Chapter 5 chapter Five

Sure enough, I was nagging Jem endlessly, and I was relieved that he finally stopped being stubborn and our show took a break.He insisted, however, that Atticus hadn't stopped us from going on, so we could do the same; and that even if Atticus had said it, he could have contrived to fool him: just change the names of the characters , you won’t be accused of playing tricks. Dill wholeheartedly endorsed the plan of action.He's a hideous-looking nuisance now, who hangs around Jem's ass all day long.This summer, he proposed to me at first, but he forgot about it in a blink of an eye.At that time, he was chasing me and stalking me, treating me as his private property, saying that I was the only girl he fell in love with in his life, but then he turned a blind eye to me.I beat him twice, but it didn't help, it made him closer to Jem.The two of them spent their days in the treehouse, making up plots and making plans, calling me only when a third person was needed.However, I had deliberately stayed out of their brash schemes during that time, and it bothered me to be called a "girl" by them, and I was mostly with Miss Maudie in the later evenings of that summer. Sitting on the front porch of her house while away.

Jem and I had always been free to run about in Miss Maudie's yard as long as we didn't touch her rhododendrons, but our relationship to her was not clearly defined.Before Jem and Dill kicked me out of their plans, she was just a neighborhood lady, but kinder than average. We have reached a kind of tacit agreement between us and Miss Maudie: we can play on her lawn and eat the grapes she planted, but we can't jump on the pergola, and we can enjoy the big garden behind her house. Random exploration activities on a piece of land.The terms were so loose that we rarely spoke to her, just carefully maintaining our delicately balanced relationship, but Jem and Dill's approach invisibly brought me closer to her.

Miss Maudie hated her house, and it seemed to her a waste of time to be in it.A widow, she was a chameleon: she worked in the flower beds in an old straw hat and men's overalls, but she didn't appear on the porch until five o'clock in the afternoon after she had bathed At that time, the awe-inspiring beauty she displayed could conquer an entire street. She loves everything that grows on the earth, even the weeds.There is one exception: if she finds a Cyperus radix plant in her yard, it's almost like the Battle of the Marne all over again.She brought a tin basin, snapped it on with lightning speed, and then sprayed a poisonous substance from the bottom.According to her, the herbicide is so powerful it will kill us if we don't dodge it.

"Why don't you just pull it out?" I wondered as I watched her storm the grass less than three inches long. "Pull it out?! Child, pull it out?!" She reached out to pick up the wilted grass, and twisted the thin grass stem with her thumb, and the tiny grass seeds fell out of it. "You see, one little cyperus can ruin a whole yard. Look at this, when it dries up in the fall, and the wind blows them all over Maycomb County!" said Miss Maudie grimly. It was like a great plague described in the Old Testament. She spoke crisply, not from Maycomb County.She always called us by our full names, and a grin revealed a pair of tiny gold points set into her canine teeth.I was so envious of it that I hoped I could have a few of them in the future.She said, "Look at this." Her tongue clicked, and the whole set of dentures popped out.This cordial gesture deepened our friendship.

Whenever Jem and Dill stopped their favorite tricks, Miss Maudie's kindness went to them both.Miss Maudie had a talent which we had benefitted from, which she had kept hidden from us until now--she made cakes unrivaled in the neighbourhood.When we made her our own, every time she baked a cake she would make one big and three smaller ones, and yell at us across the street: "Jem Finch, Scooter Finch, Charles Come on, Baker Harris!" We often get rewarded for running fast. Summer evenings are long and peaceful.Miss Maudie and I used to sit in silence on the front porch of her house and watch the sun go down and the sky turn from gold to pink and flocks of purple swallows fly low over our house and disappear into the school Behind the rows of roofs.

One night I asked her: "Miss Maudie, do you think Boo Radley is alive?" "His name is Arthur, and he's alive," she said, rocking slowly in her big oak rocking chair. "Have you smelled my mimosa flowers? It smells like an angel's tonight." breathe." "Well, I smell it, ma'am. How do you know?" "Know what, child?" "That monster—Mr. Arthur is still alive?" "What a dreadful question. But I think it's a dreadful subject. I know he's alive, Jean Louise, because I haven't seen him carried out yet."

