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(영미 명작 감상) 2023. 08.05. 제 47차
To kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
강사 : 김용동 선생
Chapter 27
Things did settle down, after a fashion, as Atticus said they would. By the middle
of October, only two small things out of the ordinary happened to two Maycomb
citizens. No, there were three things, and they did not directly concern us—the
Finches—but in a way they did.
The first thing was that Mr. Bob Ewell acquired and lost a job in a matter of days
and probably made himself unique in the annals of the nineteen-thirties: he was
the only man I ever heard of who was fired from the WPA for laziness. I suppose
his brief burst of fame brought on a briefer burst of industry, but his job lasted
only as long as his notoriety: Mr. Ewell found himself as forgotten as Tom
Robinson. Thereafter, he resumed his regular weekly appearances at the welfare
office for his check, and received it with no grace amid obscure mutterings that
the bastards who thought they ran this town wouldn’t permit an honest man to
make a living. Ruth Jones, the welfare lady, said Mr. Ewell openly accused
Atticus of getting his job. She was upset enough to walk down to Atticus’s office
and tell him about it. Atticus told Miss Ruth not to fret, that if Bob Ewell wanted
to discuss Atticus’s “getting” his job, he knew the way to the office.
The second thing happened to Judge Taylor. Judge Taylor was not a Sunday-night
churchgoer: Mrs. Taylor was. Judge Taylor savored his Sunday night hour alone
in his big house, and churchtime found him holed up in his study reading the
writings of Bob Taylor (no kin, but the judge would have been proud to claim it).
One Sunday night, lost in fruity metaphors and florid diction, Judge Taylor’s
attention was wrenched from the page by an irritating scratching noise. “Hush,”
he said to Ann Taylor, his fat nondescript dog. Then he realized he was speaking
to an empty room; the scratching noise was coming from the rear of the house.
Judge Taylor clumped to the back porch to let Ann out and found the screen door
swinging open. A shadow on the corner of the house caught his eye, and that was
all he saw of his visitor. Mrs. Taylor came home from church to find her husband
in his chair, lost in the writings of Bob Taylor, with a shotgun across his lap.
The third thing happened to Helen Robinson, Tom’s widow. If Mr. Ewell was as
forgotten as Tom Robinson, Tom Robinson was as forgotten as Boo Radley. But
Tom was not forgotten by his employer, Mr. Link Deas. Mr. Link Deas made a
job for Helen. He didn’t really need her, but he said he felt right bad about the
way things turned out. I never knew who took care of her children while Helen
was away. Calpurnia said it was hard on Helen, because she had to walk nearly a
mile out of her way to avoid the Ewells, who, according to Helen, “chunked at
her” the first time she tried to use the public road. Mr. Link Deas eventually
received the impression that Helen was coming to work each morning from the
wrong direction, and dragged the reason out of her. “Just let it be, Mr. Link,
please suh,” Helen begged. “The hell I will,” said Mr. Link. He told her to come
by his store that afternoon before she left. She did, and Mr. Link closed his store,
put his hat firmly on his head, and walked Helen home. He walked her the short
way, by the Ewells‘. On his way back, Mr. Link stopped at the crazy gate.
“Ewell?” he called. “I say Ewell!”
The windows, normally packed with children, were empty.
“I know every last one of you’s in there a-layin‘ on the floor! Now hear me, Bob
Ewell: if I hear one more peep outa my girl Helen about not bein’ able to walk
this road I’ll have you in jail before sundown!” Mr. Link spat in the dust and
walked home.
Helen went to work next morning and used the public road. Nobody chunked at
her, but when she was a few yards beyond the Ewell house, she looked around
and saw Mr. Ewell walking behind her. She turned and walked on, and Mr. Ewell
kept the same distance behind her until she reached Mr. Link Deas’s house. All
the way to the house, Helen said, she heard a soft voice behind her, crooning foul
words. Thoroughly frightened, she telephoned Mr. Link at his store, which was
not too far from his house. As Mr. Link came out of his store he saw Mr. Ewell
leaning on the fence. Mr. Ewell said, “Don’t you look at me, Link Deas, like I
was dirt. I ain’t jumped your—”
“First thing you can do, Ewell, is get your stinkin‘ carcass off my property.
You’re leanin’ on it an‘ I can’t afford fresh paint for it. Second thing you can do
is stay away from my cook or I’ll have you up for assault—”
“I ain’t touched her, Link Deas, and ain’t about to go with no nigger!”
