first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a
Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were
expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless
efforts to teach me Group Dynamics. What Jem called the Dewey
Decimal System was school-wide by the end of my first year, so I had
no chance to compare it with other teaching techniques. I could only
look around me: Atticus and my uncle, who went to school at home, knew
everything- at least, what one didn't know the other did. Furthermore,
I couldn't help noticing that my father had served for years in the
state legislature, elected each time without opposition, innocent of
the adjustments my teachers thought essential to the development of
Good Citizenship. Jem, educated on a half-Decimal half-Duncecap basis,
seemed to function effectively alone or in a group, but Jem was a poor
example: no tutorial system devised by man could have stopped him from
getting at books. As for me, I knew nothing except what I gathered
from Time magazine and reading everything I could lay hands on at
home, but as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb
County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I
was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I
did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly
what the state had in mind for me.
As the year passed, released from school thirty minutes before
Jem, who had to stay until three o'clock, I ran by the Radley Place as
fast as I could, not stopping until I reached the safety of our
front porch. One afternoon as I raced by, something caught my eye
and caught it in such a way that I took a deep breath, a long look
around, and went back.
Two live oaks stood at the edge of the Radley lot; their roots
reached out into the side-road and made it bumpy. Something about
one of the trees attracted my attention.
Some tinfoil was sticking in a knot-hole just above my eye level,
winking at me in the afternoon sun. I stood on tiptoe, hastily
looked around once more, reached into the hole, and withdrew two
pieces of chewing gum minus their outer wrappers.
My first impulse was to get it into my mouth as quickly as possible,
but I remembered where I was. I ran home, and on our front porch I
examined my loot. The gum looked fresh. I sniffed it and it smelled
all right. I licked it and waited for a while. When I did not die I
crammed it into my mouth: Wrigley's Double-Mint.
When Jem came home he asked me where I got such a wad. I told him
I found it.
"Don't eat things you find, Scout."
"This wasn't on the ground, it was in a tree."
Jem growled.
"Well it was," I said. "It was sticking in that tree yonder, the one
comin' from school."
"Spit it out right now!"
I spat it out. The tang was fading, anyway. "I've been chewin' it
all afternoon and I ain't dead yet, not even sick."
Jem stamped his foot. "Don't you know you're not supposed to even
touch the trees over there? You'll get killed if you do!"
"You touched the house once!"
"That was different! You go gargle- right now, you hear me?"
"Ain't neither, it'll take the taste outa my mouth."
"You don't 'n' I'll tell Calpurnia on you!"
Rather than risk a tangle with Calpurnia, I did as Jem told me.
For some reason, my first year of school had wrought a great change in
our relationship: Calpurnia's tyranny, unfairness, and meddling in
my business had faded to gentle grumblings of general disapproval.
On my part, I went to much trouble, sometimes, not to provoke her.
Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience.
Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch
in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything
good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most
of all, summer was Dill.
The authorities released us early the last day of school, and Jem
and I walked home together. "Reckon old Dill'll be coming home
tomorrow," I said.
"Probably day after," said Jem. "Mis'sippi turns 'em loose a day
later."
As we came to the live oaks at the Radley Place I raised my finger
to point for the hundredth time to the knot-hole where I had found the
chewing gum, trying to make Jem believe I had found it there, and
found myself pointing at another piece of tinfoil.
"I see it, Scout! I see it-"
Jem looked around, reached up, and gingerly pocketed a tiny shiny
package. We ran home, and on the front porch we looked at a small
box patchworked with bits of tinfoil collected from chewing-gum
wrappers. It was the kind of box wedding rings came in, purple
velvet with a minute catch. Jem flicked open the tiny catch. Inside
were two scrubbed and polished pennies, one on top of the other. Jem
examined them.
"Indian-heads," he said. "Nineteen-six and Scout, one of em's
nineteen-hundred. These are real old."
"Nineteen-hundred," I echoed. "Say-"
"Hush a minute, I'm thinkin'."
"Jem, you reckon that's somebody's hidin' place?"
"Naw, don't anybody much but us pass by there, unless it's some
grown person's-"
"Grown folks don't have hidin' places. You reckon we ought to keep
'em, Jem?"
"I don't know what we could do, Scout. Who'd we give 'em back to?
