I Kill the Mockingbird

by Paul Acampora

  “Did Sports Illustrated send you?” I ask.

  She grins. “Something like that.”

  I nod at all her gear. “Do you need a hand?”

  “I’m good,” she says.

  “You look good,” I tell her. And it’s true. She really does. She is tan and healthy and strong, and suddenly I want to cry because I’m so happy to see my old mom again. Of course, I’m not going to utter the words old mom out loud.

  She leans forward and kisses me on the cheek. “I’ve got to run. I have plans to shoot soccer, basketball, softball, volleyball, skateboarding, tennis, and lacrosse today. If I’m lucky, I’ll find a horseback rider, some boaters, badminton, and some stuff I haven’t thought of yet, too. I already got a fisherman, a cyclist, a jogger, and now baseball.”

  “What are you doing?” I ask her.

  “Some editor thought it would be a good idea to photograph a whole day’s worth of sports in one small town.”

  “That is a good idea,” I say.

  She nods and smiles. “Especially since I got the assignment.”

  “Good luck!”

  As Mom heads away, I realize that even though West Glover is not a very big place, there’s an enormous amount of activity going on around me pretty much all the time. There are Little League games, literary terrorists, crazy families, cancer patients … and that’s just at my house. The thought makes me laugh out loud.

  “What’s so funny?”

  I look up and find Michael beside me. The game must be over. Before I can speak, my phone buzzes. It’s a text from Elena.

  “This place is crazy,” I say to Michael.

  “You’re just now figuring that out?”

  I glance down at my phone.

  I HAVE AN IDEA, says Elena’s message.

  WHAT KIND OF IDEA? I type back.

  A WONDERFUL, AWFUL, GRINCHY IDEA.

  AND? I ask.

  MEET ME AT BOOKSHOP. BRING THE TRIKE.

  “We’re off,” I say to Michael.

  A few minutes later, he and I roll to a stop in front of the store. Michael is on the tricycle, and I’m peddling my faithful, pink three-speed. Elena meets us on the sidewalk. “We’re going to the library,” she announces.

  “The West Glover Library?” says Michael.

  Elena nods.

  Michael reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. He scans the screen, lowers his voice, and tells us, “To Kill a Mockingbird is hidden behind the taxidermy section there.”

  “Taxidermy?” I say.

  “We’re not going inside,” Elena tells us.

  “Taxidermy?” I say again.

  Elena ignores me. “We’re going behind the building.” She steps into the tricycle’s storage basket. “I’ll ride back here for now.”

  Michael turns around in the tricycle seat. “This isn’t Driving Miss Daisy.”

  Elena laughs. “Just go,” she tells him.

  It doesn’t take long to get to the library. It’s only a few blocks east on Main Street. Before we reach the entrance, however, Elena has us turn down a narrow alley. It leads to a small parking lot where we find a squat green dumpster beside a row of bright yellow recycling bins. They’re all lined up against the library’s back wall. In the heat, the dumpster smell hits us like a fist in the face.

  “What kind of library garbage smells like that?” Michael asks.

  “Really bad books?” I suggest.

  Despite the smell, Elena leads us to the recycling bins. They are all filled with old paperbacks and hardcovers. Many of the books have ripped pages and spines busted open, but a lot of them look fine.

  “What are these doing here?” says Michael.

  “Libraries have to get rid of old books to make room for new stuff,” Elena explains. “It’s called weeding. Mort and I used to sift through here sometimes, but volunteers go through it now. They sell anything worthwhile. The funds help the library. The rest gets tossed.”

  I pull an old brown book from one of the bins. “They’re just throwing these away?”

  Elena taps a yellow container with her toe. “It’s recycling.”

  I flip through the pages. “This is a perfectly good book.”

  Michael takes the book from me and reads the title. “The Travels and Extraordinary Adventure of Bob the Squirrel.” He looks up. “People like squirrels.”

  “I bet nobody’s read that book in years,” says Elena.