“You don’t have to touch her, all you have to do is make her afraid, an‘ if assault
ain’t enough to keep you locked up awhile, I’ll get you in on the Ladies’ Law, so
get outa my sight! If you don’t think I mean it, just bother that girl again!”
Mr. Ewell evidently thought he meant it, for Helen reported no further trouble.
“I don’t like it, Atticus, I don’t like it at all,” was Aunt Alexandra’s assessment of
these events. “That man seems to have a permanent running grudge against
everybody connected with that case. I know how that kind are about paying off
grudges, but I don’t understand why he should harbor one—he had his way in
court, didn’t he?”
“I think I understand,” said Atticus. “It might be because he knows in his heart
that very few people in Maycomb really believed his and Mayella’s yarns. He
thought he’d be a hero, but all he got for his pain was... was, okay, we’ll convict
this Negro but get back to your dump. He’s had his fling with about everybody
now, so he ought to be satisfied. He’ll settle down when the weather changes.”
“But why should he try to burgle John Taylor’s house? He obviously didn’t know
John was home or he wouldn’t‘ve tried. Only lights John shows on Sunday nights
are on the front porch and back in his den...”
“You don’t know if Bob Ewell cut that screen, you don’t know who did it,” said
Atticus. “But I can guess. I proved him a liar but John made him look like a fool.
All the time Ewell was on the stand I couldn’t dare look at John and keep a
straight face. John looked at him as if he were a three-legged chicken or a square
egg. Don’t tell me judges don’t try to prejudice juries,” Atticus chuckled.
By the end of October, our lives had become the familiar routine of school, play,
study. Jem seemed to have put out of his mind whatever it was he wanted to
forget, and our classmates mercifully let us forget our father’s eccentricities. Cecil
Jacobs asked me one time if Atticus was a Radical. When I asked Atticus, Atticus
was so amused I was rather annoyed, but he said he wasn’t laughing at me. He
said, “You tell Cecil I’m about as radical as Cotton Tom Heflin.”
Aunt Alexandra was thriving. Miss Maudie must have silenced the whole
missionary society at one blow, for Aunty again ruled that roost. Her refreshments
grew even more delicious. I learned more about the poor Mrunas’ social life from
listening to Mrs. Merriweather: they had so little sense of family that the whole
tribe was one big family. A child had as many fathers as there were men in the
community, as many mothers as there were women. J. Grimes Everett was doing
his utmost to change this state of affairs, and desperately needed our prayers.
Maycomb was itself again. Precisely the same as last year and the year before
that, with only two minor changes. Firstly, people had removed from their store
windows and automobiles the stickers that said NRA—WE DO OUR PART. I
asked Atticus why, and he said it was because the National Recovery Act was
dead. I asked who killed it: he said nine old men.
The second change in Maycomb since last year was not one of national
significance. Until then, Halloween in Maycomb was a completely unorganized
affair. Each child did what he wanted to do, with assistance from other children if
there was anything to be moved, such as placing a light buggy on top of the livery
stable. But parents thought things went too far last year, when the peace of Miss
Tutti and Miss Frutti was shattered.
Misses Tutti and Frutti Barber were maiden ladies, sisters, who lived together in
the only Maycomb residence boasting a cellar. The Barber ladies were rumored to
be Republicans, having migrated from Clanton, Alabama, in 1911. Their ways
were strange to us, and why they wanted a cellar nobody knew, but they wanted
one and they dug one, and they spent the rest of their lives chasing generations of
children out of it.
Misses Tutti and Frutti (their names were Sarah and Frances), aside from their
Yankee ways, were both deaf. 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.
With these facts in mind and Halloween at hand, some wicked children had
waited until the Misses Barber were thoroughly asleep, slipped into their
livingroom (nobody but the Radleys locked up at night), stealthily made away
with every stick of furniture therein, and hid it in the cellar. I deny having taken
part in such a thing.
“I heard ‘em!” was the cry that awoke the Misses Barber’s neighbors at dawn
next morning. “Heard ’em drive a truck up to the door! Stomped around like
horses. They’re in New Orleans by now!”
Miss Tutti was sure those traveling fur sellers who came through town two days
ago had purloined their furniture. “Da-rk they were,” she said. “Syrians.”
Mr. Heck Tate was summoned. He surveyed the area and said he thought it was a
local job. Miss Frutti said she’d know a Maycomb voice anywhere, and there
were no Maycomb voices in that parlor last night—rolling their r’s all over her
premises, they were. Nothing less than the bloodhounds must be used to locate
their furniture, Miss Tutti insisted, so Mr. Tate was obliged to go ten miles out the
road, round up the county hounds, and put them on the trail.
