Maycomb and the Radley House — To Kill a Mockingbird

Adult Scout Finch looks back on a childhood summer that later left Jem with a broken arm. She starts with the household that raised her. Atticus Finch is a lawyer in the county seat and a widower whose wife died when Scout was two. He comes home at midday for the long meal, then walks back to his office. Calpurnia has cooked and kept the house for years and will not let Scout talk her way out of manners. Jem is four years older. Scout is six the summer Charles Baker Harris, called Dill, arrives from Meridian to stay with his aunt Miss Rachel. He is small, pale-haired, and gifted at invention, and he wins the other two at once.

Maycomb in the Depression is a small, tired Alabama town. Neighbours know one another's grandparents, who still owes a debt, and which family is spoken of in the same tone. Dirt streets bake. Men gather near the courthouse. What seizes Dill is the shuttered house down the street. Arthur Radley, called Boo, has become the town's private monster. As a teenager he fell in with a rough crowd, was locked away by his father, and vanished from ordinary life. Gossip says he later drove scissors into his father's leg. Old Mr Radley died. Nathan came home from Pensacola. Miss Stephanie Crawford fills the gaps: Boo peeps, eats raw animals, waits. Pecans from the yard go uneaten. The pavement is a border they dare one another to cross.

Dill bets Jem will not walk up and touch the house. Jem delays, then sprints, slaps the wood, and races back. Scout, looking up, sees a movement at an inside shutter, as if someone in the dark had shifted the slat to look out. The house has answered, just barely, that it is not empty.