

“Do snakes grunt?”
“It ain’t a snake,” Jem said
...
”
Suddenly a filthy brown package shot from under the bed
...

“God Almighty
...

We watched Dill emerge by degrees
...
He stood up and eased his
shoulders, turned his feet in their ankle sockets, rubbed the back of his neck
...
”
Jem petitioned God again
...

“I’m ‘bout to perish,” said Dill
...
I brought him back some milk and half a pan of corn
bread left over from supper
...

I finally found my voice
...
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
...
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
...

“How’d you get here?” asked Jem
...
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 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
...
He was worn out, dirty beyond belief, and home
...
“We’d know if they were lookin‘ for
you…”
“Think they’re still searchin‘ all the picture shows in Meridian
...

“You oughta let your mother know where you are,” said Jem
...
Then he rose and broke the
remaining code of our childhood
...
“Atticus,”
his voice was distant, “can you come here a minute, sir?”
Beneath its sweat-streaked dirt Dill’s face went white
...
Atticus was in the
doorway
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 75

I finally found my voice: “It’s okay, Dill
...
”
Dill looked at me
...
“You know he wouldn’t bother you, you
know you ain’t scared of Atticus
...

“Just hungry, I’ll bet
...
“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
...
Finch, don’t tell Aunt Rachel, don’t make me go back, please sir! I’ll run off
again—!”
“Whoa, son,” said Atticus
...
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
...

“He’s tryin‘ to be funny,” I said
...
See there, I told you he
wouldn’t bother you
...
“Dill, I had to
tell him,” he said
...
”
We left him without a word
...
He hadn’t eaten since last night
...

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 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
...

“Your father’s tired,” said Aunt Alexandra, her first words in hours, it seemed
...
“You children get to bed now
...
“From rape to riot to
runaways,” we heard him chuckle
...
”
Since things appeared to have worked out pretty well, Dill and I decided to be civil to
Jem
...

I put on my pajamas, read for a while and found myself suddenly unable to keep my
eyes open
...

I must have slept a long time, for when I was punched awake the room was dim with
the light of the setting moon
...
”
“He thought he had to,” I mumbled
...
”
Dill got in bed beside me
...
“I just wanted to sleep with you
...
“Why’d you do it?”
No answer
...
We never did
...
“It’s no reason to run off
...
”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 76

This was the weirdest reason for flight I had ever heard
...
”
“What’d they do in there?”
“Nothin‘, just sittin’ and readin‘—but they didn’t want me with ’em
...
“You know something? I was fixin‘ to
run off tonight because there they all were
...

“—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
...
”
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
...
Even
Calpurnia couldn’t get along unless I was there
...

“Dill, you ain’t telling me right—your folks couldn’t do without 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 buy
me everything I want, but it’s now—you’ve-got-it-go-play-with-it
...
I-got-you-that-book-so-go-read-it
...
“You’re not a
boy
...
”
Dill’s voice was his own again: “Oh, they ain’t mean
...
”
“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
...
At least that’s what I think
she said
...

“Well that ain’t so
...
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
...
He could read
two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions
...
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
...

“Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run off to…”
Chapter 15
After 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
...
After that, little, it seemed
...

It began one evening after supper
...
It had been a placid
week: I had minded Aunty; Jem had outgrown the treehouse, but helped Dill and me

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 77

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)
...
Heck Tate
...

“I already did
...
”
In Maycomb, grown men stood outside in the front yard for only two reasons: death
and politics
...
Jem and I went to the front door, but Atticus
called, “Go back in the house
...
Aunt
Alexandra protested
...

Dill and I took another window
...
They all
seemed to be talking at once
...
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
...
”
“…said I was just uneasy
...
This is Saturday,” Atticus said
...
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
...
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
...
“Not much point in that, now is it?”
Atticus said something inaudible
...

“—besides,” Atticus was saying, “you’re not scared of that crowd, are you?”
“…know how they do when they get shinnied up
...

“This is a special occasion, though…” someone said
...
Jem didn’t hear her
...
Link Deas was saying
...
I mean everything
...
“Do you really think you want to move there,
Scout?” Bam, bam, bam, and the checkerboard was swept clean of my men
...
” Jem would struggle the rest of an evening
through the speeches of Henry W
...

“Link, that boy might go to the chair, but he’s not going till the truth’s told
...
“And you know what the truth is
...

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
...
Avery
...

Laughter broke them up
...

“Why on earth are you all sitting in the dark?” he asked
...
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 wanted to get you, didn’t

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 78

they?”
Atticus lowered the paper and gazed at Jem
...
Then he said gently, “No son, those were our friends
...

Atticus tried to stifle a smile but didn’t make it
...
I’ve never heard of a gang in Maycomb
...
”
“Never heard of any Catholics in Maycomb either,” said Atticus, “you’re confusing that
with something else
...
Besides, they couldn’t find anybody to scare
...
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
...
”
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
...
“It’ll never come back
...

I sought Jem and found him in his room, on the bed deep in thought
...

“Sort of
...
She almost said Atticus was
disgracin‘ the family
...
”
“Scared’a what?”
“Scared about Atticus
...
” Jem preferred to remain
mysterious; all he would say to my questions was go on and leave him alone
...
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
...
Heck Tate was present, and I wondered if he had seen the light
...
Even Mr
...
Mr
...
His days were spent at his linotype, where he refreshed himself occasionally
from an ever-present gallon jug of cherry wine
...
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
...
Something must have
been up to haul Mr
...

I caught Atticus coming in the door, and he said that they’d moved Tom Robinson to
the Maycomb jail
...
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 liked to be by himself in
church
...
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
...
Jem in his old age had taken to his room with a
stack of football magazines
...

Shooting on Sundays was prohibited, so Dill and I kicked Jem’s football around the
pasture for a while, which was no fun
...

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
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 79

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
...

“I’m going out for a while,” he said
...
”
With that, he put his hat on and went out the back door
...

Our father had a few peculiarities: one was, he never ate desserts; another was that
he liked to walk
...
He said his only exercise was walking
...

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
...
” He was changing his pants
...
”
He knew it, but he was going anyway
...
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
...
We waited until Aunty’s light went out, and we walked quietly down
the back steps
...

“Dill’ll wanta come,” I whispered
...

We leaped over the driveway wall, cut through Miss Rachel’s side yard and went to
Dill’s window
...
Dill’s face appeared at the screen, disappeared,
and five minutes later he unhooked the screen and crawled out
...
“What’s up?”
“Jem’s got the look-arounds,” an affliction Calpurnia said all boys caught at his age
...
”
We went by Mrs
...
There were eight more houses to the post office corner
...
Giant monkey-puzzle bushes bristled on
each corner, and between them an iron hitching rail glistened under the street lights
...
A larger
square of stores surrounded the courthouse square; dim lights burned from deep within
them
...
When
we rounded the corner of the square, we saw the car parked in front of the bank
...

But he wasn’t
...
Looking down the hall, we
should have seen Atticus Finch, Attorney-at-Law in small sober letters against the light
from behind his door
...

Jem peered in the bank door to make sure
...
The door was locked
...
Maybe he’s visitin‘ Mr
...
”
Mr
...
That is, above
it
...
The office building was on the northwest corner of the square, and to reach it
we had to pass the jail
...

Atticus said it was like something Cousin Joshua St
...
It was

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 80

certainly someone’s dream
...
Its fantasy was
heightened by its red brick facade and the thick steel bars at its ecclesiastical windows
...
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
...
“That’s
funny,” said Jem, “jail doesn’t have an outside light
...

A long extension cord ran between the bars of a second-floor window and down the
side of the building
...
He was sitting in one of his office chairs, and he was reading, oblivious of
the nightbugs dancing over his head
...
“Don’t go to him,” he said, “he might not like it
...
I just wanted to see where he was
...
They went around the square, passed the
bank building, and stopped in front of the jail
...
We saw Atticus look up from his newspaper
...
He
seemed to be expecting them
...
We streaked across the square, across the street, until
we were in the shelter of the Jitney Jungle door
...
“We can
get closer,” he said
...

In ones and twos, men got out of the cars
...
Atticus remained where he was
...

“He in there, Mr
...

“He is,” we heard Atticus answer, “and he’s asleep
...
”
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
...
“Get aside from the door, Mr
...
”
“You can turn around and go home again, Walter,” Atticus said pleasantly
...
”
“The hell he is,” said another man
...
”
“Indeed? Why so?”
“Called ‘em off on a snipe hunt,” was the succinct answer
...

Finch?”
“Thought about it, but didn’t believe it
...
Its owner was a shadow
...
This was too good to miss
...

Jem shrieked and tried to catch me, but I had a lead on him and Dill
...

“H-ey, Atticus!”
I thought he would have a fine surprise, but his face killed my joy
...

There was a smell of stale whiskey and pigpen about, and when I glanced around I

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 81

discovered that these men were strangers
...

Hot embarrassment shot through me: I had leaped triumphantly into a ring of people I
had never seen before
...
He put the
newspaper down very carefully, adjusting its creases with lingering fingers
...

“Go home, Jem,” he said
...
”
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
...
”
Jem shook his head
...

Mutual defiance made them alike
...
”
Jem shook his head
...
He
yanked Jem nearly off his feet
...
Barefooted, I was surprised to see him
fall back in real pain
...

“That’ll do, Scout
...
“Don’t kick folks
...

“Ain’t nobody gonna do Jem that way,” I said
...
Finch, get ‘em outa here,” someone growled
...
”
In the midst of this strange assembly, Atticus stood trying to make Jem mind him
...
”
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
...
It was a
summer’s night, but the men were dressed, most of them, in overalls and denim shirts
buttoned up to the collars
...
Some wore hats pulled firmly down over their ears
...
I sought
once more for a familiar face, and at the center of the semi-circle I found one
...
Cunningham
...

“Hey, Mr
...
How’s your entailment gettin‘ along?”
Mr
...
The big man blinked and hooked his thumbs in his overall
straps
...
My friendly
overture had fallen flat
...
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
...

“Don’t you remember me, Mr
...
You brought us
some hickory nuts one time, remember?” I began to sense the futility one feels when
unacknowledged by a chance acquaintance
...
“He’s your boy, ain’t he? Ain’t he, sir?”
Mr
...
He did know me, after all
...
He’s a good boy,” I added, “a real
nice boy
...
Maybe he told you about me, I beat
him up one time but he was real nice about it
...
Mr
...

“Entailments are bad,” I was advising him, when I slowly awoke to the fact that I was
addressing the entire aggregation
...
Atticus had stopped poking at Jem: they were standing together
beside Dill
...
Atticus’s mouth, even, was halfopen, an attitude he had once described as uncouth
...

“Well, Atticus, I was just sayin‘ to Mr
...
Entailments
seemed all right enough for livingroom talk
...
They were quite still
...

Atticus said nothing
...
Cunningham, whose face was
equally impassive
...
He squatted down and took me by both
shoulders
...

Then he straightened up and waved a big paw
...
“Let’s get
going, boys
...

Doors slammed, engines coughed, and they were gone
...
I went to him and pulled his sleeve
...

“Mr
...
“They’ve gone,” he said
...

They won’t bother you any more
...
Had you covered all the time, Atticus
...
Underwood and a double-barreled shotgun were leaning out his window above
The Maycomb Tribune office
...
Underwood would talk for the rest of the night, Mr
...
Finally Atticus returned, switched off the light above the jail door, and
picked up his chair
...
Finch?” asked Dill
...

“Why, thank you, son
...
Dill was
encumbered by the chair, and his pace was slower
...

As they passed under a streetlight, Atticus reached out and massaged Jem’s hair, his
one gesture of affection
...
He thrust his head around the connecting door
...
We stayed where we were until it went off; we heard him turn
over, and we waited until he was still again
...
“Try to go to sleep,” he said,
“It’ll be all over after tomorrow, maybe
...
Atticus killed the engine in the

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 83

driveway and coasted to the carhouse; we went in the back door and to our rooms
without a word
...
The full meaning of the
night’s events hit me and I began crying
...

Everybody’s appetite was delicate this morning, except Jem’s: he ate his way through
three eggs
...
Children who slipped out at night were a disgrace to the
family
...
Underwood was there all the time
...
“He despises Negroes,
won’t have one near him
...
Underwood to be an intense, profane little man, whose father in
a fey fit of humor christened Braxton Bragg, a name Mr
...
Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady
drinkers
...
“You’re still too little,” she said
...
” I said it might help my stomach
...
She poured one tablespoonful of coffee into it and filled the cup to the brim
with milk
...
But she was frowning at Atticus
...
”
“Talk like what in front of whom?” he asked
...
You said Braxton Underwood despises Negroes right in
front of her
...
Everybody in Maycomb knows it
...
It was a quiet digging in, never outright irritation
...
She knows what she means to this family
...
It encourages them
...
Every thing that happens in this town’s out to the Quarters before
sundown
...
“I don’t know of any law that says they can’t talk
...
Why don’t you drink your
coffee, Scout?”
I was playing in it with the spoon
...
Cunningham was a friend of ours
...
”
“He still is
...
”
Atticus placed his fork beside his knife and pushed his plate aside
...
Cunningham’s
basically a good man,” he said, “he just has his blind spots along with the rest of us
...
“Don’t call that a blind spot
...
”
“He might have hurt me a little,” Atticus conceded, “but son, you’ll understand folks a
little better when you’re older
...
Mr
...
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
...

