To Kill a Mockingbird Chapter 15 17 Read Aloud

ISBN: - 9780062368683

  harper lee

TO Kill A

MOCKINGBIRD

Contents

Dedication

Epigraph

Role Ane

Chapter one

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter eleven

Part Two

Chapter 12

Affiliate 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter sixteen

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Affiliate xx

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Affiliate 24

Chapter 25

Affiliate 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Copyright

Well-nigh the Publisher

Dedication

for Mr. Lee and Alice

in consideration of Love & Amore

Epigraph

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.

--Charles Lamb

Part One

1

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem'due south fears of never being able to play football game were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his correct; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at correct angles to his torso, 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, nosotros sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, merely Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summertime Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.

I said if he wanted to take a wide view of the thing, information technology really began with Andrew Jackson. 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? We were far besides old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus. Our father said nosotros were both right.

Existence Southerners, information technology was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Boxing of Hastings. All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded simply by his stinginess. In England, Simon was irritated past the persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more than liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his mode across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up the Saint Stephens. Mindful of John Wesley's strictures on the apply of many words in buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit he was unhappy lest he exist tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory of God, every bit the putting on of gold and costly apparel. And so Simon, having forgotten his teacher's dictum on the possession of human chattels, bought three slaves and with their help established a homestead on the banks of the Alabama River some forty miles above Saint Stephens. He returned to Saint Stephens merely once, to notice a wife, and with her established a line that ran high to daughters. Simon lived to an impressive historic period and died rich.

It was customary for the men in the family unit to remain on Simon's homestead, Finch'due south Landing, and brand 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 past river-boats from Mobile.

Simon would take regarded with impotent fury the disturbance betwixt the N 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 written report medicine. Their sis Alexandra was the Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock past the river wondering if his trot-lines were full.

When my male parent was admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb and began his practise. Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch's Landing, was the canton seat of Maycomb County. Atticus's part in the courthouse independent picayune more than than a chapeau rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama. His first two clients were the last ii persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail. Atticus had urged them to accept the country'due south generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb Canton a proper noun synonymous with jackass. The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb'due south leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of 3 witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bowwow-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody. They persisted in pleading Non Guilty to first-degree murder, and so in that location was nothing much Atticus could do for his clients except be present at their departure, an occasion that was probably the commencement of my male parent's profound distaste for the practice of criminal law.

During his outset five years in Maycomb, Atticus skillful economy more anything; for several years thereafter he invested his earnings in his brother'south education. John Hale Finch was 10 years younger than my father, and chose to study medicine at a time when cotton fiber was not worth growing; but afterwards getting Uncle Jack started, Atticus derived a reasonable income from the police force. He liked Maycomb, he was Maycomb Canton built-in and bred; he knew his people, they knew him, and because of Simon Finch'due south industry, Atticus was related past blood or marriage to nearly every family in the town.

Maycomb 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 so: a blackness domestic 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 apex, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

People moved slowly then. They ambled across the foursquare, shuffled in and out of the stores effectually it, took their time most everything. A twenty-four hour period was mean solar day long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to purchase it with, nothing to run across outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. Simply it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had zilch to fear but fear itself.

We lived on the main residential street in town--Atticus, Jem and I, plus Calpurnia our cook. Jem and I plant our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated u.s. with courteous disengagement.

Calpurnia was something else again. She was all angles and bones; she was nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was broad as a bed slat and twice as hard. She was always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn't conduct besides as Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn't ready to come. Our battles were ballsy and one-sided. Calpurnia ever won, mainly considering Atticus e'er took her side. She had been with us ever since Jem was born, and I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.

Our mother died when I was 2, then I never felt her

absence. She was a Graham from Montgomery; Atticus met her when he was kickoff elected to the state legislature. He was middle-aged and then, she was fifteen years his junior. Jem was the product of their start year of union; four years later I was born, and ii years later our mother died from a sudden center attack. They said it ran in her family. I did not miss her, but I think Jem did. He remembered her clearly, and sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then get off and play by himself behind the car-firm. When he was like that, I knew better than to carp him.

When I was almost six and Jem was nigh 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. Nosotros were never tempted to interruption them. The Radley Identify was inhabited past an unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us acquit for days on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain hell.

That was the summer Dill came to us.

Early on i morning equally we were beginning our day'south play in the back yard, Jem and I heard something side by side door in Miss Rachel Haverford's collard patch. We went to the wire argue to see if in that location was a puppy--Miss Rachel's rat terrier was expecting--instead nosotros plant 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 Jem pleasantly.

"I'm Charles Baker Harris," he said. "I can read."

"So what?" I said.

"I just idea you'd like to know I tin read. Yous got annihilation needs readin' I tin exercise it. . . ."

"How old are you," asked Jem, "four-and-a-half?"

"Goin' on seven."

"Shoot no wonder, and then," said Jem, jerking his pollex at me. "Lookout yonder's been readin' ever since she was born, and she ain't even started to school withal. You look correct puny for goin' on vii."

"I'm little only I'm one-time," he said.

Jem brushed his pilus back to get a improve await. "Why don't you lot come over, Charles Bakery Harris?" he said. "Lord, what a name."

" 's non any funnier'n yours. Aunt Rachel says your name'due south Jeremy Atticus Finch."

