out of the way.
"Why can't you just pull it up?" I asked, after witnessing a
prolonged campaign against a blade not three inches high.
"Pull it up, child, pull it up?" She picked up the limp sprout and
squeezed her thumb up its tiny stalk. Microscopic grains oozed out.
"Why, one sprig of nut grass can ruin a whole yard. Look here. When it
comes fall this dries up and the wind blows it all over Maycomb
County!" Miss Maudie's face likened such an occurrence unto an Old
Testament pestilence.
Her speech was crisp for a Maycomb County inhabitant. She called
us by all our names, and when she grinned she revealed two minute gold
prongs clipped to her eyeteeth. When I admired them and hoped I
would have some eventually, she said, "Look here." With a click of her
tongue she thrust out her bridgework, a gesture of cordiality that
cemented our friendship.
Miss Maudie's benevolence extended to Jem and Dill, whenever they
paused in their pursuits: we reaped the benefits of a talent Miss
Maudie had hitherto kept hidden from us. She made the best cakes in
the neighborhood. When she was admitted into our confidence, every
time she baked she made a big cake and three little ones, and she
would call across the street: "Jem Finch, Scout Finch, Charles Baker
Harris, come here!" Our promptness was always rewarded.
In summertime, twilights are long and peaceful. Often as not, Miss
Maudie and I would sit silently on her porch, watching the sky go from
yellow to pink as the sun went down, watching flights of martins sweep
low over the neighborhood and disappear behind the schoolhouse
rooftops.
"Miss Maudie," I said one evening, "do you think Boo Radley's
still alive?"
"His name's Arthur and he's alive," she said. She was rocking slowly
in her big oak chair. "Do you smell my mimosa? It's like angels'
breath this evening."
"Yessum. How do you know?"
"Know what, child?"
"That B- Mr. Arthur's still alive?"
"What a morbid question. But I suppose it's a morbid subject. I know
he's alive, Jean Louise, because I haven't seen him carried out yet."
"Maybe he died and they stuffed him up the chimney."
"Where did you get such a notion?"
"That's what Jem said he thought they did."
"S-ss-ss. He gets more like Jack Finch every day."
Miss Maudie had known Uncle Jack Finch, Atticus's brother, since
they were children. Nearly the same age, they had grown up together at
Finch's Landing. Miss Maudie was the daughter of a neighboring
landowner, Dr. Frank Buford. Dr. Buford's profession was medicine
and his obsession was anything that grew in the ground, so he stayed
poor. Uncle Jack Finch confined his passion for digging to his
window boxes in Nashville and stayed rich. We saw Uncle Jack every
Christmas, and every Christmas he yelled across the street for Miss
Maudie to come marry him. Miss Maudie would yell back, "Call a
little louder, Jack Finch, and they'll hear you at the post office,
I haven't heard you yet!" Jem and I thought this a strange way to
ask for a lady's hand in marriage, but then Uncle Jack was rather
strange. He said he was trying to get Miss Maudie's goat, that he
had been trying unsuccessfully for forty years, that he was the last
person in the world Miss Maudie would think about marrying but the
first person she thought about teasing, and the best defense to her
was spirited offense, all of which we understood clearly.
"Arthur Radley just stays in the house, that's all," said Miss
Maudie. "Wouldn't you stay in the house if you didn't want to come
out?"
"Yessum, but I'd wanta come out. Why doesn't he?"
Miss Maudie's eyes narrowed. "You know that story as well as I do."
"I never heard why, though. Nobody ever told me why."
Miss Maudie settled her bridgework. "You know old Mr. Radley was a
foot-washing Baptist-"
"That's what you are, ain't it?"
"My shell's not that hard, child. I'm just a Baptist."
"Don't you all believe in foot-washing?"
"We do. At home in the bathtub."
"But we can't have communion with you all-"
Apparently deciding that it was easier to define primitive baptistry
than closed communion, Miss Maudie said: "Foot-washers believe
anything that's pleasure is a sin. Did you know some of 'em came out
of the woods one Saturday and passed by this place and told me me
and my flowers were going to hell?"
"Your flowers, too?"
"Yes ma'am. They'd burn right with me. They thought I spent too much
time in God's outdoors and not enough time inside the house reading
the Bible."
