Journal #4: Chapters 10-12 (Jem)

Dear Journal,

For Christmas, Atticus got Scout and me air rifles. I was so excited when we opened them I couldn’t wait until I got to try them out. I was going to go out back to shoot at birds, but then Atticus scared me when he said, “It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird,” Atticus never says anything’s a sin. I just decided to shoot at cans instead, I didn’t want to take any chances- mockingbirds look exactly like crows to me, and I’d (apparently) sin just as soon as kill a crow. I tried to make it INCONSPICUOUS that I was too scared to shoot at birds, I wouldn’t want it getting to any of my CONTEMPORARIES that I was a scared-y cat. One day, Scout and I took our rifles and went out back behind the Radley house. We were just plodding along; listening for any squirrels or rabbits we might come across, when something caught my eye. I stopped, and looked up out into the distance. Scout asked me what I was doing, and I told her to be quiet. When she asked again, I told her not to CONTRADICT me. Just then, I realized what I was looking at. It was old Tim Johnson, Harry Johnson’s dog. I could barely make out the figure, and from what I could see, he didn’t look so good. Then I realized that he could’ve been a mad dog! I thought about the amount of PERIL that comes with a mad dog, so I grabbed Scout and ran for it. When we got back to the house, I told Calpurnia all about it, and she went wild. She started calling the whole neighborhood, Atticus, and everyone she could think of. Before I knew it, she had Atticus and Mr. Heck Tate in the front yard with a gun. I soon understood what was going on, and almost INAUDIBLEY told Scout that Tim was just looking for a place to die. Once I said that, I got why they had a gun: to put him out of his misery. Mr. Tate had the gun all ready, but stopped and pushed it toward Atticus. Mr. Tate was trying to get Atticus to take the shot instead. Apparently, his reasoning was that he’d miss and hit Radley Place, seeing as Tim was right in front of it. Atticus refused at first, claiming he hadn’t shot a gun in 30 years, but then he agreed and took his stance. With only a few seconds of preparation time, Atticus hit the poor dog with what looked like a perfect shot (Heck Tate later said he was a little to the left, but I say a hit’s a hit, and that was definitely a hit). I was in complete awe at Atticus’s amazing shot, and was begging for some kind of explanation. We got into the conversation that Atticus used to be the town’s best shooter. That when he was young, he could hit fourteen birds in fifteen shots! It takes me fifteen shots just to hit one bird, and sometimes that isn’t even enough. At first, it was just amazement, and then the questions came. How’d he get so good? Who taught him? When did he stop? Why did he stop? Why did he never mention this to us? Was there some story behind it? How could he not tell Scout and me? More and more questions came with each passing second. Finally, some answers: he said he was nicknamed Ol’ One-Shot, saying that it only took one shot for him to hit anything. Atticus said he stopped because it wasn’t what God wanted, and he didn’t want to be remembered as the good shooter of the town and that there were better things for him to be really good at. Of course, I didn’t understand any of his reasoning; I was still in shock from him being almost a pro-shooter.

I remember a couple days ago, when Scout asked me what Atticus was good at. I could see her head had a million thoughts going at once, and after thinking about it for a while, a million rushed into my head as well. I thought about whether or not our dad was really all that great and what his strengths were. Scout had come back to me with a couple things: he could write a good will, he could play the Jew’s Harp, and some other stuff that wasn’t really all that important. But now, well, this beats anything any of the kids at school have to say about their fathers!

 

                                                                        So proud of my dad,                                                                                                                                                                 Jeremy Atticus Finch                                                                                                            Jem