To Kill a Mockingbird (9 page)

The second grade was grim, but Jem assured me that the older I got the better school would be, that he started off the same way, and it was not until one reached the sixth grade that one learned anything of value. The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me—he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn’t see how they got anything done, but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn’t? Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts.

There are no clearly defined seasons in South Alabama; summer drifts into autumn, and autumn is sometimes never followed by winter, but turns to a days-old spring that melts into summer again. That fall was a long one, hardly cool enough for a light jacket. Jem and I were trotting in our orbit one mild October afternoon when our knot-hole stopped us again. Something white was inside this time.

Jem let me do the honors: I pulled out two small images carved in soap. One was the figure of a boy, the other wore a crude dress. Before I remembered that there was no such thing as hoo-dooing, I shrieked and threw them down.

Jem snatched them up. “What’s the matter with you?” he yelled. He rubbed the figures free of red dust. “These are good,” he said. “I’ve never seen any these good.”

He held them down to me. They were almost perfect miniatures of two children. The boy had on shorts, and a shock of soapy hair fell to his eyebrows. I looked up at Jem. A point of straight brown hair kicked downwards from his part. I had never noticed it before. Jem looked from the girl-doll to me. The girl-doll wore bangs. So did I.

“These are us,” he said.

“Who did ‘em, you reckon?”

“Who do we know around here who whittles?” he asked.

“Mr. Avery.”

“Mr. Avery just does like this. I mean carves.”

Mr. Avery averaged a stick of stovewood per week; he honed it down to a toothpick and chewed it.

“There’s old Miss Stephanie Crawford’s sweetheart,” I said.

“He carves all right, but he lives down the country. When would he ever pay any attention to us?”

“Maybe he sits on the porch and looks at us instead of Miss Stephanie. If I was him, I would.”

Jem stared at me so long I asked what was the matter, but got Nothing, Scout for an answer. When we went home, Jem put the dolls in his trunk.

Less than two weeks later we found a whole package of chewing gum, which we enjoyed, the fact that everything on the Radley Place was poison having slipped Jem’s memory.

The following week the knot-hole yielded a tarnished medal. Jem showed it to Atticus, who said it was a spelling medal, that before we were born the Maycomb County schools had spelling contests and awarded medals to the winners. Atticus said someone must have lost it, and had we asked around? Jem camel-kicked me when I tried to say where we had found it. Jem asked Atticus if he remembered anybody who ever won one, and Atticus said no.

Our biggest prize appeared four days later. It was a pocket watch that wouldn’t run, on a chain with an aluminum knife.

“You reckon it’s white gold, Jem?”

“Don’t know. I’ll show it to Atticus.”

Atticus said it would probably be worth ten dollars, knife, chain and all, if it were new. “Did you swap with somebody at school?” he asked.

“Oh, no sir!” Jem pulled out his grandfather’s watch that Atticus let him carry once a week if Jem were careful with it. On the days he carried the watch, Jem walked on eggs. “Atticus, if it’s all right with you, I’d rather have this one instead. Maybe I can fix it.”

When the new wore off his grandfather’s watch, and carrying it became a day’s burdensome task, Jem no longer felt the necessity of ascertaining the hour every five minutes.

He did a fair job, only one spring and two tiny pieces left over, but the watch would not run. “Oh-h,” he sighed, “it’ll never go. Scout—?”

“Huh?”

“You reckon we oughta write a letter to whoever’s leaving us these things?”

“That’d be right nice, Jem, we can thank ‘em—what’s wrong?”

Jem was holding his ears, shaking his head from side to side. “I don’t get it, I just don’t get it—I don’t know why, Scout…” He looked toward the livingroom. “I’ve gotta good mind to tell Atticus—no, I reckon not.”

“I’ll tell him for you.”

“No, don’t do that, Scout. Scout?”

“Wha-t?”

He had been on the verge of telling me something all evening; his face would brighten and he would lean toward me, then he would change his mind. He changed it again. “Oh, nothin‘.”

“Here, let’s write a letter.” I pushed a tablet and pencil under his nose.

“Okay. Dear Mister…”

“How do you know it’s a man? I bet it’s Miss Maudie—been bettin‘ that for a long time.”