"Maybe he's dead and they stuffed him down the chimney." "Where did you get this idea?!" "Jem said that's what he thinks they do." "Tut-tut-tut. He's looking more and more like Jack Finch." Miss Maudie and my uncle, Jack Finch, Atticus' brother, had known each other since childhood.They were about the same age and had grown up together at Finch Manor.Miss Maudie was the daughter of Dr. Frank Buford, the owner of the adjoining estate.Dr. Buford was in medicine, but he was obsessed with everything that grew on the earth, so he was always poor.Uncle Jack ran a window planter business in Nashville, and he put all his passion into it, worked hard, and was always rich.We saw Uncle Jack every Christmas, and every Christmas he shouted at the top of his voice to Miss Maudie who lived across the street to come and marry him.Miss Maudie would also answer by shouting, "Jack Finch, louder for the post office to hear, I haven't heard yet." Marriage proposals are weird, but Uncle Jack has always been a weird guy.He just wanted to piss off Miss Maudie, as he said, but he'd been trying for forty years without success.He said he was the last man in the world that Miss Maudie wanted to marry and the one she would most like to mock, and that his best defense was to give her some mental stimulation.We both heard what he said very clearly.

"Arthur Radley just stays in the house, that's all," said Miss Maudie. "If you don't want to go out, don't you stay at home?" "Yes, ma'am. But I still want to come out. Why doesn't he want to go out?" Miss Maudie's eyes narrowed. "We've all heard the story." "But I never knew why. No one ever mentioned it to me." Miss Maudie replaced her dentures and said: "You know, old Mr. Radley is a Baptist who washes his feet..." "You too, right?" "Son, I'm not that die-hard. I'm just an ordinary Baptist."

"Aren't you all foot-washing?" "That's right, I used the bathtub at home." "But then we won't be able to take communion with you..." Miss Maudie evidently thought primitive baptism easier to explain than privileged communion, and she said to me: "Foot-washing Baptists regard all pleasures as sins. You know? One Saturday, A few of them came out of the woods and passed by my yard and said to me that I and the flowers I planted will go to hell." "Your flowers will go to hell too?" "Yeah. They'll go through the fire with me. Those people think I'm spending too much time outdoors and not enough time sitting inside and reading my Bible."

I couldn't help but picture Miss Maudie languishing for eternity in one of the various hells the Puritans called, and it made my confidence in the Gospels very weak.To tell the truth, Miss Maudie was always bitter and mean, and she didn't go from house to house like Miss Stephanie did.But while anyone with a smattering of brains would question Miss Stephanie, Jem and I had a great deal of confidence in Miss Maudie.She never complained about us, never played cat-and-mouse games with us, and took no interest in our private affairs.She is our friend.How could such a reasonable man end up in hell and never recover?It's really puzzling.

