to kill a mockingbird chapter one when he was nearly 13 my brother jim got his arm badly broken at the elbow when it healed and jim's fears of never being able to play football were assaged he was seldom self-conscious about his injury his left arm was somewhat shorter than his right when he stood or walked the back of his hand was at the right angles to his body his thumb parallel to his thigh he couldn't have cared less so long as he could pass and punt when enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them we sometimes discuss the events leading to his accident i maintain that the yule started it all but jim who was four years my senior said it started long before that he said it began the summer dill came to us when dill first gave us the idea of making boo radley come out i said if we wanted to take a broad view of the thing it really began with andrew jackson if general jackson hadn't run the creeks up the crick simon finch would have never paddled up the alabama and where would we be if he hadn't we were far too old to settle an argument with a fistfight so we consulted atticus our father said we were both right 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 all we had was simon finch a fur trapping apothecary from cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his dinginess 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 stevens 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 good for the glory of god as the putting on of gold and costly apparel 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 40 miles above st stefan's he returned to st stephens only once to find a wife and with her established a line that ran high to daughters simon lived an impressionable age and died rich 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 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 riverboats from mobile 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 20th century when my father atticus finch went to montgomery to read law and his younger brother went to boston to study medicine their sister alexandra was the fence who remained at the landing she married a taxi turned man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock by the river wondering if his trap lines were full when my father was admitted to the bar he returned to make home and began his practice make home some 20 miles east of finch's landing was the county seat of macomb county atticus's office in the courthouse contained little more than a hat rack a spittoon a checkerboard and an unsullied code of alabama his first two clients were the last two persons hanged in macomb county jail atticus had urged them to accept the state's generosity in allowing them to plead guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives but they were haverfords in macomb county and named synonym with donkey the haberfords had dispatched make homes leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mayor were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses and insisted that the son of a gun had it coming to him was good enough defense for anybody they persisted in pleading not guilty to first-degree murder so there was nothing much atticus could do for his clients except for be present at their departure an occasion that was probably the beginning of my father's profound distaste for the practice of criminal law during his first five years in maycomb atticus practiced economy more than anything for several years thereafter he invested his earnings in his brother's education john hale finch was 10 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 he liked make home and he was make home 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 town make home was an old town but it was a tired old town when i first knew it in rainy weather the streets turned to red slop grass grew on the sidewalks the courthouse sagged in the square somehow it was hotter than 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 men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning ladies bathed before noon after the three o'clock naps and by nightfall were like soft tea cakes with frosting of sweet in sweat talcum people moved slowly then they ambled across the square shuffled in and out of the stores around it took their time about everything a day was 24 hours long but it seemed longer 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 macomb county but it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people macomb county had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself we lived on the main residential street in town atticus jim and i plus calpurnia are cook jim and i found our father satisfactory he played with us read to us and treated us with courteous detachment calpurnia was something else again she was all angles and bones and she was nearsighted she squinted her hand was as wide as a bed slapped and twice as hard she was always ordering me out of the kitchen asking me why i couldn't behave as well as jim when she knew he was older and calling me home when i wasn't ready to come our battles were epic and one-sided calpurnia always won mainly because atticus took her side she had been with us ever since jim was born and i had felt her tyrannical presence as long as i could remember our mother died when i was two so i never felt her absence she was a gram from montgomery atticus met her when he was first elected into the state legislature he was a middle-aged man then she was 15 years his junior jim was the product of their first year of marriage four years later i was born and two years later our mother died from a sudden heart attack they said it ran in the family i did not miss her but i think jim did he remembered her clearly and sometimes in the middle of the game he would sigh at length and then go off and play by himself behind the car house when he was like that i knew better than to bother him when i was almost 6 and jim was nearly 10 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 we were never tempted to break them 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 debose was playing hell that was the summer dill came to us early one morning as we were beginning our day's play in the backyard jim and i heard something next door in miss rachel haverford's collared patch 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 sitting down he wasn't much higher than the collards we stared at him until he spoke hey hey yourself said jim pleasantly i'm charles baker harris he said i can read so what i said i thought you'd like to know that i can read you got anything that needs reading i can do it how old are you ask jim four and a half going on seven shoot no wonder then said jim jerking his thumb at me scout yonder's been reading ever since she was born and she ain't even started school yet you look right puny for going on seven i'm little but i'm old he said jim brushed his hair back to get a better look why don't you come over charles baker harris he said lord what a name it's not any funnier than yours aunt rachel says your name's jeremy atticus finch jim scowled i'm big enough to fit mine