“Ar-r, Miss Maudie can’t chew gum—” Jem broke into a grin. “You know, she can talk real pretty sometimes. One time I asked her to have a chew and she said no thanks, that—chewing gum cleaved to her palate and rendered her speechless,” said Jem carefully. “Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“Yeah, she can say nice things sometimes. She wouldn’t have a watch and chain anyway.”

“Dear sir,” said Jem. “We appreciate the—no, we appreciate everything which you have put into the tree for us. Yours very truly, Jeremy Atticus Finch.”

“He won’t know who you are if you sign it like that, Jem.”

Jem erased his name and wrote, “Jem Finch.” I signed, “Jean Louise Finch (Scout),” beneath it. Jem put the note in an envelope.

Next morning on the way to school he ran ahead of me and stopped at the tree. Jem was facing me when he looked up, and I saw him go stark white.

“
Scout
!”

I ran to him.

Someone had filled our knot-hole with cement.

“Don’t you cry, now, Scout… don’t cry now, don’t you worry—” he muttered at me all the way to school.

When we went home for dinner Jem bolted his food, ran to the porch and stood on the steps. I followed him. “Hasn’t passed by yet,” he said.

Next day Jem repeated his vigil and was rewarded.

“Hidy do, Mr. Nathan,” he said.

“Morning Jem, Scout,” said Mr. Radley, as he went by.

“Mr. Radley,” said Jem.

Mr. Radley turned around.

“Mr. Radley, ah—did you put cement in that hole in that tree down yonder?”

“Yes,” he said. “I filled it up.”

“Why’d you do it, sir?”

“Tree’s dying. You plug ‘em with cement when they’re sick. You ought to know that, Jem.”

Jem said nothing more about it until late afternoon. When we passed our tree he gave it a meditative pat on its cement, and remained deep in thought. He seemed to be working himself into a bad humor, so I kept my distance.

As usual, we met Atticus coming home from work that evening. When we were at our steps Jem said, “Atticus, look down yonder at that tree, please sir.”

“What tree, son?”

“The one on the corner of the Radley lot comin‘ from school.”

“Yes?”

“Is that tree dyin‘?”

“Why no, son, I don’t think so. Look at the leaves, they’re all green and full, no brown patches anywhere—”

“It ain’t even sick?”

“That tree’s as healthy as you are, Jem. Why?”

“Mr. Nathan Radley said it was dyin‘.”

“Well maybe it is. I’m sure Mr. Radley knows more about his trees than we do.”

Atticus left us on the porch. Jem leaned on a pillar, rubbing his shoulders against it.

“Do you itch, Jem?” I asked as politely as I could. He did not answer. “Come on in, Jem,” I said.

“After while.”

He stood there until nightfall, and I waited for him. When we went in the house I saw he had been crying; his face was dirty in the right places, but I thought it odd that I had not heard him.

For reasons unfathomable to the most experienced prophets in Maycomb County, autumn turned to winter that year. We had two weeks of the coldest weather since 1885, Atticus said. Mr. Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change: Jem and I were burdened with the guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our neighbors and discomfort to ourselves.

Old Mrs. Radley died that winter, but her death caused hardly a ripple—the neighborhood seldom saw her, except when she watered her cannas. Jem and I decided that Boo had got her at last, but when Atticus returned from the Radley house he said she died of natural causes, to our disappointment.

“Ask him,” Jem whispered.

“You ask him, you’re the oldest.”

“That’s why you oughta ask him.”

“Atticus,” I said, “did you see Mr. Arthur?”

Atticus looked sternly around his newspaper at me: “I did not.”

Jem restrained me from further questions. He said Atticus was still touchous about us and the Radleys and it wouldn’t do to push him any. Jem had a notion that Atticus thought our activities that night last summer were not solely confined to strip poker. Jem had no firm basis for his ideas, he said it was merely a twitch.

Next morning I awoke, looked out the window and nearly died of fright. My screams brought Atticus from his bathroom half-shaven.

“The
world’s
endin‘, Atticus! Please do something—!” I dragged him to the window and pointed.

“No it’s not,” he said. “It’s snowing.”

