I was nearly fifty years old. Once Jem and Scout asked me why I was so old, I said I got started late. I was much older than the parents of Jem and Scout’s school contemporaries.
Jem was football crazy. I was never too tired to keep-away, but when Jem wanted to tackle me I would say, “I’m too old for that, son.”
Sometimes I thought Jem and Scout thought I couldn’t do anything because I was fifty. I worked in an office and not in a drugstore. I did not drive a dump-truck for the county, I was not a sheriff, I did not farm, work in a garage, or do anything that could possibly arouse the admiration of anyone, as Scout would say. Besides all that, I wore glasses. I was nearly blind in my left eye, and would say that left eyes are the tribal curse of the Finches. Whenever I wanted to see something well, I turned my head and looked from my right eye. Sometimes I would hear Scout talking to Jem about me. Scout would say that I did not do things her schoolmates’ fathers did: I never went hunting, I did not play poker or fish or drink or smoke. I just sat in the livingroom and read. One day as I came home for dinner I heard Scout say to Jem, “Atticus would not remain as inconspicuous as we wished him to: this year, the school has been buzzing with talk about him defending Tom Robinson.” Later, I thought about Tom Robinson and how people would judge him for being a different color and judge me because I was defending him.
When I gave Jem and Scout their air-riffles I wouldn’t teach them to shoot. Jack instructed them in the rudiments thereof; he said I wasn’t interested in guns. I said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
The next day when I came home to dinner I found Scout crouched down aiming across the street. “What are you shooting at?” I said.
“Miss Maudie’s rear end,” said Scout.
I turned and saw Scout’s generous target bending over Miss Maudie’s bushes. I pushed my hat to the back of my head and crossed the street. “Maudie,” I called, “I thought I’d better warn you. You’re in considerable peril.”
Miss Maudie straightened up and looked toward Scout. She said, “Atticus, you are a devil from hell.”
When I returned I told Scout to break camp. “Don’t you ever let me catch you pointing that gun at anybody again,” I said.
Later, Jem asked me if I was going out for the Methodists and I said I’d break my neck if I did, I was just too old for that sort of thing. The Methodists were trying to pay off their church mortgage, and had challenged the Baptists to a game of touch football.
One Saturday I received a phone call at work from Calpurnia.
“Mr. Finch!” she shouted. “This is Cal. I swear to God there’s a mad dog down the street a piece-he’s coming this way, yes sir, he’s- Mr. Finch...”
I decided to go home immediately with Mr. Heck Tate. Mr. Heck Tate was the sheriff of Maycomb County. When Mr. Heck Tate and I reached the porch, Jem opened the door.
“Stay inside, son,” I said. “Where is he, Cal?”
“He oughta be here by now,” said Calpurnia, pointing down the street.
“Not runnin’, is he?” asked Mr. Tate.
“Naw sir, he’s in the twitchin’ stage, Mr. Heck,” said Calpurnia.
“Should we go after him, Heck?” I asked.
“We better wait, Mr. Finch. They usually go in a straight line, but you never can tell. He might follow the curve-hope he does or he’ll go straight in the Radley back yard. Let’s wait a minute,” said Mr. Heck.
“Don’t think he’ll get in the Radley Yard,” I said. “Fence’ll stop him. He’ll probably follow the road…”
I put my foot on the rung of a chair and rubbed my hands slowly down of my thigh.
“There he is,” I said softly.
“Look at him,” whispered Jem. “Mr. Heck said they walked in a straight line. He can’t even stay in the road.”
“He looks more sick than anything,” said Scout.
“Let anything get in front of him and he’ll come straight at it.”
Mr. Tate put his hand to his forehead and leaned forward.
“He’s got it all right, Mr. Finch.”
“He’s lookin’ for a place to die,” said Jem.
Mr. Tate turned around. “He’s far from dead, Jem, he hasn’t got started yet.”
I said, “He’s within range, Heck. You better get him before he goes down the side street- Lord knows who’s around the corner. Go inside, Cal.”
“Take him, Mr. Finch.” Mr. Tate handed me the rifle.
“Don’t waste time, Heck,” I said. “Go on.”
“Mr. Finch, this is a one-shot job.”
I shook my head vehemently: “Don’t just stand there, Heck! He won’t wait all day for you-“
“For God’s sake, Mr. Finch, look where he is! Miss and you’ll go straight into the Radley house! I can’t shoot that well and you know it!”
