and instruction.
"Jee crawling hova, Jem! Who do you think you are?"
"Now I mean it, Scout, you antagonize Aunty and I'll- I'll spank
you."
With that, I was gone. "You damn morphodite, I'll kill you!" He
was sitting on the bed, and it was easy to grab his front hair and
land one on his mouth. He slapped me and I tried another left, but a
punch in the stomach sent me sprawling on the floor. It nearly knocked
the breath out of me, but it didn't matter because I knew he was
fighting, he was fighting me back. We were still equals.
"Ain't so high and mighty now, are you!" I screamed, sailing in
again. He was still on the bed and I couldn't get a firm stance, so
I threw myself at him as hard as I could, hitting, pulling,
pinching, gouging. What had begun as a fist-fight became a brawl. We
were still struggling when Atticus separated us.
"That's all," he said. "Both of you go to bed right now."
"Taah!" I said at Jem. He was being sent to bed at my bedtime.
"Who started it?" asked Atticus, in resignation.
"Jem did. He was tryin' to tell me what to do. I don't have to
mind him now, do I?"
Atticus smiled. "Let's leave it at this: you mind Jem whenever he
can make you. Fair enough?"
Aunt Alexandra was present but silent, and when she went down the
hall with Atticus we heard her say, "...just one of the things I've
been telling you about," a phrase that united us again.
Ours were adjoining rooms; as I shut the door between them Jem said,
"Night, Scout."
"Night," I murmured, picking my way across the room to turn on the
light. As I passed the bed I stepped on something warm, resilient, and
rather smooth. It was not quite like hard rubber, and I had the
sensation that it was alive. I also heard it move.
I switched on the light and looked at the floor by the bed. Whatever
I had stepped on was gone. I tapped on Jem's door.
"What," he said.
"How does a snake feel?"
"Sort of rough. Cold. Dusty. Why?"
"I think there's one under my bed. Can you come look?"
"Are you bein' funny?" Jem opened the door. He was in his pajama
bottoms. I noticed not without satisfaction that the mark of my
knuckles was still on his mouth. When he saw I meant what I said, he
said, "If you think I'm gonna put my face down to a snake you've got
another think comin'. Hold on a minute."
He went to the kitchen and fetched the broom. "You better get up
on the bed," he said.
"You reckon it's really one?" I asked. This was an occasion. Our
houses had no cellars; they were built on stone blocks a few feet
above the ground, and the entry of reptiles was not unknown but was
not commonplace. Miss Rachel Haverford's excuse for a glass of neat
whiskey every morning was that she never got over the fright of
finding a rattler coiled in her bedroom closet, on her washing, when
she went to hang up her negligee.
Jem made a tentative swipe under the bed. I looked over the foot
to see if a snake would come out. None did. Jem made a deeper swipe.
"Do snakes grunt?"
"It ain't a snake," Jem said. "It's somebody."
Suddenly a filthy brown package shot from under the bed. Jem
raised the broom and missed Dill's head by an inch when it appeared.
"God Almighty." Jem's voice was reverent.
We watched Dill emerge by degrees. He was a tight fit. He stood up
and eased his shoulders, turned his feet in their ankle sockets,
rubbed the back of his neck. His circulation restored, he said, "Hey."
Jem petitioned God again. I was speechless.
"I'm 'bout to perish," said Dill. "Got anything to eat?"
In a dream, I went to the kitchen. I brought him back some milk
and half a pan of corn bread left over from supper. Dill devoured
it, chewing with his front teeth, as was his custom.
I finally found my voice. "How'd you get here?"
By an involved route. Refreshed by food, Dill recited this
narrative: having been bound in chains and left to die in the basement
(there were basements in Meridian) by his new father, who disliked
him, and secretly kept alive on raw field peas by a passing farmer who
heard his cries for help (the good man poked a bushel pod by pod
through the ventilator), Dill worked himself free by pulling the
chains from the wall. Still in wrist manacles, he wandered two miles
out of Meridian where he discovered a small animal show and was
immediately engaged to wash the camel. He traveled with the show all
over Mississippi until his infallible sense of direction told him he
was in Abbott County, Alabama, just across the river from Maycomb.
He walked the rest of the way.
"How'd you get here?" asked Jem.
