No More Learning

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! ”
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? ”
“Nothin‘, sir. ”
“I don’t want any of that. Tell me. ”
“I was—we were just tryin‘ to give somethin’ to Mr. Radley. ”
“What were you trying to give him? ”
“Just a letter. ”
“Let me see it. ”
Jem held out a filthy piece of paper. Atticus took it and tried to read it. “Why do you want Mr. Radley to come out? ”
Dill said, “We thought he might enjoy us. . . ” and dried up when Atticus looked at
him.
“Son,” he said to Jem, “I’m going to tell you something and tell you one time: stop tormenting that man. That goes for the other two of you. ”
What Mr. Radley did was his own business. If he wanted to come out, he would. If he wanted to stay inside his own house he had the right to stay inside free from the attentions of inquisitive children, which was a mild term for the likes of us. How would we like it if Atticus barged in on us without knocking, when we were in our rooms at night? We were, in effect, doing the same thing to Mr. Radley. What Mr. Radley did might seem peculiar to us, but it did not seem peculiar to him. Furthermore, had it never occurred to us that the civil way to communicate with another being was by the front door instead of a side window? Lastly, we were to stay away from that house until we were invited there, we were not to play an asinine game he had seen us playing or make fun of anybody on this street or in this town-
“We weren’t makin‘ fun of him, we weren’t laughin’ at him,” said Jem, “we were just-”
“So that was what you were doing, wasn’t it? ” “Makin‘ fun of him? ”
“No,” said Atticus, “putting his life’s history on display for the edification of the neighborhood. ”
Jem seemed to swell a little. “I didn’t say we were doin‘ that, I didn’t say it! ”
Atticus grinned dryly. “You just told me,” he said. “You stop this nonsense right now, every one of you. ”
Jem gaped at him.
“You want to be a lawyer, don’t you? ” Our father’s mouth was suspiciously firm, as if he were trying to hold it in line.
Jem decided there was no point in quibbling, and was silent. When Atticus went inside the house to retrieve a file he had forgotten to take to work that morning, Jem finally realized that he had been done in by the oldest lawyer’s trick on record. He waited a respectful distance from the front steps, watched Atticus leave the house and walk toward town. When Atticus was out of earshot Jem
yelled after him: “I thought I wanted to be a lawyer but I ain’t so sure now! ”
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Chapter 6
“Yes,” said our father, when Jem asked him if we could go over and sit by Miss Rachel’s fishpool with Dill, as this was his last night in Maycomb. “Tell him so long for me, and we’ll see him next summer. ”
We leaped over the low wall that separated Miss Rachel’s yard from our driveway. Jem whistled bob-white and Dill answered in the darkness.
“Not a breath blowing,” said Jem. “Looka yonder. ”
He pointed to the east. A gigantic moon was rising behind Miss Maudie’s pecan trees. “That makes it seem hotter,” he said.
“Cross in it tonight? ” asked Dill, not looking up. He was constructing a cigarette from newspaper and string.
“No, just the lady. Don’t light that thing, Dill, you’ll stink up this whole end of town. ”
There was a lady in the moon in Maycomb. She sat at a dresser combing her hair. “We’re gonna miss you, boy,” I said. “Reckon we better watch for Mr. Avery? ”
Mr. Avery boarded across the street from Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house. Besides making change in the collection plate every Sunday, Mr. Avery sat on the porch every night until nine o’clock and sneezed. One evening we were privileged to witness a performance by him which seemed to have been his positively last, for he never did it again so long as we watched. Jem and I were leaving Miss Rachel’s front steps one night when Dill stopped us: “Golly, looka yonder. ” He pointed across the street. At first we saw nothing but a kudzu-covered front porch, but a closer inspection revealed an arc of water descending from the leaves and splashing in the yellow circle of the street light, some ten feet from source to
earth, it seemed to us. Jem said Mr. Avery misfigured, Dill said he must drink a gallon a day, and the ensuing contest to determine relative distances and respective prowess only made me feel left out again, as I was untalented in this area.
Dill stretched, yawned, and said altogether too casually. “I know what, let’s go for a walk. ”
He sounded fishy to me. Nobody in Maycomb just went for a walk. “Where to, Dill? ”
Dill jerked his head in a southerly direction.
