Transcription
Chapter 8.
For reasons unfathomable to the most experienced prophets in Macon County, Autumn turned to Winter that year. We had two weeks of the coldest weather since 1885. Atticus said Mr. Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes, and made war on each other, the seasons were changed. Gemini were burdened with the guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our neighbors and discomfort to ourselves.
Old Mrs. Radley died that winter, but her death caused hardly a ripple. The neighborhood seldom saw her except when she watered her cannas. Gemini decided that Boo had got her at last, but when Atticus returned from the Radley house, he said she died of natural causes, to our disappointment.
"Jim," I whispered, "you asked me."
Atticus said, "Did you see Mr. Arthur?"
Atticus looked sternly around his newspaper at me. "I did not."
Jim restrained me from further questions, he said. Atticus was still touchy about us and the Radleys, and it wouldn't do us to push him any. Jim had a notion that Atticus thought her activities that last, that night last summer, were not solely confined to strip poker. Jim had no firm basis for his idea, he said. It was merely a twitch.
Next morning, I awoke, looked out the window, and nearly died of fright. My screams brought Atticus from the bath, his bathroom a half-shaven. "The world's ending, Atticus! Please do something!" I dragged him to the window and pointed.
"No, it's not," he said. "It's snowing."
Jim asked Atticus, "Would it keep up?" Gemma never seen snow either, but he knew what it was. Atticus said he didn't know any more about snow than Gem did. "I think, though, if it's watery like that, it'll turn to rain." The telephone rang, and Atticus left the breakfast table to answer it. "That was Eula May," he said when he returned. "I quote: 'As it has not snowed in Macomb County since 1885, there will be no school today.'" Eula May was Macomb's leading telephone operator. She was entrusted with issuing public announcements, wedding invitations, setting off the fire siren, and giving first aid instructions when Dr. Reynolds was away.
When Atticus finally called us to order and bade us to look at our plates instead of the windows, Jem asked, "How do you make a snowman?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," said Atticus, "and I don't want you all to be disappointed, but I doubt if there'll be enough snow for a snowball, even."
Calpurnia came in and said she thought it was sticking. When we ran to the backyard, I was covered with a feeble layer of soggy snow. "We shouldn't walk about and it's," Jim said. "Look, every step you take is wasting it." I looked back at my mushy footprints. Jem said, "If we waited until it snowed some more, we could scrape it all up for a snowman."
I stuck out my tongue and caught a fat flake. "It burns, Jim!"
"It's hot!"
"No, it ain't. It's so cold it burns."
"Now, don't eat it, Scout. You're wasting it. Let it come down."
"But I want to walk in it!"
"I know. We can go walk over at Miss Maudie's." Jim hopped across the front yard. I followed in his tracks. When we were on the sidewalk in front of Miss Maudie's, Mr. Avery accosted us. He had a pink face and a big stomach below his belt. "You see what you've done?" he said. "Hadn't snow to make them since Appomattox. It's bad children like you makes the seasons change." I wondered if Mr. Avery knew how hopefully we had watched it, watched last summer for him to repeat his performance, and reflected that if this was our reward, there was something to say for sin. I did not wonder where Mr. Avery gathered his meteorological statistics; they came straight from the Rosetta Stone.
"Jem Finch, you Jem Finch!" Miss Maudie's calling you. "Jim! You all stay in the middle of the yard. There's some thrift buried under the snowport snow near the porch. Don't step on it."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Call Jim. It's beautiful, ain't it, Miss Maudie?"
"Beautiful, my hind foot! If it freezes tonight, it'll carry off all my azaleas." Miss Maudie's old son had glistened with snow crystals. She was bending over some small bushes, wrapping them in burlap bags.
"Jem, master, what she doing that for?"
"Keep them warm," she said.
"How can flowers keep warm? They don't circulate."
"I cannot answer that question, Jim Finch. All I know is if it freezes tonight, these plants will freeze. So you cover them up. Is that clear?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And Miss Maudie, what, sir, could Scout and me borrow some of your snow?"
"Heaven's alive, take it all! There's an old peach basket under the house. Haul it off in that." Miss Maudie's eyes narrowed. "Jim Finch, what are you gonna do with my snow?"
"You'll see," said Jim. And we transferred as much snow as we could from Miss Maudie's yard to ours, a slushy operation.
"What are we gonna do, Jim?" I asked.
"You'll see," he said. "Now get the basket and haul all the snow you can rake up from the backyard to the front walk. Back in your tracks, though," he cautioned. "We can have a snow baby."
"Jim, no, a real snowman. Gotta work hard now." Jim ran to the backyard, produced the garden hoe, and began digging quickly behind the woodpile, placing any worms he found to one side. He went in the house, returned with the laundry hamper, filled it with Earth, and carried it to the front yard. When we had five baskets of Earth and two baskets of snow, Jem said we were ready to begin.
"Don't you think this looks, this is kind of a mess?" I asked.
"Looks messy now, but it won't later," he said. Jem scooped up an armful of dirt, patted it into a mound, in which he added on which he added another load and another until he had constructed a torso.
"Jim, I ain't never heard of a snowman," I said.
"He won't be black long," he grunted. Jem procured some peach tree switches from the backyard, plaited them, and bent into bones to be covered with dirt. "He looks like Miss Stephanie Crawford with her hands on her hips," I said. "Fat in the middle and little bitty arms."
"I'll make them bigger." Jem sloshed water over the mud man and added more dirt. He looked thoughtfully at it for a moment, and then he molded a big stomach below the figure's waistline. Jem glanced at me, his eyes twinkling. "Mr. Avery sort of shaped like a snowman, ain't he?" Jem scooped up some snow and began plastering it on. He permitted me to cover only the back, saving the public parts for himself. Gradually, Mr. Avery turned white, using bits of wood for eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons. Jim succeeded in making Mr. Avery cross. A stick of stove wood completed the picture.
"Jim, it's lovely," I said. "Looks almost like he'd talk to you."
"It is, ain't it?" he said. "Shall we?" We could not wait for Atticus to come home for dinner, but called and said we had a big surprise for him. He seemed surprised when he saw most of the backyard and the front yard, but he said we had done a Jim-dandy dog job. "I don't know how you were gonna do it," he said to Jim, "but from now on, I'll never worry about what will become of you, son. You'll always have an idea." Gem's ears reddened from Atticus's compliment, but he looked up sharply when he saw Atticus stepping back. Atticus squinted at the snowman a while, he grinned, and then laughed. "Son, I can't tell what you're going to be—an engineer, a lawyer, or a portrait painter. You've perpetuated a near-level here in the front yard. We gotta disguise this fella." Atticus suggested that Jem honed down his creation's fronts a little, swap a broom for the stove wood, and put an apron on him. Jem explained that if he did, the snowman would become muddy and cease to be a snowman.
"Well, I don't care what you do, so long as you do something," said Atticus. "You can't go around making caricatures of the neighbors."
"Ain't he a character?"
"It looks just like him," said Jim.
"Mr. Avery?"
"I might not think so."
"I know what," said Jim. He raced across the street, disappeared into Miss Maudie's backyard, and returned triumphant. He stuck her son's head on the snowman's head and jammed her hedge clippers into the crook of his arms. Atticus said that would be fine. "I messed up character."
"Sorry." Miss Maudie opens her front door and came out on the porch. She looked across the street at us. Suddenly, she grinned. "Jim Finch!" she called. "You devil, bring me back my hat, sir!" Jim looked up at Atticus, who shook his head. "She's just fuss," he said. "She's really impressed with your um accomplishments." Atticus strolled over to Miss Maudie's sidewalk, where they engaged in an arm-waving conversation. The only phrase of which I caught was, "A wreck, an absolute, absolute morphodite in that yard, Atticus. You'll never raise them."
The snow stopped in the afternoon. The temperature dropped, and by nightfall, Mr. Avery's direst predictions came true. Calpurnia kept every fireplace in the house blazing, but we were cold. When Atticus came home that evening, he said we were in for it and asked Calpurnia if she wanted to stay with us for the night. Calpurnia glanced up at the high ceilings and long windows and said she thought she'd be warmer at her house. Atticus drove her home in the car. Before I went to sleep, Atticus put more coal on the fire in my room. He said the thermometer registered 16, that it was the coldest night in his memory, and that our snowman outside was frozen solid.
Minutes later, it seemed, I was awakened by someone shaking me. Atticus's overcoat was spread across me. "Is it morning already, baby? Get up." Atticus was holding out my bathrobe and coat. "Put your robe on first." Gem was standing beside Atticus, groggy and tousled. He was holding his overcoat closed at the neck, his other hand jammed into his pocket. He looked strangely overweight. "Hurry, hon," said Atticus. "Hear his shoes and socks." Stupidly, I put them on. "Is it morning?"
"No, it's a little after one. Hurry now." That something was wrong finally got through to me. "Wait, what's the matter?" By then, he didn't have to tell me. Just as the birds know where to go when it rains, I knew when there was trouble in our street. Soft taffeta sounds, like it's taffeta-like sounds, muffled scurrying sounds filled me with helpless dread.
"Whose is it?"
"Miss Maudie's son," said Atticus gently. At the front door, we saw fire spewing from Miss Maudie's dining room windows. As if to confirm what we saw, the town fire siren wailed up the scale to a treble pitch and remained there, screaming.
"Is gone, ain't it?"
"I expect so," said Atticus. "Now listen, both of you. Go down and stand in front of the Radley place. Keep out of the way. Do you hear?"