Jem scowled. "I'm big enough to fit mine," he said. "Your proper name's longer'n you are. Bet information technology's a human foot longer."

"Folks call me Dill," said Dill, struggling under the contend.

"Practise better if you become over it instead of under it," I said. "Where'd y'all come up from?"

Dill was from Meridian, Mississippi, was spending the summer with his aunt, Miss Rachel, and would be spending every summertime in Maycomb from now on. His family was from Maycomb County originally, his mother worked for a photographer in Height, had entered his moving picture in a Beautiful Child contest and won five dollars. She gave the money to Dill, who went to the picture testify 20 times on it.

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

Dill had seen Dracula, a revelation that moved Jem to center him with the starting time of respect. "Tell it to us," he said.

Dill was a marvel. He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair was snowfall white and stuck to his head similar duck-fluff; he was a year my senior but I towered over him. As he told us the old tale his bluish optics would lighten and darken; his laugh was sudden and happy; he habitually pulled at a cowlick in the center of his forehead.

When Dill reduced Dracula to grit, and Jem said the show sounded meliorate than the book, I asked Dill where his father was: "You ain't said annihilation well-nigh him."

"I haven't got one."

"Is he expressionless?"

"No . . ."

"Then if he's not dead you've got one, haven't y'all?"

Dill blushed and Jem 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 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. In this thing nosotros were lucky to have Dill. He played the character parts formerly thrust upon me--the ape in Tarzan, Mr. Crabtree in The Rover Boys, Mr. Damon in Tom Swift. Thus nosotros came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, foreign longings, and quaint fancies.

But by the end of August our repertoire was vapid from countless reproductions, and it was so that Dill gave the states the idea of making Boo Radley come out.

The Radley Identify fascinated Dill. In spite of our warnings and explanations it drew him as the moon draws h2o, but drew him no nearer than the low-cal-pole on the corner, a safe altitude from the Radley gate. There he would stand, his arm around the fat pole, staring and wondering.

The Radley Place jutted into a precipitous curve beyond our house. Walking s, one faced its porch; the sidewalk turned and ran abreast the lot. The house was low, was once white with a deep front porch and greenish shutters, just had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-gray one thousand around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sunday away. The remains of a spotter drunkenly guarded the forepart yard--a "swept" thousand that was never swept--where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in affluence.

Within the house lived a malevolent phantom. People said he existed, but Jem and I had never seen him. People said he went out at dark 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. Whatsoever stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work. Once the town was terrorized past a series of morbid nocturnal events: people'southward 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. A Negro would not pass the Radley Place at night, he would cutting across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked. The Maycomb school grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chickenyard tall pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, only the nuts lay untouched by the children: Radley pecans would kill you. A baseball game hit into the Radley thousand was a lost ball and no questions asked.

The misery of that house began many years before Jem and I were built-in. The Radleys, welcome anywhere in boondocks, kept to themselves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb. They did not go to church building, Maycomb's chief recreation, but worshiped at domicile; Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street for a mid-morning coffee intermission with her neighbors, and certainly never joined a missionary circumvolve. Mr. Radley walked to town at 11-thirty every morning time and came back promptly at twelve, sometimes carrying a dark-brown paper bag that the neighborhood assumed independent the family groceries. I never knew how erstwhile Mr. Radley fabricated his living--Jem said he "bought cotton," a polite term for doing cypher--only Mr. Radley and his wife had lived there with their ii sons as long equally anybody could recollect.

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, "He-y," of a Lord's day afternoon was something their neighbors never did. The Radley house had no screen doors. I once asked Atticus if information technology ever had whatsoever; Atticus said yep, merely before I was born.

According to neighborhood legend, when the younger Radley boy was in his teens he became acquainted with some of the Cunninghams from Old Sarum, an enormous and confusing tribe domiciled in the northern office of the county, and they formed the nearest thing to a gang always seen in Maycomb. They did little, but enough to be discussed by the boondocks and publicly warned from 3 pulpits: they hung around the barbershop; they rode the coach to Abbottsville on Sundays and went to the picture bear witness; they attended dances at the county's riverside gambling hall, the Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing Camp; they experimented with stumphole whiskey. Nobody in Maycomb had nervus enough to tell Mr. Radley tha

t his boy was in with the wrong oversupply.

Ane night, in an excessive spurt of high spirits, the boys backed around the foursquare in a borrowed flivver, resisted arrest past Maycomb's ancient beadle, Mr. Conner, and locked him in the courthouse outhouse. The town decided something had to exist washed; 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 linguistic communication in the presence and hearing of a female. The guess 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 transport 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 house and it was no disgrace. Mr. Radley thought it was. If the judge released Arthur, Mr. Radley would see to information technology that Arthur gave no further trouble. Knowing that Mr. Radley's discussion was his bond, the guess 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 somewhen worked his manner through engineering school at Auburn. The doors of the Radley firm 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 Radley was heard from and was seen by several people, but not by Jem. He said Atticus never talked much well-nigh the Radleys: when Jem would question him Atticus's merely answer was for him to mind his own business and permit 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 neighborhood scold, who said she knew the whole thing. According to Miss Stephanie, Boo was sitting in the livingroom cutting some items from The Maycomb Tribune to paste in his scrapbook. His begetter entered the room. As Mr. Radley passed past, Boo drove the pair of 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 livingroom, cut up the Tribune. He was 30-iii years old then.

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