from Pensacola and took Mr. Radley's place. The only difference
between him and his father was their ages. Jem said Mr. Nathan
Radley "bought cotton," too. Mr. Nathan would speak to us, however,
when we said good morning, and sometimes we saw him coming from town
with a magazine in his hand.
The more we told Dill about the Radleys, the more he wanted to know,
the longer he would stand hugging the light-pole on the corner, the
more he would wonder.
"Wonder what he does in there," he would murmur. "Looks like he'd
just stick his head out the door."
Jem said, "He goes out, all right, when it's pitch dark. Miss
Stephanie Crawford said she woke up in the middle of the night one
time and saw him looking straight through the window at her... said
his head was like a skull lookin' at her. Ain't you ever waked up at
night and heard him, Dill? He walks like this-" Jem slid his feet
through the gravel. "Why do you think Miss Rachel locks up so tight at
night? I've seen his tracks in our back yard many a mornin', and one
night I heard him scratching on the back screen, but he was gone
time Atticus got there."
"Wonder what he looks like?" said Dill.
Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about
six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw
squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were
bloodstained- if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood
off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth
he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of
the time.
"Let's try to make him come out," said Dill. "I'd like to see what
he looks like."
Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he had to do
was go up and knock on the front door.
Our first raid came to pass only because Dill bet Jem The Gray
Ghost against two Tom Swifts that Jem wouldn't get any farther than
the Radley gate. In all his life, Jem had never declined a dare.
Jem thought about it for three days. I suppose he loved honor more
than his head, for Dill wore him down easily: "You're scared," Dill
said, the first day. "Ain't scared, just respectful," Jem said. The
next day Dill said, "You're too scared even to put your big toe in the
front yard." Jem said he reckoned he wasn't, he'd passed the Radley
Place every school day of his life.
"Always runnin'," I said.
But Dill got him the third day, when he told Jem that folks in
Meridian certainly weren't as afraid as the folks in Maycomb, that
he'd never seen such scary folks as the ones in Maycomb.
This was enough to make Jem march to the corner, where he stopped
and leaned against the light-pole, watching the gate hanging crazily
on its homemade hinge.
"I hope you've got it through your head that he'll kill us each
and every one, Dill Harris," said Jem, when we joined him. "Don't
blame me when he gouges your eyes out. You started it, remember."
"You're still scared," murmured Dill patiently.
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.
"You gonna run out on a dare?" asked Dill. "If you are, then-"
"Dill, you have to think about these things," Jem said. "Lemme think
a minute... it's sort of like making a turtle come out..."
"How's that?" asked Dill.
"Strike a match under him."
I told Jem if he set fire to the Radley house I was going to tell
Atticus on him.
Dill said striking a match under a turtle was hateful.
"Ain't hateful, just persuades him- 's not like you'd chunk him in
the fire," Jem growled.
"How do you know a match don't hurt him?"
"Turtles can't feel, stupid," said Jem.
"Were you ever a turtle, huh?"
"My stars, Dill! Now lemme think... reckon we can rock him...."
Jem stood in thought so long that Dill made a mild concession: "I
won't say you ran out on a dare an' I'll swap you The Gray Ghost
if you just go up and touch the house."
Jem brightened. "Touch the house, that all?"
Dill nodded.
"Sure that's all, now? I don't want you hollerin' something
different the minute I get back."
"Yeah, that's all," said Dill. "He'll probably come out after you
when he sees you in the yard, then Scout'n' me'll jump on him and hold
him down till we can tell him we ain't gonna hurt him."
We left the corner, crossed the side street that ran in front of the
Radley house, and stopped at the gate.
"Well go on," said Dill, "Scout and me's right behind you."
"I'm going," said Jem, "don't hurry me."
He walked to the corner of the lot, then back again, studying the
simple terrain as if deciding how best to effect an entry, frowning
and scratching his head.
Then I sneered at him.
Jem threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house, slapped
it with his palm and ran back past us, not waiting to see if his foray
was successful. Dill and I followed on his heels. Safely on our porch,
panting and out of breath, we looked back.
The old house was the same, droopy and sick, but as we stared down
the street we thought we saw an inside shutter move. Flick. A tiny,
almost invisible movement, and the house was still.
2
Dill left us early in September, to return to Meridian. We saw him
off on the five o'clock bus and I was miserable without him until it
occurred to me that I would be starting to school in a week. I never
looked forward more to anything in my life. Hours of wintertime had
found me in the treehouse, looking over at the schoolyard, spying on
multitudes of children through a two-power telescope Jem had given me,
learning their games, following Jem's red jacket through wriggling
circles of blind man's buff, secretly sharing their misfortunes and
minor victories. I longed to join them.
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
