To Kill a Mockingbird

stayed gone all the time, and when they were home, even, they’d get off in a room by themselves.”
    “What’d they do in there?”
    “Nothin‘, just sittin’ and readin‘—but they didn’t want me with ’em.”
    I pushed the pillow to the headboard and sat up. “You know something? I was fixin‘ to run off tonight because there they all were. You don’t want ’em around you all the time, Dill—”
    Dill breathed his patient breath, a half-sigh.
    “—good night, Atticus’s gone all day and sometimes half the night and off in the legislature and I don’t know what—you don’t want ‘em around all the time, Dill, you couldn’t do anything if they were.”
    “That’s not it.”
    As Dill explained, I found myself wondering what life would be if Jem were different, even from what he was now; what I would do if Atticus did not feel the necessity of my presence, help and advice. Why, he couldn’t get along a day without me. Even Calpurnia couldn’t get along unless I was there. They needed me.
    “Dill, you ain’t telling me right—your folks couldn’t do without you. They must be just mean to you. Tell you what to do about that—”
    Dill’s voice went on steadily in the darkness: “The thing is, what I’m tryin‘ to say is—they do get on a lot better without me, I can’t help them any. They ain’t mean. They buy me everything I want, but it’s now—you’ve-got-it-go-play-with-it. You’ve got a roomful of things. I-got-you-that-book-so-go-read-it.” Dill tried to deepen his voice. “You’re not a boy. Boys get out and play baseball with other boys, they don’t hang around the house worryin’ their folks.”
    Dill’s voice was his own again: “Oh, they ain’t mean. They kiss you and hug you good night and good mornin‘ and good-bye and tell you they love you—Scout, let’s get us a baby.”
    “Where?”
    There was a man Dill had heard of who had a boat that he rowed across to a foggy island where all these babies were; you could order one—
    “That’s a lie. Aunty said God drops ‘em down the chimney. At least that’s what I think she said.” For once, Aunty’s diction had not been too clear.
    “Well that ain’t so. You get babies from each other. But there’s this man, too—he has all these babies just waitin‘ to wake up, he breathes life into ’em…”
    Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talking himself to sleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy island there rose the faded image of a gray house with sad brown doors.
    “Dill?”
    “Mm?”
    “Why do you reckon Boo Radley’s never run off?”
    Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me.
    “Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run off to…”

Chapter 15

    After many telephone calls, much pleading on behalf of the defendant, and a long forgiving letter from his mother, it was decided that Dill could stay. We had a week of peace together. After that, little, it seemed. A nightmare was upon us.
    It began one evening after supper. Dill was over; Aunt Alexandra was in her chair in the corner, Atticus was in his; Jem and I were on the floor reading. It had been a placid week: I had minded Aunty; Jem had outgrown the treehouse, but helped Dill and me construct a new rope ladder for it; Dill had hit upon a foolproof plan to make Boo Radley come out at no cost to ourselves (place a trail of lemon drops from the back door to the front yard and he’d follow it, like an ant). There was a knock on the front door, Jem answered it and said it was Mr. Heck Tate.
    “Well, ask him to come in,” said Atticus.
    “I already did. There’s some men outside in the yard, they want you to come out.”
    In Maycomb, grown men stood outside in the front yard for only two reasons: death and politics. I wondered who had died. Jem and I went to the front door, but Atticus called, “Go back in the house.”
    Jem turned out the livingroom lights and pressed his nose to a window screen. Aunt Alexandra protested. “Just for a second, Aunty, let’s see who it is,” he said.
    Dill and I took another window. A crowd of men was standing around Atticus. They all seemed to be talking at once.
    “…movin‘ him