Mockingbird Read Online Free PDF

accent subtle, not strong like the hard pluck of a banjo – feels comfortable. Like a ratty old pillow.
      He looks over at her with that one eye. The other is a ruined eyeless pucker hiding behind a black eyepatch. My fault , Miriam thinks.
      "I'm also not going back to that fucking island."
      "All right."
      "In fact, if you take me even remotely back toward the direction of the Jersey Shore, I'm going to take out your one good eye. With my thumb." She runs her hands through her hair, makes a wordless animal sound.
      For a little while, he just drives. Looking at her as much as the road. It feels all too familiar. Him the cautious guardian. Her the frazzled lunatic.
      "You got shot ," he says finally.
      "What? Oh." She feels her head. Again the bullet-dug ditch has crusted over: a scabby topography beneath her searching fingertips. "Right. Yeah. Wait. Who told? How'd you even find me?"
      The answer crosses her mind before he says it. "Peggy called me."
      Right. Peggy. The bane of her existence all summer – not exactly a friend of Louis's but an acquaintance. He met her dropping off, well, who knows what? Tampons and hermit crabs , she thinks. Peggy said she had a job opening if he knew anybody. Louis told Peggy he had just the girl. And the legacy of misery began.
      "You got shot," he says again. "You okay?"
      "Fine."
      He draws a deep breath. "You got shot. With a bullet."
      "Yeah, that's usually what 'shot' means. This barely counts. Last year I got stabbed in the tit. Deflated my lung like a bike tire. This… isn't anything. Just a flesh wound. So, how'd you find me?"
      "Got the call. Went back to the house–"
      "Trailer."
      "–and you were gone. So was your pack."
      "I could've gone anywhere. North to New York. South to Atlantic City."
      "Those directions wouldn't have taken you through the Pine Barrens." He watches her, warily. "I took a shot. It paid off. I think I know you pretty well by now."
      Something about that galls her.
      "You don't know shit," she spits, the words falling out of her like battery acid from an upended bucket. "You really think you know me? Good joke. Wanna know the punchline?" She's not laughing. "If you knew me, you wouldn't think that locking me away in a trailer for a year would be a super idea. You wouldn't think that my ideal job would be scanning postcards and sand pails and fucking Utz pretzels for the greasy coconut-besmirched touristy throng ."
      Louis sighs. "That's what people do, Miriam. They settle down. They get jobs."
      She rears back a foot and kicks his dashboard. Not enough to dent it or crack it but enough that it reverberates through the truck cab.
      "I'm not people!"
      "Miriam–"
      "Pull over."
      "What? No. Wait. There's something I need to tell you–"
      "I said pull the fuck over, you one-eyed sonofabitch."
      Louis grits his teeth, slams the brakes. The truck grinds to the side of the road. "There. I pulled over."
      "I'm out."
      "Again. You're bailing. Again ."
      "Again, yeah, a-fucking-gain."
      "You don't want to hear what I have to say."
      "No, I do not."
      "Fine, then. Go."
      "I'm going."
      "Doesn't look like you're going."
      She grabs her crotch. "What's this look like?"
      Miriam throws open the cab door. Leaps out into the gravel.
      Door, slam. The truck shakes with the force of it.
      Louis doesn't hang around. The tires growl on loose stone, and the Mack pulls away in a cloud of dust. It's just greasy, gauzy taillights diffused in a haze hanging low over the nighttime road. A haze that smells of smoke and distant fire.
      Good. He's angry. He should be. It's not often Louis gets angry. Always the diplomat. The peacemaker. Be a fountain, not a drain , he said once. She said back, I like to piss in fountains. And you're a real drain.
      The taillights wink and fade and are gone.
      Miriam keeps walking.
      By now, her dogs are really