We Were So Close!

I awoke that morning and thought the world was endin’- it was a bizarre thing that it would snow in Maycomb County. Mr. Avery said that when children didn’t obey their parents, the seasons would change and Jem and me felt guilty for being the reason of winter in the middle of autumn. Since it was the coldest weather since 1885, we didn’t go to school that day. It was amazing to see snow for the first time, but I was freezing and missed the usual sweltering heat.

            Jem told me not to walk about in the snow so much or I would waste it, so I was meticulous because we really wanted to do a snowman. Jem had an idea: we could go walk in Miss Maudie’s yard and waste her snow instead. Dissension existed between Jem and Miss Maudie –while Jem said the snow was beautiful, she said it wasn’t because it would freeze her azaleas. She told us we could take all her snow since it was freezing her plants. Jem went to Miss Maudie’s back yard and collected baskets of dirt and snow, which was kind of a mess. I thought it wouldn’t work but he took handfuls of dirt and built it into the body of our nigger snowman. It looked like Miss Crawford but he continued his plan. He suddenly said, “Mr. Avery’s sort of shaped like a snowman, ain’t he?” We conspired to make a Mr. Avery snowman; he grabbed snow and put it on the mud, letting me only cover the back. Then we added eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons, and a stick of stove wood to make him look cross.

            When Atticus got home, he lionized Jem and admired our creation, but then obligated us to disguise the fellow because it was wrong to make caricatures of the neighbors. In the afternoon it stopped snowing and I went to sleep with coal on the fire in my room; it seemed like a long time had elapsed when Atticus woke me up. I interrogated him –trying to figure out what was the matter. I then assimilated that something was wrong in our neighborhood: Miss Maudie’s house was on fire! We did as told, and Jem and me walked towards the Radley Place, leaving behind the calamitous scene. We saw as the men in our neighborhood, including Atticus, helped get Miss Maudie’s things out of the burning house. Even with the gigantic fire I was shivering from the cold. Fire trucks came to the rescue and tried to extinguish the fire; but the roof burned and the house collapsed.

            Atticus led us home and offered us hot chocolate. He was staring at me and I didn’t know why. “Whose blanket is that?” I didn’t know what he was talking about, looked down, and saw a brown blanket around my shoulders. I turned to ask Jem for an answer and we both apprehended –Boo Radley had put it around my arms so I wouldn’t be cold. I could believe we hadn’t seen him! We were so close…