Jem wanted Dill to know once and for all that he wasn't scared of
anything: "It's just that I can't think of a way to make him come out
without him gettin' us." Besides, Jem had his little sister to think of.
When he said that, I knew he was afraid. Jem had his little sister
to think of the time I dared him to jump off the top of the house: "If I
got killed, what'd become of you?" he asked. Then he jumped, landed
unhurt, and his sense of responsibility left him until confronted by the
Radley Place.
* * *
Jem condescended to take me to school the first day, a job usually
done by one's parents, but Atticus had said Jem would be delighted to show
me where my room was. I think some money changed hands in this
transaction, for as we trotted around the corner past the Radley Place I
heard an unfamiliar jingle in Jem's pockets. When we slowed to a walk at
the edge of the schoolyard, Jem was careful to explain that during school
hours I was not to bother him, I was not to approach him with requests to
enact a chapter of Tarzan and the Ant Men, to embarrass him with
references to his private life, or tag along behind him at recess and
noon. I was to stick with the first grade and he would stick with the
fifth. In short, I was to leave him alone.
"You mean we can't play any more?" I asked.
"We'll do like we always do at home," he said, "but you'll see-
school's different."
It certainly was. Before the first morning was over, Miss Caroline
Fisher, our teacher, hauled me up to the front of the room and patted the
palm of my hand with a ruler, then made me stand in the corner until noon.
Miss Caroline was no more than twenty-one. She had bright auburn
hair, pink cheeks, and wore crimson fingernail polish. She also wore
high-heeled pumps and a red-and-white-striped dress. She looked and
smelled like a peppermint drop. She boarded across the street one door
down from us in Miss Maudie Atkinson's upstairs front room, and when Miss
Maudie introduced us to her, Jem was in a haze for days.
Miss Caroline printed her name on the blackboard and said, "This
says I am Miss Caroline Fisher. I am from North Alabama, from Winston
County." The class murmured apprehensively, should she prove to harbor her
share of the peculiarities indigenous to that region. (When Alabama
seceded from the Union on January 11, 1861, Winston County seceded from
Alabama, and every child in Maycomb County knew it.) North Alabama was
full of Liquor Interests, Big Mules, steel companies, Republicans,
professors, and other persons of no background.
Miss Caroline began the day by reading us a story about cats. The
cats had long conversations with one another, they wore cunning little
clothes and lived in a warm house beneath a kitchen stove. By the time
Mrs. Cat called the drugstore for an order of chocolate malted mice the
class was wriggling like a bucketful of catawba worms. Miss Caroline
seemed unaware that the ragged, denim-shirted and floursack-skirted first
grade, most of whom had chopped cotton and fed hogs from the time they
were able to walk, were immune to imaginative literature. Miss Caroline
came to the end of the story and said, "Oh, my, wasn't that nice?"
Then she went to the blackboard and printed the alphabet in
enormous square capitals, turned to the class and asked, "Does anybody
know what these are?"
Everybody did; most of the first grade had failed it last year.
I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the
alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me
read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The
Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me
with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not
to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading.
"Teach me?" I said in surprise. "He hasn't taught me anything,
Miss Caroline. Atticus ain't got time to teach me anything," I added, when
Miss Caroline smiled and shook her head. "Why, he's so tired at night he
just sits in the livingroom and reads."
"If he didn't teach you, who did?" Miss Caroline asked
good-naturedly. "Somebody did. You weren't born reading The Mobile
Register."
"Jem says I was. He read in a book where I was a Bullfinch instead
of a Finch. Jem says my name's really Jean Louise Bullfinch, that I got
swapped when I was born and I'm really a-"
Miss Caroline apparently thought I was lying. "Let's not let our
imaginations run away with us, dear," she said. "Now you tell your father
not to teach you any more. It's best to begin reading with a fresh mind.
You tell him I'll take over from here and try to undo the damage-"
"Ma'am?"
"Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now."
I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime. I
never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing
illicitly in the daily papers. In the long hours of church- was it then I
learned? I could not remember not being able to read hymns. Now that I was
compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me,
as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or
achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces. I could not remember when
the lines above Atticus's moving finger separated into words, but I had
stared at them all the evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the
day, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow- anything
Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night.
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love
breathing.
* * *
"Atticus, that's bad," I said. In Maycomb County, hunting out of
season was a misdemeanor at law, a capital felony in the eyes of the
populace.
"It's against the law, all right," said my father, "and it's
certainly bad, but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey
his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don't know of any
landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father
can hit."
"Mr. Ewell shouldn't do that-"
"Of course he shouldn't, but he'll never change his ways. Are you
going to take out your disapproval on his children?"
"No sir," I murmured, and made a final stand: "But if I keep on
goin' to school, we can't ever read any more...."
