Lee Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird

“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!”

Dill said, “It’s my idea. I figure if he’d come out and sit a spell with us he might feel better.”

“How do you know he don’t feel good?”

“Well how’d you feel if you’d been shut up for a hundred years with nothin’ but cats to eat? I bet he’s got a beard down to here—”

“Like your daddy’s?”

“He ain’t got a beard, he—” Dill stopped, as if trying to remember.

“Uh huh, caughtcha,” I said. “You said ‘fore you were off the train good your daddy had a black beard—”

“If it’s all the same to you he shaved it off last summer! Yeah, an’ I’ve got the letter to prove it — he sent me two dollars, too!”

“Keep on — I reckon he even sent you a mounted police uniform! That’n never showed up, did it? You just keep on tellin’ ‘em, son—”

Dill Harris could tell the biggest ones I ever heard. Among other things, he had been up in a mail plane seventeen times, he had been to Nova Scotia, he had seen an elephant, and his granddaddy was Brigadier General Joe Wheeler and left him his sword.

“You all hush,” said Jem. He scuttled beneath the house and came out with a yellow bamboo pole. “Reckon this is long enough to reach from the sidewalk?”

“Anybody who’s brave enough to go up and touch the house hadn’t oughta use a fishin’ pole,” I said. “Why don’t you just knock the front door down?”

“This — is — different,” said Jem, “how many times do I have to tell you that?”

Dill took a piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to Jem. The three of us walked cautiously toward the old house. Dill remained at the light-pole on the front corner of the lot, and Jem and I edged down the sidewalk parallel to the side of the house. I walked beyond Jem and stood where I could see around the curve.

“All clear,” I said. “Not a soul in sight.”

Jem looked up the sidewalk to Dill, who nodded.

Jem attached the note to the end of the fishing pole, let the pole out across the yard and pushed it toward the window he had selected. The pole lacked several inches of being long enough, and Jem leaned over as far as he could. I watched him making jabbing motions for so long, I abandoned my post and went to him.

“Can’t get it off the pole,” he muttered, “or if I got it off I can’t make it stay. G’on back down the street, Scout.”

I returned and gazed around the curve at the empty road. Occasionally I looked back at Jem, who was patiently trying to place the note on the window sill. It would flutter to the ground and Jem would jab it up, until I thought if Boo Radley ever received it he wouldn’t be able to read it. I was looking down the street when the dinner-bell rang.

Shoulder up, I reeled around to face Boo Radley and his bloody fangs; instead, I saw Dill ringing the bell with all his might in Atticus’s face.

Jem looked so awful I didn’t have the heart to tell him I told him so. He trudged along, dragging the pole behind him on the sidewalk.

Atticus said, “Stop ringing that bell.”

Dill grabbed the clapper; in the silence that followed, I wished he’d start ringing it again. Atticus pushed his hat to the back of his head and put his hands on his hips. “Jem,” he said, “what were you doing?”