I know for a fact don't anybody go by there- Cecil goes by the back
street an' all the way around by town to get home."
Cecil Jacobs, who lived at the far end of our street next door to
the post office, walked a total of one mile per school day to avoid
the Radley Place and old Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose. Mrs. Dubose
lived two doors up the street from us; neighborhood opinion was
unanimous that Mrs. Dubose was the meanest old woman who ever lived.
Jem wouldn't go by her place without Atticus beside him.
"What you reckon we oughta do, Jem?"
Finders were keepers unless title was proven. Plucking an occasional
camellia, getting a squirt of hot milk from Miss Maudie Atkinson's cow
on a summer day, helping ourselves to someone's scuppernongs was
part of our ethical culture, but money was different.
"Tell you what," said Jem. "We'll keep 'em till school starts,
then go around and ask everybody if they're theirs. They're some bus
child's, maybe- he was too taken up with gettin' outa school today an'
forgot 'em. These are somebody's, I know that. See how they've been
slicked up? They've been saved."
"Yeah, but why should somebody wanta put away chewing gum like that?
You know it doesn't last."
"I don't know, Scout. But these are important to somebody...."
"How's that, Jem...?"
"Well, Indian-heads- well, they come from the Indians. They're
real strong magic, they make you have good luck. Not like fried
chicken when you're not lookin' for it, but things like long life
'n' good health, 'n' passin' six-weeks tests... these are real
valuable to somebody. I'm gonna put em in my trunk."
Before Jem went to his room, he looked for a long time at the Radley
Place. He seemed to be thinking again.
Two days later Dill arrived in a blaze of glory: he had ridden the
train by himself from Meridian to Maycomb Junction (a courtesy
title- Maycomb Junction was in Abbott County) where he had been met by
Miss Rachel in Maycomb's one taxi; he had eaten dinner in the diner,
he had seen two twins hitched together get off the train in Bay St.
Louis and stuck to his story regardless of threats. He had discarded
the abominable blue shorts that were buttoned to his shirts and wore
real short pants with a belt; he was somewhat heavier, no taller,
and said he had seen his father. Dill's father was taller than ours,
he had a black beard (pointed), and was president of the L & N
Railroad.
"I helped the engineer for a while," said Dill, yawning.
"In a pig's ear you did, Dill. Hush," said Jem. "What'll we play
today?"
"Tom and Sam and Dick," said Dill. "Let's go in the front yard."
Dill wanted the Rover Boys because there were three respectable parts.
He was clearly tired of being our character man.
"I'm tired of those," I said. I was tired of playing Tom Rover,
who suddenly lost his memory in the middle of a picture show and was
out of the script until the end, when he was found in Alaska.
"Make us up one, Jem," I said.
"I'm tired of makin' 'em up."
Our first days of freedom, and we were tired. I wondered what the
summer would bring.
We had strolled to the front yard, where Dill stood looking down the
street at the dreary face of the Radley Place. "I- smell- death," he
said. "I do, I mean it," he said, when I told him to shut up.
"You mean when somebody's dyin' you can smell it?"
"No, I mean I can smell somebody an' tell if they're gonna die. An
old lady taught me how." Dill leaned over and sniffed me. "Jean-
Louise- Finch, you are going to die in three days."
"Dill if you don't hush I'll knock you bowlegged. I mean it, now-"
"Yawl hush," growled Jem, "you act like you believe in Hot Steams."
"You act like you don't," I said.
"What's a Hot Steam?" asked Dill.
"Haven't you ever walked along a lonesome road at night and passed
by a hot place?" Jem asked Dill. "A Hot Steam's somebody who can't get
to heaven, just wallows around on lonesome roads an' if you walk
through him, when you die you'll be one too, an' you'll go around at
night suckin' people's breath-"
"How can you keep from passing through one?"
"You can't," said Jem. "Sometimes they stretch all the way across
the road, but if you hafta go through one you say, 'Angel-bright,
life-in-death; get off the road, don't suck my breath.' That keeps 'em
from wrapping around you-"
"Don't you believe a word he says, Dill," I said. "Calpurnia says
that's nigger-talk."
Jem scowled darkly at me, but said, "Well, are we gonna play
anything or not?"
"Let's roll in the tire," I suggested.
Jem sighed. "You know I'm too big."
