“Tom, did she ever speak to you?”
“Why, yes suh, I’d tip my hat when I’d go by, and one day she asked me to come inside the fence and bust up a chiffarobe for her.”
“When did she ask you to chop up the—the chiffarobe?”
“Mr. Finch, it was way last spring. I remember it because it was choppin’ time and I had my hoe with me. I said I didn’t have nothin’ but this hoe, but she said she had a hatchet . She give me the hatchet and I broke up the chiffarobe. She said, ‘I reckon I’ll hafta give you a nickel, won’t I?’ an’ I said, ‘No ma’am there ain’t no charge.’ Then I went home. Mr. Finch, that was way last spring, way over a year ago.”
“Did you ever go on the place again?”
“Yes, suh.”
“When?”
“Well, I went lots of times.”
There was murmuring in the courtroom but it died down quickly.
“Under what circumstances?”
“Please, suh?”
“Why did you go inside the fence lots of times?”
“She’d call me in, suh. Seemed like every time I passed by yonder she’d have some little somethin’ for me to do—choppin’, kindlin’, carryin’ water for her. She watered them red flowers every day—“
“Were you paid for your services?”
“No suh, not after she offered me a nickel the first time. I was glad to do it, Mr. Ewell didn’t seem to help her none, and neither did the children, and I knowed she didn’t have no nickels to spare .”
“Where were the other children?”
“They was always around, all over the place. They’d watch me work, some of ‘em’d set in the window.”
“Would Miss Mayella talk to you?”
“Yes sir, she talked to me.”