"Miss Maudie, it's not fair. You're the nicest person I know." Miss Maudie smiled brightly. "Thank you. The problem is that the Baptists who wash the feet think that women are inherently sinful. You see, they take the Bible literally." "Is that why Mr. Arthur keeps himself at home? To avoid women?" "I have no idea." "I don't think it makes sense at all. I feel that if Mr. Arthur desires to go to heaven, he should at least come out of the house and hang out on the front porch. Atticus said God loved the world as the world Love yourself as much as..." Miss Maudie stopped her rocking chair and her tone became stiff. "You're too young to understand these things," she said. "Sometimes someone's Bible is worse than someone's - say your father's - bottle of whiskey." I was horrified. "Atticus never drank whiskey," I said. "He never drank a drop in his life—oh, no, he did. He said he tried it once and didn't like it." Miss Maudie laughed. "I'm not talking about your father," she explained. "I'm saying that Atticus Finch, even when he's dead drunk, can't be as vicious as some people are at their sane. The world is There's a class of people who—they're so worried about the afterlife that they don't even learn how to behave in this life. You can just walk down the street and see the consequences." "Do you think it's all true? What they say about Mr.--Mr. Arthur?" "What are these things?" I told her. "Three-quarters of this is made up by Negroes, and the other quarter is Stephanie Crawford's gossip," said Miss Maudie coldly, "Stephanie Crawford once And told me she woke up in the middle of the night and found him lying on the window staring at her. I said to her, Stephanie, how did you do it? Did you move the bed to make room for him? This made her shut up for a while." I believe in the power of this statement.Miss Maudie's voice was enough to shut anyone up. "That's not the case at all, child," she said. "It's a sad house. I remember Arthur Radley as a boy. No matter what anyone said he did, he always talked to me. Be polite, be as polite as possible.” "Do you think he's crazy?" Miss Maudie shook her head. "Even if he wasn't crazy before, he's about the same now. We'll never understand what other people have experienced. Who knows what's going on and what secrets are hidden in the closed doors of every house..." "Atticus was as much to me and Jem in the yard as he was in the house." I felt it was my duty to defend my father. "My dear boy, I was just trying to explain things to you, and I didn't take your father into account at all. But now I will say that Atticus Finch is in his own house and he is out." It's the same. Would you like to take some pound cakes home?" Of course I am very happy. I awoke the next morning to find Jem and Dill talking in the back yard.As usual, they let me go as soon as I got close. "I'm not going. Tell you, Jem Finch, I have my share of the yard. I have as much right as you to play here as I please." Immediately Dill and Jem murmured together, then turned to me again. "If you want to stay, you have to do as we say," Dill warned me. "Ah-ha!" I said, "who's got so high up all of a sudden?" "If you don't agree to do what we say, we won't tell you anything." Dill continued to put on airs. "You look like you grew ten inches overnight! Well, what's the matter?" Jem said in a calm tone: "We're going to send Boo Radley a message." "How to send it?" I tried my best to suppress the fear welling up in my heart.It doesn't matter what Miss Maudie says--she's old and comfortable on her front porch every day, but we're different. It turned out that Jem was just going to thread a letter on a fishing rod and poke it through the shutter.If anyone passed by, Dill rang the bell. Dill raised his right hand—he held my mother's silver dinner bell. "I'll go around the side of the house now," said Jem. "We scouted from across the street yesterday, and there's a window leaf loose there. I think maybe I can at least stick the letter on the sill." "Jem..." "You've joined the gang now, you can't run away, you can only join us in the action, Miss Jiao!" "All right, all right, but I don't want to be sentinel. Jem, somebody--" "No, you have to keep watch. You watch the back of the house, and Dill watches the front and the street, and rings the bell if anyone comes by, understand?" "All right then. What did you write him?" "We very politely invited him to come out and tell us what he was doing in the house — we said we wouldn't hurt him and we'd buy him ice cream," Dill said. "You are crazy, he will kill us!" Dill said, "That was my idea. I figured he might feel better if he came out and sat with us for a while." "How do you know he's not feeling well?" "Well, how would you feel if you were locked up for a hundred years and had nothing to eat but cats? I dare say he's got a beard all over here..." "Like your father?" "My dad doesn't have a beard, he..." Dill suddenly stopped talking, as if he was thinking about something. "Aha, got it," I said, "you were just bragging about how you got off the train alone, and that your father had a black beard..." "He shaved off