Jem said, “Okay. ” When I protested, he said sweetly, “You don’t have to come along, Angel May. ”
“You don’t have to go. Remember-”
Jem was not one to dwell on past defeats: it seemed the only message he got from Atticus was insight into the art of cross examination. “Scout, we ain’t gonna do anything, we’re just goin‘ to the street light and back. ”
We strolled silently down the sidewalk, listening to porch swings creaking with the weight of the neighborhood, listening to the soft night-murmurs of the grown people on our street. Occasionally we heard Miss Stephanie Crawford laugh.
“Well? ” said Dill.
“Okay,” said Jem. “Why don’t you go on home, Scout? ” “What are you gonna do? ”
Dill and Jem were simply going to peep in the window with the loose shutter to see if they could get a look at Boo Radley, and if I didn’t want to go with them I could go straight home and keep my fat flopping mouth shut, that was all.
“But what in the sam holy hill did you wait till tonight? ”
Because nobody could see them at night, because Atticus would be so deep in a book he wouldn’t hear the Kingdom coming, because if Boo Radley killed them they’d miss school instead of vacation, and because it was easier to see inside a dark house in the dark than in the daytime, did I understand?
“Jem, please—”
“Scout, I’m tellin‘ you for the last time, shut your trap or go home—I declare to the Lord you’re gettin’ more like a girl every day! ”
With that, I had no option but to join them. We thought it was better to go under the high wire fence at the rear of the Radley lot, we stood less chance of being seen. The fence enclosed a large garden and a narrow wooden outhouse.
Jem held up the bottom wire and motioned Dill under it. I followed, and held up the wire for Jem. It was a tight squeeze for him. “Don’t make a sound,” he whispered. “Don’t get in a row of collards whatever you do, they’ll wake the dead. ”
With this thought in mind, I made perhaps one step per minute. I moved faster when I saw Jem far ahead beckoning in the moonlight. We came to the gate that divided the garden from the back yard. Jem touched it. The gate squeaked.
“Spit on it,” whispered Dill.
“You’ve got us in a box, Jem,” I muttered. “We can’t get out of here so easy. ”
“Sh-h. Spit on it, Scout. ”
We spat ourselves dry, and Jem opened the gate slowly, lifting it aside and resting it on the fence. We were in the back yard.
The back of the Radley house was less inviting than the front: a ramshackle porch ran the width of the house; there were two doors and two dark windows between the doors. Instead of a column, a rough two-by-four supported one end of the roof. An old Franklin stove sat in a corner of the porch; above it a hat-rack mirror caught the moon and shone eerily.
“Ar-r,” said Jem softly, lifting his foot. “‘Smatter? ”
“Chickens,” he breathed.
That we would be obliged to dodge the unseen from all directions was confirmed when Dill ahead of us spelled G-o-d in a whisper. We crept to the side of the house, around to the window with the hanging shutter. The sill was several inches taller than Jem.
“Give you a hand up,” he muttered to Dill. “Wait, though. ” Jem grabbed his left wrist and my right wrist, I grabbed my left wrist and Jem’s right wrist, we
crouched, and Dill sat on our saddle. We raised him and he caught the window sill. “Hurry,” Jem whispered, “we can’t last much longer. ”
Dill punched my shoulder, and we lowered him to the ground.
“What’d you see? ”
“Nothing. Curtains. There’s a little teeny light way off somewhere, though. ”
“Let’s get away from here,” breathed Jem. “Let’s go ‘round in back again. Sh-h,” he warned me, as I was about to protest.
“Let’s try the back window. ” “Dill, no,” I said.
Dill stopped and let Jem go ahead. When Jem put his foot on the bottom step, the step squeaked. He stood still, then tried his weight by degrees. The step was silent. Jem skipped two steps, put his foot on the porch, heaved himself to it, and teetered a long moment. He regained his balance and dropped to his knees. He crawled to the window, raised his head and looked in.
Then I saw the shadow. It was the shadow of a man with a hat on. At first I thought it was a tree, but there was no wind blowing, and tree-trunks never walked. The back porch was bathed in moonlight, and the shadow, crisp as toast, moved across the porch toward Jem.
Dill saw it next. He put his hands to his face.
When it crossed Jem, Jem saw it. He put his arms over his head and went rigid.
The shadow stopped about a foot beyond Jem. Its arm came out from its side, dropped, and was still. Then it turned and moved back across Jem, walked along the porch and off the side of the house, returning as it had come.
