● DEDICATION● PART ONE❍ Chapter 1❍ Chapter 2❍ Chapter 3❍ Chapter 4❍ Chapter 5❍ Chapter 6❍ Chapter 7❍ Chapter 8❍ Chapter 9❍ Chapter 10❍ Chapter 11● PART TWO❍ Chapter 12❍ Chapter 13❍ Chapter 14❍ Chapter 15❍ Chapter 16❍ Chapter 17❍ Chapter 18❍ Chapter 19❍ Chapter 20❍ Chapter 21❍ Chapter 22❍ Chapter 23❍ Chapter 24❍ Chapter 25❍ Chapter 26❍ Chapter 27❍ Chapter 28❍ Chapter 29❍ Chapter 30❍ Chapter 31● Scan & Proof Notes Contents - Prev / NextDEDICATIONfor Mr. Lee and Alicein consideration of Love & AffectionLawyers, I suppose, were children once.Charles LambPART ONEContents - Prev / NextChapter 1When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at theelbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football wereassuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm wassomewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his handwas at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn’t havecared less, so long as he could pass and punt.When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, wesometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewellsstarted it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long beforethat. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the ideaof making Boo Radley come out.I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with AndrewJackson. If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finchwould 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 consultedAtticus. Our father said we were both right.Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family thatwe had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings. All we hadwas Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety wasexceeded only by his stinginess. In England, Simon was irritated by thepersecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their moreliberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his wayacross the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and upthe Saint Stephens. Mindful of John Wesley’s strictures on the use of many wordsin buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuithe was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the gloryof God, as the putting on of gold and costly apparel. So Simon, having forgottenhis teacher’s dictum on the possession of human chattels, bought three slaves andwith their aid established a homestead on the banks of the Alabama River someforty miles above Saint Stephens. He returned to Saint Stephens only once, to finda wife, and with her established a line that ran high to daughters. Simon lived toan impressive age and died rich.It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon’s homestead,Finch’s Landing, and make their living from cotton. The place was self-sufficient:modest in comparison with the empires around it, the Landing neverthelessproduced everything required to sustain life except ice, wheat flour, and articlesof clothing, supplied by river-boats from Mobile.Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the Northand the South, as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land, yetthe tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentiethcentury, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and hisyounger brother went to Boston to study medicine. Their sister Alexandra was theFinch who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent mostof his time lying in a hammock by the river wondering if his trot-lines were full.When my father was admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb and began hispractice. Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch’s Landing, was the county seat of Maycomb County. Atticus’s office in the courthouse contained little morethan a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama. Hisfirst two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail.Atticus had urged them to accept the state’s generosity in allowing them to pleadGuilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they wereHaverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. TheHaverfords had dispatched Maycomb’s leading blacksmith in a misunderstandingarising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough todo it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody. They persisted inpleading Not Guilty to first-degree murder, so there was nothing much Atticuscould do for his clients except be present at their departure, an occasion that wasprobably the beginning of my father’s profound distaste for the practice ofcriminal law.During his first five years in Maycomb, Atticus practiced economy more thananything; for several years thereafter he invested his earnings in his brother’seducation. John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father, and chose tostudy medicine at a time when cotton was not worth growing; but after gettingUncle Jack started, Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law. He likedMaycomb, he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, theyknew him, and because of Simon Finch’s industry, Atticus was related by bloodor marriage to nearly every family in the town.Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. Inrainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, thecourthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dogsuffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies inthe sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted bynine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps,and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out ofthe stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go,nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundariesof Maycomb County. 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.We lived on the main residential street in town— Atticus, Jem and I, plusCalpurnia our cook. Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us,read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment.Calpurnia was something else again. She was all angles and bones; she wasnearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard. Shewas always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn’t behave aswell as Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn’tready to come. Our battles were epic and one-sided. Calpurnia always won,mainly because Atticus always took her side. She had been with us ever since Jemwas born, and I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence. She was a Grahamfrom Montgomery; Atticus met her when he was first elected to the statelegislature. He was middle-aged then, she was fifteen years his junior. Jem wasthe product of their first year of marriage; four years later I was born, and twoyears later our mother died from a sudden heart attack. They said it ran in herfamily. I did not miss her, but I think Jem did. He remembered her clearly, andsometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and playby himself behind the car-house. When he was like that, I knew better than tobother him.When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries(within calling distance of Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s housetwo doors to the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south. Wewere never tempted to break them. The Radley Place was inhabited by anunknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave fordays on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain hell.That was the summer Dill came to us.Early one morning as we were beginning our day’s play in the back yard, Jem andI heard something next door in Miss Rachel Haverford’s collard patch. We went to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy— Miss Rachel’s rat terrier wasexpecting— instead we found someone sitting looking at us. Sitting down, hewasn’t much higher than the collards. We stared at him until he spoke:“Hey.”“Hey yourself,” said Jem pleasantly.“I’m Charles Baker Harris,” he said. “I can read.”“So what?” I said.“I just thought you’d like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin‘ Ican do it…”“How old are you,” asked Jem, “four-and-a-half?”“Goin‘ on seven.”“Shoot no wonder, then,” said Jem, jerking his thumb at me. “Scout yonder’sbeen readin‘ ever since she was born, and she ain’t even started to school yet. Youlook right puny for goin’ on seven.”“I’m little but I’m old,” he said.Jem brushed his hair back to get a better look. “Why don’t you come over,Charles Baker Harris?” he said. “Lord, what a name.”