“I haven’t shot a gun in thirty years-”
Mr. Tate almost threw the rifle at me. “I’d feel mighty comfortable if you did now,” he said.
I took the gun and walked out into the middle of the street. I pushed my glasses to my forehead: they slipped down, and I dropped them in the street.
In front of the Radley gate, Tim Johnson had made up what was left of his mind. He had finally turned himself around, to pursue his original course up on our street. He made two steps forward, then stopped and raised his head. My hand yanked a ball-tipped lever as I brought the gun to my shoulder.
The rifle cracked. Tim Johnson leaped, flopped over and crumpled on the sidewalk in a brown-and-white heap. He didn’t know what hit him.
Mr. Tate jumped off the porch and ran to the Radley Place. He stopped in front of the dog, squatted, turned around and tapped his finger on his forehead above his left eye. “You were a little to the right, Mr. Finch,” he called.
“Always was,” I answered. “If I had my ’druthers I’d take a shotgun.”
I stooped and picked up my glasses, ground the broken lenses to powder under my heel; I went to Mr. Tate and stood looking down at Tim Johnson.
Doors opened one by one, and the neighborhood slowly came alive. Miss Maudie walked down the steps with Miss Stephanie Crawford.
When I saw Jem and Scout coming I called, “Stay where you are.”
When Mr. Tate and I returned to the yard, Mr. Tate was smiling. “I’ll have Zeebo collect him,” he said. “You haven’t forgot much, Mr. Finch. They say it never leaves you.”
I was silent.
“Atticus?” said Jem.
“Yes?”
“Nothin’.”
“I saw that, One-Shot Finch!”
I wheeled around and faced Miss Maudie. We looked at one another without saying anything, and I got into the sheriff’s car. “Come here,” I said to Jem
“Don’t you go near that dog, you understand? Don’t go near him, he’s just as dangerous dead as alive.”
“Yes sir,” said Jem. “Atticus-”
“What, son?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s the matter with you, boy, can’t you talk?” said Mr. Tate, grinning at Jem. “Didn’t you know your daddy’s-”
“Hush, Heck,” I said, “let’s go back to town.”
As we drove away I thought about what Jem and Scout would say when they found out I was the deadest shot in Maycomb County in my time.
Mrs. Dubose lived alone except for a girl in constant attendance, two doors up the street from us in a house with steep front steps and a dog-trot hall. She was very old; she spent most of each day in bed and the rest of it in a wheelchair. Countless evenings I would find Jem furious at something Mrs. Dubose had said when they went by her house.
“Easy does it, son,” I would say. “She’s an old lady and she’s ill. You just hold your head high and be a gentleman. Whatever she says to you, it’s your job not to let her make you mad.”
When the three of us came to her house, I would sweep off my hat, wave gallantly to her and say, “Good evening, Mrs. Dubose! You look like a picture this evening.”
I would tell her the courthouse news, and would say I hoped with all my heart she’d have a good day tomorrow. I would return my hat to my head, swing Scout to my shoulders in her very presence, and we would go home in the twilight.
One day as I was coming from work Mrs. Dubose called me and said Jem had cut the tops off every camellia bush she owned.
I switched on the ceiling light in the livingroom and found Jem and Scout there, frozen still. I carried Scout’s baton in one hand. I held out my other hand; it contained fat camellia buds.
“Jem,” I said, “are you responsible for this?”
“Yes sir.”
“Why’d you do it?”
Jem said softly, “She said you lawed for niggers and trash.”
“You did this because she said that?”
Jem’s lips moved, but his, “Yes sir,” was inaudible.
“Son, I have no doubt that you’ve been annoyed by your contemporaries about me lawing for niggers, as you say, but to do something like this to a sick old lady is inexcusable. I strongly advise you to go down and have a talk with Mrs. Dubose,” I said. “Come straight home afterward.”
Jem did not move.
“Go on, I said.”
Scout followed Jem out of the livingroom. “Come back here,” I said to Scout. Scout came back.
I picked up the Mobile Press and sat down in the rocking chair Jem had vacated. Scout was hiding in my lap and my arms were around her.
“You’re mighty big to be rocked,” I said.
“You don’t care what happens to him,” Scout said. “You just send him on to get shot at when all he was doin’ was standin’ up for you.”