he said your name's longer than you are i bet it's a foot longer folks call me dill said dill struggling under the fence do better if you go over it and sit under it i said where'd you come from dill was from meridian mississippi would spend in the summer with his aunt miss rachel and would be spending every summer and make home from now on his family was from macomb county originally his mother worked for a photographer and meridian had entered his picture in a beautiful child contest and won five dollars she gave the money to dill who went to the picture show 20 times on it don't have any picture shows here except jesus ones in the courthouse sometimes said jim ever see anything good dill had seen dracula a revelation that moved jim to eye him with the beginning of respect tell it to us he said dill was a curiosity he wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt his hair was snow white and stuck to his head like duck fluff he was a year my senior but i towered over him as he told us the old tale his blue eyes would lighten and darken his laugh was sudden and happy he habitually pulled at the colic at the center of his forehead when dill reduced dracula to dust and jim said the show sounded better than the book i asked dill where his father was you ain't said anything about him haven't got one is he dead no then if he's not dead you've got one haven't you still blushed and jim told me to hush a sure sign that dill had been studied and found acceptable thereafter the summer passed in routine contentment routine contentment was improving our tree house that rested between the giant twin chinaberry trees in the backyard fussing running through our list of dramas based on the works of oliver optic victor appleton and edgar rice burroughs in this matter we were lucky to have dill he played the character parts for merely thrust upon me the ape and tarzan the mr crabtree and the rover boys mr damon and tom swift thus we came to know dill as a pocket merlin whose head teamed with the eccentric plans strange longings and quaint fancies but by the end of august our repertoire was vapid from countless reproductions and it was then that dill gave us the idea of making boo radley come out the radley place fascinated dill in spite of our warnings and explanations it drew him as moon draws water but drew him no nearer than the light pole on the corner a safe distance from the radley gate there he would stand his arm around the fat pole staring and wandering the radley place jutted into a sharp curve behind our house walking south one faced its porch the sidewalk turned and ran beside the lot 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 rain rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda oak trees kept the sun away 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 inside the house lived a benevolent phantom people said he existed but jim and i had never seen him people said he went out at night when the moon was down and peeped in windows when people's azaleas froze in a cold snap it was because he had breathed on them any stealthy small crimes committed in maycombe county were his work 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 addy who eventually drowned himself in baker's eddy people still looked at the radley place unwilling to discard their initial suspicions a negro would not pass the radley place at night he would cut across the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked the make home school grounds and joined the back of the radley lot from the radley chicken yard tall pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard but the nuts lay untouched by the children radley pecans would kill you a baseball hit into a radley yard was a lost ball and no questions asked the misery of that house began many years before jim and i were born the radleys welcome anywhere in town kept to themselves a pretty liction unforgivable in maycomb they did not go to church make homes principal recreation but worshipped at home mrs radley seldom if ever cross the street for a mid-morning coffee mrs radley seldom oh i already said that with her neighbors and certainly never joined a missionary circle mr radley walked to town at 11 30 every morning and came back promptly at 12 sometimes carrying a brown paper bag that the neighborhood assumed contained the family groceries i never knew how old mr radley made his living jim said he bought cotton a polite term for doing nothing but mr radley 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 make homes ways closed doors meant illness and cold weather only of all days sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting ladies wear corsets men wore coats children wore shoes but to climb the radley front steps and call hey of a sunday afternoon was something their neighbors 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 the neighborhood legend when the younger bradley boy was in his teens he became acquainted with some of the cunninghams from old sarah an enormous and confusing tribe docimiled in the northern part of the county and they formed the nearest thing to a gang ever seen in make home 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 county's riverside gambling hall the do drop in and fishing camp they experimented with stump hole whiskey 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 fliver resisted arrest by make home's ancient beetle mr connor and locked him in the courthouse outhouse the town decided something had to be done mr connor 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 the charges of disorderly conduct disturbing the peace assault and battery and using abusive and profane language in front of in the presence and hearing of a female the judge asked mr connor why he included the last charge mr connor 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 radley thought it was if the judge released arthur mr radley 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 15 years but there came a day barely within jim's memory when boo radley was heard from and seen by several people but not by jim he said atticus never talked much about the radleys when jim would question him atticus's only answer was for him to mind his own business and let the radley's mind theirs they had a right to do but when it happened jim said atticus shook his head and said so jim received the most of his information from his stephanie crawford a neighbor's gold who said she knew the whole thing according to miss stephanie boo was sitting in the living room cutting up some items from the maycon tribune to paste in his scrapbook his father entered the room as mr radley passed by boo drove the scissors into his parents leg pulled them out wiped them on his pants and resumed 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 tribune he was 33 years old then ms stephanie said mr 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 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 negros so boo was locked in the courthouse basement boo's transition from the basement to back home was nebulous in jim's memory ms stephanie crawford