“That proves something—that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 84

they’re still human
...
That was enough
...

“First day Walter comes back to school’ll be his last,” I affirmed
...
“I don’t want either of you bearing a grudge
about this thing, no matter what happens
...
Don’t say I
haven’t told you
...
“There’s a day
ahead, so excuse me
...
”
As Atticus departed, Dill came bounding down the hall into the diningroom
...
“It was not a hundred folks,”
she said, “and nobody held anybody off
...
”
“Aw, Aunty, that’s just Dill’s way,” said Jem
...

“You all stay in the yard today,” she said, as we made our way to the front porch
...
People from the south end of the county passed our house in a
leisurely but steady stream
...
Dolphus Raymond lurched by on his thoroughbred
...
“How c’n you stand to get drunk ‘fore eight in the morning?”
A wagonload of ladies rattled past us
...
A bearded man in a wool hat drove them
...
“They don’t have buttons
...
Dill was interested
...
Their
wives like for ‘em to tickle ’em with their beards
...
X Billups rode by on a mule and waved to us
...
“X’s
his name, not his initial
...
He said
X Billups
...
Asked him again and he said X
...

They asked him where he got his name and he said that’s the way his folks signed him
up when he was born
...
Tensaw Jones voted the straight Prohibition ticket; Miss
Emily Davis dipped snuff in private; Mr
...
Jake
Slade was cutting his third set of teeth
...
When they pointed to Miss
Maudie Atkinson’s yard, ablaze with summer flowers, Miss Maudie herself came out on
the porch
...
She was now standing arms akimbo, her shoulders drooping a little, her head
cocked to one side, her glasses winking in the sunlight
...

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
...

“You goin‘ to court this morning?” asked Jem
...

“I am not,” she said
...
”
“Aren’t you goin‘ down to watch?” asked Dill
...
‘t’s morbid, watching a poor devil on trial for his life
...
”
“They hafta try him in public, Miss Maudie,” I said
...
”
“I’m quite aware of that,” she said
...
She wore a hat and gloves
...
“Look at all those folks—you’d think William Jennings Bryan was speakin‘
...

“To the Jitney Jungle
...

“Well,” said Miss Stephanie, “I thought I might just look in at the courthouse, to see
what Atticus’s up to
...
”
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
...
After dinner, we stopped by for Dill and went to town
...
There was no room at the public hitching rail for another
animal, mules and wagons were parked under every available tree
...
Some people were gnawing on cold chicken and
cold fried pork chops
...
Greasy-faced children popped-the-whip through the crowd,
and babies lunched at their mothers’ breasts
...
Mr
...

“Jem,” said Dill, “he’s drinkin‘ out of a sack
...
Dolphus Raymond seemed to be so doing: two yellow drugstore straws ran from
his mouth to the depths of a brown paper bag
...

“How does he keep what’s in it in it?”
Jem giggled
...
That’s so’s not to
upset the ladies
...
”
“Why’s he sittin‘ with the colored folks?”
“Always does
...
Lives by himself way down
near the county line
...
Show you
some of ’em if we see ‘em
...

“He’s not, he owns all one side of the riverbank down there, and he’s from a real old
family to boot
...
“They say he never got over his weddin‘
...
They were gonna have a
huge weddin’, but they didn’t—after the rehearsal the bride went upstairs and blew her
head off
...
She pulled the trigger with her toes
...
Dolphus
...
He’s been sorta drunk ever since
...
You’ve seen ‘em, Scout
...
He’s half white
...
”
“Sad, how come?”
“They don’t belong anywhere
...
But Mr
...

They don’t mind ‘em up north
...
”
A small boy clutching a Negro woman’s hand walked toward us
...
Sometimes he
would skip happily, and the Negro woman tugged his hand to make him stop
...
“That’s one of the little ones,” he said
...
“He looked black to me
...
But he’s half Raymond, all
right
...

“I told you, Scout, you just hafta know who they are
...
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
...
”
“That’s what I thought,” said Jem, “but around here once you have a drop of Negro
blood, that makes you all black
...
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
...

Dolphus Raymond stood up and dusted their breeches
...
They waited patiently
at the doors behind the white families
...

“Naw, we better wait till they get in, Atticus might not like it if he sees us,” said Jem
...
The
pillars were all that remained standing when the original courthouse burned in 1856
...
It is better to say, built in spite of them
...
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
...
It was necessary to turn on
the lights in the daytime; there was always a film of dust on the rough floorboards
...

We knew there was a crowd, but we had not bargained for the multitudes in the firstfloor hallway
...
I found myself in the middle of
the Idlers’ Club and made myself as unobtrusive as possible
...
Attentive critics of courthouse business, Atticus said they knew as much law as
the Chief Justice, from long years of observation
...
When they spoke, their voices sounded casually important
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 87

“…thinks he knows what he’s doing,” one said
...
“Atticus Finch’s a deep reader, a mighty
deep reader
...
” The club snickered
...
”
“Yeah, but Atticus aims to defend him
...
”
This was news, news that put a different light on things: Atticus had to, whether he
wanted to or not
...
He had to, that’s why he was
doing it, equaled fewer fights and less fussing
...
Atticus aimed to defend him
...
It was confusing
...

“Whoa now, just a minute,” said a club member, holding up his walking stick
...
”
The club began its stiff-jointed climb and ran into Dill and Jem on their way down
looking for me
...
We’ll hafta stand up
...
” he said irritably, as the black people surged upstairs
...
We were out of luck and it was my
fault, Jem informed me
...

“Can’t you all get in?”
Reverend Sykes was looking down at us, black hat in hand
...
“Naw, Scout here messed us up
...
”
Reverend Sykes edged his way upstairs
...
“There’s not
a seat downstairs
...
Happily, we sped ahead of Reverend Sykes to the courtroom
floor
...
Reverend Sykes
came puffing behind us, and steered us gently through the black people in the balcony
...

The Colored balcony ran along three walls of the courtroom like a second-story
veranda, and from it we could see everything
...
Sunburned, lanky, they seemed to be all
farmers, but this was natural: townfolk rarely sat on juries, they were either struck or
excused
...
At this
stage they sat straight and alert
...
There was a brown book and some yellow tablets on the solicitor’s
table; Atticus’s was bare
...
Their backs were to us
...
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
...
Without opening
his eyes, Judge Taylor murmured, “Mr
...
”
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
...
Old Sarum, their stamping grounds, was populated by two families
separate and apart in the beginning, but unfortunately bearing the same name
...
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
...

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
...
That was all they had wanted in the first place
...
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
...
I once asked Atticus how
Mrs
...

The witness stand was to the right of Judge Taylor, and when we got to our seats Mr
...

Chapter 17
“Jem,” I said, “are those the Ewells sittin‘ down yonder?”
“Hush,” said Jem, “Mr
...
”
Mr
...
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
...
He was sitting
forward in the witness chair, his hands clasped between his knees, listening attentively
to the circuit solicitor
...
Gilmer, was not well known to us
...
A balding, smooth-faced man, he could have been anywhere between
forty and sixty
...
The
jury, thinking themselves under close scrutiny, paid attention; so did the witnesses,
thinking likewise
...
Tate,” Mr
...

“Well,” said Mr
...
Tate? Thank you
...
Tate said, “I was fetched by Bob—by Mr
...
Tate said, “It was the night of November twenty-first
...
Ewell came in, very excited he was, and said get out to his house
quick, some nigger’d raped his girl
...
Got in the car and went out as fast as I could
...
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
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 89

“—asked her if he beat her like that, she said yes he had
...
So I went down to Robinson’s house and
brought him back
...
That’s all there was to
it
...
Gilmer
...
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
...

“No sir,” said Mr
...

“Didn’t call a doctor?”
“No sir,” repeated Mr
...

“Why not?” There was an edge to Atticus’s voice
...
It wasn’t necessary, Mr
...
She was mighty
banged up
...
”
“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 didn’t call
a doctor
...

Jem’s hand, which was resting on the balcony rail, tightened around it
...
Glancing below, I saw no corresponding reaction, and wondered if Jem
was trying to be dramatic
...

“What is it?” I whispered, and got a terse, “Sh-h!”
“Sheriff,” Atticus was saying, “you say she was mighty banged up
...
”
“Well, she was beaten around the head
...
Tate grinned
...
Anyway, she was pretty bruised up
when I got there, and she had a black eye comin‘
...
Tate blinked and ran his hands through his hair
...
“Can’t you remember?”
Atticus asked
...
Tate pointed to an invisible person five inches in front of him and said, “Her left
...
“Was it her left facing you or her left looking the
same way you were?”
Mr
...
It was her right eye, Mr
...
I
remember now, she was bunged up on that side of her face…”
Mr
...
Then
he turned his head and looked around at Tom Robinson
...

Something had been made plain to Atticus also, and it brought him to his feet
...
”
“It was her right eye, I said
...
It stopped, flipped back the shorthand pad, and the court reporter said,
“‘Mr
...
I remember now she was bunged up on that side of the face
...
Tate
...
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

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 90

said, “Yes, what were her other injuries?” As Mr
...

“…her arms were bruised, and she showed me her neck
...
Finch
...
Tate
fell silent
...
Tate, who rose stiffly and stepped down from the witness stand
...
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
...
Atticus was proceeding amiably, as if he were
involved in a title dispute
...
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
...

All the spectators were as relaxed as Judge Taylor, except Jem
...

“…Robert E
...
When he turned
around to take the oath, we saw that his face was as red as his neck
...
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
...

Every town the size of Maycomb had families like the Ewells
...
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
...
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
...

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 hammerheads, snaggle-toothed rake heads, shovels, axes and grubbing hoes, held on with
pieces of barbed wire
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 91

One corner of the yard, though, bewildered Maycomb
...
People said they were Mayella Ewell’s
...
Some people said six,
others said nine; there were always several dirty-faced ones at the windows when
anyone passed by
...

Atticus took us with him last Christmas when he complied with the mayor’s request
...
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
...
There were delicious smells about: chicken, bacon frying crisp as the
twilight air
...

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
...
Robert Ewell?” asked Mr
...

“That’s m’name, cap’n,” said the witness
...
Gilmer’s back stiffened a little, and I felt sorry for him
...
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
...
We acquired no traumas from watching our father win or lose
...
We could tell,
however, when debate became more acrimonious than professional, but this was from
watching lawyers other than our father
...
Mr
...

Besides, Mr
...
Gilmer’s witness, and he had no business being rude to him
of all people
...

“Well, if I ain’t I can’t do nothing about it now, her ma’s dead,” was the answer
...
He turned slowly in his swivel chair and looked benignly at the
witness
...

“Yes sir,” Mr
...

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
...
There will be no more audibly obscene speculations
on any subject from anybody in this courtroom as long as I’m sitting here
...
Ewell nodded, but I don’t think he did
...

Gilmer?”
“Thank you, sir
...
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
...
Gilmer’s
trademark
...
Gilmer was afraid his witness
might employ
...

“What time was it, Mr
...
Well, I was sayin’ Mayella was screamin‘ fit to beat Jesus—”
another glance from the bench silenced Mr
...

“Yes? She was screaming?” said Mr
...

Mr
...
“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
...
He stood
up and pointed his finger at Tom Robinson
...
Atticus was on his feet at the bench saying something
to him, Mr
...
Behind us, there was an angry muffled groan from the colored
people
...
“Mr
...
Mr
...
“Scout, go home
...
”
“You gotta make me first,” I said, remembering Atticus’s blessed dictum
...
”
I was mortally offended
...
”
“Aw hush
...
”
Reverend Sykes’s black eyes were anxious
...
Finch know you all are here? This
ain’t fit for Miss Jean Louise or you boys either
...
“He can’t see us this far away
...
”
I knew Jem would win, because I knew nothing could make him leave now
...

As Judge Taylor banged his gavel, Mr
...
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
...
He
looked suddenly weary; his age was showing, and I thought about what Atticus had
said—he and Mrs
...

“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
...
Mr
...
Proceed, Mr
...
”
Mr
...
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
...
Ewell was on the stand, the judge kept his
eyes on him, as if daring him to make a false move
...
Gilmer and Atticus exchanged glances
...
Mr
...

A question from Judge Taylor made him relax: “Mr
...
”
The spectators were quiet, but the defendant said something
...

“You say you were at the window?” asked Mr
...

“Yes sir
...
”
“Did you have a clear view of the room?”
“Yes sir
...
”
“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 was too distracted about Mayella to run after’im
...
I knowed who it was, all right, lived down yonder
in that nigger-nest, passed the house every day
...
Ewell,” said Mr
...

The witness made a hasty descent from the stand and ran smack into Atticus, who
had risen to question him
...

“Just a minute, sir,” said Atticus genially
...
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
...
Ewell,” Atticus began, “folks were doing a lot of running that night
...
Tate
...
I seen what happened
...
“Weren’t you concerned with
Mayella’s condition?”
“I most positively was,” said Mr
...
“I seen who done it
...
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
...

“Not quite,” said Atticus casually
...
Ewell, you heard the sheriff’s testimony, didn’t
you?”
“How’s that?”
“You were in the courtroom when Mr
...
Ewell considered the matter carefully, and seemed to decide that the question was
safe
...

“Do you agree with his description of Mayella’s injuries?”
“How’s that?”
Atticus looked around at Mr
...
Mr
...

