The bus terminal is up ahead. Our timing was close, but it was worth the hassle to see the look on Sedushia’s face when she read the note, and to know that Boomer is giving her a second chance.
Sedushia pats my arm. “I knew you could do it, Scout.”
“Ah, yes,” I reply as I think of the other unsuccessful pawns before me. I don’t mention that I know there were others who tried. It could have been a setup this whole time, her sitting next to me, the instant bond she said she felt. I should be mad, but I feel close to her somehow. I figure if she gets her son back, it doesn’t matter. She had enough guts to keep trying.
“Do you know which bus you’re supposed to be on?” Sedushia asks as the cab pulls up to the curb in front of the bus depot. It’s seven ten and I have less than five minutes to get on board.
“I think so.” I check my ticket, then jump out and turn to face her.
She hangs on to the door and shrugs her shoulders as she flashes me a wistful look. We both stand there for a long moment, searching for words. Finally, I pull out a scrap of notebook paper and scribble my name, address, and phone number on it. She closes her hand around it and reaches over and gives me a quick hug; her chunky earrings press into my face. She smells like drugstore perfume, the kind that comes in a package with matching powder.
“Don’t give up your dream. You have to make it to Alabama and find what you’re looking for,” she whispers in my ear.
I hug her back. “Thanks.”
“And don’t forget to call your dad and let him know you’re all right.”
“I will. Good luck with Boomer.”
Her smile crinkles the corners of her mouth. “I’ll need lots of luck.”
I turn and run for the bus. It’s unsatisfying to leave her so suddenly, like putting down a book halfway through, not knowing the end.
A man and his daughter walk by, and I wish I had time to call Dad. But I want to make it to Alabama, so I dash past the phones as I hurry in the opposite direction.
The bus driver is looking to pull out when I run up and slam my fist against the door. He opens it and I thrust my ticket at him.
The man puts out his hand to block me.
“You don’t have any luggage, do you?” he asks loudly.
“No.”
He lets me on, but the passengers stare at me with pinched faces. A woman looks at her watch and shakes her head in disgust. I’m definitely sitting alone.
I find an empty seat and open Mockingbird to one of my favorite chapters, the one where the kids sneak into Boo Radley’s yard at night, eager for adventure. They get shot at and barely escape as Scout’s brother loses his pants while crawling underneath a ragged fence.
I’d felt the same rush of fear and excitement this morning, running from Duke and facing up to Boomer. More thrills than I figured I’d have on a bus trip, but it felt good. I’d been a doer this time. I think Scout would be proud.
I smile and read the familiar words, knowing I won’t finish the page. Twenty-five hours without sleep and the drone of a moving bus. I’m out till Alabama.
Chapter Eleven
Somewhere in Missouri March 14, 1986, 10:45 a.m.
In a 1961 interview of Harper Lee
she said she wrote one page a day for her second
book.
If she’s still working on it,
I figure she must have almost 10,000 pages by now.
I open my eyes. My head is resting on a shoulder. It’s a massive shoulder of green plaid flannel, and worse yet, there’s a wet spot where I drooled.
I sit up and wipe my mouth. A guy next to me is drawing in a sketchpad, so absorbed he either doesn’t notice me or is being kind.
He turns and nods as if he’s been patiently waiting for me to get off his shoulder. His oversized face is framed by long red sideburns that match his unruly red hair. Wire-rimmed glasses frame a slanted nose.
He runs his finger through a red walrus mustache that reaches down to the corners of his mouth. I’m staring into his large eyes, or maybe it’s just the glasses that make them seem so big. His look is penetrating, and I feel like an idiot.
“You were pretty zonked. You slept through Columbia and Kingdom City.”
“Sorry I used you as a pillow,” I apologize.
“Glad to oblige.” He hands me my book from his lap. “This fell off while you were sleeping.”
“Thanks.” I take Mockingbird and tuck it in close.
“I don’t remember you sitting here when I got on.”