said some of the town council told mr radley that if he didn't take boo back boo would die of mold from the damp besides buu could not live forever on the bounty of the county no one knew what form of intimidation mr radley employed to keep buu out of sight but jim figured that mr radley kept him chained to the bed most of the time atticus said no but it wasn't that sort of thing that there were other ways of making people into ghosts my memory came alive to see mrs radley occasionally open the front door walk to the edge of the porch and pour some water on her canis but every day jim and i would see mr radley walking to and from town he was a thin leathery man with colorless eyes so colorless they did not reflect light his cheekbones were sharp and his mouth was wide with a thin upper lip and a full lower lip miss stephanie crawford said he was so upright he took the word of god as his only law and we believed her because mr radley's posture was ram rod straight he never spoke to us when he passed us we would look at the ground and say good morning sir and he would cough and reply 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 from the day mr radley took arthur home people said the house died but there came a day when atticus told us he'd wear us out if we made any noise in the yard and commissioned calpernia to serve in his absence if she heard a sound out of us mr radley was dying he took his time about it wooden saw horses blocked the road at each end of the radley lot straw was put down on the sidewalk traffic was diverted to the back street dr reynolds parked his car in front of our house and walked over to the radley's every time he called jim and i crept around the yard for days at last the saw horses were taken away and we stood watching from the front porch when mr radley made his final journey past our house there goes the meanest man god ever blew breath into murmured calpurnia and she spat meditatively into the art we looked at her in surprise for calpurnia rarely commented on the ways of white people the neighborhood thought when mr radley went under boo would come out but it had another thing coming boo's elder brother returned from pensacola and took mr radley's place the only difference between him and his father was their ages jim said mr nathan radley bought cotton two mr nathan would speak to us however when we said good morning and sometimes we saw him coming from town with a magazine in his hand the more we told dill about the radleys the more he wanted to know the longer he would stand hugging the light pole on the corner the more he would wonder wonder what he does in there he would murmur looks just like he'd stick his head out the door jim said he goes out all right when it's pitch dark miss stephanie crawford said he woke up in the middle of the night one slime and saw him looking straight through the window at her sad his head was like a skull looking at her ain't she ever waked up at night heard him dill he walks like this jim slid his feet through the gravel why do you think miss rachel locks up so tight at night i've seen his tracks in our backyard many a morning and one night i heard them scratching on the back screen but he was gone time atticus got there wonder what he looks like said dill jim 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 there was a long jagged scar that ran across his face what teeth he had were yellow and rotten his eyes popped and he drooled most of the time let's try to make him come out said dill i'd like to see what he looks like jim said if dill wanted to get himself killed all he had to do was go up and knock on the front porch our first raid came to pass only because dilbet jim the grey ghost against two tom swifts that jim wouldn't get any further than the radley gate in all his life jim had never declined to dare jim thought about it for three days i suppose he loved honor more than his head for dill wore him down easily you're scared still said the first day ain't scared just respectful jim said the next day dill said you're too scared to even put your big toe in the front yard jim said he reckoned he wasn't he'd passed the radley place every school day of his life always running i said but dill got him on the third day when he told jim that folks in meridian certainly weren't as afraid as the folks in maycomb and that he'd never seen such scary folks as the one to make home this was enough to make jim march to the corner where he stopped and leaned against the light pole watching the gate hanging crazily on its homemade hinge i hope you got it through your head that he'll kill us each and every one dill harris said jim when we joined him don't blame me when he gouges your eyes out you started it remember you're still scared murmured dill patiently jim wanted dill to know once and for all that he wasn't scared of anything it's just that i can't think of any way to make him come out without getting us besides jim had his head a little had his little sister to think of when he said that i knew he was afraid jim 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 had become of you he asked then he jumped and landed unhurt and his sense of responsibility left him until confronted by the radley place you gonna run out on a dare ask still if you are then dill you have to think about these things jim said let me think a minute it's sort of like making a turtle come out how's that ask still strike a match under him i told jim if he set fire to the radley house i was going to tell atticus on him dill said striking a match under a turtle was hateful ain't hateful just persuades him it's not like you'd chuck him in the fire jim crowd how do you know a match don't hurt him turtles can't feel stupid said jim were you ever a turtle huh my star still now let me think reckon we can rock him jim stood and thought so long that dill made a mild concession i won't say you ran out on a dare and i'll swap you the grey ghost if you just go up and touch the house jim brightened touch the house that's all dill nodded sure that's all now i don't want you hollering something different the minute i get back yeah that's all said dill he'll probably come out after you when he sees you in the yard and then scout me will jump on him and hold him down until we can tell him we ain't gonna hurt him we left the corner crossed the side street that ran in front of the radley house and stopped at the gate well go on said dill scouting me is right behind you i'm going said jim don't hurry me we walked to the corner of the lot then back again studying the simple terrain as if deciding how to best to affect an entry frowning and scratching his head then i sneered at him jim threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house slapped it with his palm and ran back past us not wanting waiting to see if his foray was successful dill and i followed on his heels safely on our porch panting and out of breath we looked back the old house was the same droopy and sick but as we stared down the street we thought we saw an inside shutter move flick a tiny almost visible movement and the house was still