“‘s not any funnier’n yours. Aunt Rachel says your name’s Jeremy Atticus Finch.”Jem scowled. “I’m big enough to fit mine,” he said. “Your name’s longer’n youare. Bet it’s a foot longer.”“Folks call me Dill,” said Dill, struggling under the fence.“Do better if you go over it instead of under it,” I said. “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.His family was from Maycomb County originally, his mother worked for aphotographer in Meridian, had entered his picture in a Beautiful Child contest andwon five dollars. She gave the money to Dill, who went to the picture showtwenty times on it.“Don’t have any picture shows here, except Jesus ones in the courthousesometimes,” said Jem. “Ever see anything good?” Dill had seen Dracula, a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginningof respect. “Tell it to us,” he said.Dill was a curiosity. He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hairwas snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior butI towered over him. As he told us the old tale his blue eyes would lighten anddarken; his laugh was sudden and happy; he habitually pulled at a cowlick in thecenter of his forehead.When Dill reduced Dracula to dust, and Jem said the show sounded better thanthe book, I asked Dill where his father was: “You ain’t said anything about him.”“I haven’t got one.”“Is he dead?”“No…”“Then if he’s not dead you’ve got one, haven’t you?”Dill blushed and Jem told me to hush, a sure sign that Dill had been studied andfound acceptable. Thereafter the summer passed in routine contentment. Routinecontentment was: improving our treehouse that rested between giant twinchinaberry trees in the back yard, fussing, running through our list of dramasbased on the works of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.In this matter we were lucky to have Dill. He played the character parts formerlythrust upon me— the ape in Tarzan, Mr. Crabtree in The Rover Boys, Mr. Damonin Tom Swift. Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemedwith eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.But by the end of August our repertoire was vapid from countless reproductions,and it was then that Dill gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.The Radley Place fascinated Dill. In spite of our warnings and explanations itdrew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no nearer than the light-pole onthe corner, a safe distance from the Radley gate. There he would stand, his armaround the fat pole, staring and wondering.The Radley Place jutted into a sharp curve beyond our house. Walking south, onefaced its porch; the sidewalk turned and ran beside the lot. The house was low,was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shinglesdrooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remainsof a picket drunkenly guarded the front yard— a “swept” yard that was neverswept— where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance.Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom. People said he existed, but Jem andI had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon was down,and peeped in windows. When people’s azaleas froze in a cold snap, it wasbecause he had breathed on them. Any stealthy small crimes committed inMaycomb were his work. Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbidnocturnal events: people’s chickens and household pets were found mutilated;although the culprit was Crazy Addie, who eventually drowned himself inBarker’s Eddy, people still looked at the Radley Place, unwilling to discard theirinitial suspicions. A Negro would not pass the Radley Place at night, he would cutacross to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked. The Maycomb schoolgrounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chickenyard tallpecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched by thechildren: Radley pecans would kill you. A baseball hit into the Radley yard was alost ball and no questions asked.The misery of that house began many years before Jem and I were born. TheRadleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilectionunforgivable in Maycomb. They did not go to church, Maycomb’s principalrecreation, but worshiped at home; Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the streetfor a mid-morning coffee break with her neighbors, and certainly never joined amissionary circle. Mr. Radley walked to town at eleven-thirty every morning andcame back promptly at twelve, sometimes carrying a brown paper bag that theneighborhood assumed contained the family groceries. I never knew how old Mr.Radley made his living— Jem said he “bought cotton,” a polite term for doingnothing—but Mr. Radley and his wife had lived there with their two sons as longas anybody could remember.The shutters and doors of the Radley house were closed on Sundays, anotherthing alien to Maycomb’s ways: closed doors meant illness and cold weatheronly. Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies worecorsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes. But to climb the Radley front steps and call, “He-y,” of a Sunday afternoon was something their neighbors never did.The Radley house had no screen doors. I once asked Atticus if it ever had any;Atticus said yes, but before I was born.According to neighborhood legend, when the younger Radley boy was in histeens he became acquainted with some of the Cunninghams from Old Sarum, anenormous and confusing tribe domiciled in the northern part of the county, andthey formed the nearest thing to a gang ever seen in Maycomb. They did little, butenough to be discussed by the town and publicly warned from three pulpits: theyhung around the barbershop; they rode the bus to Abbottsville on Sundays andwent to the picture show; they attended dances at the county’s riverside gamblinghell, the Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing Camp; they experimented with stumpholewhiskey. Nobody in Maycomb had nerve enough to tell Mr. Radley that his boywas in with the wrong crowd.One night, in an excessive spurt of high spirits, the boys backed around the squarein a borrowed flivver, resisted arrest by Maycomb’s ancient beadle, Mr. Conner,and locked him in the courthouse outhouse. The town decided something had tobe done; Mr. Conner said he knew who each and every one of them was, and hewas bound and determined they wouldn’t get away with it, so the boys camebefore the probate judge on charges of disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace,assault and battery, and using abusive and profane language in the presence andhearing of a female. The judge asked Mr. Conner why he included the last charge;Mr. Conner said they cussed so loud he was sure every lady in Maycomb heardthem. The judge decided to send the boys to the state industrial school, whereboys were sometimes sent for no other reason than to provide them with food anddecent shelter: it was no prison and it was no disgrace. Mr. Radley thought it was.If the judge released Arthur, Mr. Radley would see to it that Arthur gave nofurther trouble. Knowing that Mr. Radley’s word was his bond, the judge wasglad to do so.The other boys attended the industrial school and received the best secondaryeducation to be had in the state; one of them eventually worked his way throughengineering school at Auburn. The doors of the Radley house were closed onweekdays as well as Sundays, and Mr. Radley’s boy was not seen again for fifteen years.But there came a day, barely within Jem’s memory, when Boo Radley was heardfrom and was seen by several people, but not by Jem. He said Atticus never talkedmuch about the Radleys: when Jem would question him Atticus’s only answerwas for him to mind his own business and let the Radleys mind theirs, they had aright to; but when it happened Jem said Atticus shook his head and said, “Mm,mm, mm.”So Jem received most of his information from Miss Stephanie Crawford, aneighborhood scold, who said she knew the whole thing. According to MissStephanie, Boo was sitting in the livingroom cutting some items from TheMaycomb Tribune to paste in his scrapbook. His father entered the room. As Mr.Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out,wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities.Mrs. Radley ran screaming into the street that Arthur was killing them all, butwhen the sheriff arrived he found Boo still sitting in the livingroom, cutting up theTribune. He was thirty-three years old then.Miss Stephanie said old Mr. Radley said no Radley was going to any asylum,when it was suggested that a season in Tuscaloosa might be helpful to Boo. Boowasn’t crazy, he was high-strung at times. It was all right to shut him up, Mr.Radley conceded, but insisted that Boo not be charged with anything: he was nota criminal. The sheriff hadn’t the heart to put him in jail alongside Negroes, soBoo was locked in the courthouse basement.Boo’s transition from the basement to back home was nebulous in Jem’s memory.Miss Stephanie Crawford said some of the town council told Mr. Radley that if hedidn’t take Boo back, Boo would die of mold from the damp. Besides, Boo couldnot live forever on the bounty of the county.Nobody knew what form of intimidation Mr. Radley employed to keep Boo out ofsight, but Jem figured that Mr. Radley kept him chained to the bed most of thetime. Atticus said no, it wasn’t that sort of thing, that there were other ways ofmaking people into ghosts.My memory came alive to see Mrs. Radley occasionally open the front door, walkto the edge of the porch, and pour water on her cannas. But every day Jem and I would see Mr. Radley walking to and from town. He was a thin leathery man withcolorless eyes, so colorless they did not reflect light. His cheekbones were sharpand his mouth was wide, with a thin upper lip and a full lower lip. Miss StephanieCrawford said he was so upright he took the word of God as his only law, and webelieved her, because Mr. Radley’s posture was ramrod straight.He never spoke to us. When he passed we would look at the ground and say,“Good morning, sir,” and he would cough in reply. Mr. Radley’s elder son livedin Pensacola; he came home at Christmas, and he was one of the few persons weever saw enter or leave the place. From the day Mr. Radley took Arthur home,people said the house died.But there came a day when Atticus told us he’d wear us out if we made any noisein the yard and commissioned Calpurnia to serve in his absence if she heard asound out of us. Mr. Radley was dying.He took his time about it. Wooden sawhorses blocked the road at each end of theRadley lot, straw was put down on the sidewalk, traffic was diverted to the backstreet. Dr. Reynolds parked his car in front of our house and walked to theRadley’s every time he called. Jem and I crept around the yard for days. At lastthe sawhorses were taken away, and we stood watching from the front porchwhen Mr. Radley made his final journey past our house.“There goes the meanest man ever God blew breath into,” murmured Calpurnia,and she spat meditatively into the yard. We looked at her in surprise, forCalpurnia rarely commented on the ways of white people.The neighborhood thought when Mr. Radley went under Boo would come out,but it had another think coming: Boo’s elder brother returned from Pensacola andtook Mr. Radley’s place. The only difference between him and his father wastheir ages. Jem said Mr. Nathan Radley “bought cotton,” too. Mr. Nathan wouldspeak to us, however, when we said good morning, and sometimes we saw himcoming from town with a magazine in his hand.The more we told Dill about the Radleys, the more he wanted to know, the longerhe would stand hugging the light-pole on the corner, the more he would wonder.“Wonder what he does in there,” he would murmur. “Looks like he’d just stickhis head out the door.” Jem said, “He goes out, all right, when it’s pitch dark. Miss Stephanie Crawfordsaid she woke up in the middle of the night one time and saw him looking straightthrough the window at her… said his head was like a skull lookin‘ at her. Ain’tyou ever waked up at night and heard him, Dill? He walks like this-” Jem slid hisfeet through the gravel. “Why do you think Miss Rachel locks up so tight atnight? I’ve seen his tracks in our back yard many a mornin’, and one night I heardhim scratching on the back screen, but he was gone time Atticus got there.”“Wonder what he looks like?” said Dill.Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall,judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch,that’s why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate an animal raw, you couldnever wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face;what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled mostof the time.“Let’s try to make him come out,” said Dill. “I’d like to see what he looks like.”Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he had to do was go up and knockon the front door.Our first raid came to pass only because Dill bet Jem The Gray Ghost against twoTom Swifts that Jem wouldn’t get any farther than the Radley gate. In all his life,Jem had never declined a dare.Jem thought about it for three days. I suppose he loved honor more than his head,for Dill wore him down easily: “You’re scared,” Dill said, the first day. “Ain’tscared, just respectful,” Jem said. The next day Dill said, “You’re too scared evento put your big toe in the front yard.” Jem said he reckoned he wasn’t, he’d passedthe Radley Place every school day of his life.“Always runnin‘,” I said.But Dill got him the third day, when he told Jem that folks in Meridian certainlyweren’t as afraid as the folks in Maycomb, that he’d never seen such scary folksas the ones in Maycomb.This was enough to make Jem march to the corner, where he stopped and leanedagainst the light-pole, watching the gate hanging crazily on its homemade hinge. “I hope you’ve got it through your head that he’ll kill us each and every one, DillHarris,” said Jem, when we joined him. “Don’t blame me when he gouges youreyes out. You started it, remember.”“You’re still scared,” murmured Dill patiently.Jem wanted Dill to know once and for all that he wasn’t scared of anything: “It’sjust that I can’t think of a way to make him come out without him gettin‘ us.”Besides, Jem had his little sister to think of.When he said that, I knew he was afraid. Jem had his little sister to think of thetime I dared him to jump off the top of the house: “If I got killed, what’d becomeof you?” he asked. Then he jumped, landed unhurt, and his sense of responsibilityleft him until confronted by the Radley Place.“You gonna run out on a dare?” asked Dill. “If you are, then-”“Dill, you have to think about these things,” Jem said. “Lemme think a minute…it’s sort of like making a turtle come out…”“How’s that?” asked Dill.“Strike a match under him.”I told Jem if he set fire to the Radley house I was going to tell Atticus on him.Dill said striking a match under a turtle was hateful.“Ain’t hateful, just persuades him—‘s not like you’d chunk him in the fire,” Jemgrowled.“How do you know a match don’t hurt him?”“Turtles can’t feel, stupid,” said Jem.“Were you ever a turtle, huh?”“My stars, Dill! Now lemme think… reckon we can rock him…”Jem stood in thought so long that Dill made a mild concession: “I won’t say youran out on a dare an‘ I’ll swap you The Gray Ghost if you just go up and touch thehouse.”Jem brightened. “Touch the house, that all?”Dill nodded.“Sure that’s all, now? I don’t want you hollerin‘ something different the minute I get back.”“Yeah, that’s all,” said Dill. “He’ll probably come out after you when he sees youin the yard, then Scout’n‘ me’ll jump on him and hold him down till we can tellhim we ain’t gonna hurt him.”We left the corner, crossed the side street that ran in front of the Radley house,and stopped at the gate.“Well go on,” said Dill, “Scout and me’s right behind you.”