Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" Chapters 11-20

"About your writing with your left hand, are you ambidextrous, Mr. Ewell?"

From time to time she would open her mouth wide, and I could see her tongue undulate faintly.

Dill made his way through the leftovers and was reaching for a can of pork and beans in the pantry when Miss Rachel's Do-oo Je-sus went off in the hall.

Occasionally it would say, "Pt," like some viscous substance coming to a boil.

Instead, Maycomb grew and sprawled out from its hub, Sinkfield's Tavern, because Sinkfield reduced his guests to myopic drunkenness one evening, induced them to bring forward their maps and charts, lop off a little here, add a bit there, and adjust

A shock of wispy new-washed hair stood up from his forehead; his nose was thin, pointed, and shiny; he had no chin to speak of-it seemed to be part of his crepey neck.
"-so help me God," he crowed.

Atticus's remarks were still rankling, which made me miss the request in Jem's question.

Of course Jem antagonized me sometimes until I could kill him, but when it came down to it he was all I had.

Still in wrist manacles, he wandered two miles out of Meridian where he discovered a small animal show and was immediately engaged to wash the camel.

As I passed the bed I stepped on something warm, resilient, and rather smooth.

I don't think anybody in Maycomb'll begrudge me a client, with times this hard."

Walking toward the office, Dill and I fell into step behind Atticus and Jem. Dill was encumbered by the chair, and his pace was slower.

He was still on the bed and I couldn't get a firm stance, so I threw myself at him as hard as I could, hitting, pulling, pinching, gouging.

Her bottom plate was not in, and her upper lip protruded; from time to time she would draw her nether lip to her upper plate and carry her chin with it.

Atticus picked up the Mobile Press and sat down in the rocking chair Jem had vacated.

I tried to explain to Atticus that it wasn't so much what Francis said that had infuriated me as the way he had said it.

Conscious," he smiled, "and cantankerous.

"I don't know how he done it, but he done it - I said it all happened so fast I---"
"Now let's consider this calmly-" began Atticus, but Mr. Gilmer interrupted with an objection: he was not irrelevant or immaterial, but Atticus was browbeating the

"Called 'em off on a snipe hunt," was the succinct answer.

We asked Miss Maudie to elucidate: she said Miss Stephanie seemed to know so much about the case she might as well be called on to testify.

We could tell, however, when debate became more acrimonious than professional, but this was from watching lawyers other than our father.

I wasn't sure what Jem resented most, but I took umbrage at Mrs. Dubose's assessment of the family's mental hygiene.

Unaware of public scrutiny from above, Judge Taylor disposed of the severed end by propelling it expertly to his lips and saying, "Fhluck!"

As he read along, I noticed that Mrs. Dubose's corrections grew fewer and farther between, that Jem had even left one sentence dangling in mid-air.

So serene was Judge Taylor's court, that he had few occasions to use his gavel, but he hammered fully five minutes.

As they had come, in ones and twos the men shuffled back to their ramshackle cars.

We forgot her, trooped upstairs to church, and were listening quietly to the sermon when a dreadful banging issued from the radiator pipes, persisting until someone investigated and brought forth Eunice Ann saying she didn't want to play Shadrach a

"She said she was going to leave this world beholden to nothing and nobody.

The club snickered.

At each seat was a cheap cardboard fan bearing a garish Garden of Gethsemane, courtesy Tyndal's Hardware Co. (You-Name-It-We-Sell-It).

"When he's -riled, has he ever beaten you?"

"Entailments are bad," I was advising him, when I slowly awoke to the fact that I was addressing the entire aggregation.

All the spectators were as relaxed as Judge Taylor, except Jem. His mouth was twisted into a purposeful half-grin, and his eyes happy about, and he said something about corroborating evidence, which made me sure he was showing off.

The cabin's plank walls were supplemented with sheets of corrugated iron, its roof shingled with tin cans hammered flat, so only its general shape suggested its original design: square, with four tiny rooms opening onto a shotgun hall, the cabin re

His sermon was a forthright denunciation of sin, an austere declaration of the motto on the wall behind him: he warned his flock against the evils of heady brews, gambling, and strange women.

Don't pay no 'tention to Lula, she's contentious because Reverend Sykes threatened to church her.

No truant officers could keep their numerous offspring in school; no public health officer could free them from congenital defects, various worms, and the diseases indigenous to filthy surroundings.

