present, and I wondered if he had seen the light. He never went to
church. Even Mr. Underwood was there. Mr. Underwood had no use for any
organization but The Maycomb Tribune, of which he was the sole
owner, editor, and printer. His days were spent at his linotype, where
he refreshed himself occasionally from an ever-present gallon jug of
cherry wine. He rarely gathered news; people brought it to him. It was
said that he made up every edition of The Maycomb Tribune out of his
own head and wrote it down on the linotype. This was believable.
Something must have been up to haul Mr. Underwood out.
I caught Atticus coming in the door, and he said that they'd moved
Tom Robinson to the Maycomb jail. He also said, more to himself than
to me, that if they'd kept him there in the first place there wouldn't
have been any fuss. I watched him take his seat on the third row
from the front, and I heard him rumble, "Nearer my God to thee,"
some notes behind the rest of us. He never sat with Aunty, Jem and me.
He liked to be by himself in church.
The fake peace that prevailed on Sundays was made more irritating by
Aunt Alexandra's presence. Atticus would flee to his office directly
after dinner, where if we sometimes looked in on him, we would find
him sitting back in his swivel chair reading. Aunt Alexandra
composed herself for a two-hour nap and dared us to make any noise
in the yard, the neighborhood was resting. Jem in his old age had
taken to his room with a stack of football magazines. So Dill and I
spent our Sundays creeping around in Deer's Pasture.
Shooting on Sundays was prohibited, so Dill and I kicked Jem's
football around the pasture for a while, which was no fun. Dill
asked if I'd like to have a poke at Boo Radley. I said I didn't
think it'd be nice to bother him, and spent the rest of the
afternoon filling Dill in on last winter's events. He was considerably
impressed.
We parted at suppertime, and after our meal Jem and I were
settling down to a routine evening, when Atticus did something that
interested us: he came into the livingroom carrying a long
electrical extension cord. There was a light bulb on the end.
"I'm going out for a while," he said. "You folks'll be in bed when I
come back, so I'll say good night now."
With that, he put his hat on and went out the back door.
"He's takin' the car," said Jem.
Our father had a few peculiarities: one was, he never ate
desserts; another was that he liked to walk. As far back as I could
remember, there was always a Chevrolet in excellent condition in the
carhouse, and Atticus put many miles on it in business trips, but in
Maycomb he walked to and from his office four times a day, covering
about two miles. He said his only exercise was walking. In Maycomb, if
one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct
to believe one's mind incapable of definite purpose.
Later on, I bade my aunt and brother good night and was well into
a book when I heard Jem rattling around in his room. His go-to-bed
noises were so familiar to me that I knocked on his door: "Why ain't
you going to bed?"
"I'm goin' downtown for a while." He was changing his pants.
"Why? It's almost ten o'clock, Jem."
He knew it, but he was going anyway.
"Then I'm goin' with you. If you say no you're not, I'm goin'
anyway, hear?"
Jem saw that he would have to fight me to keep me home, and I
suppose he thought a fight would antagonize Aunty, so he gave in
with little grace.
I dressed quickly. We waited until Aunty's light went out, and we
walked quietly down the back steps. There was no moon tonight.
"Dill'll wanta come," I whispered.
"So he will," said Jem gloomily.
We leaped over the driveway wall, cut through Miss Rachel's side
yard and went to Dill's window. Jem whistled bob-white. Dill's face
appeared at the screen, disappeared, and five minutes later he
unhooked the screen and crawled out. An old campaigner, he did not
speak until we were on the sidewalk. "What's up?"
"Jem's got the look-arounds," an affliction Calpurnia said all
boys caught at his age.
"I've just got this feeling," Jem said, "just this feeling."
We went by Mrs. Dubose's house, standing empty and shuttered, her
camellias grown up in weeds and johnson grass. There were eight more
houses to the post office corner.
The south side of the square was deserted. Giant monkey-puzzle
bushes bristled on each corner, and between them an iron hitching rail
glistened under the street lights. A light shone in the county toilet,
otherwise that side of the courthouse was dark. A larger square of
stores surrounded the courthouse square; dim lights burned from deep
within them.
Atticus's office was in the courthouse when he began his law
practice, but after several years of it he moved to quieter quarters
in the Maycomb Bank building. When we rounded the corner of the
square, we saw the car parked in front of the bank. "He's in there,"
said Jem.
But he wasn't. His office was reached by a long hallway. Looking
down the hall, we should have seen Atticus Finch, Attorney-at-Law in
small sober letters against the light from behind his door. It was
dark.