My confidence in pulpit Gospel lessened at the vision of Miss Maudie
stewing forever in various Protestant hells. True enough, she had an
acid tongue in her head, and she did not go about the neighborhood
doing good, as did Miss Stephanie Crawford. But while no one with a
grain of sense trusted Miss Stephanie, Jem and I had considerable
faith in Miss Maudie. She had never told on us, had never played
cat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in our private
lives. She was our friend. How so reasonable a creature could live
in peril of everlasting torment was incomprehensible.
"That ain't right, Miss Maudie. You're the best lady I know."
Miss Maudie grinned. "Thank you ma'am. Thing is, foot-washers
think women are a sin by definition. They take the Bible literally,
you know."
"Is that why Mr. Arthur stays in the house, to keep away from
women?"
"I've no idea."
"It doesn't make sense to me. Looks like if Mr. Arthur was hankerin'
after heaven he'd come out on the porch at least. Atticus says God's
loving folks like you love yourself-"
Miss Maudie stopped rocking, and her voice hardened. "You are too
young to understand it," she said, "but sometimes the Bible in the
hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of- oh,
of your father."
I was shocked. "Atticus doesn't drink whiskey," I said. "He never
drunk a drop in his life- nome, yes he did. He said he drank some
one time and didn't like it."
Miss Maudie laughed. "Wasn't talking about your father," she said.
"What I meant was, if Atticus Finch drank until he was drunk he
wouldn't be as hard as some men are at their best. There are just some
kind of men who- who're so busy worrying about the next world
they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the
street and see the results."
"Do you think they're true, all those things they say about B- Mr.
Arthur?"
"What things?"
I told her.
"That is three-fourths colored folks and one-fourth Stephanie
Crawford," said Miss Maudie grimly. "Stephanie Crawford even told me
once she woke up in the middle of the night and found him looking in
the window at her. I said what did you do, Stephanie, move over in the
bed and make room for him? That shut her up a while."
I was sure it did. Miss Maudie's voice was enough to shut anybody
up.
"No, child," she said, "that is a sad house. I remember Arthur
Radley when he was a boy. He always spoke nicely to me, no matter what
folks said he did. Spoke as nicely as he knew how."
"You reckon he's crazy?"
Miss Maudie shook her head. "If he's not he should be by now. The
things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in
houses behind closed doors, what secrets-"
"Atticus don't ever do anything to Jem and me in the house that he
don't do in the yard," I said, feeling it my duty to defend my parent.
"Gracious child, I was raveling a thread, wasn't even thinking about
your father, but now that I am I'll say this: Atticus Finch is the
same in his house as he is on the public streets. How'd you like
some fresh poundcake to take home?"
I liked it very much.
Next morning when I awakened I found Jem and Dill in the back yard
deep in conversation. When I joined them, as usual they said go away.
"Will not. This yard's as much mine as it is yours, Jem Finch. I got
just as much right to play in it as you have."
Dill and Jem emerged from a brief huddle: "If you stay you've got to
do what we tell you," Dill warned.
"We-ll," I said, "who's so high and mighty all of a sudden?"
"If you don't say you'll do what we tell you, we ain't gonna tell
you anything," Dill continued.
"You act like you grew ten inches in the night! All right, what is
it?"
Jem said placidly, "We are going to give a note to Boo Radley."
"Just how?" I was trying to fight down the automatic terror rising
in me. It was all right for Miss Maudie to talk- she was old and
snug on her porch. It was different for us.
Jem was merely going to put the note on the end of a fishing pole
and stick it through the shutters. If anyone came along, Dill would
ring the bell.
Dill raised his right hand. In it was my mother's silver
dinner-bell.
"I'm goin' around to the side of the house," said Jem. "We looked
yesterday from across the street, and there's a shutter loose. Think
maybe I can make it stick on the window sill, at least."
"Jem-"
"Now you're in it and you can't get out of it, you'll just stay in
it, Miss Priss!"
"Okay, okay, but I don't wanta watch. Jem, somebody was-"
"Yes you will, you'll watch the back end of the lot and Dill's gonna
watch the front of the house an' up the street, an' if anybody comes
he'll ring the bell. That clear?"
"All right then. What'd you write him?"
Dill said, "We're askin' him real politely to come out sometimes,
and tell us what he does in there- we said we wouldn't hurt him and
we'd buy him an ice cream."
"You all've gone crazy, he'll kill us!"