I pushed my head under my chin. “It’s not time to worry yet,” I said. “I never thought Jem’d be the one to lose his head over this-thought I’d have more trouble with you.”
Scout said she didn’t see why they had to keep their head anyway, that nobody she knew at school had to keep his head about anything.
“Scout,” I said, “when summer comes you’ll have to keep your head about far worse things… it’s not fair for you and Jem, I know that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down-well, all I can say is, when you and Jem are grown, maybe you’ll look back on this with some compassion and some feeling that I didn’t let you down. This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience-Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.”
“Atticus, you must be wrong…”
“How’s that?”
“Well, most folks seem to think they’re right and you’re wrong…”
“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions,” I said, “but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
When Jem returned, Scout was still in my lap.
“Well, son? I said. I set Scout on her feet, and Scout made a secret reconnaissance of Jem.
“I cleaned it up for her and said I was sorry, but I ain’t, and that I’d work on ’em ever Saturday and try to make ’em grow back out.”
“There was no point in saying you were sorry if you aren’t,” I said. “Jem, she’s old and ill. You can’t hold her responsible for what she says and does. Of course, I’d rather she’d have said it to me than to either of you, but we can’t always have our ’druthers.”
“Atticus,” Jem said, “she wants me to read to her.”
“Read to her?”
“Yes sir. She wants me to come every afternoon after school and Saturdays and read to her out loud for two hours. Atticus, do I have to?”
“Certainly.”
“But she wants me to do it for a month.”
“Then you’ll do it for a month.”
Finally Jem said, “Atticus, it’s all right on the sidewalk but inside it’s-it’s dark and creepy. There’s shadows and things on the ceilings…”
I smiled grimly. “That should appeal to your imagination. Just pretend you’re inside the Radley house.”
The following days Jem went with Scout to read to Mrs. Dubose. A little more than one month passed and Jem finally finished. I was in the middle of Windy Seaton’s column one evening when the telephone rang.
I answered it, then I went to the hat rack in the hall. “I’m going down to Mrs. Dubose for a while,” I said. “I won’t be long.”
When I returned I was carrying a candy box. I sat down in the livingroom and put the box on the floor beside my chair.
“What’d she want?” asked Jem.
“She’s dead, son,” I said. “She died a few minutes ago.”
“Oh,” said Jem. “Well.”
“Well is right,” I said. “She’s not suffering anymore. She was sick for a long time. Son, didn’t you know what her fits were?”
Jem shook his head.
“Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict,” I said. “She took it as a pain-killer for years. The doctor put her on it. She’d have spent the rest of her life on it and died without so much agony, but was too contrary-”
“Sir?” said Jem.
I said, “Just before your escapade she called me to make her will. Dr. Reynolds told her she had only a few months left. Her business affairs were in perfect order but she said, ‘There’s still one thing out of order.’ ”
“What was that?” Jem was perplexed.
“She said she was going to leave this world beholden to nothing and nobody. Jem, when you’re sick as she was, it’s all right to take anything to make it easier, but it wasn’t all right for her. She said she meant to break herself of it before she died, and that’s what she did.”
Jem said, “You mean that’s what her fits were?”
“Yes, that’s what they were. Most of the time you were reading to her I doubt if she heard a word you said. Her whole mind and body were concentrated on that alarm clock. If you hadn’t fallen into her hands, I’d have made you go read to her anyway. It may have been some distraction. There was another reason-”
“Did she die free?” asked Jem.
“As the mountain air,” I said. “She was conscious to the last, almost. Conscious,” I smiled, “and cantankerous. She still disapproved heartily of my doings, and said I’d probably spend the rest of my life bailing you out of jail. She had Jessie fix you this box-”
I reached down and picked up the candy box. I handed it to Jem. Jem opened the box. Inside, surrounded by wads of damp cotton, was a white, waxy, perfect camellia. It was Snow-on-the-Mountain.
“Old hell-devil, old hell-devil!” Jem screamed, flinging it down. “Why can’t she leave me alone?”
I stood up and Jem buried his face in my shirt front. “Sh-h,” I said. “I think that was her way of telling you-everything’s all right now, Jem, everything’s all right. You know, she was a great lady.”
“A lady,” Jem raised his head. “After all those things she said about you, a lady?”
“She was. She had her own views about things, a lot different from mine, maybe…son, I told you that if you hadn’t lost your head I’d have made you go read to her. I wanted you to see something about her-I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she did beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.”