"That's really bothering you, isn't it?"
"Yes sir."
When Atticus looked down at me I saw the expression on his face
that always made me expect something. "Do you know what a compromise is?"
he asked.
"Bending the law?"
"No, an agreement reached by mutual concessions. It works this
way," he said. "If you'll concede the necessity of going to school, we'll
go on reading every night just as we always have. Is it a bargain?"
"Yes sir!"
"We'll consider it sealed without the usual formality," Atticus
said, when he saw me preparing to spit.
As I opened the front screen door Atticus said, "By the way,
Scout, you'd better not say anything at school about our agreement."
"Why not?"
"I'm afraid our activities would be received with considerable
disapprobation by the more learned authorities."
Jem and I were accustomed to our father's last-will-and-testament
diction, and we were at all times free to interrupt Atticus for a
translation when it was beyond our understanding.
"Huh, sir?"
"I never went to school," he said, "but I have a feeling that if
you tell Miss Caroline we read every night she'll get after me, and I
wouldn't want her after me."
* * *
My confidence in pulpit Gospel lessened at the vision of Miss
Maudie stewing forever in various Protestant hells. True enough, she had
an acid tongue in her head, and she did not go about the neighborhood
doing good, as did Miss Stephanie Crawford. But while no one with a grain
of sense trusted Miss Stephanie, Jem and I had considerable faith in Miss
Maudie. She had never told on us, had never played cat-and-mouse with us,
she was not at all interested in our private lives. She was our friend.
How so reasonable a creature could live in peril of everlasting torment
was incomprehensible.
"That ain't right, Miss Maudie. You're the best lady I know."
Miss Maudie grinned. "Thank you ma'am. Thing is, foot-washers
think women are a sin by definition. They take the Bible literally, you
know."
"Is that why Mr. Arthur stays in the house, to keep away from
women?"
"I've no idea."
"It doesn't make sense to me. Looks like if Mr. Arthur was
hankerin' after heaven he'd come out on the porch at least. Atticus says
God's loving folks like you love yourself-"
Miss Maudie stopped rocking, and her voice hardened. "You are too
young to understand it," she said, "but sometimes the Bible in the hand of
one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of- oh, of your
father."
I was shocked. "Atticus doesn't drink whiskey," I said. "He never
drunk a drop in his life- nome, yes he did. He said he drank some one time
and didn't like it."
Miss Maudie laughed. "Wasn't talking about your father," she said.
"What I meant was, if Atticus Finch drank until he was drunk he wouldn't
be as hard as some men are at their best. There are just some kind of men
who- who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to
live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results."
* * *
"She's dead, son," said Atticus. "She died a few minutes ago."
"Oh," said Jem. "Well."
"Well is right," said Atticus. "She's not suffering any more. She
was sick for a long time. Son, didn't you know what her fits were?"
Jem shook his head.
"Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict," said Atticus. "She took it as
a pain-killer for years. The doctor put her on it. She'd have spent the
rest of her life on it and died without so much agony, but she was too
contrary-"
"Sir?" said Jem.
Atticus said, "Just before your escapade she called me to make her
will. Dr. Reynolds told her she had only a few months left. Her business
affairs were in perfect order but she said, 'There's still one thing out
of order.'"
"What was that?" Jem was perplexed.
"She said she was going to leave this world beholden to nothing
and nobody. Jem, when you're sick as she was, it's all right to take
anything to make it easier, but it wasn't all right for her. She said she
meant to break herself of it before she died, and that's what she did."
Jem said, "You mean that's what her fits were?"
"Yes, that's what they were. Most of the time you were reading to
her I doubt if she heard a word you said. Her whole mind and body were
concentrated on that alarm clock. If you hadn't fallen into her hands, I'd
have made you go read to her anyway. It may have been some distraction.
There was another reason-"
"Did she die free?" asked Jem.
"As the mountain air," said Atticus. "She was conscious to the
last, almost. Conscious," he smiled, "and cantankerous. She still
disapproved heartily of my doings, and said I'd probably spend the rest of
my life bailing you out of jail. She had Jessie fix you this box-"
Atticus reached down and picked up the candy box. He handed it to
Jem.
Jem opened the box. Inside, surrounded by wads of damp cotton, was
a white, waxy, perfect camellia. It was a Snow-on-the-Mountain.
Jem's eyes nearly popped out of his head. "Old hell-devil, old
hell-devil!" he screamed, flinging it down. "Why can't she leave me
alone?"
In a flash Atticus was up and standing over him. Jem buried his
face in Atticus's shirt front. "Sh-h," he said. "I think that was her way
of telling you- everything's all right now, Jem, everything's all right.
You know, she was a great lady."
