To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee (CHAPTER 4–PART 1)

Chapter 4

The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed,
they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of
construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its
well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics. What Jem called
the Dewey Decimal System was school-wide by the end of my first year, so I had
no chance to compare it with other teaching techniques. I could only look around
me: Atticus and my uncle, who went to school at home, knew everything—at
least, what one didn’t know the other did. Furthermore, I couldn’t help noticing
that my father had served for years in the state legislature, elected each time
without opposition, innocent of the adjustments my teachers thought essential to
the development of Good Citizenship. Jem, educated on a half-Decimal halfDuncecap basis, seemed to function effectively alone or in a group, but Jem was a
poor example: no tutorial system devised by man could have stopped him from
getting at books. As for me, I knew nothing except what I gathered from Time
magazine and reading everything I could lay hands on at home, but as I inched
sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not
help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of
what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom
was exactly what the state had in mind for me.
As the year passed, released from school thirty minutes before Jem, who had to
stay until three o’clock, I ran by the Radley Place as fast as I could, not stopping
until I reached the safety of our front porch. One afternoon as I raced by,
something caught my eye and caught it in such a way that I took a deep breath, a
long look around, and went back.
Two live oaks stood at the edge of the Radley lot; their roots reached out into the
side-road and made it bumpy. Something about one of the trees attracted my
attention.
Some tinfoil was sticking in a knot-hole just above my eye level, winking at me in
the afternoon sun. I stood on tiptoe, hastily looked around once more, reached
into the hole, and withdrew two pieces of chewing gum minus their outer
wrappers.My first impulse was to get it into my mouth as quickly as possible, but I
remembered where I was. I ran home, and on our front porch I examined my loot.
The gum looked fresh. I sniffed it and it smelled all right. I licked it and waited
for a while. When I did not die I crammed it into my mouth: Wrigley’s DoubleMint.
When Jem came home he asked me where I got such a wad. I told him I found it.
“Don’t eat things you find, Scout.”
“This wasn’t on the ground, it was in a tree.”
Jem growled.
“Well it was,” I said. “It was sticking in that tree yonder, the one comin‘ from
school.”
“Spit it out right now!”
I spat it out. The tang was fading, anyway. “I’ve been chewin‘ it all afternoon and
I ain’t dead yet, not even sick.”
Jem stamped his foot. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to even touch the
trees over there? You’ll get killed if you do!”
“You touched the house once!”
“That was different! You go gargle—right now, you hear me?”
“Ain’t neither, it’ll take the taste outa my mouth.”
“You don’t ‘n’ I’ll tell Calpurnia on you!”
Rather than risk a tangle with Calpurnia, I did as Jem told me. For some reason,
my first year of school had wrought a great change in our relationship:
Calpurnia’s tyranny, unfairness, and meddling in my business had faded to gentle
grumblings of general disapproval. On my part, I went to much trouble,
sometimes, not to provoke her.
Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our
best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep
in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a
parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.
The authorities released us early the last day of school, and Jem and I walked home together. “Reckon old Dill’ll be coming home tomorrow,” I said.
“Probably day after,” said Jem. “Mis’sippi turns ‘em loose a day later.”
As we came to the live oaks at the Radley Place I raised my finger to point for the
hundredth time to the knot-hole where I had found the chewing gum, trying to
make Jem believe I had found it there, and found myself pointing at another piece
of tinfoil.
“I see it, Scout! I see it-”
Jem looked around, reached up, and gingerly pocketed a tiny shiny package. We
ran home, and on the front porch we looked at a small box patchworked with bits
of tinfoil collected from chewing-gum wrappers. It was the kind of box wedding
rings came in, purple velvet with a minute catch. Jem flicked open the tiny catch.
Inside were two scrubbed and polished pennies, one on top of the other. Jem
examined them.
“Indian-heads,” he said. “Nineteen-six and Scout, one of em’s nineteen-hundred.
These are real old.”
“Nineteen-hundred,” I echoed. “Say-”
“Hush a minute, I’m thinkin‘.”
“Jem, you reckon that’s somebody’s hidin‘ place?”
“Naw, don’t anybody much but us pass by there, unless it’s some grown
person’s-”
“Grown folks don’t have hidin‘ places. You reckon we ought to keep ’em, Jem?”
“I don’t know what we could do, Scout. Who’d we give ‘em back to? I know for a
fact don’t anybody go by there—Cecil goes by the back street an’ all the way
around by town to get home.”
Cecil Jacobs, who lived at the far end of our street next door to the post office,
walked a total of one mile per school day to avoid the Radley Place and old Mrs.
Henry Lafayette Dubose. Mrs. Dubose lived two doors up the street from us;
neighborhood opinion was unanimous that Mrs. Dubose was the meanest old
woman who ever lived. Jem wouldn’t go by her place without Atticus beside him.
“What you reckon we oughta do, Jem?”Finders were keepers unless title was proven. Plucking an occasional camellia,
getting a squirt of hot milk from Miss Maudie Atkinson’s cow on a summer day,
helping ourselves to someone’s scuppernongs was part of our ethical culture, but
money was different.
“Tell you what,” said Jem. “We’ll keep ‘em till school starts, then go around and
ask everybody if they’re theirs. They’re some bus child’s, maybe—he was too
taken up with gettin’ outa school today an‘ forgot ’em. These are somebody’s, I
know that. See how they’ve been slicked up? They’ve been saved.”
“Yeah, but why should somebody wanta put away chewing gum like that? You
know it doesn’t last.”
“I don’t know, Scout. But these are important to somebody…”
“How’s that, Jem…?”
“Well, Indian-heads—well, they come from the Indians. They’re real strong
magic, they make you have good luck. Not like fried chicken when you’re not
lookin‘ for it, but things like long life ’n‘ good health, ’n‘ passin’ six-weeks
tests… these are real valuable to somebody. I’m gonna put em in my trunk.”
Before Jem went to his room, he looked for a long time at the Radley Place. He
seemed to be thinking again.
Two days later Dill arrived in a blaze of glory: he had ridden the train by himself
from Meridian to Maycomb Junction (a courtesy title—Maycomb Junction was in
Abbott County) where he had been met by Miss Rachel in Maycomb’s one taxi;
he had eaten dinner in the diner, he had seen two twins hitched together get off
the train in Bay St. Louis and stuck to his story regardless of threats. He had
discarded the abominable blue shorts that were buttoned to his shirts and wore
real short pants with a belt; he was somewhat heavier, no taller, and said he had
seen his father. Dill’s father was taller than ours, he had a black beard (pointed),
and was president of the L & N Railroad.
“I helped the engineer for a while,” said Dill, yawning.
“In a pig’s ear you did, Dill. Hush,” said Jem. “What’ll we play today?”
“Tom and Sam and Dick,” said Dill. “Let’s go in the front yard.” Dill wanted the
Rover Boys because there were three respectable parts. He was clearly tired of being our character man.