  “So?”

  “So if nobody’s going to read it,” says Elena, “then having Bob the Squirrel in the library is like having a rose bush in a vegetable garden. Do you know what that’s called?”

  “What?” asks Michael.

  “A weed. It’s pretty to look at, but it won’t help you make a salad. Luckily, we’re not going to make a salad.”

  “What are we going to make?” I ask.

  Elena starts pulling books from one of the recycling bins. “A bonfire.”

  “Excuse me?” I say.

  “Actually,” says Elena as she starts moving books toward the tricycle, “it will be more like a funeral pyre, but instead of a body we’ve got books.”

  “I am not going to burn books,” says Michael.

  “Not just any books,” Elena says. “We’re going to burn a thousand pages of To Kill a Mockingbird.”

  Michael’s mouth drops open as if somebody just punched him in the stomach.

  “It’s going to be great!” Elena promises.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he finally asks.

  Elena laughs. “Don’t worry. We’re not really going to burn To Kill a Mockingbird. We’re just going to burn pages from these throwaways, but nobody will know the difference once they’re on fire.”

  “You seriously want to set books on fire?” Michael says.

  Elena dumps several hardcovers and paperbacks into the tricycle’s cargo bin.

  Michael crosses his arms. “This is not good.”

  “It’s fine,” says Elena. “It won’t even be that big of a fire, but it will definitely be a big finish.”

  Michael shakes his head. “It really is true what they say about the teenage brain.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “I read about it in a National Geographic magazine,” he says. “Our brains go through a massive reorganization starting when we turn twelve. We start losing impulse control. We take big risks. We overestimate rewards. We basically go insane.” He points at Elena. “And there’s the living proof.”

  Elena gives Michael a big grin.

  “Lucy,” Michael says to me, “tell her that you are not going to go along with this.”

  “It would be a big finish,” I tell him. “And we’ve come this far.”

  “We’re already throwing a funeral!” Michael protests.

  “Anybody can do that,” says Elena. “But it takes real nerve to host a book burning. Plus,” she adds, “if we burn books, we’ll get tons of publicity.”

  “So?” says Michael.

  “So more people will hear about I Kill the Mockingbird.”

  “Enough people have already heard about it.”

  Elena tosses several more titles onto the tricycle. “But this will get more visitors to the website. We can post your list showing all the places where books are hidden. Libraries and bookstores will get the word that nothing was ever really stolen. Everybody will be able to find everything without us having to go back to the places ourselves.”

  I turn to Michael. “That actually makes sense.”

  Michael stares at the library recycling bins for a long time. “What about the books that have been stolen?” he finally says.

  “That’s not our fault,” Elena says.

  “It’s a little bit our fault,” I tell her.

  “More than a little,” says Michael.

  “We can’t visit every town in the country to put a stop to this thing,” says Elena. “But we can send a signal that it’s really and truly over. The bonfire will be that signal.”<
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  I turn to Michael. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “No,” he admits. He turns toward the recycling bins. “Are they really just throwing all these books away?”

  “Don’t think of them as books,” says Elena. “Think of them as kindling words.”

  Michael sighs. “Can I keep Bob the Squirrel for myself?”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve already put it aside for you.”

  22

  “It Was a Pleasure to Burn”

  We bring the tricycle back to my house, roll it into the garage, and close the door behind us. Mom’s car is no longer parked in here, so the space feels huge. “Now what?” says Michael.

  “Do you have a plan?” I ask Elena.

  “Yes,” she tells me. “My plan is to gather a bunch of books and then set them on fire.”

  “That’s not a plan!”

  “I didn’t have time to work out all the details!”

  Luckily, with the end of summer in sight, my father is working long hours to get ready for the new school year, and Mom is out capturing the secret life of athletes in West Glover. We have the house to ourselves.

  “Okay,” I say, “here’s what we do.” I grab a big metal trash can and drag it to the middle of the floor. I open the lid, and I’m happy to find that it’s empty.