his beard last summer, and now you have nothing to say! By the way, I have a letter to prove it—he sent me two dollars!" "Keep bragging—I guess he sent you a ranger uniform! Why don't you ever show it off, say! Go on bragging, boy..." Dill Harris can boast a lot.In addition to the ramblings above, he also claimed to have flown seventeen mail planes, been to Nova Scotia, seen elephants, and his grandpa, Brigadier General Joseph Wheeler, left him a sword. "Shut up both of you," said Jem.He quickly ran to the base of the house, took a yellow bamboo pole and got out. "Do you think it's long enough to stretch across the sidewalk?" "If you go and touch the house, you shouldn't use the fishing rod." I said, "Why don't you just kick down the door?" "It's—is—two things," said Jem, "how many times do I have to tell you?" Dill took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Jem, and the three of us walked toward the old house with trepidation.Dill stopped by the lamppost directly in front of the house, and Jem and I shuffled to the sidewalk that ran parallel to the house.After Jem had settled, I took a few steps forward and stood where I could see the other side of the corner. "All is well," I reported, "not a soul in sight." Jem looked again at Dill on the other side of the sidewalk, and Dill nodded at him. Jem threaded the letter on the top of his fishing rod and stretched it across the yard to the window he had chosen.It was a pity that the pole was a few inches too short, and Jem leaned forward desperately.I saw him poking and tossing for a long time, then left my sentry post and walked towards him. "Why can't it come off," he muttered, "and even if it did, it wouldn't stay there. Scout, you get back on the street." I went back to my post and stared at the deserted street around the corner, glancing back now and then at Jem, who was still trying tirelessly to get the letter onto the windowsill.But the letter kept falling to the floor, and he kept poking it up and trying again and again until it was so messed up that I don't think Boo Radley would have been able to read it at all if he got his hands on it.I was looking up the street when I heard a bell ringing loudly. Shrugging my shoulders, I turned tremblingly to face Boo Radley and his bloody fangs; to my surprise, I saw Dill shaking desperately in Atticus' face. bell. Jem looked so discomfited I couldn't bear to tell him I had warned him.He walked over step by step, dragging the bamboo pole on the sidewalk. Atticus said, "Stop ringing the bell." Dill hastened to grab the hammer, and there was a silence, and I wished he'd rang the bell again to make some noise.Atticus pushed his hat back and put his hands on his hips. "Jem," he began, "what are you doing?" "Nothing." "Don't play around with me. Tell me." "I—we just wanted to give Mr. Radley something." "What do you want to give him?" "Just a letter." "show me." Jem handed over the dirty slip of paper.Atticus took it and began to read it with difficulty. "Why do you want Mr. Radley out?" Dill replied, "We figured he might like to be with us..." Atticus shot him a sideways look, and he swallowed again. "Son," Atticus said to Jem, "listen, I'm only telling you this one time: stop torturing that man. And you two." What Mr. Radley did was his business.If he wants to get out of the house, he will.If he wanted to stay out, he also had the right to stay inside, away from inquisitive kids. "An inquisitive kid" is a polite way of saying it for people like us.Would we be happy if Atticus barged in without knocking when we were in our rooms at night?In fact, what we just did to Mr. Radley amounted to an intrusion.What Mr. Radley is doing may seem eccentric to us, but to him there is nothing out of the ordinary.Besides, didn't it ever cross our minds that the decent way of meeting people was through the front door, not through the side windows?In the end he forbade us to go near the house unless invited; Anyone in this town... "We didn't tease him, we didn't tease him..." said Jem, "we just..." "So you've been busy with this, haven't you?" "Make fun of him?" "No," Atticus said, "you put his personal story into a play and show it to the neighbors, so that everyone can be inspired by it." Jem seemed a little smug: "I didn't say we were playing him, I didn't!" Atticus smiled grimly. "You've just told me," he said, "from now on no more nonsense, including every one of you." Jem looked at him, dumbfounded. "Don't you want to be a lawyer?" Our father Atticus pursed his lips so tightly into a line that I really doubted he was trying to suppress a smile and pretend to be stern. Jem was silent, for he knew that sophistry was useless.When Atticus went in to get the file he had forgotten to bring to work that morning, Jem woke up like a dream: he had fallen into the oldest lawyer's trap that ever existed.He stood there respectfully, some distance from the front steps, watching Atticus leave the house and walk toward town.When he guessed that Atticus couldn't hear him, he shouted at his back: "I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but now I'm not so sure!"