TKAM Post #2

Journal #2
Chapters 4-7
Perspective of Dill

Because I’m back in Maycomb for the summer, Scout, Jem and I have been playing a lot. Our favorite game this time around is where we act like Boo Radley. The more we play our game, the more intricate it becomes. We ended up adding a storyline and dialogue. But that ended real quick one day when we were acting out when Boo stuck some scissors into his daddy’s leg and Atticus came out and asked us what we were playing. He told us we better not be acting out anything that had to do with the Radleys.

As Jem and I became closer and closer this summer, I couldn’t help but feel a little superior to Scout. One morning, she came up to us and we told her to go away.
“Will not. This yard’s as much mine as it is yours, Jem Finch. I got just as much right to play in it as you have.”
“If you stay you’ve got to do what we tell you,” I said.
“We-ll, who’s so high and mighty all of a sudden?” she asked sharply.
“If you don’t say you’ll do what we tell you, we ain’t gonna tell you anything,”
I said belligerently.
“You act like you grew ten inches in the night! All right, what is it?” she gave in.
Jem told her about our plan to give Boo Radley a note.
“Just how?” Scout questioned. As usual, she seemed scared. But the plan was simple; Jem was just going to stick the note on a fishing pole and drop it through the Radleys’ window shutters. I would stand guard and ring their mother’s silver dinner-bell if anyone came.
Scout asked what the note said.
I replied, “We’re askin’ him real politely to come out sometimes, and tell us what he does in there- we said we wouldn’t hurt him and we’d buy him an ice cream.”
Scout didn’t appreciate our idea. “You’ve all gone crazy, he’ll kill us!”
“It’s my idea,” I said. “I figure if he’d come out and sit spell with us he might feel better.”
“How do you know he don’t feel good?”
“Well how’d you feel if you’d been shut up for a hundred years with nothin’ to eat but cats to eat? I bet he’s got a beard down to here-“ I motioned to my feet.
After a few minutes of squabbling with Scout, Jem told us to hush. He reached beneath the house and grabbed a yellow bamboo rod. “Reckon this is long enough to reach from the sidewalk?”
“Anybody who’s brave enough to go up and touch the house hadn’t oughta use a fishin’ pole. Why don’t you just knock the front door down?” Scout remarked smartly.
“This-is-different. How many times do I have to tell you that?” Jem said, frustrated.
I gave the note to Jem and all three of us walked down to the Radley house.
Once Scout gave him the green light, Jem attached the note to the fishing pole and cautiously pushed it across the yard, in the direction of a window. The pole was a couple inches too short, so Jem had to lean forward to get the pole closer to the house.
All of a sudden, I saw Atticus Finch walking over to the house. I rang the bell as hard as I could, even in Atticus’s face. “Stop ringing that bell.”
I held the clapper steady. There was silence.
“Jem, what were you doing?” he asked.
“Nothin, sir,” was his response.
“I don’t want any of that. Tell me.”
When he did, we got the lecture about minding our own business and such.
Oh well. We’ll get him to come out some other way, then.