He smiles. “I wasn’t. I boarded at Columbia. There weren’t any empty seats. You didn’t seem to mind me sitting here. At least, you didn’t say anything at the time.” He laughs at his own joke and a high-pitched wheezing sound emerges from his throat. The man in front of us turns around and stares as if an alien has just landed on our bus. My seatmate stops laughing and looks down at the floor.
I smile at his odd laugh. I feel embarrassed for him. I know what it’s like to be made fun of, but not because of my looks or my laugh. Amy says I’m pretty. I think I’m plain looking, except for the dimple in my right cheek when I smile.
Loud conversations and the whine of fussy children begin to fill my ears. “What time is it?” I shout above the noise. I suddenly remember my dad. I wish I had called him from Kansas City. The air on the bus is warm and heavy, as if crammed with too many bodies. I shake my head, pushing out the sluggishness.
He looks at his watch, which isn’t covered by his shirtsleeves because they’re three inches too short. In fact, his whole shirt seems too small for his large body.
“It’s eleven.”
“Oh,” I respond, unable to hide the panic in my voice. By now Dad has definitely found my note. Maybe even called the police. I shudder as I think of the trouble I’m in.
“Are you okay?”
I nod. “I just need to make a phone call.”
He stares cautiously at the seat in front of him. “St. Louis is an hour from here. We have a layover, so you can get off and use the phone.”
“Great.” I’m still groggy from four hours of sleep when I’m used to ten. My mouth feels like a sewer, and I haven’t brushed my hair since yesterday morning. I open my backpack and rummage through the front pocket in search of gum. I take out two pieces.
“Would you like a stick of gum?”
His eyes widen. “Sure, thanks.” He takes the gum, quickly unwraps it, and shoves it into his mouth. “I’m starved. I didn’t eat breakfast this morning because I had to be at the bus depot so early.” He relaxes back into the seat, his anxiety forgotten. His body melts into the upholstery, reminding me of a softened marshmallow squished between two graham crackers.
“I’m hungry, too.” My stomach makes several rumbling noises to back my sudden insight.
The guy looks to be in his mid-twenties, although he might be older. His thick eyebrows arch at the mention of food, and his voice becomes animated.
“When I got on I asked the driver if there’s any fast food near the next stop. As you can tell from looking at me, food is my first priority. He said there’s a pizza place just down the street from the depot.”
“Pizza sounds good.” I glimpse at a drawing in his sketchpad.
“Where are you traveling to?”
He sits up tall and speaks with no hesitation. “Across the U.S. I’m taking thirty days to see it all.”
I force a nod. “That sounds great. Where are you going first?”
“I think I’ll get off in Tennessee somewhere, maybe Memphis. I’ve never seen the Grand Ole Opry.”
“That’s in Nashville,” I reply, remembering that fact from a movie I saw about Loretta Lynn. “But you can visit Elvis’s mansion in Memphis.”
“Hey. That’s better yet,” he drawls in a bad Elvis voice. “I’ve got the sideburns for it. Maybe I’ll dye my hair black and become one of those Elvis impersonators.”
I laugh at the thought.
“This is the first time I’ve taken a
Greyhound,” he confides. “We never went anywhere while I was growing up, so I decided it was time to see the country. Of course, I’m losing some pay while I’m doing it.”
“What do you do?” The bus hits a bump, sending us both into the air for half a second.
“I unload trucks. Exciting work, right? Epp Gobarth’s the name.” He sticks out his hand and I reach over and give it a squeeze.
“Hi, Epp. I’m Sco—I’m Erin,” I correct myself.
“That’s okay. Sometimes I forget who I am, too,” he says. Then he winks and adds, “Not really.”
“I guess it’s from reading this book so much,” I say with a nervous laugh.
He nods. “I read that back in high school. Did you know that’s the only book the author ever wrote? She won a big prize for it, too. I think she’s dead now.”
I smile politely and don’t correct him.
