"You c'n push."
I ran to the back yard and pulled an old car tire from under the
house. I slapped it up to the front yard. "I'm first," I said.
Dill said he ought to be first, he just got here.
Jem arbitrated, awarded me first push with an extra time for Dill,
and I folded myself inside the tire.
Until it happened I did not realize that Jem was offended by my
contradicting him on Hot Steams, and that he was patiently awaiting an
opportunity to reward me. He did, by pushing the tire down the
sidewalk with all the force in his body. Ground, sky and houses melted
into a mad palette, my ears throbbed, I was suffocating. I could not
put out my hands to stop, they were wedged between my chest and knees.
I could only hope that Jem would outrun the tire and me, or that I
would be stopped by a bump in the sidewalk. I heard him behind me,
chasing and shouting.
The tire bumped on gravel, skeetered across the road, crashed into a
barrier and popped me like a cork onto pavement. Dizzy and
nauseated, I lay on the cement and shook my head still, pounded my
ears to silence, and heard Jem's voice: "Scout, get away from there,
come on!"
I raised my head and stared at the Radley Place steps in front of
me. I froze.
"Come on, Scout, don't just lie there!" Jem was screaming. "Get
up, can'tcha?"
I got to my feet, trembling as I thawed.
"Get the tire!" Jem hollered. "Bring it with you! Ain't you got
any sense at all?"
When I was able to navigate, I ran back to them as fast as my
shaking knees would carry me.
"Why didn't you bring it?" Jem yelled.
"Why don't you get it?" I screamed.
Jem was silent.
"Go on, it ain't far inside the gate. Why, you even touched the
house once, remember?"
Jem looked at me furiously, could not decline, ran down the
sidewalk, treaded water at the gate, then dashed in and retrieved
the tire.
"See there?" Jem was scowling triumphantly. "Nothin' to it. I swear,
Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl it's mortifyin'."
There was more to it than he knew, but I decided not to tell him.
Calpurnia appeared in the front door and yelled, "Lemonade time! You
all get in outa that hot sun 'fore you fry alive!" Lemonade in the
middle of the morning was a summertime ritual. Calpurnia set a pitcher
and three glasses on the porch, then went about her business. Being
out of Jem's good graces did not worry me especially. Lemonade would
restore his good humor.
Jem gulped down his second glassful and slapped his chest. "I know
what we are going to play," he announced. "Something new, something
different."
"What?" asked Dill.
"Boo Radley."
Jem's head at times was transparent: he had thought that up to
make me understand he wasn't afraid of Radleys in any shape or form,
to contrast his own fearless heroism with my cowardice.
"Boo Radley? How?" asked Dill.
Jem said, "Scout, you can be Mrs. Radley-"
"I declare if I will. I don't think-"
"'Smatter?" said Dill. "Still scared?"
"He can get out at night when we're all asleep...." I said.
Jem hissed. "Scout, how's he gonna know what we're doin'? Besides, I
don't think he's still there. He died years ago and they stuffed him
up the chimney."
Dill said, "Jem, you and me can play and Scout can watch if she's
scared."
I was fairly sure Boo Radley was inside that house, but I couldn't
prove it, and felt it best to keep my mouth shut or I would be accused
of believing in Hot Steams, phenomena I was immune to in the daytime.
Jem parceled out our roles: I was Mrs. Radley, and all I had to do
was come out and sweep the porch. Dill was old Mr. Radley: he walked
up and down the sidewalk and coughed when Jem spoke to him. Jem,
naturally, was Boo: he went under the front steps and shrieked and
howled from time to time.
As the summer progressed, so did our game. We polished and perfected
it, added dialogue and plot until we had manufactured a small play
upon which we rang changes every day.
Dill was a villain's villain: he could get into any character part
assigned him, and appear tall if height was part of the devilry
required. He was as good as his worst performance; his worst
performance was Gothic. I reluctantly played assorted ladies who
entered the script. I never thought it as much fun as Tarzan, and I
played that summer with more than vague anxiety despite Jem's
assurances that Boo Radley was dead and nothing would get me, with him
and Calpurnia there in the daytime and Atticus home at night.
Jem was a born hero.
It was a melancholy little drama, woven from bits and scraps of
gossip and neighborhood legend: Mrs. Radley had been beautiful until
she married Mr. Radley and lost all her money. She also lost most of
her teeth, her hair, and her right forefinger (Dill's contribution.