“Mr
...
“I hold with everything Tate said
...
“I just want to make sure
...
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
...
”
He flipped the page
...
“You heard it again, Mr
...
Do you have anything
to add to it? Do you agree with the sheriff?”
“I holds with Tate
...
”
The little man seemed to have forgotten his previous humiliation from the bench
...
He seemed to grow ruddy
again; his chest swelled, and once more he was a red little rooster
...
Ewell, can you read and write?”
Mr
...
“Objection,” he said
...
”
Judge Taylor was about to speak but Atticus said, “Judge, if you’ll allow the question
plus another one you’ll soon see
...
Overruled
...
Gilmer seemed as curious as the rest of us as to what bearing the state of Mr
...

“I’ll repeat the question,” said Atticus
...
”
“Will you write your name and show us?”
“I most positively will
...
Ewell was endearing himself to his fellow citizens
...

I was becoming nervous
...
Never, never, never, on crossexamination ask a witness a question you don’t already know the answer to, was a tenet
I absorbed with my baby-food
...

Atticus was reaching into the inside pocket of his coat
...
He moved leisurely, and
had turned so that he was in full view of the jury
...
He shook the pen a little, then handed it with the
envelope to the witness
...
“Clearly now,
so the jury can see you do it
...
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
...
The jury was watching
him, one man was leaning forward with his hands over the railing
...

“You’re left-handed, Mr
...
Mr
...
Tricking lawyers like
Atticus Finch took advantage of him all the time with their tricking ways
...
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
...

Mr
...
“About your writing with your left hand, are
you ambidextrous, Mr
...
One hand good as
the other,” he added, glaring at the defense table
...
He was pounding the balcony rail softly, and

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 95

once he whispered, “We’ve got him
...
Ewell could have
beaten up Mayella
...
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
...
But Tom Robinson could
easily be left-handed, too
...
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
...
His back was to us, but I
could see his broad shoulders and bull-thick neck
...
I
thought Jem was counting his chickens
...

“Mayella Violet Ewell—!”
A young girl walked to the witness stand
...

In Maycomb County, it was easy to tell when someone bathed regularly, as opposed
to yearly lavations: Mr
...
Mayella looked as if she tried to keep clean, and I was reminded of the row of
red geraniums in the Ewell yard
...
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
...

“Where were you at dusk on that evening?” began Mr
...

“On the porch
...
”
“What were you doing on the porch?”
“Nothin‘
...
You can do that, can’t you?”
Mayella stared at him and burst into tears
...
Judge Taylor let her cry for a while, then he said, “That’s enough now
...
All this is strange to you, I know, but
you’ve nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to fear
...
“What was that?” asked the judge
...

“Mr
...
It was plain that he had never been
confronted with a problem of this kind
...

“Nineteen-and-a-half,” Mayella said
...

“Mr
...

That’s one thing I’m sitting up here for
...
You can do that, can’t you?”
I whispered to Jem, “Has she got good sense?”
Jem was squinting down at the witness stand
...
“She’s got
enough sense to get the judge sorry for her, but she might be just—oh, I don’t know
...
Gilmer, “Well sir,

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 96

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
...
Gilmer
...
”
“That’n yonder,” she said
...
”
“Then what happened?”
“I said come here, nigger, and bust up this chiffarobe for me, I gotta nickel for you
...
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
...
He got me round the neck, cussin‘ me an’ sayin‘ dirt—I
fought’n’hollered, but he had me round the neck
...
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
...
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
...
Gilmer
...
”
“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
...
”
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
...
Gilmer
...

“You are positive that he took full advantage of you?”
Mayella’s face contorted, and I was afraid that she would cry again
...
”
Mr
...
“That’s all
for the time being,” he said pleasantly, “but you stay there
...
Finch
has some questions to ask you
...
”
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
...
From long years of experience, I could tell
he was trying to come to a decision about something
...
Let’s just
get acquainted
...
” Mayella jerked her head resentfully
at the bench
...
You’ll have to bear with me, Miss Mayella, I’m getting
along and can’t remember as well as I used to
...
”
I could see nothing in Mayella’s expression to justify Atticus’s assumption that he had
secured her wholehearted cooperation
...

“Won’t answer a word you say long as you keep on mockin‘ me,” she said
...

“Long’s you keep on makin‘ fun o’me
...
Finch is not making fun of you
...
I don’t hafta take his
sass, I ain’t called upon to take it
...
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
...
Finch’s way,” he told Mayella
...
Finch is always courteous to everybody
...
That’s just his way
...
“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
...
What on earth was her life like? I
soon found out
...
“How many sisters and brothers have
you?” He walked from the windows back to the stand
...

“You the eldest? The oldest?”
“Yes
...
”
“Did you ever go to school?”
“Read’n‘write good as Papa yonder
...
Jingle in a book I had been reading
...
”
Slowly but surely I began to see the pattern of Atticus’s questions: from questions that
Mr
...
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
...
Who are your friends?”
The witness frowned as if puzzled
...
“You
makin‘ fun o’me agin, Mr
...

“Do you love your father, Miss Mayella?” was his next
...

He sat up straight and waited for her to answer
...
“I said he does tollable
...
Ewell leaned back again
...

“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
...

“My paw’s never touched a hair o’my head in my life,” she declared firmly
...
”
Atticus’s glasses had slipped a little, and he pushed them up on his nose
...
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
...
“I knowed who he was, he passed the house every day
...
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 turned around and raised his eyebrows
...

“Yes it was
...
“I did not, I certainly did not
...
“You never asked him to do odd jobs for
you before?”
“I mighta,” conceded Mayella
...
”
“Can you remember any other occasions?”
“No
...
You said Tom Robinson was behind you in the room
when you turned around, that right?”
“Yes
...
”
Atticus’s memory had suddenly become accurate
...
”
“Do you remember him beating you about the face?”
The witness hesitated
...
All this time you were fighting back,
remember? You ‘kicked and hollered as loud as you could
...
She seemed to be trying to get something clear to herself
...
Heck Tate’s and my trick of pretending there
was a person in front of us
...
Gilmer
...
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
...
I mean yes I do, he hit me
...
”
Judge Taylor looked sternly at Mayella
...
We’ve got all the time in the world
...
“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
...
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
...
Will you
identify the man who raped you?”
“I will, that’s him right yonder
...
“Tom, stand up
...
Is this the man, Miss Mayella?”
Tom Robinson’s powerful shoulders rippled under his thin shirt
...
He looked oddly off balance, but it was
not from the way he was standing
...
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, look! Reverend, he’s crippled!”
Reverend Sykes leaned across me and whispered to Jem
...
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
...
“How?”
Mayella was raging
...
Gilmer interrupted with an
objection: he was not irrelevant or immaterial, but Atticus was browbeating the witness
...
“Oh sit down, Horace, he’s doing nothing of the sort
...
”
Judge Taylor was the only person in the courtroom who laughed
...

“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
...
Tell us once more, please,
what happened?”
“I told’ja what happened
...
He choked you then?”
“Yes
...
”
“He blacked your left eye with his right fist?”
“I ducked and it—it glanced, that’s what it did
...
” Mayella
had finally seen the light
...
A while ago you couldn’t remember too
well, could you?”
“I said he hit me
...
He choked you, he hit you, then he raped you, that right?”
“It most certainly is
...
Judge Taylor said, “One question at a time, Atticus
...
”
“All right, why didn’t you run?”
“I tried…”
“Tried to? What kept you from it?”
“I—he slung me down
...
”
“You were screaming all this time?”
“I certainly was
...

“Why didn’t your screams make them come running? The dump’s closer than the
woods, isn’t it?”
No answer
...

“Did you scream first at your father instead of at Tom Robinson? Was that it?”
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
...

Suddenly Mayella became articulate
...

Atticus raised his head
...
“I got somethin‘ to say an’ then I
ain’t gonna say no more
...
Your fancy airs don’t come to nothin‘—your ma’amin’ and Miss
Mayellerin‘ don’t come to nothin’, Mr
...
Her shoulders shook with angry sobs
...
She answered no more questions, even when Mr
...
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
...
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
...
Gilmer told Judge Taylor that the state rested, Judge Taylor said, “It’s time
we all did
...
”
Atticus and Mr
...
I
discovered that I had been sitting on the edge of the long bench, and I was somewhat
numb
...
The temperature was an easy ninety, he said
...
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
...

“Jem,” I said, “Mr
...
”
“That’s okay
...
”
Jem turned back to Dill, explaining, I suppose, the finer points of the trial to him, but I
wondered what they were
...

Gilmer on any points; Mr
...
But Atticus had

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee101

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
...
Atticus said he was a good
judge
...
He took a cigar
from his vest pocket and examined it thoughtfully
...
Having passed the
judge’s inspection, the cigar suffered a vicious bite
...
“It’s gonna take him the rest of the afternoon, now
...
”
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
...

As a rule, a recess meant a general exodus, but today people weren’t moving
...
I guess Mr
...

Atticus and Mr
...
“It’s gettin‘ on
to four,” he said, which was intriguing, as the courthouse clock must have struck the
hour at least twice
...

“Shall we try to wind up this afternoon?” asked Judge Taylor
...

“How many witnesses you got?”
“One
...
”
Chapter 19
Thomas Robinson reached around, ran his fingers under his left arm and lifted it
...
As he raised his right hand, the useless one slipped off the Bible and hit the
clerk’s table
...
” Tom
took the oath and stepped into the witness chair
...

“It must have been disorderly,” said Atticus
...
”
“Did he succeed?”
“Yes suh, a little, not enough to hurt
...

“Yes,” said Atticus
...
Other fellow paid his’n
...
Jem said Atticus was
showing the jury that Tom had nothing to hide
...

“Yes suh, I had to pass her place goin‘ to and from the field every day
...
Link Deas
...
I works pretty steady for him all year
round, he’s got a lot of pecan trees’n things
...
Is there any other
way to go?”
“No suh, none’s I know of
...
”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee102

“When did she ask you to chop up the—the chiffarobe?”
“Mr
...
I remember it because it was choppin‘ time and I
had my hoe with me
...
She give me the hatchet and I broke up the chiffarobe
...
‘ Then I
went home
...
Finch, that was way last spring, way over a year ago
...
”
“When?”
“Well, I went lots of times
...
The murmur
below us died without his help
...
“She’d call me in, suh
...
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
...
Ewell
didn’t seem to help her none, and neither did the chillun, and I knowed she didn’t have
no nickels to spare
...
They’d watch me work, some of ‘em,
some of ’em’d set in the window
...
”
As Tom Robinson gave his testimony, it came to me that Mayella Ewell must have
been the loneliest person in the world
...
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 couldn’t live like Mr
...
Nobody said, “That’s just their way,” about the
Ewells
...
Tom Robinson was probably the only person who was ever decent to her
...

“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
...
I wouldn’t do that, suh
...
He seemed to be a respectable Negro, and a
respectable Negro would never go up into somebody’s yard of his own volition
...
Behind us, the
Negroes did the same
...
The whites of his eyes
shone in his face, and when he spoke we saw flashes of his teeth
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee103

“Mr
...
It seemed real
quiet like, an’ I didn’t quite know why
...
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
...
’ I said you got a screwdriver, Miss Mayella? She said she sho‘ had
...
I said Miss Mayella, this door look all right
...
Then she shet the door in my face
...
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
...
She says, ‘took me a slap year to save
seb’m nickels, but I done it
...
’”
Tom’s discomfort was not from the humidity
...

“I said somethin‘ like, why Miss Mayella, that’s right smart o’you to treat ’em
...
”
“I understand you, Tom
...

“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
...

The witness smiled
...
Most as tall as the room
...
Finch
...
Finch, when I left it
...
”
“What happened after you turned the chair over?”
Tom Robinson had come to a dead stop
...
Underwood sitting across the room
...
Will you tell it?”
Tom ran his hand nervously over his mouth
...
One-third of his cigar had vanished
...
Finch, I got down offa that chair an‘ turned around an’ she sorta jumped on me
...
She hugged me round the waist
...
Darkness had not come, but the afternoon sun had left
the windows
...

“Then what did she do?”
The witness swallowed hard
...
She
says she never kissed a grown man before an’ she might as well kiss a nigger
...
She says, ‘Kiss me back, nigger
...
I didn’t wanta harm her, Mr
...
Ewell yonder hollered through th’ window
...
“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
...
“He says you goddamn whore, I’ll kill ya
...
Finch, I was runnin‘ so fast I didn’t know what happened
...
”
“Did you harm her in any way?”
“I did not, suh
...
Finch, I tried
...
I didn’t wanta be ugly, I didn’t wanta
push her or nothin‘
...
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
...
Ewell,” said Atticus
...
He mighta said somethin‘, but I weren’t there—”
“That’ll do,” Atticus cut in sharply
...
Finch, he were talkin‘ and lookin’ at Miss Mayella
...
”
“Why did you run?”
“I was scared, suh
...
Finch, if you was a nigger like me, you’d be scared, too
...
Mr
...
Link Deas rose from the audience and announced:
“I just want the whole lot of you to know one thing right now
...
Not a speck
...
He was also pink in
the face
...
“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 looked at Jem, but Jem shook his head
...
“I think it’d be different then
...
Link was just disturbin‘ the peace or something
...
Finch if you were a nigger like me you’d be scared too, and told the jury to
disregard the interruption
...
Link Deas to effect total departure
...

