To Kill a Mockingbird All Words

We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted
Atticus.

He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea
of making Boo Radley come out.

The solicitor, a Mr. Gilmer, was not well known to us.

Atticus and Mr. Heck Tate got out.

“Scout yonder’s
been readin‘ ever since she was born, and she ain’t even started to school yet.

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 out of the way.

Miss Maudie’s old sunhat glistened with snow crystals.

He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea
of making Boo Radley come out.

Long
ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named
Henry, who left home as soon as was humanly possible, married, and produced
Francis.

Routine
contentment was: improving our treehouse that rested between giant twin
chinaberry trees in the back yard, fussing, running through our list of dramas
based on the works of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Routine
contentment was: improving our treehouse that rested between giant twin
chinaberry trees in the back yard, fussing, running through our list of dramas
based on the works of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

He was long-nosed, wore boots with shiny metal eye-holes, boot pants
and a lumber jacket.

“Thought you could kill my Snow-on-the-Mountain, did you?

In his lawyer’s voice, without a shade of
inflection, he said: “Your aunt has asked me to try and impress upon you and Jean
Louise that you are not from run-of-the-mill people, that you are the product of
several generations’ gentle breeding—” Atticus paused, watching me locate an
elusive redbug on my leg.

The Maycomb school
grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chickenyard tall
pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched by the
children: Radley pecans would kill you.

Plucking an occasional camellia,
getting a squirt of hot milk from Miss Maudie Atkinson’s cow on a summer day,
helping ourselves to someone’s scuppernongs was part of our ethical culture, but
money was different.

With a click of her tongue she thrust out her bridgework, a
gesture of cordiality that cemented our friendship.

I maintain that the Ewells
started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before
that.

Early one morning as we were beginning our day’s play in the back yard, Jem and
I heard something next door in Miss Rachel Haverford’s collard patch.

I maintain that the Ewells
started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before
that.

“We were playin‘ strip poker up yonder by the fishpool,” he said.

The remains
of a picket drunkenly guarded the front yard— a “swept” yard that was never
swept— where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance.

John Taylor was kind enough to give us a postponement…”
“If you shouldn’t be defendin‘ him, then why are you doin’ it?”

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?”

She was not fat, but solid, and she chose
protective garments that drew up her bosom to giddy heights, pinched in her
waist, flared out her rear, and managed to suggest that Aunt Alexandra’s was once
an hour-glass figure.

Walking south, one
faced its porch; the sidewalk turned and ran beside the lot.

Don’t pay no ‘tention to
Lula, she’s contentious because Reverend Sykes threatened to church her.

She
stopped at Walter Cunningham’s desk.

Don’t you like butterbeans?

Atticus’s office in the courthouse contained little more
than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama.

“I’m simply defending a Negro—his name’s Tom Robinson.

Sitting down, he
wasn’t much higher than the collards.

Before the first morning was over, Miss Caroline Fisher, our
teacher, hauled me up to the front of the room and patted the palm of my hand
with a ruler, then made me stand in the corner until noon.

Dill was from Meridian, Mississippi, was spending the summer with his aunt,
Miss Rachel, and would be spending every summer in Maycomb from now on.

The house was low,
was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago
darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it.

“Folks call me Dill,” said Dill, struggling under the fence.

“That’s okay, ma’am, you’ll get to know all the county folks after a while.

“Called ‘em off on a snipe hunt,” was the succinct answer.

In
rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the
courthouse sagged in the square.

The witness stand was to the right of Judge Taylor, and when we got to our seats
Mr. Heck Tate was already on it.

Even Mr. Underwood was there.

He declined to let
us take our air rifles to the Landing (I had already begun to think of shooting
Francis) and said if we made one false move he’d take them away from us for
good.

Aunt Rachel says your name’s Jeremy Atticus Finch.”

“Come on,” whispered Jem. We streaked across the square, across the street, until
we were in the shelter of the Jitney Jungle door.

Says if
anybody sees a white nigger around, that’s the one.

He would probably have poured it into his milk glass had I not
asked what the sam hill he was doing.

Indeed,
they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of
construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its
well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics.

It took Atticus’s courtroom voice to drag us away from the tree.

So Jem received most of his information from Miss Stephanie Crawford, a
neighborhood scold, who said she knew the whole thing.

The Radley house had no screen doors.

“There ain’t no need to fear a cootie, ma’am.

I turned around and saw most of the town people and the entire bus delegation
looking at me.

Early one morning as we were beginning our day’s play in the back yard, Jem and
I heard something next door in Miss Rachel Haverford’s collard patch.

Double first cousin.”

Early one morning as we were beginning our day’s play in the back yard, Jem and
I heard something next door in Miss Rachel Haverford’s collard patch.

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.

Ain’t
no snot-nosed slut of a schoolteacher ever born c’n make me do nothin‘!

Charles Lamb
PART ONE
Contents - Prev / Next
Chapter 1
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the
elbow.

“Folks call me Dill,” said Dill, struggling under the fence.

Mrs. Crenshaw took some
chicken wire and bent it into the shape of a cured ham.

1960
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) 1960 by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) renewed 1988 by Harper Lee
Published by arrangement with McIntosh and Otis, Inc.
CONTENTS
l DEDICATION
l PART ONE
m Chapter 1
m Chapter 2
m Chapter 3
m Chapter 4
m Chapter 5
m Chapter 6
m Chapter 7
m Chapter 8
m Chapter 9
m Chapter 10
m Chapter 11
l PART TWO
m Chapter 12
m Chapter 13
m Chapter 14
m Chapter 15
m Chapter 16
m Chapter 17
m Chapter 18
m Chapter 19
m Chapter 20
m Chapter 21
m Chapter 22...

The place was self-sufficient:
modest in comparison with the empires around it, the Landing nevertheless
produced everything required to sustain life except ice, wheat flour, and articles
of clothing, supplied by river-boats from Mobile.

He played the character parts formerly
thrust upon me— the ape in Tarzan, Mr. Crabtree in The Rover Boys, Mr. Damon
in Tom Swift.

The old fire truck, killed by the cold, was being pushed from town
by a crowd of men.

Ain’t
no snot-nosed slut of a schoolteacher ever born c’n make me do nothin‘!

In the glare from the streetlight, I could see Dill hatching one: his eyes widened,
his fat cherub face grew rounder.

There was a marble-topped washstand by her bed; on it were a glass with a
teaspoon in it, a red ear syringe, a box of absorbent cotton, and a steel alarm clock
standing on three tiny legs.

It was necessary to turn on the lights in the daytime; there was always a film of
dust on the rough floorboards.

We parted at suppertime, and after our meal Jem and I were settling down to a
routine evening, when Atticus did something that interested us: he came into the
livingroom carrying a long electrical extension cord.

Indeed,
they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of
construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its
well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics.

Don’t light that thing, Dill, you’ll stink up this whole end of
town.”

With one phrase he had turned happy picknickers
into a sulky, tense, murmuring crowd, being slowly hypnotized by gavel taps
lessening in intensity until the only sound in the courtroom was a dim pink-pinkpink:
the judge might have been rapping the bench with a pencil.

“I said come here, nigger, and bust up this chiffarobe for me, I gotta nickel for
you.

Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch’s Landing, was the county
seat of Maycomb County.

“Yeah, that’s all,” said Dill.

When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries
(within calling distance of Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house
two doors to the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south.

She
was always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn’t behave as
well as Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn’t
ready to come.

It’s the Dewey Decimal System.”

He read in a book where I was a Bullfinch instead of a Finch.

When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we
sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident.

I thought she was going to spit in it, which was the only reason anybody in
Maycomb held out his hand: it was a time-honored method of sealing oral
contracts.

Simple enough; but
the daughters’ rooms could be reached only by one staircase, Welcome’s room
and the guestroom only by another.

The more affluent chased
their food with drugstore Coca-Cola in bulb-shaped soda glasses.

As Mr.
Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out,
wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities.

She
stopped at Walter Cunningham’s desk.

I maintain that the Ewells
started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before
that.

We went
to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy— Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was
expecting— instead we found someone sitting looking at us.

Plucking an occasional camellia,
getting a squirt of hot milk from Miss Maudie Atkinson’s cow on a summer day,
helping ourselves to someone’s scuppernongs was part of our ethical culture, but
money was different.

Then the
bass drum sounded.

“I just thought you’d like to know I can read.

We were surprised to find that we had been
gone nearly an hour, and were equally surprised to find the courtroom exactly as
we had left it, with minor changes: the jury box was empty, the defendant was
gone; Judge Taylor had been gone, but he reappeared as we were seating
ourselves.

All the ladies in Maycomb includin‘ my wife’d be knocking on his
door bringing angel food cakes.

The ladies were cool in fragile pastel prints: most of them were heavily powdered
but unrouged; the only lipstick in the room was Tangee Natural.

Mr. Tate reached in his side pocket and withdrew a long switchblade knife.

But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people:
Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.

He liked
Maycomb, he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they
knew him, and because of Simon Finch’s industry, Atticus was related by blood
or marriage to nearly every family in the town.