He picks up his sketchpad and looks at it. It’s a drawing of a cartoon character in some kind of maze. The character is short, with wild frizzy hair much like Epp’s hair, and he has round eyes that take up most of his face.
“This is my life’s work.”
“Are you an illustrator?”
His chubby cheeks bounce with the jiggle of the bus as he shakes his head. “No way. I’ve been working on a computer game for the last three years, kind of like Zork, you know, a role-playing game but with more action and better graphics. I’ve been learning computer code in my spare time, and designing this booklet for the game. Only problem is, I was developing it for the Atari 800 personal computer and that’s been discontinued.”
“When do you think you’ll be finished with your game?” I ask, wondering what the point would be now.
He looks down as if he’s calculating a mathematical problem. “Don’t know. I’ll have to modify the code for a new system. I keep adding things. This maze is my latest addition.”
I look it over. The complex maze has over thirty paths that stretch down and around the paper. I follow one path with my eyes and end up next to a grenade. “I like it. You have a good eye for detail.” Epp brightens at my remark.
“This sketch is not as complex as the graphics will be. I’m continually upgrading it. Of course the new system will need 128K of memory to play.”
He’s lost me but I try to pay attention and end up focusing on his red eyebrows, which twitch as he speaks. It’s almost hypnotic, and I’d love to go back to sleep, but Epp isn’t about to stop his private lesson on the design of his computer game. I nod as he talks, and I figure the half hour that follows makes up for at least one day of missed school.
Chapter Twelve
St. Louis, Missouri March 14, 1986, noon
Like the Rubik’s Cube that I’ve never been able to
master,
things just don’t line up right for me.
Why didn’t Dad remarry when I was two years
old?
I would have called her Mommy.
She could have taught me how to make chocolate
chip cookies and crochet.
And I could have acted embarrassed when she
showed up at school
with the lunch I left at home.
All those “mom” things that I envy about Amy
and her mother.
I’m too old to have a mom now.
Susan doesn’t act like she wants the job anyway.
She just wants to be my friend.
“What a dumb thing to do, Erin!” My brother’s sarcastic voice reaches out over the miles and hits me right in the chest. “Dad freaked out. He even called the cops.”
I groan, the weight of guilt settling in as I imagine my face plastered on a milk carton in Baltimore.
“Why did he call?” I can’t finish because Dad is yelling at Jeff to give him the phone.
A muffled sound interrupts the yells, then I hear Dad’s echoing voice. “Erin, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I insist. I steel myself for the onslaught.
“My God, we’ve been worried sick,” his voice cracks, and I swallow hard. “Tell me where you are and we’ll come get you.”
I was ready for screaming and shouting, but not this.
I almost cave. Maybe I should let him wire me some money and take the bus back home. Or I could hang out here till Dad drives down to pick me up. But then I think of Sedushia’s encouraging words when we parted. I think of how far I’ve already come. I can’t go home. Not like this.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner, Dad. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Is this about Susan and me? Never mind, we’ll talk about it when I get there. Just tell me where you are.”
I cover the receiver with my hand as a voice from an overhead speaker blares out that a bus to Kansas City departs in ten minutes.
“There’s something I have to do, Dad. I’m not ready to come home yet.”
An uncomfortable silence follows. “Does this have to do with your mother’s diary?”
“Why didn’t you tell me Mom used to write?” I blurt it out in accusation.
“Listen, Erin, we’ll talk about it on the way back. Where are you?” His voice is higher, to the point of exasperation.
A long pause follows. I want to say the right thing. I don’t want to make him mad, but somehow that seems hopeless now. How can I explain to him what I’m doing when I don’t even know myself? How can I describe the drive I feel inside to do this? I can’t. I don’t want to break down and cry on the phone, so I do the only thing I can think of that will keep me on this trip.
I hang up.
I close my eyes and force back the tears. Now I’m really in trouble.
