-
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
(1926--)
1
……
The
misery
of
that
house
began
many
years
before
Jem
and
I
were
born.
The
Radleys,
welcome anywhere in
town, kept to themselves, a predilection
unforgivable in Maycomb. They
did
not
go
to
church,
Maycomb
’
s
principal
recreation,
but
worshipped
at
home;
Mrs
Radley
seldom if ever crossed the street for a
mid-morning coffee break with her neighbours and
certainly
never joined a missionary
circle. Mr Radley walked to town at eleven-thirty
every morning and
came
back
promptly
at
twelve,
sometimes
carrying
a
brown
paper
bag
that
the
neighbourhood
assumed contained the family groceries.
I never knew how old Mr Bradley made his
living
—
Jem
said
he
‘
bought
cotton
’
, a polite term for
doing nothing
—
but Mr Bradley
and his wife had lived
there with their
two sons as long as anybody could remember.
The shutters and doors of the Radley
house were closed on Sundays, another thing alien
to
Maycomb
’
s
Ways: closed doors meant illness and cold weather
only. Of all days Sunday was the
day
for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore
corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes. But
to
climb
the
Radley
front
steps
and
call, <
/p>
‘
He-y
’
,
of
a
Sunday
afternoon
was
something
their
neighbours never did. The Radley house
had no screen doors. I once asked Atticus if it
ever had
any; Atticus said yes, but
before I was born.
According
to
neighbourhood
legend,
when
the
younger
Radley
boy
was
in
his
teens
he
became acwuainted with some of the
Cumminghams from Old Sarum, an enormous and
confusing
tribe domiciled in the
northern part of the country, and they formed the
nearest thing to a gang
ever
seen
in
Maycomb.
They
did
little,
but
enough
to
be
discussed
by
the
town
and
publicly
warned from three
pulpits: they hung, around the barber-shop; they
rode the bus to Abbotsville on
Sundays
and went to the picture show; they attended dances
at the country
’
s riverside
gambling
hell, the Dew-Drop Inn and
Fishing Camp; they experimented with stumphole
whisky. Nobody in
Maycomb had nerve
enough to tell Mr Radley that his boy was in with
the wrong crowd.
One
night
in
an
excessive
spurt
of
high
spirits,
the
boys
backed
around
the
square
in
a
borrowed flivver, resisted arrest by
Maycomb
’
s ancient beadle, Mr
Conner, and locked him in the
court-
house. The Town decide 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
1
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
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.
The
judge
decided
to
send
the
boys
to
the
state
industrial school, where boys were
sometimes sent for no other reason than to provide
them with
food and decent shelter: it
was no prison and it was no disgrace. Mr Bradley
would see to it that
Arthur gave no
further trouble. Knowing that Mr
Radley
’
s word was his bond,
the judge was glad
to do so.
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.
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.
But
there came a day, barely within
Jem
’
s memory, when Boo
Bradley 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.
’
So Jem
received most of his information from Miss
Stephanie Crawford, a neighbourhood
scold, who said she knew the whole
thing. According to Miss Stephanie, Boo was
sitting in the
living room cutting some
items from the Maycomb Tribute to paste in his
scrapbook. His father
entered the room.
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.
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
living
room,
cutting
up
the
Tribute.
He
was
thirty-three years old then.
Miss
Stephanie
said
old
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. 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. The sheriff
hadn
’
t the heart to put him
in jail
alongside Negroes, so Boo was
locked in the court-house basement,
Boo
’
s
transition
from
the
basement
to
back
home
was
nebulous
in
Jem
’
s
Memory.
Miss
Stephanie Crawford said some of the
town council told Radley that if he
didn
’
t take Boo back,
Boo would die of mould from the damp.
Besides, Boo could not live for ever on the bounty
of the
country.
Nobody knew
what form of intimation Mr Radley employed to keep
Boo out of sight, But
Jem figured that
Mr Radley kept him chained to bed most of the
time. Atticus said no, it
wasn
’
t
that sort
of thing, that
there were other ways of
making people into ghosts
……
.