He had taken thirteen dollars from his mother's purse, caught the
nine o'clock from Meridian and got off at Maycomb Junction. He had
walked ten or eleven of the fourteen miles to Maycomb, off the highway
in the scrub bushes lest the authorities be seeking him, and had
ridden the remainder of the way clinging to the backboard of a
cotton wagon. He had been under the bed for two hours, he thought;
he had heard us in the diningroom, and the clink of forks on plates
nearly drove him crazy. He thought Jem and I would never go to bed; he
had considered emerging and helping me beat Jem, as Jem had grown
far taller, but he knew Mr. Finch would break it up soon, so he
thought it best to stay where he was. He was worn out, dirty beyond
belief, and home.
"They must not know you're here," said Jem. "We'd know if they
were lookin' for you...."
"Think they're still searchin' all the picture shows in Meridian."
Dill grinned.
"You oughta let your mother know where you are," said Jem. "You
oughta let her know you're here...."
Dill's eyes flickered at Jem, and Jem looked at the floor. Then he
rose and broke the remaining code of our childhood. He went out of the
room and down the hall. "Atticus," his voice was distant, "can you
come here a minute, sir?"
Beneath its sweat-streaked dirt Dill's face went white. I felt sick.
Atticus was in the doorway.
He came to the middle of the room and stood with his hands in his
pockets, looking down at Dill.
I finally found my voice: "It's okay, Dill. When he wants you to
know somethin', he tells you."
Dill looked at me. "I mean it's all right," I said. "You know he
wouldn't bother you, you know you ain't scared of Atticus."
"I'm not scared..." Dill muttered.
"Just hungry, I'll bet." Atticus's voice had its usual pleasant
dryness. "Scout, we can do better than a pan of cold corn bread, can't
we? You fill this fellow up and when I get back we'll see what we
can see."
"Mr. Finch, don't tell Aunt Rachel, don't make me go back,
please sir! I'll run off again-!"
"Whoa, son," said Atticus. "Nobody's about to make you go anywhere
but to bed pretty soon. I'm just going over to tell Miss Rachel you're
here and ask her if you could spend the night with us- you'd like
that, wouldn't you? And for goodness' sake put some of the county back
where it belongs, the soil erosion's bad enough as it is."
Dill stared at my father's retreating figure.
"He's tryin' to be funny," I said. "He means take a bath. See there,
I told you he wouldn't bother you."
Jem was standing in a corner of the room, looking like the traitor
he was. "Dill, I had to tell him," he said. "You can't run three
hundred miles off without your mother knowin'."
We left him without a word.
Dill ate, and ate, and ate. He hadn't eaten since last night. He
used all his money for a ticket, boarded the train as he had done many
times, coolly chatted with the conductor, to whom Dill was a
familiar sight, but he had not the nerve to invoke the rule on small
children traveling a distance alone if you've lost your money the
conductor will lend you enough for dinner and your father will pay him
back at the end of the line.
Dill made his way through the leftovers and was reaching for a can
of pork and beans in the pantry when Miss Rachel's Do-oo Je-sus went
off in the hall. He shivered like a rabbit.
He bore with fortitude her Wait Till I Get You Home, Your Folks
Are Out of Their Minds Worryin', was quite calm during That's All
the Harris in You Coming Out, smiled at her Reckon You Can Stay One
Night, and returned the hug at long last bestowed upon him.
Atticus pushed up his glasses and rubbed his face.
"Your father's tired," said Aunt Alexandra, her first words in
hours, it seemed. She had been there, but I suppose struck dumb most
of the time. "You children get to bed now."
We left them in the diningroom, Atticus still mopping his face.
"From rape to riot to runaways," we heard him chuckle. "I wonder
what the next two hours will bring."
Since things appeared to have worked out pretty well, Dill and I
decided to be civil to Jem. Besides, Dill had to sleep with him so
we might as well speak to him.
I put on my pajamas, read for a while and found myself suddenly
unable to keep my eyes open. Dill and Jem were quiet; when I turned
off my reading lamp there was no strip of light under the door to
Jem's room.
I must have slept a long time, for when I was punched awake the room
was dim with the light of the setting moon.
"Move over, Scout."
"He thought he had to," I mumbled. "Don't stay mad with him."
Dill got in bed beside me. "I ain't," he said. "I just wanted to
sleep with you. Are you waked up?"
By this time I was, but lazily so. "Why'd you do it?"
No answer. "I said why'd you run off? Was he really hateful like you
said?"
"Naw..."
"Didn't you all build that boat like you wrote you were gonna?"
"He just said we would. We never did."
I raised up on my elbow, facing Dill's outline. "It's no reason to
run off. They don't get around to doin' what they say they're gonna do
half the time...."
"That wasn't it, he- they just wasn't interested in me."