Mr. Tate started them off at the Misses Barber’s front steps, but all they did was
run around to the back of the house and howl at the cellar door. When Mr. Tate
set them in motion three times, he finally guessed the truth. By noontime that day,
there was not a barefooted child to be seen in Maycomb and nobody took off his
shoes until the hounds were returned.
So the Maycomb ladies said things would be different this year. The high-school
auditorium would be open, there would be a pageant for the grown-ups; apple-
bobbing, taffy-pulling, pinning the tail on the donkey for the children. There
would also be a prize of twenty-five cents for the best Halloween costume,
created by the wearer.
Jem and I both groaned. Not that we’d ever done anything, it was the principle of
the thing. Jem considered himself too old for Halloween anyway; he said he
wouldn’t be caught anywhere near the high school at something like that. Oh
well, I thought, Atticus would take me.
I soon learned, however, that my services would be required on stage that
evening. Mrs. Grace Merriweather had composed an original pageant entitled
Maycomb County: Ad Astra Per Aspera, and I was to be a ham. She thought it
would be adorable if some of the children were costumed to represent the
county’s agricultural products: Cecil Jacobs would be dressed up to look like a
cow; Agnes Boone would make a lovely butterbean, another child would be a
peanut, and on down the line until Mrs. Merriweather’s imagination and the
supply of children were exhausted.
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. When she called out, “Pork,” that was my cue. Then the assembled
company would sing, “Maycomb County, Maycomb County, we will aye be true
to thee,” as the grand finale, and Mrs. Merriweather would mount the stage with
the state flag.
My costume was not much of a problem. Mrs. Crenshaw, the local seamstress,
had as much imagination as Mrs. Merriweather. Mrs. Crenshaw took some
chicken wire and bent it into the shape of a cured ham. This she covered with
brown cloth, and painted it to resemble the original. I could duck under and
someone would pull the contraption down over my head. It came almost to my
knees. Mrs. Crenshaw thoughtfully left two peepholes for me. She did a fine job.
Jem said I looked exactly like a ham with legs. There were several discomforts,
though: it was hot, it was a close fit; if my nose itched I couldn’t scratch, and once
inside I could not get out of it alone.
When Halloween came, I assumed that the whole family would be present to
watch me perform, but I was disappointed. Atticus said as tactfully as he could
that he just didn’t think he could stand a pageant tonight, he was all in. He had
been in Montgomery for a week and had come home late that afternoon. He
thought Jem might escort me if I asked him.
Aunt Alexandra said she just had to get to bed early, she’d been decorating the
stage all afternoon and was worn out—she stopped short in the middle of her
sentence. She closed her mouth, then opened it to say something, but no words
came.
“‘s matter, Aunty?” I asked.
“Oh nothing, nothing,” she said, “somebody just walked over my grave.” 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. So Jem squeezed me
into my costume, stood at the livingroom door, called out “Po-ork,” exactly as
Mrs. Merriweather would have done, and I marched in. Atticus and Aunt
Alexandra were delighted.
I repeated my part for Calpurnia in the kitchen and she said I was wonderful. I
wanted to go across the street to show Miss Maudie, but Jem said she’d probably
be at the pageant anyway.
After that, it didn’t matter whether they went or not. Jem said he would take me.
Thus began our longest journey together.
Chapter 28
The weather was unusually warm for the last day of October. We didn’t even
need jackets. The wind was growing stronger, and Jem said it might be raining
before we got home. There was no moon. The street light on the corner cast sharp
shadows on the Radley house. I heard Jem laugh softly. “Bet nobody bothers
them tonight,” he said. Jem was carrying my ham costume, rather awkwardly, as
it was hard to hold. I thought it gallant of him to do so.
“It is a scary place though, ain’t it?” I said. “Boo doesn’t mean anybody any
harm, but I’m right glad you’re along.” “You know Atticus wouldn’t let you go to
the schoolhouse by yourself,” Jem said.
“Don’t see why, it’s just around the corner and across the yard.”
“That yard’s a mighty long place for little girls to cross at night,” Jem teased.
“Ain’t you scared of haints?”
We laughed. Haints, Hot Steams, incantations, secret signs, had vanished with our
years as mist with sunrise. “What was that old thing,” Jem said, “Angel bright,
life-in-death; get off the road, don’t suck my breath.”
