ficrepost: "Buy You a Looking Glass" To Kill a Mockingbird gen
Title: "Buy You a Looking Glass"
Fandom: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Featured Characters: Scout Finch and Boo Radley
Rating: PG-13 for dark themes
Spoilers/Timeline: Several years post-book
Disclaimer: Harper Lee is sheer genius. Me, not so much.
Notes: For sef1029 in yuletide 2006. Originally posted here in the Yuletide archive. Thanks to meyerlemon and castalianspring for betaing.
Summary: When Boo finally leaves the Radley Place feet-first, Scout inherits his scrapbook.
Words: 3346
Buy You a Looking Glass
The last time Atticus whupped me was the evening after Boo Radley died. Still in the habit of keeping things hidden from him-out of sheer obstinacy at this point, and a refusal to believe the truth would out-I had curled up in my room with the door closed, a bottle of shinny ready should I need it, and Boo's scrapbook spread open on my cotton quilt. I was careful not to cry-didn't want to further stain the battered cardboard album-before Cal called dinner.
++
"Arthur Radley, are you going to set there all day or can you at least pretend like you're civilized folk long enough to come eat?"
I considered. Clipping the paper's not tiring work. I had a fresh pot of paste, pictures from a society ball, and the perfect caption-dainty ladies. But I could read a whipping in my brother's eye, so, after carefully closing my paste and album and folding the paper, I shuffled toward the kitchen-dining room's too good for you 'n' I, Arthur Radley.
"Cain't you walk steady, even?"
I walked a little straighter, and Nathan set his head back, calm and approving. As a reward, he said over salad, "Miss Maudie has a new bonnet."
I took a bite of wilted lettuce, careful not to let my eyes betray even a flicker of interest, though my breath came fast, and my fork-hand trembled.
"It's a nice calico, blue 'n' yellow."
Floral or paisley? I thought, and is it edged in the newfangled way with flimsy yellow lace, or with old-fashioned rick-rack? I'd seen ladies parade past our house on Sunday mornings with their heads held high and new bonnets edged in pink and green, lacy and extravagant, but Miss Maudie would look more elegant than they without half as much lace and with a good deal more dignity. I said nothing, and it seemed that Nathan had exhausted the subject of women's headwear, for his only further comment that mealtime was a curt, "Pass the salt." I didn't see how salt would improve the tasteless beef stew he'd brought up from town, but I handed it to him without a word.
++
I don't know what I had expected in a scrapbook held together with string and wrapped in brown paper, carefully left, "To Miss Scout Finch," with Boo's name printed in ink on the front cover. Perhaps a collection of clippings about me and Jem-and, I graciously allowed, our father too-chronicling our lives from birth to Jem's graduation, at which point his life became too interesting for our local newspaper, and mine far too dull.
But, except for the summer of Tom Robinson's trial, which I couldn't recall without an uncomfortable, angry clutch in my gut, Boo'd been indiscriminate in his clipping. I was a little hurt, at first; had Jem and I not provided him enough entertainment? We'd certainly tried hard enough to make a name for ourselves, as far as Aunt Alexandra's sense of dignity, Atticus's sense of fairness, and our own sense of honor would allow. I spent a few minutes glumly reading about the price of cotton and advertisements for custom tailoring, wondering when on earth Boo thought he'd buy cotton or wear a suit. If there was a logic to the clippings, illustrations, and meticulous captions, I didn't know it, though I suspected Jem, away at the university and mightily ignoring all my letters, might've understood if he'd taken the time.
++
I didn't dare draw the children in the plain sight of my father, who thought my scribbling queer enough without knowing whose portraits I'd collected. Instead, I waited till he and Ma were abed, then from memory sketched Jem Finch in his just-shortened pants. I'd watch him as he and his mother wheeled the baby, Jean Louise, in her pram. I memorized the way his leg looked when he kicked a rock and the way his brow tightened up when Jean Louise started to cry and he bent over the carriage, singing something I couldn't hear. Jem's limbs were in constant motion, and his hair always seemed tousled by a breeze no one else felt.
I sketched Jem a dozen times before I came up with a version I liked: nothing but charcoal on paper, but I could hear the shrill little-boy sound of his four-year old voice as he sang the lullaby I hand-lettered all around my portrait, something my mother might've sung a long time ago. Or maybe I'd heard Mrs. Finch sing it to Jem, some summer night when there was a breeze and music carried down the street and managed to sneak into even our backyard. The picture wasn't perfect; it was Jem in a moment, frozen and still, when the real life Jem was constantly moving and shouting and escaping the reach of any man's pen.
Once she got grown enough to walk by herself, the littlest Finch wouldn't stand still for me either. I'd peek out the window all day long but see nothing save the back of her legs, darting away from her brother in a game of tag or dangling out of a tree she'd climbed. Scout wasn't draw-able, and in my scrapbook she was nothing but clippings: a birth announcement, her ma's obituary, and very little else until the summer she and Jem and Dill tagged around our house and I got a few good impressions of her, which I recorded by moonlight when Nathan was asleep.
++
I didn't start drinking in earnest till late, after a dull supper where Atticus recounted the events of his day and I listened with half an ear, most of me still upstairs and wandering through Boo's mind, trying to make sense of the connections he made between birdwatching and Finchwatching and medical news and laywerly reports, Indian pennies and maple leaves and the wrappers from gum and candies.
"Scout, what's wrong?" Atticus asked.
"Nothin'," I mumbled, which was my usual response that year to any question about my activities, interests, or well-being.
"Nothing to do with Mr. Radley, is it?"
"Course not." It seemed a shame to give up the habit of lying about Boo after all these years, and though my father raised an eyebrow, he provided no other response or remonstrance, I suppose figuring (as I never could remember) that the truth always emerged where Boo was concerned. I ate a bite of fried fish.
"Arthur's will was rather unusual," my father said, as if we'd been discussing the matter for hours.
"Really?" I asked, failing miserably to suppress my interest.
"He left nothing to his brother, you know."
"That's not so strange," I said. "Jem won't get anything from me either; he'd just sell all my books and burn anything he couldn't sell."
"That's not true. Your brother values books."
"Doesn't value me, though," I said.
My father took a careful sip of water, as if this was mildly interesting news and not disastrously important information about a rift between his very own offspring.
"Isn't that bothersome?" I asked.
"How old is Jem now?"
"Eighteen," I said.
"There's nothing unusual about eighteen finding fourteen dull," my father said. "Give him space."
"That's what you said at thirteen, and sixteen, and when he starting going steady with Hattie, and when he first left home."
"And it's what I'm saying now. There's still plenty of time, Scout."
++
After I was first released from the jail and allowed to go home, I felt as if I'd never have enough time to do everything I'd meant to. I would spend hours sitting by the window, listening for birdsong, making lists of all the calls I heard, then realize with a start I'd wasted a morning when I could have been drawing, or writing, or working on the scrapbook. I asked my father to buy everything I could think of, bits of cloth for making bags, pieces of wood for carving, and mostly a newspaper, because more than anything I needed to know what was happening beyond the walls of our house, beyond the end of the street, and beyond even the boundaries of Maycomb County. My father never cared much for the outside world, and let me have his papers as soon as he'd finished checking his investments.
With dull scissors and a great deal of paste, I assembled the scrapbook. Sometimes, at least at first, I'd feel my fingers clench up and my face go tight, and I'd know I needed to move, look at something different before the whole world vanished except my dull black and white photographs. I spent a good deal of time by windows and doors, or, after dark, in the yard, listening.
There were spirits in Maycomb County in those days, you see, and if no one else could see them, all the more reason for me to remain vigilant.
++
Maybe because the night had grown dark suddenly, maybe because drinking after supper always made me a little queasy, maybe because Boo's book wasn't exactly what I'd expected-whatever the reason, suddenly I was grateful to know that Atticus was nearby, and I wished harder than usual that Jem was home. I wanted to peek out of my room, see that the light still shone under Jem's door, slip into his room and ask, careless, if he wanted to take a turn with the scrapbook. I wished it weren't mine, or that I could close it tight, shove it under the bed, and read something else.
