When my brother Jem was nearly thirteen, he suffered a bad elbow fracture.When the injury healed, and he was no longer afraid that he would never be able to play football again, he seldom thought about his injury.As a result, his left arm was a little shorter than his right; the back of his left hand was at right angles to his body when he stood or walked, and his thumb was parallel to his thigh—but he didn't mind any of that, so long as he could still communicate. Ball, tee off. After some years, long enough for the person to look back, we sometimes talk about the events that led to his injury.I insisted that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years older than me, said it started much earlier than that.He said it started the summer that Dill came to us--or rather, when Dill urged us to lure Boo Radley out.

I said, if you look further, it actually starts with Andrew Jackson.If General Jackson hadn't driven the Creek Indians across the river, Simon Finch would never have paddled up to Alabama; if he hadn't come here, where would we be?We were both old enough to settle arguments with our fists, so we went to my father, Atticus, for advice.He said we were both right. As Southerners, our family's ancestors were not well-known at the Battle of Hastings, and had no connection to either side, which was a disgrace to some of the family members.The only one we can be proud of is Simon Finch, a quack and fur trader from Cornwall, whose piety is surpassed only by miserliness.When he was in England, Simon couldn't bear the persecution of believers who claimed to be Methodists being persecuted by more open believers-because he also claimed to be Methodists. In anger, he tried every means to cross the Atlantic Ocean and came to Philadelphia. From there it went to Jamaica, then to Mobile, and finally up to St. Stephens.With John Wesley's rules and regulations on business jargon in mind, he made a fortune practicing medicine.But in the process of engaging in this profession, Simon was not happy, because he was afraid that he would not be able to resist the temptation and do things that did not honor God, such as wearing gold and silver, and well-dressed.So Simon simply put aside his mentor's precepts about the strict prohibition of owning "personal property", bought three slaves, and with their assistance, he founded the Alabama River on the banks of the Alabama River about forty miles north of St. Stephens. own homeland.He went back to St. Stephens only once, to find a wife, and the two of them built an assembly line to produce children, and the output of daughters was extraordinarily large.Simon lived to a great age and died a millionaire.

The men in the family usually stay in the "Finch Manor" founded by Simon, and make a living by growing cotton.Back in the day, the estate was almost self-sufficient: Although unremarkable compared with the surrounding mansions, Finch Manor produced all the necessities of life, only ice, flour and clothes were transported from Mobile by riverboat of. The Civil War plundered all of Simon's descendants, leaving only the land.If Simon was still alive, he would have no choice but to shake his head helplessly except to express his indignation at the war, but our family's tradition of living off the land has been maintained until the twentieth century. It was not broken by my father's generation: my father Adik S Finch went to Montgomery to study law, his brother went to Boston to study medicine, and only their sister Alexandra was left to care for the estate-she married a taciturn man who spent most of his time with him. Lying in the hammock by the river, all he can think about is whether the string hooks he has laid are full of fish.

My father came back to Maycomb after he was called to the bar and practiced.The town of Maycomb, about twenty miles east of Finch Estates, is the seat of Maycomb County.Atticus's office was in the county hall, and there was little else in it except a coat rack, a spittoon, a chess board, and a clean copy of the Alabama State Code.His earliest clients were the last two hanged men in the Maycomb County Jail.Atticus tried to persuade them to accept the state's leniency and accept second-degree murder charges to avoid death, but they were Haverfords--in Maycomb County, the name is synonymous with "jackass."It is said that the Haverford brothers, misunderstood by hearing that a mare had been impounded for no reason, went so far as to beat and kill the number one blacksmith in Maycomb County, and did so in the presence of three witnesses.They insisted that simply asserting that the "son of a bitch" brought it on himself was a good defense, and insisted on pleading not guilty to first-degree murder.As a result, Atticus could do nothing for his client but to be with them when they were on their way.This event was probably the beginning of his later distaste for criminal proceedings.

