"Jem, do you remember the night we saw Boo Radley?" I asked one humid July nightfall as my brother and I were sitting on our front porch. It had been three whole years since the Bob Ewell incident and I had just finished reading a letter from Dill, who was now thirteen years old and spending most of the summer with his mother.
Jem didn't even bother to look up from his book. "As far as I remember, you were the one who saw 'im."
"Yeah…that's right," I conceded, resting my head my propped-up hand and glancing at the letter beside me. "Dill says he still wishes he coulda seen 'im, too."
"He wouldn't say that if he'd been there," Jem said, looking at his left arm, which was still somewhat crooked.
"Aw, shut up. You were asleep the whole time." I snapped. Then I glanced at the Radley house in all its run-down mystery, my thoughts turning back to Boo Radley. "But if the Ewells hadn't done all that, we wouldn't 'ave gotten to see Boo."
"Naw, Scout. The Ewells didn't start it." Jem closed his book, looking seriously at me.
"They did too, Jem. If that Mayella and her pa hadn't sued Tom Robinson, Atticus wouldn't have had to do a thing, and wouldn't 'ave come after us."
"Scout, the whole thing started way before."
"Who says?"
"It started that summer we first met Dill. You remember?"
"'Course I do." I said, fingering the crease in Dill's letter. "But—"
"We were scared of Boo back then. Dill gave us the idea of makin' Boo come outta his house."
"What does that hafta do with anything, Jem?" I said, scowling as I brushed the dirt off my skirt. "Boo didn't even know us."
"He was watchin' us, wasn't he?" Jem pointed out.
"Yeah." I had to stop and think before adding. "I still think the Ewells started it."
"But Boo Radley was the one who rescued you, remember?" he said, his dark eyebrows stiffening as he tried to stay calm.
"So? Doesn't change that it was all Bob Ewells fault."
Jem frowned at me and gave a short, exasperated sigh. "I'mjust tryin' to take a broad view on this, Scout!"
"Well if you wanna take a broad view of the thing, it started with Andrew Jackson!" I retorted, standing up to my full height of five-foot-two. "If he hadn't run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch wouldn't have come up to Alabama."
Jem stood upright to his towering height of five-foot-eleven, never one to be outdone by me. "Scout, you're being ridiculous."
"I'm being ridiculous?" I challenged incredulously, glaring at Jem.
Jem shrugged, obviously not wanting to dignify my response with a comeback. My fists curled as I considered whacking Jem in his stuck-up face. I decided against it. At the age of twelve, I was far too old to be starting fistfights every which way. It was terribly unladylike. Aunt Alexandra would skin me alive! Atticus wouldn't be too pleased about it, either.
"Fine," I said curtly. "I'll ask Atticus."
"Go ahead!" answered Jem, and he sat back down.
The day was ending, and Atticus, as usual, was sitting at his desk doing some paperwork or the other. In recent times, I felt that Atticus was becoming more work-orientated and less of a fascinating person. Maybe I was undergoing a set of bizarre mental changes equivalent to those Jem had experienced three years before. Calpurnia called it "growing up"- as if it was something that every person went through.
"Atticus," I loudly called, trudging over to the armchair beside Atticus' desk and crossing my bony arms. "Remember what happened with ?"
Atticus swiveled to look at me. "Yes. Yes, I do, Scout."
"Well, Jem's been saying the whole Ewell thing started 'cause of Boo Radley. And I said the Ewells started it all. "
"Don't call him Boo. His name is Mr. Arthur." Atticus said sternly.
"That's not what I said," interrupted Jem, coming inside. "I said if you want to have a broad view of it, it started the summer we met Dill because he was the one who gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out. And then, Boo started watching us and…doin' stuff for us and…you know."
"That's true, Jem. It did lead up to…the Bob Ewell incident, in a sense. But you're right too, Scout."
"How can we both be right?" I asked Atticus.
"Scout, sometimes you need a lot of different perspectives before you see the full picture." Atticus told me, and somehow I couldn't disagree with that.
Aunt Alexandra emerged at the door, a drifting feather."Are you bothering your father again?"
"No'm." I shuffled back outside. The dusky wind was soothing to my bare arms as I skipped down the steps and stepped across to the Radley front gate.
"Scout!" called Jem, disapproving.
Disregarding Jem, I reached my arm out and did the unthinkable. I plucked a single pecan off the dewy grass where it had fallen, and closed my hand snugly around its barky surface. Aware of eyes watching from behind, I turned to stare at the Radley house, but there was no one there.
I hurried back inside our house. Jem shook his head at me. "Why'd you do that?"
"Why can't I?" I posed, biting into the pecan and grinning widely. The flavor was surprisingly delicious for a Radley pecan, and the crunch extraordinarily satisfying.
"About time someone ate one of those," Atticus commented. I nodded, peering through the front window. Outside, the sky was fading to a deep smoky purple color. Everyone in town would be settling down for the evening. As I stared, I thought I saw a figure silhouetted in the uppermost window of the Radley house. I blinked, and a shadow dropped swiftly across the window, like a curtain falling into place.