But Boo's note and my own curiosity meant I could do nothing but find the place where I'd left off, and, with a healthy swig of shinny, discover what message Boo'd intended for me.
It wasn't, I thought as I took another largish sip, that Maycomb was so very different then than it was now. The scrapbook was only a few years older than I was, and what I didn't remember, Jem had told me. Anyhow, in bygone days mostly we'd feared Boo himself more than other ghosts, and folk like the Ewells more than any spooks, which were, after all, insubstantial and couldn't do more than frighten you.
"Though," Jem'd warned me, "sometimes they'll frighten you right dead, and your hair'll turn white --"
"Like Dill's?"
"Reckon that's what happened to Dill. He saw a ghost and his hair went white and he's never been the same since, can't lie down and close his eyes but he remembers that ghost."
"That true?" I asked.
"Sure," Dill told me. "I've seen plenty of ghosts, frightier ghosts than anything you've got here. Bet the ghosts in Maycomb just poke along and say 'Howdyewdo,' same as the living folks. I've seen ghosts that'd make you fall over in fright, Jem Finch."
"You haven't. There's nothing living that could make a Finch man faint," Jem said, then realized his mistake. "Nor dead, either. Don't think you'd catch Atticus being scared of ghosts, do you?"
I didn't, but maybe it was easier for men to be calm than women, and anyhow, it had been broad daylight when Jem'd professed his immunity to fear, and it was nighttime now. My heavy curtains were pulled tight across the window, but the reflections of tree limbs danced across them, and if I listened, I could hear wind-it was only wind, I was sure of it-rip down the street. I felt a chill despite the unseasonable warmth, and I cuddled close into the quilt Calpurnia had made for me last Christmas. I felt a little wobbly.
++
The Finch children were uncooperative, hard to draw, and loud. The ghosts were uncooperative, hard to draw, and quieter even than I was. Plenty of times there were ghosts in the house and no one knew except me, and I'm sure there were times we were haunted that even I didn't know. I could rarely tell what ghosts wanted, they were so still and creepy and didn't say a word or manifest themselves, just made my hair stand on end and my hands shake. Ghosts never haunted anyone else on our street, for, like the Finches, they were all loudly occupied with their own and each other's business, quilting or gardening or lawyering, and the ghosts never bothered them, or tried and found they couldn't.
They distracted me, though, which practically drove my mother (when she was living) to distraction. I couldn't wander away from them, or shake them off by whistling as my father seemed to. They were fascinated by soap-carving and drawing and any other craft I used to keep them away. Sometimes they clouded my eyes so I couldn't see; I'd try drawing blind for awhile, and once in awhile, when my sight returned, I found I'd drawn a ghost, though I couldn't tell you how they looked, just zig-zaggy lines that outlined horrible features, crags of noses and empty sockets…. Begging your pardon, but I'm sure you've heard worse, just like Jem told Scout or my brother told me, years ago, that if you saw a ghost it'd drink your soul from you, and there'd be nothing left but your shell, which might walk and talk and pretend to bear your name but be nothing like you on the inside.
++
The pictures weren't so creepy, though they were impressively well-drawn; I figured if things had worked out different, maybe Boo would be a famous artist in some big city, and send us letters (I was quite keen on imagining correspondence) with funny sketches of us as kids. Way things were, though, I was the only person-and Jem if I let him read the scrapbook-to benefit from Boo's skills, and I wasn't so sure it was a benefit, really, since so far all he'd accomplished was to give me a bad fright. I suspected that if there were ghosts, they probably gathered around Boo, who was so spooky himself-sure, he was just shy, but shyness has a creepy quality all its own, and anyhow, everyone knew that Arthur Radley wasn't quite himself, wasn't quite the same person who'd suffered through the Maycomb County school system all those years before.
