In Search of Mockingbird

by Loretta Ellsworth

  “Who?”

  “He’s the CEO of Infocom. Of course, I would never send my game idea to him.”

  “Why not?”

  He picks up a piece of pizza and pauses with it hanging in midair. “What if Harper Lee told your mom to forget about writing? To be honest, I couldn’t take the criticism. It might sound stupid, but this game has become a dream of mine. Without it, I’m just some nerd who lives alone, works at a boring job, plays computer games, and watches too many James Bond movies. But this game”—he nods toward a man behind the counter stretching pizza dough onto a pan —“it makes me a work in progress, like that pizza.”

  It figures he would use food as a comparison. Now I know why I showed him Mom’s diary. I’m like Epp. We both have far-fetched dreams. Maybe that’s why I write. Maybe that’s why I’m obsessive about Mockingbird. Those things make me feel special, like there’s hope for me, too.

  One thing I like about Scout’s story is that it’s told from a child’s point of view, but also from the distance of an adult looking back on her childhood. And sometimes she sort of wavers between the two, like she’s not sure which one belongs, like she’s caught in the middle.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Interstate 55 South March 14, 1986, 3:00 p.m.

  I’m reading each entry slowly,

  absorbing every word.

  Mom didn’t filter her thoughts

  like I do in my journal,

  searching for a finished product

  that will sound better than I really am.

  Epp has been quiet since we left St. Louis. I’m wondering if it has something to do with what happened when I stopped to buy gum. Epp was fishing through his pockets for change because he wanted a candy bar from the vending machine. Two kids approached him. They were wearing matching Celtics shirts with the number 32 plastered on the front. Kevin McHale’s number, one of many pieces of sports trivia I’ve picked up from home. The boys looked to be about eight or nine, which immediately made me suspicious. I’ve done a lot of babysitting, and that’s the worst age for kids. I’d rather have five babies than one nine-year-old. The two kids were both grinning like they were up to something.

  “Hey, mister, is that your girlfriend?” one of them asked, pointing at me.

  “She’s a girl and she’s a friend, but no, she’s not my girlfriend,” Epp replied with more patience than I would have shown.

  “That’s because you’re a gargantuan freak,” the other boy yelled, as the first one kicked Epp in the shin, causing him to drop all the coins in his hand. The brat then ran away, yelling “The freak has a girlfriend” at the top of his lungs.

  Epp shook his head and I looked down at the fallen change.

  “You should have belted them,” I told him after I’d chased a runaway quarter under a cracked plastic chair that was bolted onto the dirty tiled floor. The candy machines were tucked away in a corner next to a row of old metal lockers, many of them missing doors, and no one noticed the commotion, not even a scruffy man sprawled out on the floor near the soda machine.

  “They’re just kids,” Epp said. “Besides, I’ve been called a lot worse.”

  It didn’t help matters when the two boys got on the same bus as we did. I would have yelled at their parents or complained to the bus driver, but Epp didn’t say a word, even when the boys snickered and pointed at him. A born gentleman, he helped two elderly women up the stairs of the bus, taking one by the elbow, then hopping back down to assist the other. They both smiled gratefully, then sat as far away from us as possible.

  Epp is now leaning back in his seat, one knee propped up, doodling on his sketchpad, seemingly unfazed by the incident that I’m still fuming over. He’s much more forgiving than I am. The boy asked if I was Epp’s girlfriend. Only a jerky kid would think a twenty-something guy would date a sixteen-year-old. Plus Epp isn’t exactly boyfriend material. First, he’s too old. I know only one girl in my class who dated a guy that age, and she’s got a bad reputation. Then there’s the fact that he’s a nerd, although a nice one.

  Everything annoys me at this point. Maybe it’s the fact that this bus ride seems to go on endlessly from one dirty station with buzzing fluorescent lighting to the next, or maybe I’m just getting crabby. But the drone of the engine is preventing any possibility of sleep.

  I’m trying to gather my thoughts for my journal when Epp leans over. “May I?” he asks as his pencil looms above my paper.