Gilmer
...
Gilmer
...
”
“What’d the nigger look like when you got through with him?”
“He beat me, Mr
...
”
“Yes, but you were convicted, weren’t you?”
Atticus raised his head
...
” I thought
he sounded tired
...

“Yes suh, I got thirty days
...
Gilmer would sincerely tell the jury that anyone who was convicted of

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee105

disorderly conduct could easily have had it in his heart to take advantage of Mayella
Ewell, that was the only reason he cared
...

“Robinson, you’re pretty good at busting up chiffarobes and kindling with one hand,
aren’t you?”
“Yes, suh, I reckon so
...
”
“But you are strong enough to?”
“I reckon so, suh
...
”
“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
...
”
“Why didn’t you do them instead of Miss Ewell’s?”
“I done ‘em both, suh
...
Why?”
“Why what, suh?”
“Why were you so anxious to do that woman’s chores?”
Tom Robinson hesitated, searching for an answer
...
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
...
Gilmer smiled grimly at the jury
...
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
...

The witness realized his mistake and shifted uncomfortably in the chair
...
Below us, nobody liked Tom Robinson’s answer
...
Gilmer paused
a long time to let it sink in
...
”
“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
...
“I don’t say she’s lyin‘, Mr
...
”
To the next ten questions, as Mr
...

“Didn’t Mr
...
”
“Don’t think, what do you mean?”
“I mean I didn’t stay long enough for him to run me off
...
”
“If you had a clear conscience, why were you scared?”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee106

“Like I says before, it weren’t safe for any nigger to be in a—fix like that
...
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
...
”
“Are you being impudent to me, boy?”
“No suh, I didn’t go to be
...
Gilmer’s cross-examination, because Jem made
me take Dill out
...
Jem said if I didn’t go
with him he’d make me, and Reverend Sykes said I’d better go, so I went
...

“Ain’t you feeling good?” I asked, when we reached the bottom of the stairs
...
Mr
...
“Anything happenin‘, Scout?” he asked as we went by
...
“Dill here, he’s sick
...
“Heat got you, I expect
...

“It was just him I couldn’t stand,” Dill said
...
Gilmer doin‘ him thataway, talking so hateful to him—”
“Dill, that’s his job
...
”
Dill exhaled patiently
...
It was the way he said it made me sick,
plain sick
...
”
“Well, Mr
...
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
...
It ain’t right, somehow it ain’t right to do ‘em that way
...
”
“That’s just Mr
...
You’ve never seen him get
good’n down on one yet
...
Gilmer seemed to me like he
wasn’t half trying
...
”
“Mr
...
”
“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
...
”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Dill
...
We thought it came from the
tree-trunk, but it belonged to Mr
...
He peered around the trunk at us
...
”
As Mr
...
Somehow, I didn’t think Atticus would like it if we became friendly with Mr
...

“Here,” he said, offering Dill his paper sack with straws in it
...
”
Dill sucked on the straws, smiled, and pulled at length
...
Raymond, evidently taking delight in corrupting a child
...

Dill released the straws and grinned
...
”
Mr
...
He had been lying on the grass
...
”
“You mean all you drink in that sack’s Coca-Cola? Just plain Coca-Cola?”
“Yes ma’am,” Mr
...
I liked his smell: it was of leather, horses,
cottonseed
...
“That’s all I drink,
most of the time
...
“I didn’t
mean to be—”
Mr
...
“Some folks
don’t—like the way I live
...
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
...
It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason
...
He can’t help himself, that’s why he lives the way he does
...
Raymond, making yourself out badder’n you are already—”
“It ain’t honest but it’s mighty helpful to folks
...
”
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
...
But why had he entrusted us
with his deepest secret? I asked him why
...
Let
him get a little older and he won’t get sick and cry
...
”
“Cry about what, Mr
...

“Cry about the simple hell people give other people—without even thinking
...
”
“Atticus says cheatin‘ a colored man is ten times worse than cheatin’ a white man,” I
muttered
...
”
Mr
...
You haven’t even seen this town, but all you gotta do is step
back inside the courthouse
...
Gilmer’s cross-examination
...
Between two fires, I could not decide which I wanted to jump into: Mr
...
“C’mon, Dill,” I said
...
Glad t’ve metcha, Mr
...
”
We raced back to the courthouse, up the steps, up two flights of stairs, and edged our
way along the balcony rail
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee108

The courtroom was still, and again I wondered where the babies were
...
Gilmer was writing on one of the
yellow pads on his table, trying to outdo the court reporter, whose hand was jerking
rapidly
...
”
Atticus was halfway through his speech to the jury
...

Tom Robinson was toying with them
...
“How long’s he been at it?”
“He’s just gone over the evidence,” Jem whispered, “and we’re gonna win, Scout
...
He’s been at it ‘bout five minutes
...
You could’ve understood it, even
...
Gilmer—?”
“Sh-h
...
Hush now
...
Atticus was speaking easily, with the kind of detachment he
used when he dictated a letter
...
I guess it was because Atticus wasn’t a thunderer
...
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
...
We exchanged horrified glances
...

“Gentlemen,” he said
...
” 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
...
To begin with, this case should never have come to trial
...

“The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence to the effect that the crime
Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place
...
The defendant is
not guilty, but somebody in this courtroom is
...

“I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her
...
She is the
victim of cruel poverty and ignorance, but I cannot pity her: she is white
...
She persisted, and her subsequent
reaction is something that all of us have known at one time or another
...
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
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee109

“What was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being
...
Tom Robinson was her daily reminder of what she did
...

“She was white, and she tempted a Negro
...
Not an old Uncle, but a strong young Negro man
...

“Her father saw it, and the defendant has testified as to his remarks
...
We do
know in part what Mr
...

“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
...
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
...
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
...
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
...
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
...
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
...
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
...

“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
...
It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the
humblest J
...
court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve
...

“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
...
A court is only as sound as its jury, and a

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee110

jury is only as sound as the men who make it up
...
In the name of God, do your duty
...
He said it more to himself than to the court
...
“What’d he
say?”
“‘In the name of God, believe him,’ I think that’s what he said
...
“Looka yonder!”
We followed his finger with sinking hearts
...

Chapter 21
She stopped shyly at the railing and waited to get Judge Taylor’s attention
...

Judge Taylor saw her and said, “It’s Calpurnia, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir,” she said
...
Finch, please sir? It hasn’t got
anything to do with—with the trial
...
He opened it,
read its contents and said, “Judge, I—this note is from my sister
...
” Mr
...
“They’re right up yonder in
the colored balcony—been there since precisely one-eighteen P
...
”
Our father turned around and looked up
...

Then he said something to the Judge we didn’t hear
...

Atticus and Calpurnia met us downstairs
...

Jem was jumping in excitement
...
“You’ve been here all afternoon? Go home with
Calpurnia and get your supper—and stay home
...
“Please let us hear the verdict, please
sir
...
“Well, you’ve heard it all, so you might as well hear the rest
...
But I
expect it’ll be over before you get back
...

Atticus opened his mouth to answer, but shut it and left us
...
K
...

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
...
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?

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee111

Jem was chuckling
...
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
...
“She’s run
distracted lookin‘ for you—you watch out she don’t ship you back to Meridian first thing
in the mornin’
...
I
guess it hurt her when we told her Atticus said we could go back, because she didn’t
say a word during supper
...
Calpurnia poured milk,
dished out potato salad and ham, muttering, “‘shamed of yourselves,” in varying
degrees of intensity
...

Reverend Sykes had saved our places
...

“Nobody’s moved, hardly,” said Jem
...
“The
menfolk down there got the womenfolk their suppers, and they fed their babies
...

“‘bout thirty minutes
...
Finch and Mr
...
”
“How was he?” asked Jem
...
I ain’t complainin‘ one bit—he was mighty fairminded
...
I thought he was leanin’ a little to our
side—” Reverend Sykes scratched his head
...
“He’s not supposed to lean, Reverend, but don’t fret, we’ve won it,” he
said wisely
...
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
...
If you were under
eighteen, you didn’t have to go through all this
...
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
...
” Perhaps I was too
convincing, because Jem hushed and never discussed the subject again
...

“Gettin‘ on toward eight
...
He looked in it,
inspected Judge Taylor on his throne, then went back to where he started
...
He acknowledged my salute with a nod, and resumed his tour
...
Gilmer was standing at the windows talking to Mr
...
Bert, the court
reporter, was chain-smoking: he sat back with his feet on the table
...
Gilmer, Judge Taylor
sound asleep, and Bert, were the only ones whose behavior seemed normal
...
Sometimes a baby would cry out fretfully, and a
child would scurry out, but the grown people sat as if they were in church
...

The old courthouse clock suffered its preliminary strain and struck the hour, eight
deafening bongs that shook our bones
...
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
...

Dill was sound asleep, his head on Jem’s shoulder, and Jem was quiet
...

“Sure is, Scout,” he said happily
...
”
Jem raised his eyebrows
...

But I must have been reasonably awake, or I would not have received the impression
that was creeping into me
...
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 steaming summer
night was no different from a winter morning
...
Heck Tate, who had entered the
courtroom and was talking to Atticus, might have been wearing his high boots and
lumber jacket
...
Tate was saying, he ran his hand
slowly up and down his thigh
...
Tate to say any minute, “Take him, Mr
...
Tate said, “This court will come to order,” in a voice that rang with authority,
and the heads below us jerked up
...
Tate left the room and returned with Tom
Robinson
...
Judge Taylor
had roused himself to sudden alertness and was sitting up straight, looking at the empty
jury box
...
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
...
The foreman handed a piece of paper to Mr
...
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
...
His gavel was in his fist, but he wasn’t using it
...
He snapped it
shut, went to the court reporter and said something, nodded to Mr
...
Atticus put his hand on Tom’s

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee113

shoulder as he whispered
...
Then he left the courtroom, but not by his usual exit
...
I followed the top of his head as he made his way to the door
...

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
...
They were standing
...
Reverend Sykes’s voice was as distant as
Judge Taylor’s:
“Miss Jean Louise, stand up
...
”
Chapter 22
It was Jem’s turn to cry
...
“It ain’t right,” he muttered, all the way to the corner of the
square where we found Atticus waiting
...

“It ain’t right, Atticus,” said Jem
...
”
We walked home
...
She was in her dressing gown, and I could have
sworn she had on her corset underneath it
...
Having
never heard her call Atticus “brother” before, I stole a glance at Jem, but he was not
listening
...

“Is he all right?” Aunty asked, indicating Jem
...
“It was a little too strong for him
...
“I’m going to bed,” he said
...
”
“I didn’t think it wise in the first place to let them—”
“This is their home, sister,” said Atticus
...
”
“But they don’t have to go to the courthouse and wallow in it—”
“It’s just as much Maycomb County as missionary teas
...
“You are the last person I thought
would turn bitter over this
...
I’m going to bed
...

He turned in the doorway
...
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
...
”
But things are always better in the morning
...
Jem’s morning
face posed the question his sleepy lips struggled to ask
...

“We’re not through yet
...
Gracious alive,
Cal, what’s all this?” He was staring at his breakfast plate
...
I
fixed it
...
What are these?”
“Rolls,” said Calpurnia
...
”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee114

Atticus looked up at her, puzzled, and she said, “You better step out here and see
what’s in the kitchen, Mr
...
”
We followed him
...
Atticus grinned when he found
a jar of pickled pigs’ knuckles
...

They—they ’preciate what you did, Mr
...
They—they aren’t oversteppin‘
themselves, are they?”
Atticus’s eyes filled with tears
...
“Tell them I’m very
grateful,” he said
...
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
...
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
...
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
...
“It just aggravates her
...
“I told her till I was blue in the face where I was goin‘—she’s just
seein’ too many snakes in the closet
...
Seen her
...
“It’s not becoming to a child
...
”
“I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra
...
”
Jem’s eyes flashed at her, but he said to Dill, “Let’s go
...
”
When we went to the front porch, Miss Stephanie Crawford was busy telling it to Miss
Maudie Atkinson and Mr
...
They looked around at us and went on talking
...
I wished for a weapon
...
“Makes you feel like you’ve done
something
...

Jem groaned and heaved himself up from the swing
...

Miss Stephanie’s nose quivered with curiosity
...
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
...
“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
...
Excuse us, Stephanie
...
Avery
...
There should
have been three little ones
...
But we understood when she cut from the big cake and gave the slice to Jem
...
She sat quietly in a kitchen chair, watching us
...
Things are never as bad as they seem
...
This she did, and we waited
...
Your father’s one of them
...
“Well
...
”
Jem was staring at his half-eaten cake
...
“Like somethin’ asleep wrapped up in a warm place
...
”
“We’re the safest folks in the world,” said Miss Maudie
...
”
Jem grinned ruefully
...
”
“You’d be surprised how many of us do
...
“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 Mr
...
Stop eating and start thinking, Jem
...
Court-appointed defenses were usually given to Maxwell Green,
Maycomb’s latest addition to the bar, who needed the experience
...

“You think about that,” Miss Maudie was saying
...
I was sittin‘ there
on the porch last night, waiting
...
And I
thought to myself, well, we’re making a step—it’s just a baby-step, but it’s a step
...
“Soon’s I get grown—”
“That’s something you’ll have to take up with your father,” Miss Maudie said
...
Avery
and Miss Stephanie Crawford still at it
...
Miss Rachel was walking toward them
...