I turn around and run into Epp, who is coming out of the men’s restroom. He’s wearing a pouch that fastens around the middle, but it sits below his protruding stomach and can barely be seen.
“Sorry,” Epp apologizes, even though it’s clearly my fault.
“Let’s get some lunch,” he suggests when he looks at my face. I quickly rub my eyes and nod.
I end up standing in line behind him at a busy fast-food pizza restaurant. Epp asks if I want to split a large pizza, but I’m low on cash. I order one slice and a Coke. Fifteen minutes later, I manage to grab a small corner table where I wash down my cheese pizza while Epp sits across from me finishing off a large combo.
“Where’s the beef?” He says when he sees my pizza, then laughs. Two women from a nearby table overhear him and laugh as well.
“I can live on this stuff,” Epp says between stuffing his face with large bites. “I usually eat cold pizza for breakfast.”
I frown. “I don’t know if I could stomach cold pizza in the morning.”
“Food is food. I’ve even eaten ice cream for breakfast when I was out of groceries,” he says.
The pizza place is bustling with the lunch crowd, mostly people from our bus. A tall, dark-haired man stands in line and reminds me of my father. Dad’s good looks turn even my friends’ heads. Amy said it’s a miracle he didn’t remarry years ago.
“I could handle ice cream for breakfast,” I reply. “Of course, my dad would have a fit if I did.”
Epp nods. “Yeah. When I lived at home, my mom got on me about my eating habits. She said she didn’t want to see me die young of heart disease like my dad. I have the same build as he did and the same appetite.”
Epp sounds like a poster boy for future heart problems. “Doesn’t all that worry you?”
He shrugs and wipes pizza sauce from the corner of his mouth, smearing it onto his cheek. He doesn’t notice the two drops of pizza sauce on the front of his shirt. “I don’t think about it much. I’m not as bad as my dad was. He smoked and drank. I don’t do either of those things.”
“My mom died a week after I was born. It was some freak thing. She hemorrhaged and didn’t go to the doctor soon enough.” I stop and put my hand over my mouth. I already spilled my guts to Sedushia, and now I’m telling another stranger about my mom.
“I wish I’d known my mom.” I unzip my backpack and take out Mom’s diary, opening it to the page about Harper Lee. “My mom wrote this back in 1963. I love to write and didn’t know I had anything in common with her until now.”
Epp takes the diary and reads the excerpt about Mom’s desire to be a writer and her letter to Harper Lee. His large eyes grow even bigger.
“Wow,” he says when he finishes. “Did Harper Lee write back to her?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t find a letter.”
“If she did, I’ll bet it’s valuable now.”
I shrug. I hadn’t thought of any value except a personal one.
“So you’re a writer?”
“I like to write,” I clarify. “And I’m a huge Harper Lee fan.”
“Right,” he says as if it’s suddenly clear. I look down at my backpack. I’m afraid I’ve told him too much. I don’t know why I felt compelled to share Mom’s diary entry with him. Maybe it’s because he shared his sketches with me.
“Did your mother ever publish a book?”
“There are a few stories toward the end of her diary. All I know is that she quit college when she was nineteen to marry my dad.” I push leftover pizza crust around on my plate. “I think she ran out of time.”
Epp rests his chin in one hand in a thoughtful pose. “Maybe she didn’t want to have a book published. Maybe she just wanted to write for herself.”
“Most people write to be published,” I reply, thinking of Epp’s game that nobody will ever see.
Epp hands me the diary. A smudge of pizza sauce dots the edge where his finger touched the page, but he doesn’t seem to notice. I wipe the smudge with my napkin, and Epp’s face turns red.
“Sorry. I should have been more careful.”
I shake my head like it’s nothing. “It’s okay.” I put her diary in my backpack as I talk. “I know my mom wanted to be a writer when she wrote to Harper Lee.”
“I guess you’re right. She must have had some big goals to send a letter to a famous writer. It’d be like me writing to Joel Berez.”
In Search of Mockingbird Page 5
