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"To Kill a Mockingbird" By Nelle Harper Lee

Part One

Chapter 1

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbo

w. When it healed, and Jem's fears of never being able to play football were ass

uaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat

shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at rig

ht angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn't have cared l

ess, so long as he could pass and punt.

When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes di

scussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started i

t all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that.

He said it began the summer 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 broad view of the thing, it really began with Andr

ew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn't run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch w

ould never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn't? We w

ere far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus

. Our father said we were both right.

Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that w

e had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings. All we had

was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceed

ed only by his stinginess. In England, Simon was irritated by the persecution of

those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more liberal breth

ren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way across the Atlan

tic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up the Saint Steph

ens. Mindful of John Wesley's strictures on the use of many words in buying and

selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit he was unhap

py lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory of God, as t

he putting on of gold and costly apparel. So Simon, having forgotten his teacher

's dictum on the possession of human chattels, bought three slaves and with thei

r aid established a homestead on the banks of the Alabama River some forty miles

above Saint Stephens. He returned to Saint Stephens only once, to find a wife,

and with her established a line that ran high to daughters. Simon lived to an im

pressive age and died rich.

It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon's homestead, Finch

's Landing, and make their living from cotton. The place was self-sufficient: mo

dest in comparison with the empires around it, the Landing nevertheless produced

everything required to sustain life except ice, wheat flour, and articles of cl

othing, supplied by river- boats from Mobile.

Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the North a

nd 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 tw

entieth century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law,

and his younger brother went to Boston to study medicine. Their sister Alexandra

was the Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent

most of his time lying in a hammock by the river wondering if his trot-lines we

re full.

When my father was admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb and began his pra

ctice. Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch's Landing, was the county seat o

f Maycomb County. Atticus's office in the courthouse contained little more than

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a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama. His fir

st two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail. Atti

cus had urged them to accept the state's generosity in allowing them to plead Gu

ilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfor

ds, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The Haverfords had dispatc

hed Maycomb's leading "To Kill a Mockingbird" By Nelle Harper Lee 3 blacksmith i

n a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were

imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that

the- son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody.

They persisted in pleading Not Guilty to first-degree murder, so there was noth

ing much Atticus could do for his clients except be present at their departure,

an occasion that was probably the beginning of my father's profound distaste for

the practice of criminal law.

During his first five years in Maycomb, Atticus practiced economy more than anyt

hing; for several years thereafter he invested his earnings in his brother's edu

cation. John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father, and chose to study

medicine at a time when cotton was not worth growing; but after getting Uncle J

ack started, Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law. He liked Maycomb,

he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they knew him, and bec

ause of Simon Finch's industry, Atticus was related by blood or marriage to near

ly every family in the town.

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In ra

iny weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the cou

rthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered

on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the swelt

ering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine i

n the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, 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 square, shuffled in and out of

the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four ho

urs long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, not

hing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries o

f Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Ma

ycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.

We lived on the main residential street in town--Atticus, Jem and I, plus Calpur

nia our cook. Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read t

o us, and treated us with courteous detachment.

Calpurnia was something else again. She was all angles and bones; she was nearsi

ghted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard. She was

always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn't behave as well a

s Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn't ready to com

e. Our battles were epic and one-sided. Calpurnia always won, mainly because Att

icus always took her side. She had been with us ever since Jem was born, and I h

ad felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.

Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence. She was a Graham fr

om Montgomery; Atticus met her when he was first elected to the state legislatur

e. He was middle-aged then, she was fifteen years his junior. Jem was the produc

t of their first year of marriage; four years later I was born, and two years la

ter our mother died from a sudden heart attack. They said it ran in her family.

I did not miss her, but I think Jem did. He remembered her clearly, and sometime

s in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and play by himse

lf behind the car-house. When he was like that, I knew better than to bother him

.

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When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries (within

calling distance of Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose's house two door

s to the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south. We were nev

er tempted to break them. The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity th

e mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end; Mrs. Du

bose was plain hell.

That was the summer Dill came to us.

Early one morning as we were beginning our day's play in the back yard, Jem and

I "To Kill a Mockingbird" By Nelle Harper Lee 4 heard something next door in Mis

s Rachel Haverford's collard patch. We went to the wire fence to see if there wa

s a puppy--Miss Rachel's rat terrier was expecting-- instead we found someone si

tting looking at us. Sitting down, he wasn't much higher than the collards. We s

tared 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 thought you'd like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin` I

can do it..."

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

"Goin` on seven."

"Shoot no wonder, then," said Jem, jerking his thumb at me. "Scout yonder's been

readin` ever since she was born, and she ain't even started to school yet. You

look right puny for goin' on seven."

"I'm little but I'm old," he said.

Jem brushed his hair back to get a better look. "Why don't you come over, Charle

s Baker Harris?" he said. "Lord, what a name."

"`s not any funnier'n yours. Aunt Rachel says your name's Jeremy Atticus Finch."

Jem scowled. "I'm big enough to fit mine," he said. "Your name's longer'n you ar

e. Bet it's a foot longer."

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

"Do better if you go over it instead of under it," I said. "Where'd you come fro

m?"

Dill was from Meridian, Mississippi, was spending the summer with his aunt, Miss

Rachel, and would be spending every summer in Maycomb from now on. His family w

as from Maycomb County originally, his mother worked for a photographer in Merid

ian, had entered his picture in a Beautiful Child contest and won five dollars.

She gave the money to Dill, who went to the picture show twenty times on it.

"Don't have any picture shows here, except Jesus ones in the courthouse sometime

s," said Jem. "Ever see anything good?"

Dill had seen Dracula, a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginning