Arthur "Boo" Radley's Childhood

Told From Arthur's Point of View

Hi. I'm Boo Radley. Okay, my name isn't really Boo, it's Arthur. Arthur Radley. According to the neighborhood gossip, I'm six and a half feet tall, with rotten yellow teeth, bloodstained hands, I eat raw squirrels and cats, and I drool most of the time. But I'm not really like that. I'm pretty average, really. I have pale skin, I'm kind of thin, have light-colored hair, and I'm only around five foot nine. I'm thirty-seven years old, and I haven't left the house in over fifteen years. I bet you want to know why. This is the story of my childhood.

I was born in Maycomb, Alabama in the same house I live in now. I have a brother named Nathan Radley who is three years my senior. My father was very religious, and always thought what he believed was right and everything else was wrong. Not the nicest guy to have around. No matter what I did, it was never good enough for my dad, but it seemed to him that Nathan was the perfect son. I was always being compared to Nathan, which eventually gave him a big head. Every time it was always, "Why can't you be more like your brother?" or "You should act more like Nathan!"

All the neglect and abuse from my father eventually led up to my becoming acquainted with the Cunningham boys. Unlike the Ewells, I was only verbally abused. Anyway, I started to hang out with the Cunninghams all the time, despite them being the "trash" of the town, and we formed a gang when I was a teenager. We got into all sorts of trouble, like locking the town beadle in the courthouse outhouse, setting fire to a large stack of tinder in the woods on multiple occasions, stealing a car, and stealing from some of the shops around town. However, the outhouse incident is what finally got us all tried in the courthouse. Let me tell you, it was awful having all those eyes boring into the back of your skull, with the heat from outside causing me to sweat, and Judge Taylor staring at all of us while he read off the charges. We were all sentenced to attend industrial school, but my father wouldn't have it. He promised to keep me out of trouble, as long as I didn't go with the Cunninghams to industrial school. The judge agreed, and my father grabbed my arm, a little too roughly, and led me out of the courtroom.

The next thing I knew, my father had shoved me into my room upstairs and locked the door. "I don't want to hear one word out of you for the rest of the day, boy!" I could hear him stomping down the stairs, muttering under his breath. My room was dark, the only sunlight coming through the crack in the closed curtains in front of my only window. Nathan had left home that year, and I wished he would've taken me with him. The hours passed as I sat in my dark, lonely room and my father had still not come back. I figured he just forgot about me, and carried on around the house. Boy, was I wrong.

He came in at sunset, his face was as beet red, his knuckles were white from clenching his fists so hard, and from where I sat, I swore that he looked like the Devil himself. "Come on, Arthur," he said, grabbing my shirt and dragging me downstairs, where my mother stood in the living room. My father practically threw me down onto the well worn couch, and I was subjected to what felt like hours of lecturing about my behavior. My eyes drooped a couple times, followed by a loud "Pay attention, boy!" from my father. After it was over, my father let out with the oh so common "Why can't you be more like your brother?" Then, I snapped. I don't know what it was, but my blood was boiling, and my pale face was beginning to turn red. I was screaming every curse word I knew at my father and yelling at him to quit comparing me to Nathan. Then, without warning, he slapped me. Hard. Hard enough so that it left a bright red mark on my cheek.

Dad seemed to have regretted what he'd done, because he began staring at his hand like it wasn't a part of his body. He began to apologize, and I just yelled at him to take his apology and shove it up his rear end. I remember that so well, because it was the first time in my life that he had ever laid a hand on me. Sure, he had threatened me quite a bit, but he never inflicted any physical harm on me until now. I ran up to my room without dinner, which I came to regret later, and slumped down onto my bed. I rubbed my cheek where my father had slapped me, and began to feel an unusual wetness around the corners of my eyes. Was I crying? I couldn't remember the last time I had cried. I was usually a lot tougher than this, but I guess Dad slapping me for the first time had quite an effect on me.

Anyway, about a year or two later, I was cutting out articles from the newspaper, the Maycomb Tribune, with an old pair of scissors I found in the kitchen, for my scrap book, when Mom and Dad walked by arguing, as usual. I was suddenly filled with immense anger for everything he had done, and looked and the scissors and got an idea. Dad walked by where I was sitting, and what did I do? I stabbed him right in the leg with my scissors. I was suddenly filled with pride, and looked up at my mother. Instead of her eyes lighting up like I hoped, they were darker than ever, a look of intense horror on her face. My father was screaming, his hand on his leg, and Mom ran out the door yelling, "He's going to kill us all!" I guess Mom wasn't as happy as I'd hoped, but I was pretty satisfied, and just kept right on cutting the paper. My happiness didn't last long, though.

What I'd done got me into that courthouse again, and Judge Taylor wanted to send me to an asylum. But my father, being the stubborn son-of-a-gun he is, declared that, "No Radley is going to an asylum!" So what did I get? Three years locked up in the courthouse basement. The courtroom had a slightly moldy smell to it, but the basement was suffocating. There were all kinds of bugs crawling around, and rats, hundreds of rats! They were crawling all over my feet, chewing on my arms and legs, and I eventually got sick from all the mildew. I would've died, had my father not come and gotten me. It was at that time that he decided to just lock me up permanently in the house. So that's where I stayed.

Dad put a padlock on my window, so that I couldn't sneak out, and I was locked in my room. The only reason I was allowed to go downstairs was to eat, and I didn't even get much food. I just stayed in my house for years and years and years, and my already pale skin had gotten even paler, if that was even possible. The children in the neighborhood seemed terrified of the house, and I couldn't blame them. I would be too, if I were them. But I think it was me they were scared of, and it was around this time that people started calling me Boo. And one day, while I was looking in the mirror, I could see why. My skin wasn't just pale anymore, it was a ghostly white, and my hair was a very light blond, almost white, from going years and years with little to no sunlight.

It was also around this time that I took to going out at night. Since the sun hurt my eyes and burned my skin, I used a pin to pick the lock and open the window so that I could go out. I enjoyed the time I spent walking around the neighborhood, in the shadows of course, to feel the warm breeze blowing on my face again after so long, it just felt good. Of course I couldn't be out for long, since my parents were light sleepers, and I would be in serious trouble with Dad if he found out. When I felt I had been out long enough, I ran silently back to my house and climbed back into the window. I then closed the window ever so slowly, and quietly put the padlock back on before finally going to sleep.

That was basically my childhood/teen years in a nutshell. Sure, I went into when I was in my mid to late twenties, but I got so engrossed in writing, I forgot. I hope you enjoyed reading about the childhood of Arthur "Boo" Radley.