Suffering therein myself, I ought to have been asleep long ago, but I'd rather spend my waking hours on this than on geometry or history, which were, after all, only a matter of memorizing facts, and weren't likely to have any effect at all on my marriageability (Aunt Alexandra), my future writing career (Atticus), or my ability to throw a ball straight (Jem). If I wanted to be a writer (I was less concerned with the other two, figuring those prospects hopeless), I'd need to know about ghosts, as there weren't any good books written that weren't filled cover-to-cover with spirits, hauntings, spooky old houses, and supernatural murders.
++
The last ghost I saw before vowing to stay inside for keeps was a woman, not ancient like the women who lived on our street, nor again as young as Scout (who wasn't truly a woman at all but more like an overgrown girl), but a young woman like you might read about in a story, or like the women who filled the society pages of the local newspaper (but much lovelier and much uglier than any of them). When she was alive, I imagined, her face had been weak, and now that she was dead it possessed no features at all, but just shimmered with blue light as she moved down the stairs and out into our garden.
I didn't mean to follow, for I knew better than to creep out at night and also that it was no good trying to catch a ghost who didn't want to be caught. I'd more likely end up with my face disfigured and my power of speech removed than with a pretty scrapbook page recording her vital statistics for posterity. I clung hard to my bedposts, and thought I wouldn't move, but I did in spite of my efforts, and followed the spirit downstairs, across the kitchen, and into the garden, making a good deal more noise than she did or than I ought to. I was sure every moment that my brother would wake up, and every bone was tense. Then I was in the garden and thought she'd gone. I had a moment to relax before the tension returned fourfold, and I knew she was even nearer than before.
I couldn't see her properly, or hear her at all, but I thought I understood. There'd been a man, he'd left, and he'd taken something vital with him. The details wouldn't coalesce any more than her body would. I had the impression she hadn't died right away, but lingered awhile, doing dainty work and trying to gossip and laugh, which eroded away her insides even worse than if she'd let herself languish in peace. Instead she'd been busy and pretended at carelessness, and the outside of her had grown weaker while the inside made ready to implode on itself. That much, at least, I knew for certain-I could feel the inside of her chest like it was my own, felt all the breath rush out of me and red flares of pain rush in from all directions. The garden, till then comforting, felt too confining and too expansive; there was nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe, but my nostrils and lungs and throat were filled with phantasm, and my whole body burned.
++
If I'd known what Boo meant, it might've been easier, but all I knew were weird illustrations of weirder creatures, no longer innocent drawings of Jem playing ball or of me and Dill kissing awkwardly behind Calpurnia's back. The last three years of Boo's life he'd stopped reading the paper and spying on us and started seeing things. He wasn't the first person, certainly, to succumb to a particular kind of madness, but he was the first person I knew who'd gone 'round like that, and certainly the first person who'd illustrated the process. I drank, and read, and when I closed my eyes, heat crept from my lungs up through my throat, exploding in my nostrils and making me scream.
I screamed, and screamed, and screamed, till Atticus lifted me from my bed and shook me hard.
"You've been drinking," he said.
I nodded miserably.
"And reading that book Arthur Radley left for you."
I nodded again, and Atticus shook his head; I nodded harder, as if that would make him nod too, agreeing that whatever I'd done was all right. I wanted him to let me go, retreat to his room so I could retreat to sleep, but of course he didn't. "Scout, you are drunk."
"No shir."
"Come downstairs."
"Now?"
"Are you likely to sleep?"
I thought about Boo's ghosts, and shook my head. "Are you going to thrash me, sir?" I asked, careful not to slur.
"Yes," he said, and I flinched. "Yes, I'm going to whip you, because I would be remiss as your guardian if I failed to punish you for drinking under my roof-and underage, too. Is it stolen?"
I decided it would be unwise to tell him I'd gotten it from Dill, so I said nothing.
He let my silence stand, and said only, "Don't expect me to thrash you again, though."
"I won't drink anymore," I promised.
"I mean you are getting entirely too old to be taken over my knee, Scout, and after tonight I won't. I suppose waking up screaming will be punishment enough if you decide to mix alcohol and ghost stories again."
I stiffened, pretending to myself that I was brave enough to bear the lashing without tears, and decided not to ask how Atticus knew what Boo's scrapbook contained.
