Transcription
And we're back with chapter seven and some new nails to look at while I'm reading to you. Gem stayed moody and silent for a week, as Atticus had once advised me to do. I tried to climb into Gem's skin and walk around in it. If I had gone alone to the Radley place at two in the morning, my funeral would have been held the next afternoon. So I left Jim alone and tried not to bother him.
School started. The second grade was as bad as the first, only worse. They still flashed cards at you and wouldn't let you read or write. Miss Caroline's progress next door could be estimated by the frequency of laughter. However, the usual crew had flunked the first grade again and were helpful in keeping order. The only thing good about the second grade was that this year I had to stay as late as Gem, and we usually walked home together at three o'clock.
One afternoon, when we were crossing the schoolyard toward home, Jem suddenly said, "There's something I didn't tell you." As this was his first complete sentence in several days, I encouraged him. "About what? About that night? You never told me anything about that night," I said. Gem waved my words away as fanning nets. He was silent for a while, then he said, "When I went back from the bridges, they were all in a tangle. When I was getting out of them, I couldn't get them loose."
When I went back, Jim took a deep breath. "When I went back, they were folded across the fence like they were expecting me. Across and something else." Jim's voice was flat. "I'll show you when we get home. But they'd been sewed up, not like a lady sewed them, like something I'd try to do, all crooked."
"It's almost like somebody knew you were coming back for them." Gem shuddered. "Like somebody was reading my mind, like somebody could tell what I was going to do. Can't anybody tell what I'm gonna do lest they know me? Can they?" Scout, Jem's question was an appeal. I reassured him. "Can anybody tell what you're gonna do unless they live in the house with you? And even I can't tell sometimes."
We were talking past our tree, and in its knothole rested a ball of gray twine. "Don't take it, Gem," I said. "This is somebody's hat in place." "I don't think so." "Scout, yes it is. Somebody like Walter Cunningham comes down here every recess and hides his things, and we come along and take them away from him. Listen, let's leave it and wait a couple days. If it ain't gone, then we'll take it." "Okay, okay. You might be right. So Jim must be some little kid's place, hides his things from bigger folks, you know. It's only when school's in that we found things." "Yeah," I said, "but we never go by here in the summertime."
We went home. The next morning, the twine was where we had left it. When it was still there on the third day, Jen pocketed it. From then on, we considered everything we found in the knothole our property.
Second grade was grim, but Gem assured me that the older I got, the better school would be. That he started off the same way, and it was not until one reached the sixth grade that one learned anything of value. The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning. He went through a brief Egyptian period that baffled me. He tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in the back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way. I said if they did, I didn't see how they got anything done, but Gem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did. They invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn't. Atticus told me to delete the adjectives, and I'd have the facts.
There are no clearly defined seasons in South Alabama. Summer drifts into autumn, and autumn is sometimes never followed by winter, but turns to a day's old spring that melts into summer again. That fall was a long one, hardly cool enough for a light jacket. Gemini were trotting in our orbit one mild October afternoon when our knothole stops us again. Something white was inside this time, and Jim let me do the honors. I pulled out two small images carved in soap. One was the figure of a boy; the other wore a crude dress. Before I remembered that there was no such thing as hoodooing, I shrieked and threw them down. Gem snatched him up. "What's the matter with you?" he yelled. He rubbed the figures free of red dust. "These are good," he said. "I've never seen any these good." He held them down to me. They were almost perfect miniatures of two children. The boy had on shorts, and a shock of soapy hair fell to his eyebrows. I looked up at Gem. A point of straight brown hair kicked downwards from his part. I had never noticed it before. Gem looked from the girl doll to me. The girl doll wore bangs, so did I. "These are us," he said. "Who did them, you reckon? Who do we know around here who whittles?" he asked. "Mr. Avery." "Mr. Avery just does like this, I mean carves." "Mr. Avery averaged to stick a stove wood per week. He honed it down to a toothpick and chewed it." "There's almost Stephanie Crawford, sweetheart," I said. "He carves all right, but he lives down the country. When would he ever pay any attention to us?" "Maybe he sits on the porch and looks at us instead of Miss Stephanie. If I was him, I would." Gem stared at me so long I asked what was the matter, but got nothing but Scout for an answer.