  “Sure.” I hand him my journal so he doesn’t have to write sideways.

  He begins drawing, and I’m amazed at how easy he makes it look. He sketches a girl, and I soon realize from the ponytail and pug nose that he’s drawing me. He draws two moon-shaped eyes that take up much of the face, which seems to be a signature characteristic of his drawings. I’ve never considered my eyes my best feature, but I keep quiet.

  He draws a book in my lap, and scribbles the initials TKAM. Then he pencils in the background, a bus filled with passengers, but the ones in the picture are odd-shaped and all have moon eyes. On the side of the picture he writes “From Epp Gobarth.”

  “Thanks.” I hold up the sketch to admire it, then carefully close the journal so as not to smudge the pencil drawing.

  “Is your journal like your mom’s diary?” he asks.

  “Not exactly. My mom wrote in a casual style, except for her stories, which are more thought out. Before this trip I put only my best writing in my journal. But now I’m putting a bit of everything; a few descriptions, poems, whatever I feel at the moment. I like reading those parts the most in Mom’s diary.”

  “How long have you had her diary?”

  A sudden itch in my throat makes me cough. “Dad just gave it to me yesterday.”

  Epp folds his arms. “Are you in trouble?”

  “Trouble?” My voice jumps an octave.

  “That call you made, was it collect?”

  My face reddens. “Yes.”

  “You know when you make a collect call, it’s easy to trace where it came from.”

  He’s right. I am in trouble. I have the worst poker face in the world and Epp is watching me closely. I think he knows.

  “I sort of ran away. You’re not going to turn me in, are you?”

  Epp looks around, as if he’s sizing up the rest of the passengers. He leans over and says in a low voice, “I’d feel responsible if anything happened to you. There are a lot of weirdos out there.”

  I stare at him, wondering if he has any idea what he just said. Most of the other people on the bus think he’s the weirdo.

  His brows furrow. “Why are you running away?”

  I look down. “I just wanted to do something my mom never had the chance to do.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Monroeville, Alabama.”

  He nods. “How come you’re traveling alone? Girls should always travel in groups of two, at least that’s what my mom says.”

  I shrug. It didn’t occur to me to ask Amy to come.

  “Aren’t you afraid to travel by yourself?”

  I’d felt safe with Sedushia. Now that she’s gone I’ve been more uncomfortable, even a little scared. But admitting that seems like admitting defeat. “I’ve done it lots of times,” I say sheepishly.

  He looks down at his drawing. “Maybe I should come with you.”

  I want to pretend I didn’t hear him, but he sneaks a peek at me. He’s holding his breath, as if it took all his courage to say that.

  “What about Memphis?” I remind him.

  He waves his hands in the air and I sink down in my seat. “I have thirty days. I can go anywhere I want.”

  I don’t really mind him coming. I like the thought of someone sitting next to me now, if just for the conversation. But I can’t fathom why he’d want to ride fifteen hours on the bus when Memphis is only a few hours away. “We just met this morning. Why would you do that?”

  He pauses, as if he’s searching for words. “I think that maybe you should go home.
But I’m not a snitch, and I couldn’t face the rest of my trip knowing I left a kid alone and wondering what happened to her. So as a compromise, I’ll ride the bus with you to make sure you get to … where are you going again?”

  “Monroeville, Alabama,” I repeat.

  His eyes light up. “Great. I’ve never been there. What’s in Monroeville?”

  I look down at my journal and whisper, “Harper Lee.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Cape Girardeau, Missouri March 14, 1986, 4:10 p.m.

  Everything makes me think of Dad:

  a man carrying his daughter on his shoulders,

  the announcer’s voice blaring from a boom box

  behind us.

  Dad bought me my first bra,

  a training bra that he picked out himself.

  Dad deserves better than me.

  Epp is eating a Hershey bar while leaning over his Rand McNally atlas, trying to find the small dot that represents Monroeville. Bits of chocolate flutter on the pages, and he flicks them off with the side of his hand.