Jem picked up the candy box and threw it on the fire. He picked up the camellia, and went off to bed.
Jem was football crazy. I was never too tired to keep-away, but when Jem wanted to tackle me I would say, “I’m too old for that, son.”
Sometimes I thought Jem and Scout thought I couldn’t do anything because I was fifty. I worked in an office and not in a drugstore. I did not drive a dump-truck for the county, I was not a sheriff, I did not farm, work in a garage, or do anything that could possibly arouse the admiration of anyone, as Scout would say. Besides all that, I wore glasses. I was nearly blind in my left eye, and would say that left eyes are the tribal curse of the Finches. Whenever I wanted to see something well, I turned my head and looked from my right eye. Sometimes I would hear Scout talking to Jem about me. Scout would say that I did not do things her schoolmates’ fathers did: I never went hunting, I did not play poker or fish or drink or smoke. I just sat in the livingroom and read. One day as I came home for dinner I heard Scout say to Jem, “Atticus would not remain as inconspicuous as we wished him to: this year, the school has been buzzing with talk about him defending Tom Robinson.” Later, I thought about Tom Robinson and how people would judge him for being a different color and judge me because I was defending him.
When I gave Jem and Scout their air-riffles I wouldn’t teach them to shoot. Jack instructed them in the rudiments thereof; he said I wasn’t interested in guns. I said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
The next day when I came home to dinner I found Scout crouched down aiming across the street. “What are you shooting at?” I said.
“Miss Maudie’s rear end,” said Scout.
I turned and saw Scout’s generous target bending over Miss Maudie’s bushes. I pushed my hat to the back of my head and crossed the street. “Maudie,” I called, “I thought I’d better warn you. You’re in considerable peril.”
Miss Maudie straightened up and looked toward Scout. She said, “Atticus, you are a devil from hell.”
When I returned I told Scout to break camp. “Don’t you ever let me catch you pointing that gun at anybody again,” I said.
Later, Jem asked me if I was going out for the Methodists and I said I’d break my neck if I did, I was just too old for that sort of thing. The Methodists were trying to pay off their church mortgage, and had challenged the Baptists to a game of touch football.
One Saturday I received a phone call at work from Calpurnia.
“Mr. Finch!” she shouted. “This is Cal. I swear to God there’s a mad dog down the street a piece-he’s coming this way, yes sir, he’s- Mr. Finch...”
I decided to go home immediately with Mr. Heck Tate. Mr. Heck Tate was the sheriff of Maycomb County. When Mr. Heck Tate and I reached the porch, Jem opened the door.
“Stay inside, son,” I said. “Where is he, Cal?”
“He oughta be here by now,” said Calpurnia, pointing down the street.
“Not runnin’, is he?” asked Mr. Tate.
“Naw sir, he’s in the twitchin’ stage, Mr. Heck,” said Calpurnia.
“Should we go after him, Heck?” I asked.
“We better wait, Mr. Finch. They usually go in a straight line, but you never can tell. He might follow the curve-hope he does or he’ll go straight in the Radley back yard. Let’s wait a minute,” said Mr. Heck.
“Don’t think he’ll get in the Radley Yard,” I said. “Fence’ll stop him. He’ll probably follow the road…”
I put my foot on the rung of a chair and rubbed my hands slowly down of my thigh.
“There he is,” I said softly.
“Look at him,” whispered Jem. “Mr. Heck said they walked in a straight line. He can’t even stay in the road.”
“He looks more sick than anything,” said Scout.
“Let anything get in front of him and he’ll come straight at it.”
Mr. Tate put his hand to his forehead and leaned forward.
“He’s got it all right, Mr. Finch.”
“He’s lookin’ for a place to die,” said Jem.
Mr. Tate turned around. “He’s far from dead, Jem, he hasn’t got started yet.”
I said, “He’s within range, Heck. You better get him before he goes down the side street- Lord knows who’s around the corner. Go inside, Cal.”
“Take him, Mr. Finch.” Mr. Tate handed me the rifle.
“Don’t waste time, Heck,” I said. “Go on.”
“Mr. Finch, this is a one-shot job.”
I shook my head vehemently: “Don’t just stand there, Heck! He won’t wait all day for you-“
“For God’s sake, Mr. Finch, look where he is! Miss and you’ll go straight into the Radley house! I can’t shoot that well and you know it!”