Jem and I stopped in our tracks
...
“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
...
“Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them
...
I’m gonna stand in the middle of the ring and
laugh at the folks
...
“Every one of ‘em oughta be ridin’
broomsticks
...
”
Miss Stephanie and Miss Rachel were waving wildly at us, in a way that did not give
the lie to Dill’s observation
...
“I reckon it’d be ugly not to see ‘em
...
Mr
...
Miss Stephanie was trembling with
excitement, and Miss Rachel caught Dill’s shoulder
...
“There’s danger a’comin‘
...

“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
...
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
...

According to Miss Stephanie Crawford, however, Atticus was leaving the post office
when Mr
...

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
...
Mr
...
Miss Stephanie said you had to
hand it to Atticus Finch, he could be right dry sometimes
...

“After all, though,” I said, “he was the deadest shot in the county one time
...
He ain’t even got one—” said Jem
...
He told me havin‘ a gun
around’s an invitation to somebody to shoot you
...
“We can ask him to borrow one
...
”
Dill was of the opinion that an appeal to Atticus’s better nature might work: after all, we
would starve if Mr
...
Jem said it might work if I cried and flung a fit, being young and a
girl
...
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
...
Ewell
...
We’re scared for you, and we think you oughta do something
about him
...
“Do what? Put him under a peace bond?”
“When a man says he’s gonna get you, looks like he means it
...
“Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s
shoes a minute
...
The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does
...
He had to take it out on somebody and I’d rather it be me than that
houseful of children out there
...

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
...
“His kind’d do anything to pay off a
grudge
...
”
“What on earth could Ewell do to me, sister?”
“Something furtive,” Aunt Alexandra said
...
”
“Nobody has much chance to be furtive in Maycomb,” Atticus answered
...
Summer was melting away, and we made the most of it
...
He was at Enfield Prison Farm, seventy miles away in Chester County
...

“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
...
We’ve got a good chance
...
He looked up
...
He didn’t kill anybody even if he was guilty
...
”
“You know rape’s a capital offense in Alabama,” said Atticus
...
”
“Given,” said Atticus
...
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
...
”
Jem was shaking his head
...
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
...
“—I mean, before a man is
sentenced to death for murder, say, there should be one or two eye-witnesses
...
’”
“But lots of folks have been hung—hanged—on circumstantial evidence,” said Jem
...
The law says
’reasonable doubt,‘ but I think a defendant’s entitled to the shadow of a doubt
...
”
“Then it all goes back to the jury, then
...
” Jem was
adamant
...
“You’re rather hard on us, son
...
Change the law
...
”
“Then go up to Montgomery and change the law
...
I won’t live to see the law changed, and if you
live to see it you’ll be an old man
...
“No sir, they oughta do away with juries
...
”
“If you had been on that jury, son, and eleven other boys like you, Tom would be a
free man,” said Atticus
...
Those are twelve reasonable men in everyday life, Tom’s jury, but you saw
something come between them and reason
...
When that crew went away, they didn’t go as reasonable men, they went
because we were there
...
In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word
against a black man’s, the white man always wins
...
”
“Doesn’t make it right,” said Jem stolidly
...
“You just
can’t convict a man on evidence like that—you can’t
...
The older you grow the more of it you’ll see
...

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
...
I looked up, and his
face was vehement
...
Don’t fool yourselves—it’s all adding up
and one of these days we’re going to pay the bill for it
...
”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee118

Jem was scratching his head
...
“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
...
For some reason he looked pleased with
Jem
...
“There are lots of reasons
...

“I do
...
Besides,”
Atticus grinned, “I doubt if we’d ever get a complete case tried—the ladies’d be
interrupting to ask questions
...
Miss Maudie on a jury would be impressive
...

Dubose in her wheelchair—“Stop that rapping, John Taylor, I want to ask this man
something
...

Atticus was saying, “With people like us—that’s our share of the bill
...
Our stout Maycomb citizens aren’t interested, in the first place
...
Then, they’re—”
“Afraid, why?” asked Jem
...
Link Deas had to decide the amount of damages to award,
say, Miss Maudie, when Miss Rachel ran over her with a car
...
So Judge Taylor excuses him
...
”
“What’d make him think either one of ‘em’d stop trading with him?” I asked
...
But a jury’s vote’s secret,
Atticus
...
“You’ve many more miles to go, son
...
Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself
about something
...
Sometimes it’s unpleasant
...

Atticus’s fingers went to his watchpocket
...
“That was the one thing that made me think, well, this may be the shadow of a
beginning
...
An inevitable verdict, maybe, but usually it takes
‘em just a few minutes
...
“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
...

Atticus’s eyes twinkled
...
He was one of
your Old Sarum friends…”
“One of the Cunninghams?” Jem yelped
...
” He looked at Atticus from the corners of his eyes
...
On a hunch, I didn’t strike him
...
Could’ve,
but I didn’t
...
“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
...
He said the Cunninghams hadn’t taken anything
from or off of anybody since they migrated to the New World
...
Atticus
said he had a feeling, nothing more than a suspicion, that they left the jail that night with
considerable respect for the Finches
...
“If we’d had two of that
crowd, we’d’ve had a hung jury
...
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

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee119

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
...
Walter Cunningham?” I asked
...
It was not even our bedtime, but we knew he
wanted a chance to read his newspaper
...

“Let’s see now,” he droned to himself
...
Double first cousin
...
That’s all I’ll tell you—you figure it out
...
“Gee minetti, Jem,” I said, when
Atticus had gone, “they’re funny folks
...
She sat
in her chair with her workbasket beside it, her rug spread across her lap
...

“I heard it,” she said
...
Now I was glad I’d done it
...
“He can stay over sometimes after school, too
...
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
...
“Why not, Aunty? They’re good
folks
...
“Jean Louise, there is no doubt in my mind
that they’re good folks
...
”
Jem says, “She means they’re yappy, Scout
...
They like fiddlin‘ and things like that
...
“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
...
Finch women
aren’t interested in that sort of people
...
”
“She may as well learn it now
...
I was reminded vividly of the last time she had put her
foot down
...
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
...

This time the tactics were different, but Aunt Alexandra’s aim was the same
...
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
...
But you don’t have to invite him home
...
”
“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
...
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
...
”
She had said Indeed Not, but this time she would give her reasons: “But I want to play

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee120

with Walter, Aunty, why can’t I?”
She took off her glasses and stared at me
...
“Because—
he—is—trash, that’s why you can’t play with him
...
You’re enough of a problem to your father
as it is
...
He caught me by the
shoulders, put his arm around me, and led me sobbing in fury to his bedroom
...
“‘s all right, sir,” Jem said gruffly, “’s not
anything
...

“Have a chew, Scout
...
It took a
few minutes to work the candy into a comfortable wad inside my jaw
...
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
...
He was growing taller
...
” I said what
...

“Well what?”
“Well can’t you see it?”
“Well no
...
”
“Where?”
“There
...
”
He had been a comfort to me, so I said it looked lovely, but I didn’t see anything
...
”
“Under my arms, too,” he said
...
Scout, don’t let Aunty
aggravate you
...

“You know she’s not used to girls,” said Jem, “leastways, not girls like you
...
Can’t you take up sewin‘ or somethin’?”
“Hell no
...
It was her callin‘
Walter Cunningham trash that got me goin’, Jem, not what she said about being a
problem to Atticus
...
Naw, it was Walter—that boy’s not trash, Jem
...
”
Jem kicked off his shoes and swung his feet to the bed
...
“You know something, Scout? I’ve got it all
figured out, now
...
There’s four
kinds of folks in the world
...
”
“What about the Chinese, and the Cajuns down yonder in Baldwin County?”
“I mean in Maycomb County
...
”
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
...
“I can’t see why Aunty—”
“No, lemme finish—it does, but we’re still different somehow
...
”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee121

“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
...
”
“Background doesn’t mean Old Family,” said Jem
...
Scout, I’ve studied this real hard and that’s the only reason I
can think of
...
” Jem laughed
...
”
“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
...
”
“Well then, how do you explain why the Cunninghams are different? Mr
...
We’ve just been readin‘ and writin’ longer’n they
have
...
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
...
Naw, Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks
...
”
Jem turned around and punched his pillow
...

He was going into one of his declines, and I grew wary
...
He was silent for a while
...
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
...
”
Chapter 24
Calpurnia wore her stiffest starched apron
...
She backed
up to the swinging door and pressed gently
...
So did Aunt Alexandra, I guess, because she
had let Calpurnia serve today
...
Dill would be leaving for Meridian tomorrow;
today he was off with Jem at Barker’s Eddy
...
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
...
From the kitchen, I heard Mrs
...
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
...

I didn’t know whether to go into the diningroom or stay out
...
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
...
I decided to stay out
...

Calpurnia paused in the doorway
...
”
The gentle hum of ladies’ voices grew louder as she opened the door: “Why,

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee122

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
...
“This coffee pitcher’s a curiosity,” she
murmured, “they don’t make ‘em these days
...
Set it down at the end of the table by Miss
Alexandra
...
She’s gonna pour
...
Grinning, she held it open for me
...
Don’t look at it and
you won’t spill it
...
“Stay with us, Jean
Louise,” she said
...

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
...
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
...
Cutex Natural sparkled on
their fingernails, but some of the younger ladies wore Rose
...
I
sat quietly, having conquered my hands by tightly gripping the arms of the chair, and
waited for someone to speak to me
...
“You’re mighty dressed up, Miss Jean
Louise,” she said, “Where are your britches today?”
“Under my dress
...
My cheeks grew hot as I realized
my mistake, but Miss Maudie looked gravely down at me
...

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
...
Nurse? Aviator?
“Well…”
“Why shoot, I thought you wanted to be a lawyer, you’ve already commenced going to
court
...
“That Stephanie’s a card,” somebody said
...
”
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
...
Its warmth was
enough
...
Grace Merriweather sat on my left, and I felt it would be polite to talk to her
...

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
...
For certainly Mrs
...
I searched for a topic of interest to her
...

“Oh child, those poor Mrunas,” she said, and was off
...

Mrs
...
“Living in that jungle with nobody but J
...
“Not a
white person’ll go near ‘em but that saintly J
...
”
Mrs
...
Grimes Everett
knows
...
Grimes
Everett said to me—”
“Was he there, ma’am? I thought—”
“Home on leave
...
Grimes Everett said to me, he said, ‘Mrs
...
’ That’s what he said to
me
...
”
“I said to him, ‘Mr
...
’ That’s what I said to him
...
I said to myself, when I
go home I’m going to give a course on the Mrunas and bring J
...
”
“Yes ma’am
...
Merriweather shook her head, her black curls jiggled
...
You live in a Christian home with Christian folks in a
Christian town
...
Grimes Everett’s land there’s nothing but sin and
squalor
...
”
“Sin and squalor—what was that, Gertrude?” Mrs
...
“Oh that
...
Thing that church ought to do is help her lead a Christian life for those children
from here on out
...
”
“Excuse me, Mrs
...
That darky’s wife
...
”
Mrs
...
“There’s one thing I truly believe,
Gertrude,” she continued, “but some people just don’t see it my way
...
”
“Ah—Mrs
...
Mrs
...
“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
...
Merriweather faced Mrs
...
Their mouths go down to here
...
You know what I said to my Sophy, Gertrude? I said,
’Sophy,‘ I said, ’you simply are not being a Christian today
...
She took her eyes
off that floor and said, ’Nome, Miz Merriweather, Jesus never went around grumblin‘
...
”
I was reminded of the ancient little organ in the chapel at Finch’s Landing
...
The last note would linger as long as
there was air to sustain it
...
Merriweather had run out of air, I judged, and was
replenishing her supply while Mrs
...

Mrs
...
She had a
fresh permanent wave, and her hair was a mass of tight gray ringlets
...
She had a curious habit of prefacing everything
she said with a soft sibilant sound
...
‘S-s-s
Brother Hutson,’ I said, ‘looks like we’re fighting a losing battle, a losing battle
...
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
...
Farrow, I don’t know what we’re coming to down
here
...
”
Mrs
...
Her voice soared over the clink of coffee cups and
the soft bovine sounds of the ladies munching their dainties
...
Good, but misguided
...
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
...
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
...
”
“His food doesn’t stick going down, does it?”
Miss Maudie said it
...
She
had been sitting silently beside me, her coffee cup balanced on one knee
...
Aunt Alexandra had
got it backwards: the business part of the meeting was blood-curdling, the social hour
was dreary
...
Merriweather
...

She said no more
...
Something had
made her deeply angry, and her gray eyes were as cold as her voice
...
Merriweather
reddened, glanced at me, and looked away
...
Farrow
...
Merriweather and Mrs
...
When she had them
well on the road with Mrs
...
She gave Miss
Maudie a look of pure gratitude, and I wondered at the world of women
...
For what, I knew not
...
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
...
People like Mr
...
Ladies seemed to live in faint horror of men, seemed
unwilling to approve wholeheartedly of 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
...
Merriweather was saying
...
People up there set ‘em free, but
you don’t see ’em settin‘ at the table with ’em
...
Down here we just say you
live your way and we’ll live ours
...
Roosevelt’s lost her
mind—just plain lost her mind coming down to Birmingham and tryin’ to sit with ‘em
...
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
...
Finch, there ain’t nothin‘ you can do now, so there ain’t no use tryin’
...
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
...
Calpurnia said, “Because you ain’t familiar with the law
...
Mr
...
”
The front door slammed and I heard Atticus’s footsteps in the hall
...
Not nearly time for him to be home, and on Missionary
Society days he usually stayed downtown until black dark
...
His hat was in his hand, and his face was white
...
“Go right ahead with your meeting, don’t let me disturb
you
...
”
He didn’t go through the diningroom, but went down the back hallway and entered the
kitchen from the rear door
...
The diningroom door opened
again and Miss Maudie joined us
...