Fandom: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Featured Characters: Scout Finch and Boo Radley
Rating: PG-13 for dark themes
Spoilers/Timeline: Several years post-book
Disclaimer: Harper Lee is sheer genius. Me, not so much.
Notes: For sef1029 in yuletide 2006. Originally posted here in the Yuletide archive. Thanks to meyerlemon and castalianspring for betaing.
Summary: When Boo finally leaves the Radley Place feet-first, Scout inherits his scrapbook.
Words: 3346
Buy You a Looking Glass
The last time Atticus whupped me was the evening after Boo Radley died. Still in the habit of keeping things hidden from him-out of sheer obstinacy at this point, and a refusal to believe the truth would out-I had curled up in my room with the door closed, a bottle of shinny ready should I need it, and Boo's scrapbook spread open on my cotton quilt. I was careful not to cry-didn't want to further stain the battered cardboard album-before Cal called dinner.
++
"Arthur Radley, are you going to set there all day or can you at least pretend like you're civilized folk long enough to come eat?"
I considered. Clipping the paper's not tiring work. I had a fresh pot of paste, pictures from a society ball, and the perfect caption-dainty ladies. But I could read a whipping in my brother's eye, so, after carefully closing my paste and album and folding the paper, I shuffled toward the kitchen-dining room's too good for you 'n' I, Arthur Radley.
"Cain't you walk steady, even?"
I walked a little straighter, and Nathan set his head back, calm and approving. As a reward, he said over salad, "Miss Maudie has a new bonnet."
I took a bite of wilted lettuce, careful not to let my eyes betray even a flicker of interest, though my breath came fast, and my fork-hand trembled.
"It's a nice calico, blue 'n' yellow."
Floral or paisley? I thought, and is it edged in the newfangled way with flimsy yellow lace, or with old-fashioned rick-rack? I'd seen ladies parade past our house on Sunday mornings with their heads held high and new bonnets edged in pink and green, lacy and extravagant, but Miss Maudie would look more elegant than they without half as much lace and with a good deal more dignity. I said nothing, and it seemed that Nathan had exhausted the subject of women's headwear, for his only further comment that mealtime was a curt, "Pass the salt." I didn't see how salt would improve the tasteless beef stew he'd brought up from town, but I handed it to him without a word.
++
I don't know what I had expected in a scrapbook held together with string and wrapped in brown paper, carefully left, "To Miss Scout Finch," with Boo's name printed in ink on the front cover. Perhaps a collection of clippings about me and Jem-and, I graciously allowed, our father too-chronicling our lives from birth to Jem's graduation, at which point his life became too interesting for our local newspaper, and mine far too dull.
But, except for the summer of Tom Robinson's trial, which I couldn't recall without an uncomfortable, angry clutch in my gut, Boo'd been indiscriminate in his clipping. I was a little hurt, at first; had Jem and I not provided him enough entertainment? We'd certainly tried hard enough to make a name for ourselves, as far as Aunt Alexandra's sense of dignity, Atticus's sense of fairness, and our own sense of honor would allow. I spent a few minutes glumly reading about the price of cotton and advertisements for custom tailoring, wondering when on earth Boo thought he'd buy cotton or wear a suit. If there was a logic to the clippings, illustrations, and meticulous captions, I didn't know it, though I suspected Jem, away at the university and mightily ignoring all my letters, might've understood if he'd taken the time.
++
I didn't dare draw the children in the plain sight of my father, who thought my scribbling queer enough without knowing whose portraits I'd collected. Instead, I waited till he and Ma were abed, then from memory sketched Jem Finch in his just-shortened pants. I'd watch him as he and his mother wheeled the baby, Jean Louise, in her pram. I memorized the way his leg looked when he kicked a rock and the way his brow tightened up when Jean Louise started to cry and he bent over the carriage, singing something I couldn't hear. Jem's limbs were in constant motion, and his hair always seemed tousled by a breeze no one else felt.