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.

“Nome thank you ma’am,” he drawled softly.

Mindful of John Wesley’s strictures on the use of many words
in buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit
he was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory
of God, as the putting on of gold and costly apparel.

Dr. Reynolds parked his car in front of our house and walked to the
Radley’s every time he called.

Because its primary reason for existence was government, Maycomb was spared
the grubbiness that distinguished most Alabama towns its size.

Sitting down, he
wasn’t much higher than the collards.

I did not miss her, but I think Jem did.

His left arm was
somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand
was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh.

“Linin‘?” she asked.

Cecil Jacobs, who lived at the far end of our street next door to the post office,
walked a total of one mile per school day to avoid the Radley Place and old Mrs.
Henry Lafayette Dubose.

Jem says my name’s really Jean Louise Bullfinch, that I got swapped when I was
born and I’m really a-”
Miss Caroline apparently thought I was lying.

She had bright auburn hair, pink
cheeks, and wore crimson fingernail polish.

Against the fence, in a
line, were six chipped-enamel slop jars holding brilliant red geraniums, cared for
as tenderly as if they belonged to Miss Maudie Atkinson, had Miss Maudie
deigned to permit a geranium on her premises.

He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea
of making Boo Radley come out.

I stood on tiptoe, hastily looked around once more, reached
into the hole, and withdrew two pieces of chewing gum minus their outer
wrappers.

There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go,
nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries
of Maycomb County.

Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps,
and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

The back porch was bathed in moonlight, and the shadow, crisp as toast,
moved across the porch toward Jem.
Dill saw it next.

It was all right to shut him up, Mr.
Radley conceded, but insisted that Boo not be charged with anything: he was not
a criminal.

Early one morning as we were beginning our day’s play in the back yard, Jem and
I heard something next door in Miss Rachel Haverford’s collard patch.

Atticus’s voice had lost its comfortableness; he was
speaking in his arid, detached professional voice.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve seen Atticus pat his foot when there’s fiddlin‘ on the
radio, and he loves pot liquor better’n any man I ever saw—”
“Then that makes us like the Cunninghams,” I said.

Besides, they’d put me in jail
if I kept you at home—dose of magnesia for you tonight and school tomorrow.”

She
was always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn’t behave as
well as Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn’t
ready to come.

Jem yelled.

He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea
of making Boo Radley come out.

He shifted his feet, clad in heavy work shoes.

In Maycomb County, it was easy to tell when someone bathed regularly, as
opposed to yearly lavations: Mr. Ewell had a scalded look; as if an overnight
soaking had deprived him of protective layers of dirt, his skin appeared to be
sensitive to the elements.

Until then, Halloween in Maycomb was a completely unorganized
affair.

Dear Mister…”
“How do you know it’s a man?

His left arm was
somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand
was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh.

Old-age liver spots dotted her cheeks, and her pale eyes had
black pinpoint pupils.

Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog
suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in
the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square.

If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch
would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t?

When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries
(within calling distance of Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house
two doors to the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south.

When people’s azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was
because he had breathed on them.

1960
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) 1960 by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) renewed 1988 by Harper Lee
Published by arrangement with McIntosh and Otis, Inc.
CONTENTS
l DEDICATION
l PART ONE
m Chapter 1
m Chapter 2
m Chapter 3
m Chapter 4
m Chapter 5
m Chapter 6
m Chapter 7
m Chapter 8
m Chapter 9
m Chapter 10
m Chapter 11
l PART TWO
m Chapter 12
m Chapter 13
m Chapter 14
m Chapter 15
m Chapter 16
m Chapter 17
m Chapter 18
m Chapter 19
m Chapter 20
m Chapter 21
m Chapter 22...

We went
to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy— Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was
expecting— instead we found someone sitting looking at us.

They persisted in
pleading Not Guilty to first-degree murder, so there was nothing much Atticus
could do for his clients except be present at their departure, an occasion that was
probably the beginning of my father’s profound distaste for the practice of
criminal law.

I maintain that the Ewells
started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before
that.

1960
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) 1960 by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) renewed 1988 by Harper Lee
Published by arrangement with McIntosh and Otis, Inc.
CONTENTS
l DEDICATION
l PART ONE
m Chapter 1
m Chapter 2
m Chapter 3
m Chapter 4
m Chapter 5
m Chapter 6
m Chapter 7
m Chapter 8
m Chapter 9
m Chapter 10
m Chapter 11
l PART TWO
m Chapter 12
m Chapter 13
m Chapter 14
m Chapter 15
m Chapter 16
m Chapter 17
m Chapter 18
m Chapter 19
m Chapter 20
m Chapter 21
m Chapter 22...

We sat
waiting for Zeebo to arrive in the garbage truck.

Jem was merely going to put the note on the end of a fishing pole and stick it
through the shutters.

“Somebody did.

If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch
would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t?

John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father, and chose to
study medicine at a time when cotton was not worth growing; but after getting
Uncle Jack started, Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law.

Now that I was compelled to think about
it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of
my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of
shoelaces.

He was at Enfield Prison Farm, seventy miles away
in Chester County.

Refreshed by food, Dill recited this narrative: having been
bound in chains and left to die in the basement (there were basements in
Meridian) by his new father, who disliked him, and secretly kept alive on raw
field peas by a passing farmer who heard his cries for help (the good man poked a
bushel pod by pod through the ventilator), Dill worked himself free by pulling the
chains from the wall.

Through all the headshaking,
quelling of nausea and Jem-yelling, I had heard another sound, so low I
could not have heard it from the sidewalk.

When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were
assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury.

“Not being wheeled around
yet, am I? Neither’s your father.

In England, Simon was irritated by the
persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more
liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way
across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up
the Saint Stephens.

He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair
was snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior but
I towered over him.

When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries
(within calling distance of Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house
two doors to the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south.

I so often wondered how she could be
Atticus’s and Uncle Jack’s sister that I revived half-remembered tales of
changelings and mandrake roots that Jem had spun long ago.

John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father, and chose to
study medicine at a time when cotton was not worth growing; but after getting
Uncle Jack started, Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law.

The gentle hum of ladies’ voices grew louder as she opened the door: “Why,
Alexandra, I never saw such charlotte… just lovely… I never can get my crust
like this, never can… who’d‘ve thought of little dewberry tarts… Calpurnia?…
who’da thought it… anybody tell you that the preacher’s wife’s… nooo, well she
is, and that other one not walkin’ yet…”
They became quiet, and I knew they had all been served.

“If I didn’t have to stay I’d leave.

This was enough to make Jem march to the corner, where he stopped and leaned
against the light-pole, watching the gate hanging crazily on its homemade hinge.

The town decided something had to
be done; Mr. Conner said he knew who each and every one of them was, and he
was bound and determined they wouldn’t get away with it, so the boys came
before the probate judge on charges of disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace,
assault and battery, and using abusive and profane language in the presence and
hearing of a female.

The cabin’s plank walls were supplemented with sheets of
corrugated iron, its roof shingled with tin cans hammered flat, so only its general
shape suggested its original design: square, with four tiny rooms opening onto a
shotgun hall, the cabin rested uneasily upon four irregular lumps of limestone.

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents,” said Miss Maudie.

It was Zeebo, the garbage collector.

Despite our compromise,
my campaign to avoid school had continued in one form or another since my first
day’s dose of it: the beginning of last September had brought on sinking spells,
dizziness, and mild gastric complaints.

She was all angles and bones; she was
nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard.

When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were
assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury.

Aunt Alexandra got up from the table and swiftly passed more refreshments,
neatly engaging Mrs. Merriweather and Mrs. Gates in brisk conversation.

Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the North
and the South, as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land, yet
the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth
century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his
younger brother went to Boston to study medicine.

She
was always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn’t behave as
well as Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn’t
ready to come.

Mindful of John Wesley’s strictures on the use of many words
in buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit
he was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory
of God, as the putting on of gold and costly apparel.

I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew
Jackson.

The sun said twelve noon.

Indeed,
they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of
construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its
well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics.

She gave the money to Dill, who went to the picture show
twenty times on it.

“Let’s try to make him come out,” said Dill.

See how they’ve been slicked up?

By the time Mrs. Cat called the drugstore for
an order of chocolate malted mice the class was wriggling like a bucketful of
catawba worms.

I licked it and waited
for a while.

As
Maycomb County was farm country, nickels and dimes were hard to come by for
doctors and dentists and lawyers.

We went
to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy— Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was
expecting— instead we found someone sitting looking at us.

Early one morning as we were beginning our day’s play in the back yard, Jem and
I heard something next door in Miss Rachel Haverford’s collard patch.

As I was the last to leave, I saw her sink
down into her chair and bury her head in her arms.

“Everybody who goes home to lunch hold up your hands,” said Miss Caroline,
breaking into my new grudge against Calpurnia.

He had
discarded the abominable blue shorts that were buttoned to his shirts and wore
real short pants with a belt; he was somewhat heavier, no taller, and said he had
seen his father.