“Cut it out, now,” I said. We were in front of the Radley Place.
Jem said, “Boo must not be at home. Listen.”
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.
We turned the corner and I tripped on a root growing in the road. Jem tried to help
me, but all he did was drop my costume in the dust. I didn’t fall, though, and soon
we were on our way again.
We turned off the road and entered the schoolyard. It was pitch black.
“How do you know where we’re at, Jem?” I asked, when we had gone a few steps.
“I can tell we’re under the big oak because we’re passin‘ through a cool spot.
Careful now, and don’t fall again.”
We had slowed to a cautious gait, and were feeling our way forward so as not to
bump into the tree. The tree was a single and ancient oak; two children could not
reach around its trunk and touch hands. It was far away from teachers, their spies,
and curious neighbors: it was near the Radley lot, but the Radleys were not
curious. A small patch of earth beneath its branches was packed hard from many
fights and furtive crap games.
The lights in the high school auditorium were blazing in the distance, but they
blinded us, if anything. “Don’t look ahead, Scout,” Jem said. “Look at the ground
and you won’t fall.”
“You should have brought the flashlight, Jem.”
“Didn’t know it was this dark. Didn’t look like it’d be this dark earlier in the
evening. So cloudy, that’s why. It’ll hold off a while, though.”
Someone leaped at us.
“God almighty!” Jem yelled.
A circle of light burst in our faces, and Cecil Jacobs jumped in glee behind it. “Ha-
a-a, gotcha!” he shrieked. “Thought you’d be comin‘ along this way!”
“What are you doin‘ way out here by yourself, boy? Ain’t you scared of Boo
Radley?”
Cecil had ridden safely to the auditorium with his parents, hadn’t seen us, then
had ventured down this far because he knew good and well we’d be coming
along. He thought Mr. Finch’d be with us, though.
“Shucks, ain’t much but around the corner,” said Jem. “Who’s scared to go
around the corner?” We had to admit that Cecil was pretty good, though. He had
given us a fright, and he could tell it all over the schoolhouse, that was his
privilege.
“Say,” I said, “ain’t you a cow tonight? Where’s your costume?”
“It’s up behind the stage,” he said. “Mrs. Merriweather says the pageant ain’t
comin‘ on for a while. You can put yours back of the stage by mine, Scout, and
we can go with the rest of ’em.”
This was an excellent idea, Jem thought. He also thought it a good thing that Cecil
and I would be together. This way, Jem would be left to go with people his own
age.
When we reached the auditorium, the whole town was there except Atticus and
the ladies worn out from decorating, and the usual outcasts and shut-ins. Most of
the county, it seemed, was there: the hall was teeming with slicked-up country
people. The high school building had a wide downstairs hallway; people milled
around booths that had been installed along each side.
“Oh Jem. I forgot my money,” I sighed, when I saw them.
“Atticus didn’t,” Jem said. “Here’s thirty cents, you can do six things. See you
later on.”
“Okay,” I said, quite content with thirty cents and Cecil. I went with Cecil down
to the front of the auditorium, through a door on one side, and backstage. I got rid
of my ham costume and departed in a hurry, for Mrs. Merriweather was standing
at a lectern in front of the first row of seats making last-minute, frenzied changes
in the script.
“How much money you got?” I asked Cecil. Cecil had thirty cents, too, which
made us even. We squandered our first nickels on the House of Horrors, which
scared us not at all; we entered the black seventh-grade room and were led around
by the temporary ghoul in residence and were made to touch several objects
alleged to be component parts of a human being. “Here’s his eyes,” we were told
when we touched two peeled grapes on a saucer. “Here’s his heart,” which felt
like raw liver. “These are his innards,” and our hands were thrust into a plate of
cold spaghetti.
Cecil and I visited several booths. We each bought a sack of Mrs. Judge Taylor’s
homemade divinity. I wanted to bob for apples, but Cecil said it wasn’t sanitary.
His mother said he might catch something from everybody’s heads having been in
the same tub. “Ain’t anything around town now to catch,” I protested. But Cecil
said his mother said it was unsanitary to eat after folks. I later asked Aunt
Alexandra about this, and she said people who held such views were usually
climbers.
We were about to purchase a blob of taffy when Mrs. Merriweather’s runners
appeared and told us to go backstage, it was time to get ready. The auditorium
was filling with people; the Maycomb County High School band had assembled
in front below the stage; the stage footlights were on and the red velvet curtain
rippled and billowed from the scurrying going on behind it.