“I haven’t shot a gun in thirty years-”
Mr. Tate almost threw the rifle at me. “I’d feel mighty comfortable if you did now,” he said.
I took the gun and walked out into the middle of the street. I pushed my glasses to my forehead: they slipped down, and I dropped them in the street.
In front of the Radley gate, Tim Johnson had made up what was left of his mind. He had finally turned himself around, to pursue his original course up on our street. He made two steps forward, then stopped and raised his head. My hand yanked a ball-tipped lever as I brought the gun to my shoulder.
The rifle cracked. Tim Johnson leaped, flopped over and crumpled on the sidewalk in a brown-and-white heap. He didn’t know what hit him.
Mr. Tate jumped off the porch and ran to the Radley Place. He stopped in front of the dog, squatted, turned around and tapped his finger on his forehead above his left eye. “You were a little to the right, Mr. Finch,” he called.
“Always was,” I answered. “If I had my ’druthers I’d take a shotgun.”
I stooped and picked up my glasses, ground the broken lenses to powder under my heel; I went to Mr. Tate and stood looking down at Tim Johnson.
Doors opened one by one, and the neighborhood slowly came alive. Miss Maudie walked down the steps with Miss Stephanie Crawford.
When I saw Jem and Scout coming I called, “Stay where you are.”
When Mr. Tate and I returned to the yard, Mr. Tate was smiling. “I’ll have Zeebo collect him,” he said. “You haven’t forgot much, Mr. Finch. They say it never leaves you.”
I was silent.
“Atticus?” said Jem.
“Yes?”
“Nothin’.”
“I saw that, One-Shot Finch!”
I wheeled around and faced Miss Maudie. We looked at one another without saying anything, and I got into the sheriff’s car. “Come here,” I said to Jem
“Don’t you go near that dog, you understand? Don’t go near him, he’s just as dangerous dead as alive.”
“Yes sir,” said Jem. “Atticus-”
“What, son?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s the matter with you, boy, can’t you talk?” said Mr. Tate, grinning at Jem. “Didn’t you know your daddy’s-”
“Hush, Heck,” I said, “let’s go back to town.”
As we drove away I thought about what Jem and Scout would say when they found out I was the deadest shot in Maycomb County in my time.
Mrs. Dubose lived alone except for a girl in constant attendance, two doors up the street from us in a house with steep front steps and a dog-trot hall. She was very old; she spent most of each day in bed and the rest of it in a wheelchair. Countless evenings I would find Jem furious at something Mrs. Dubose had said when they went by her house.
“Easy does it, son,” I would say. “She’s an old lady and she’s ill. You just hold your head high and be a gentleman. Whatever she says to you, it’s your job not to let her make you mad.”
When the three of us came to her house, I would sweep off my hat, wave gallantly to her and say, “Good evening, Mrs. Dubose! You look like a picture this evening.”
I would tell her the courthouse news, and would say I hoped with all my heart she’d have a good day tomorrow. I would return my hat to my head, swing Scout to my shoulders in her very presence, and we would go home in the twilight.
One day as I was coming from work Mrs. Dubose called me and said Jem had cut the tops off every camellia bush she owned.
I switched on the ceiling light in the livingroom and found Jem and Scout there, frozen still. I carried Scout’s baton in one hand. I held out my other hand; it contained fat camellia buds.
“Jem,” I said, “are you responsible for this?”
“Yes sir.”
“Why’d you do it?”
Jem said softly, “She said you lawed for niggers and trash.”
“You did this because she said that?”
Jem’s lips moved, but his, “Yes sir,” was inaudible.
“Son, I have no doubt that you’ve been annoyed by your contemporaries about me lawing for niggers, as you say, but to do something like this to a sick old lady is inexcusable. I strongly advise you to go down and have a talk with Mrs. Dubose,” I said. “Come straight home afterward.”
Jem did not move.
“Go on, I said.”
Scout followed Jem out of the livingroom. “Come back here,” I said to Scout. Scout came back.
I picked up the Mobile Press and sat down in the rocking chair Jem had vacated. Scout was hiding in my lap and my arms were around her.
“You’re mighty big to be rocked,” I said.
“You don’t care what happens to him,” Scout said. “You just send him on to get shot at when all he was doin’ was standin’ up for you.”
I pushed my head under my chin. “It’s not time to worry yet,” I said. “I never thought Jem’d be the one to lose his head over this-thought I’d have more trouble with you.”
