said. "Fat in the middle and little-bitty arms."
"I'll make 'em bigger." Jem sloshed water over the mud man and added
more dirt. He looked thoughtfully at it for a moment, then he molded a
big stomach below the figure's waistline. Jem glanced at me, his
eyes twinkling: "Mr. Avery's sort of shaped like a snowman, ain't he?"
Jem scooped up some snow and began plastering it on. He permitted me
to cover only the back, saving the public parts for himself. Gradually
Mr. Avery turned white.
Using bits of wood for eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons, Jem succeeded
in making Mr. Avery look cross. A stick of stovewood completed the
picture. Jem stepped back and viewed his creation.
"It's lovely, Jem," I said. "Looks almost like he'd talk to you."
"It is, ain't it?" he said shyly.
We could not wait for Atticus to come home for dinner, but called
and said we had a big surprise for him. He seemed surprised when he
saw most of the back yard in the front yard, but he said we had done a
jim-dandy job. "I didn't know how you were going to do it," he said to
Jem, "but from now on I'll never worry about what'll become of you,
son, you'll always have an idea."
Jem's ears reddened from Atticus's compliment, but he looked up
sharply when he saw Atticus stepping back. Atticus squinted at the
snowman a while. He grinned, then laughed. "Son, I can't tell what
you're going to be- an engineer, a lawyer, or a portrait painter.
You've perpetrated a near libel here in the front yard. We've got to
disguise this fellow."
Atticus suggested that Jem hone down his creation's front a
little, swap a broom for the stovewood, and put an apron on him.
Jem explained that if he did, the snowman would become muddy and
cease to be a snowman.
"I don't care what you do, so long as you do something," said
Atticus. "You can't go around making caricatures of the neighbors."
"Ain't a characterture," said Jem. "It looks just like him."
"Mr. Avery might not think so."
"I know what!" said Jem. He raced across the street, disappeared
into Miss Maudie's back yard and returned triumphant. He stuck her
sunhat on the snowman's head and jammed her hedge-clippers into the
crook of his arm. Atticus said that would be fine.
Miss Maudie opened her front door and came out on the porch. She
looked across the street at us. Suddenly she grinned. "Jem Finch," she
called. "You devil, bring me back my hat, sir!"
Jem looked up at Atticus, who shook his head. "She's just
fussing," he said. "She's really impressed with your-
accomplishments."
Atticus strolled over to Miss Maudie's sidewalk, where they
engaged in an arm-waving conversation, the only phrase of which I
caught was "...erected an absolute morphodite in that yard! Atticus,
you'll never raise 'em!"
The snow stopped in the afternoon, the temperature dropped, and by
nightfall Mr. Avery's direst predictions came true: Calpurnia kept
every fireplace in the house blazing, but we were cold. When Atticus
came home that evening he said we were in for it, and asked
Calpurnia if she wanted to stay with us for the night. Calpurnia
glanced up at the high ceilings and long windows and said she
thought she'd be warmer at her house. Atticus drove her home in the
car.
Before I went to sleep Atticus put more coal on the fire in my room.
He said the thermometer registered sixteen, that it was the coldest
night in his memory, and that our snowman outside was frozen solid.
Minutes later, it seemed, I was awakened by someone shaking me.
Atticus's overcoat was spread across me. "Is it morning already?"
"Baby, get up."
Atticus was holding out my bathrobe and coat. "Put your robe on
first," he said.
Jem was standing beside Atticus, groggy and tousled. He was
holding his overcoat closed at the neck, his other hand was jammed
into his pocket. He looked strangely overweight.
"Hurry, hon," said Atticus. "Here're your shoes and socks."
Stupidly, I put them on. "Is it morning?"
"No, it's a little after one. Hurry now."
That something was wrong finally got through to me. "What's the
matter?"
By then he did not have to tell me. Just as the birds know where
to go when it rains, I knew when there was trouble in our street. Soft
taffeta-like sounds and muffled scurrying sounds filled me with
helpless dread.
"Whose is it?"
"Miss Maudie's, hon," said Atticus gently.
At the front door, we saw fire spewing from Miss Maudie's diningroom
windows. As if to confirm what we saw, the town fire siren wailed up
the scale to a treble pitch and remained there, screaming.
"It's gone, ain't it?" moaned Jem.
"I expect so," said Atticus. "Now listen, both of you. Go down and
stand in front of the Radley Place. Keep out of the way, do you
hear? See which way the wind's blowing?"
"Oh," said Jem. "Atticus, reckon we oughta start moving the
furniture out?"
