That time I almost met Harper Lee.

I take great pride in the Lee last name.

According to legend, and also my father who, among his many world travels, visited the “Lee place” in Ireland, etc. I think, from what I can gather, that it was hardly more than a couple of sticks stuck upright in a slab of mortar. 

A perfect potato.

I mean, that’s been centuries back; the only palpable evidence was that of the family crest, but don’t ask me what’s on that thing. I couldn’t tell you. What I do know is that there were only ever two Lee brothers who set out for the New World. Both made it, but on the way over, one lost everything except like a goat or two, a cow, and half a potato…oh, and of course his precious family. The other managed to hold onto all his money, though I think he lost a daughter.

I don’t know; it’s not important.

Point is, in a way, we’re all related. And, in that same way, I get to take all the credit for what everyone else in the family did, does, and has done. Even though, we don’t know each other. And probably never will. Because why should we.

However, following this by-now established logic in my made-up world of existence and family trees, that means, then that Harper Lee is related to me. And that means I’m a part of her great American novel. (Also, it means I’m related to Peggy Lee, Bruce Lee, Gypsy Rose Lee, Jason Lee, and probably Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Vivian Leigh, even though they tried to cleverly hide the fact by misspelling the Lee last name. But, I wasn’t fooled).

There are many more Lees/Leighs/even Lis (like Jet Li), in my family, but today’s focus is on Harper for the simple fact that I almost met her once.

My friend Lyle and I (several years ago, now, I guess it was) were taking a trip down to Pensacola. We have some good friends who live down there, still, and it makes me jealous to think about it since I too wish to live near the water but I still love them. Lyle had diligently (as he is wont to do) made all the travel arrangements. I try to always maintain great relationships with extremely orderly people.  I secretly wish I were, and every now and then, I can aggravate myself into becoming like them, but it’s ever so much, much easier just to find friends who already are like that, and then support them in their decision-making process. This I can do, in my sleep. (And that’s usually exactly where I do it).

Lyle had chosen a more scenic route, which if I recall correctly, actually ended up being a better route, anyway, and a portion of it wound its way through Monroeville, Alabama.  This was exciting news to me.

I knew of Monroeville; one of my favorite authors is Capote. Not so much for anything stylistically, but more because he was such a loudmouth, one-of-a-kind original. For me, that’s how I divide my favorites in literature: those who wrote well and those who lived well.  And though I personally think I’m nothing like him, I still blush at the comparison people often make between us. I think it has mostly to do with the fact that I, like him, am somewhat addicted to scarfs.

I've been to Paradise, and I've been to Me.

I also wear a Fedora, though, which puts me, perhaps, a little more in the category of Elvis Costello, someone else I’m often compared to, for some reason. I look nothing like him, and besides, I think he favors Bono. Who recently wrote a poem about Elvis Presley (not a good one, in my opinion – I’m supposing there’s musical accompaniment that I missed hearing). A few members of Presley’s family, a small tributary of it anyway still gurgling along in Mississippi, on his father’s side, are close family friends of U.L., so I don’t know, maybe it all comes full circle.

I’ve gotten off track, as usual. Sorry.

I was well familiar with Monroeville, like I said, because I often re-read and enmesh myself in one of my favorite autobiographies, Capote, written by one Gerald Clarke; it truly takes a good long look at this tiny town. It’s also well-written, I should point out.  Which is really all it could be, considering the stink Capote caused about his “invention” of creative nonfiction. I know, I know, he never really said, out loud, that he “invented” creative nonfiction, but so superior did he think his ability to cull a story from truth along the tenets of fiction that he, I’m sure, believed it his invention by proximity of mastery, if nothing else.

That’s what all geniuses do, you know.

So, I was elated when Lyle said we’d be passing through. I’d always wanted to drive through Monroeville. I mean, it couldn’t be that large. It wouldn’t take up much time.

We were stopping for gas anyway.

The trouble was – the rain. It was pouring, open-spout, straight down, as rain tends to do. And, it was a little more off the beaten path of Highway 41, than it appeared to be on the map. Still, there’s no better motivation to take on an adventure quite like the need for gas. As we tentatively took the exit towards Monroeville, it dawned on Lyle that another great, literary giant lived here: Nell Harper Lee, who in the recent cinema had been portrayed on the big screen by both Catherine Keener and Sandra Bullock. The New Yorker had recently published a letter from Harper Lee in which she openly criticized Bullock’s version of her in the lesser Capote film (put out literally on the heels of the award-winning one). “I never wore penny loafers,” Lee said. Or something like that; it had to do with shoes, I believe.

Her curmudgeon is still thick as a pie crust. But that letter I read way after the fact of this trip, as you’re about to see.

We should track down her house, then, I said to Lyle. Let’s bite the bullet, and be those people, I said, let’s ask the locals where she’s buried. 

