Dill said, "It's my idea. I figure if he'd come out and sit a
spell with us he might feel better."
"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.
"Uh huh, caughtcha," I said. "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. Among other
things, he had been up in a mail plane seventeen times, he had been to
Nova Scotia, he had seen an elephant, and his granddaddy was Brigadier
General Joe Wheeler and left him his sword.
"You all hush," said Jem. He scuttled beneath the house and came out
with a yellow bamboo pole. "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. "Why don't you just knock the
front door down?"
"This- is- different," said Jem, "how many times do I have to tell
you that?"
Dill took a piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to Jem. The
three of us walked cautiously toward the old house. Dill remained at
the light-pole on the front corner of the lot, and Jem and I edged
down the sidewalk parallel to the side of the house. I walked beyond
Jem and stood where I could see around the curve.
"All clear," I said. "Not a soul in sight."
Jem looked up the sidewalk to Dill, who nodded.
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.
The pole lacked several inches of being long enough, and Jem leaned
over as far as he could. I watched him making jabbing motions for so
long, I abandoned my post and went to him.
"Can't get it off the pole," he muttered, "or if I got it off I
can't make it stay. G'on back down the street, Scout."
I returned and gazed around the curve at the empty road.
Occasionally I looked back at Jem, who was patiently trying to place
the note on the window sill. It would flutter to the ground and Jem
would jab it up, until I thought if Boo Radley ever received it he
wouldn't be able to read it. I was looking down the street when the
dinner-bell rang.
Shoulder up, I reeled around to face Boo Radley and his bloody
fangs; instead, I saw Dill ringing the bell with all his might in
Atticus's face.
Jem looked so awful I didn't have the heart to tell him I told him
so. He trudged along, dragging the pole behind him on the sidewalk.
Atticus said, "Stop ringing that bell."
Dill grabbed the clapper; in the silence that followed, I wished
he'd start ringing it again. Atticus pushed his hat to the back of his
head and put his hands on his hips. "Jem," he said, "what were you
doing?"
"Nothin', sir."
"I don't want any of that. Tell me."
"I was- we were just tryin' to give somethin' to Mr. Radley."
"What were you trying to give him?"
"Just a letter."
"Let me see it."
Jem held out a filthy piece of paper. Atticus took it and tried to
read it. "Why do you want Mr. Radley to come out?"
Dill said, "We thought he might enjoy us..." and dried up when
Atticus looked at him.
"Son," he said to Jem, "I'm going to tell you something and tell you
one time: stop tormenting that man. That goes for the other two of
you."
What Mr. Radley did was his own business. If he wanted to come
out, he would. If he wanted to stay inside his own house he had the
right to stay inside free from the attentions of inquisitive children,
which was a mild term for the likes of us. 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. Radley. What
Mr. Radley did might seem peculiar to us, but it did not seem peculiar
to him. 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."
Jem seemed to swell a little. "I didn't say we were doin' that, I
didn't say it!"
Atticus grinned dryly. "You just told me," he said. "You stop this
nonsense right now, every one of you."
Jem gaped at him.
"You want to be a lawyer, don't you?" Our father's mouth was
suspiciously firm, as if he were trying to hold it in line.
Jem decided there was no point in quibbling, and was silent. 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. He waited a respectful
distance from the front steps, watched Atticus leave the house and
walk toward town. 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!"
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. "Tell him so long for me, and we'll see him next summer."
We leaped over the low wall that separated Miss Rachel's yard from
our driveway. Jem whistled bob-white and Dill answered in the
darkness.
"Not a breath blowing," said Jem. "Looka yonder."
He pointed to the east. A gigantic moon was rising behind Miss
Maudie's pecan trees. "That makes it seem hotter," he said.
"Cross in it tonight?" asked Dill, not looking up. He was
constructing a cigarette from newspaper and string.
"No, just the lady. Don't light that thing, Dill, you'll stink up
this whole end of town."
There was a lady in the moon in Maycomb. She sat at a dresser
combing her hair.
"We're gonna miss you, boy," I said. "Reckon we better watch for Mr.
Avery?"
Mr. Avery boarded across the street from Mrs. Henry Lafayette
Dubose's house. Besides making change in the collection plate every
Sunday, Mr. Avery sat on the porch every night until nine o'clock
and sneezed. 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. Jem and I were leaving Miss Rachel's
front steps one night when Dill stopped us: "Golly, looka yonder."
He pointed across the street. At first we saw nothing but a
kudzu-covered front porch, but a closer inspection revealed an arc
of water descending from the leaves and splashing in the yellow circle
of the street light, some ten feet from source to earth, it seemed
to us. Jem said Mr. Avery misfigured, Dill said he must drink a gallon
a day, and the ensuing contest to determine relative distances and
respective prowess only made me feel left out again, as I was
untalented in this area.
Dill stretched, yawned, and said altogether too casually. "I know
what, let's go for a walk."
He sounded fishy to me. Nobody in Maycomb just went for a walk.
"Where to, Dill?"
Dill jerked his head in a southerly direction.
Jem said, "Okay." When I protested, he said sweetly, "You don't have
to come along, Angel May."
"You don't have to go. 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.
"Scout, we ain't gonna do anything, we're just goin' to the street
light and back."
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. Occasionally we heard
Miss Stephanie Crawford laugh.
"Well?" said Dill.
"Okay," said Jem. "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.
"But what in the sam holy hill did you wait till tonight?"
Because nobody could see them at night, because Atticus would be
so deep in a book he wouldn't hear the Kingdom coming, because if
Boo Radley killed them they'd miss school instead of vacation, and
because it was easier to see inside a dark house in the dark than in
the daytime, did I understand?
"Jem, please-"
"Scout, I'm tellin' you for the last time, shut your trap or go
home- I declare to the Lord you're gettin' more like a girl every
day!"
With that, I had no option but to join them. 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. The fence enclosed a large
garden and a narrow wooden outhouse.
Jem held up the bottom wire and motioned Dill under it. I
followed, and held up the wire for Jem. It was a tight squeeze for
him. "Don't make a sound," he whispered. "Don't get in a row of