“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
...
”
Aunt Alexandra put her hands to her mouth
...
“He was running
...

They said he just broke into a blind raving charge at the fence and started climbing over
...

“Oh yes, the guards called to him to stop
...

They got him just as he went over the fence
...
Seventeen bullet holes in him
...
Cal, I want you to come out with me and help me tell Helen
...
Miss Maudie went to Calpurnia and
untied it
...

“Depends on how you look at it,” he said
...
”
Atticus leaned against the refrigerator, pushed up his glasses, and rubbed his eyes
...
“I told him what I thought, but I couldn’t in truth
say that we had more than a good chance
...
Ready, Cal?”
“Yessir, Mr
...
”
“Then let’s go
...
She sat
quite still; she was so quiet I wondered if she would faint
...

I thought Aunt Alexandra was crying, but when she took her hands away from her
face, she was not
...
She spoke, and her voice was flat
...
” Her voice rose: “It tears him to pieces
...
I’ve seen him when—what else do they want
from him, Maudie, what else?”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee126

“What does who want, Alexandra?” Miss Maudie asked
...
They’re perfectly willing to let him do what they’re too afraid to do
themselves—it might lose ‘em a nickel
...
“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
...
It’s that simple
...

“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
...
”
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
...
It was the size of a football
field
...
“Get up, Alexandra,
we’ve left ‘em long enough
...
She
took her handkerchief from her belt and wiped her nose
...
“Are you together again, Jean Louise?”
“Yes ma’am
...

Their voices swelled when Miss Maudie opened the door to the diningroom
...

“Oh, Mrs
...
Let me get it
...
“Let me pass
you some more of those dewberry tarts
...
The gentle hum began again
...
Perkins, that J
...
He goes to bed
with the… chickens, a crate full of sick chickens, Fred says that’s what started it all
...
She looked at a tray of
cookies on the table and nodded at them
...
Merriweather
...

After all, if Aunty could be a lady at a time like this, so could I
...
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
...
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
...
I was putting my book on the floor beside my
cot when I saw him
...

I lay on my stomach, reached down and poked him
...
Then, feeling safe, I
suppose, he slowly unrolled
...
He rolled up
...
My hand was
going down on him when Jem spoke
...
It was probably a part of the stage he was going through, and I
wished he would hurry up and get through it
...

“Why couldn’t I mash him?” I asked
...
He had turned out
his reading light
...
“Lemme know when you change your mind
...
”
“Aw dry up,” he answered drowsily
...
Comfortable, I lay
on my back and waited for sleep, and while waiting I thought of Dill
...
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
...
The last two days of his time with us, Jem had taught him to swim—
Taught him to swim
...

Barker’s Eddy is at the end of a dirt road off the Meridian highway about a mile from
town
...

According to Dill, he and Jem had just come to the highway when they saw Atticus
driving toward them
...
Atticus
finally slowed down; when they caught up with him he said, “You’d better catch a ride
back
...
” Calpurnia was in the back seat
...
”
On the way to Tom Robinson’s, Atticus told them what had happened
...
Dill said a crowd of black children were
playing marbles in Tom’s front yard
...
Calpurnia
followed him through the front gate
...
Finch
...
“Go on
with your game, boys,” Atticus said to the children
...
Dill said her hair was a
wad of tiny stiff pigtails, each ending in a bright bow
...
Dill said Atticus
went to her, took off his hat, and offered her his finger
...
Then he gave her to Calpurnia
...
Dill said Helen said, “‘evenin’,
Mr
...
Neither did Atticus
...
Just fell down in the dirt, like a giant
with a big foot just came along and stepped on her
...
“Like you’d step on an ant
...
They stayed inside a long time, and Atticus came out alone
...

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
...
Typical of a nigger to cut and run
...
Funny thing, Atticus Finch
might’ve got him off scot free, but wait—? Hell no
...
Easy come,
easy go
...
Nigger always comes out in ‘em
...
There was a
brief obituary in the Colored News, but there was also an editorial
...
B
...
Underwood was at his most bitter, and he couldn’t have cared less who
canceled advertising and subscriptions
...

Underwood could holler till he sweated and write whatever he wanted to, he’d still get
his advertising and subscriptions
...
) Mr
...
Mr
...
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
...
Underwood’s editorial
...
Then Mr
...
Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth
and screamed
...
Maycomb had lost no time in getting Mr
...
Miss Stephanie told Aunt Alexandra in Jem’s
presence (“Oh foot, he’s old enough to listen
...
Ewell said it made one down
and about two more to go
...
Ewell was more hot gas
than anything
...

Chapter 26
School started, and so did our daily trips past the Radley Place
...
He went out for football, but was too slender
and too young yet to do anything but carry the team water buckets
...

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
...
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
...
Two Indian-head pennies, chewing gum, soap dolls, a rusty medal, a

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee129

broken watch and chain
...
I stopped and
looked at the tree one afternoon: the trunk was swelling around its cement patch
...

We had almost seen him a couple of times, a good enough score for anybody
...
Maybe someday we would see him
...
“Hidy do, Mr
...
“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
...
We would never see him
...
I’d have picked somebody
else to look at, but that was his business
...

“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
...
I’m too old to go chasing you off the Radley property
...
You might get shot
...
Nathan shoots at every shadow he sees,
even shadows that leave size-four bare footprints
...
”
I hushed then and there
...
This was the first he
had let us know he knew a lot more about something than we thought he knew
...
No, only last summer—no, summer before last, when… time
was playing tricks on me
...

So many things had happened to us, Boo Radley was the least of our fears
...

Perhaps Atticus was right, but the events of the summer hung over us like smoke in a
closed room
...
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
...
In a way, it was
like the era of Mrs
...
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 was forced to one day in school
...

Each child was supposed to clip an item from a newspaper, absorb its contents, and
reveal them to the class
...

The idea was profound, but as usual, in Maycomb it didn’t work very well
...
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
...

Even so, not many of the children knew what a Current Event was
...

That is an advertisement
...
When his turn came, he went to the front of
the room and began, “Old Hitler—”
“Adolf Hitler, Cecil,” said Miss Gates
...
”
“Yes ma’am,” he said
...
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
...
Puffing, Cecil returned to his seat
...
“How can he do that?”
“Who do what?” asked Miss Gates patiently
...

“Hitler is the government,” said Miss Gates, and seizing an opportunity to make
education dynamic, she went to the blackboard
...
“Democracy,” she said
...

I raised my hand, remembering an old campaign slogan Atticus had once told me
about
...

“Very good, Jean Louise, very good,” Miss Gates smiled
...
“Now class, say it all together, ‘We are a democracy
...
Then Miss Gates said, “That’s the difference between America and
Germany
...
Dictator-ship,” she said
...
Persecution comes from people
who are prejudiced
...
“There are no better people in
the world than the Jews, and why Hitler doesn’t think so is a mystery to me
...
They contribute to every society they live in, and most of all, they
are a deeply religious people
...
”
Cecil spoke up
...
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
...
Time for arithmetic, children
...
The only
time I ever saw Atticus scowl was when Elmer Davis would give us the latest on Hitler
...
”
This would not do, I mused, as the class proceeded with its sums
...
Looked to me like they’d shut Hitler in a pen instead of letting
him shut them up
...

I did, and he said he could not possibly answer my question because he didn’t know
the answer
...
“It’s not okay to hate anybody
...
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
...
” 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
...
Jem understood school things better than Atticus
...
There were at least twelve banana
peels on the floor by his bed, surrounding an empty milk bottle
...

“Coach says if I can gain twenty-five pounds by year after next I can play,” he said
...
”
“If you don’t throw it all up
...
”
“Shoot
...

“Miss Gates is a nice lady, ain’t she?”
“Why sure,” said Jem
...
”
“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
...
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
...
Jem, how can
you hate Hitler so bad an‘ then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home—”
Jem was suddenly furious
...
“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
...
Suddenly tired, I wanted Atticus
...

Atticus smiled
...
” He held
me close
...
He’s having a rough time
these days
...
”
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
...
When he was able to think about it, Jem would be
himself again
...
By the middle of
October, only two small things out of the ordinary happened to two Maycomb citizens
...

The first thing was that Mr
...
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
...
Thereafter, he
resumed his regular weekly appearances at the welfare office for his check, and

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee132

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
...
Ewell openly accused Atticus of getting his job
...
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
...
Judge Taylor was not a Sunday-night
churchgoer: Mrs
...
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)
...
“Hush,” he said to Ann Taylor, his fat nondescript
dog
...
Judge Taylor clumped to the back porch to let Ann
out and found the screen door swinging open
...
Mrs
...

The third thing happened to Helen Robinson, Tom’s widow
...
Ewell was as
forgotten as Tom Robinson, Tom Robinson was as forgotten as Boo Radley
...
Link Deas
...
Link Deas made a job for Helen
...
I
never knew who took care of her children while Helen was away
...
Mr
...
“Just
let it be, Mr
...
“The hell I will,” said Mr
...
He told her
to come by his store that afternoon before she left
...
Link closed his
store, put his hat firmly on his head, and walked Helen home
...
On his way back, Mr
...

“Ewell?” he called
...

“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
...

Helen went to work next morning and used the public road
...

Ewell walking behind her
...
Ewell kept the same
distance behind her until she reached Mr
...
All the way to the house,
Helen said, she heard a soft voice behind her, crooning foul words
...
Link at his store, which was not too far from his house
...
Link came out of his store he saw Mr
...
Mr
...
I ain’t jumped your—”
“First thing you can do, Ewell, is get your stinkin‘ carcass off my property
...
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
...

“I don’t like it, Atticus, I don’t like it at all,” was Aunt Alexandra’s assessment of these
events
...
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?”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee133

“I think I understand,” said Atticus
...
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’ll settle down when the weather changes
...
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
...
I proved him a liar but John made him look like a fool
...
John
looked at him as if he were a three-legged chicken or a square egg
...

By the end of October, our lives had become the familiar routine of school, play, study
...
Cecil Jacobs asked me
one time if Atticus was a Radical
...
He said, “You tell Cecil I’m about
as radical as Cotton Tom Heflin
...
Miss Maudie must have silenced the whole missionary
society at one blow, for Aunty again ruled that roost
...
I learned more about the poor Mrunas’ social life from listening to Mrs
...
A
child had as many fathers as there were men in the community, as many mothers as
there were women
...
Grimes Everett was doing his utmost to change this state of
affairs, and desperately needed our prayers
...
Precisely the same as last year and the year before that,
with only two minor changes
...
I asked Atticus why, and
he said it was because the National Recovery Act was dead
...

The second change in Maycomb since last year was not one of national significance
...
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
...

Misses Tutti and Frutti Barber were maiden ladies, sisters, who lived together in the
only Maycomb residence boasting a cellar
...
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
...
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
...
I deny having taken part in such a thing
...
“Heard ’em drive a truck up to the door! Stomped around like horses
...
“Da-rk they were,” she said
...
”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee134

Mr
...
He surveyed the area and said he thought it was a
local job
...
Nothing less than the bloodhounds must be used to locate their furniture, Miss
Tutti insisted, so Mr
...

Mr
...
When Mr
...
By noontime that day, there was not a
barefooted child to be seen in Maycomb and nobody took off his shoes until the hounds
were returned
...
The high-school
auditorium would be open, there would be a pageant for the grown-ups; apple-bobbing,
taffy-pulling, pinning the tail on the donkey for the children
...

Jem and I both groaned
...
Jem considered himself too old for Halloween anyway; he said he wouldn’t be
caught anywhere near the high school at something like that
...

I soon learned, however, that my services would be required on stage that evening
...
Grace Merriweather had composed an original pageant entitled Maycomb County:
Ad Astra Per Aspera, and I was to be a ham
...

Merriweather’s imagination and the supply of children were exhausted
...
Merriweather (not only the author, but the narrator) identified us
...
Then the assembled company would
sing, “Maycomb County, Maycomb County, we will aye be true to thee,” as the grand
finale, and Mrs
...

My costume was not much of a problem
...
Crenshaw, the local seamstress, had as
much imagination as Mrs
...
Mrs
...
This she covered with brown cloth, and painted it
to resemble the original
...
It came almost to my knees
...
Crenshaw thoughtfully left two
peepholes for me
...
Jem said I looked exactly like a ham with legs
...

When Halloween came, I assumed that the whole family would be present to watch
me perform, but I was disappointed
...
He had been in Montgomery
for a week and had come home late that afternoon
...

Aunt Alexandra said she just had to get to bed early, she’d been decorating the stage
all afternoon and was worn out—she stopped short in the middle of her sentence
...

“‘s matter, Aunty?” I asked
...
” She put away
from her whatever it was that gave her a pinprick of apprehension, and suggested that I
give the family a preview in the livingroom
...
Merriweather would
have done, and I marched in
...