You can teach me like Granddaddy taught
you ‘n’ Uncle Jack.”

She
was always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn’t behave as
well as Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn’t
ready to come.

When he passed we would look at the ground and say,
“Good morning, sir,” and he would cough in reply.

See how they’ve been slicked up?

He remembered her clearly, and
sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and play
by himself behind the car-house.

“Well, if everybody in Maycomb knows what kind of folks the Ewells are they’d
be glad to hire Helen… what’s rape, Cal?”
“It’s somethin‘ you’ll have to ask Mr. Finch about,” she said.

“Tell you what,” said Jem. “We’ll keep ‘em till school starts, then go around and
ask everybody if they’re theirs.

I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew
Jackson.

But to climb the Radley front steps
and call, “He-y,” of a Sunday afternoon was something their neighbors never did.

When Miss Caroline threatened it with a similar fate the first grade exploded
again, becoming cold sober only when the shadow of Miss Blount fell over them.

1960
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) 1960 by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) renewed 1988 by Harper Lee
Published by arrangement with McIntosh and Otis, Inc.
CONTENTS
l DEDICATION
l PART ONE
m Chapter 1
m Chapter 2
m Chapter 3
m Chapter 4
m Chapter 5
m Chapter 6
m Chapter 7
m Chapter 8
m Chapter 9
m Chapter 10
m Chapter 11
l PART TWO
m Chapter 12
m Chapter 13
m Chapter 14
m Chapter 15
m Chapter 16
m Chapter 17
m Chapter 18
m Chapter 19
m Chapter 20
m Chapter 21
m Chapter 22
m Chap...

But to climb the Radley front steps
and call, “He-y,” of a Sunday afternoon was something their neighbors never did.

“You know rape’s a capital offense in Alabama,” said Atticus.

Local opinion held Mr. Underwood to be an intense, profane little man, whose
father in a fey fit of humor christened Braxton Bragg, a name Mr. Underwood had
done his best to live down.

I unlatched the back door and held it while he crept down the steps.

“Scout yonder’s
been readin‘ ever since she was born, and she ain’t even started to school yet.

This was enough to make Jem march to the corner, where he stopped and leaned
against the light-pole, watching the gate hanging crazily on its homemade hinge.

Atticus would flee to his office directly after dinner, where
if we sometimes looked in on him, we would find him sitting back in his swivel
chair reading.

Mr. Tate reached in his side pocket and withdrew a long switchblade knife.

As she raised her hand and swore that
the evidence she gave would be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth so help her God, she seemed somehow fragile-looking, but when she sat
facing us in the witness chair she became what she was, a thick-bodied girl
accustomed to strenuous labor.

I followed, and held up
the wire for Jem. It was a tight squeeze for him.

My memory came alive to see Mrs. Radley occasionally open the front door, walk
to the edge of the porch, and pour water on her cannas.

Their sister Alexandra was the
Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent most
of his time lying in a hammock by the river wondering if his trot-lines were full.

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His left arm was
somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand
was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh.

The Maycomb school
grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chickenyard tall
pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched by the
children: Radley pecans would kill you.

Dr. Reynolds parked his car in front of our house and walked to the
Radley’s every time he called.

Some tinfoil was sticking in a knot-hole just above my eye level, winking at me in
the afternoon sun.

As
Maycomb County was farm country, nickels and dimes were hard to come by for
doctors and dentists and lawyers.

They did not go to church, Maycomb’s principal
recreation, but worshiped at home; Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street
for a mid-morning coffee break with her neighbors, and certainly never joined a
missionary circle.

Tim was a liver-colored bird dog, the pet
of Maycomb.

Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom.

Walter Cunningham’s face told everybody in the first grade he had hookworms.

He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea
of making Boo Radley come out.

There was no color in his face except at
the tip of his nose, which was moistly pink.

I once asked Atticus if it ever had any;
Atticus said yes, but before I was born.

His left arm was
somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand
was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh.

He remembered her clearly, and
sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and play
by himself behind the car-house.

“Looks like he’d just stick
his head out the door.”

Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog
suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in
the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square.

Walking south, one
faced its porch; the sidewalk turned and ran beside the lot.

I ran to the back yard and pulled an old car tire from under the house.

Smoke was rolling off our house and Miss Rachel’s house like fog off a
riverbank, and men were pulling hoses toward them.

He liked
Maycomb, he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they
knew him, and because of Simon Finch’s industry, Atticus was related by blood
or marriage to nearly every family in the town.

Why, I hated that old cow barn.

“Playing hooky, I
suppose.

Hours of wintertime had found me in the treehouse, looking over at the
schoolyard, spying on multitudes of children through a two-power telescope Jem
had given me, learning their games, following Jem’s red jacket through wriggling
circles of blind man’s buff, secretly sharing their misfortunes and minor victories.

That spring when we found a crokersack full of turnip
greens, Atticus said Mr. Cunningham had more than paid him.

Calpurnia set a pitcher and three glasses on the porch, then
went about her business.

Our father said we were both right.

Jem yelled.

We went
to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy— Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was
expecting— instead we found someone sitting looking at us.

Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the North
and the South, as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land, yet
the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth
century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his
younger brother went to Boston to study medicine.

They’re some bus child’s, maybe—he was too
taken up with gettin’ outa school today an‘ forgot ’em.

In
rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the
courthouse sagged in the square.

Atticus
said Calpurnia had more education than most colored folks.

Mrs. Merriweather faced Mrs. Farrow: “Gertrude, I tell you there’s nothing more
distracting than a sulky darky.

“She
likes Jem better’n she likes me, anyway,” I concluded, and suggested that Atticus
lose no time in packing her off.

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.

In his lawyer’s voice, without a shade of
inflection, he said: “Your aunt has asked me to try and impress upon you and Jean
Louise that you are not from run-of-the-mill people, that you are the product of
several generations’ gentle breeding—” Atticus paused, watching me locate an
elusive redbug on my leg.

People said he went out at night when the moon was down,
and peeped in windows.

We decorated the tree until bedtime, and that night I dreamed of the two long
packages for Jem and me.

Mr. Radley’s elder son lived
in Pensacola; he came home at Christmas, and he was one of the few persons we
ever saw enter or leave the place.

When he completed his
examination of the wisteria vine he strolled back to me.

“Your daddy Mr. Walter Cunningham from Old
Sarum?” he asked, and Walter nodded.

It had been
a placid week: I had minded Aunty; Jem had outgrown the treehouse, but helped
Dill and me construct a new rope ladder for it; Dill had hit upon a foolproof plan
to make Boo Radley come out at no cost to ourselves (place a trail of lemon drops
from the back door to the front yard and he’d follow it, like an ant).

“I can read.”

His
first two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail.

In
rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the
courthouse sagged in the square.

Mindful of John Wesley’s strictures on the use of many words
in buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit
he was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory
of God, as the putting on of gold and costly apparel.

In Calpurnia’s teaching, there was no sentimentality: I
seldom pleased her and she seldom rewarded me.

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Chapter 3
Catching Walter Cunningham in the schoolyard gave me some pleasure, but when
I was rubbing his nose in the dirt Jem came by and told me to stop.

When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we
sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident.

I stood on tiptoe, hastily looked around once more, reached
into the hole, and withdrew two pieces of chewing gum minus their outer
wrappers.

“Your father’s no better than the niggers and trash he
works for!”

“He’ll probably come out after you when he sees you
in the yard, then Scout’n‘ me’ll jump on him and hold him down till we can tell
him we ain’t gonna hurt him.”

I
would fight anyone from a third cousin upwards tooth and nail.

The Maycomb school
grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chickenyard tall
pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched by the
children: Radley pecans would kill you.

He
lives in that little settlement beyond the town dump.

The Maycomb school
grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chickenyard tall
pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched by the
children: Radley pecans would kill you.

Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the North
and the South, as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land, yet
the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth
century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his
younger brother went to Boston to study medicine.

In England, Simon was irritated by the
persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more
liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way
across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up
the Saint Stephens.

You can pay me back tomorrow.”

At last
the sawhorses were taken away, and we stood watching from the front porch
when Mr. Radley made his final journey past our house.

I saw Atticus carrying Miss
Maudie’s heavy oak rocking chair, and thought it sensible of him to save what she
valued most.

Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps,
and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

In
rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the
courthouse sagged in the square.

It was our habit to run meet Atticus the moment
we saw him round the post office corner in the distance.

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.

He drew out an envelope,
then reached into his vest pocket and unclipped his fountain pen.

“How’re we gonna sing it if there ain’t any hymnbooks?”

The fact that Aunty
was a good cook was some compensation for being forced to spend a religious
holiday with Francis Hancock.

His left arm was
somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand
was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh.

“There goes the meanest man ever God blew breath into,” murmured Calpurnia,
and she spat meditatively into the yard.

I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew
Jackson.

People caught hookworms going
barefooted in barnyards and hog wallows.

He remembered her clearly, and
sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and play
by himself behind the car-house.

It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon’s homestead,
Finch’s Landing, and make their living from cotton.

