26 Chapter 26 (1/2)

School started, and so did our daily trips past the Radley Place. Jem was in theseventh grade and went to high school, beyond the grammar-school building; I was nowin the third grade, and our routines were so different I only walked to school with Jem inthe mornings and saw him at mealtimes. He went out for football, but was too slenderand too young yet to do anything but carry the team water buckets. This he did withenthusiasm; most afternoons he was seldom home before dark.

The Radley Place had ceased to terrify me, but it was no less gloomy, no less chillyunder its great oaks, and no less uninviting. Mr. Nathan Radley could still be seen on aclear day, walking to and from town; we knew Boo was there, for the same old reason—nobody'd seen him carried out yet. I sometimes felt a twinge of remorse, when passingby the old place, at ever having taken part in what must have been sheer torment toArthur Radley—what reasonable recluse wants children peeping through his shutters,delivering greetings on the end of a fishing-pole, wandering in his collards at night? Andyet I remembered. Two Indian-head pennies, chewing gum, soap dolls, a rusty medal, abroken watch and chain. Jem must have put them away somewhere. I stopped andlooked at the tree one afternoon: the trunk was swelling around its cement patch. Thepatch itself was turning yellow.

We had almost seen him a couple of times, a good enough score for anybody.

But I still looked for him each time I went by. Maybe someday we would see him. Iimagined how it would be: when it happened, he'd just be sitting in the swing when Icame along. ”Hidy do, Mr. Arthur,” I would say, as if I had said it every afternoon of mylife. ”Evening, Jean Louise,” he would say, as if he had said it every afternoon of my life,”right pretty spell we're having, isn't it?” ”Yes sir, right pretty,” I would say, and go on.

It was only a fantasy. We would never see him. He probably did go out when themoon was down and gaze upon Miss Stephanie Crawford. I'd have picked somebodyelse to look at, but that was his business. He would never gaze at us.

”You aren't starting that again, are you?” said Atticus one night, when I expressed astray desire just to have one good look at Boo Radley before I died. ”If you are, I'll tellyou right now: stop it. I'm too old to go chasing you off the Radley property. Besides, it'sdangerous. You might get shot. You know Mr. Nathan shoots at every shadow he sees,even shadows that leave size-four bare footprints. You were lucky not to be killed.”

I hushed then and there. At the same time I marveled at Atticus. This was the first hehad let us know he knew a lot more about something than we thought he knew. And ithad happened years ago. No, only last summer—no, summer before last, when… timewas playing tricks on me. I must remember to ask Jem.

So many things had happened to us, Boo Radley was the least of our fears. Atticussaid he didn't see how anything else could happen, that things had a way of settlingdown, and after enough time passed people would forget that Tom Robinson'sexistence was ever brought to their attention.

Perhaps Atticus was right, but the events of the summer hung over us like smoke in aclosed room. The adults in Maycomb never discussed the case with Jem and me; itseemed that they discussed it with their children, and their attitude must have been thatneither of us could help having Atticus for a parent, so their children must be nice to usin spite of him. The children would never have thought that up for themselves: had ourclassmates been left to their own devices, Jem and I would have had several swift,satisfying fist-fights apiece and ended the matter for good. As it was, we were compelledto hold our heads high and be, respectively, a gentleman and a lady. In a way, it waslike the era of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, without all her yelling. There was one oddthing, though, that I never understood: in spite of Atticus's shortcomings as a parent,people were content to re-elect him to the state legislature that year, as usual, withoutopposition. I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew fromthem, and never thought about them until I was forced to.

I was forced to one day in school. Once a week, we had a Current Events period.

Each child was supposed to clip an item from a newspaper, absorb its contents, andreveal them to the class. This practice allegedly overcame a variety of evils: standing infront of his fellows encouraged good posture and gave a child poise; delivering a shorttalk made him word-conscious; learning his current event strengthened his memory;being singled out made him more than ever anxious to return to the Group.

The idea was profound, but as usual, in Maycomb it didn't work very well. In the firstplace, few rural children had access to newspapers, so the burden of Current Eventswas borne by the town children, convincing the bus children more deeply that the townchildren got all the attention anyway. The rural children who could, usually broughtclippings from what they called The Grit Paper, a publication spurious in the eyes ofMiss Gates, our teacher. Why she frowned when a child recited from The Grit Paper Inever knew, but in some way it was associated with liking fiddling, eating syrupy biscuitsfor lunch, being a holy-roller, singing Sweetly Sings the Donkey and pronouncing itdunkey, all of which the state paid teachers to discourage.

Even so, not many of the children knew what a Current Event was. Little Chuck Little,a hundred years old in his knowledge of cows and their habits, was halfway through anUncle Natchell story when Miss Gates stopped him: ”Charles, that is not a current event.

That is an advertisement.”

Cecil Jacobs knew what one was, though. When his turn came, he went to the front ofthe room and began, ”Old Hitler—”

”Adolf Hitler, Cecil,” said Miss Gates. ”One never begins with Old anybody.”

”Yes ma'am,” he said. ”Old Adolf Hitler has been prosecutin' the—”

”Persecuting Cecil…”

”Nome, Miss Gates, it says here—well anyway, old Adolf Hitler has been after theJews and he's puttin' 'em in prisons and he's taking away all their property and he won'tlet any of 'em out of the country and he's washin' all the feeble-minded and—”

”Washing the feeble-minded?”

”Yes ma'am, Miss Gates, I reckon they don't have sense enough to wash themselves,I don't reckon an idiot could keep hisself clean. Well anyway, Hitler's started a programto round up all the half-Jews too and he wants to register 'em in case they might wantacause him any trouble and I think this is a bad thing and that's my current event.”

”Very good, Cecil,” said Miss Gates. Puffing, Cecil returned to his seat.

A hand went up in the back of the room. ”How can he do that?”

”Who do what?” asked Miss Gates patiently.

”I mean how can Hitler just put a lot of folks in a pen like that, looks like the govamint'dstop him,” said the owner of the hand.

”Hitler is the government,” said Miss Gates, and seizing an opportunity to makeeducation dynamic, she went to the blackboard. She printed DEMOCRACY in largeletters. ”Democracy,” she said. ”Does anybody have a definition?”

”Us,” somebody said.

I raised my hand, remembering an old campaign slogan Atticus had once told meabout.

”What do you think it means, Jean Louise?”

”'Equal rights for all, special privileges for none,'” I quoted.

”Very good, Jean Louise, very good,” Miss Gates smiled. In front of DEMOCRACY,she printed WE ARE A. ”Now class, say it all together, 'We are a democracy.'”

We said it. Then Miss Gates said, ”That's the difference between America andGermany. We are a democracy and Germany is a dictatorship. Dictator-ship,” she said.