"See which way the wind's blowing?"
"Oh, son, Atticus!"
"We reckon we ought to start moving the furniture out."
"Not yet, son. Do as I tell you. Run now. Take care of Scout, you hear, and don't let her out of your set." With a push, Atticus started us toward the Radley front gate. We stood watching the street fill with men and cars while fire silently devoured Miss Maudie's house.
"Why don't they hurry? Why don't they hurry, Mudder?"
"Jim," we saw why the old fire truck, killed by the cold, was being pushed from town by a crowd of men. When the men attached its hose to the hydrant, the hose burst, and the water shot up, tinkling down on the pavement.
"Oh, Lord!"
"Jim! Jim put his arm around me. Hush, Scout," he said. "It ain't time to worry yet. I'll let you know when." The men, in all degrees of dress and undress, took furniture from Miss Maudie's house to a yard across the street. I saw Atticus carrying Miss Maudie's heavy oak rocking chair and thought, it's sensible of him to save what she valued most. Sometimes we heard shouts that Mr. Avery's face appeared in an upstairs window. He pushed a mattress out the window into the street and threw down furniture until men shouted, "Come down from there, Dick! The stairs are going! Get out of there, Mr. Avery!"
"Mr. Avery! Mr. Avery began climbing through the window."
"Scout, he's stuck!"
"Breathe, Jim!"
"Oh, God!" Mr. Avery was wedged tightly. I buried my head under Jim's arm and didn't look again until Jem cried, "He's got a little, Scout. He's all right." I looked up to see Mr. Avery cross the upstairs porch. He swung his legs over the railing and was sliding down a pillar when he slipped. He fell, yelled, and hit Miss Maudie's shrubbery. Suddenly, I noticed that the men were backing away from Miss Maudie's house, moving down the street toward us. They were no longer carrying furniture. The fire was well into the second floor and had eaten its way to the roof. Window frames were black against vivid orange.
"Jim, it looks like a pumpkin."
"Scout, look!" Smoke was rolling off our house and Miss Rachel's house like fog off a riverbank, and men were pulling hoses toward them. Behind us, the fire truck from Abbottsville screamed around the curve and stopped in front of our house.
"That book," I said.
"What?" said Jim. "That Tom Swift book?"
"It ain't mine. It's Dill's."
"Don't worry, Scout. It ain't time to worry yet," said Jim. He pointed. "Look at yonder." And a group of neighbors. Atticus was standing with his hands in his overcoat pockets. He might have been watching a football game. Miss Maudie was beside him. "See there? He's not worried yet," said Jim. "Why ain't he on top of one of those houses?"
"He's too old. He'd break his neck."
"You think we ought to make him get our stuff out?"
"Let's not. Let's don't pester him. He'll know when it's time," said Jim. The Abbottsville fire truck began pumping water on our house. A man on the roof pointed to places that needed it most. I watched our absolute morphodite go black and crumble. Miss Maudie's son had settled on top of the heap. I could not see her hedge clippers in the heat. Between our house, Miss Rachel's, and Miss Maudie's, the men had long ago shed coats and bathrobes. They worked in pajamas, tops, and nightshirts stuffed into their pants. But I became aware that I was slowly freezing where I stood. Gem tried to keep me warm, but his arm was not enough. I pulled free of it and clutched my shoulders. By dancing a little, I could feel my feet. Another fire truck appeared and stopped in front of Miss Stephanie Crawford's. There was no hydrant for another hose, and the men tried to soak her house with hand extinguishers. Miss Maudie's tin roof quelled the flames roaring. The house collapsed. Fire gushed everywhere, followed by a flurry of blankets from men on top of the adjacent houses, beating out sparks and burning chunks of wood. It was dawn before the men began to leave. First one by one, then in groups, they pushed the Macomb fire truck back to town. The Abbottsville truck departed, and the third one remained. We found out next day it had come from Clarks Ferry, 60 miles away.
Gemini slid across the street. Miss Maudie was staring at the smoking black hole in her yard, and Atticus shook his head to tell us she did not want to talk. He led us home, holding onto our shoulders to cross the icy street. "He said Miss Maudie would stay with Miss Stephanie for the time being."
"Anybody want some hot chocolate?" he asked. I shuddered when Atticus started a fire in the kitchen stove. As we drank our cocoa, I noticed Atticus looking at me, first with curiosity, and then with sternness. "I thought I told you and Jim to stay put," he said.
"What we did? We stayed."
"Then whose blanket is that?"
"Blanket?" Yes, ma'am, blanket. "It isn't ours." I looked down and found myself clutching a brown woolen blanket I was wearing around my shoulders. "Fashion, Atticus?"
"I don't know, sir." Uh, I turned to Jim for an answer, but Jim was even more bewildered than I. He said he didn't know how it got there. "We did exactly as Atticus had told us. We stood down by the Radley gate, away from everybody. We didn't move an inch."