Jem peered in the bank door to make sure. He turned the knob. The
door was locked. "Let's go up the street. Maybe he's visitin' Mr.
Underwood."
Mr. Underwood not only ran The Maycomb Tribune office, he lived in
it. That is, above it. He covered the courthouse and jailhouse news
simply by looking out his upstairs window. The office building was
on the northwest corner of the square, and to reach it we had to
pass the jail.
The Maycomb jail was the most venerable and hideous of the
county's buildings. Atticus said it was like something Cousin Joshua
St. Clair might have designed. It was certainly someone's dream.
Starkly out of place in a town of square-faced stores and steep-roofed
houses, the Maycomb jail was a miniature Gothic joke one cell wide and
two cells high, complete with tiny battlements and flying
buttresses. Its fantasy was heightened by its red brick facade and the
thick steel bars at its ecclesiastical windows. It stood on no
lonely hill, but was wedged between Tyndal's Hardware Store and The
Maycomb Tribune office. The jail was Maycomb's only conversation
piece: its detractors said it looked like a Victorian privy; its
supporters said it gave the town a good solid respectable look, and no
stranger would ever suspect that it was full of niggers.
As we walked up the sidewalk, we saw a solitary light burning in the
distance. "That's funny," said Jem, "jail doesn't have an outside
light."
"Looks like it's over the door," said Dill.
A long extension cord ran between the bars of a second-floor
window and down the side of the building. In the light from its bare
bulb, Atticus was sitting propped against the front door. He was
sitting in one of his office chairs, and he was reading, oblivious
of the nightbugs dancing over his head.
I made to run, but Jem caught me. "Don't go to him," he said, "he
might not like it. He's all right, let's go home. I just wanted to see
where he was."
We were taking a short cut across the square when four dusty cars
came in from the Meridian highway, moving slowly in a line. They
went around the square, passed the bank building, and stopped in front
of the jail.
Nobody got out. We saw Atticus look up from his newspaper. He closed
it, folded it deliberately, dropped it in his lap, and pushed his
hat to the back of his head. He seemed to be expecting them.
"Come on," whispered Jem. We streaked across the square, across
the street, until we were in the shelter of the Jitney Jungle door.
Jem peeked up the sidewalk. "We can get closer," he said. We ran to
Tyndal's Hardware door- near enough, at the same time discreet.
In ones and twos, men got out of the cars. Shadows became
substance as lights revealed solid shapes moving toward the jail door.
Atticus remained where he was. The men hid him from view.
"He in there, Mr. Finch?" a man said.
"He is," we heard Atticus answer, "and he's asleep. Don't wake him
up."
In obedience to my father, there followed what I later realized
was a sickeningly comic aspect of an unfunny situation: the men talked
in near-whispers.
"You know what we want," another man said. "Get aside from the door,
Mr. Finch."
"You can turn around and go home again, Walter," Atticus said
pleasantly. "Heck Tate's around somewhere."
"The hell he is," said another man. "Heck's bunch's so deep in the
woods they won't get out till mornin'."
"Indeed? Why so?"
"Called 'em off on a snipe hunt," was the succinct answer. "Didn't
you think a'that, Mr. Finch?"
"Thought about it, but didn't believe it. Well then," my father's
voice was still the same, "that changes things, doesn't it?"
"It do," another deep voice said. Its owner was a shadow.
"Do you really think so?"
This was the second time I heard Atticus ask that question in two
days, and it meant somebody's man would get jumped. This was too
good to miss. I broke away from Jem and ran as fast as I could to
Atticus.
Jem shrieked and tried to catch me, but I had a lead on him and
Dill. I pushed my way through dark smelly bodies and burst into the
circle of light.
"H-ey, Atticus!"
I thought he would have a fine surprise, but his face killed my joy.
A flash of plain fear was going out of his eyes, but returned when
Dill and Jem wriggled into the light.
There was a smell of stale whiskey and pigpen about, and when I
glanced around I discovered that these men were strangers. They were
not the people I saw last night. Hot embarrassment shot through me:
I had leaped triumphantly into a ring of people I had never seen
before.
Atticus got up from his chair, but he was moving slowly, like an old
man. He put the newspaper down very carefully, adjusting its creases
with lingering fingers. They were trembling a little.
"Go home, Jem," he said. "Take Scout and Dill home."
We were accustomed to prompt, if not always cheerful acquiescence to
Atticus's instructions, but from the way he stood Jem was not thinking
