collards whatever you do, they'll wake the dead."
With this thought in mind, I made perhaps one step per minute. I
moved faster when I saw Jem far ahead beckoning in the moonlight. We
came to the gate that divided the garden from the back yard. Jem
touched it. The gate squeaked.
"Spit on it," whispered Dill.
"You've got us in a box, Jem," I muttered. "We can't get out of here
so easy."
"Sh-h. Spit on it, Scout."
We spat ourselves dry, and Jem opened the gate slowly, lifting it
aside and resting it on the fence. We were in the back yard.
The back of the Radley house was less inviting than the front: a
ramshackle porch ran the width of the house; there were two doors
and two dark windows between the doors. Instead of a column, a rough
two-by-four supported one end of the roof. An old Franklin stove sat
in a corner of the porch; above it a hat-rack mirror caught the moon
and shone eerily.
"Ar-r," said Jem softly, lifting his foot.
"'Smatter?"
"Chickens," he breathed.
That we would be obliged to dodge the unseen from all directions was
confirmed when Dill ahead of us spelled G-o-d in a whisper. We crept
to the side of the house, around to the window with the hanging
shutter. The sill was several inches taller than Jem.
"Give you a hand up," he muttered to Dill. "Wait, though." Jem
grabbed his left wrist and my right wrist, I grabbed my left wrist and
Jem's right wrist, we crouched, and Dill sat on our saddle. We
raised him and he caught the window sill.
"Hurry," Jem whispered, "we can't last much longer."
Dill punched my shoulder, and we lowered him to the ground.
"What'd you see?"
"Nothing. Curtains. There's a little teeny light way off
somewhere, though."
"Let's get away from here," breathed Jem. "Let's go 'round in back
again. Sh-h," he warned me, as I was about to protest.
"Let's try the back window."
"Dill, no," I said.
Dill stopped and let Jem go ahead. When Jem put his foot on the
bottom step, the step squeaked. He stood still, then tried his
weight by degrees. The step was silent. Jem skipped two steps, put his
foot on the porch, heaved himself to it, and teetered a long moment.
He regained his balance and dropped to his knees. He crawled to the
window, raised his head and looked in.
Then I saw the shadow. It was the shadow of a man with a hat on.
At first I thought it was a tree, but there was no wind blowing, and
tree-trunks never walked. The back porch was bathed in moonlight,
and the shadow, crisp as toast, moved across the porch toward Jem.
Dill saw it next. He put his hands to his face.
When it crossed Jem, Jem saw it. He put his arms over his head and
went rigid.
The shadow stopped about a foot beyond Jem. Its arm came out from
its side, dropped, and was still. Then it turned and moved back across
Jem, walked along the porch and off the side of the house, returning
as it had come.
Jem leaped off the porch and galloped toward us. He flung open the
gate, danced Dill and me through, and shooed us between two rows of
swishing collards. Halfway through the collards I tripped; as I
tripped the roar of a shotgun shattered the neighborhood.
Dill and Jem dived beside me. Jem's breath came in sobs: "Fence by
the schoolyard!- hurry, Scout!"
Jem held the bottom wire; Dill and I rolled through and were halfway
to the shelter of the schoolyard's solitary oak when we sensed that
Jem was not with us. We ran back and found him struggling in the
fence, kicking his pants off to get loose. He ran to the oak tree in
his shorts.
Safely behind it, we gave way to numbness, but Jem's mind was
racing: "We gotta get home, they'll miss us."
We ran across the schoolyard, crawled under the fence to Deer's
Pasture behind our house, climbed our back fence and were at the
back steps before Jem would let us pause to rest.
Respiration normal, the three of us strolled as casually as we could
to the front yard. We looked down the street and saw a circle of
neighbors at the Radley front gate.
"We better go down there," said Jem. "They'll think it's funny if we
don't show up."
Mr. Nathan Radley was standing inside his gate, a shotgun broken
across his arm. Atticus was standing beside Miss Maudie and Miss
Stephanie Crawford. Miss Rachel and Mr. Avery were near by. None of
them saw us come up.
We eased in beside Miss Maudie, who looked around. "Where were you
all, didn't you hear the commotion?"
"What happened?" asked Jem.
"Mr. Radley shot at a Negro in his collard patch."
"Oh. Did he hit him?"
"No," said Miss Stephanie. "Shot in the air. Scared him pale,
though. Says if anybody sees a white nigger around, that's the one.
Says he's got the other barrel waitin' for the next sound he hears
in that patch, an' next time he won't aim high, be it dog, nigger, or-
Jem Finch!"
"Ma'am?" asked Jem.
Atticus spoke. "Where're your pants, son?"
"Pants, sir?"
"Pants."
It was no use. In his shorts before God and everybody. I sighed.
"Ah- Mr. Finch?"
In the glare from the streetlight, I could see Dill hatching one:
his eyes widened, his fat cherub face grew rounder.
"What is it, Dill?" asked Atticus.
"Ah- I won 'em from him," he said vaguely.
"Won them? How?"
Dill's hand sought the back of his head. He brought it forward and
across his forehead. "We were playin' strip poker up yonder by the
fishpool," he said.
Jem and I relaxed. The neighbors seemed satisfied: they all
stiffened. But what was strip poker?
We had no chance to find out: Miss Rachel went off like the town
fire siren: "Do-o-o Jee-sus, Dill Harris! Gamblin' by my fishpool?
I'll strip-poker you, sir!"
Atticus saved Dill from immediate dismemberment. "Just a minute,
Miss Rachel," he said. "I've never heard of 'em doing that before.
Were you all playing cards?"
Jem fielded Dill's fly with his eyes shut: "No sir, just with
matches."
I admired my brother. Matches were dangerous, but cards were fatal.
"Jem, Scout," said Atticus, "I don't want to hear of poker in any
form again. Go by Dill's and get your pants, Jem. Settle it
yourselves."
"Don't worry, Dill," said Jem, as we trotted up the sidewalk, "she
ain't gonna get you. He'll talk her out of it. That was fast thinkin',
son. Listen... you hear?"
We stopped, and heard Atticus's voice: "...not serious... they all
go through it, Miss Rachel...."
Dill was comforted, but Jem and I weren't. There was the problem
of Jem showing up some pants in the morning.
"'d give you some of mine," said Dill, as we came to Miss Rachel's
steps. Jem said he couldn't get in them, but thanks anyway. We said
good-bye, and Dill went inside the house. He evidently remembered he
was engaged to me, for he ran back out and kissed me swiftly in
front of Jem. "Yawl write, hear?" he bawled after us.
Had Jem's pants been safely on him, we would not have slept much
anyway. Every night-sound I heard from my cot on the back porch was
magnified three-fold; every scratch of feet on gravel was Boo Radley
seeking revenge, every passing Negro laughing in the night was Boo
Radley loose and after us; insects splashing against the screen were
Boo Radley's insane fingers picking the wire to pieces; the chinaberry
trees were malignant, hovering, alive. I lingered between sleep and
wakefulness until I heard Jem murmur.
"Sleep, Little Three-Eyes?"
"Are you crazy?"
"Sh-h. Atticus's light's out."
In the waning moonlight I saw Jem swing his feet to the floor.
"I'm goin' after 'em," he said.
I sat upright. "You can't. I won't let you."
He was struggling into his shirt. "I've got to."
"You do an' I'll wake up Atticus."
"You do and I'll kill you."
I pulled him down beside me on the cot. I tried to reason with
him. "Mr. Nathan's gonna find 'em in the morning, Jem. He knows you
lost 'em. When he shows 'em to Atticus it'll be pretty bad, that's all
there is to it. Go'n back to bed."
"That's what I know," said Jem. "That's why I'm goin' after 'em."
I began to feel sick. Going back to that place by himself- I
remembered Miss Stephanie: Mr. Nathan had the other barrel waiting for
the next sound he heard, be it nigger, dog... Jem knew that better
than I.
I was desperate: "Look, it ain't worth it, Jem. A lickin' hurts
but it doesn't last. You'll get your head shot off, Jem. Please..."
He blew out his breath patiently. "I- it's like this, Scout," he
muttered. "Atticus ain't ever whipped me since I can remember. I wanta
keep it that way."
This was a thought. It seemed that Atticus threatened us every other
day. "You mean he's never caught you at anything."
"Maybe so, but- I just wanta keep it that way, Scout. We shouldn'a
done that tonight, Scout."
It was then, I suppose, that Jem and I first began to part
company. Sometimes I did not understand him, but my periods of
bewilderment were short-lived. This was beyond me. "Please," I
pleaded, "can'tcha just think about it for a minute- by yourself on
that place-"
"Shut up!"
"It's not like he'd never speak to you again or somethin'... I'm
gonna wake him up, Jem, I swear I am-"