Backstage, Cecil and I found the narrow hallway teeming with people: adults in
homemade three-corner hats, Confederate caps, Spanish-American War hats, and
World War helmets. Children dressed as various agricultural enterprises crowded
around the one small window.
“Somebody’s mashed my costume,” I wailed in dismay. Mrs. Merriweather
galloped to me, reshaped the chicken wire, and thrust me inside.
“You all right in there, Scout?” asked Cecil. “You sound so far off, like you was
on the other side of a hill.”
“You don’t sound any nearer,” I said.
The band played the national anthem, and we heard the audience rise. Then the
bass drum sounded. Mrs. Merriweather, stationed behind her lectern beside the
band, said: “Maycomb County Ad Astra Per Aspera.” The bass drum boomed
again. “That means,” said Mrs. Merriweather, translating for the rustic elements,
“from the mud to the stars.” She added, unnecessarily, it seemed to me, “A
pageant.”
“Reckon they wouldn’t know what it was if she didn’t tell ‘em,” whispered Cecil,
who was immediately shushed.
“The whole town knows it,” I breathed.
“But the country folks’ve come in,” Cecil said.
“Be quiet back there,” a man’s voice ordered, and we were silent.
The bass drum went boom with every sentence Mrs. Merriweather uttered. She
chanted mournfully about Maycomb County being older than the state, that it was
a part of the Mississippi and Alabama Territories, that the first white man to set
foot in the virgin forests was the Probate Judge’s great-grandfather five times
removed, who was never heard of again. Then came the fearless Colonel
Maycomb, for whom the county was named.
Andrew Jackson appointed him to a position of authority, and Colonel
Maycomb’s misplaced self-confidence and slender sense of direction brought
disaster to all who rode with him in the Creek Indian Wars. Colonel Maycomb
persevered in his efforts to make the region safe for democracy, but his first
campaign was his last. His orders, relayed to him by a friendly Indian runner,
were to move south. After consulting a tree to ascertain from its lichen which way
was south, and taking no lip from the subordinates who ventured to correct him,
Colonel Maycomb set out on a purposeful journey to rout the enemy and
entangled his troops so far northwest in the forest primeval that they were
eventually rescued by settlers moving inland.
Mrs. Merriweather gave a thirty-minute description of Colonel Maycomb’s
exploits. I discovered that if I bent my knees I could tuck them under my costume
and more or less sit. I sat down, listened to Mrs. Merriweather’s drone and the
bass drum’s boom and was soon fast asleep.
They said later that Mrs. Merriweather was putting her all into the grand finale,
that she had crooned, “Po-ork,” with a confidence born of pine trees and
butterbeans entering on cue. She waited a few seconds, then called, “Po-ork?”
When nothing materialized, she yelled, “Pork!”
I must have heard her in my sleep, or the band playing Dixie woke me, but it was
when Mrs. Merriweather triumphantly mounted the stage with the state flag that I
chose to make my entrance. Chose is incorrect: I thought I’d better catch up with
the rest of them.
They told me later that Judge Taylor went out behind the auditorium and stood
there slapping his knees so hard Mrs. Taylor brought him a glass of water and one
of his pills.
Mrs. Merriweather seemed to have a hit, everybody was cheering so, but she
caught me backstage and told me I had ruined her pageant. She made me feel
awful, but when Jem came to fetch me he was sympathetic. He said he couldn’t
see my costume much from where he was sitting. How he could tell I was feeling
bad under my costume I don’t know, but he said I did all right, I just came in a
little late, that was all. Jem was becoming almost as good as Atticus at making
you feel right when things went wrong. Almost—not even Jem could make me go
through that crowd, and he consented to wait backstage with me until the
audience left.
“You wanta take it off, Scout?” he asked.
“Naw, I’ll just keep it on,” I said. I could hide my mortification under it.
“You all want a ride home?” someone asked.
“No sir, thank you,” I heard Jem say. “It’s just a little walk.”
“Be careful of haints,” the voice said. “Better still, tell the haints to be careful of
Scout.”
“There aren’t many folks left now,” Jem told me. “Let’s go.”
We went through the auditorium to the hallway, then down the steps. It was still
black dark. The remaining cars were parked on the other side of the building, and
their headlights were little help. “If some of ‘em were goin’ in our direction we
could see better,” said Jem. “Here Scout, let me hold onto your—hock. You might
lose your balance.”
“I can see all right.”
“Yeah, but you might lose your balance.” I felt a slight pressure on my head, and
assumed that Jem had grabbed that end of the ham. “You got me?”