I repeated my part for Calpurnia in the kitchen and she said I was wonderful
...

After that, it didn’t matter whether they went or not
...
Thus
began our longest journey together
...
We didn’t even need
jackets
...
There was no moon
...
I heard Jem laugh softly
...

Jem was carrying my ham costume, rather awkwardly, as it was hard to hold
...

“It is a scary place though, ain’t it?” I said
...
” “You know Atticus wouldn’t let you go to the schoolhouse by
yourself,” Jem said
...
”
“That yard’s a mighty long place for little girls to cross at night,” Jem teased
...
Haints, Hot Steams, incantations, secret signs, had vanished with our
years as mist with sunrise
...
”
“Cut it out, now,” I said
...

Jem said, “Boo must not be at home
...
”
High above us in the darkness a solitary mocker poured out his repertoire in blissful
unawareness of whose tree he sat in, plunging from the shrill kee, kee of the sunflower
bird to the irascible qua-ack of a bluejay, to the sad lament of Poor Will, Poor Will, Poor
Will
...
Jem tried to help me,
but all he did was drop my costume in the dust
...

We turned off the road and entered the schoolyard
...

“How do you know where we’re at, Jem?” I asked, when we had gone a few steps
...
Careful
now, and don’t fall again
...
The tree was a single and ancient oak; two children could not reach around
its trunk and touch hands
...
A small patch of
earth beneath its branches was packed hard from many fights and furtive crap games
...
“Don’t look ahead, Scout,” Jem said
...
”
“You should have brought the flashlight, Jem
...
Didn’t look like it’d be this dark earlier in the evening
...
It’ll hold off a while, though
...

“God almighty!” Jem yelled
...
“Ha-a-a,
gotcha!” he shrieked
...
He
thought Mr
...

“Shucks, ain’t much but around the corner,” said Jem
...
He had given us a fright,

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee136

and he could tell it all over the schoolhouse, that was his privilege
...
“Mrs
...
You can put yours back of the stage by mine, Scout, and we can go with
the rest of ’em
...
He also thought it a good thing that Cecil
and I would be together
...

When we reached the auditorium, the whole town was there except Atticus and the
ladies worn out from decorating, and the usual outcasts and shut-ins
...
The
high school building had a wide downstairs hallway; people milled around booths that
had been installed along each side
...
I forgot my money,” I sighed, when I saw them
...
“Here’s thirty cents, you can do six things
...
”
“Okay,” I said, quite content with thirty cents and Cecil
...
I got rid of my ham
costume and departed in a hurry, for Mrs
...

“How much money you got?” I asked Cecil
...
We squandered our first nickels on the House of Horrors, which scared us not at
all; we entered the black seventh-grade room and were led around by the temporary
ghoul in residence and were made to touch several objects alleged to be component
parts of a human being
...
“Here’s his heart,” which felt like raw liver
...

Cecil and I visited several booths
...
Judge Taylor’s
homemade divinity
...
His
mother said he might catch something from everybody’s heads having been in the same
tub
...
But Cecil said his mother
said it was unsanitary to eat after folks
...

We were about to purchase a blob of taffy when Mrs
...
The auditorium was
filling with people; the Maycomb County High School band had assembled in front below
the stage; the stage footlights were on and the red velvet curtain rippled and billowed
from the scurrying going on behind it
...
Children dressed as various agricultural enterprises crowded
around the one small window
...
Mrs
...

“You all right in there, Scout?” asked Cecil
...
”
“You don’t sound any nearer,” I said
...
Then the bass
drum sounded
...
Merriweather, stationed behind her lectern beside the band, said:
“Maycomb County Ad Astra Per Aspera
...
“That means,”
said Mrs
...
”
She added, unnecessarily, it seemed to me, “A pageant
...

“The whole town knows it,” I breathed
...

“Be quiet back there,” a man’s voice ordered, and we were silent
...
Merriweather uttered
...
Then came the fearless Colonel Maycomb, for whom the county
was named
...
Colonel Maycomb persevered in his efforts to
make the region safe for democracy, but his first campaign was his last
...
After consulting a tree to
ascertain from its lichen which way was south, and taking no lip from the subordinates
who ventured to correct him, Colonel Maycomb set out on a purposeful journey to rout
the enemy and entangled his troops so far northwest in the forest primeval that they
were eventually rescued by settlers moving inland
...
Merriweather gave a thirty-minute description of Colonel Maycomb’s exploits
...
I sat down, listened to Mrs
...

They said later that Mrs
...
She waited a few seconds, then called, “Po-ork?” When nothing
materialized, she yelled, “Pork!”
I must have heard her in my sleep, or the band playing Dixie woke me, but it was
when Mrs
...
Chose is incorrect: I thought I’d better catch up with the rest of
them
...
Taylor brought him a glass of water and one of his pills
...
Merriweather seemed to have a hit, everybody was cheering so, but she caught
me backstage and told me I had ruined her pageant
...
He said he couldn’t see my costume much
from where he was sitting
...
Jem was
becoming almost as good as Atticus at making you feel right when things went wrong
...

“You wanta take it off, Scout?” he asked
...
I could hide my mortification under it
...

“No sir, thank you,” I heard Jem say
...
”
“Be careful of haints,” the voice said
...
”
“There aren’t many folks left now,” Jem told me
...
”
We went through the auditorium to the hallway, then down the steps
...
The remaining cars were parked on the other side of the building, and their
headlights were little help
...
“Here Scout, let me hold onto your—hock
...
”
“I can see all right
...
” I felt a slight pressure on my head, and
assumed that Jem had grabbed that end of the ham
...
”
We began crossing the black schoolyard, straining to see our feet
...
”
“Well let’s go get ‘em
...
“You

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee138

can get ’em tomorrow,” he said
...

“You can get the Janitor to let you in… Scout?”
“Hm?”
“Nothing
...
I wondered what he was thinking
...
I felt his fingers press the top of my
costume, too hard, it seemed
...
“Jem, you don’t hafta—”
“Hush a minute, Scout,” he said, pinching me
...
“Minute’s up,” I said
...

“Thought I heard something,” he said
...
”
We stopped
...

“No
...

“Jem, are you tryin‘ to scare me? You know I’m too old—”
“Be quiet,” he said, and I knew he was not joking
...
I could hear his breath coming easily beside me
...
This was the stillness before a thunderstorm
...

“Heard an old dog just then,” I said
...
“I hear it when we’re walkin‘ along, but when we stop I
don’t hear it
...
Aw, it’s just Halloween got you…”
I said it more to convince myself than Jem, for sure enough, as we began walking, I
heard what he was talking about
...

“It’s just old Cecil,” said Jem presently
...
Let’s don’t let him think
we’re hurrying
...
I asked Jem how Cecil could follow us in this dark, looked to me
like he’d bump into us from behind
...

“How? I can’t see you
...
Mrs
...
I can see you pretty well, an‘ I expect Cecil can
see you well enough to keep his distance
...
“Cecil
Jacobs is a big wet he-en!” I yelled suddenly, turning around
...
There was no acknowledgement save he-en bouncing off the distant
schoolhouse wall
...
“He-y!”
Hay-e-hay-e-hay-ey, answered the schoolhouse wall
...
We should have been leapt
at already
...

He said softly, “Scout, can you take that thing off?”
“I think so, but I ain’t got anything on under it much
...
”
“I can’t get it on in the dark
...
”
“Jem, are you afraid?”
“No
...
Few yards from that, an‘ we’ll be to the road
...
” Jem was talking in an unhurried, flat toneless voice
...

“You reckon we oughta sing, Jem?”
“No
...
”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee139

We had not increased our pace
...
Maybe it was the wind rustling the trees
...

Our company shuffled and dragged his feet, as if wearing heavy shoes
...

I felt the sand go cold under my feet and I knew we were near the big oak
...
We stopped and listened
...
His trousers swished softly and steadily
...
He was running, running toward us with no child’s steps
...

I took one giant step and found myself reeling: my arms useless, in the dark, I could
not keep my balance
...
Metal ripped on metal and I fell to the
ground and rolled as far as I could, floundering to escape my wire prison
...
Someone rolled against me and I felt Jem
...

We were nearly to the road when I felt Jem’s hand leave me, felt him jerk backwards
to the ground
...

I ran in the direction of Jem’s scream and sank into a flabby male stomach
...
His stomach was
soft but his arms were like steel
...
I could not
move
...
I thought, Jem’s up
...
Stunned, I stood there dumbly
...

Still but for a man breathing heavily, breathing heavily and staggering
...
He coughed violently, a sobbing, bone-shaking
cough
...

“Jem?”
Jem didn’t answer
...
I heard him groan and
pull something heavy along the ground
...

“Atticus…?”
The man was walking heavily and unsteadily toward the road
...
Presently I touched someone
...
A prickly stubble on the face told me it was not Jem’s
...

I made my way along in what I thought was the direction of the road
...
But I found it and looked down to the
street light
...
The man was walking with the staccato steps
of someone carrying a load too heavy for him
...
He was
carrying Jem
...

By the time I reached the corner the man was crossing our front yard
...

I was at the front door when they were going down the hall
...
“Call Dr
...

“Where’s Scout?”
“Here she is,” Aunt Alexandra called, pulling me along with her to the telephone
...
“I’m all right, Aunty,” I said, “you better call
...
Reynolds, quick!”
“Agnes, is your father home? Oh God, where is he? Please tell him to come over here
as soon as he comes in
...

Atticus came out of Jem’s room
...
He rattled the hook, then said, “Eula May, get me the
sheriff, please
...
Someone’s been after my children
...
Between here
and the schoolhouse
...
Run out there for me, please, and see if he’s
still around
...
Got to go now
...
”
“Atticus, is Jem dead?”
“No, Scout
...

Aunt Alexandra’s fingers trembled as she unwound the crushed fabric and wire from
around me
...

It was a relief to be out
...
I rubbed them, and they felt better
...
We won’t know how badly he’s hurt until Dr
...
Jean Louise, what happened?”
“I don’t know
...
She brought me something to put on, and had I thought about it
then, I would have never let her forget it: in her distraction, Aunty brought me my
overalls
...

She rushed back to Jem’s room, then came to me in the hall
...

A car stopped in front of the house
...
Reynolds’s step almost as well as my
father’s
...
Dr
...

He came in the door and said, “Good Lord
...
He knew every room in the house
...

After ten forevers Dr
...
“Is Jem dead?” I asked
...
“He’s got a bump on the head just like
yours, and a broken arm
...

Now look over yonder
...

Like somebody tried to wring his arm off… Now look at me
...
Reynolds got to his feet
...
We’ll have to X-ray his arm—looks like he’ll be
wearing his arm ‘way out by his side for a while
...
Boys his age bounce
...
Reynolds had been looking keenly at me, lightly fingering the
bump that was coming on my forehead
...
Reynolds’s small joke made me smile
...
“Now I may be wrong, of course, but I think he’s very alive
...
Go have a look at him, and when I come back we’ll get together
and decide
...
Reynolds’s step was young and brisk
...
Heck Tate’s was not
...

Reynolds said when he came in
...

“Yes sir, I’m goin‘ in to see Jem
...
”
“I’ll go with you,” said Mr
...

Aunt Alexandra had shaded Jem’s reading light with a towel, and his room was dim
...
There was an ugly mark along one side of his face
...
Jem
was frowning
...
“He can’t hear you, Scout, he’s out like a light
...
Reynolds put him out again
...
” I retreated
...
Aunt Alexandra was sitting in
a rocking-chair by the fireplace
...
He was some countryman I did not know
...
He must have heard our
screams and come running
...

Mr
...
His hat was in his hand, and a flashlight bulged
from his pants pocket
...

“Come in, Heck,” said Atticus
...
”
Mr
...
He glanced sharply at the man in the corner, nodded to him, then
looked around the room—at Jem, at Aunt Alexandra, then at Atticus
...
Finch,” he said pleasantly
...
Have that chair, Heck
...
”
Mr
...
He waited until Atticus returned and settled himself
...
Some of his rural clients would park
their long-eared steeds under the chinaberry trees in the back yard, and Atticus would
often keep appointments on the back steps
...

“Mr
...
Tate, “tell you what I found
...
That your dress, Scout?”
“Yes sir, if it’s a pink one with smockin‘,” I said
...
Tate was behaving as if he were
on the witness stand
...

“I found some funny-looking pieces of muddy-colored cloth—”
“That’s m’costume, Mr
...
”
Mr
...
He rubbed his left arm and investigated Jem’s
mantelpiece, then he seemed to be interested in the fireplace
...

“What is it, Heck?” said Atticus
...
Tate found his neck and rubbed it
...
He’s dead, Mr
...
”
Chapter 29
Aunt Alexandra got up and reached for the mantelpiece
...
Tate rose, but she
declined assistance
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee142

Somehow, I could think of nothing but Mr
...
Mr
...

“Are you sure?” Atticus said bleakly
...
Tate
...
He won’t hurt these children
again
...
” Atticus seemed to be talking in his sleep
...

“Hadn’t we better go to the livingroom?” Aunt Alexandra said at last
...
Tate, “I’d rather us stay in here if it won’t hurt Jem any
...
”
“Is it all right if I leave?” she asked
...
I’ll be in my
room if you want me, Atticus
...
“Atticus, I had a feeling about this tonight—I—this is my fault,” she began
...
Tate held up his hand
...
And don’t you fret yourself about anything—why, if we followed our feelings all the
time we’d be like cats chasin‘ their tails
...
You think you can? Did you see him
following you?”
I went to Atticus and felt his arms go around me
...
“We
started home
...
Soon’s we started back for ‘em the lights
went out
...
Tate can hear you,” Atticus said
...