“I’m going,” said Jem, “don’t hurry me.”He walked to the corner of the lot, then back again, studying the simple terrain asif deciding how best to effect an entry, frowning and scratching his head.Then I sneered at him.Jem threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house, slapped it with hispalm and ran back past us, not waiting to see if his foray was successful. Dill andI followed on his heels. Safely on our porch, panting and out of breath, we lookedback.The old house was the same, droopy and sick, but as we stared down the street wethought we saw an inside shutter move. Flick. A tiny, almost invisible movement,and the house was still.Contents - Prev / NextChapter 2Dill left us early in September, to return to Meridian. We saw him off on the fiveo’clock bus and I was miserable without him until it occurred to me that I wouldbe starting to school in a week. I never looked forward more to anything in mylife. Hours of wintertime had found me in the treehouse, looking over at theschoolyard, spying on multitudes of children through a two-power telescope Jemhad given me, learning their games, following Jem’s red jacket through wriggling circles of blind man’s buff, secretly sharing their misfortunes and minor victories.I longed to join them.Jem condescended to take me to school the first day, a job usually done by one’sparents, but Atticus had said Jem would be delighted to show me where my roomwas. I think some money changed hands in this transaction, for as we trottedaround the corner past the Radley Place I heard an unfamiliar jingle in Jem’spockets. When we slowed to a walk at the edge of the schoolyard, Jem wascareful to explain that during school hours I was not to bother him, I was not toapproach him with requests to enact a chapter of Tarzan and the Ant Men, toembarrass him with references to his private life, or tag along behind him atrecess and noon. I was to stick with the first grade and he would stick with thefifth. In short, I was to leave him alone.“You mean we can’t play any more?” I asked.“We’ll do like we always do at home,” he said, “but you’ll see—school’sdifferent.”It certainly was. Before the first morning was over, Miss Caroline Fisher, ourteacher, hauled me up to the front of the room and patted the palm of my handwith a ruler, then made me stand in the corner until noon.Miss Caroline was no more than twenty-one. She had bright auburn hair, pinkcheeks, and wore crimson fingernail polish. She also wore high-heeled pumps anda red-and-white-striped dress. She looked and smelled like a peppermint drop.She boarded across the street one door down from us in Miss Maudie Atkinson’supstairs front room, and when Miss Maudie introduced us to her, Jem was in ahaze for days.Miss Caroline printed her name on the blackboard and said, “This says I am MissCaroline Fisher. I am from North Alabama, from Winston County.” The classmurmured apprehensively, should she prove to harbor her share of thepeculiarities indigenous to that region. (When Alabama seceded from the Unionon January 11, 1861, Winston County seceded from Alabama, and every child inMaycomb County knew it.) North Alabama was full of Liquor Interests, BigMules, steel companies, Republicans, professors, and other persons of nobackground. Miss Caroline began the day by reading us a story about cats. The cats had longconversations with one another, they wore cunning little clothes and lived in awarm house beneath a kitchen stove. By the time Mrs. Cat called the drugstore foran order of chocolate malted mice the class was wriggling like a bucketful ofcatawba worms. Miss Caroline seemed unaware that the ragged, denim-shirtedand floursack-skirted first grade, most of whom had chopped cotton and fed hogsfrom the time they were able to walk, were immune to imaginative literature.Miss Caroline came to the end of the story and said, “Oh, my, wasn’t that nice?”Then she went to the blackboard and printed the alphabet in enormous squarecapitals, turned to the class and asked, “Does anybody know what these are?”Everybody did; most of the first grade had failed it last year.I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faintline appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My FirstReader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, shediscovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. MissCaroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interferewith my reading.“Teach me?” I said in surprise. “He hasn’t taught me anything, Miss Caroline.Atticus ain’t got time to teach me anything,” I added, when Miss Caroline smiledand shook her head. “Why, he’s so tired at night he just sits in the livingroom andreads.”“If he didn’t teach you, who did?” Miss Caroline asked good-naturedly.“Somebody did. You weren’t born reading The Mobile Register.”“Jem says I was. He read in a book where I was a Bullfinch instead of a Finch.Jem says my name’s really Jean Louise Bullfinch, that I got swapped when I wasborn and I’m really a-”Miss Caroline apparently thought I was lying. “Let’s not let our imaginations runaway with us, dear,” she said. “Now you tell your father not to teach you anymore. It’s best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I’ll take over fromhere and try to undo the damage-”“Ma’am?” “Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now.”I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime. I neverdeliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in thedaily papers. In the long hours of church—was it then I learned? I could notremember not being able to read hymns. Now that I was compelled to think aboutit, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat ofmy union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl ofshoelaces. I could not remember when the lines above Atticus’s moving fingerseparated 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 ofLorenzo Dow—anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into hislap every night. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does notlove breathing.I knew I had annoyed Miss Caroline, so I let well enough alone and stared out thewindow until recess when Jem cut me from the covey of first-graders in theschoolyard. He asked how I was getting along. I told him.“If I didn’t have to stay I’d leave. Jem, that damn lady says Atticus’s beenteaching me to read and for him to stop it-”“Don’t worry, Scout,” Jem comforted me. “Our teacher says Miss Caroline’sintroducing a new way of teaching. She learned about it in college. It’ll be in allthe grades soon. You don’t have to learn much out of books that way—it’s like ifyou wanta learn about cows, you go milk one, see?”“Yeah Jem, but I don’t wanta study cows, I-”“Sure you do. You hafta know about cows, they’re a big part of life in MaycombCounty.”I contented myself with asking Jem if he’d lost his mind.“I’m just trying to tell you the new way they’re teachin‘ the first grade, stubborn.It’s the Dewey Decimal System.”Having never questioned Jem’s pronouncements, I saw no reason to begin now.The Dewey Decimal System consisted, in part, of Miss Caroline waving cards atus on which were printed “the,” “cat,” “rat,” “man,” and “you.” No comment seemed to be expected of us, and the class received these impressionisticrevelations in silence. I was bored, so I began a letter to Dill. Miss Carolinecaught me writing and told me to tell my father to stop teaching me. “Besides,”she said. “We don’t write in the first grade, we print. You won’t learn to writeuntil you’re in the third grade.”Calpurnia was to blame for this. It kept me from driving her crazy on rainy days, Iguess. She would set me a writing task by scrawling the alphabet firmly across thetop of a tablet, then copying out a chapter of the Bible beneath. If I reproducedher penmanship satisfactorily, she rewarded me with an open-faced sandwich ofbread and butter and sugar. In Calpurnia’s teaching, there was no sentimentality: Iseldom pleased her and she seldom rewarded me.“Everybody who goes home to lunch hold up your hands,” said Miss Caroline,breaking into my new grudge against Calpurnia.The town children did so, and she looked us over.“Everybody who brings his lunch put it on top of his desk.”Molasses buckets appeared from nowhere, and the ceiling danced with metalliclight. Miss Caroline walked up and down the rows peering and poking into lunchcontainers, nodding if the contents pleased her, frowning a little at others. Shestopped at Walter Cunningham’s desk. “Where’s yours?” she asked.Walter Cunningham’s face told everybody in the first grade he had hookworms.His absence of shoes told us how he got them. People caught hookworms goingbarefooted in barnyards and hog wallows. If Walter had owned any shoes hewould have worn them the first day of school and then discarded them until mid-winter. He did have on a clean shirt and neatly mended overalls.“Did you forget your lunch this morning?” asked Miss Caroline.Walter looked straight ahead. I saw a muscle jump in his skinny jaw.“Did you forget it this morning?” asked Miss Caroline. Walter’s jaw twitchedagain.