I Kill the Mockingbird

by Paul Acampora

  “What’s your point?” Michael asks her.

  “I think Lucy’s point is that people will want what they think they can’t have,” Elena tells him.

  “Just because something is missing doesn’t mean people will want it,” Michael replies.

  “Making books disappear is just the first step,” I say. “In fact, it’s the easy part. The hard part will be getting the word out. We need people to think that To Kill a Mockingbird has been banned or something.”

  “You know what would be better?” says Elena. “If we could make people think that there’s some kind of conspiracy to keep the book out of circulation.”

  “What?” says Michael.

  “Seriously,” says Elena. “Conspiracy theories are great for sales.”

  “There will be a conspiracy!” I say. “The conspiracy is us! Think about it. If you believed there was some kind of plot to keep a book out of your hands, wouldn’t you want to read it?”

  Neither Michael nor Elena responds.

  “Of course you would!” I tell them. “Wanting what you can’t have is the American way! All we have to do is make people think that they can’t have To Kill a Mockingbird, and they’ll be busting down the doors to get it.”

  Elena grins. “It will be like Charles Darwin’s mobs at the boat docks.”

  “Charles Dickens,” says Michael.

  “Whatever,” says Elena.

  Michael shakes his head. “This is ridiculous. Even if we got rid of every book in the mall, you could still buy a copy from somewhere else.”

  “But what if we hid books in other stores, too?” I ask him.

  “I could go to the library,” says Michael.

  “And if all the library books are gone?”

  “I’d order it online.”

  “But in the meantime you’d have learned that the books are missing from everywhere else. You’d discover that there’s some kind of mysterious plot going on that’s supposed to prevent you from reading To Kill a Mockingbird. As a result, you’d really want to read it.”

  “But the plot will have failed,” says Michael. “I got the book. I’ll read it. You lose.”

  “No,” says Elena. “In the end, you did what she wanted you to do. You read To Kill a Mockingbird. Lucy wins!” She turns to me. “I like it.”

  The sane part of my brain knows that this whole thing is absurd. But honestly, I like it too. “Let’s give it a try,” I say.

  “Let’s not,” says Michael.

  Elena leans forward. “You’d do it for Newman Noggs.”

  Newman Noggs is a character in the novel Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. In fact, Noggs is one of Michael’s very favorite characters. I can’t believe that Elena remembers this.

  “My mother is a police officer!” Michael reminds us.

  “We’re not breaking any laws,” I say.

  “I don’t even like the book!” he protests.

  “You like it enough,” Elena tells him.

  “And one day,” I add, “you might want us to help you rescue Mr. Noggs.”

  “That’s not fair!” he says.

  Elena grins. “Literature is a cruel mistress.”

  Michael puts his head down on the food court table. “Why do I hang out with you two?”

  “Because you are an independent thinking person who chooses his friends wisely,” Elena says to Michael.

  “We’re going to be like terrorists,” he says.

  “We are not terrorists,” I tell him. “We’re more like literary saboteurs.”

  “Literary terrorists sounds better,” offers Elena.

  “My mother will kill me if she ever finds out about this. Actually,” he adds, “she’ll kill us all.”

  “Michael,” I say, “it’s not like we’re starting a riot. We’re encouraging people to read.”

  “You just said we’re literary terrorists!”

  “Michael,” says Elena, “this isn’t terrorism. This is community service. If we can pull it off, we’ll probably get a medal.”

  Michael lifts his head off the table. “I bet that’s what all the terrorists say.”

  9

  Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

  The next morning, I find Mom at the picnic table on our back porch. She’s got a sketch pad, a coffee cup, and a pile of colored pencils spread out in front of her. Photography is not the only thing she does well. She paints and sculpts. She plays piano and guitar. She writes poetry that she never lets anybody read. But her favorite thing of all is drawing. With a stubby pencil and a scrap of paper, my mother can take things she sees in her head and make them come alive.

  I grab some yogurt and a spoon then open the sliding glass door that leads from the kitchen to the backyard. Mom lifts her head when I step onto the porch. “Hey, Lucy.”

  I wave my breakfast at her. “Good morning.”

  She points at my spoon. “Can I get one of those with a bowl of Fruit Loops?”

  “No,” I tell her. “You need healthy food.”

  She rolls her eyes.

  I look down at her pad. The page is covered with quick sketches of robins and chickadees and blue jays. I like to draw, but I’ll never be that good. Mom shows me her paper. “These are just the ones I saw this morning.”

  In addition to everything else, Mom is a birder. She can identify just about any species that’s ever visited the eastern United States. She recognizes most of their songs, too.

  I point at a few stray lines near the top of her page. “What’s that?”

  “It’s supposed to be a crow. He flew away before I could get it right.” Mom chooses a few pencils from the bunch on the table. She adds a purple smudge, some orange dots, and a couple sharp lines to the scribble. Now there’s a jaunty black bird flying across her sheet. “There he is.”

  “How did you do that?” I ask.

  Mom laughs. “His parts were there. I just had to fit them together.”