The second grade was as bad as the first, only worse—they still
flashed cards at you and wouldn’t let you read or write.

So Simon, having forgotten
his teacher’s dictum on the possession of human chattels, bought three slaves and
with their aid established a homestead on the banks of the Alabama River some
forty miles above Saint Stephens.

I
interrupted to make Uncle Jack let me know when he would pull it out, but he
held up a bloody splinter in a pair of tweezers and said he yanked it while I was
laughing, that was what was known as relativity.

Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps,
and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

She was mighty
banged up.

High above us in the darkness a solitary mocker poured out his repertoire in
blissful unawareness of whose tree he sat in, plunging from the shrill kee, kee of
the sunflower bird to the irascible qua-ack of a bluejay, to the sad lament of Poor
Will, Poor Will, Poor Will.

I tried again: “Walter’s one of the Cunninghams, Miss Caroline.”

Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore
corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes.

I went with Cecil down
to the front of the auditorium, through a door on one side, and backstage.

Jem threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house, slapped it with his
palm and ran back past us, not waiting to see if his foray was successful.

A few graves in the cemetery were marked with crumbling
tombstones; newer ones were outlined with brightly colored glass and broken
Coca-Cola bottles.

Miss Stephanie Crawford
said she woke up in the middle of the night one time and saw him looking straight
through the window at her… said his head was like a skull lookin‘ at her.

She had been with us ever since Jem
was born, and I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.

It was all right to shut him up, Mr.
Radley conceded, but insisted that Boo not be charged with anything: he was not
a criminal.

Halfway through the collards I tripped; as I tripped the roar of a shotgun shattered
the neighborhood.

He drew out an envelope,
then reached into his vest pocket and unclipped his fountain pen.

“I’da got her told,” growled Dill, gnawing a chicken leg, “but she didn’t look
much like tellin‘ this morning.

Atticus’s office in the courthouse contained little more
than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama.

The following Monday afternoon Jem and I climbed the steep front steps to Mrs.
Dubose’s house and padded down the open hallway.

People said he went out at night when the moon was down,
and peeped in windows.

Calpurnia was something else again.

“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.

No truant officers
could keep their numerous offspring in school; no public health officer could free
them from congenital defects, various worms, and the diseases indigenous to
filthy surroundings.

1960
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) 1960 by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) renewed 1988 by Harper Lee
Published by arrangement with McIntosh and Otis, Inc.
CONTENTS
l DEDICATION
l PART ONE
m Chapter 1
m Chapter 2
m Chapter 3
m Chapter 4
m Chapter 5
m Chapter 6
m Chapter 7
m Chapter 8
m Chapter 9
m Chapter 10
m Chapter 11
l PART TWO
m Chapter 12
m Chapter 13
m Chapter 14
m Chapter 15
m Chapter 16
m Chapter 17
m Chapter 18
m Chapter 19
m Chapter 20
m Chapter 21
m Chapter 22
m Chap...

Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog
suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in
the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square.

He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea
of making Boo Radley come out.

Atticus’s office was in the courthouse when he began his law practice, but after
several years of it he moved to quieter quarters in the Maycomb Bank building.

I was beginning to learn his body English.

Another thing, Mr. Bob Ewell, Burris’s father, was
permitted to hunt and trap out of season.

Nobody in Maycomb had nerve enough to tell Mr. Radley that his boy
was in with the wrong crowd.

She
had a fresh permanent wave, and her hair was a mass of tight gray ringlets.

Punk, punk, punk, her needle
broke the taut circle.

Jem, there’s some wrapping paper in the
pantry, I think.

Mrs. Radley ran screaming into the street that Arthur was killing them all, but
when the sheriff arrived he found Boo still sitting in the livingroom, cutting up the
Tribune.

As he told us the old tale his blue eyes would lighten and
darken; his laugh was sudden and happy; he habitually pulled at a cowlick in the
center of his forehead.

Bert, the
court reporter, was chain-smoking: he sat back with his feet on the table.

The house was low,
was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago
darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it.

Jem turned out the livingroom lights and pressed his nose to a window screen.

Jem thought about it for three days.

“I hope you’ve got it through your head that he’ll kill us each and every one, Dill
Harris,” said Jem, when we joined him.

I don’t mean to sass you, I’m just tryin‘
to tell you.”

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.

Hey, look—”
Some invisible signal had made the lunchers on the square rise and scatter bits of
newspaper, cellophane, and wrapping paper.

“If you are, then-”
“Dill, you have to think about these things,” Jem said.

“Atticus—” said Jem bleakly.

He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea
of making Boo Radley come out.

“Mr.
Cunningham’s basically a good man,” he said, “he just has his blind spots along
with the rest of us.”

To reach the courtroom, on the second floor, one passed sundry sunless county
cubbyholes: the tax assessor, the tax collector, the county clerk, the county
solicitor, the circuit clerk, the judge of probate lived in cool dim hutches that
smelled of decaying record books mingled with old damp cement and stale urine.

See how they’ve been slicked up?

Her voice soared over the clink of coffee cups
and the soft bovine sounds of the ladies munching their dainties.

Atticus’s office in the courthouse contained little more
than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama.

A Negro would not pass the Radley Place at night, he would cut
across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked.

“Naw, we better wait till they get in, Atticus might not like it if he sees us,” said
Jem.
The Maycomb County courthouse was faintly reminiscent of Arlington in one
respect: the concrete pillars supporting its south roof were too heavy for their light
burden.

The
collection taken up today and for the next three Sundays will go to Helen—his
wife, to help her out at home.”

I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew
Jackson.

A day was twenty-four
hours long but seemed longer.

She called us by all our
names, and when she grinned she revealed two minute gold prongs clipped to her
eyeteeth.

But there came a day, barely within Jem’s memory, when Boo Radley was heard
from and was seen by several people, but not by Jem. He said Atticus never talked
much about the Radleys: when Jem would question him Atticus’s only answer
was for him to mind his own business and let the Radleys mind theirs, they had a
right to; but when it happened Jem said Atticus shook his head and said, “Mm,
mm, mm.”

Mr. Tate said, “It was the night of November twenty-first.

We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted
Atticus.

“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.

John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father, and chose to
study medicine at a time when cotton was not worth growing; but after getting
Uncle Jack started, Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law.

In England, Simon was irritated by the
persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more
liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way
across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up
the Saint Stephens.

The Maycomb school
grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chickenyard tall
pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched by the
children: Radley pecans would kill you.

Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall,
judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch,
that’s why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate an animal raw, you could
never wash the blood off.

Mollified, Mayella gave Atticus a final terrified glance and said to Mr. Gilmer,
“Well sir, I was on the porch and—and he came along and, you see, there was this
old chiffarobe in the yard Papa’d brought in to chop up for kindlin‘—Papa told
me to do it while he was off in the woods but I wadn’t feelin’ strong enough then,
so he came by-”
“Who is ‘he’?”

We went
to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy— Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was
expecting— instead we found someone sitting looking at us.

Some people said
six, others said nine; there were always several dirty-faced ones at the windows
when anyone passed by.

We leaped over the low wall that separated Miss Rachel’s yard from our
driveway.

The
Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb’s leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding
arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to
do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-itcoming-
to-him was a good enough defense for anybody.

When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we
sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident.

His left arm was
somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand
was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh.

But there came a day, barely within Jem’s memory, when Boo Radley was heard
from and was seen by several people, but not by Jem. He said Atticus never talked
much about the Radleys: when Jem would question him Atticus’s only answer
was for him to mind his own business and let the Radleys mind theirs, they had a
right to; but when it happened Jem said Atticus shook his head and said, “Mm,
mm, mm.”

When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were
assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury.

When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we
sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident.

If the judge released Arthur, Mr. Radley would see to it that Arthur gave no
further trouble.

She sat in her chair with her workbasket beside it, her rug spread across her lap.

Now that I was compelled to think about
it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of
my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of
shoelaces.

She was bending over
some small bushes, wrapping them in burlap bags.

His cheekbones were sharp
and his mouth was wide, with a thin upper lip and a full lower lip.

She was all angles and bones; she was
nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard.

Wooden sawhorses blocked the road at each end of the
Radley lot, straw was put down on the sidewalk, traffic was diverted to the back
street.

Routine
contentment was: improving our treehouse that rested between giant twin
chinaberry trees in the back yard, fussing, running through our list of dramas
based on the works of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

“You’re left-handed, Mr. Ewell,” said Judge Taylor.

In spite of our warnings and explanations it
drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no nearer than the light-pole on
the corner, a safe distance from the Radley gate.

He liked
Maycomb, he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they
knew him, and because of Simon Finch’s industry, Atticus was related by blood
or marriage to nearly every family in the town.

I stood on tiptoe, hastily looked around once more, reached
into the hole, and withdrew two pieces of chewing gum minus their outer
wrappers.

He liked
Maycomb, he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they
knew him, and because of Simon Finch’s industry, Atticus was related by blood
or marriage to nearly every family in the town.