During the first five years of his practice in Maycomb, Atticus was the most conscientious about saving money, and for the next few years he used the money he earned to help his younger brother through his education.John Hall Finch, ten years my father's junior, chose to study medicine because cotton was not selling at a price.Still, after Atticus helped Uncle Jack get on his feet and support himself, his legal income was pretty good.As a Maycomb County native, he liked Maycomb; All are related by blood or marriage. Maycomb is quite old, and in my first memory it was a tired old town.On rainy days, the streets turned into red puddles of mud; the sidewalks were overgrown with weeds, and the county government building in the center of the square was crumbling.For some reason, the weather seemed hotter then than it is now: a black dog was suffering under the summer sun; a bony mule harnessed to a cart stood in the shade of the scorching oak trees in the square, wagging its tail to drive fly.Men's crisp collars become limp before nine o'clock in the morning; women take a shower before noon, and then wash again after taking a nap at three o'clock in the afternoon, and wait until night falls, women who have put on talcum powder They were all sweaty and sweet, like soft cakes sprinkled with icing sugar.

In those days, the pace of life was slow.People wandered across the square at a leisurely pace, wandering in and out of the surrounding shops, taking their time for nothing.The days are long and seem to last more than twenty-four hours.With nowhere to go, nothing to buy, and little spare money in their pockets, and nothing to see even outside Maycomb County, there was no need to hurry.For some, those were Pollyanna times: the men, women and children of Maycomb County had only recently learned that they had nothing to fear but fear itself. Our family lived on Main Street in the residential part of town—Atticus, Jem, and I, plus Calpurnia who cooked for us.Jem and I were content with having a father who played with us, read to us, and was always kind and impartial to both of us.

Calpurnia was a different story.She is covered with bones and sharp edges; she is short-sighted and has a squint; her palms are as wide as a bed board and twice as hard.She was always ordering me out of the kitchen; always asking me why I couldn't be as good as he was, knowing Jem was older than me, and often making me go home when I didn't want to.Our wars were long and always one-sided: Calpurnia always won big because Atticus was always on her side.She's been with us since Jem was born, and I've known her dominance for as long as I can remember. My mother died when I was two, so I never felt lost.Her name was Graham, and she was from Montgomery; Atticus had met her when he was first elected to the state legislature.He was middle-aged then, and she was fifteen years younger than him.Jem was the fruit of their first year of marriage, four years later I was born, and two years later my mother died of a sudden heart attack.Some say it's a family tradition.I don't miss my mother, but I think Jem misses her a lot.He clearly remembered his mother's voice and smile.Sometimes we'd be playing a game together, and he'd let out a long sigh and go to the back of the garage to play by himself.Whenever this happens, I know it's best not to bother him.

When I was nearly six and Jem was ten, our summer zone, as far as Calpurnia's shouts could reach our ears, was two houses north to Dubose. The wife's house, three houses south to the Radley compound.It never occurred to us to cross the line, because the Radleys lived with an unidentified fellow whose appearance alone was enough to keep us honest for days, and Mrs. Dubose was a A fearsome demon. It was during that summer that Dill came into our lives. One day, early in the morning, we were in the back yard, about to start our game, when we heard a noise in the cabbage bed next door at Miss Rachel Haverford's.We went over to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy—for Miss Rachel's rat terrier was due, and we found someone sitting there watching us.He sat on the ground and looked not much taller than Kale.We stare at him without saying a word until he says hello first:

"Hey." "Hey, hello." Jem's tone was kind. "My name is Charles Baker Harris," he said, "and I can read." "So what?" I asked back. "I just thought you'd be glad to know I could read. If you need to read something, I can help..." "How old are you?" asked Jem. "Four and a half?" "Almost seven years old." "Oh, no wonder," said Jem, gesturing at me with his thumb. "There's Scout over there. She could read as soon as she was born, and she ain't gone to school. You're almost seven, and you look like a real kid." Little."

