Scout
Atticus is an old man! hes so old that he can't even play any football or nothin' like the other kids dads. He works in a lame ol' office. Not something interesting like a post office or something. Jem likes football. Atticus will spend hours throwing a football around. But when Jem wants to play tackle, Atticus says he's to old. Seems like hes too old for everything. After he made me promise to not fight anyone who were mean about his job and him defending a negro, word got out that Scout Finch no longer fought anybody. But I did fight relatives. I complained to Ms. Maudie. She told me that he was an amazing checker player. But that can't be true cause me an' Jem beat him all the time. Guess he might be letting us beat him. He apparently also plays the Jew's Harp. I don't really see the use of that though. What can you do with a Jew's pipe?
Me and Jem play with our air rifles a lot. We are always trying to find new targets. I was aiming at Ms. Maudie today but that old Atticus had to go and tell her. Atticus also told us to never EVER shoot a Mockingbird. It doesn't make much sense. Alls they do is sing. But thats why Atticus says we can't shoot them.
A while later, Jem came runnin' into the house at Calpurnia. He yells at her that there is a mad dog comin' down the street. I think at first she didn't rightly believe him, but then she started to believe. She called Heck Tate, the sherrif, and made everyone go into their houses. We watched that dog come down the street. It was all twitching and gasping like a fish. It looked like its trying to get to air. It was just comin on down the street like it had all the time in the world. It was old Tim Johnson. Calpurnia called Atticus at his office. He finally got home. Heck was already there. Heck was about to shoot that dog when Atticus came in. He told Atticus to take the gun and shoot the dog. I didn't think that was such a good idea. I mean, I never even seen Atticus pick up a gun. He's never even shot anything I don't think. But sure enough, Heck was right. I didn't even notice until it was done. But Atticus shot that dog with just one shot. Even Jem was impressed. Everyone we talked to after that said that Atticus was the best shot in Maycomb. He was called One-Shot Finch apparently. I wonder why I didn't know this information sooner. But Jem said I couldn't tell anyone at school or brag about it. Because he was a gentleman and Atticus probably didn't tell us for a reason. I didn't quite believe that but I didn't want to get Jem mad at me.
Me and Jem pass old Ms. Dubose's house every day into town. She always yelled insults at us and called me ugly every time we passed by. One day, Jem and me passed and she started calling Atticus names. Jem got so mad. He went back to her house afterwards. He started ripping off flowers and ripping up all the bushes. Then he broke my brand new baton in half and began walking away. I started shrieking and he pulled my hair and told me to stop. He kicked me and pushed me to the ground. I ran home. We waited for Atticus. Atticus came in quietly with my baton. He spoke quietly to Jem and had him go to Ms. Dubose's house to clean up. When Jem came back, he had gotten a punishment from Ms. Dubose. He had to go to her house for a month and read to her every day for two hours. I went with him. Ms. Dubose had saliva coming out of her mouth. We kept being sent home early. After a month, Ms. Dubose said that Jem had one more week to go. After he had finished, we were very relieved. A few weeks later, Atticus told us that Ms. Dubose had died and left a gift for Jem. It was a candy box with a single waxy flower in it. I saw Jem fingering it later.