  That reminds me of something that Mr. Nowak used to say. “We are all broken, but sometimes the jagged pieces fit together nicely.” I steal a glance at Mom’s face. She doesn’t look broken anymore.

  “Are you going to sit?” asks Mom. “Or are you just going to stand there and stare at me?”

  I sit.

  Mom rips a blank page from her notebook. “Draw,” she says.

  “Draw what?”

  A sharp rat-tat-tat-tat echoes off the trees around us.

  “A woodpecker,” says Mom. She grabs a dark pencil and starts to sketch.

  I turn my head back and forth, but I don’t see the bird. “Where is he?”

  “Just see him in your head.”

  “I’d rather see him in a tree.”

  “It’s probably a downy woodpecker. He’s a little guy. White chest. Black-and-white wings. A mask on his face like a raccoon. The males have a bit of red on the tops of their heads. They’re very dashing.”

  I look at the branches around us. “I still don’t see him.”

  Mom points at a tall evergreen leaning toward our house. “Pretend that he’s on a limb near the trunk. Draw what you’d see if he was sitting right there.”

  “But—”

  “Just try.”

  I glance around one more time. I still can’t find the woodpecker, so I lean over my paper and make a stick figure drawing of a bird.

  “Don’t forget to look at the tree,” Mom says.

  “But there’s no woodpecker there.”

  “You have to pretend that there is.”

  I stay focused on my drawing. “Pretend that I’m pretending.”

  “Pretend that I’m not going to stick a pencil in your eye if you don’t look into the branches.”

  I lean back and stare at the empty tree. “I think he’s coming into view.”

  “Happy to hear it.” Mom continues drawing while I continue glancing back and forth between the tree and my paper. Every once in a while, the air fills with the sound of his drumming. Rat-tat-tat-tat …

&
nbsp; Mom smiles. “We hear you.”

  She never looks happier than when she is drawing. In fact, she says that her sketchbooks made as big a difference during her cancer treatments as the pain medicine that the doctors gave her. Even at her sickest, she tried to create at least one drawing every single day. Sometimes she drew stuff out of her head. Other times, she sketched nurses and orderlies and other patients. Once, she was so tired that she could barely sit up, but she struggled through a detailed drawing of her own scrawny fingers holding a pencil.

  “You could take a day off,” I told her then.

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  “Why not?”

  “I want to be an artist.”

  “You are an artist.”

  “Artists make art.”

  Now, Mom adds small details to her woodpecker so that the feathers on its head look like a messy crown. “You should write a book,” I say.

  “About what?” she asks.

  “How to fight cancer with colored pencils.”

  Mom doesn’t looks up. “Who says I was fighting cancer?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Lucy,” Mom says, “I’m not one of those people who think that cancer is some kind of jousting match. People live or die based on good medicine, good luck, and the grace of God. The people who die from it did not fail. The people who live will die another day.”

  My chest fills with a sudden, familiar pressure. I do not know how many times my heart has been broken and remade during this last year. “I’m glad you didn’t die,” I say.

  “I’m glad too,” Mom says, “but there were some days that death was the only thing that kept me going.”

  I look up. “I don’t understand.”

  Mom turns her face to me. “Just so we’re clear, being sick did not make me want to die.”

  “Okay.”

  “But it sure made me want to stop being sick. I figured that if I didn’t get better, at least I would die and then I wouldn’t feel so rotten anymore. One way or another, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.”

  “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

  “Always look on the bright side of life, Lucy. And anyway, it’s not like death is the end of the world.”

  “You mean heaven?” I ask.

  “I mean people die every day, and the world is still spinning.” Mom takes my paper and turns it around to study it. “That’s a good thing.”

  “Are you talking about life, death, or my bird?”

  “Life is good. Death is a mystery. The bird needs work.”

  I take my paper, turn it over, and try again. This time, I don’t bother looking at the trees or at Mom or anything. I just draw what’s on my mind. When I’m done, a little black bird sits on my page. It’s more like a cartoon than the realistic drawings that Mom makes, but it’s lively and confident and I like it.

  “Nice,” says Mom.

  “Really?” I ask.

  She nods. “What kind of bird is it?”

  “Does it matter?” I ask.

  “If it’s art, then everything matters.”

  I stare down at my drawing. “It’s a mockingbird.”

  10

  I Kill the Mockingbird

  After lunch, I tuck my mockingbird sketch into a back pocket and let Mom know that I’m going to head to the bookshop for the afternoon.

  “Look both ways before you cross the street,” she tells me.

  I start to protest, but then it strikes me that if I am very lucky I will be able to offer annoying safety tips to my own children one day. “I’ll look both ways if you eat some fruit.”

  “Do strawberry Peeps count?”

  “Strawberries would be good.”

  Mom grins. Her eyes are bright and lively, and her cheeks are filling out. I wish she’d eat a little better than she does, but her main food groups have always been coffee, candy, and fast food. “Lucy,” she says, “Peeps make me happy, and happiness cures cancer.”

  “That’s not what you said before.”

  “Peeps cure cancer!” Mom hollers as I head out the door.