  “I cannot wait for this to be over,” says Michael.

  Elena gives him a sweet smile. “It’s not over till the mockingbird burns.”

  I point to the old books still loaded on the tricycle. “Start ripping pages out then stuff them into the garbage can.”

  Michael shakes his head. “First you want me to burn them. Now you want me to trash and mutilate them. What happened to ‘We fight for the books’?”

  “Michael,” I say, “we are fighting for the books. Now just start ripping.”

  Still, I know how he feels. These are real books that we’re tearing apart. They hold stories and knowledge and truths about the world. I glance at a few titles that have spilled onto the garage floor. I see Knitting with Dog Hair, Fancy Coffins to Make Yourself, and something called Across Europe by Kangaroo. On the other hand, a bonfire might not be the wrong ending for some of these.

  “Lucy,” Michael says to me. “When will your parents be home?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” I tell him, “so the sooner we’re done here the better.”

  We tear the books apart as fast as we can, but it’s already late afternoon by the time we’re finished. We’re barely able fit all the pages into the trash can. “It’s just kindling,” Michael says over and over. “It’s just kindling.”

  “It is now,” says Elena.

  It takes all three of us to load the trash can onto the trike, but we finally get it aboard. We snap on the lid then tie it down with bungee cords. From there, we push the whole thing out of the garage and into the driveway.

  “Wait,” I say at the last minute. I run back into the garage, grab a book of matches, and stuff them into my pocket. “Now,” I tell my friends, “we’re ready.”

  It’s a slightly downhill ride from my house to the Green, so Michael is able to pedal the tricycle out of our neighborhood without too much difficulty. He has to go slow, but that makes it easy for Elena and me to keep up on foot. When we finally arrive, the sun is setting over the park. Even in the dimming light, it’s easy to see that there’s a much bigger crowd here than usual. Most of them are standing around the bandstand. Michael, Elena, and I gather at the opposite end of the Green near the baseball field.

  I point at the backstop behind home plate. It’s really just a great big chain-link fence. “Let’s put the trash can there,” I say. “It’s surrounded by dirt so nothing else will burn. After the sun goes down, I’ll light the pages then find you in the crowd.”

  “Why are you the one to start the fire?” asks Michael.

  “I got us into this,” I tell him. “I’m going to end it. Not only that,” I add. “I’m the one who brought the matches.”

  “I want to read something,” says Elena. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a copy of Fahrenheit 451, the most famous book-burning story of all time. “This is what gave me the idea for the bonfire.”

  “That’s perfect,” I say.

  She opens to a dog-eared page and reads aloud. “So few want to be rebels anymore.” She looks up. “That’s not true for us.”

  Michael takes the book from Elena, turns to a different page, and reads. “Let us this day light such a candle that, by God’s grace, shall never be put out.”

  “Good one,” I say.

  “Okay,” says Michael. “Let’s do this thing.”

  Elena rubs her hands together. “It was a pleasure to burn.”

  That’s the very first line in Fahrenheit 451, and it makes all three of us laugh, which I am sure is not what Ray Bradbury, the author of the book, ever intended.

  Together, we move our heavy container off the tricycle then carry it to the chain-link backstop. Michael takes the bungee cords and uses them to secure the trash can to the fence. “There’s no reason it should tip over,” he says, “but just in case.”

  I glance toward the bandstand. The crowd is even larger now, and a group of musicians appears to be setting up instruments on stage. “You two go mingle in the crowd,” I tell Michael and Elena. “I’ll start the fire as soon as it’s dark. I’ll join you once I’m sure it’s going to stay lit.”

  “And then,” says Elena, “we wander around and tell people that we heard that the bonfire is made with copies of To Kill a Mockingbird.”

  “Exactly,” I say.

  Elena smiles. “Excellent.”

  I turn to Michael. “And are we ready to post the list of hiding spots onto our home page?”