"Not yet, son. Do as I tell you. Run now. Take care of Scout, you
hear? Don't let her out of your sight."
With a push, Atticus started us toward the Radley front gate. We
stood watching the street fill with men and cars while fire silently
devoured Miss Maudie's house. "Why don't they hurry, why don't they
hurry..." muttered Jem.
We saw why. The old fire truck, killed by the cold, was being pushed
from town by a crowd of men. When the men attached its hose to a
hydrant, the hose burst and water shot up, tinkling down on the
pavement.
"Oh-h Lord, Jem..."
Jem put his arm around me. "Hush, Scout," he said. "It ain't time to
worry yet. I'll let you know when."
The men of Maycomb, in all degrees of dress and undress, took
furniture from Miss Maudie's house to a yard across the street. I
saw Atticus carrying Miss Maudie's heavy oak rocking chair, and
thought it sensible of him to save what she valued most.
Sometimes we heard shouts. Then Mr. Avery's face appeared in an
upstairs window. He pushed a mattress out the window into the street
and threw down furniture until men shouted, "Come down from there,
Dick! The stairs are going! Get outta there, Mr. Avery!"
Mr. Avery began climbing through the window.
"Scout, he's stuck..." breathed Jem. "Oh God..."
Mr. Avery was wedged tightly. I buried my head under Jem's arm and
didn't look again until Jem cried, "He's got loose, Scout! He's all
right!"
I looked up to see Mr. Avery cross the upstairs porch. He swung
his legs over the railing and was sliding down a pillar when he
slipped. He fell, yelled, and hit Miss Maudie's shrubbery.
Suddenly I noticed that the men were backing away from Miss Maudie's
house, moving down the street toward us. They were no longer
carrying furniture. The fire was well into the second floor and had
eaten its way to the roof: window frames were black against a vivid
orange center.
"Jem, it looks like a pumpkin-"
"Scout, look!"
Smoke was rolling off our house and Miss Rachel's house like fog off
a riverbank, and men were pulling hoses toward them. Behind us, the
fire truck from Abbottsville screamed around the curve and stopped
in front of our house.
"That book..." I said.
"What?" said Jem.
"That Tom Swift book, it ain't mine, it's Dill's..."
"Don't worry, Scout, it ain't time to worry yet," said Jem. He
pointed. "Looka yonder."
In a group of neighbors, Atticus was standing with his hands in
his overcoat pockets. He might have been watching a football game.
Miss Maudie was beside him.
"See there, he's not worried yet," said Jem.
"Why ain't he on top of one of the houses?"
"He's too old, he'd break his neck."
"You think we oughta make him get our stuff out?"
"Let's don't pester him, he'll know when it's time," said Jem.
The Abbottsville fire truck began pumping water on our house; a
man on the roof pointed to places that needed it most. I watched our
Absolute Morphodite go black and crumble; Miss Maudie's sunhat settled
on top of the heap. I could not see her hedge-clippers. In the heat
between our house, Miss Rachel's and Miss Maudie's, the men had long
ago shed coats and bathrobes. They worked in pajama tops and
nightshirts stuffed into their pants, but I became aware that I was
slowly freezing where I stood. Jem tried to keep me warm, but his
arm was not enough. I pulled free of it and clutched my shoulders.
By dancing a little, I could feel my feet.
Another fire truck appeared and stopped in front of Miss Stephanie
Crawford's. There was no hydrant for another hose, and the men tried
to soak her house with hand extinguishers.
Miss Maudie's tin roof quelled the flames. Roaring, the house
collapsed; fire gushed everywhere, followed by a flurry of blankets
from men on top of the adjacent houses, beating out sparks and burning
chunks of wood.
It was dawn before the men began to leave, first one by one, then in
groups. They pushed the Maycomb fire truck back to town, the
Abbottsville truck departed, the third one remained. We found out next
day it had come from Clark's Ferry, sixty miles away.
Jem and I slid across the street. Miss Maudie was staring at the
smoking black hole in her yard, and Atticus shook his head to tell
us she did not want to talk. He led us home, holding onto our
shoulders to cross the icy street. He said Miss Maudie would stay with
Miss Stephanie for the time being.
"Anybody want some hot chocolate?" he asked. I shuddered when
Atticus started a fire in the kitchen stove.
As we drank our cocoa I noticed Atticus looking at me, first with
curiosity, then with sternness. "I thought I told you and Jem to
stay put," he said.
"Why, we did. We stayed-"
"Then whose blanket is that?"
"Blanket?"
"Yes ma'am, blanket. It isn't ours."