10
Atticus was feeble: he
was nearly fifty. When Jem and I asked him why he
was so old, he
said
he got
started
late,
which
we
felt
reflected
upon
his
abilities
and
manliness.
He
was
much
older
than
the
parents
of
our
school
contemporaries,
and
there
was
nothing
Jem
or
I
could
say
about
him when our classmates said,
‘
My
father-
’
Jem
was
football
crazy.
Atticus
was
never
too
tired
to
play
keep-away,
but
when
Jem
2
wanted to tackle him
Atticus would say:
‘
I
’
m
too old for that, son.
”
Our father didn
’
t
do anything. He worked in an office, not in a
drugstore. Atticus did not
drive a
dump-truck for the county, he was not the sheriff,
he did not farm, work in a garage, or do
anything that could possibly arouse the
admiration of anyone.
Besides that, he
wore glasses. He was nearly blind in his left eye,
and said left eyes were
the tribal
curse of the Finches. Whenever he wanted to see
something well, he turned his head and
looked from his right eye.
He did
not do
the
things
our
schoolmates
’
father
did:
he
never
went
hunting,
he
did
not
play poker or fish or
drink or smoke. He sat in the living-room and
read.
With these attributes, however,
he would not remain as inconspicuous as we wished
him too: that year, the school buzzed
with talk about him defending Tom Robinson, none
of
which was complimentary.
After my bout with Cecil Jacobs when I
committed myself to a policy
of
cowardice, word got around that Scout Finch
wouldn
’
t fight any more, her
daddy wouldn
’
t let
her. This was not entirely correct: I
wouldn
’
t fight publicly for
Atticus anyone from a third cousin
upwards tooth and nail. Francis
Hancock, for example, knew that.
When
he gave us our air rifles Atticus
wouldn
’
t teach us to shoot.
Uncle Jack instructed us
in the
rudiments thereof; he said Atticus
wasn
’
t interested in guns.
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.
Shoot all the
bluejays you want, if you can
hit
’
em, but remember
it
’
s a sin to kill a
mockingbird
.
’
That was the only time I ever heard
Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I
asked
Miss Maudie about it.
‘
Your
father
’
s
right,
’
she said.
‘
Mockingbirds
don
’
t do one thing but make
music for us
to enjoy. They
don
’
t eat up
people
’
s garden,
don
’
t nest in corncribs,
they don
’
t do one thing
but sing their hearts out for us.
That
’
s why
it
’
s a sin to kill a
mockingbird
.
19
……
As Tom Robinson gave his
testimony, it came to me that Mayella Ewell must
have been the
loneliest person in the
world. She was even lonelier than Boo Radley, who
had not been out of the
house in
twenty-five years. When Atticus asked had she any
friends, she seemed not to know what
he
meant, then she thought, as he was making fun of
her. She was as sad, I thought, as what Jem
called a mixed child: white people
wouldn
’
t have anything to do
with her because she lived among
pigs;
Negroes wouldn
’
t have
anything to do with her because she was white. She
couldn
’
t live like
Mr
Dolphus
Raymond,
who
preferred
the
company
of
Negroes,
because
she
didn
’
t
own
a
riverbank
and she wasn
’
t from a fine
family. Nobody said,
‘
That
’
s just their
way,
’
about the Ewells.
Maycomb gave them Christmas baskets,
welfare money, and the back of its hand. Tom
Robinson
was probably the only person
who was ever decent to her. But she said he took
advantage of her,
and when she stood up
she looked at him as if he were dirt beneath her
feet.
‘
Did
you
ever,
’
Atticus
interrupted
my
meditations,
‘
at
any
time,
go
on
the
Ewell
property
—
did you
ever set foot on the Ewell property without an
express invitation from one of
them?
’
‘
No such, Mr Finch, I never
did. I wouldn
’
t do that,
suh.
’
Atticus
sometimes said that one way to tell whether a
witness was lying or telling the truth
was to listen rather watch: I applied
his test
—
Tom denied it three
times in one breath, but quietly,
3