  Michael pulls out his phone and swipes at the screen a few times. “As of now,” he says, “the I Kill the Mockingbird website features a list describing every hiding spot we know about. Not only that, I made it so that people can add new locations and also make notes on the ones that are already there.”

  “You’re awesome,” I say.

  “Thanks.”

  On the other side of the Green, the crowd has drawn close to the bandstand. The sound of music floats across the park. “Is that a ukulele?” I ask.

  We stop and listen closely. “Actually,” says Elena, “it’s a bunch of ukuleles.”

  “I think they’re playing Beach Boys songs,” says Michael.

  “You should get moving,” I tell my friends.

  Elena slaps at a mosquito on her arm. “Can I say one more thing?” She doesn’t wait for a reply. “I just want to say that I have had a great summer.” She points at me. “And so have you.” She turns to Michael. “And so have you.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” I say.

  “Me neither,” says Michael.

  I watch as my two best friends cross the Green then blend into the crowd. Soon, the stars begin to twinkle in the sky. While my eyes adjust to the darkness, I enjoy this clear, beautiful night that is filled with cricket songs and fireflies and ukuleles. In the distance, I see that the bandstand musicians include the college kids who visited the bookstore earlier today. They have been joined by a banjo player, a few guitarists, and a small girl banging on a bucket. I look more closely and see that the little drummer girl is Ginny, owner of the Norse god wiener dog.

  Meanwhile, David Donovan, the boy who spoke to me at the bookshop, has his head bowed down, and he’s strumming on his ukulele as if somebody might die if he stops. I don’t recognize the song, but people are clapping and dancing and singing. I don’t understand all the words until that girl Soo Bee steps up and wails into this big megaphone-bullhorn thing. “With my lightning bolts a glowing, I can see where I am going…” She takes a breath and repeats the line. “With my lightning bolts a glowing, I can see where I am going…” She looks so brave and bold up there. The musicians behind her are playing for all they’re worth. I think she’s going to repeat the line again, but
instead she smiles at the crowd and yells into the bullhorn, “You better look out below!”

  The song ends with a sudden, unexpected chord that every player hits simultaneously. The musicians must be as surprised as anybody because they all burst out laughing while the crowd, which has grown to several hundred people, explodes into cheers and applause.

  This, I realize, is as good a time as any to start a fire. As quietly as possible, I remove the trash can lid and place it in the dirt. Luckily, there is no real wind so I don’t have to worry about littering the park with loose pages from Knitting with Dog Hair. I pull the matches from my pocket, but then I stop. For a just a second, I think I hear something in the dark. I stand frozen in place. The sound comes again. It could be a bird rustling in a nearby tree or it could be gravel crunching beneath someone’s foot. “Is someone there?” I whisper.

  “It’s me.” Elena steps out of the shadows.

  “And me.” Michael is here, too.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “We couldn’t leave you alone,” says Michael.

  “But—”

  “Actually,” says Elena, “we can’t let you go through with this.”

  On the bandstand, the musicians begin another song. It’s the tune we embedded onto the home page of our website. I shake my head. “But the bonfire is your idea,” I say to Elena.

  “I know,” she says.

  “Elena and I were talking,” says Michael.

  “The more we talked,” says Elena, “the more we started to realize that the bonfire is not a good idea.”

  “I don’t understand,” I tell them.

  Elena points toward the bandstand. “Look. All those people are having a great time. They’re making music and talking about books and making new friends. It’s exactly what Mr. Nowak was talking about when he told us about being good readers. And we made that, Lucy. If we light this fire, that party is over.”

  “But what about I Kill the Mockingbird?” I ask. “How can we end it?”

  Michael steps forward and takes my hand. “I think you know.”

  Elena takes my other hand. Together, the three of us cross the Green. From the bandstand, David Donovan and his friend Soo Bee see us coming. They wave us forward until we are on stage with them. “Hey!” says David. “Are you having fun?”