I sketched Jem a dozen times before I came up with a version I liked: nothing but charcoal on paper, but I could hear the shrill little-boy sound of his four-year old voice as he sang the lullaby I hand-lettered all around my portrait, something my mother might've sung a long time ago. Or maybe I'd heard Mrs. Finch sing it to Jem, some summer night when there was a breeze and music carried down the street and managed to sneak into even our backyard. The picture wasn't perfect; it was Jem in a moment, frozen and still, when the real life Jem was constantly moving and shouting and escaping the reach of any man's pen.
Once she got grown enough to walk by herself, the littlest Finch wouldn't stand still for me either. I'd peek out the window all day long but see nothing save the back of her legs, darting away from her brother in a game of tag or dangling out of a tree she'd climbed. Scout wasn't draw-able, and in my scrapbook she was nothing but clippings: a birth announcement, her ma's obituary, and very little else until the summer she and Jem and Dill tagged around our house and I got a few good impressions of her, which I recorded by moonlight when Nathan was asleep.
++
I didn't start drinking in earnest till late, after a dull supper where Atticus recounted the events of his day and I listened with half an ear, most of me still upstairs and wandering through Boo's mind, trying to make sense of the connections he made between birdwatching and Finchwatching and medical news and laywerly reports, Indian pennies and maple leaves and the wrappers from gum and candies.
"Scout, what's wrong?" Atticus asked.
"Nothin'," I mumbled, which was my usual response that year to any question about my activities, interests, or well-being.
"Nothing to do with Mr. Radley, is it?"
"Course not." It seemed a shame to give up the habit of lying about Boo after all these years, and though my father raised an eyebrow, he provided no other response or remonstrance, I suppose figuring (as I never could remember) that the truth always emerged where Boo was concerned. I ate a bite of fried fish.
"Arthur's will was rather unusual," my father said, as if we'd been discussing the matter for hours.
"Really?" I asked, failing miserably to suppress my interest.
"He left nothing to his brother, you know."
"That's not so strange," I said. "Jem won't get anything from me either; he'd just sell all my books and burn anything he couldn't sell."
"That's not true. Your brother values books."
"Doesn't value me, though," I said.
My father took a careful sip of water, as if this was mildly interesting news and not disastrously important information about a rift between his very own offspring.
"Isn't that bothersome?" I asked.
"How old is Jem now?"
"Eighteen," I said.
"There's nothing unusual about eighteen finding fourteen dull," my father said. "Give him space."
"That's what you said at thirteen, and sixteen, and when he starting going steady with Hattie, and when he first left home."
"And it's what I'm saying now. There's still plenty of time, Scout."
++
After I was first released from the jail and allowed to go home, I felt as if I'd never have enough time to do everything I'd meant to. I would spend hours sitting by the window, listening for birdsong, making lists of all the calls I heard, then realize with a start I'd wasted a morning when I could have been drawing, or writing, or working on the scrapbook. I asked my father to buy everything I could think of, bits of cloth for making bags, pieces of wood for carving, and mostly a newspaper, because more than anything I needed to know what was happening beyond the walls of our house, beyond the end of the street, and beyond even the boundaries of Maycomb County. My father never cared much for the outside world, and let me have his papers as soon as he'd finished checking his investments.
With dull scissors and a great deal of paste, I assembled the scrapbook. Sometimes, at least at first, I'd feel my fingers clench up and my face go tight, and I'd know I needed to move, look at something different before the whole world vanished except my dull black and white photographs. I spent a good deal of time by windows and doors, or, after dark, in the yard, listening.
There were spirits in Maycomb County in those days, you see, and if no one else could see them, all the more reason for me to remain vigilant.
++
Maybe because the night had grown dark suddenly, maybe because drinking after supper always made me a little queasy, maybe because Boo's book wasn't exactly what I'd expected-whatever the reason, suddenly I was grateful to know that Atticus was nearby, and I wished harder than usual that Jem was home. I wanted to peek out of my room, see that the light still shone under Jem's door, slip into his room and ask, careless, if he wanted to take a turn with the scrapbook. I wished it weren't mine, or that I could close it tight, shove it under the bed, and read something else.
