Heck's Story — To Kill a Mockingbird

They move to the porch, where the light is kinder to a man not used to being looked at. Boo sits in the swing while Atticus and Heck finish the night's accounting. Atticus believes Jem killed Bob Ewell. In the version he can bear, his injured son struck back in the dark and the kitchen knife found Bob. Atticus will not have that fact buried. He wants it tried, or at least set down in the open, so Jem will not grow up under a secret his father helped him keep. A cover story would teach the boy that the Finches may step around the law. Atticus has spent a year asking Maycomb to face an ugly truth in public. He will not ask less of his own house.

Heck Tate refuses. A child with a shattered arm could not have driven that knife. The fight had another actor. Heck will not hang a killing on Jem, and he will not name the man who stopped Bob. His public account is simple: Bob Ewell fell on his knife. That is the story he will carry to town. Atticus argues because he hates a lie that protects his family. Heck holds the line because the truth Atticus wants would drag a recluse into a second circus.

Heck will not put Arthur Radley under courthouse lights so the ladies of Maycomb can bring cake and stare. To haul him into fame would pay him with the one thing he cannot survive: public gratitude as spectacle. Heck calls that a sin. Dragging Boo into the town's mouth would be like shooting a mockingbird. Bob is dead. Tom is dead. Heck will not add Arthur's peace to the bill. Atticus asks Scout if she understands. She says yes: exposing Arthur would be like shooting a mockingbird. Atticus accepts Heck's account, not because he loves a false report, but because he will not repay a quiet man with a crowd. He thanks Boo for his children's lives. The thanks are plain. They do not ask Boo to answer.