Jem leaped off the porch and galloped toward us. He flung open the gate, danced Dill and me through, and shooed us between two rows of swishing collards. Halfway through the collards I tripped; as I tripped the roar of a shotgun shattered the neighborhood.
Dill and Jem dived beside me. Jem’s breath came in sobs: “Fence by the schoolyard! —hurry, Scout! ”
Jem held the bottom wire; Dill and I rolled through and were halfway to the
shelter of the schoolyard’s solitary oak when we sensed that Jem was not with us. We ran back and found him struggling in the fence, kicking his pants off to get loose. He ran to the oak tree in his shorts.
Safely behind it, we gave way to numbness, but Jem’s mind was racing: “We gotta get home, they’ll miss us. ”
We ran across the schoolyard, crawled under the fence to Deer’s Pasture behind our house, climbed our back fence and were at the back steps before Jem would let us pause to rest.
Respiration normal, the three of us strolled as casually as we could to the front yard. We looked down the street and saw a circle of neighbors at the Radley front gate.
“We better go down there,” said Jem. “They’ll think it’s funny if we don’t show up. ”
Mr. Nathan Radley was standing inside his gate, a shotgun broken across his arm. Atticus was standing beside Miss Maudie and Miss Stephanie Crawford. Miss Rachel and Mr. Avery were near by. None of them saw us come up.
We eased in beside Miss Maudie, who looked around. “Where were you all, didn’t you hear the commotion? ”
“What happened? ” asked Jem.
“Mr. Radley shot at a Negro in his collard patch. ” “Oh. Did he hit him? ”
“No,” said Miss Stephanie. “Shot in the air. Scared him pale, though. Says if anybody sees a white nigger around, that’s the one. Says he’s got the other barrel waitin‘ for the next sound he hears in that patch, an’ next time he won’t aim high, be it dog, nigger, or—Jem Finch! ”
“Ma’am? ” asked Jem.
Atticus spoke. “Where’re your pants, son? ”
“Pants, sir? ”
“Pants. ”
It was no use. In his shorts before God and everybody. I sighed.
“Ah—Mr. Finch? ”
In the glare from the streetlight, I could see Dill hatching one: his eyes widened, his fat cherub face grew rounder.
“What is it, Dill? ” asked Atticus.
“Ah—I won ‘em from him,” he said vaguely.
“Won them? How? ”
Dill’s hand sought the back of his head. He brought it forward and across his forehead. “We were playin‘ strip poker up yonder by the fishpool,” he said.
Jem and I relaxed. The neighbors seemed satisfied: they all stiffened. But what was strip poker?
We had no chance to find out: Miss Rachel went off like the town fire siren: “Do- o-o Jee-sus, Dill Harris! Gamblin‘ by my fishpool? I’ll strip-poker you, sir! ”
Atticus saved Dill from immediate dismemberment. “Just a minute, Miss Rachel,” he said. “I’ve never heard of ‘em doing that before. Were you all playing cards? ”
Jem fielded Dill’s fly with his eyes shut: “No sir, just with matches. ” I admired my brother. Matches were dangerous, but cards were fatal.
“Jem, Scout,” said Atticus, “I don’t want to hear of poker in any form again. Go by Dill’s and get your pants, Jem. Settle it yourselves. ”
“Don’t worry, Dill,” said Jem, as we trotted up the sidewalk, “she ain’t gonna get you. He’ll talk her out of it. That was fast thinkin‘, son. Listen. . . you hear? ”
We stopped, and heard Atticus’s voice:“. . . not serious. . . they all go through it, Miss Rachel. . . ”
Dill was comforted, but Jem and I weren’t. There was the problem of Jem showing up some pants in the morning.
“‘d give you some of mine,” said Dill, as we came to Miss Rachel’s steps. Jem said he couldn’t get in them, but thanks anyway. We said good-bye, and Dill went inside the house. He evidently remembered he was engaged to me, for he ran back out and kissed me swiftly in front of Jem. “Yawl write, hear? ” he bawled after us.
Had Jem’s pants been safely on him, we would not have slept much anyway.
Every night-sound I heard from my cot on the back porch was magnified three- fold; every scratch of feet on gravel was Boo Radley seeking revenge, every passing Negro laughing in the night was Boo Radley loose and after us; insects splashing against the screen were Boo Radley’s insane fingers picking the wire to pieces; the chinaberry trees were malignant, hovering, alive.