But Boo's note and my own curiosity meant I could do nothing but find the place where I'd left off, and, with a healthy swig of shinny, discover what message Boo'd intended for me.
It wasn't, I thought as I took another largish sip, that Maycomb was so very different then than it was now. The scrapbook was only a few years older than I was, and what I didn't remember, Jem had told me. Anyhow, in bygone days mostly we'd feared Boo himself more than other ghosts, and folk like the Ewells more than any spooks, which were, after all, insubstantial and couldn't do more than frighten you.
"Though," Jem'd warned me, "sometimes they'll frighten you right dead, and your hair'll turn white --"
"Like Dill's?"
"Reckon that's what happened to Dill. He saw a ghost and his hair went white and he's never been the same since, can't lie down and close his eyes but he remembers that ghost."
"That true?" I asked.
"Sure," Dill told me. "I've seen plenty of ghosts, frightier ghosts than anything you've got here. Bet the ghosts in Maycomb just poke along and say 'Howdyewdo,' same as the living folks. I've seen ghosts that'd make you fall over in fright, Jem Finch."
"You haven't. There's nothing living that could make a Finch man faint," Jem said, then realized his mistake. "Nor dead, either. Don't think you'd catch Atticus being scared of ghosts, do you?"
I didn't, but maybe it was easier for men to be calm than women, and anyhow, it had been broad daylight when Jem'd professed his immunity to fear, and it was nighttime now. My heavy curtains were pulled tight across the window, but the reflections of tree limbs danced across them, and if I listened, I could hear wind-it was only wind, I was sure of it-rip down the street. I felt a chill despite the unseasonable warmth, and I cuddled close into the quilt Calpurnia had made for me last Christmas. I felt a little wobbly.
++
The Finch children were uncooperative, hard to draw, and loud. The ghosts were uncooperative, hard to draw, and quieter even than I was. Plenty of times there were ghosts in the house and no one knew except me, and I'm sure there were times we were haunted that even I didn't know. I could rarely tell what ghosts wanted, they were so still and creepy and didn't say a word or manifest themselves, just made my hair stand on end and my hands shake. Ghosts never haunted anyone else on our street, for, like the Finches, they were all loudly occupied with their own and each other's business, quilting or gardening or lawyering, and the ghosts never bothered them, or tried and found they couldn't.
They distracted me, though, which practically drove my mother (when she was living) to distraction. I couldn't wander away from them, or shake them off by whistling as my father seemed to. They were fascinated by soap-carving and drawing and any other craft I used to keep them away. Sometimes they clouded my eyes so I couldn't see; I'd try drawing blind for awhile, and once in awhile, when my sight returned, I found I'd drawn a ghost, though I couldn't tell you how they looked, just zig-zaggy lines that outlined horrible features, crags of noses and empty sockets…. Begging your pardon, but I'm sure you've heard worse, just like Jem told Scout or my brother told me, years ago, that if you saw a ghost it'd drink your soul from you, and there'd be nothing left but your shell, which might walk and talk and pretend to bear your name but be nothing like you on the inside.
++
The pictures weren't so creepy, though they were impressively well-drawn; I figured if things had worked out different, maybe Boo would be a famous artist in some big city, and send us letters (I was quite keen on imagining correspondence) with funny sketches of us as kids. Way things were, though, I was the only person-and Jem if I let him read the scrapbook-to benefit from Boo's skills, and I wasn't so sure it was a benefit, really, since so far all he'd accomplished was to give me a bad fright. I suspected that if there were ghosts, they probably gathered around Boo, who was so spooky himself-sure, he was just shy, but shyness has a creepy quality all its own, and anyhow, everyone knew that Arthur Radley wasn't quite himself, wasn't quite the same person who'd suffered through the Maycomb County school system all those years before.