  “In twelve more hours, we’ll be in Montgomery, Alabama. That’s just a couple of hours north of Monroeville,” he announces.

  It’s after four o’clock in the afternoon. My rear end is sore from eighteen-plus hours of sitting. The engine sounds have caused a permanent humming in my ears. I’ve had to go to the bathroom since Perryville, but Sedushia warned me never to use the bathroom on the bus. My legs are crossed, as if holding back a potential flood. I stand up. The small cubicle at the back of the bus has the IN USE sign in place and a woman waiting outside. I’ll have to hold it till we make it to Sikeston.

  “If I’d had more money, I could have flown to Alabama. It’s a four-hour flight from Minnesota.”

  Epp shakes his head. “You meet more interesting people on the bus.”

  A woman wearing a heavy parka holds a covered basket on her lap. Two rows back from her a man talks to himself as he clutches a brown paper bag. I wonder what’s in that bag. The two Jesse James boys run up and down the aisle when the driver’s not yelling at them.

  Then there’s the baby that’s been crying since Jackson, Missouri. The bald man in front of me leaned his seat back as far as it can go and is snoring loudly, with long stretches between each snort that make me wonder if he’s going to stop breathing. I’ve even bumped his seat when the pauses go beyond twenty seconds, which is the longest time I’ve counted so far.

  Epp’s shirt has developed an odor, with bits of food thrown in to boot. The entire bus smells bad, but I can’t pinpoint any single smell, just a barrage of stinks hitting me at any given moment. I think it’s worse in the back by the bathroom.

  Epp stares out the window, as if he’s memorizing every bit of landscape on his journey. “So you say Harper Lee is still alive. Why do you suppose she never wrote another book?”

  “She may have written more books. She just never published another one.”

  “Why not?”

  I have several theories on this. Most of them are pretty far-fetched. “You said that not everyone writes for publication. I’m sure she has her reasons.”

  Epp scrunches up his mouth and his walrus mustache creases. “You think Mockingbird was too hard to top?”

  I pause a moment before answering. “No. Harper Lee is a writer, so that’s what she does. Maybe she’s just taking her time on her next book.”

  Epp looks at me. “Why do you think your mom gave up writing?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. It’s odd, but when I asked my dad, he sounded like he didn’t want to talk about it.”

  Neither of us speaks for a minute, then Epp turns to face me.

  “It’s not his fault. You can’t blame him for that.”

  “For what?”

  “For her quitting. Just because they married. Maybe your mom intended to go back to writing after you were older. My mom didn’t work until my dad died. Now she’s a full-time clerk at Penney’s.”

  “It’s not just that. He didn’t seem to know she wanted to be a writer. You’re supposed to know everything about the person you marry. This was a big part of her life, at least it was at sixteen.”

  Epp breaks open a bag of Cheez Doodles and lets out a sigh. “People change.”

  I want to tell him that I love to write. But I’m afraid I don’t have what it takes. If my mom quit, what’s to say I won’t? Harper Lee gave up law school to write her novel. Mom gave up writing to have a family. What will I have to give up?

  “I won’t change,” I announce to Epp.

  He frowns as though he doesn’t believe me. “Change isn’t necessarily bad. Besides, how are you going to prevent it?”

  “I could quit school and become a writer now.” As soon as I say it I realize how stupid an idea it is.

  “Are you crazy? You can’t quit school. I should know. If I’d gone to college, I’d be programming computers instead of unloading trucks and learning computer code in my spare time.”

  I brush off a piece of chocolate that made its way onto the armrest. “What about writers who escape from life, who run off to secluded spots to write?”

  He cocks his head and looks smug. “How many of them never finished high school, let alone college? Did Harper Lee graduate from college?”

  “Yup. She even went to law school, then dropped out one year shy of getting her law degree.”

  Epp points his finger at me like a loaded gun. “Then I’d say you have a few years to go.”

  What does he know about it? I turn away from him. “I can make that decision myself, thank you.”