"I'm small, but I'm old," he said. Jem brushed his hair back from his forehead and looked at him carefully again. "Why don't you come and play, Charles Baker Harris?" he added, "My God, what a funny name!" "Not even your name is funny. Aunt Rachel said your name was Jeremy Atticus Finch." Jem scowled. "I'm big enough to deserve that name. Your name is longer than you are, a foot longer than you, I dare say." "Everyone calls me Dill," said Dill, scrambling under the fence. "It's easier to climb up than to go under," I said. "Where did you come from?"

According to Dill, his family lived in Meridian, Mississippi, and this time he came to spend the summer with his aunt, Miss Rachel, and he would stay in Maycomb every summer after that.They used to be from Maycomb County too, and my mother worked for a photographer in Meridian and once sent his picture to a "pretty baby" contest and won a fiver.She gave Dill the money, and Dill took it to twenty movies. "We don't have any movies here, except sometimes there's one about Jesus in the county hall," Jem said. "Have you seen any good ones?" Dill said he'd seen "Dracula," and Jem was impressed by the show. "Tell us about it," he said. Dill is a fresh figure.He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned all the way to his shirt; his hair was snow-white and fluffed to his head like duck down; he was a year older than me, but quite a bit shorter.When he told the old vampire stories, his blue eyes flickered and flickered; sometimes he would burst out laughing happily, and he habitually reached out to pull the bristling hair in the middle of his forehead. When Dill finally talked about Dracula turning to dust, Jem said that the movie sounded better than the book, and I asked Dill where his father was: "Why didn't you mention him at all?" ah?" "I don't have a father." "Is he dead?" "no……" "If he ain't dead, then you've got Dad, right?" Dill blushed and Jem cut me off, apparently Dill had passed his scrutiny as an acceptable partner.From then on, our summers were spent on a routine of self-sufficiency.These routines include renovating the treehouse built on the two juxtaposed neem trees in the backyard, yelling and whistling, and then bringing us back to life based on Oliver Optik, Victor Appleton, and Ed An adaptation of the novel by Gar Rice Burroughs is staged in its entirety.This last event made us all the more grateful to have Dill on board, because he's now playing the roles that were thrust upon me — the apes in Tarzan, Crabbe in Rover the Kid Mr. Turley, and Mr. Damon in Tom Swift.We thus discover that Dill is a pocket version of Merlin, full of outlandish ideas, uncanny desires, and magical fantasies. By the end of August, however, our repertoire had been flattened by countless repetitions, and that's when Dill gave us an idea: bring out Boo Radley. The Radley mansion fascinates Dill.Our warnings and persuasions fell on deaf ears, and the house attracted Dill as the moon attracts the sea, but only to the lamppost around the corner, not far from the Radley gate. There is a safe distance.He always stood there, hugging the thick pillar, staring and thinking. There was a sharp turn a little past our house, and the Radley house was just around the corner.We were facing his porch when we went south; the sidewalk turned around here and went around the house.It was a low house, once white, with a deep front porch and green shutters, but long since gone, as gray as the surrounding yard.Rain-battered shingles drooped languidly over the porch eaves; a few oak trees shaded the sun; a remnant of a picket fence, rickety drunkenly, guarded the front yard—the one known as "the sweep." The place had never been swept, and the yard grew lush with Johnson's Grass and Rabbit Tobacco. A malevolent ghost lives in the house.People say that, but Jem and I never saw it.It is said that he would sneak out at night when the moon went down, and secretly peep into other people's windows.If someone's rhododendrons are damaged by the cold, it must be that he blew on the flowers.He couldn't get away with all the petty theft and the like that happened in Maycomb.For a while, the town's residents were gripped by a morbid string of nocturnal crimes: chickens and pets kept getting murdered.Although the perpetrator, Crazy Eddie, fell into Buck's Bay and drowned, people still stared at the Radley house, not wanting to dispel their initial suspicions.Any Negro never passed the Radley house at night, but crossed to the opposite sidewalk, whistling all the way.The playground of the Maycomb School is connected to the backyard of the Radley family. There are several tall walnut trees beside the chicken coop in the