Bob Ewell fell on his knife

I don't do a lot of walking around the ranch, it must be said - I'm trying to remedy that, kind of, except now it's going to be summer and hot and ticks . . . nonetheless, tonight I had this problem of car key being in barn and car being here and I needed to be at the other side of the compound, so I walked. It's not far or difficult in any way, except that later, it was going to be night and I'm not going to lie that while I am scared of ticks in the day, freaky animal noises echoing over the river in the dark are a strong deterrent.

But instead of being scaredy-cat girl, I instead imagined I was Scout taking "[my] longest journey together" with Jem through the patch of woods behind the schoolyard, past the Radley place. You know what happens next - Bob Ewell's knife rakes along the chicken wire in her ham costume and Jem's arm gets broken and it's all in pitch-black night with no moon even. Tonight the moon was somewhere else, and though there was a bit of ambient light from the barn, it was pretty dark and coyotes and dogs were barking somewhere, and the cats were doing their darnedest to scare me half to death by jumping out of bushes directly in my path, but I made it all the way to the gravel path through the woods to the gatehouse before turning on the flashlight. Because: spiders. But more than spiders: walking face-first into their webs strung between trees.

I love the whole novel, especially Miss Maudie and "His food doesn't stick going down, does it?" but that scene, too, because it's wonderfully visceral. I've read it at least 30 times and I still try to map it out in my head: how far is it from the school? They can see when the janitor turns off the lights, but in the blackness, they were the brightest thing, so they could have been far in the distance, and at what angle, exactly, does Boo Radley's house face the Finches, and how much woods are we talking here? Scout is barefoot, which adds an important layer - cold earth and stumbling over tree roots. And mostly, I love that the scene ends with Heck Tate, who is, after many readings, right up there with Miss Maudie in terms of my deepest love and affection. I am always glad he is the endcap to that night's story - if he had been waiting up here in my apartment tonight, I daresay I might have walked through the woods without the flashlight.