Cement in the Knothole — To Kill a Mockingbird

School starts, and Jem is quiet in a way that is not ordinary fifth-grade mood. For days he will not talk about the night he went back for his trousers. Scout waits him out. At last he tells her. The trousers were not tangled where he had kicked them off. They were folded across the wire, waiting. Someone had tried to mend the tear, roughly, as if a person who did not sew often had sat in the dark and done his best. The shotgun was frightening. The folded, half-mended clothes are something else: proof the figure in the house is not only watching, but caring in a clumsy, secret way. Jem does not know what to do with kindness that arrives like a ghost.

The knothole begins to speak more clearly. First a ball of twine, left, then taken when it stays. Later two soap figures, a boy and a girl close enough that the children recognise themselves. Then a tarnished spelling medal, and a pocket watch on a chain with a cheap knife. The tree has become a postbox. Whoever is using it knows their faces. They stop pretending the gifts are accidents and decide to leave a thank-you note signed as friends.

They never deliver it. The next morning the knothole is packed with grey cement, the hollow gone. Nathan says the tree is dying and the cement will keep it from rotting. Scout and Jem ask Atticus to look. He studies the leaves and trunk and says the oak looks healthy. He does not accuse Nathan. The children can do the arithmetic: a living tree, a filled hole, and a man who does not want messages between his house and the street. That night Scout finds Jem on the verandah, crying. He will not give a neat reason. The cement is the end of the only conversation they had with the person inside, a conversation carried in gum, pennies, twine, soap, a medal, and a watch. Someone was trying to be kind, and the house has sealed the kindness in.