yard. Some fruits always fall to this side of the school playground, but those walnuts are scattered on the ground. I didn't dare to touch it, because eating the Radley's walnuts would kill you.If someone hit a baseball in the Radley yard, no one would try to get it back, it would be lost. A shadow had hung over that house long before Jem and I were born.It was an unforgivable eccentricity in Maycomb that the Radleys, though welcome anywhere in town, chose to live in isolation.They do not go to church, which is Maycomb's chief entertainment, but choose to worship at home; Never joined a crusade.Mr. Radley went out to town every morning at half-past eleven and returned promptly at twelve o'clock, sometimes with a brown paper bag in his hand which the neighbors assumed contained groceries.I never knew what Mr. Radley was doing—Jem said his job was to "buy cotton," which was a euphemism for "doing nothing," but, for as long as anyone could remember, Mr. Radley Live here with his wife and their two sons. The Radleys' doors and windows were always closed on Sundays, which was out of tune with the Maycomb way of life: being closed meant someone in the family was sick or it was cold.Every Sunday afternoon, everyone will visit relatives and friends in a dignified manner: the ladies put on their corsets, the men put on their coats, and the children put on their shoes.Yet the Radleys' neighbors never walked up their front steps to say "hi" on a Sunday afternoon.The Radley house didn't have a screen door.Have they installed screen doors before?I asked Atticus that question once; Atticus said yes, but that was before I was born. Neighborhood lore had it that the youngest Radley son had befriended some of the Cunninghams from Old Sarum as a teenager.The Cunninghams were a large and disorganized family in northern Maycomb County.Little Radley hung out with the gang, the closest thing to a gang in the town of Maycomb.Although they didn't do anything, it was enough to make the people in the town talk about it, and they were publicly warned by the three priests.They hung around the barber shop, took the bus to Abbotsville to see a movie on Sundays, attended dances at the county's riverside casino and the Dewdrop Inn fishing camp, and even sipped moonshine whiskey stashed in tree stump holes.No one in Maycomb had the courage to tell Mr. Radley that his son was hanging out with a bunch of duds. One night, in a state of euphoria, the delinquent teens drove a crappy borrowed car around the town square in reverse.Mr. Connor, the old Maycomb sheriff, tried to catch them. They not only resisted arrest, but locked Mr. Connor in the annex of the county building.The townspeople decided that something must be done; Mr. Connor said he knew every one of the gang and they must be brought to justice.The teenagers were taken to juvenile court and charged with disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, assault and injury, and using vulgar language in front of women.The judge asked Mr. Connor where the last one had come from, and Mr. Connor replied that they were shouting so loudly that he was sure it would reach every lady in Maycomb.The judge decided to send these delinquent teenagers to the state work-study school.Sometimes people send their kids to work-school just to provide them with food and decent housing—it's not a prison, and there's nothing to be ashamed of.But Mr. Radley thinks otherwise.He assured the judge that if Arthur was released, he would take charge of supervision and prevent Arthur from getting into any trouble.The judge knew Mr. Radley would do what he said, and he was more than happy to do so. Several other teenagers went to work-study schools, received the best secondary education in the state, and one of them graduated from Auburn University's engineering school on a work-study program.The Radleys had been closed since that time, on weekdays and on Sundays; and the boy hadn't been seen since, for fifteen years. But then one day, when Jem was just beginning to remember, people started talking about Boo Radley, and a few people saw it, but Jem missed it.He said Atticus never said much about the Radleys, and when he asked, Atticus's only answer was to let him mind his own business and let the Radleys mind theirs, This is their right.But after that happened, Jem said Atticus shook his head a lot and said "Mmmmmmmm." Jem got most of his information from Miss Stephanie Crawford--a well-known gossip in the neighborhood who claimed to know all about it.According to Miss Stephanie, the weirdo was sitting in the living room cutting out articles from the Maycomb Tribune to paste in his scrapbook.Then his father came in.As Mr. Radley passed