Scout said she didn’t see why they had to keep their head anyway, that nobody she knew at school had to keep his head about anything.
“Scout,” I said, “when summer comes you’ll have to keep your head about far worse things… it’s not fair for you and Jem, I know that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down-well, all I can say is, when you and Jem are grown, maybe you’ll look back on this with some compassion and some feeling that I didn’t let you down. This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience-Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.”
“Atticus, you must be wrong…”
“How’s that?”
“Well, most folks seem to think they’re right and you’re wrong…”
“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions,” I said, “but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
When Jem returned, Scout was still in my lap.
“Well, son? I said. I set Scout on her feet, and Scout made a secret reconnaissance of Jem.
“I cleaned it up for her and said I was sorry, but I ain’t, and that I’d work on ’em ever Saturday and try to make ’em grow back out.”
“There was no point in saying you were sorry if you aren’t,” I said. “Jem, she’s old and ill. You can’t hold her responsible for what she says and does. Of course, I’d rather she’d have said it to me than to either of you, but we can’t always have our ’druthers.”
“Atticus,” Jem said, “she wants me to read to her.”
“Read to her?”
“Yes sir. She wants me to come every afternoon after school and Saturdays and read to her out loud for two hours. Atticus, do I have to?”
“Certainly.”
“But she wants me to do it for a month.”
“Then you’ll do it for a month.”
Finally Jem said, “Atticus, it’s all right on the sidewalk but inside it’s-it’s dark and creepy. There’s shadows and things on the ceilings…”
I smiled grimly. “That should appeal to your imagination. Just pretend you’re inside the Radley house.”
The following days Jem went with Scout to read to Mrs. Dubose. A little more than one month passed and Jem finally finished. I was in the middle of Windy Seaton’s column one evening when the telephone rang.
I answered it, then I went to the hat rack in the hall. “I’m going down to Mrs. Dubose for a while,” I said. “I won’t be long.”
When I returned I was carrying a candy box. I sat down in the livingroom and put the box on the floor beside my chair.
“What’d she want?” asked Jem.
“She’s dead, son,” I said. “She died a few minutes ago.”
“Oh,” said Jem. “Well.”
“Well is right,” I said. “She’s not suffering anymore. She was sick for a long time. Son, didn’t you know what her fits were?”
Jem shook his head.
“Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict,” I said. “She took it as a pain-killer for years. The doctor put her on it. She’d have spent the rest of her life on it and died without so much agony, but was too contrary-”
“Sir?” said Jem.
I said, “Just before your escapade she called me to make her will. Dr. Reynolds told her she had only a few months left. Her business affairs were in perfect order but she said, ‘There’s still one thing out of order.’ ”
“What was that?” Jem was perplexed.
“She said she was going to leave this world beholden to nothing and nobody. Jem, when you’re sick as she was, it’s all right to take anything to make it easier, but it wasn’t all right for her. She said she meant to break herself of it before she died, and that’s what she did.”
Jem said, “You mean that’s what her fits were?”
“Yes, that’s what they were. Most of the time you were reading to her I doubt if she heard a word you said. Her whole mind and body were concentrated on that alarm clock. If you hadn’t fallen into her hands, I’d have made you go read to her anyway. It may have been some distraction. There was another reason-”
“Did she die free?” asked Jem.
“As the mountain air,” I said. “She was conscious to the last, almost. Conscious,” I smiled, “and cantankerous. She still disapproved heartily of my doings, and said I’d probably spend the rest of my life bailing you out of jail. She had Jessie fix you this box-”
I reached down and picked up the candy box. I handed it to Jem. Jem opened the box. Inside, surrounded by wads of damp cotton, was a white, waxy, perfect camellia. It was Snow-on-the-Mountain.
“Old hell-devil, old hell-devil!” Jem screamed, flinging it down. “Why can’t she leave me alone?”
I stood up and Jem buried his face in my shirt front. “Sh-h,” I said. “I think that was her way of telling you-everything’s all right now, Jem, everything’s all right. You know, she was a great lady.”
“A lady,” Jem raised his head. “After all those things she said about you, a lady?”
“She was. She had her own views about things, a lot different from mine, maybe…son, I told you that if you hadn’t lost your head I’d have made you go read to her. I wanted you to see something about her-I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she did beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.”
Jem picked up the candy box and threw it on the fire. He picked up the camellia, and went off to bed.