Dill was from Meridian, Mississippi, was spending the summer with his aunt,
Miss Rachel, and would be spending every summer in Maycomb from now on.

Calpurnia sent me through the swinging door to the diningroom with a stinging
smack.

When his turn came, he went to the
front of the room and began, “Old Hitler—”
“Adolf Hitler, Cecil,” said Miss Gates.

I’ve heard that lawyers’ children, on seeing their parents
in court in the heat of argument, get the wrong idea: they think opposing counsel
to be the personal enemies of their parents, they suffer agonies, and are surprised
to see them often go out arm-in-arm with their tormenters during the first recess.

“It’s not like he’d never speak to you again or somethin‘… I’m gonna wake him
up, Jem, I swear I am—”
Jem grabbed my pajama collar and wrenched it tight.

“You reckon it’s white gold, Jem?”
“Don’t know.

They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they
don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.

They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of
the stores around it, took their time about everything.

He couldn’t have
cared less, so long as he could pass and punt.

Dill nodded.

Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he had to do was go up and knock
on the front door.

He played the character parts formerly
thrust upon me— the ape in Tarzan, Mr. Crabtree in The Rover Boys, Mr. Damon
in Tom Swift.

The night-crawlers had retired, but ripe chinaberries drummed on
the roof when the wind stirred, and the darkness was desolate with the barking of
distant dogs.

I stood on tiptoe, hastily looked around once more, reached
into the hole, and withdrew two pieces of chewing gum minus their outer
wrappers.

Rain-rotted shingles
drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away.

Simon lived to
an impressive age and died rich.

When Walter shook his head a third time someone whispered, “Go on and tell
her, Scout.”

His father entered the room.

They did little, but
enough to be discussed by the town and publicly warned from three pulpits: they
hung around the barbershop; they rode the bus to Abbottsville on Sundays and
went to the picture show; they attended dances at the county’s riverside gambling
hell, the Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing Camp; they experimented with stumphole
whiskey.

They buy me everything I want, but it’s now—you’ve-got-it-go-play-with-it.

It was a pocket watch that wouldn’t
run, on a chain with an aluminum knife.

“Grandma’s a wonderful cook,” said Francis.

Routine
contentment was: improving our treehouse that rested between giant twin
chinaberry trees in the back yard, fussing, running through our list of dramas
based on the works of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the North
and the South, as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land, yet
the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth
century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his
younger brother went to Boston to study medicine.

Mindful of John Wesley’s strictures on the use of many words
in buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit
he was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory
of God, as the putting on of gold and costly apparel.

She says they’re clean-living
folks.

Atticus switched on the ceiling light in the livingroom and found us there, frozen
still.

Uncle Jack said if I talked like that he’d lick me again, so I was quiet.

Later, a sack of hickory nuts appeared on the back steps.

In England, Simon was irritated by the
persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more
liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way
across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up
the Saint Stephens.

“You c’n push.”

With Christmas came a
crate of smilax and holly.

He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea
of making Boo Radley come out.

The Radley Place was inhabited by an
unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for
days on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain hell.

Miss Caroline, the
sixth grade cannot concentrate on the pyramids for all this racket!”

The place was self-sufficient:
modest in comparison with the empires around it, the Landing nevertheless
produced everything required to sustain life except ice, wheat flour, and articles
of clothing, supplied by river-boats from Mobile.

These were abstract speculations for the first month of her stay, as she had little to
say to Jem or me, and we saw her only at mealtimes and at night before we went
to bed.

A few graves in the cemetery were marked with crumbling
tombstones; newer ones were outlined with brightly colored glass and broken
Coca-Cola bottles.

Calpurnia sent me through the swinging door to the diningroom with a stinging
smack.

Summer was our
best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep
in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a
parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.

Left to its own devices, the class tied Eunice Ann Simpson to a
chair and placed her in the furnace room.

“Why don’t you come over,
Charles Baker Harris?” he said.

The next day Dill said, “You’re too scared even
to put your big toe in the front yard.”

But there came a day, barely within Jem’s memory, when Boo Radley was heard
from and was seen by several people, but not by Jem. He said Atticus never talked
much about the Radleys: when Jem would question him Atticus’s only answer
was for him to mind his own business and let the Radleys mind theirs, they had a
right to; but when it happened Jem said Atticus shook his head and said, “Mm,
mm, mm.”

Dill had seen Dracula, a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginning
of respect.

In spite of our warnings and explanations it
drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no nearer than the light-pole on
the corner, a safe distance from the Radley gate.

“Let’s go in the front yard.”

The
Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb’s leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding
arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to
do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-itcoming-
to-him was a good enough defense for anybody.

The old courthouse clock suffered its preliminary strain and struck the hour, eight
deafening bongs that shook our bones.

Bet it’s a foot longer.”

“Lord, what a name.”
“‘s not any funnier’n yours.

He traveled with the show all over Mississippi until his
infallible sense of direction told him he was in Abbott County, Alabama, just
across the river from Maycomb.

He couldn’t have
cared less, so long as he could pass and punt.

Miss Caroline began the day by reading us a story about cats.

According to Miss
Stephanie, Boo was sitting in the livingroom cutting some items from The
Maycomb Tribune to paste in his scrapbook.

He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair
was snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior but
I towered over him.

Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that
we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings.

“You’ll have a very
unladylike scar on your wedding-ring finger.”

When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were
assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury.

The sheriff hadn’t the heart to put him in jail alongside Negroes, so
Boo was locked in the courthouse basement.

“I’m just trying to tell you the new way they’re teachin‘ the first grade, stubborn.

If I said as sunnily as I could, “Hey, Mrs.
Dubose,” I would receive for an answer, “Don’t you say hey to me, you ugly girl!

The house was low,
was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago
darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it.

“Don’t have any picture shows here, except Jesus ones in the courthouse
sometimes,” said Jem. “Ever see anything good?”

Miss Maudie Atkinson baked a Lane cake so loaded
with shinny it made me tight; Miss Stephanie Crawford had long visits with Aunt
Alexandra, consisting mostly of Miss Stephanie shaking her head and saying,
“Uh, uh, uh.”

Well,” she said, getting up from the
kitchen chair, “it’s enough time to make a pan of cracklin‘ bread, I reckon.

He placed the young town too far away from the only kind of public
transportation in those days—river-boat—and it took a man from the north end of
the county two days to travel to Maycomb for store-bought goods.

We parted at suppertime, and after our meal Jem and I were settling down to a
routine evening, when Atticus did something that interested us: he came into the
livingroom carrying a long electrical extension cord.

Bam, bam, bam, and the checkerboard was swept clean of my men.

The Governor was eager to scrape a few
barnacles off the ship of state; there were sit-down strikes in Birmingham; bread
lines in the cities grew longer, people in the country grew poorer.

People moved slowly then.

He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair
was snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior but
I towered over him.

“Are you all right, darling?” she asked over and over as she
worked me free.

We leaped over the driveway wall, cut through Miss Rachel’s side yard and went
to Dill’s window.

One by one, the congregation came forward and dropped nickels and dimes into a
black enameled coffee can.

Men’s stiff collars wilted by
nine in the morning.

I was just leaving my
office to go home when B—Mr. Ewell came in, very excited he was, and said get
out to his house quick, some nigger’d raped his girl.”

When he was like that, I knew better than to
bother him.

She had been with us ever since Jem
was born, and I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.

He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair
was snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior but
I towered over him.

Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed
with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.

“Shoot no wonder, then,” said Jem, jerking his thumb at me.

You should be in a
dress and camisole, young lady!

Dr. Reynolds parked his car in front of our house and walked to the
Radley’s every time he called.

We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted
Atticus.

They persisted in
pleading Not Guilty to first-degree murder, so there was nothing much Atticus
could do for his clients except be present at their departure, an occasion that was
probably the beginning of my father’s profound distaste for the practice of
criminal law.

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 out of the way.

A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a
lost ball and no questions asked.

Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore
corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes.

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it.

Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid
nocturnal events: people’s chickens and household pets were found mutilated;
although the culprit was Crazy Addie, who eventually drowned himself in
Barker’s Eddy, people still looked at the Radley Place, unwilling to discard their
initial suspicions.

“Fat in the
middle and little-bitty arms.”

You all get in
outa that hot sun ‘fore you fry alive!”

Jem’s nose wrinkled.

Miss Tutti denied it and lived in a world of silence,
but Miss Frutti, not about to miss anything, employed an ear trumpet so enormous
that Jem declared it was a loudspeaker from one of those dog Victrolas.

Miss Stephanie said old Mr. Radley said no Radley was going to any asylum,
when it was suggested that a season in Tuscaloosa might be helpful to Boo. Boo
wasn’t crazy, he was high-strung at times.

Dill had seen Dracula, a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginning
of respect.

“Take a good sip,
it’ll quieten you.”

He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair
was snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior but
I towered over him.

Mr. Radley’s elder son lived
in Pensacola; he came home at Christmas, and he was one of the few persons we
ever saw enter or leave the place.

Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid
nocturnal events: people’s chickens and household pets were found mutilated;
although the culprit was Crazy Addie, who eventually drowned himself in
Barker’s Eddy, people still looked at the Radley Place, unwilling to discard their
initial suspicions.

The warm bittersweet smell of clean Negro welcomed us as we entered the
churchyard—Hearts of Love hairdressing mingled with asafoetida, snuff, Hoyt’s
Cologne, Brown’s Mule, peppermint, and lilac talcum.

“You’re still scared,” murmured Dill patiently.

In England, Simon was irritated by the
persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more
liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way
across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up
the Saint Stephens.

But at supper that evening when I asked him to pass the damn ham, please, Uncle
Jack pointed at me.

When we slowed to a walk at the edge of the schoolyard, Jem was
careful to explain that during school hours I was not to bother him, I was not to
approach him with requests to enact a chapter of Tarzan and the Ant Men, to
embarrass him with references to his private life, or tag along behind him at
recess and noon.

Miss Caroline picked up
her ruler, gave me half a dozen quick little pats, then told me to stand in the
corner.

There was a smell of stale whiskey and pigpen about, and when I glanced around
I discovered that these men were strangers.

Misses Tutti and Frutti Barber were maiden ladies, sisters, who lived together in
the only Maycomb residence boasting a cellar.

It was not often that she made crackling bread, she said she never had time, but
with both of us at school today had been an easy one for her.

The place was self-sufficient:
modest in comparison with the empires around it, the Landing nevertheless
produced everything required to sustain life except ice, wheat flour, and articles
of clothing, supplied by river-boats from Mobile.

The Methodists were trying to pay off their church mortgage, and had
challenged the Baptists to a game of touch football.

Atticus’s office in the courthouse contained little more
than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama.

“You should have brought the flashlight, Jem.”
“Didn’t know it was this dark.

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 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.

The cats had long
conversations with one another, they wore cunning little clothes and lived in a
warm house beneath a kitchen stove.

“Nineteen-six and Scout, one of em’s nineteen-hundred.

Our only duties, as far as I could gather from our two rehearsals, were to enter
from stage left as Mrs. Merriweather (not only the author, but the narrator)
identified us.

He spat into the shrubbery,
then thrust his hands into his hip pockets and faced Atticus.

He sighed, and said rape was carnal knowledge of a female by force and without
consent.

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!”

We went
to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy— Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was
expecting— instead we found someone sitting looking at us.

It was pitch black.

“Go and eat downtown today.

Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog
suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in
the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square.

Tom Robinson was toying with them.
“…absence of any corroborative evidence, this man was indicted on a capital
charge and is now on trial for his life…”
I punched Jem. “How long’s he been at it?”

She’s a
troublemaker from way back, got fancy ideas an’ haughty ways—we’re mighty
glad to have you all.”

By late afternoon most of my traveling plans were complete; when Jem and I
raced each other up the sidewalk to meet Atticus coming home from work, I
didn’t give him much of a race.

Charles Lamb
PART ONE
Contents - Prev / Next
Chapter 1
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the
elbow.

It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon’s homestead,
Finch’s Landing, and make their living from cotton.

A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a
lost ball and no questions asked.

I mean it, now-”
“Yawl hush,” growled Jem, “you act like you believe in Hot Steams.”

I don’t think-”
“‘Smatter?” said Dill.

Calpurnia poured milk, dished out potato salad and ham, muttering, “‘shamed of
yourselves,” in varying degrees of intensity.

Little Chuck Little, whose patience with all living things
was phenomenal, said, “Which way did he go, Miss Caroline?

Besides making change in the collection plate every Sunday, Mr. Avery sat on the
porch every night until nine o’clock and sneezed.

“Nome thank you ma’am,” he drawled softly.

He nodded, produced his handkerchief, gave his face a going-over and blew his
nose violently.

He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea
of making Boo Radley come out.

Rain-rotted shingles
drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away.

I
remember now, she was bunged up on that side of her face…”
Mr. Tate blinked again, as if something had suddenly been made plain to him.

“We better go down there,” said Jem. “They’ll think it’s funny if we don’t show
up.”

Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog
suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in
the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square.

I was on the verge
of leavin’—I done done my time for this year.”

They put the women out in huts when their time came, whatever that was; they
had no sense of family—I knew that’d distress Aunty—they subjected children to
terrible ordeals when they were thirteen; they were crawling with yaws and
earworms, they chewed up and spat out the bark of a tree into a communal pot
and then got drunk on it.

Dill asked if I’d like to have a poke at
Boo Radley.

“Cecil Jacobs is a big fat hen, I think.

It was only three forty-five when we got home, so Jem and I drop-kicked in the
back yard until it was time to meet Atticus.

If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch
would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t?

Miss Blount, a native Maycombian as yet uninitiated in the mysteries of the
Decimal System, appeared at the door hands on hips and announced: “If I hear
another sound from this room I’ll burn up everybody in it.

Those
Bellingraths’ll look plain puny when I get started!”

We went
to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy— Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was
expecting— instead we found someone sitting looking at us.

It was
not quite like hard rubber, and I had the sensation that it was alive.

Lives by himself way
down near the county line.

He unhitched his
watch and chain and placed them on the table, saying, “With the court’s
permission—”
Judge Taylor nodded, and then Atticus did something I never saw him do before
or since, in public or in private: he unbuttoned his vest, unbuttoned his collar,
loosened his tie, and took off his coat.

I could not remember when the lines above Atticus’s moving finger
separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory,
listening to the news of the day, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of
Lorenzo Dow—anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his
lap every night.

Atticus was holding out my bathrobe and coat.

“Ain’t hateful, just persuades him—‘s not like you’d chunk him in the fire,” Jem
growled.

In England, Simon was irritated by the
persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more
liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way
across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up
the Saint Stephens.

Atticus’s office in the courthouse contained little more
than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama.

I looked up to see Miss Caroline standing in the middle of the
room, sheer horror flooding her face.

We don’t know, but there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that
Mayella Ewell was beaten savagely by someone who led almost exclusively with
his left.

When the men attached its hose to a hydrant, the hose burst
and water shot up, tinkling down on the pavement.

“Nome thank you ma’am,” he drawled softly.

Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that
we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings.

I’ve seen his tracks in our back yard many a mornin’, and one night I heard
him scratching on the back screen, but he was gone time Atticus got there.”

1960
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) 1960 by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) renewed 1988 by Harper Lee
Published by arrangement with McIntosh and Otis, Inc.
CONTENTS
l DEDICATION
l PART ONE
m Chapter 1
m Chapter 2
m Chapter 3
m Chapter 4
m Chapter 5
m Chapter 6
m Chapter 7
m Chapter 8
m Chapter 9
m Chapter 10
m Chapter 11
l PART TWO
m Chapter 12
m Chapter 13
m Chapter 14
m Chapter 15
m Chapter 16
m Chapter 17
m Chapter 18
m Chapter 19
m Chapter 20
m Chapter 21
m Chapter 22...

He drew out an envelope,
then reached into his vest pocket and unclipped his fountain pen.

Dill’s maleness was beginning to assert itself.

Jem seized his briefcase and bag, I jumped into his arms, felt his vague
dry kiss and said, “‘d you bring me a book? ’d you know Aunty’s here?”

“He’ll probably come out after you when he sees you
in the yard, then Scout’n‘ me’ll jump on him and hold him down till we can tell
him we ain’t gonna hurt him.”

He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair
was snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior but
I towered over him.

We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted
Atticus.

Nearly the same age, they had grown up together at Finch’s Landing.

“Folks call me Dill,” said Dill, struggling under the fence.

Subdued, I fixed
my attention upon Reverend Sykes, who seemed to be waiting for me to settle
down.

Jem had his little sister to think of the
time I dared him to jump off the top of the house: “If I got killed, what’d become
of you?” he asked.

Miss Caroline pointed a shaking finger not at the floor nor at a desk, but to a
hulking individual unknown to me.

Bit by
bit the dead cigar would disappear, to reappear some hours later as a flat slick
mess, its essence extracted and mingling with Judge Taylor’s digestive juices.

He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea
of making Boo Radley come out.

When he passed we would look at the ground and say,
“Good morning, sir,” and he would cough in reply.

Jem brushed his hair back to get a better look.

Behind the
rough oak pulpit a faded pink silk banner proclaimed God Is Love, the church’s
only decoration except a rotogravure print of Hunt’s The Light of the World.

In obedience to my father, there followed what I later realized was a sickeningly
comic aspect of an unfunny situation: the men talked in near-whispers.

The doors of the Radley house were closed on
weekdays as well as Sundays, and Mr. Radley’s boy was not seen again for
fifteen years.

This was enough to make Jem march to the corner, where he stopped and leaned
against the light-pole, watching the gate hanging crazily on its homemade hinge.

People moved slowly then.

I maintain that the Ewells
started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before
that.

“Shoot no wonder, then,” said Jem, jerking his thumb at me.