Suffering therein myself, I ought to have been asleep long ago, but I'd rather spend my waking hours on this than on geometry or history, which were, after all, only a matter of memorizing facts, and weren't likely to have any effect at all on my marriageability (Aunt Alexandra), my future writing career (Atticus), or my ability to throw a ball straight (Jem). If I wanted to be a writer (I was less concerned with the other two, figuring those prospects hopeless), I'd need to know about ghosts, as there weren't any good books written that weren't filled cover-to-cover with spirits, hauntings, spooky old houses, and supernatural murders.
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The last ghost I saw before vowing to stay inside for keeps was a woman, not ancient like the women who lived on our street, nor again as young as Scout (who wasn't truly a woman at all but more like an overgrown girl), but a young woman like you might read about in a story, or like the women who filled the society pages of the local newspaper (but much lovelier and much uglier than any of them). When she was alive, I imagined, her face had been weak, and now that she was dead it possessed no features at all, but just shimmered with blue light as she moved down the stairs and out into our garden.
I didn't mean to follow, for I knew better than to creep out at night and also that it was no good trying to catch a ghost who didn't want to be caught. I'd more likely end up with my face disfigured and my power of speech removed than with a pretty scrapbook page recording her vital statistics for posterity. I clung hard to my bedposts, and thought I wouldn't move, but I did in spite of my efforts, and followed the spirit downstairs, across the kitchen, and into the garden, making a good deal more noise than she did or than I ought to. I was sure every moment that my brother would wake up, and every bone was tense. Then I was in the garden and thought she'd gone. I had a moment to relax before the tension returned fourfold, and I knew she was even nearer than before.
I couldn't see her properly, or hear her at all, but I thought I understood. There'd been a man, he'd left, and he'd taken something vital with him. The details wouldn't coalesce any more than her body would. I had the impression she hadn't died right away, but lingered awhile, doing dainty work and trying to gossip and laugh, which eroded away her insides even worse than if she'd let herself languish in peace. Instead she'd been busy and pretended at carelessness, and the outside of her had grown weaker while the inside made ready to implode on itself. That much, at least, I knew for certain-I could feel the inside of her chest like it was my own, felt all the breath rush out of me and red flares of pain rush in from all directions. The garden, till then comforting, felt too confining and too expansive; there was nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe, but my nostrils and lungs and throat were filled with phantasm, and my whole body burned.
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If I'd known what Boo meant, it might've been easier, but all I knew were weird illustrations of weirder creatures, no longer innocent drawings of Jem playing ball or of me and Dill kissing awkwardly behind Calpurnia's back. The last three years of Boo's life he'd stopped reading the paper and spying on us and started seeing things. He wasn't the first person, certainly, to succumb to a particular kind of madness, but he was the first person I knew who'd gone 'round like that, and certainly the first person who'd illustrated the process. I drank, and read, and when I closed my eyes, heat crept from my lungs up through my throat, exploding in my nostrils and making me scream.
I screamed, and screamed, and screamed, till Atticus lifted me from my bed and shook me hard.
"You've been drinking," he said.
I nodded miserably.
"And reading that book Arthur Radley left for you."
I nodded again, and Atticus shook his head; I nodded harder, as if that would make him nod too, agreeing that whatever I'd done was all right. I wanted him to let me go, retreat to his room so I could retreat to sleep, but of course he didn't. "Scout, you are drunk."
"No shir."
"Come downstairs."
"Now?"
"Are you likely to sleep?"
I thought about Boo's ghosts, and shook my head. "Are you going to thrash me, sir?" I asked, careful not to slur.
"Yes," he said, and I flinched. "Yes, I'm going to whip you, because I would be remiss as your guardian if I failed to punish you for drinking under my roof-and underage, too. Is it stolen?"
I decided it would be unwise to tell him I'd gotten it from Dill, so I said nothing.
He let my silence stand, and said only, "Don't expect me to thrash you again, though."
"I won't drink anymore," I promised.
"I mean you are getting entirely too old to be taken over my knee, Scout, and after tonight I won't. I suppose waking up screaming will be punishment enough if you decide to mix alcohol and ghost stories again."
I stiffened, pretending to myself that I was brave enough to bear the lashing without tears, and decided not to ask how Atticus knew what Boo's scrapbook contained.