When Jem was nearly 13 years old his arm was badly broken at the elbow. After it healed and Jem was assured that he could still play football, his arm never bothered him - though it always remained shorter than the right, and hung at a funny angle. Years later, Jem and his sister, Scout, still talked about the accident and the events leading up to it. They finally agreed it had all started the summer when they tried to get Arthur "Boo" Radley to come out of his house.

Jem and Scout lived in Maycomb, Alabama, a drowsy, isolated town where everyone knew everyone. Their mother had died when Scout was two years old. Calpurnia, a Negro cook, took care of them and taught them tolerance that took them beyond the rigid prejudices of Maycomb society' Their wise father, an attorney, Atticus Finch, played with them and read them stories. In fact, Scout learned to read before going to school which later caused trouble with her teacher, who didn't think early reading fit into proper educational theory.

During the summer when Scout was six and Jem was ten, the children became fascinated with the Radley place next door. Most of the community's young people believed the house was haunted. At night children would cross the street rather than walk in front of the Radley house. Nuts that fell from the Radley pecan tree into the school yard were never eaten; surely, Radley nuts would kill you. A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a lost ball. Scout and Jem raced past the property on their way to or from school. The only person seen going in and out of the dwelling was old Nathan Radley, "the meanest man ever God blew breath into," according to Calpurnia.

But inside the weathered home also lived "Boo," Nathan's younger brother. No one had seen Boo for the past twenty years. It was said that he had gotten into some "trouble" all those years ago and had been imprisoned in the house ever since first by his now dead father and then by Nathan.

All that summer Scout and Jem bravely assailed the Radley home, trying to get a glimpse of Boo. They never saw him; but they did see evidence of his existence. On one occasion, Jem's torn pants (lost on a wire fence while escaping from the Radley yard) were returned to him - mended. Another night, when a fire forced the Finches out of their house, Scout, shivering in the cold, found a blanket suddenly thrust around her shoulders. "We'd better keep ... the blanket to ourselves," Atticus gently said. "Someday, maybe, Scout can thank him for covering her up." "Thank who?" Scout asked. "Boo Radley," replied her father. "You were so busy looking at the fire you didn't know it when he put the blanket around you."

Atticus finally ordered his two children to stop harassing Arthur: "What Mr. Radley did was his own business. If he wanted to come out, he would. If he wanted to stay inside his own house he had the right to stay inside free from the attention of inquisitive children."

Through the next fall and winter, objects began to mysteriously appear in the knot-hole of a tree on the corner of the Radley property: gum, then twine, a carved soap sculpture, Indian-head pennies, and other treasures - gifts clearly intended for Scout and Jem. Boo became even more of a puzzle.

The following summer, trouble cropped up over Atticus' recent appointment as defense counsel for Tom Robinson, a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Violet Ewell. The Ewells were the lowest family in Maycomb society. But Mayelia was white and Tom was black: no matter how trashy the girl might be, her honor had to be upheld against a Negro. What angered many of the townspeople most was Atticus's attempt to truly defend Tom. Atticus and his children had several threats aimed at pressuring them to let things stay as they'd always been in the South. But Atticus felt Tom was innocent, and he would do all he could to prove it. "Every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally," he told Scout. Nevertheless, he had to be realistic. They would probably lose, he explained, because they had been "licked a hundred years before they had even started",, but that was no reason not to try. Atticus then extracted a promise from Scout not to fight her friends at school - a difficult promise to keep. She heard her father called "nigger-lover," and she herself, for the first time in her life, was labeled a coward. But Scout stayed true to her word; her father rarely asked for favors.

The day of Tom Robinson's trial dawned hot and droopy, but it still seemed everyone in Maycomb was packed into the courthouse. Sheriff Heck Tate was the first witness. He testified that on answering a summons from her father, he had found Mayella at her home, her head bloodied, bruises on her arms and neck, and her right eye blackened. She claimed to have been beaten and raped by Tom Robinson. Sheriff Tate added that he personally felt Mayella had been battered by a left-handed person; her principal wounds were on her right side.

The next witness, Robert E. Lee Ewell, Mayella's ne'er-do-well father, described coming home to find Tom attacking his daughter. He had run Tom off, he said, and fetched the sheriff. just before Mr. Ewell left the stand, Atticus demonstrated to the jury the fact that Bob Ewell was left-handed.

Then Mayella Ewell testified. Through careful questioning, Atticus was able to paint for the jury the type of life Mayella led. The welfare check never went far enough (her father drank most of it up); her many younger brothers and sisters were always dirty and sick; there was never enough food or clothes, and the family rummaged through the dump to find their belongings and food. Mayella was a lonely girl trying to make the most of a miserable situation.

The final witness was the defendant himself, Tom Robinson. As he took the oath, it became obvious to all that his left arm was totally useless. It had been mutilated in a farming accident. This gentle hired-hand could never have beaten up Mayella Ewell.

Atticus concluded his closing statement using Thomas Jefferson's words - "all men are created equal." All men aren't created equal, he argued. One individual may be faster than another; some people are gifted beyond the scope of most men. But in one arena this country presumes that all men are created equal: in their rights before a court of law.

Despite the many hours the jury spent deliberating, Tom Robinson was declared guilty, Though Atticus tried to describe that they would probably win when the case was appealed to a higher court, Tom was left without hope. Only a few weeks later, as he tried to escape from jail, he was shot and killed.

But the episode was not yet closed. Bob Ewell's anger still smoldered. Atticus Finch had made a fool of him, and he publicly vowed revenge.

School started that autumn, and life slipped back into the ordinary. For Halloween, the ladies of Maycomb decided to produce an original pageant at the elementary school, and Scout was assigned the role of a walking, talking ham, ingloriously costumed in chicken wire and brown paper. After the pageant, she waited, humiliated, backstage with Jem until everyone else had left. Then the two started for home.

It was dark, and Scout couldn't see much anyway because of her costume - but she could hear. Someone was following them! As they started running, suddenly someone seized Scout and she fell. After a brief, frenzied scuffle, the children dashed on toward the house. This time Scout felt Jem jerked backwards to the ground. More scuffling, then a dull, crunching sound - and Jem screamed.

"As Scout groped toward jem, she was grabbed and her breath was slowly squeezed out of her. Suddenly the attacker lurched back, twitched and fell. Scout heard someone breathing heavily, and then a violent sobbing and coughing." This someone picked Jem up and staggered down the street to the Finch's home.

After Sheriff Tate had surveyed the scene of the fight, he reported to Atticus: "Bob Ewell's lyin' on the ground under that tree down yonder with a kitchen knife stuck up under his ribs. He's dead, Mr. Finch."

As the household calmed down that night and Scout was reassured that Jem would live, she suddenly realized that a stranger was standing behind the door - a man so white he looked as if he never saw the sun, his cheeks thin and hollow, his eyes colorless, and his hair disarranged and dead-looking. At last Scout had met Arthur Radley. "Hi Boo," she said, just as she always imagined greeting him.

According to Heck Tate, dragging shy Boo Radley into the limelight of a murder trial would be "as sinful as killing a mockingbird." There would be no trial. Heck Tate's report would read that Ewell had fallen on his knife.

Boo Radley hardly ever left his home. But one October night, when his friends, the children he had watched so frequently from his window, needed him, he came. "Thank you for my children, Arthur," said Atticus Finch as Scout turned to walk Boo home.

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