The fact that I had a permanent fiance was little compensation for his absence: I had never thought about it, but summer was Dill by the fishpool smoking string, Dill's eyes alive with complicated plans to make Boo Radley emerge; summer was the swi

We acquired no traumas from watching our father win or lose.

I sometimes think Atticus subjected every crisis of his life to tranquil evaluation behind The Mobile Register, The Birmingham News and The Montgomery Advertiser.

When asked upon what grounds, Judge Taylor said, "Champertous connivance," and declared he hoped to God the litigants were satisfled by each having had their public say.

He was from Abbottsville; we saw him only when court convened, and that rarely, for court was of no special interest to Jem and me.

Jem seemed fascinated by a rose in the carpet.

Mayella's hostility, which had subsided to grudging neutrality, flared again.

There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked this way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted attitudes, c

I was expecting a tirade, but all she said was, "You may commence reading, Jeremy."

From the other side, however, Greek revival columns clashed with a big nineteenth-century clock tower housing a rusty unreliable instrument, a view indicating a people determined to preserve every physical scrap of the past.

I found myself in the middle of the Idlers' Club and made myself as unobtrusive as possible.

"Change of venue," said Mr. Tate.

Atticus would flee to his office directly after dinner, where if we sometimes looked in on him, we would find him sitting back in his swivel chair reading.

We had just come to her gate when Jem snatched my baton and ran flailing wildly up the steps into Mrs. Dubose's front yard, forgetting everything Atticus had said, forgetting that she packed a pistol under her shawls, forgetting that if Mrs. Dubose

Jem and I detected squirrel cooking, but it took an old countryman like Atticus to identify possum and rabbit, aromas that vanished when we rode back past the Ewell residence.

Mollified, Mayella gave Atticus a final terrified glance and said to Mr. Gilmer, "Well sir, I was on the porch and -and he came along and, you see, there was this old chiffarobe in the yard Papa'd brought in to chop up for kindlin'-Papa told me to

It aggravates 'em.

She'd have spent the rest of her life on it and died without so much agony, but she was too contrary-"
"Sir?" said Jem.
Atticus said, "Just before your escapade she called me to make her will.

I whispered, and got a terse, "Sh-h!"

We were accustomed to prompt, if not always cheerful acquiescence to Atticus's instructions, but from the way he stood Jem was not thinking of budging.

And for goodness' sake put some of the county back where it belongs, the soil erosion's bad enough as it is."

What Jem did was something I'd do as a matter of course had I not been under Atticus's interdict, which I assumed included not fighting horrible old ladies.

Let a sixteen-year-old girl giggle in the choir and Aunty would say, "It just goes to show you, all the Penfield women are flighty."

After one altercation when Jem hollered, "It's time you started bein' a girl and acting right!"

I did likewise with no qualms.

"Better be careful he doesn't hand you a subpoena."

There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked this way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted attit

As a rule, a recess meant a general exodus, but today people weren't moving.

We skulked around the kitchen until Calpurnia threw us out.

No economic fluctuations changed their status people like the Ewells lived as guests of the county in prosperity as well as in the depths of a depression.

Per- haps she had given him a dose of calomel.

In later years, I sometimes wondered exactly what made Jem do it, what made him break the bonds of "You just be a gentleman, son," and the phase of self-conscious rectitude he had recently entered.

Her bottom plate was not in, and her upper lip protruded; from time to time she would draw her nether lip to her upper plate and carry her chin with it.

Here Judge Taylor glanced sharply at the witness and must have decided his speculations devoid of evil intent, for he subsided sleepily.

He seemed to be a respectable Negro, and a respectable Negro would never go up into somebody's yard of his own volition.

He sighed, and said rape was carnal knowledge of a female by force and without consent.

The beginning of that summer boded well: Jem could do as he pleased;
Calpurnia would do until Dill came.

To all parties present and participating in the life of the county, Aunt Alexandra was one of the last of her kind: she had river-boat, boarding-school manners; let any moral come along and she would uphold it; she was born in the objective case; s

Punk, punk, punk, her needle broke the taut circle.

As Atticus's fists went to his hips, so did Jem's, and as they faced each other I could see little resemblance between them: Jem's soft brown hair and eyes, his oval face and snug-fitting ears were our mother's, contrasting oddly with Atticus's gra

He was still on the bed and I couldn't get a firm stance, so I threw myself at him as hard as I could, hitting, pulling, pinching, gouging.