“Yeb’m,” he finally mumbled.Miss Caroline went to her desk and opened her purse. “Here’s a quarter,” she saidto Walter. “Go and eat downtown today. You can pay me back tomorrow.” Walter shook his head. “Nome thank you ma’am,” he drawled softly.Impatience crept into Miss Caroline’s voice: “Here Walter, come get it.”Walter shook his head again.When Walter shook his head a third time someone whispered, “Go on and tellher, Scout.”I turned around and saw most of the town people and the entire bus delegationlooking at me. Miss Caroline and I had conferred twice already, and they werelooking at me in the innocent assurance that familiarity breeds understanding.I rose graciously on Walter’s behalf: “Ah—Miss Caroline?”“What is it, Jean Louise?”“Miss Caroline, he’s a Cunningham.”I sat back down.“What, Jean Louise?”I thought I had made things sufficiently clear. It was clear enough to the rest ofus: Walter Cunningham was sitting there lying his head off. He didn’t forget hislunch, he didn’t have any. He had none today nor would he have any tomorrow orthe next day. He had probably never seen three quarters together at the same timein his life.I tried again: “Walter’s one of the Cunninghams, Miss Caroline.”“I beg your pardon, Jean Louise?”“That’s okay, ma’am, you’ll get to know all the county folks after a while. TheCunninghams never took anything they can’t pay back—no church baskets and noscrip stamps. They never took anything off of anybody, they get along on whatthey have. They don’t have much, but they get along on it.”My special knowledge of the Cunningham tribe—one branch, that is—was gainedfrom events of last winter. Walter’s father was one of Atticus’s clients. After adreary conversation in our livingroom one night about his entailment, before Mr.Cunningham left he said, “Mr. Finch, I don’t know when I’ll ever be able to payyou.”“Let that be the least of your worries, Walter,” Atticus said. When I asked Jem what entailment was, and Jem described it as a condition ofhaving your tail in a crack, I asked Atticus if Mr. Cunningham would ever pay us.“Not in money,” Atticus said, “but before the year’s out I’ll have been paid. Youwatch.”We watched. One morning Jem and I found a load of stovewood in the back yard.Later, a sack of hickory nuts appeared on the back steps. With Christmas came acrate of smilax and holly. That spring when we found a crokersack full of turnipgreens, Atticus said Mr. Cunningham had more than paid him.“Why does he pay you like that?” I asked.“Because that’s the only way he can pay me. He has no money.”“Are we poor, Atticus?”Atticus nodded. “We are indeed.”Jem’s nose wrinkled. “Are we as poor as the Cunninghams?”“Not exactly. The Cunninghams are country folks, farmers, and the crash hit themhardest.”Atticus said professional people were poor because the farmers were poor. AsMaycomb County was farm country, nickels and dimes were hard to come by fordoctors and dentists and lawyers. Entailment was only a part of Mr.Cunningham’s vexations. The acres not entailed were mortgaged to the hilt, andthe little cash he made went to interest. If he held his mouth right, Mr.Cunningham could get a WPA job, but his land would go to ruin if he left it, andhe was willing to go hungry to keep his land and vote as he pleased. Mr.Cunningham, said Atticus, came from a set breed of men.As the Cunninghams had no money to pay a lawyer, they simply paid us withwhat they had. “Did you know,” said Atticus, “that Dr. Reynolds works the sameway? He charges some folks a bushel of potatoes for delivery of a baby. MissScout, if you give me your attention I’ll tell you what entailment is. Jem’sdefinitions are very nearly accurate sometimes.”If I could have explained these things to Miss Caroline, I would have savedmyself some inconvenience and Miss Caroline subsequent mortification, but itwas beyond my ability to explain things as well as Atticus, so I said, “You’re shamin‘ him, Miss Caroline. Walter hasn’t got a quarter at home to bring you, andyou can’t use any stovewood.”Miss Caroline stood stock still, then grabbed me by the collar and hauled me backto her desk. “Jean Louise, I’ve had about enough of you this morning,” she said.“You’re starting off on the wrong foot in every way, my dear. Hold out yourhand.”I thought she was going to spit in it, which was the only reason anybody inMaycomb held out his hand: it was a time-honored method of sealing oralcontracts. Wondering what bargain we had made, I turned to the class for ananswer, but the class looked back at me in puzzlement. Miss Caroline picked upher ruler, gave me half a dozen quick little pats, then told me to stand in thecorner. A storm of laughter broke loose when it finally occurred to the class thatMiss Caroline had whipped me.When Miss Caroline threatened it with a similar fate the first grade explodedagain, becoming cold sober only when the shadow of Miss Blount fell over them.Miss Blount, a native Maycombian as yet uninitiated in the mysteries of theDecimal System, appeared at the door hands on hips and announced: “If I hearanother sound from this room I’ll burn up everybody in it. Miss Caroline, thesixth grade cannot concentrate on the pyramids for all this racket!”My sojourn in the corner was a short one. Saved by the bell, Miss Carolinewatched the class file out for lunch. As I was the last to leave, I saw her sinkdown into her chair and bury her head in her arms. Had her conduct been morefriendly toward me, I would have felt sorry for her. She was a pretty little thing.Contents - Prev / NextChapter 3Catching Walter Cunningham in the schoolyard gave me some pleasure, but whenI was rubbing his nose in the dirt Jem came by and told me to stop. “You’re bigger’n he is,” he said.“He’s as old as you, nearly,” I said. “He made me start off on the wrong foot.”“Let him go, Scout. Why?”“He didn’t have any lunch,” I said, and explained my involvement in Walter’sdietary affairs.Walter had picked himself up and was standing quietly listening to Jem and me.His fists were half cocked, as if expecting an onslaught from both of us. I stompedat him to chase him away, but Jem put out his hand and stopped me. He examinedWalter with an air of speculation. “Your daddy Mr. Walter Cunningham from OldSarum?” he asked, and Walter nodded.Walter looked as if he had been raised on fish food: his eyes, as blue as DillHarris’s, were red-rimmed and watery. There was no color in his face except atthe tip of his nose, which was moistly pink. He fingered the straps of his overalls,nervously picking at the metal hooks.Jem suddenly grinned at him. “Come on home to dinner with us, Walter,” he said.“We’d be glad to have you.”Walter’s face brightened, then darkened.Jem said, “Our daddy’s a friend of your daddy’s. Scout here, she’s crazy—shewon’t fight you any more.”“I wouldn’t be too certain of that,” I said. Jem’s free dispensation of my pledgeirked me, but precious noontime minutes were ticking away. “Yeah Walter, Iwon’t jump on you again. Don’t you like butterbeans? Our Cal’s a real goodcook.”Walter stood where he was, biting his lip. Jem and I gave up, and we were nearlyto the Radley Place when Walter called, “Hey, I’m comin‘!”When Walter caught up with us, Jem made pleasant conversation with him. “Ahain’t lives there,” he said cordially, pointing to the Radley house. “Ever hearabout him, Walter?”“Reckon I have,” said Walter. “Almost died first year I come to school and etthem pecans—folks say he pizened ‘em and put ’em over on the school side of thefence.” Jem seemed to have little fear of Boo Radley now that Walter and I walked besidehim. Indeed, Jem grew boastful: “I went all the way up to the house once,” he saidto Walter.“Anybody who went up to the house once oughta not to still run every time hepasses it,” I said to the clouds above.“And who’s runnin‘, Miss Priss?”“You are, when ain’t anybody with you.”By the time we reached our front steps Walter had forgotten he was aCunningham. Jem ran to the kitchen and asked Calpurnia to set an extra plate, wehad company. Atticus greeted Walter and began a discussion about crops neitherJem nor I could follow.“Reason I can’t pass the first grade, Mr. Finch, is I’ve had to stay out ever‘ springan’ help Papa with the choppin‘, but there’s another’n at the house now that’sfield size.”