Jem asked Atticus would it keep up. Jem had never seen snow either, but he knew what it was. Atticus said he didn’t know any more about snow than Jem did. “I think, though, if it’s watery like that, it’ll turn to rain.”

The telephone rang and Atticus left the breakfast table to answer it. “That was Eula May,” he said when he returned. “I quote—‘As it has not snowed in Maycomb County since 1885, there will be no school today.’”

Eula May was Maycomb’s leading telephone operator. She was entrusted with issuing public announcements, wedding invitations, setting off the fire siren, and giving first-aid instructions when Dr. Reynolds was away.

When Atticus finally called us to order and bade us look at our plates instead of out the windows, Jem asked, “How do you make a snowman?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Atticus. “I don’t want you all to be disappointed, but I doubt if there’ll be enough snow for a snowball, even.”

Calpurnia came in and said she thought it was sticking. When we ran to the back yard, it was covered with a feeble layer of soggy snow.

“We shouldn’t walk about in it,” said Jem. “Look, every step you take’s wasting it.”

I looked back at my mushy footprints. Jem said if we waited until it snowed some more we could scrape it all up for a snowman. I stuck out my tongue and caught a fat flake. It burned.

“Jem, it’s hot!”

“No it ain’t, it’s so cold it burns. Now don’t eat it, Scout, you’re wasting it. Let it come down.”

“But I want to walk in it.”

“I know what, we can go walk over at Miss Maudie’s.”

Jem hopped across the front yard. I followed in his tracks. When we were on the sidewalk in front of Miss Maudie’s, Mr. Avery accosted us. He had a pink face and a big stomach below his belt.

“See what you’ve done?” he said. “Hasn’t snowed in Maycomb since Appomattox. It’s bad children like you makes the seasons change.”

I wondered if Mr. Avery knew how hopefully we had watched last summer for him to repeat his performance, and reflected that if this was our reward, there was something to say for sin. I did not wonder where Mr. Avery gathered his meteorological statistics: they came straight from the Rosetta Stone.

“Jem Finch, you Jem Finch!”

“Miss Maudie’s callin‘ you, Jem.”

“You all stay in the middle of the yard. There’s some thrift buried under the snow near the porch. Don’t step on it!”

“Yessum!” called Jem. “It’s beautiful, ain’t it, Miss Maudie?”

“Beautiful my hind foot! If it freezes tonight it’ll carry off all my azaleas!”

Miss Maudie’s old sunhat glistened with snow crystals. She was bending over some small bushes, wrapping them in burlap bags. Jem asked her what she was doing that for.

“Keep ‘em warm,” she said.

“How can flowers keep warm? They don’t circulate.”

“I cannot answer that question, Jem Finch. All I know is if it freezes tonight these plants’ll freeze, so you cover ‘em up. Is that clear?”

“Yessum. Miss Maudie?”

“What, sir?”

“Could Scout and me borrow some of your snow?”

“Heavens alive, take it all! There’s an old peach basket under the house, haul it off in that.” Miss Maudie’s eyes narrowed. “Jem Finch, what are you going to do with my snow?”

“You’ll see,” said Jem, and we transferred as much snow as we could from Miss Maudie’s yard to ours, a slushy operation.

“What are we gonna do, Jem?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” he said. “Now get the basket and haul all the snow you can rake up from the back yard to the front. Walk back in your tracks, though,” he cautioned.

“Are we gonna have a snow baby, Jem?”

“No, a real snowman. Gotta work hard, now.”

Jem ran to the back yard, produced the garden hoe and began digging quickly behind the woodpile, placing any worms he found to one side. He went in the house, returned with the laundry hamper, filled it with earth and carried it to the front yard.

When we had five baskets of earth and two baskets of snow, Jem said we were ready to begin.

“Don’t you think this is kind of a mess?” I asked.

“Looks messy now, but it won’t later,” he said.

Jem scooped up an armful of dirt, patted it into a mound on which he added another load, and another until he had constructed a torso.

“Jem, I ain’t ever heard of a nigger snowman,” I said.

“He won’t be black long,” he grunted.

Jem procured some peachtree switches from the back yard, plaited them, and bent them into bones to be covered with dirt.

“He looks like Stephanie Crawford with her hands on her hips,” I said. “Fat in the middle and little-bitty arms.”