When we went home, Jen put the dolls in his trunk. Less than two weeks later, we found a whole package of chewing gum, which we enjoyed. The fact that everything on the Radley place was poison having slipped Gem's memory. The following week, the knothole yielded a tarnished medal. Gem showed it to Atticus, who said it was a spelling medal, that before we were born, the Macomb County schools had spelling contests and awarded medals to the winners. Atticus said someone might have lost it, and had we asked around. Gem camel-kicked me when I tried to stay where we had found it. Jem asked Atticus if he remembered anybody who ever won one. And Atticus said no.
Our biggest prize appeared four days later. It was a pocket watch that wouldn't run, on a chain with an aluminum knife. "You reckon it's white gold, Jim?" "Don't know. I'll show it to Atticus." Atticus said it would probably be worth ten dollars, knife, chain, and all, if it were new. "Did you swap with somebody at school?" he asked. "Oh, no sir." Jen pulled out his grandfather's watch, that Atticus let him carry once a week if Jim were careful with it. On the days he carried the watch, GEM walked on eggs. "Atticus, if it's all right with you, I'd rather have this one instead. Maybe I can fix it." When the new wore off his grandfather's watch and carrying it became a day's burdensome task, Gem no longer felt the necessity of ascertaining the hour every five minutes. He did a fair job, only one spring and two tiny pieces left over, but the watch would not run. He sighed. "It'll never go, Scout." "Huh?" "You reckon we ought to write a letter to whoever's leaving us these things?" "That'd be right nice, Jam. We can thank him." "What's wrong?" Gem was holding his ear, shaking his head from side to side. "I, I don't get it. I just don't get it. I, I don't know why, Scout." He looked toward the living room. "I got a good mind to tell Atticus." "No, I reckon not. I'll sell them for you." "No, no, don't do that, Scout." "Scout, what..." He had been on the verge of telling me something all evening. His face would brighten, and he would lean toward me, and then he would change his mind. He changed it again. "No, nothing here. Let's write a letter." I pushed the tablet and pencil under his nose. "Okay. Dear Mister. How do you know what?" "I bet it's Miss Marty. Been betting that for a long time." "Ah, Miss Marty can't chew gum." Jim broke into a grin. "You know she can talk pretty sometimes. One time I asked her to have a chew, and she said, 'No thanks, that chewing gum cleaved to her palate and rendered her speechless.' Said Jim carefully. 'Doesn't that sound nice?'" "Yeah, she can say nice things sometimes. She would never watch in chain anyway." "Dear Sir," said Jim. "We appreciate the no, we appreciate everything what you've put in the tree for us. Yours very truly, Jeremy Atticus Finch." "He won't know who you are if you sign it like that, Jim." And Jim erased his name and wrote Gem Finch. "Asan Gene Louise (parentheses Scout Finch) Scout, excuse me." Beneath it, Jen put the note in an envelope.
Next morning, on the way to school, he ran ahead of me and stopped at the tree. Gem was facing me when he looked up, and I saw him go stark. "What, Scout?" I ran to him. Someone had filled our knothole with cement. "Don't you cry now, Scouts, don't cry now, don't you worry," he muttered at me all the way to school.
When we went home for dinner, Jen bolted his food and ran to the porch and stood on the steps. "And followed him." "Hasn't passed by yet," he said. The next day, Jen repeated his vigil and was rewarded. "How to do, Mr. Nathan?" he said. "Morning, Jim." "Scout," said Mr. Radley's. "He went by." Mr. Radley said Jim. Mr. Radley turned around. "Mr. Radley, Ed, did you put cement in that hole in that tree down yonder?" "Yes," he said. "I filled it up." "Why'd you do it, sir?" "Trees dying, you plug them up with cement when they're sick, you ought to know that." Jim said nothing more about it until late afternoon, when we passed our tree. He gave it a meditative pat on its cement and remained deep in thought. He seemed to be working himself into a bad humor, so I kept my distance.
As usual, we met Atticus coming home from work that evening. When we were at our steps, Jim said, "Atticus, look down yonder at that tree, please sir." "What tree, son?" "The one on the corner of the Radley lock, coming from school." "Yes, is that tree dying?" "One, no son, I don't think so. Look at the leaves, they're all green and full, no brown patches anywhere. It ain't even sick, that tree's healthy as you are." "Jim, why Mr. Nathan Radley said it was dying?" "Well, maybe it is. I'm sure Mr. Radley knows more about trees than we do." Atticus left us on the porch. Gem leaned on a pillow, rubbing his shoulders against it. "Tia itch, Jam?" I asked as politely as I could. He did not answer. "In Jim?" I said after a while. He stood there until nightfall, and I waited for him. When we went in the house, I saw he had been crying. His face was dirty in the right places, but I thought it odd that I had not heard him.