Boo bit it off one night when he couldn't find any cats and
squirrels to eat.); she sat in the livingroom and cried most of the
time, while Boo slowly whittled away all the furniture in the house.
The three of us were the boys who got into trouble; I was the
probate judge, for a change; Dill led Jem away and crammed him beneath
the steps, poking him with the brushbroom. Jem would reappear as
needed in the shapes of the sheriff, assorted townsfolk, and Miss
Stephanie Crawford, who had more to say about the Radleys than anybody
in Maycomb.
When it was time to play Boo's big scene, Jem would sneak into the
house, steal the scissors from the sewing-machine drawer when
Calpurnia's back was turned, then sit in the swing and cut up
newspapers. Dill would walk by, cough at Jem, and Jem would fake a
plunge into Dill's thigh. From where I stood it looked real.
When Mr. Nathan Radley passed us on his daily trip to town, we would
stand still and silent until he was out of sight, then wonder what
he would do to us if he suspected. Our activities halted when any of
the neighbors appeared, and once I saw Miss Maudie Atkinson staring
across the street at us, her hedge clippers poised in midair.
One day we were so busily playing Chapter XXV, Book II of One
Man's Family, we did not see Atticus standing on the sidewalk
looking at us, slapping a rolled magazine against his knee. The sun
said twelve noon.
"What are you all playing?" he asked.
"Nothing," said Jem.
Jem's evasion told me our game was a secret, so I kept quiet.
"What are you doing with those scissors, then? Why are you tearing
up that newspaper? If it's today's I'll tan you."
"Nothing."
"Nothing what?" said Atticus.
"Nothing, sir."
"Give me those scissors," Atticus said. "They're no things to play
with. Does this by any chance have anything to do with the Radleys?"
"No sir," said Jem, reddening.
"I hope it doesn't," he said shortly, and went inside the house.
"Je-m..."
"Shut up! He's gone in the livingroom, he can hear us in there."
Safely in the yard, Dill asked Jem if we could play any more.
"I don't know. Atticus didn't say we couldn't-"
"Jem," I said, "I think Atticus knows it anyway."
"No he don't. If he did he'd say he did."
I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls
always imagined things, that's why other people hated them so, and
if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to
play with.
"All right, you just keep it up then," I said. "You'll find out."
Atticus's arrival was the second reason I wanted to quit the game.
The first reason happened the day I rolled into the Radley front yard.
Through all the head-shaking, quelling of nausea and Jem-yelling, I
had heard another sound, so low I could not have heard it from the
sidewalk. Someone inside the house was laughing.
5
My nagging got the better of Jem eventually, as I knew it would, and
to my relief we slowed down the game for a while. He still maintained,
however, that Atticus hadn't said we couldn't, therefore we could; and
if Atticus ever said we couldn't, Jem had thought of a way around
it: he would simply change the names of the characters and then we
couldn't be accused of playing anything.
Dill was in hearty agreement with this plan of action. Dill was
becoming something of a trial anyway, following Jem about. He had
asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot
about it. He staked me out, marked as his property, said I was the
only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. I beat him up
twice but it did no good, he only grew closer to Jem. They spent
days together in the treehouse plotting and planning, calling me
only when they needed a third party. But I kept aloof from their
more foolhardy schemes for a while, and on pain of being called a
girl, I spent most of the remaining twilights that summer sitting with
Miss Maudie Atkinson on her front porch.
Jem and I had always enjoyed the free run of Miss Maudie's yard if
we kept out of her azaleas, but our contact with her was not clearly
defined. Until Jem and Dill excluded me from their plans, she was only
another lady in the neighborhood, but a relatively benign presence.
Our tacit treaty with Miss Maudie was that we could play on her
lawn, eat her scuppernongs if we didn't jump on the arbor, and explore
her vast back lot, terms so generous we seldom spoke to her, so
careful were we to preserve the delicate balance of our
relationship, but Jem and Dill drove me closer to her with their
behavior.
Miss Maudie hated her house: time spent indoors was time wasted. She
was a widow, a chameleon lady who worked in her flower beds in an
old straw hat and men's coveralls, but after her five o'clock bath she
would appear on the porch and reign over the street in magisterial
beauty.
She loved everything that grew in God's earth, even the weeds.
With one exception. If she found a blade of nut grass in her yard it
was like the Second Battle of the Marne: she swooped down upon it with
a tin tub and subjected it to blasts from beneath with a poisonous
substance she said was so powerful it'd kill us all if we didn't stand