Boogie, Boogie stabbed the scissors into his father's leg, pulled them out, wiped his trousers, and went on cutting the newspaper. Mrs. Radley ran screaming into the street, shouting at the top of her lungs that Arthur was going to kill them all.But when the sheriff arrived, he saw the strange man still sitting in the living room, still cutting the Maycomb Tribune.He was thirty-three years old then. Miss Stephanie said that at the time it was suggested that Boo would be sent to Tuscaloosa to recuperate for a while, and old Mr. Radley said that no one in his family would go to a mental institution.The weirdo isn't crazy, he's just overwrought sometimes.Mr. Radley grudgingly backed down and said it was okay to lock Boogie up, but insisted that they not make any charges against Boogie because he wasn't a criminal.The sheriff couldn't bear to put him in jail with the blacks, so the weirdo was locked in the basement of the county government building. The scene of the weirdo moving back from the basement was also a blur in Jem's memory.Miss Stephanie said someone at the town council had told Mr Radley that if he didn't get Boo back home and kept him in the damp, musty basement, he was going to die.Besides, the county government cannot always be so generous. No one knew what intimidation tactics Mr. Radley used to keep Boogie from showing up.Jem's guess was that Mr. Radley chained him to the bed most of the time.Atticus said no, that wasn't the case, there were ways of turning a man into a ghost. I vividly remember seeing Mrs. Radley occasionally open the front door and go out to the edge of the porch to water some of the canna plants she had planted.However, Jem and I saw Mr. Radley going to and from town every day.He was a lean man, rough-skinned, with dull, almost luminous eyes; high cheekbones, a wide mouth with a thin upper lip and a thick lower lip.Miss Stephanie said that he was a man of great integrity and took God's word as his only guideline.We took her word for granted, for Mr. Radley's posture was always straight. He never said a word to us.Whenever he passed us, we dropped our heads, looked at the ground and said, "Good morning, sir." He always answered with a cough.Mr. Radley's eldest son lived in Pensacola, came home every Christmas, and was one of the very few people we ever saw who passed through his front door.People said that the house had not been alive since the day Mr. Radley brought Arthur home. But one day Atticus warned us out of the blue that if we made any noise in the yard he'd drive us around and put Calpurnia in charge of us while he wasn't home.The reason was that Mr. Radley was dying. He did not die in a blink of an eye.The intersection on both sides of his house was blocked by sawhorses, and a layer of straw was laid on the sidewalk, so pedestrians and vehicles could only pass through the back street.Whenever Dr. Reynolds came to visit, he would park in front of our house and walk to the Radleys.Jem and I sneaked around the yard for days.At last the sawhorses were removed, and we stood on the front porch watching Mr. Radley pass our house for the last time. "The worst man God ever made is gone," Calpurnia murmured, spitting into the yard with a thoughtful expression on her face.We cast a surprised look at her, because she rarely commented on the behavior of white people on weekdays. The neighbors in the neighborhood thought that the weirdo would show up after Mr. Radley left, but they never thought that the weirdo's brother came home from Pensacola and took Mr. Radley's place.The only difference between him and his father is age.Nathan Radley, too, was a "cotton buyer," in Jem's words.But anyway, when we greeted him and said "good morning", he would answer us.Sometimes we saw him come back from town with the magazine in his hand. The more we talked about the Radley story, the more Dill became curious and brooded over the lamppost. "I don't know what he's doing in the house," he always muttered. "It looks like he stuck his head in the door just now." Jem said: "He'll come out when it's dark, sure." Miss Stephanie said she woke up in the middle of the night once to find him staring at her through the glass window... and said he His head was like a skull, staring at her. Didn't you ever wake him up in the middle of the night, Dill? He walks like this..." Jem scratched his feet on the gravel Slide, "Think about it, why does Miss Rachel close the door tightly at night? Many mornings, I found his footprints in the backyard, and one night, I heard him scratching his back The screen, and as soon as Atticus came out he slipped away." "What does he look like?" Dill asked. Jem's description sounded plausible, too: Judging by his footprints, Boo was about six and a half feet tall; he ate raw squirrels, and as many cats as he could catch, so he always had blood on his hands—if you ate raw In the case of animals, the blood stains can never be washed off.There was a long jagged scar on his face, his teeth were yellow and rotting, and his eyes were bulging and protruding, and he drooled all day and night. "Let's try to get him out," Dill said. "I want to see what he looks like." Our first foray came into action because Dill bet a copy of The Gray Ghost against Jem's two Tom Swifts that he wouldn't venture past the Radley gates.Jem had never turned down a challenge in his life. Jem pondered for three days.I think he loves honor more than his head, because Dill took him down so easily.On the first day, Dill said to him, "You're scared." "I'm not scared, I just don't want to offend people," Jem retorted.The next day Dill said again, "You're a coward to put your foot in the front yard." Jem said that was total nonsense, and that he passed the Radley house every day when he went to school. "I always trot all the way." I said. But on the third day, Dill stopped him with a few words.Dill told Jem that the people he knew in Meridian weren't so timid as the Maycombs, and he'd never seen a Maycomb so timid. These words were enough to make Jem's blood boil, and he strode to the corner.He stopped, leaning against a lamppost, and gazed at the rickety yard door, which had been fitted to its frame with homemade hinges. "I hope you've figured it out, Dill Harris, and you're going to get us all killed by him," said Jem, after we joined him. , don't blame me. You have to remember, this is all your idea. " "You're still scared." Dill muttered patiently. Jem wanted to convince Dill of his bravery, saying, "I just can't think of a way to get him out without him getting caught." Besides, he had to think about his sister. safety. As soon as I said that, I knew he was really scared.The last time Jem thought about me was when I bet he wouldn't dare jump off the roof. "What would you do if I fell to my death?" he said.Later, when he plucked up the courage to jump down and landed on the ground safe and sound, he immediately threw his sense of responsibility to Java.It was only now that he was facing Dill's challenge about the Radleys that he remembered it again. "Do you want to run away from the challenge?" Dill said. "If so, then..." "Dill, this kind of thing has to be thought about," said Jem. "Let me think about it for a second... It's like letting a turtle show its head..." "So what to do?" Dill asked. "There was a match struck under it." I warned Jem if he set fire to the Radley house I would tell Atticus. Dill said striking a match under a tortoise was gross. "It ain't nasty, it's just prodding it--not throwing it in the fire," muttered Jem indignantly. "How do you know the match won't hurt it?" "Fool, a tortoise can't feel pain." "Ha! Have you ever been a turtle?" "Hey, Dill! Let me see... I think we might be able to shake it hard..." Jem stood there thinking and thinking, but he couldn't make up his mind for a long time, so Dill had to make a tolerant concession: "As long as you run over and touch the house, it doesn't count as your avoiding the challenge. Give it to you." Jem's eyes lit up. "Touch the house, that's all?" Dill nodded. "It's a deal? I don't want to hear you yelling about something else just after running back." "It's a deal, that's all," Dill said. "If he sees you running into the yard, he'll probably come out after you, and that's when Scooter and I jump on him and hold him down until he understands we're not until it hurts him." We left the corner, crossed the sidewalk in front of the Radley house, and stopped at the gate. "Okay, go ahead," Dill said, "Me and Scout are right behind you." "I'll go right away," said Jem, "don't hurry." He walked to a corner of the courtyard and turned back again, frowning and scratching his head, as if studying the obvious terrain carefully to decide how best to launch an attack. At this point, I snorted contemptuously at him. Jem flung open the yard door, sprinted to the side of the house, slapped the wall hard, and then turned and rushed back, leaving us behind without even taking a look Was his raid a success?Dill and I ran out on his heels as hard as we could, and when we arrived safely on the front porch of my house, the three of us were out of breath before looking back. The old house had not changed at all, and still looked listless, but when we looked at it from across the street, we seemed to see the shutters move a little inside.A quick flash.So lightly, almost imperceptibly, that the house fell silent again.