  When I arrive at the bookstore, Elena and Mort are redecorating the display window that looks out onto Main Street. From the sidewalk, I see them assembling a stubby, fake Christmas tree next to a life-size Santa Claus doll that they’ve shoved into an old-fashioned school desk.

  “What do you think they’re doing?”

  I turn and find Michael right beside me. He’s wearing a pin-striped baseball uniform with grass stains on the elbows and knees. I’m guessing he already played today. I point to the green and red banner on the wall behind Santa. It says CHRISTMAS IN JULY.

  “Ho, ho, ho,” says Michael.

  “How was your game?” I ask.

  “We got beat, but I did okay in the field. I got on base once, and I struck out twice.”

  “You struck out?”

  Michael smiles and nods. “These guys are good!”

  “It’s funny that striking out makes you happy.”

  “The best hitters in baseball can strike out two out of every three times they’re at bat. Striking out doesn’t make me happy, but you can’t let it get you down. It’s just part of the game.”

  “That’s a good attitude.”

  “Plus,” he says, “even if I were unhappy, that would change when I saw you.”

  I feel my face get very warm, and I expect my cheeks are about to turn bright red. “Thanks.”

  This would probably be a good moment for Michael and me to talk, but I suddenly feel like I’ve lost the ability to form coherent thoughts and sentences.

  “Want to go inside?” Michael asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “Sure. Okay.”

  Michael looks at me oddly. “Okay.”

  There are no shoppers inside the bookstore at the moment, so Mort has the music turned up loud. He’s got the place wired up with an old-style record player and a stereo system that includes several large, boxy speakers mounted to the ceiling. Now, a vinyl album is spinning on the turntable. A huge wall of sound filled with funky horns, an orchestral string section, some massive drums, and a set of jingle bells roar out of the speakers along with an all-girl chorus singing in perfect harmony.

  Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?

  In the lane, snow is glistening.

  A beautiful sight,

  We’re happy tonight.

  Walking in a winter wonderland …

  Mort sticks his head out from the doorway that leads to the window display space. “I love the holidays!”

  I look over his shoulder. Elena is putting twinkly, red lights on the plastic tree. “I can tell,” I shout over the music.

  Mort turns down the volume. “I’m hoping that a little bit of Christmas will get some shoppers in here. We’ve hardly even sold any of your summer reading list books. I thought we’d go through a couple dozen of those by now.”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  He points at a stack of To Kill a Mockingbird copies. “There’s only one thing keeping me from boxing those up and sending them back as returns.”

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

  That makes me laugh. It’s one of the novel’s most famous lines. In fact, I can recite that entire passage from memory. So I do. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

  “That was your teacher’s favorite part of the book,” Mort tells me.

  “Miss Caridas?”

  Mort shakes his head. “Fat Bob.”

  “Really?”

  Mort nods. “He thought the author was making a joke because real mockingbirds are territorial and aggressive. They’ll peck an intruder to death if it gets too close to their nest. And as far as singing their hearts out, they do that by stealing other
birds’ songs.”

  “If that’s the case, then there are a lot of characters in that novel who act like real mockingbirds,” says Michael.

  “But in the book,” I say, “the mockingbird is supposed to be a symbol of innocence. That’s why it’s a sin to kill one.”

  “Who says it’s a symbol of innocence?” asks Mort.

  “Teachers,” I tell him. “Book reviewers, critics—”

  “Wikipedia,” Elena calls from behind the display window.

  “Everybody,” I say.

  “Maybe everybody is wrong,” says Michael.

  “They’re not wrong,” says Mort.

  Elena steps out of the display window and joins us in the shop. She turns to her uncle. “You said that mockingbirds are mean, selfish, hostile, thieving liars. Now you’re saying they’re not. Which is it?”

  “Mockingbirds are creatures without a sense of right and wrong,” Mort says. “That makes them innocent. They also behave exactly the way they were raised to behave. That means they are thieving, selfish, hostile liars. They can be innocent and wicked at the same time.”

  “That’s not a joke,” says Michael.

  “Michael,” says Mort, “contradiction and paradox are the building blocks of great humor.”

  “So is the mockingbird a symbol of innocence or not?” asks Elena.

  Mort rolls his eyes. “Forget about symbols. To Kill a Mockingbird is not about symbols. It’s about people.”

  “It’s about selfish, hostile, thieving liars who might be innocents,” says Elena.

  Mort nods. “That’s what Mr. Nowak would say.”

  “I think it’s a story about growing up,” I say, “and leaving things behind.”

  “It’s about a lot of things,” says Mort. “Mr. Nowak thought it should have been titled HOW to Kill a Mockingbird.”

  “I like that,” says Elena.

  “The book’s original title was Atticus,” he adds.

  “I don’t like that,” says Elena.

  “Harper Lee changed it at the last minute.”

  Elena shrugs. “Better late than never.”

  Mort glances at an ancient grandfather clock he’s got propped in the corner. “Speaking of late, it’s five minutes past lunchtime. You three watch the store while I go make us some sandwiches.” He turns away then trots upstairs.