Jim stopped. "Mr. Nathan was at the fire. He babbled a song. I saw him. He was talking."
"That mattress, Atticus, I swear that's all right, son." Atticus grinned slowly. "Looks like all of Macomb was out tonight in one way or another. Jim, there's some wrapping paper in the pantry. I think. Go get it."
"Well, Atticus knows, sir." Gem seemed to have lost his mind. He began pouring out our secrets right and left, in total disregard for my safety, if not for his own, omitting nothing, not whole pants and all. "Mr. Nathan put cement in that tree, Atticus, and he did it to stop us finding things. He's crazy, I reckon, like that."
"But, but Atticus, I swear to God, he ain't never harmed us. He never hurt us. He could have cut my throat from ear to ear that night, but he tried to mend my pants instead. He ain't never hurt us, Atticus."
Atticus said, "Whoa, whoa, son," so gently that I was greatly heartened. It was obvious that he had not followed a word Jim said. For all Atticus said was, "You're right. We better keep this in the blanket to ourselves. Someday, maybe Scout can thank him for covering her up."
"Think who?" I asked.
"Boo Radley. You were so busy looking at the fire, you didn't know it when he put the blanket around you." My stomach turned to water, and I nearly threw up. When Jem held out the blanket and crept toward me, he sneaked out of the house, turned around, sneaked up, and went like this. Atticus said, "Riley, now don't let this inspire you to do further glory, Jeremy." Gem scowled. "I ain't gonna do anything to him, but I watched the spark of fresh adventure leave his eyes."
"Just think, Scout," he said, "if you just turned around, you'd have seen him."
Calpurnia woke us at noon. Atticus said we had need not go to school that day. "We learned nothing after no sleep," Calpurnia said. For us to try and clean up the front yard. Miss Maudie's son hat was suspended in a thin layer of ice like a flying amber, and we had to dig under the dirt for her hedge clippers. We found her in her backyard, gazing at her frozen, charred azaleas.
"We're bringing back your things, Miss Maudie," said Jim. "We're awful sorry."
Miss Maudie looked around. In the shadow of her old Grand, a cross face. "Always wanted a smaller house, Jim Finch. Gives me more yard. Just think, I'll have more room for my azaleas now."
"You ain't grieving, Miss Maudie?" I asked, surprised.
"Atticus said her house was nearly all she had. Grieving, child? Well, I hated that old cow barn. Thought of setting fire to it a hundred times myself, except they locked me up. But don't you worry about me, Gene Louise Finch. There are ways of doing things you don't know about. Well, I'll build me a little house and take me a couple of rooms, and gracious, I'll have the finest yard in Alabama. Those billing grass will look like, look plain puny when I get started."
Gem and I looked at each other. "How to catch Miss Maudie?" he asked.
"I don't know, Jim. Probably the flu."
"In the kitchen? I kept a fire in there last night for my potted plants. I hear you had some unexpected company last night, Miss Jane Louise." You know, Atticus told me on his way to town this morning. "Tell you the truth, I'd like to been with you and that I had sense enough to turn around, too." Miss Maudie puzzled me. With most of her possessions gone and her beloved yard in shambles, she still took a lively and cordial interest in Gemini's affairs. She must have seen my perplexity. She said, "Only thing I worried about last night was all the danger and commotion it caused. This whole neighborhood could have gone up. Mr. Avery will be in bed for a week. He's right stove up. He's too old to do things like that, and I told him so. As soon as I can get my hands clean, and when Stephanie Crawford's not looking, I'll make him a lane cake. That's Stephanie's been after my recipe for 30 years, and if she thinks I'll give it to her just because I'm staying with her, she's got another thing coming." I reflected that if Miss Maudie broke down and gave it to her, Miss Stephanie couldn't follow it anyway. Miss Maudie had once let me see it. Among other things, the recipe called for one large cup of sugar.
It was still a still day. The air was so cold and clear, we heard the courthouse clock clank, rattle, and strain before it struck the hour. Miss Maudie's nose was the color I'd never seen before, and I inquired about it. "I've been out here since six o'clock," she said. "Should be frozen now." She held up her hands. A network of tiny lines crisscrossed her palms, brown with dirt and dried blood.
"You ruined them," said Jim. "Why don't you get a colored man?" There was no note of sacrifice in his voice when he added, "Or Scout and me. We can help you."
Miss Maudie said, "Thank you, sir, but you've got a job of your own over there," and she pointed to our yard.
"You mean the more for that?" I asked.
"Sure, we can rake him up in a jiffy." Miss Maudie's Marty stared down at me, her lips moving silently. Suddenly, she put her hands to her head and whooped. When we left her, she was still chuckling. Jim said he didn't know was the matter with her, and that was just Miss Maudie.