For shame, I know. But, we couldn’t help it. She’d not been heard of in ages, she might as well be dead, in a plot right along Capote, if indeed, he were buried here, as well. I found out and soon, though, that she wasn’t dead. As a matter of fact, she was very well alive, and living in Monroeville.

Let me back up first, a little.

So, we’d found ourselves, finally, under a tall awning at a Chevron. And not a moment too soon, I should add. I get nervous easily on road trips (having fun, of course) and was in need of a restroom break. It doesn’t take much, as anyone who knows me will gladly tell you. While in the Chevron, I did bite the bullet – I did the one thing I dislike others for doing, because truth be known, I don’t get starry-eyed. At least, not easily. I remember my Ya Ya saying once that no one was that important; we all have to shit, she said. (Forgive the imagery and language, but that’s fairly provocative, and it’s kept me in good stead for many years).

But, regardless, I did it: I became a tourist of wanderlust and asked the guy behind the cash register where her grave was. And also, Capote’s house, and her house, also. The guy behind me answered. She’s not dead, he said. And he should know; he was her mailman, and was on his way to deliver her mail, right then.

And for the record, Capote’s house was torn down years ago, and the mailman wasn’t sure if there was even a marker there, but maybe? Anyway, we could find Harper Lee on the second floor of the bank, in the middle of town. She kept her office there, and we could just get out and go upstairs, and on the right, knock at her door.

The real deal. No deal.

I hurried back to the car, told Lyle, and we immediately agreed that we should do this. We should just go further into the town and get lost and find her and well…let’s just get that part done, first, we said.

The town wasn’t, isn’t, large, but it doesn’t take a space much bigger than a living room to get lost in when you don’t know where you’re going. The rain was relentless. We took several wrong turns, and I believe, at the last minute, we were about to give up when a KFC roared into view and there behind it was a clunky, solid-brown brick building with an unobtrusive sign stating that this was indeed the First Bank of Monroeville.

We pulled into a parking space and stared at it. Here it was; here, she was, somewhere tucked away inside like the thousands and thousands of dollar bills. I imagined her wound as tightly into her own persona as a roll of quarters. Just as heavy, too, I thought, with her mystique and her bitten thumb attitude at the literary world. Who could blame her? Some critics don’t really believe she wrote To Kill A Mockingbird, anyway; others don’t give the fact that she had anything to do with In Cold Blood a leg to stand on, (I mean, Capote didn’t), so where do you go with that?

Poor thing.

However…she was still a giant, and more power to her if she’s fooled them all. (But I don’t believe that for a moment).

We took a deep breath, Lyle and I, and scared ourselves. What would we say to her? Hey, Harper, good job on that book and all?  Or, Atticus, cool name, where’d that come from? Or, are you Scout?

The rain kept on and on and on.

And, then…so did we.

We pulled out of the parking space, too intimidated to meet her. At least, this is what we said to ourselves, heading further south towards old friends who hadn’t written any works of “staggering genius” (yet), and a mile of sand that wouldn’t care what questions we asked. We told ourselves, Look at us – what we have on, we’re wearing traveling clothes (for me that was pair of exercise pants and a Golden Girls overshirt).

You couldn’t go meeting the First Lady of Fiction looking like we did.

Plus, the rain! We would have come across as obsessed fans, a couple of soaking rats. We’d probably have been arrested. Of course, I’d spit the fact of that mailman out as fast as I could, if that were the case. Aiding and abetting is a crime, too.

I know I missed a real opportunity that day. But, only in the flesh, in the literal, only in the very real chance of having met her, shaked her hand, thanked her, whatever would have happened. Everything else about that moment, though…pure gold, I must say. A great memory.

Just do it what it says.

We took our last exit in Alabama, just miles from the Florida state line, through a town so small I’m still not sure it was even there. Except for this sign. Spray-painted across an empty storefront.

I don’t know, but for me, this made the trip.

This sign was worth all the money in the First Bank of Monroeville.

The monk on a yellow motorcycle.

Again, with the dreams. I’m having such dreams, lately.  A flood. Minus the ark.

I think they’re so vehement and vivid because I’m knuckles-down and knee-deep in rehearsals for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [abridged]. We open next week, and I’m stressed, to be sure. But so long as I can get that stress out in my dreams, and not on the stage, perhaps, perchance, it will be all right. After all, the Bard said,

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Heaven help me indeed, if this is part of my philosophy. Earth, I doubt as I always do, is really ever much help at all.

Part One: Shintoism

I am a Shintoist monk, of some unknown order, but still free of faculty and speech. I am a traveling monk, apparently, as I have a yellow motorcycle, and I take to the highway, eager to stay moving, a shark in asphalt waters. You should know that I’ve never in my life wanted a motorcyle, so why it should be buried in my subconscious is a mystery of great interest. I try very hard to find meaning in my dreams, even if all that means is that I saw a yellow motorcycle earlier in the day, and my brain is just processing it.  I still crave knowing.