  He takes out his sketchpad and starts drawing. “Fine by me. I’m just along for the ride.”

  Now it seems like he’s along to ruin my ride. Just because I’m young doesn’t mean I can’t make my own decisions.

  I hope Harper Lee will see it my way. She once wrote an article about discovering America and how her fifteen-year-old nephew hitchhiked across the country. He didn’t need some big oaf wearing a pizza-stained flannel shirt tagging along either.

  I open my journal and wait for our next stop, but it’s hard to concentrate. Epp Gobarth is way too exasperating. He’s an obsessive eater, and I’m sitting on cracker crumbs and chocolate candy that he spilled on my seat. He acts like he wants to help, but I know what he’s really trying to do. He’s trying to talk me into going home. Of course it isn’t going to work, and him tagging along isn’t going to stop me either. One thing I know for certain though. If he stays on the bus, I’m switching seats in Sikeston.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Near Hayti, Missouri March 14, 1986, 6:05 p.m.

  Scout is a funny kid who reminds me of myself.

  She’s not very fond of school.

  At times she’s a trial to her father,

  and she understands how peculiar people can be.

  That’s why I love Mockingbird.

  I wonder if that’s why my mom loved it, too.

  I follow Epp back on to the bus after a twenty-five-minute stop, most of which I spent trying to avoid him. He plops down in the window seat, and I keep walking. An elderly woman sits near the back reading People magazine. Using my most respectful voice, I ask if I can sit next to her. She smiles sweetly.

  “Of course, dear.”

  Epp watches from his seat. I quickly look away and sit down.

  “Weren’t you sitting with your brother before?” the woman asks.

  “Oh, he’s not my brother.”

  “Really?” Her voice drips with suggestion. My face reddens. “He’s, um, my cousin,” I stammer, but I don’t think she buys it.

  “Hmm,” she says as she pinches her mouth tight and turns away from me.

  I’m not one to stay where I’m not wanted, so I stand and walk up the aisle, then sit down next to Epp, who is busy sketching.

  He looks over at me. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?”

  I shrug and open my book.

  Epp rubs his face. “I always mess things
up. Do you want me to get off the bus? Because I will if I’m bothering you.”

  “No.” My voice is almost a shout. “No,” I say again softer, since people are looking at us.

  Epp shifts in his seat. “I thought I should talk you into staying in school,” he says. “But that’s not my call.”

  My book is perched open in front of me, even though I’m not really reading the words. I’m thinking about Dad, and Jeff, who will tell everyone at school what I did and what an idiot I am. Why am I on this bus? What am I trying to accomplish besides being grounded for the next six months?

  Epp leans over. “I’m really sorry.”

  “You know,” I say, closing my book and putting it down. “I’ve been having second thoughts. What’s the point in causing my dad so much grief? Maybe I should go home before I get into more trouble.”

  His eyebrows twitch. “Sounds like you might be giving up.”

  “I’m tired. We still have such a long way to go.”

  Maybe it’s the exhaustion, but I feel as though I could burst into tears. My throat tightens and my chest feels heavy. “On top of everything else, it’s my birthday and I’m spending it on a bus.”

  “It’s obvious that this trip is important to you,” Epp says, nodding for emphasis. “I hate to admit it, but I would never have had the courage to do what you’re doing.”

  He doesn’t get it. “My dad called the cops. It’s just a matter of time before my dad finds me.”

  Epp clutches his sketchpad. “You’re not going to let that stop you, are you? Listen, I didn’t mean to take away your spirit.” He looks around the bus. “Maybe I can make it up to you.” He stands and pushes past me into the aisle. The bus turns sharp, and Epp hangs on to my seat to keep from falling. He takes up a good portion of the aisle, and I wonder if another sudden turn might cause him to fly across the bus and land on the bratty kid who kicked him earlier.

  He puts one hand into the air and waves at the passengers, then turns toward the front of the bus and does the same.

  “Could I have your attention for a moment?” he yells, and everyone but the nonsleeping baby responds.