14 Chapter 14 (2/2)

”God Almighty.” Jem's voice was reverent.

We watched Dill emerge by degrees. He was a tight fit. He stood up and eased hisshoulders, turned his feet in their ankle sockets, rubbed the back of his neck. Hiscirculation restored, he said, ”Hey.”

Jem petitioned God again. I was speechless.

”I'm 'bout to perish,” said Dill. ”Got anything to eat?”

In a dream, I went to the kitchen. I brought him back some milk and half a pan of cornbread left over from supper. Dill devoured it, chewing with his front teeth, as was hiscustom.

I finally found my voice. ”How'd you get here?”

By an involved route. Refreshed by food, Dill recited this narrative: having been boundin chains and left to die in the basement (there were basements in Meridian) by his newfather, who disliked him, and secretly kept alive on raw field peas by a passing farmerwho heard his cries for help (the good man poked a bushel pod by pod through theventilator), Dill worked himself free by pulling the chains from the wall. Still in wristmanacles, he wandered two miles out of Meridian where he discovered a small animalshow and was immediately engaged to wash the camel. He traveled with the show allover Mississippi until his infallible sense of direction told him he was in Abbott County,Alabama, just across the river from Maycomb. He walked the rest of the way.

”How'd you get here?” asked Jem.

He had taken thirteen dollars from his mother's purse, caught the nine o'clock fromMeridian and got off at Maycomb Junction. He had walked ten or eleven of the fourteenmiles to Maycomb, off the highway in the scrub bushes lest the authorities be seekinghim, and had ridden the remainder of the way clinging to the backboard of a cottonwagon. He had been under the bed for two hours, he thought; he had heard us in thediningroom, and the clink of forks on plates nearly drove him crazy. He thought Jem andI would never go to bed; he had considered emerging and helping me beat Jem, as Jemhad grown far taller, but he knew Mr. Finch would break it up soon, so he thought it bestto stay where he was. He was worn out, dirty beyond belief, and home.

”They must not know you're here,” said Jem. ”We'd know if they were lookin' foryou…”

”Think they're still searchin' all the picture shows in Meridian.” Dill grinned.

”You oughta let your mother know where you are,” said Jem. ”You oughta let her knowyou're here…”

Dill's eyes flickered at Jem, and Jem looked at the floor. Then he rose and broke theremaining code of our childhood. He went out of the room and down the hall. ”Atticus,”

his voice was distant, ”can you come here a minute, sir?”

Beneath its sweat-streaked dirt Dill's face went white. I felt sick. Atticus was in thedoorway.

He came to the middle of the room and stood with his hands in his pockets, lookingdown at Dill.

I finally found my voice: ”It's okay, Dill. When he wants you to know somethin', he tellsyou.”

Dill looked at me. ”I mean it's all right,” I said. ”You know he wouldn't bother you, youknow you ain't scared of Atticus.”

”I'm not scared…” Dill muttered.

”Just hungry, I'll bet.” Atticus's voice had its usual pleasant dryness. ”Scout, we can dobetter than a pan of cold corn bread, can't we? You fill this fellow up and when I getback we'll see what we can see.”

”Mr. Finch, don't tell Aunt Rachel, don't make me go back, please sir! I'll run offagain—!”

”Whoa, son,” said Atticus. ”Nobody's about to make you go anywhere but to bed prettysoon. I'm just going over to tell Miss Rachel you're here and ask her if you could spendthe night with us—you'd like that, wouldn't you? And for goodness' sake put some of thecounty back where it belongs, the soil erosion's bad enough as it is.”

Dill stared at my father's retreating figure.

”He's tryin' to be funny,” I said. ”He means take a bath. See there, I told you hewouldn't bother you.”

Jem was standing in a corner of the room, looking like the traitor he was. ”Dill, I had totell him,” he said. ”You can't run three hundred miles off without your mother knowin'.”

We left him without a word.

Dill ate, and ate, and ate. He hadn't eaten since last night. He used all his money for aticket, 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 smallchildren traveling a distance alone if you've lost your money the conductor will lend youenough for dinner and your father will pay him back at the end of the line.