"A lady?" Jem raised his head. His face was scarlet. "After all
those things she said about you, a lady?"
"She was. She had her own views about things, a lot different from
mine, maybe... son, I told you that if you hadn't lost your head I'd have
made you go read to her. I wanted you to see something about her- I wanted
you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage
is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before
you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You
rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds
of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody.
She was the bravest person I ever knew."
* * *
"That's because you can't hold something in your mind but a little
while,' said Jem. 'It's different with grown folks, we --' His maddening
superiority was unbearable these days. He did not want to do anything but
read and go off by himself."
* * *
``Jack! When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness'
sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they
can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.''
* * *
``Atticus -- '' said Jem bleakly.
``How could they do it, how could they?''
``I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they
did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it - seems that
only children weep. Good night.''
* * *
There was a big cake and two little ones on Miss Maudie's kitchen
table. There should have been three little ones. It was not like Miss
Maudie to forget Dill, and we must have shown it. But we understood when
she cut from the big cake and gave the slice to Jem.
As we ate, we sensed that this was Miss Maudie's way of saying
that as far as she was concerned, nothing had changed. She sat quietly in
a kitchen chair, watching us.
Suddenly she spoke: "Don't fret, Jem. Things are never as bad as
they seem."
Indoors, when Miss Maudie wanted to say something lengthy she
spread her fingers on her knees and settled her bridgework. This she did,
and we waited.
"I simply want to tell you that there are some men in this world
who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of
them."
"Oh," said Jem. "Well."
"Don't you oh well me, sir," Miss Maudie replied, recognizing
Jem's fatalistic noises, "you are not old enough to appreciate what I
said."
Jem was staring at his half-eaten cake. "It's like bein' a
caterpillar in a cocoon, that's what it is," he said. "Like somethin'
asleep wrapped up in a warm place. I always thought Maycomb folks were the
best folks in the world, least that's what they seemed like."
"We're the safest folks in the world," said Miss Maudie. "We're so
rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we've got men like
Atticus to go for us."
* * *
"Well Jem, I don't know -- Atticus told me one time that most of
this Old Family stuff's foolishness because everybody's family's just as
old as everybody else's. I said did that include the colored folks and
Englishmen and he said yes."
"Background doesn't mean Old Family," said Jem. "I think it's how
long your family's been readin' and writin'. Scout, I've studied this real
hard and that's the only reason I can think of. Somewhere along when the
Finches were in Egypt one of 'em must have learned a hieroglyphic or two
and he taught his boy." Jem laughed. "Imagine Aunty being proud her
great-grandaddy could read an' write -- ladies pick funny things to be
proud of."
"Well I'm glad he could, or who'da taught Atticus and them, and if
Atticus couldn't read, you and me'd be in a fix. I don't think that's what
background is, Jem."
"Well then, how do you explain why the Cunninghams are different?
Mr. Walter can hardly sign his name, I've seen him. We've just been
readin' and writin' longer'n they have."
"No, everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowin'. That
Walter's as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because
he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin's wrong with him. Naw, Jem,
I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks."
Jem turned around and punched his pillow. When he settled back his
face was cloudy. He was going into one of his declines, and I grew wary.
His brows came together; his mouth became a thin line. He was silent for a
while.
"That's what I thought, too," he said at last, "when I was your
age. If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each
other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise
each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think
I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house
all this time... it's because he wants to stay inside."
* * *
Mr. Tate stopped pacing. He stopped in front of Atticus, and his
back was to us. "I'm not a very good man, sir, but I am sheriff of Maycomb
County. Lived in this town all my life an' I'm goin' on forty-three years
old. Know everything that's happened here since before I was born. There's
a black boy dead for no reason, and the man responsible for it's dead. Let
the dead bury the dead this time, Mr. Finch. Let the dead bury the dead.''
Mr. Tate went to the swing and picked up his hat. It was lying
beside Atticus. Mr. Tate pushed back his hair and put his hat on.
`` 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. Know what'd happen then? All the ladies in Maycomb
includin' my wife'd be knocking on his door bringing angel food cakes. To
my way of thinkin', Mr. Finch, taking the one man who's done you and this
town a great service an' draggin' him with his shy ways into the
limelight- to me, that's a sin. It's a sin and I'm not about to have it on
my head. If it was any other man, it'd be different. But not this man,
Mr. Finch.''
Mr. Tate was trying to dig a hole in the floor with the toe of his
boot. He pulled his nose, then he massaged his left arm.
``I may not be much, Mr. Finch, but I'm still sheriff of Maycomb
County and Bob Ewell fell on his knife. Good night, sir.''
* * *
Neighbours bring food with death and flowers with sickness and
little things in between. Boo was our neighbour. He gave us two soap
dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our
lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what
we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.
* * *