“Uh huh.”
We began crossing the black schoolyard, straining to see our feet. “Jem,” I said,
“I forgot my shoes, they’re back behind the stage.”
“Well let’s go get ‘em.” But as we turned around the auditorium lights went off.
“You can get ’em tomorrow,” he said.
“But tomorrow’s Sunday,” I protested, as Jem turned me homeward.
“You can get the Janitor to let you in... Scout?”
“Hm?”
“Nothing.”
Jem hadn’t started that in a long time. I wondered what he was thinking. He’d tell
me when he wanted to, probably when we got home. I felt his fingers press the
top of my costume, too hard, it seemed. I shook my head. “Jem, you don’t hafta
—”
“Hush a minute, Scout,” he said, pinching me.
We walked along silently. “Minute’s up,” I said. “Whatcha thinkin‘ about?” I
turned to look at him, but his outline was barely visible.
“Thought I heard something,” he said. “Stop a minute.”
We stopped.
“Hear anything?” he asked.
“No.”
We had not gone five paces before he made me stop again.
“Jem, are you tryin‘ to scare me? You know I’m too old—”
“Be quiet,” he said, and I knew he was not joking.
The night was still. I could hear his breath coming easily beside me. Occasionally
there was a sudden breeze that hit my bare legs, but it was all that remained of a
promised windy night. This was the stillness before a thunderstorm. We listened.
“Heard an old dog just then,” I said.
“It’s not that,” Jem answered. “I hear it when we’re walkin‘ along, but when we
stop I don’t hear it.”
“You hear my costume rustlin‘. Aw, it’s just Halloween got you...”
I said it more to convince myself than Jem, for sure enough, as we began walking,
I heard what he was talking about. It was not my costume.
“It’s just old Cecil,” said Jem presently. “He won’t get us again. Let’s don’t let
him think we’re hurrying.”
We slowed to a crawl. I asked Jem how Cecil could follow us in this dark, looked
to me like he’d bump into us from behind.
“I can see you, Scout,” Jem said.
“How? I can’t see you.”
“Your fat streaks are showin‘. Mrs. Crenshaw painted ’em with some of that
shiny stuff so they’d show up under the footlights. I can see you pretty well, an‘ I
expect Cecil can see you well enough to keep his distance.”
I would show Cecil that we knew he was behind us and we were ready for him.
“Cecil Jacobs is a big wet he-en!” I yelled suddenly, turning around.
We stopped. There was no acknowledgement save he-en bouncing off the distant
schoolhouse wall.
“I’ll get him,” said Jem. “He-y!”
Hay-e-hay-e-hay-ey, answered the schoolhouse wall. It was unlike Cecil to hold
out for so long; once he pulled a joke he’d repeat it time and again. We should
have been leapt at already. Jem signaled for me to stop again.
He said softly, “Scout, can you take that thing off?”
“I think so, but I ain’t got anything on under it much.”
“I’ve got your dress here.”
“I can’t get it on in the dark.”
“Okay,” he said, “never mind.”
“Jem, are you afraid?”
“No. Think we’re almost to the tree now. Few yards from that, an‘ we’ll be to the
road. We can see the street light then.” Jem was talking in an unhurried, flat
toneless voice. I wondered how long he would try to keep the Cecil myth going.
“You reckon we oughta sing, Jem?”
“No. Be real quiet again, Scout.”
We had not increased our pace. Jem knew as well as I that it was difficult to walk
fast without stumping a toe, tripping on stones, and other inconveniences, and I
was barefooted. Maybe it was the wind rustling the trees. But there wasn’t any
wind and there weren’t any trees except the big oak.
Our company shuffled and dragged his feet, as if wearing heavy shoes. Whoever
it was wore thick cotton pants; what I thought were trees rustling was the soft
swish of cotton on cotton, wheek, wheek, with every step.
I felt the sand go cold under my feet and I knew we were near the big oak. Jem
pressed my head. We stopped and listened.
Shuffle-foot had not stopped with us this time. His trousers swished softly and
steadily. Then they stopped.
------- from the first line of the page 351
He was running, running toward us with no child’s steps.
“Run, Scout! Run! Run!” Jem screamed.
I took one giant step and found myself reeling: my arms useless, in the dark, I
could not keep my balance.
“Jem, Jem, help me, Jem!”
Something crushed the chicken wire around me. Metal ripped on metal and I fell
to the ground and rolled as far as I could, floundering to escape my wire prison.