Not a Shintoist monk, but isn't music universal?

I have on blue jeans, and an Oxford, royal blue, like the color I thought dolphins were, when I was a child. I make quite a statement in color, though, with the motorcyle. I’m flying down some Interstate. The weather is gorgeous. All I’ve been told, and I don’t know when or where I was told this, is that I’m undertaking a mission trip, but for what purpose: converts, fundraising, education? That part was kept from me.

I’ve been on this particular Interstate now for several hours; I feel that I’m in Kentucky, as if in my secular life – which, in the course of this dream I debate that compared to this new, spiritual one, is perhaps my less sinful life – I’d had reason to know this state. I pass by the National Corvette Museum. Yes, this is Kentucky.

I look to my right, and there are suddenly three childhood friends, all on motorcycles, people I’ve not seen in years or even thought about.  They are revving their delicate motors, they want to race me, and my first instinct is to oblige them, to rev back my own motor, but instead, I wave at them.

I murmur some blessing to them and keep to my course. Because…

I know, up ahead, is a shrine. It’s a popular tourist attraction; the front half of the shrine, but I know that behind the altar, is the place the true believers can go. We are told to approach the steward at the second door and say, Java Est. He will let us into the private room.

I can't believe I found this picture.

I’m headed there, to this shrine. I pull off the ramp, from the Interstate, Exit 27, and see a large, sheer banner hanging down the entire front of the shrine, emblazoned on this banner are two Japanese characters from their kana that I don’t recognize; they are printed in bold red. To the right of me is a gift shop plaza. Something tells me to go there first. I do. I park my yellow motorcycle, and go into this gift shop.

There’s a long, dark, stairwell and from my back pocket, I pull a pink scarf out and drape it over my head, for some reason. I take the steps, one at a time, slowly, and when I emerge at the top of the stairwell, I see that this is no gift shop. It is a library.  A very busy one. I’ve apparently entered on the second floor and approaching the rail, I look over and there are hundreds and hundreds of people milling about below.

A girl, a thin African-American girl is standing in the middle of this throng, choking.

But, no one responds.

I leap over the rail to assist her. I fall perfectly, feet first. A young man, a white man, sees this and records it on his cell phone. He will make a movie of this incident and show it at this library in a matter of weeks. I will return, so long is this dream, to the opening night. But, I will not remember having helped this girl, and I will leave the film, disturbed: Am I being followed? Who else sees me that I don’t see? Am I merely subject matter for other people to turn into art?

Returning to the stairwell, I see another old friend, gaunt and sickly. She informs me that the library is to be shut down by September. What could I do to help? I help by leaving.

But first, I give her the longest embrace.

I get back on my bike, but I see that the weather is turning. I don’t relish the idea of driving in rain, not on a motorcycle. So, I head further into this town. I want to find a coffee shop because I have decided to buy a cup, to try it. One truth that persists from real life into this dream, is my very real dislike of drinking coffee. The smell, though, I adore.

In this coffee shop cum mall, I discover two people, who, at random moments, approach me with their problems: one young man, an African-American man, has a bruise on both of his cheeks. The other, a Hispanic woman, has lacerations on both her wrists. They ask me to heal them.

I suggest he use make-up to cover the bruise. I instruct her to buy gloves, but not white ones, as they would stain.  I order a fried chicken sandwich with two slices of cheese, and then, without waiting for it, I drift into the bookstore attached to the coffee shop.

It is full of the oddest types of books. One section, the one right by the door, is devoted to textiles; there’s a book all about different types of laces, for instance. Each page is made of the lace it is discussing. I know this because I am drawn to it, and must finger it; it is painfully soft. The section next to it, is dedicated to wood samples: I thumb through a book about sisal; each page is twined sisal itself, and I love the feel of it, also. This book, unlike the lace book, has an accompanying story with it: a piece of folklore, entitled Taily-Po. (This is a story my Ya Ya used to tell me when I was little, instilling superstition was a family decree). 

This is a dream in and of itself. Nothing but books. How wonderful.

I thoroughly enjoy my time in the bookstore. I am a haptic monk. I like touching things; that is where healing is kept in the human world. These two books remind me of that.

Then, I feel a chill in the air, and I look down at myself. I’m almost entirely bare. I am not naked, but I am not clothed properly, even my feet are bare, a sin. I feel awkward. I turn, then, there’s a noise at the outer door, the door to the mall, not from the coffee shop. A string of elderly women are entering. They don’t approve of my being without shoes. But they say nothing; instead, they discuss the row of paintings for sale on the left wall, and one remarks, Why, this is only $290. And the rebuttal, if you will, is more a projection than anything else, You should buy it. Hattie, did you hear that? 

I also overhear that her birthday is coming up…

Yet, no one buys the painting.

Part Two: Aunt Lola

To be continued.