“Then Jem said hush a minute
...
We thought it was Cecil
...
He scared us once tonight, an‘ we thought it was him again
...
They gave a quarter for the best costume, I don’t know who won it—”
“Where were you when you thought it was Cecil?”
“Just a little piece from the schoolhouse
...
We didn’t hear nothin‘—then Jem yelled hello or
somethin’ loud enough to wake the dead—”
“Just a minute, Scout,” said Mr
...
“Mr
...
He had the radio on
...
He remembered because she told him to turn his down a bit so she could
hear hers
...
“I always play a radio too loud
...
Tate
...
Most of them listen to their radios or go to bed with the chickens
...
”
“Go ahead, Scout,” Mr
...

“Well, after Jem yelled we walked on
...
Tate, I was shut up in my costume but I
could hear it myself, then
...
They walked when we walked and
stopped when we stopped
...
Crenshaw put
some kind of shiny paint on my costume
...
”
“How’s that?” asked Mr
...

Atticus described my role to Mr
...
“You
should have seen her when she came in,” he said, “it was crushed to a pulp
...
Tate rubbed his chin
...
There were one or two little puncture marks on his arms
to match the holes
...
”
Atticus fetched the remains of my costume
...
Tate turned it over and bent it around
to get an idea of its former shape
...
“Look
...
A shiny clean line stood out on the dull wire
...
Tate muttered
...

“Don’t like to contradict you, Mr
...
Low-down skunk
with enough liquor in him to make him brave enough to kill children
...
”
Atticus shook his head
...
Finch, there’s just some kind of men you have to shoot before you can say hidy to
‘em
...
Ewell ‘as one of ’em
...
Even if he
hadn’t, I thought he’d come after me
...
Tate sighed
...
Scout, you heard him
behind you—”
“Yes sir
...
”
“I was barefooted, and Jem says the ground’s always cooler under a tree
...
”
“Then all of a sudden somethin‘ grabbed me an’ mashed my costume… think I ducked
on the ground… heard a tusslin‘ under the tree sort of… they were bammin’ against the
trunk, sounded like
...
Some—Mr
...
They tussled some more and then there was this
funny noise—Jem hollered…” I stopped
...

“Anyway, Jem hollered and I didn’t hear him any more an‘ the next thing—Mr
...
Ewell down
...
That’s all I know…”
“And then?” Mr
...

“Somebody was staggerin‘ around and pantin’ and—coughing fit to die
...
I
thought Atticus had come to help us and had got wore out—”
“Who was it?”
“Why there he is, Mr
...
”
As I said it, I half pointed to the man in the corner, but brought my arm down quickly
lest Atticus reprimand me for pointing
...

He was still leaning against the wall
...
As I pointed he brought his arms
down and pressed the palms of his hands against the wall
...

I looked from his hands to his sand-stained khaki pants; my eyes traveled up his thin
frame to his torn denim shirt
...
His cheeks were thin to hollowness; his mouth was wide; there were
shallow, almost delicate indentations at his temples, and his gray eyes were so colorless
I thought he was blind
...

When I pointed to him his palms slipped slightly, leaving greasy sweat streaks on the
wall, and he hooked his thumbs in his belt
...
His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbor’s image
blurred with my sudden tears
...


“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee144

Chapter 30
“Mr
...
“Jean Louise, this is Mr
...
I believe he already knows you
...

Boo saw me run instinctively to the bed where Jem was sleeping, for the same shy
smile crept across his face
...

“Ah-ah, don’t touch him,” Atticus said
...
Heck Tate sat looking intently at Boo through his horn-rimmed glasses
...
Reynolds came down the hall
...
“Evenin‘, Arthur, didn’t notice you
the first time I was here
...
Reynolds’s voice was as breezy as his step, as though he had said it every
evening of his life, an announcement that astounded me even more than being in the
same room with Boo Radley
...
But on the other hand I wasn’t sure
...
Reynolds was carrying a big package wrapped in newspaper
...
“You’re quite satisfied he’s alive, now? Tell you how I
knew
...
Had to put him out good and proper to
touch him
...

“Er—” said Atticus, glancing at Boo
...
There are
plenty of chairs out there, and it’s still warm enough
...
The livingroom lights were awfully strong
...
Tate—Atticus was waiting at the door for him to go ahead of him
...
Tate
...
I was
no exception: “Come along, Mr
...
I’ll just take you to the porch, sir
...

I led him through the hall and past the livingroom
...
Arthur? This rocking-chair’s nice and comfortable
...
Arthur?
Yes, a right pretty spell
...
Tate
...
Boo would feel more comfortable in the
dark
...
Tate was in a chair next to him
...
I sat beside Boo
...
“Jem’s
not quite thirteen… no, he’s already thirteen—I can’t remember
...
Finch?” Mr
...

“Of course it was clear-cut self defense, but I’ll have to go to the office and hunt up—”
“Mr
...
She said Jem got up and
yanked him off her—he probably got hold of Ewell’s knife somehow in the dark… we’ll
find out tomorrow
...
Tate
...
”
Atticus was silent for a moment
...
Tate as if he appreciated what he
said
...

“Heck, it’s mighty kind of you and I know you’re doing it from that good heart of yours,

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee145

but don’t start anything like that
...
Tate got up and went to the edge of the porch
...
“Like what?” he said
...

I don’t live that way
...
Finch
...
Tate’s voice was quiet, but his boots were planted so solidly on the porch
floorboards it seemed that they grew there
...

It was Atticus’s turn to get up and go to the edge of the porch
...
He put his hands in his pockets and faced Mr
...

“Heck, you haven’t said it, but I know what you’re thinking
...
Jean
Louise—” he turned to me
...
Ewell off you?”
“Yes sir, that’s what I thought… I—”
“See there, Heck? Thank you from the bottom of my heart, but I don’t want my boy
starting out with something like this over his head
...
Let the county come and bring sandwiches
...
’ Sooner we get this over with the better
...
Finch,” Mr
...
He killed himself
...
He looked at the wisteria vine
...
I wondered who would give in first
...
Mr
...

“Heck,” Atticus’s back was turned
...
Sometimes I think I’m a total failure as a parent,
but I’m all they’ve got
...
I don’t want to
lose him and Scout, because they’re all I’ve got
...
Finch
...
Tate was still planted to the floorboards
...
I
can prove it
...
His hands dug into his pockets
...
When mine are
grown I’ll be an old man if I’m still around, but right now I’m—if they don’t trust me they
won’t trust anybody
...
If they hear of me saying
downtown something different happened—Heck, I won’t have them any more
...
”
Mr
...
”
Mr
...
As he did
so, Dr
...
“The son—deceased’s under that tree, doctor, just
inside the schoolyard
...
”
“I can ease around and turn my car lights on,” said Dr
...

Tate’s flashlight
...
He won’t wake up tonight, I hope, so don’t worry
...
Looked like a kitchen knife from the handle
...
”
Mr
...
“It was like this,” he said
...
“See
there? Stabbed himself through that soft stuff between his ribs
...
”
Mr
...
“Scout is eight years old,”
he said
...
”
“You’d be surprised,” Atticus said grimly
...
It was mighty dark out there, black as ink
...

“God damn it, I’m not thinking of Jem!”
Mr
...
Miss Stephanie Crawford’s lights went on
...
Tate looked across the
street, then at each other
...

When Mr
...
“Mr
...
You’ve been under a strain tonight no man should ever have
to go through
...
Bob Ewell’s got a kitchen knife in his craw
...
Tate added that Atticus wasn’t going to stand there and maintain that any boy
Jem’s size with a busted arm had fight enough left in him to tackle and kill a grown man
in the pitch dark
...
Where’d you
get it?”
“Took it off a drunk man,” Mr
...

I was trying to remember
...
Ewell was on me… then he went down… Jem must
have gotten up
...
Ewell probably found that kitchen
knife in the dump somewhere
...
”
Atticus made his way to the swing and sat down
...
He was looking at the floor
...

Mr
...
“It ain’t your decision, Mr
...
It’s my decision and my responsibility
...
If you wanta try, I’ll call you a liar to your face
...
All he wanted to do was get him and his sister safely home
...
Tate stopped pacing
...
“I’m
not a very good man, sir, but I am sheriff of Maycomb County
...
Know everything that’s happened here since
before I was born
...
Let the dead bury the dead this time, Mr
...
Let the dead bury the dead
...
Tate went to the swing and picked up his hat
...
Mr
...

“I never heard tell that it’s against the law for a citizen to do his utmost to prevent a
crime from being committed, which is exactly what he did, but maybe you’ll say it’s my
duty to tell the town all about it and not hush it up
...
To my way of thinkin’, Mr
...
It’s a sin and I’m not about to have it on my head
...
But not this man, Mr
...
”
Mr
...
He pulled his
nose, then he massaged his left arm
...
Finch, but I’m still sheriff
of Maycomb County and Bob Ewell fell on his knife
...
”
Mr
...
His car door
slammed and he drove away
...
Finally he raised his head
...
Ewell fell on his knife
...
I ran to him and hugged him and kissed
him with all my might
...
“Mr
...
”
Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me
...
When he got up and walked across the
porch into the shadows, his youthful step had returned
...
“Thank you for my children, Arthur,” he said
...
Every move he made was uncertain, as if he were not sure his hands and
feet could make proper contact with the things he touched
...
His hand searched for his
hip pocket, and he pulled out a handkerchief
...

Having been so accustomed to his absence, I found it incredible that he had been
sitting beside me all this time, present
...

Once more, he got to his feet
...

“You’d like to say good night to Jem, wouldn’t you, Mr
...
”
I led him down the hall
...
“Come in, Arthur,”
she said
...
Dr
...
Jean Louise, is
your father in the livingroom?”
“Yes ma’am, I think so
...
Dr
...

Boo had drifted to a corner of the room, where he stood with his chin up, peering from
a distance at Jem
...
I
tugged him a little, and he allowed me to lead him to Jem’s bed
...
Reynolds had made a tent-like arrangement over Jem’s arm, to keep the cover off,
I guess, and Boo leaned forward and looked over it
...
His mouth was slightly open,
and he looked at Jem from head to foot
...

“You can pet him, Mr
...
You couldn’t if he was awake, though, he
wouldn’t let you…” I found myself explaining
...
”
Boo’s hand hovered over Jem’s head
...
”
His hand came down lightly on Jem’s hair
...
His hand tightened on mine and he
indicated that he wanted to leave
...
He was still holding my
hand and he gave no sign of letting me go
...

I put my foot on the top step and stopped
...

“Mr
...
That’s right, sir
...

He had to stoop a little to accommodate me, but if Miss Stephanie Crawford was
watching from her upstairs window, she would see Arthur Radley escorting me down the
sidewalk, as any gentleman would do
...
I wondered how many times
Jem and I had made this journey, but I entered the Radley front gate for the second time
in my life
...
His fingers found the front

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee148

doorknob
...
I never saw him again
...

Boo was our neighbor
...
But neighbors give in return
...

I turned to go home
...
I had
never seen our neighborhood from this angle
...
I could even see Mrs
...

I looked behind me
...
I
walked to it, stood in front of it, and turned around
...

Daylight… in my mind, the night faded
...
Miss Stephanie Crawford crossed the street to tell the latest to Miss Rachel
...
It was summertime, and two children scampered down
the sidewalk toward a man approaching in the distance
...

It was still summertime, and the children came closer
...
A man stood waiting with his hands on his
hips
...

It was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs
...
The boy
helped his sister to her feet, and they made their way home
...
They stopped
at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive
...

Winter, and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog
...
Autumn again, and Boo’s
children needed him
...
One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his
shoes and walk around in them
...

The street lights were fuzzy from the fine rain that was falling
...
As I made my way home, I
thought what a thing to tell Jem tomorrow
...
As I made my way home, I thought Jem and I would get grown
but there wasn’t much else left for us to learn, except possibly algebra
...
Aunt Alexandra had gone to bed, and Atticus’s
room was dark
...
Atticus was in Jem’s room, sitting
by his bed
...

“Is Jem awake yet?”
“Sleeping peacefully
...
”
“Oh
...
Go to bed, Scout
...
”
“Well, I think I’ll stay with you for a while
...
It must have been after midnight, and I was puzzled by his
amiable acquiescence
...

“Whatcha readin‘?” I asked
...
“Something of Jem’s
...
”
I was suddenly awake
...
Just picked it up
...

“Read it out loud, please, Atticus
...
”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee149

“No,” he said
...
This is too—”
“Atticus, I wasn’t scared
...
Tate
about it
...
Asked him and he said he wasn’t
...
”
Atticus opened his mouth to say something, but shut it again
...
I moved over and leaned my
head against his knee
...
“The Gray Ghost, by Seckatary Hawkins
...

Seconds later, it seemed, his shoe was gently nudging my ribs
...
“Heard every word you said,” I muttered
...
He held me up
with one hand and reached for my pajamas with the other
...
He lifted my legs and put me under the
cover
...

“Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them
...
He would be there all night, and he
would be there when Jem waked up in the morning

---