Shareware Overload/ShartewareOverload.cdr/wp/read1.zip/NOVEL.TXT

Text File | 1989-01-25 | 5KB | 81 lines

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To Kill A Mocking Bird, Harper Lee, P. 16-17
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     Miss Stephanie Crawford said some of the town council told
Mr. Radley that if he didn't take Boo back, Boo would die of mold
from the damp.  Besides, Boo could not live forever on the bounty
of the county.
     Nobody knew what form of intimidation Mr. Radley employed to
keep Boo out of sight, but Jem figured that Mr. Radley kept him
chained to the bed most of the time.  Atticus said no, it wasn't
that sort of thing, that there were other ways of making people
into ghosts.
     My memory came alive to see Mrs. Radley occasionally open
the front door, walk to the edge of the porch, and pour water on
her cannas.  But every day Jem and I would see Mr. Radley walking
to and from town.  He was a thin leathery man with colorless
eyes, so colorless they did not reflect light.  His cheekbones
were sharp and his mouth was wide, with a thin upper lip and a
full lower lip.  Miss Stephanie Crawford said he was so upright
he took the word God as his only law, and we believed her,
because Mr. Radley's posture was ramrod straight.
     He never spoke to us.  When he passed we would look at the
ground and say, "Good morning, sir," and he would cough in reply.
Mr. Radley's elder son lived in Pensacola; he came home at
Christmas, and he was one of the few persons we ever saw enter or
leave the place.  From the day Mr. Radley took Arthur home,
people said the house died.
     But there came a day when Atticus told us he'd wear us out
if we made any noise in the yard and commissioned Calpurnia to
serve in his absence if she heard a sound out of us.  Mr. Radley
was dying.
     He took his time about it.  Wooden sawhorses blocked the
road at each end of the Radley lot, straw was put down on the
sidewalk, traffic was diverted to the back street.  Dr. Raynolds
parked his car in front of our house and walked to the Radley's
every time he called.  Jem and I crept around the yard for days.
At last the sawhorses were taken away, and we stood watching from
the front porch when Mr. Radley made his final journey past our
house.
     "There goes the meanest man ever God blew breath into,"
murmured Calpurnia, and she spat meditatively into the yard.  We
looked at her in surprise, for Calpurnia rarely commented on the
ways of white people.
     The neighborhood thought when Mr. Radley went under Boo
would come out, but it had another think coming: Boo's elder
brother returned from Pensacola and took Mr. Radley's place.  The
only difference between him and his father was their ages.  Jem
said Mr. Nathan Radley "bought cotton," too.  Mr. Nathan would
speak to us, however, when we said good morning, and sometimes we
saw him coming from town with a magazine in his hand.
     The more we told Dill about the Radleys, the more he wanted
to know, the longer he would stand hugging the light-pole on the
corner, the more he would wonder.
     "Wonder what he does in there," he would murmur.
"Looks like he'd just stick his head out the door."
     Jem said. "He goes out, all right, when it's pitch dark.
Miss Stephanie Crawford said she woke up in the middle of the
night one time and saw him looking straight through the window at
her...said his head was like a skull lookin' at her.  Ain't you
ever waked up at night and heard him, Dill.  He walks like this--
" Jem slid his feet through gravel.  "Why do you think Miss
Rachel locks up so tight at night?  I've seen his tracks in our
back yard many a mornin', and one night I heard him scratching on
the back screen, but he was gone time Atticus got there."
     "Wonder what he looks like?" said Dill.
     Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo:  Boo was about
six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on
raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands
were bloodstained-if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash
the blood off.  There was a long jagged scar that ran across his
face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped,
and he drooled most of the time.
"Let's try to make him come out," said Dill.  "I'd like to see
what he looks like."
     Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he had to
do was go up and knock on the front door.
     Our first raid came to pass only because Dill bet Jem The
Gray Ghost against two Tom Swifts that Jem wouldn't get any
farther than the Radley gate.  In all his life, Jem had never
declined a dare.