From somewhere near by came scuffling, kicking sounds, sounds of shoes and
flesh scraping dirt and roots. Someone rolled against me and I felt Jem. He was up
like lightning and pulling me with him but, though my head and shoulders were
free, I was so entangled we didn’t get very far.
We were nearly to the road when I felt Jem’s hand leave me, felt him jerk
backwards to the ground. More scuffling, and there came a dull crunching sound
and Jem screamed.
I ran in the direction of Jem’s scream and sank into a flabby male stomach. Its
owner said, “Uff!” and tried to catch my arms, but they were tightly pinioned. His
stomach was soft but his arms were like steel. He slowly squeezed the breath out
of me. I could not move. Suddenly he was jerked backwards and flung on the
ground, almost carrying me with him. I thought, Jem’s up.
One’s mind works very slowly at times. Stunned, I stood there dumbly. The
scuffling noises were dying; someone wheezed and the night was still again.
Still but for a man breathing heavily, breathing heavily and staggering. I thought
he went to the tree and leaned against it. He coughed violently, a sobbing, bone-
shaking cough.
-------- the last line of the page 351
“Jem?”
There was no answer but the man’s heavy breathing.
“Jem?”
Jem didn’t answer.
The man began moving around, as if searching for something. I heard him groan
and pull something heavy along the ground. It was slowly coming to me that there
were now four people under the tree.
“Atticus...?”
The man was walking heavily and unsteadily toward the road.
I went to where I thought he had been and felt frantically along the ground,
reaching out with my toes. Presently I touched someone.
“Jem?”
My toes touched trousers, a belt buckle, buttons, something I could not identify, a
collar, and a face. A prickly stubble on the face told me it was not Jem’s. I
smelled stale whiskey.
I made my way along in what I thought was the direction of the road. I was not
sure, because I had been turned around so many times. But I found it and looked
down to the street light. A man was passing under it. The man was walking with
the staccato steps of someone carrying a load too heavy for him. He was going
around the corner. He was carrying Jem. Jem’s arm was dangling crazily in front
of him.
By the time I reached the corner the man was crossing our front yard. Light from
our front door framed Atticus for an instant; he ran down the steps, and together,
he and the man took Jem inside.
I was at the front door when they were going down the hall. Aunt Alexandra was
running to meet me. “Call Dr. Reynolds!” Atticus’s voice came sharply from
Jem’s room. “Where’s Scout?”
“Here she is,” Aunt Alexandra called, pulling me along with her to the telephone.
She tugged at me anxiously. “I’m all right, Aunty,” I said, “you better call.”
She pulled the receiver from the hook and said, “Eula May, get Dr. Reynolds,
quick!”
“Agnes, is your father home? Oh God, where is he? Please tell him to come over
here as soon as he comes in. Please, it’s urgent!”
There was no need for Aunt Alexandra to identify herself, people in Maycomb
knew each other’s voices.
Atticus came out of Jem’s room. The moment Aunt Alexandra broke the
connection, Atticus took the receiver from her. He rattled the hook, then said,
“Eula May, get me the sheriff, please.”
“Heck? Atticus Finch. Someone’s been after my children. Jem’s hurt. Between
here and the schoolhouse. I can’t leave my boy. Run out there for me, please, and
see if he’s still around. Doubt if you’ll find him now, but I’d like to see him if you
do. Got to go now. Thanks, Heck.”
“Atticus, is Jem dead?”
“No, Scout. Look after her, sister,” he called, as he went down the hall.
Aunt Alexandra’s fingers trembled as she unwound the crushed fabric and wire
from around me. “Are you all right, darling?” she asked over and over as she
worked me free.
It was a relief to be out. My arms were beginning to tingle, and they were red with
small hexagonal marks. I rubbed them, and they felt better.
“Aunty, is Jem dead?”
“No—no, darling, he’s unconscious. We won’t know how badly he’s hurt until
Dr. Reynolds gets here. Jean Louise, what happened?”
“I don’t know.”
She left it at that. She brought me something to put on, and had I thought about it
then, I would have never let her forget it: in her distraction, Aunty brought me my
overalls. “Put these on, darling,” she said, handing me the garments she most
despised.
She rushed back to Jem’s room, then came to me in the hall. She patted me
vaguely, and went back to Jem’s room.
A car stopped in front of the house. I knew Dr. Reynolds’s step almost as well as
my father’s. He had brought Jem and me into the world, had led us through every
childhood disease known to man including the time Jem fell out of the treehouse,
and he had never lost our friendship. Dr. Reynolds said if we had been boil-prone
things would have been different, but we doubted it.