They did little, but
enough to be discussed by the town and publicly warned from three pulpits: they
hung around the barbershop; they rode the bus to Abbottsville on Sundays and
went to the picture show; they attended dances at the county’s riverside gambling
hell, the Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing Camp; they experimented with stumphole
whiskey.

I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint
line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First
Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she
discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste.

Through all the headshaking,
quelling of nausea and Jem-yelling, I had heard another sound, so low I
could not have heard it from the sidewalk.

I never
deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the
daily papers.

There were at least twelve banana
peels on the floor by his bed, surrounding an empty milk bottle.

Atticus pushed up his glasses and rubbed his face.

I could not remember when the lines above Atticus’s moving finger
separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory,
listening to the news of the day, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of
Lorenzo Dow—anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his
lap every night.

I waited, on tenterhooks, for Uncle Jack to tell Atticus my side of it.

He returned to Saint Stephens only once, to find
a wife, and with her established a line that ran high to daughters.

He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea
of making Boo Radley come out.

He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair
was snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior but
I towered over him.

Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore
corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes.

She boarded across the street one door down from us in Miss Maudie Atkinson’s
upstairs front room, and when Miss Maudie introduced us to her, Jem was in a
haze for days.

“That’s okay, ma’am, you’ll get to know all the county folks after a while.

The old house was the same, droopy and sick, but as we stared down the street we
thought we saw an inside shutter move.

I can’t conceive of
anyone low-down enough to do a thing like this, but I hope you found him.”

Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but
in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are
created equal.

“He sneaked out of the house—turn ‘round—sneaked up,
an’ went like this!”

The Governor was eager to scrape a few
barnacles off the ship of state; there were sit-down strikes in Birmingham; bread
lines in the cities grew longer, people in the country grew poorer.

“Dill if you don’t hush I’ll knock you bowlegged.

Mr. Tate uncrossed his legs and leaned forward.

As Mr.
Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out,
wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities.

Miss Stephanie Crawford
said she woke up in the middle of the night one time and saw him looking straight
through the window at her… said his head was like a skull lookin‘ at her.

Maycomb’s Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a
Negro cabin.

Scout, you’ll get in trouble if you go around saying things
like that.

Burris seemed to be afraid of a child half his height, and Miss Caroline took
advantage of his indecision: “Burris, go home.

All we had
was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was
exceeded only by his stinginess.

Sometimes when we made a
midnight pilgrimage to the bathroom we would find him reading.

The jail was
Maycomb’s only conversation piece: its detractors said it looked like a Victorian
privy; its supporters said it gave the town a good solid respectable look, and no
stranger would ever suspect that it was full of niggers.

Dill made his way through the leftovers and was reaching for a can of pork and
beans in the pantry when Miss Rachel’s Do-oo Je-sus went off in the hall.

“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 stood on tiptoe, hastily looked around once more, reached
into the hole, and withdrew two pieces of chewing gum minus their outer
wrappers.

He would probably have poured it into his milk glass had I not
asked what the sam hill he was doing.

When we passed our tree he
gave it a meditative pat on its cement, and remained deep in thought.

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.

Besides, Jem had his little sister to think of.

It was a pocket watch that wouldn’t
run, on a chain with an aluminum knife.

Miss
Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere
with my reading.

I crawled into his lap and tucked my head
under his chin.

Miss Caroline came to the end of the story and said, “Oh, my, wasn’t that nice?”

“If we’d had two of that crowd, we’d’ve had a hung jury.”

Atticus said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I
know you’ll go after birds.

When people’s azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was
because he had breathed on them.

They were white
hands, sickly white hands that had never seen the sun, so white they stood out
garishly against the dull cream wall in the dim light of Jem’s room.

Just ump—” Dill’s fat
foot hit the ground.

Miss Caroline pointed a shaking finger not at the floor nor at a desk, but to a
hulking individual unknown to me.

I thought they must be coldnatured,
as their sleeves were unrolled and buttoned at the cuffs.

“Scout yonder’s
been readin‘ ever since she was born, and she ain’t even started to school yet.

The Levy family met all criteria for being Fine Folks: they did the best they could
with the sense they had, and they had been living on the same plot of ground in
Maycomb for five generations.

“Heard every word you said,” I muttered. “…
wasn’t sleep at all, ‘s about a ship an’ Three-Fingered Fred ‘n’ Stoner’s Boy…”
He unhooked my overalls, leaned me against him, and pulled them off.

They did not go to church, Maycomb’s principal
recreation, but worshiped at home; Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street
for a mid-morning coffee break with her neighbors, and certainly never joined a
missionary circle.

Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall,
judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch,
that’s why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate an animal raw, you could
never wash the blood off.

He had walked ten or eleven of
the fourteen miles to Maycomb, off the highway in the scrub bushes lest the
authorities be seeking him, and had ridden the remainder of the way clinging to
the backboard of a cotton wagon.

Her face was the color of a dirty pillowcase, and the corners of
her mouth glistened with wet, which inched like a glacier down the deep grooves
enclosing her chin.

I could not remember when the lines above Atticus’s moving finger
separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory,
listening to the news of the day, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of
Lorenzo Dow—anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his
lap every night.

Jem underlined it when he asked Atticus if he was going out for the Methodists
and Atticus said he’d break his neck if he did, he was just too old for that sort of
thing.

Dill blushed and Jem told me to hush, a sure sign that Dill had been studied and
found acceptable.

The Radley house had no screen doors.

Now lemme think… reckon we can rock him…”
Jem stood in thought so long that Dill made a mild concession: “I won’t say you
ran out on a dare an‘ I’ll swap you The Gray Ghost if you just go up and touch the
house.”

As he told us the old tale his blue eyes would lighten and
darken; his laugh was sudden and happy; he habitually pulled at a cowlick in the
center of his forehead.

The warm bittersweet smell of clean Negro welcomed us as we entered the
churchyard—Hearts of Love hairdressing mingled with asafoetida, snuff, Hoyt’s
Cologne, Brown’s Mule, peppermint, and lilac talcum.

Little Chuck brought
water in a paper cup, and she drank it gratefully.

We ran back and found him struggling in the fence, kicking his pants off to get
loose.

Perhaps Calpurnia sensed that my day had been a grim one: she let me watch her
fix supper.

It kept me from driving her crazy on rainy days, I
guess.

“What fer, missus?”

At last
the sawhorses were taken away, and we stood watching from the front porch
when Mr. Radley made his final journey past our house.

1960
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) 1960 by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) renewed 1988 by Harper Lee
Published by arrangement with McIntosh and Otis, Inc.
CONTENTS
l DEDICATION
l PART ONE
m Chapter 1
m Chapter 2
m Chapter 3
m Chapter 4
m Chapter 5
m Chapter 6
m Chapter 7
m Chapter 8
m Chapter 9
m Chapter 10
m Chapter 11
l PART TWO
m Chapter 12
m Chapter 13
m Chapter 14
m Chapter 15
m Chapter 16
m Chapter 17
m Chapter 18
m Chapter 19
m Chapter 20
m Chapter 21
m Chapter 22...

“Naw, don’t anybody much but us pass by there, unless it’s some grown
person’s-”
“Grown folks don’t have hidin‘ places.

He charges some folks a bushel of potatoes for delivery of a baby.

Aunt Alexandra’s
vision of my deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing
the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born; furthermore, I should be
a ray of sunshine in my father’s lonely life.

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Chapter 3
Catching Walter Cunningham in the schoolyard gave me some pleasure, but when
I was rubbing his nose in the dirt Jem came by and told me to stop.

“Sir?”
“Go to bed.”

One or two of the jury looked vaguely like dressed-up
Cunninghams.

Double first cousin.”

Walking south, one
faced its porch; the sidewalk turned and ran beside the lot.

Routine
contentment was: improving our treehouse that rested between giant twin
chinaberry trees in the back yard, fussing, running through our list of dramas
based on the works of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

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 out of the way.

Why, I’ll build me a little house and take me a couple of
roomers and—gracious, I’ll have the finest yard in Alabama.

Wordlessly, he held up his pants.

There was a kitchen separate from the rest of the house, tacked onto it by a
wooden catwalk; in the back yard was a rusty bell on a pole, used to summon
field hands or as a distress signal; a widow’s walk was on the roof, but no widows
walked there—from it, Simon oversaw his overseer, watched the river-boats, and
gazed into the lives of surrounding landholders.

“Grandma,” he bawled, “she called me a
whore-lady and jumped on me!”

When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we
sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident.

It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon’s homestead,
Finch’s Landing, and make their living from cotton.

Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore
corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes.

Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch’s Landing, was the county
seat of Maycomb County.

“How do you know a match don’t hurt him?”

If anyone came along, Dill would ring the bell.

It was customary for field
Negroes with tiny children to deposit them in whatever shade there was while
their parents worked—usually the babies sat in the shade between two rows of
cotton.

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.

Walter looked straight ahead.

Hours of wintertime had found me in the treehouse, looking over at the
schoolyard, spying on multitudes of children through a two-power telescope Jem
had given me, learning their games, following Jem’s red jacket through wriggling
circles of blind man’s buff, secretly sharing their misfortunes and minor victories.