“Did you pay a bushel of potatoes for him?” I asked, but Atticus shook his head atme.While Walter piled food on his plate, he and Atticus talked together like two men,to the wonderment of Jem and me. Atticus was expounding upon farm problemswhen Walter interrupted to ask if there was any molasses in the house. Atticussummoned Calpurnia, who returned bearing the syrup pitcher. She stood waitingfor Walter to help himself. Walter poured syrup on his vegetables and meat with agenerous hand. He would probably have poured it into his milk glass had I notasked what the sam hill he was doing.The silver saucer clattered when he replaced the pitcher, and he quickly put hishands in his lap. Then he ducked his head.Atticus shook his head at me again. “But he’s gone and drowned his dinner insyrup,” I protested. “He’s poured it all over-”It was then that Calpurnia requested my presence in the kitchen.She was furious, and when she was furious Calpurnia’s grammar became erratic.When in tranquility, her grammar was as good as anybody’s in Maycomb. Atticussaid Calpurnia had more education than most colored folks. When she squinted down at me the tiny lines around her eyes deepened. “There’ssome folks who don’t eat like us,” she whispered fiercely, “but you ain’t called onto contradict ‘em at the table when they don’t. That boy’s yo’ comp’ny and if hewants to eat up the table cloth you let him, you hear?”“He ain’t company, Cal, he’s just a Cunningham-”“Hush your mouth! Don’t matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house’syo‘ comp’ny, and don’t you let me catch you remarkin’ on their ways like youwas so high and mighty! Yo‘ folks might be better’n the Cunninghams but itdon’t count for nothin’ the way you’re disgracin‘ ’em—if you can’t act fit to eatat the table you can just set here and eat in the kitchen!”Calpurnia sent me through the swinging door to the diningroom with a stingingsmack. I retrieved my plate and finished dinner in the kitchen, thankful, though,that I was spared the humiliation of facing them again. I told Calpurnia to justwait, I’d fix her: one of these days when she wasn’t looking I’d go off and drownmyself in Barker’s Eddy and then she’d be sorry. Besides, I added, she’d alreadygotten me in trouble once today: she had taught me to write and it was all herfault. “Hush your fussin‘,” she said.Jem and Walter returned to school ahead of me: staying behind to advise Atticusof Calpurnia’s iniquities was worth a solitary sprint past the Radley Place. “Shelikes Jem better’n she likes me, anyway,” I concluded, and suggested that Atticuslose no time in packing her off.“Have you ever considered that Jem doesn’t worry her half as much?” Atticus’svoice was flinty. “I’ve no intention of getting rid of her, now or ever. We couldn’toperate a single day without Cal, have you ever thought of that? You think abouthow much Cal does for you, and you mind her, you hear?”I returned to school and hated Calpurnia steadily until a sudden shriek shatteredmy resentments. I looked up to see Miss Caroline standing in the middle of theroom, sheer horror flooding her face. Apparently she had revived enough topersevere in her profession.“It’s alive!” she screamed.The male population of the class rushed as one to her assistance. Lord, I thought, she’s scared of a mouse. Little Chuck Little, whose patience with all living thingswas phenomenal, said, “Which way did he go, Miss Caroline? Tell us where hewent, quick! D.C.-” he turned to a boy behind him—“D.C., shut the door andwe’ll catch him. Quick, ma’am, where’d he go?”Miss Caroline pointed a shaking finger not at the floor nor at a desk, but to ahulking individual unknown to me. Little Chuck’s face contracted and he saidgently, “You mean him, ma’am? Yessum, he’s alive. Did he scare you someway?”Miss Caroline said desperately, “I was just walking by when it crawled out of hishair… just crawled out of his hair-”Little Chuck grinned broadly. “There ain’t no need to fear a cootie, ma’am. Ain’tyou ever seen one? Now don’t you be afraid, you just go back to your desk andteach us some more.”Little Chuck Little was another member of the population who didn’t know wherehis next meal was coming from, but he was a born gentleman. He put his handunder her elbow and led Miss Caroline to the front of the room. “Now don’t youfret, ma’am,” he said. “There ain’t no need to fear a cootie. I’ll just fetch yousome cool water.” The cootie’s host showed not the faintest interest in the furorhe had wrought. He searched the scalp above his forehead, located his guest andpinched it between his thumb and forefinger.Miss Caroline watched the process in horrid fascination. Little Chuck broughtwater in a paper cup, and she drank it gratefully. Finally she found her voice.“What is your name, son?” she asked softly.The boy blinked. “Who, me?” Miss Caroline nodded.“Burris Ewell.”Miss Caroline inspected her roll-book. “I have a Ewell here, but I don’t have afirst name… would you spell your first name for me?”“Don’t know how. They call me Burris’t home.”“Well, Burris,” said Miss Caroline, “I think we’d better excuse you for the rest ofthe afternoon. I want you to go home and wash your hair.”From her desk she produced a thick volume, leafed through its pages and read for a moment. “A good home remedy for—Burris, I want you to go home and washyour hair with lye soap. When you’ve done that, treat your scalp with kerosene.”“What fer, missus?”“To get rid of the—er, cooties. You see, Burris, the other children might catchthem, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?”The boy stood up. He was the filthiest human I had ever seen. His neck was darkgray, the backs of his hands were rusty, and his fingernails were black deep intothe quick. He peered at Miss Caroline from a fist-sized clean space on his face.No one had noticed him, probably, because Miss Caroline and I had entertainedthe class most of the morning.“And Burris,” said Miss Caroline, “please bathe yourself before you come backtomorrow.”The boy laughed rudely. “You ain’t sendin‘ me home, missus. I was on the vergeof leavin’—I done done my time for this year.”Miss Caroline looked puzzled. “What do you mean by that?”The boy did not answer. He gave a short contemptuous snort.One of the elderly members of the class answered her: “He’s one of the Ewells,ma’am,” and I wondered if this explanation would be as unsuccessful as myattempt. But Miss Caroline seemed willing to listen. “Whole school’s full of ‘em.They come first day every year and then leave. The truant lady gets ’em here‘cause she threatens ’em with the sheriff, but she’s give up tryin‘ to hold ’em. Shereckons she’s carried out the law just gettin‘ their names on the roll and runnin’‘em here the first day. You’re supposed to mark ’em absent the rest of the year…”“But what about their parents?” asked Miss Caroline, in genuine concern.“Ain’t got no mother,” was the answer, “and their paw’s right contentious.”Burris Ewell was flattered by the recital. “Been comin‘ to the first day o’ the firstgrade fer three year now,” he said expansively. “Reckon if I’m smart this yearthey’ll promote me to the second…”Miss Caroline said, “Sit back down, please, Burris,” and the moment she said it Iknew she had made a serious mistake. The boy’s condescension flashed to anger.“You try and make me, missus.” Little Chuck Little got to his feet. “Let him go, ma’am,” he said. “He’s a meanone, a hard-down mean one. He’s liable to start somethin‘, and there’s some littlefolks here.”He was among the most diminutive of men, but when Burris Ewell turned towardhim, Little Chuck’s right hand went to his pocket. “Watch your step, Burris,” hesaid. “I’d soon’s kill you as look at you. Now go home.”Burris seemed to be afraid of a child half his height, and Miss Caroline tookadvantage of his indecision: “Burris, go home. If you don’t I’ll call the principal,”she said. “I’ll have to report this, anyway.”The boy snorted and slouched leisurely to the door.Safely out of range, he turned and shouted: “Report and be damned to ye! Ain’tno snot-nosed slut of a schoolteacher ever born c’n make me do nothin‘! Youain’t makin’ me go nowhere, missus. You just remember that, you ain’t makin‘me go nowhere!”He waited until he was sure she was crying, then he shuffled out of the building.Soon we were clustered around her desk, trying in our various ways to comforther. He was a real mean one… below the belt… you ain’t called on to teach folkslike that… them ain’t Maycomb’s ways, Miss Caroline, not really… now don’tyou fret, ma’am. Miss Caroline, why don’t you read us a story? That cat thingwas 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 toadfrogthat lived in a hall.When I passed the Radley Place for the fourth time that day—twice at a full gallop—my gloom had deepened to match the house. If the remainder of the school yearwere as fraught with drama as the first day, perhaps it would be mildlyentertaining, but the prospect of spending nine months refraining from readingand writing made me think of running away.By late afternoon most of my traveling plans were complete; when Jem and Iraced each other up the sidewalk to meet Atticus coming home from work, Ididn’t give him much of a race. It was our habit to run meet Atticus the moment we saw him round the post office corner in the distance. Atticus seemed to haveforgotten my noontime fall from grace; he was full of questions about school. Myreplies were monosyllabic and he did not press me.Perhaps Calpurnia sensed that my day had been a grim one: she let me watch herfix supper. “Shut your eyes and open your mouth and I’ll give you a surprise,” shesaid.It was not often that she made crackling bread, she said she never had time, butwith both of us at school today had been an easy one for her. She knew I lovedcrackling bread.“I missed you today,” she said. “The house got so lonesome ‘long about twoo’clock I had to turn on the radio.”“Why? Jem’n me ain’t ever in the house unless it’s rainin‘.”“I know,” she said, “But one of you’s always in callin‘ distance. I wonder howmuch of the day I spend just callin’ after you. Well,” she said, getting up from thekitchen chair, “it’s enough time to make a pan of cracklin‘ bread, I reckon. Yourun along now and let me get supper on the table.”Calpurnia bent down and kissed me. I ran along, wondering what had come overher. She had wanted to make up with me, that was it. She had always been toohard on me, she had at last seen the error of her fractious ways, she was sorry andtoo stubborn to say so. I was weary from the day’s crimes.After supper, Atticus sat down with the paper and called, “Scout, ready to read?”The Lord sent me more than I could bear, and I went to the front porch. Atticusfollowed me.“Something wrong, Scout?”I told Atticus I didn’t feel very well and didn’t think I’d go to school any more ifit was all right with him.Atticus sat down in the swing and crossed his legs. His fingers wandered to hiswatchpocket; he said that was the only way he could think. He waited in amiablesilence, and I sought to reinforce my position: “You never went to school and youdo all right, so I’ll just stay home too. You can teach me like Granddaddy taughtyou ‘n’ Uncle Jack.” “No I can’t,” said Atticus. “I have to make a living. Besides, they’d put me in jailif I kept you at home—dose of magnesia for you tonight and school tomorrow.”“I’m feeling all right, really.”“Thought so. Now what’s the matter?”Bit by bit, I told him the day’s misfortunes. “-and she said you taught me allwrong, so we can’t ever read any more, ever. Please don’t send me back, pleasesir.”Atticus stood up and walked to the end of the porch. When he completed hisexamination of the wisteria vine he strolled back to me.“First of all,” he said, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lotbetter with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until youconsider things from his point of view-”“Sir?”“-until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”Atticus said I had learned many things today, and Miss Caroline had learnedseveral things herself. She had learned not to hand something to a Cunningham,for one thing, but if Walter and I had put ourselves in her shoes we’d have seen itwas an honest mistake on her part. We could not expect her to learn allMaycomb’s ways in one day, and we could not hold her responsible when sheknew no better.“I’ll be dogged,” I said. “I didn’t know no better than not to read to her, and sheheld me responsible—listen Atticus, I don’t have to go to school!” I was burstingwith a sudden thought. “Burris Ewell, remember? He just goes to school the firstday. The truant lady reckons she’s carried out the law when she gets his name onthe roll-” “You can’t do that, Scout,” Atticus said. “Sometimes it’s better to bendthe law a little in special cases. In your case, the law remains rigid. So to schoolyou must go.”“I don’t see why I have to when he doesn’t.”“Then listen.”Atticus said the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations.None of them had done an honest day’s work in his recollection. He said that some Christmas, when he was getting rid of the tree, he would take me with himand show me where and how they lived. They were people, but they lived likeanimals. “They can go to school any time they want to, when they show thefaintest symptom of wanting an education,” said Atticus. “There are ways ofkeeping them in school by force, but it’s silly to force people like the Ewells intoa new environment-”“If I didn’t go to school tomorrow, you’d force me to.”“Let us leave it at this,” said Atticus dryly. “You, Miss Scout Finch, are of thecommon folk. You must obey the law.” He said that the Ewells were members ofan exclusive society made up of Ewells. In certain circumstances the commonfolk judiciously allowed them certain privileges by the simple method ofbecoming blind to some of the Ewells’ activities. They didn’t have to go toschool, for one thing. Another thing, Mr. Bob Ewell, Burris’s father, waspermitted to hunt and trap out of season.“Atticus, that’s bad,” I said. In Maycomb County, hunting out of season was amisdemeanor at law, a capital felony in the eyes of the populace.“It’s against the law, all right,” said my father, “and it’s certainly bad, but when aman spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of cryingfrom hunger pains. I don’t know of any landowner around here who begrudgesthose children any game their father can hit.”“Mr. Ewell shouldn’t do that-”“Of course he shouldn’t, but he’ll never change his ways. Are you going to takeout your disapproval on his children?”“No sir,” I murmured, and made a final stand: “But if I keep on goin‘ to school,we can’t ever read any more…”“That’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”“Yes sir.”When Atticus looked down at me I saw the expression on his face that alwaysmade me expect something. “Do you know what a compromise is?” he asked.“Bending the law?”“No, an agreement reached by mutual concessions. It works this way,” he said. “If you’ll concede the necessity of going to school, we’ll go on reading every nightjust as we always have. Is it a bargain?”“Yes sir!”“We’ll consider it sealed without the usual formality,” Atticus said, when he sawme preparing to spit.As I opened the front screen door Atticus said, “By the way, Scout, you’d betternot say anything at school about our agreement.”“Why not?”“I’m afraid our activities would be received with considerable disapprobation bythe more learned authorities.”Jem and I were accustomed to our father’s last-will-and-testament diction, and wewere at all times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond ourunderstanding.“Huh, sir?”“I never went to school,” he said, “but I have a feeling that if you tell MissCaroline we read every night she’ll get after me, and I wouldn’t want her afterme.”Atticus kept us in fits that evening, gravely reading columns of print about a manwho sat on a flagpole for no discernible reason, which was reason enough for Jemto spend the following Saturday aloft in the treehouse. Jem sat from afterbreakfast until sunset and would have remained overnight had not Atticus severedhis supply lines. I had spent most of the day climbing up and down, runningerrands for him, providing him with literature, nourishment and water, and wascarrying him blankets for the night when Atticus said if I paid no attention to him,Jem would come down. Atticus was right.Contents - Prev / Next Chapter 4The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed,they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles ofconstruction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in itswell-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics. What Jem calledthe Dewey Decimal System was school-wide by the end of my first year, so I hadno chance to compare it with other teaching techniques. I could only look aroundme: Atticus and my uncle, who went to school at home, knew everything—atleast, what one didn’t know the other did. Furthermore, I couldn’t help noticingthat my father had served for years in the state legislature, elected each timewithout opposition, innocent of the adjustments my teachers thought essential tothe development of Good Citizenship. Jem, educated on a half-Decimal half-Duncecap basis, seemed to function effectively alone