Winter started with the coldest weather in Macomb County since 1885 and the death of Mrs. Radley. Atticus went over to her house and when he came back he said she died of natural causes. Jem made me interrogate him about his visit and if he saw Mr. Radley, but he said he didn’t and that was about it.
I woke up the next morning, opened my eyes and felt the bizarre, cold weather around me and not the usual, sweltering air that filled my room all these other years. I stood up and walked towards the window, but what I saw was not what I expected. Our backyard was white.
“The world’s ending Atticus! Please do something!” I dragged him to the window and pointed. He said it was just snowing. I didn’t know what it was because I had never seen it in my whole life, neither did Jem. I watched as every snowflake fell to the ground and assimilated into the rest of them.
The phone rang and Atticus picked up. When he hung up, he said it was Eula May and she said that school had been cancelled so Jem decided to make a snowman. We didn’t really know how, but Jem seemed to have an idea. He walked to the backyard and I followed him into the snow.
“Don’t walk on the snow Scout. You’re wasting it.” He looked around, “There isn’t enough snow, maybe Miss Maudie will let us borrow some of hers.” We walked over to her house. When we asked her if we could borrow her snow she told us to take it all. We gathered up as much of it as we could, but there still wasn’t enough. Jem started gathering dirt and building a snowman shape out of it. Then he started covering his masterpiece with snow.
He permitted me to cover only the back, saving the public parts for himself. He made it look like Mr. Avery, looking cross and everything. A stick of stovewood completed his meticulous work. Atticus was very impressed with our creation, but he said we better disguise it. Jem got Miss Maudie’s sunhat, put it on the snowman’s head and jammed her hedge-clippers into the crook of his arm.
It seemed like only minutes elapsed before I was awakened by someone shaking me.
“Baby, get up.” He said and handed me my bathrobe and coat. I put them on and then got my shoes and socks. He pulled me out of bed and out the house. By then, I understood why he was in such a hurry. Across the street Miss Maudie’s house was on fire. Atticus pushed us towards the Radley place and I remembered the warm summer, when we conspired to put a note in the house to get Boo to come out. I looked back at Miss Maudie’s house where the fire got stronger. I thought it was imminent that our house would catch on fire next, but Atticus didn’t seem to worry about that right now.
We heard shouts and then Mr. Avery’s face appeared in the upstairs window. He was getting some furniture out but men shouted to him and told him to get down. When he climbed through the window, he got stuck. I buried my face under Jem’s arm and didn’t look up until he shouted, “He’s got loose!” We watched him walk across the porch and slide down a pillar until he slipped, fell and landed on Miss Maudie’s shrubbery.
Smoke started rolling off our house and Miss Rachel’s house. There was noise all around the neighborhood. Houses started catching on fire one after the other and it wasn’t until dawn before the men started leaving.
The next day, we found Miss Maudie looking at the smoking black holes in her yard from the calamitous night.
We were drinking cocoa, when I noticed Atticus staring at me. “I thought I told you and Jem to stay put.” We said we did, but he pointed to the blanket around my shoulders and asked whose it was. I didn’t apprehend how the blanket got there and looked at Jem for answers. He blurted out that Boo Radley had put it there and that I had been so busy looking at the fire I didn’t notice when he came up behind me.
"Just think Scout, if you'd just turned around you'd've seen him." I wished I had and I wished I did.