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

He bore with fortitude her Wait Till I Get You Home, Your Folks Are Out of Their MindsWorryin', was quite calm during That's All the Harris in You Coming Out, smiled at herReckon You Can Stay One Night, and returned the hug at long last bestowed upon him.

Atticus pushed up his glasses and rubbed his face.

”Your father's tired,” said Aunt Alexandra, her first words in hours, it seemed. She hadbeen there, but I suppose struck dumb most of the time. ”You children get to bed now.”

We left them in the diningroom, Atticus still mopping his face. ”From **** to riot torunaways,” we heard him chuckle. ”I wonder what the next two hours will bring.”

Since things appeared to have worked out pretty well, Dill and I decided to be civil toJem. Besides, Dill had to sleep with him so we might as well speak to him.

I put on my pajamas, read for a while and found myself suddenly unable to keep myeyes open. Dill and Jem were quiet; when I turned off my reading lamp there was nostrip of light under the door to Jem's room.

I must have slept a long time, for when I was punched awake the room was dim withthe light of the setting moon.

”Move over, Scout.”

”He thought he had to,” I mumbled. ”Don't stay mad with him.”

Dill got in bed beside me. ”I ain't,” he said. ”I just wanted to sleep with you. Are youwaked up?”

By this time I was, but lazily so. ”Why'd you do it?”

No answer. ”I said why'd you run off? Was he really hateful like you said?”

”Naw…”

”Didn't you all build that boat like you wrote you were gonna?”

”He just said we would. We never did.”

I raised up on my elbow, facing Dill's outline. ”It's no reason to run off. They don't getaround to doin' what they say they're gonna do half the time…”

”That wasn't it, he—they just wasn't interested in me.”

This was the weirdest reason for flight I had ever heard. ”How come?”

”Well, they stayed gone all the time, and when they were home, even, they'd get off ina room by themselves.”

”What'd they do in there?”

”Nothin', just sittin' and readin'—but they didn't want me with 'em.”

I pushed the pillow to the headboard and sat up. ”You know something? I was fixin' torun off tonight because there they all were. You don't want 'em around you all the time,Dill—”

Dill breathed his patient breath, a half-sigh.

”—good night, Atticus's gone all day and sometimes half the night and off in thelegislature and I don't know what—you don't want 'em around all the time, Dill, youcouldn't do anything if they were.”

”That's not it.”

As Dill explained, I found myself wondering what life would be if Jem were different,even from what he was now; what I would do if Atticus did not feel the necessity of mypresence, help and advice. Why, he couldn't get along a day without me. EvenCalpurnia couldn't get along unless I was there. They needed me.

”Dill, you ain't telling me right—your folks couldn't do without you. They must be justmean to you. Tell you what to do about that—”

Dill's voice went on steadily in the darkness: ”The thing is, what I'm tryin' to say is—they do get on a lot better without me, I can't help them any. They ain't mean. They buyme everything I want, but it's now—you've-got-it-go-play-with-it. You've got a roomful ofthings. I-got-you-that-book-so-go-read-it.” Dill tried to deepen his voice. ”You're not aboy. Boys get out and play baseball with other boys, they don't hang around the houseworryin' their folks.”

Dill's voice was his own again: ”Oh, they ain't mean. They kiss you and hug you goodnight and good mornin' and good-bye and tell you they love you—Scout, let's get us ababy.”

”Where?”

There was a man Dill had heard of who had a boat that he rowed across to a foggyisland where all these babies were; you could order one—”That's a lie. Aunty said God drops 'em down the chimney. At least that's what I thinkshe said.” For once, Aunty's diction had not been too clear.

”Well that ain't so. You get babies from each other. But there's this man, too—he hasall these babies just waitin' to wake up, he breathes life into 'em…”

Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could readtwo books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could addand subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world wherebabies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talking himself tosleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy island there rose thefaded image of a gray house with sad brown doors.

”Dill?”

”Mm?”

”Why do you reckon Boo Radley's never run off?”

Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me.

”Maybe he doesn't have anywhere to run off to…”