or in a group, but Jem was apoor example: no tutorial system devised by man could have stopped him fromgetting at books. As for me, I knew nothing except what I gathered from Timemagazine and reading everything I could lay hands on at home, but as I inchedsluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could nothelp receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out ofwhat I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredomwas exactly what the state had in mind for me.As the year passed, released from school thirty minutes before Jem, who had tostay until three o’clock, I ran by the Radley Place as fast as I could, not stoppinguntil I reached the safety of our front porch. One afternoon as I raced by,something caught my eye and caught it in such a way that I took a deep breath, along look around, and went back.Two live oaks stood at the edge of the Radley lot; their roots reached out into theside-road and made it bumpy. Something about one of the trees attracted myattention.Some tinfoil was sticking in a knot-hole just above my eye level, winking at me inthe afternoon sun. I stood on tiptoe, hastily looked around once more, reachedinto the hole, and withdrew two pieces of chewing gum minus their outerwrappers. My first impulse was to get it into my mouth as quickly as possible, but Iremembered where I was. I ran home, and on our front porch I examined my loot.The gum looked fresh. I sniffed it and it smelled all right. I licked it and waitedfor a while. When I did not die I crammed it into my mouth: Wrigley’s Double-Mint.When Jem came home he asked me where I got such a wad. I told him I found it.“Don’t eat things you find, Scout.”“This wasn’t on the ground, it was in a tree.”Jem growled.“Well it was,” I said. “It was sticking in that tree yonder, the one comin‘ fromschool.”“Spit it out right now!”I spat it out. The tang was fading, anyway. “I’ve been chewin‘ it all afternoon andI ain’t dead yet, not even sick.”Jem stamped his foot. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to even touch thetrees over there? You’ll get killed if you do!”“You touched the house once!”“That was different! You go gargle—right now, you hear me?”“Ain’t neither, it’ll take the taste outa my mouth.”“You don’t ‘n’ I’ll tell Calpurnia on you!”Rather than risk a tangle with Calpurnia, I did as Jem told me. For some reason,my first year of school had wrought a great change in our relationship:Calpurnia’s tyranny, unfairness, and meddling in my business had faded to gentlegrumblings of general disapproval. On my part, I went to much trouble,sometimes, not to provoke her.Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was ourbest season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleepin the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in aparched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.The authorities released us early the last day of school, and Jem and I walked home together. “Reckon old Dill’ll be coming home tomorrow,” I said.“Probably day after,” said Jem. “Mis’sippi turns ‘em loose a day later.”As we came to the live oaks at the Radley Place I raised my finger to point for thehundredth time to the knot-hole where I had found the chewing gum, trying tomake Jem believe I had found it there, and found myself pointing at another pieceof tinfoil.“I see it, Scout! I see it-”Jem looked around, reached up, and gingerly pocketed a tiny shiny package. Weran home, and on the front porch we looked at a small box patchworked with bitsof tinfoil collected from chewing-gum wrappers. It was the kind of box weddingrings came in, purple velvet with a minute catch. Jem flicked open the tiny catch.Inside were two scrubbed and polished pennies, one on top of the other. Jemexamined them.“Indian-heads,” he said. “Nineteen-six and Scout, one of em’s nineteen-hundred.These are real old.”“Nineteen-hundred,” I echoed. “Say-”“Hush a minute, I’m thinkin‘.”“Jem, you reckon that’s somebody’s hidin‘ place?”“Naw, don’t anybody much but us pass by there, unless it’s some grownperson’s-”“Grown folks don’t have hidin‘ places. You reckon we ought to keep ’em, Jem?”“I don’t know what we could do, Scout. Who’d we give ‘em back to? I know for afact don’t anybody go by there—Cecil goes by the back street an’ all the wayaround by town to get home.”Cecil Jacobs, who lived at the far end of our street next door to the post office,walked a total of one mile per school day to avoid the Radley Place and old Mrs.Henry Lafayette Dubose. Mrs. Dubose lived two doors up the street from us;neighborhood opinion was unanimous that Mrs. Dubose was the meanest oldwoman who ever lived. Jem wouldn’t go by her place without Atticus beside him.“What you reckon we oughta do, Jem?” Finders were keepers unless title was proven. Plucking an occasional camellia,getting a squirt of hot milk from Miss Maudie Atkinson’s cow on a summer day,helping ourselves to someone’s scuppernongs was part of our ethical culture, butmoney was different.“Tell you what,” said Jem. “We’ll keep ‘em till school starts, then go around andask everybody if they’re theirs. They’re some bus child’s, maybe—he was tootaken up with gettin’ outa school today an‘ forgot ’em. These are somebody’s, Iknow that. See how they’ve been slicked up? They’ve been saved.”“Yeah, but why should somebody wanta put away chewing gum like that? Youknow it doesn’t last.”“I don’t know, Scout. But these are important to somebody…”“How’s that, Jem…?”“Well, Indian-heads—well, they come from the Indians. They’re real strongmagic, they make you have good luck. Not like fried chicken when you’re notlookin‘ for it, but things like long life ’n‘ good health, ’n‘ passin’ six-weekstests… these are real valuable to somebody. I’m gonna put em in my trunk.”Before Jem went to his room, he looked for a long time at the Radley Place. Heseemed to be thinking again.Two days later Dill arrived in a blaze of glory: he had ridden the train by himselffrom Meridian to Maycomb Junction (a courtesy title—Maycomb Junction was inAbbott 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 offthe train in Bay St. Louis and stuck to his story regardless of threats. He haddiscarded the abominable blue shorts that were buttoned to his shirts and worereal short pants with a belt; he was somewhat heavier, no taller, and said he hadseen his father. Dill’s father was taller than ours, he had a black beard (pointed),and was president of the L & N Railroad.“I helped the engineer for a while,” said Dill, yawning.“In a pig’s ear you did, Dill. Hush,” said Jem. “What’ll we play today?”“Tom and Sam and Dick,” said Dill. “Let’s go in the front yard.” Dill wanted theRover Boys because there were three respectable parts. He was clearly tired of being our character man.“I’m tired of those,” I said. I was tired of playing Tom Rover, who suddenly losthis memory in the middle of a picture show and was out of the script until theend, when he was found in Alaska.“Make us up one, Jem,” I said.“I’m tired of makin‘ ’em up.”Our first days of freedom, and we were tired. I wondered what the summer wouldbring.We had strolled to the front yard, where Dill stood looking down the street at thedreary face of the Radley Place. “I—smell—death,” he said. “I do, I mean it,” hesaid, when I told him to shut up.“You mean when somebody’s dyin‘ you can smell it?”“No, I mean I can smell somebody an‘ tell if they’re gonna die. An old ladytaught me how.” Dill leaned over and sniffed me. “Jean—Louise—Finch, you aregoing to die in three days.”“Dill if you don’t hush I’ll knock you bowlegged. I mean it, now-”“Yawl hush,” growled Jem, “you act like you believe in Hot Steams.”“You act like you don’t,” I said.“What’s a Hot Steam?” asked Dill.“Haven’t you ever walked along a lonesome road at night and passed by a hotplace?” Jem asked Dill. “A Hot Steam’s somebody who can’t get to heaven, justwallows around on lonesome roads an‘ if you walk through him, when you dieyou’ll be one too, an’ you’ll go around at night suckin‘ people’s breath-”“How can you keep from passing through one?”“You can’t,” said Jem. “Sometimes they stretch all the way across the road, but ifyou hafta go through one you say, ‘Angel-bright, life-in-death; get off the road,don’t suck my breath.’ That keeps ‘em from wrapping around you-”“Don’t you believe a word he says, Dill,” I said. “Calpurnia says that’s nigger-talk.”Jem scowled darkly at me, but said, “Well, are we gonna play anything or not?”