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?”

He unhitched his
watch and chain and placed them on the table, saying, “With the court’s
permission—”
Judge Taylor nodded, and then Atticus did something I never saw him do before
or since, in public or in private: he unbuttoned his vest, unbuttoned his collar,
loosened his tie, and took off his coat.

“I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury
system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality.

His curtness stung me.

“Jem?”
My toes touched trousers, a belt buckle, buttons, something I could not identify, a
collar, and a face.

“Reason I can’t pass the first grade, Mr. Finch, is I’ve had to stay out ever‘ spring
an’ help Papa with the choppin‘, but there’s another’n at the house now that’s
field size.”

They did not go to church, Maycomb’s principal
recreation, but worshiped at home; Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street
for a mid-morning coffee break with her neighbors, and certainly never joined a
missionary circle.

My memory came alive to see Mrs. Radley occasionally open the front door, walk
to the edge of the porch, and pour water on her cannas.

1960
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) 1960 by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) renewed 1988 by Harper Lee
Published by arrangement with McIntosh and Otis, Inc.
CONTENTS
l DEDICATION
l PART ONE
m Chapter 1
m Chapter 2
m Chapter 3
m Chapter 4
m Chapter 5
m Chapter 6
m Chapter 7
m Chapter 8
m Chapter 9
m Chapter 10
m Chapter 11
l PART TWO
m Chapter 12
m Chapter 13
m Chapter 14
m Chapter 15
m Chapter 16
m Chapter 17
m Chapter 18
m Chapter 19
m Chapter 20
m Chapter 21
m Chapter 22
m Chap...

I felt Calpurnia’s hand dig into my shoulder.

Simon lived to
an impressive age and died rich.

“Is he dead?”

“Then I’m goin‘ with you
—” I choked.

The neighborhood thought when Mr. Radley went under Boo would come out,
but it had another think coming: Boo’s elder brother returned from Pensacola and
took Mr. Radley’s place.

To reach the courtroom, on the second floor, one passed sundry sunless county
cubbyholes: the tax assessor, the tax collector, the county clerk, the county
solicitor, the circuit clerk, the judge of probate lived in cool dim hutches that
smelled of decaying record books mingled with old damp cement and stale urine.

She just rearranged food on her plate,
looking at it sadly while Calpurnia served Jem, Dill and me with a vengeance.

Every night Atticus would read us the sports pages of the
newspapers.

“There goes the meanest man ever God blew breath into,” murmured Calpurnia,
and she spat meditatively into the yard.

I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime.

“Good Lord, Miss Maudie, Jem and me beat him all the time.”

That cat thing
was real fine this mornin‘…
Miss Caroline smiled, blew her nose, said, “Thank you, darlings,” dispersed us,
opened a book and mystified the first grade with a long narrative about a toadfrog
that lived in a hall.

Miss Caroline went to her desk and opened her purse.

Don’t step on it!”

Some tinfoil was sticking in a knot-hole just above my eye level, winking at me in
the afternoon sun.

When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we
sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident.

I remembered something he had
said about Judge Taylor’s ex cathedra remarks sometimes exceeding his duty, but
that few lawyers ever did anything about them.

When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries
(within calling distance of Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house
two doors to the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south.

She boarded across the street one door down from us in Miss Maudie Atkinson’s
upstairs front room, and when Miss Maudie introduced us to her, Jem was in a
haze for days.

Calpurnia, in her navy voile dress and tub of a hat, walked between Jem and me.

There was a marble-topped washstand by her bed; on it were a glass with a
teaspoon in it, a red ear syringe, a box of absorbent cotton, and a steel alarm clock
standing on three tiny legs.

In
rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the
courthouse sagged in the square.

The judge asked Mr. Conner why he included the last charge;
Mr. Conner said they cussed so loud he was sure every lady in Maycomb heard
them.

“Bet he was hell
with a spitball,” murmured Dill.

Mr. Braxton Underwood, who had been sitting quietly in a chair reserved for the
Press, soaking up testimony with his sponge of a brain, allowed his bitter eyes to
rove over the colored balcony, and they met mine.

He remembered her clearly, and
sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and play
by himself behind the car-house.

I did not miss her, but I think Jem did.

Mr. Radley’s elder son lived
in Pensacola; he came home at Christmas, and he was one of the few persons we
ever saw enter or leave the place.

This was enough to make Jem march to the corner, where he stopped and leaned
against the light-pole, watching the gate hanging crazily on its homemade hinge.

Dill stopped and let Jem go ahead.

“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.

The other boys attended the industrial school and received the best secondary
education to be had in the state; one of them eventually worked his way through
engineering school at Auburn.

Old Sarum, their stamping grounds, was populated by
two families separate and apart in the beginning, but unfortunately bearing the
same name.

“You can’t,” said Jem. “Sometimes they stretch all the way across the road, but if
you hafta go through one you say, ‘Angel-bright, life-in-death; get off the road,
don’t suck my breath.’

I sat back down.

There was a kitchen separate from the rest of the house, tacked onto it by a
wooden catwalk; in the back yard was a rusty bell on a pole, used to summon
field hands or as a distress signal; a widow’s walk was on the roof, but no widows
walked there—from it, Simon oversaw his overseer, watched the river-boats, and
gazed into the lives of surrounding landholders.

Tim was a liver-colored bird dog, the pet
of Maycomb.

While he cleaned and bandaged
my knuckles, he entertained me with a tale about a funny nearsighted old
gentleman who had a cat named Hodge, and who counted all the cracks in the
sidewalk when he went to town.

Men’s stiff collars wilted by
nine in the morning.

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.

Instead of a column, a rough two-by-four supported one end of the
roof.

I pushed the pillow to the headboard and sat up.

Dill’s face appeared at the screen,
disappeared, and five minutes later he unhooked the screen and crawled out.

“We were playin‘ strip poker up yonder by the fishpool,” he said.

Miss Caroline printed her name on the blackboard and said, “This says I am Miss
Caroline Fisher.

I guess it was because
Atticus wasn’t a thunderer.

I drew a bead on him, remembered what Atticus had said, then dropped my fists
and walked away, “Scout’s a cow—ward!” ringing in my ears.

She was bullet-headed with strange almond-shaped eyes, straight nose, and
an Indian-bow mouth.

“I do, I mean it,” he
said, when I told him to shut up.

“Nome thank you ma’am,” he drawled softly.

The judge asked Mr. Conner why he included the last charge;
Mr. Conner said they cussed so loud he was sure every lady in Maycomb heard
them.

Our Cal’s a real good
cook.”

You don’t want ’em around
you all the time, Dill—”
Dill breathed his patient breath, a half-sigh.
“—good night, Atticus’s gone all day and sometimes half the night and off in the
legislature and I don’t know what—you don’t want ‘em around all the time, Dill,
you couldn’t do anything if they were.”

But there came a day when Atticus told us he’d wear us out if we made any noise
in the yard and commissioned Calpurnia to serve in his absence if she heard a
sound out of us.

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?”

As he told us the old tale his blue eyes would lighten and
darken; his laugh was sudden and happy; he habitually pulled at a cowlick in the
center of his forehead.

He swung his legs over the
railing and was sliding down a pillar when he slipped.

“Do better if you go over it instead of under it,” I said.

I went to the back yard and found Jem plugging away at a tin can, which seemed
stupid with all the bluejays around.

He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair
was snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior but
I towered over him.

She eats all the leftover fingers and ears from the hospital.”

“It’s
all over town this morning,” he announced, “all about how we held off a hundred
folks with our bare hands…” Aunt Alexandra stared him to silence.

Rain-rotted shingles
drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away.

She put
away from her whatever it was that gave her a pinprick of apprehension, and
suggested that I give the family a preview in the livingroom.

When people’s azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was
because he had breathed on them.

Judge Taylor looked like most judges I had
ever seen: amiable, white-haired, slightly ruddy-faced, he was a man who ran his
court with an alarming informality—he sometimes propped his feet up, he often
cleaned his fingernails with his pocket knife.

She looked and smelled like a peppermint drop.

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.

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.

John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father, and chose to
study medicine at a time when cotton was not worth growing; but after getting
Uncle Jack started, Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law.

I could not put out my hands to stop, they were wedged between my
chest and knees.

Little Chuck brought
water in a paper cup, and she drank it gratefully.

I could not remember when the lines above Atticus’s moving finger
separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory,
listening to the news of the day, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of
Lorenzo Dow—anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his
lap every night.

The air was so cold and clear we heard the courthouse clock
clank, rattle and strain before it struck the hour.

Francis had requested a pair of knee-pants, a red
leather booksack, five shirts and an untied bow tie.

“Everybody who brings his lunch put it on top of his desk.”

We do know in part what Mr. Ewell did: he did what any God-fearing,
persevering, respectable white man would do under the circumstances—he swore
out a warrant, no doubt signing it with his left hand, and Tom Robinson now sits
before you, having taken the oath with the only good hand he possesses—his right
hand.

She carried a tray of charlotte.