Gifts in the Tree — To Kill a Mockingbird

Walking home from school, Scout finds two pieces of chewing gum in a knothole of the oak on the Radley place. She chews both. When Jem hears where they came from he makes her spit them out, afraid the tree is poisoned by the house. Later they find a small box in the same hole holding two old pennies, worn smooth and kept as if they still had value. They take the coins and will not yet admit the tree might be a message rather than a trap. The school year crawls. Scout still hates the classroom, but the walk home now has a secret. The Radley lot, once only a dare, has started to give things back.

Summer returns Dill, and the three invent a game. They act out the rumours about Boo: the scissors, the locked rooms, the years without a face at the door. Jem plays Arthur. Dill plays the father. Scout gets the smaller parts. The play is part mockery and part hunger. They want the story real enough to touch and safe enough to laugh at. Atticus comes home, sees them with scissors, and asks what they are doing. They deny the game is about the Radleys. He lets them go, but they have already crossed from talk into impersonation.

On another afternoon Jem pushes Scout inside an old tyre and sends her rolling. The tyre leaves the street, crashes into the Radley yard, and dumps her near the house. Then she hears low laughter from inside, not a monster's howl, just someone amused at the heap she has become. She does not tell the boys. She wants out at once. Jem runs in and retrieves the tyre. They keep playing the Radley game anyway. Dill and Jem are too deep in the story to stop, and Scout still wants the trio. Two sticks of gum and two old pennies sit in the background, still unconnected to the laughter.