I looked around and up at Mr. Cunningham, whose face was equally impassive.

Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen.

Thus the dicta No Crawford Minds His Own Business, Every Third Merriweather Is Morbid, The Truth Is Not in the Delafields, All the Bufords Walk Like That, were simply guides to daily living: never take a check from a Delafield without a discreet ca

He set me on my feet, and I made a secret reconnaissance of Jem. He seemed to be all in one piece, but he had a queer look on his face.

Atticus tried to stifle a smile but didn't make it.

Mayella sniffed wrathfully and looked at Atticus.

Jem's voice was reverent.

Judge Taylor was not the kind of figure that ever evoked pity, but I did feel a pang for him as he tried to explain.

Giant monkey-puzzle bushes bristled on each corner, and between them an iron hitching rail glistened under the street lights.

We were surprised one morning to see a cartoon in the Montgomery Advertiser above the caption, "Maycomb's Finch."

The varmints had a lean time of it, for the Ewells gave the dump a thorough gleaning every day, and the fruits of their industry (those that were not eaten) made the plot of ground around the cabin look like the playhouse of an insane child: what p

"Never heard of any Catholics in Maycomb either," said Atticus, "you're confusing that with something else.

Like Mr. Heck Tate, I imagined a person facing me, went through a swift mental pantomime, and concluded that he might have held her with his right hand and pounded her with his left.

The more affluent chased their food with drugstore Coca-Cola in bulb-shaped soda glasses.

"Gentle breeding," he continued, when I had found and scratched it, "and that you should try to live up to your name--' Atticus persevered in spite of us: "She asked me to tell you you must try to behave like the little lady and gentleman that you

He was sitting in one of his office chairs, and he was reading, oblivious of the nightbugs dancing over his head.

No truant officers could keep their numerous offspring in school; no public health officer could free them from congenital defects, various worms, and the diseases indigenous to filthy surroundings.

On the dying notes of "Jubilee," Zeebo said, "In that far-off sweet forever, just beyond the shining river."

Jem made a tentative swipe under the bed.

Starkly out of place in a town of square-faced stores and steep-roofed houses, the Maycomb jail was a miniature Gothic joke one cell wide and two cells high, complete with tiny battlements and flying buttresses.

Below us, heads turned, feet scraped the floor, babies were shifted to shoulders, and a few children scampered out of the courtroom.

He used all his money for a ticket, boarded the train as he had done many times, coolly chatted with the conductor, to whom Dill was a familiar sight, but he had not the nerve to invoke the rule on small children traveling a distance alone: if you'

I did not remember our mother, but Jem, did-he would tell me about her sometimes-and he went livid when Mrs. Dubose shot us this message.

After nine hours of listening to the eccentricities of Old Sarum's inhabitants, Judge Taylor threw the case out of court.

In Maycomb County, it was easy to tell when someone bathed regularly, as opposed to yearly lavations: Mr. Ewell had a scalded look; as if an overnight soaking had deprived him of protective layers of dirt, his skin appeared to be sensitive to the e

Atticus's mouth, even, was half-open, an attitude he had once described as uncouth.

Atticus's voice had lost its comfortableness; he was speaking in his arid, detached professional voice.

Although her fits had passed off, she was in every other way her old self: when Sir Walter Scott became involved in lengthy descriptions of moats and castles, Mrs. Dubose would become bored and pick on us:
"Jeremy Finch, I told you you'd live to re

Slowly but surely I began to see the pattern of Atticus's questions: from questions that Mr. Gilmer did not deem sufficiently irrelevant or immaterial to object to, Atticus was quietly building up before the jury a picture of the Ewells' home life.

In his lawyer's voice, without a shade of inflection, he said: "Your aunt has asked me to try and impress upon you and Jean Louise that you are not from run-of-the-mill people, that you are the product of several generations' gentle breeding --' Atticus p

The Levy family met all criteria for being Fine Folks: they did the best they could with the sense they had, and they had been living on the same plot of ground in Maycomb for five generations.

Its fantasy was heightened by its red brick facade and the thick steel bars at its ecclesiastical windows.

Atticus looked pensive.

But Maycomb would have been closer to the river had it not been for the nimble-wittedness of one Sinkfield, who in the dawn of history operated an inn where two pig-trails met, the only tavern in the territory.