He came in the door and said, “Good Lord.” He walked toward me, said, “You’re
still standing,” and changed his course. He knew every room in the house. He also
knew that if I was in bad shape, so was Jem.
After ten forevers Dr. Reynolds returned. “Is Jem dead?” I asked.
“Far from it,” he said, squatting down to me. “He’s got a bump on the head just
like yours, and a broken arm. Scout, look that way—no, don’t turn your head, roll
your eyes. Now look over yonder. He’s got a bad break, so far as I can tell now
it’s in the elbow. Like somebody tried to wring his arm off... Now look at me.”
“Then he’s not dead?”
“No-o!” Dr. Reynolds got to his feet. “We can’t do much tonight,” he said,
“except try to make him as comfortable as we can. We’ll have to X-ray his arm—
looks like he’ll be wearing his arm ‘way out by his side for a while. Don’t worry,
though, he’ll be as good as new. Boys his age bounce.”
While he was talking, Dr. Reynolds had been looking keenly at me, lightly
fingering the bump that was coming on my forehead. “You don’t feel broke
anywhere, do you?”
Dr. Reynolds’s small joke made me smile. “Then you don’t think he’s dead,
then?”
He put on his hat. “Now I may be wrong, of course, but I think he’s very alive.
Shows all the symptoms of it. Go have a look at him, and when I come back we’ll
get together and decide.”
Dr. Reynolds’s step was young and brisk. Mr. Heck Tate’s was not. His heavy
boots punished the porch and he opened the door awkwardly, but he said the same
thing Dr. Reynolds said when he came in. “You all right, Scout?” he added.
“Yes sir, I’m goin‘ in to see Jem. Atticus’n’them’s in there.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Mr. Tate.
Aunt Alexandra had shaded Jem’s reading light with a towel, and his room was
dim. Jem was lying on his back. There was an ugly mark along one side of his
face. His left arm lay out from his body; his elbow was bent slightly, but in the
wrong direction. Jem was frowning.
“Jem...?”
Atticus spoke. “He can’t hear you, Scout, he’s out like a light. He was coming
around, but Dr. Reynolds put him out again.”
“Yes sir.” I retreated. Jem’s room was large and square. Aunt Alexandra was
sitting in a rocking-chair by the fireplace. The man who brought Jem in was
standing in a corner, leaning against the wall. He was some countryman I did not
know. He had probably been at the pageant, and was in the vicinity when it
happened. He must have heard our screams and come running.
Atticus was standing by Jem’s bed.
Mr. Heck Tate stood in the doorway. His hat was in his hand, and a flashlight
bulged from his pants pocket. He was in his working clothes.
“Come in, Heck,” said Atticus. “Did you find anything? I can’t conceive of
anyone low-down enough to do a thing like this, but I hope you found him.”
Mr. Tate sniffed. He glanced sharply at the man in the corner, nodded to him, then
looked around the room—at Jem, at Aunt Alexandra, then at Atticus.
“Sit down, Mr. Finch,” he said pleasantly.
Atticus said, “Let’s all sit down. Have that chair, Heck. I’ll get another one from
the livingroom.”
Mr. Tate sat in Jem’s desk chair. He waited until Atticus returned and settled
himself. I wondered why Atticus had not brought a chair for the man in the
corner, but Atticus knew the ways of country people far better than I. Some of his
rural clients would park their long-eared steeds under the chinaberry trees in the
back yard, and Atticus would often keep appointments on the back steps. This one
was probably more comfortable where he was.
“Mr. Finch,” said Mr. Tate, “tell you what I found. I found a little girl’s dress—
it’s out there in my car. That your dress, Scout?”
“Yes sir, if it’s a pink one with smockin‘,” I said. Mr. Tate was behaving as if he
were on the witness stand. He liked to tell things his own way, untrammeled by
state or defense, and sometimes it took him a while.
“I found some funny-looking pieces of muddy-colored cloth—”
“That’s m’costume, Mr. Tate.”
Mr. Tate ran his hands down his thighs. He rubbed his left arm and investigated
Jem’s mantelpiece, then he seemed to be interested in the fireplace. His fingers
sought his long nose.
“What is it, Heck?” said Atticus.
Mr. Tate found his neck and rubbed it. “Bob Ewell’s lyin‘ on the ground under
that tree down yonder with a kitchen knife stuck up under his ribs. He’s dead, Mr.
Finch.”
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