It was plain that Aunty thought me dull in the extreme, because I once heard her tell Atticus that I was sluggish.

Business was excellent when Governor William Wyatt Bibb, with a view to promoting the newly created county's domestic tranquility, dispatched a team of surveyors to locate its exact center and there establish its seat of government.

The surveyors, Sinkfield's guests, told their host that he was in the territorial confines of Maycomb County, and showed him the probable spot where the county seat would be built.

I wanted to stay and explore, but Calpurnia propelled me up the aisle ahead of her.

"From rape to riot to runaways," we heard him chuckle.

She was not fat, but solid, and she chose protective garments that drew up her bosom to giddy heights, pinched in her waist, flared out her rear, and managed to suggest that Aunt Alexandra's was once an hour-glass figure.

Th' old door's off its hinges an' fall's comin' on pretty fast.'

As Atticus's fists went to his hips, so did Jem's, and as they faced each other I could see little resemblance between them: Jem's soft brown hair and eyes, his oval face and snug-fitting ears were our mother's, contrasting oddly with Atticus's gra

Occasionally someone would return from Montgomery or Mobile with an outsider, but the result caused only a ripple in the quiet stream of family resemblance.

Aunt Alexandra, in underlining the moral of young Sam Merriweather's suicide, said it was caused by a morbid streak in the family.

"I don't want either of you bearing a grudge about this thing, no matter what happens."

But the ultimate wisdom of Sinkfield's maneuver is open to question.

He carried my baton in one hand; its filthy yellow tassel trailed on the rug.

Thus the dicta No Crawford Minds His Own Business, Every Third Merriweather Is Morbid, The Truth Is Not in the Delafields, All the Bufords Walk Like That, were simply guides to daily living: never take a check from a Delafield without a discreet ca

It was dim inside, with a damp coolness slowly dispelled by the gathering congregation.

Jem's chin would come up, and he would gaze at Mrs. Dubose with a face devoid of resentment.

She was never bored, and given the slightest chance she would exercise her royal prerogative: she would arrange, advise, caution, and warn.

To all parties present and participating in the life of the county, Aunt Alexandra was one of the last of her kind: she had river-boat, boarding-school manners; let any moral come along and she would uphold it; she was born in the objective case; s

From the other side, however, Greek revival columns clashed with a big nineteenth-century clock tower housing a rusty unreliable instrument, a view indicating a people determined to preserve every physical scrap of the past.

"He might have hurt me a little," Atticus conceded, "but son, you'll understand folks a little better when you're older.

"You know he wouldn't bother you, you know you ain't seared of Atticus."

Judge Taylor looked like most judges I had ever seen: amiable, white-haired, slightly ruddy-faced, he was a man who ran his court with an alarming informality he sometimes propped his feet up, he often cleaned his fingernails with his pocket knife.

Through my tears I saw Jem standing in a similar pool of isolation, his head cocked to one side.

Somewhere, I had received the impression that Fine Folks were people who did the best they could with the sense they had, but Aunt Alexandra was of the opinion, obliquely expressed, that the longer a family had been squatting on one patch of land t

The door was opened, and the gust of warm air revived us.

Her whole mind and body were concentrated on that alarm clock.

The next afternoon at Mrs. Dubose's was the same as the first, and so was the next, until gradually a pattern emerged: everything would begin normally-that is, Mrs. Dubose would hound Jem for a while on her favorite subjects, her camellias and our

Jem had probably stood as much guff about Atticus lawing for niggers as had I, and I took it for granted that he kept his temperhe had a naturally tranquil disposition and a slow fuse.

Refreshed by food, Dill recited this narrative: having been bound in chains and left to die in the basement (there were basements in Meridian) by his new father, who disliked him, and secretly kept alive on raw field peas by a passing farmer who heard his

Her face was the color of a dirty pillowcase, and the corners of her mouth glistened with wet, which inched like a glacier down the deep grooves enclosing her chin.

Jem thought he had enough to buy a miniature steam engine for himself and a twirling baton for me.

Aunty had a way of declaring What Is Best For The Family, and I suppose her coming to live with us was in that category.

The Reverend took a long time unwindin' this morning, he's not usually so tedious."

"Don't you fret too much over Mister Jem--' she began.

The next afternoon at Mrs. Dubose's was the same as the first, and so was the next, until gradually a pattern emerged: everything would begin normally-that is, Mrs. Dubose would hound Jem for a while on her favorite subjects, her camellias and our

The Cunninghams married the Coninghams until the spelling of the names was academic -academic until a Cunningham disputed a Coningham over land titles and took to the law.

Aunt Alexandra ignored my question.

Zeebo rose from his pew and walked down the center aisle, stopping in front of us and facing the congregation.

They were sullen-looking, sleepy-eyed men who seemed unused to late hours.

All the spectators were as relaxed as Judge Taylor, except Jem. His mouth was twisted into a purposeful half-grin, and his eyes happy about, and he said something about corroborating evidence, which made me sure he was showing off.

"And you-" she pointed an arthritic finger at me-"what are you doing in those overalls?

I pulled at his sleeve, and we were followed up the sidewalk by a philippic on our family's moral degeneration, the major premise of which was that half the Finches were in the asylum anyway, but if our mother were living we would not have come to

Through the weeks he had cultivated an expression of polite and detached interest, which he would present to her in answer to her most blood-curdling inventions.

He placed the young town too far away from the only kind of public transportation in those days river-boat-and it took a man from the north end of the county two days to travel to Maycomb for store-bought goods.

When we were small, Jem and I confined our activities to the southern neighborhood, but when I was well into the second grade at school and tormenting Boo Radley became pass6, the business section of Maycomb drew us frequently up the street past th

Dusty.

She's a troublemaker from way back, got fancy ideas an' haughty ways-we're mighty glad to have you all."

"That makes the Ewells fine folks, then," said Jem. The tribe of which Burris Ewell and his brethren consisted had lived on the same plot of earth behind the Maycomb dump, and had thrived on county welfare money for three generations.

"He despises Negroes, won't have one near him."

She left the room and returned with a purple-covered book on which Meditations of Joshua S. St. Clair was stamped in gold.

There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked this way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted attit

Aunt Alexandra ignored my question.

In the frosty December dusk, their cabins looked neat and snug with pale blue smoke rising from the chimneys and doorways glowing amber from the fires inside.

There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked this way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted attitudes, c

When she settled in with us and life resumed its daily pace, Aunt Alexandra seemed as if she had always lived with us.

She never let a chance escape her to point out the shortcomings of other tribal groups to the greater glory of our own, a habit that amused Jem rather than annoyed him: "Aunty better watch how she talks-scratch most folks in Maycomb and they're kin

They paraded by Mr. Sam Levy's house one night, but Sam just stood on his porch and told 'em things had come to a pretty pass, he'd sold 'em the very sheets on their backs.

It was a sad thing that my father had neglected to tell me about the Finch Family, or to install any pride into his children.

"Scout," said Atticus, "when summer comes you'll have to keep your head about far worse things . . . it's not fair for you and Jem, I know that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down-wel

Through the weeks he had cultivated an expression of polite and detached interest, which he would present to her in answer to her most blood-curdling inventions.

To all parties present and participating in the life of the county, Aunt Alexandra was one of the last of her kind: she had river-boat, boarding-school manners; let any moral come along and she would uphold it; she was born in the objective case; s

I sometimes think Atticus subjected every crisis of his life to tranquil evaluation behind The Mobile Register, The Birmingham News and The Montgomery Advertiser.

So Dill and I spent our Sundays creeping around in Deer's Pasture.

Instead, Maycomb grew and sprawled out from its hub, Sinkfield's Tavern, because Sinkfield reduced his guests to myopic drunkenness one evening, induced them to bring forward their maps and charts, lop off a little here, add a bit there, and adjust the ce

Sinkfield, no patriot, served and supplied am- munition to Indians and settlers alike, neither knowing or caring whether he was a part of the Alabama Territory or the Creek Nation so long as business was good.

Business was excellent when Governor William Wyatt Bibb, with a view to promoting the newly created county's domestic tranquility, dispatched a team of surveyors to locate its exact center and there establish its seat of government.

There was a story behind all this, but I had no desire to extract it from her then: today was Sunday, and Aunt Alexandra was positively irritable on the Lord's Day. I guess it was her Sunday corset.

Her Missionary Society refreshments added to her reputation as a hostess (she did not permit Calpurnia to make the delicacies required to sustain the Society through long reports on Rice Christians) ; she joined and became Secretary of the Maycomb