Also Known As Harper (10 page)

When we got to the end of our driveway, that heavy feeling dropped right down to my sneakers. I looked at Hem, and I could tell that he felt it, too. He stood with his mouth open a tiny bit.

The van in the driveway was one I'd seen before,
but I couldn't straightaway remember where. It was green, with a dented-in spot over the taillight. Someone had put a bumper sticker on the back to try to hide the dent.
My child is an honor student at Kennedy Elementary.

The feeling in my body got shakier, because that bumper sticker went and reminded me about my poems and how I wasn't at school to show them to Mrs. Rodriguez.

I stood at the end of our driveway, my toes touching the curb. And I heard a small sound coming from behind me. It was a soft, whimpering sound, and when I turned around, I could see it was coming from Hem.

He was staring at his dirt pile by the corner of the house, and I saw a little boy sitting to the side. He was running trucks through the dirt pile.

But it wasn't the little boy that was making that sound come out of Hem's mouth. It was seeing those trucks. Hem's trucks. The ones that we had packed away in Winnie Rae Early's camping trailer.

We had been in a bit of a hurry that day, but I could still picture them in the waxy brown banana box. Resting on top of my dresser with the daisy decals.

Before I could even think about stopping him, Hem was standing knee-deep in that dirt pile. He held one truck in each hand, and the little boy was screaming his head off.

Then Hem was screaming his head off, too. “Get your snotty nose out of my dirt pile! You're ruining my best roads!”

And a woman was making her way down the front steps and across to the side yard. “What in the world is going on out here?”

I should've grabbed Hem and his trucks and run on back to the motel, but I was frozen. My feet had stopped still when I laid eyes on that orange sign.

 

 

 

 

 

I
'
D RECOGNIZE
Mrs. Early's writing anywhere, after all those notices she'd tacked up on our front windows and door. Her “L”s always lay down a bit, like they were reclining in a lawn chair. The sign itself was tilted to the side against the garbage can, so you had to put your ear down to your shoulder to properly read the
YARD SALE
part.

“Give that back to him, now.” The lady waggled her pointer finger at Hem, but Hem held on to his truck as tightly as if it was a life preserver.

She looked to be getting ready to grab it out of his hand, but Hem took a quick step sideways and she almost fell in the dirt pile.

She said a word I'm not inclined to repeat, and I remembered how I knew that van in the
driveway. It belonged to Mrs. Early's sister. Winnie Rae's aunt.

She wasn't nearly as fat as Winnie Rae's mother, but she was twice as mean about the mouth. Those swear words of hers had a bite to them.

I did what I did when Mrs. Early let loose with her curses. I turned sideways and let them blow right past. But what I couldn't shake was the strangeness I felt seeing someone else living in our house and digging in our dirt pile.

When I looked at Winnie Rae's nasty aunt and her grubby cousin, it all started to make sense, and I got a numb feeling all the way down to my fingertips. “Mrs. Early probably had them moving their stuff in the back door as we were moving our stuff off the front lawn.” I said it to Hem, but I was looking right at Winnie Rae's aunt. They had probably been planning it ever since they put the first sign up on our door.

Hem looked as if he didn't understand it all. Another kid running Hem's own trucks through his dirt pile just plain confused him. But not as much as the van in the driveway. I followed Hem's eyes to the green van.

His voice came out soft and small. “That might be Daddy's new car.”

The toy truck in his hand tumbled slowly to the ground, and he started to head in the direction of the front porch, but I grabbed his arm.

He tried to shake me off. “Daddy's inside.” He said it all quiet, as if he was afraid he might wake Daddy from a nap.

“Hem . . . Hemingway . . .” I tried to block his way, but he was plenty quick.

I saw his eyes getting wide and glassy and a little like a crazed animal as he ran to the front steps. “Daddy's inside . . . Daddy's inside. . . .” He kept repeating it over and over again, getting louder each time.

Seeing as Winnie Rae's aunt wasn't half as enormous as her sister, she got to the front door before Hem, and she grabbed him by the shoulders. “I have no idea what you're ranting about, boy, but you need to take all that crazy talk back down my stairs and leave me and my son alone!”

I would've been perfectly fine with her just blocking his way, but seeing her grab him by the shoulders sent loose the crazy part of me.

“Mama! That boy had his dirty hands on my truck! He bent back my finger!” Winnie Rae's cousin was trying to make it up those steps carrying a couple of Hem's biggest trucks and show his mama his pointer finger at the same time. So he wasn't too hard to push to the side when I went to rescue Hem.

I made straight for Winnie Rae's aunt. “Nobody's going to grab on to Hem like that except me!” I told it to her good and hard, because it definitely looked as if she was capable of digging in with her fingernails. There was nothing worse than a fingernail grabber.

Which was why I had to step on her toe with the heel of my sneaker.

She gave out a sound that came straight from her belly and sounded as if someone had pumped a chunk of air out of her.

I had a backup plan that involved her knee, but luckily she let go of Hem after one stomp.

He had started whimpering, and he didn't put up a fight when I led him down the stairs and out to the curb.

Mrs. Early's sister was speeding up her swears, but her boy was screaming louder than everybody.

“Get him, Mama! Get them both!” He was holding
a skinned elbow, so I figured she probably wouldn't bother coming after me.

Sure enough, she scooped him up and hauled him on into the house, with barely a look back.

I sat on the curb and pulled Hemingway down on my lap and rubbed his back like Mama sometimes did for me. I closed my eyes and made my breath trickle out slowly. When Hem's whimpering got quieter, I scooted him next to me. “You understand that's not our house anymore, right?” I said it quietly, but with a strong voice, so he'd listen and believe me.

He looked me in the eye and took a few quick, shaky gulps of air, but he didn't say anything.

“Daddy couldn't be inside, because he doesn't know those people, right?” I nodded toward our old house.

“He had my trucks.” Hem took another shaky gulp of air. “That kid had my trucks.”

I patted his back. “I know, Hem. I know.” I got up and went over to the garbage can.

I kicked the yard sale sign to the ground and looked around on the grass.

The yard sale itself was over, because all that was
left were the broken pieces. The parts that had been stepped on or ignored. Everything was tossed in a long pile, waiting for the trash collector to come by and haul it away. I had never had a fire like Lorraine, but this seemed worse somehow. The fire had been an accident, but everything here had been on purpose, and it made me feel sick inside to see the bits and pieces of our life all torn up and scattered.

Hem walked toward the back of the pile and pulled out our old ceramic towel rack from the bathroom. He ran his hand along the purple forget-me-nots I'd painted on one end. “How come they're throwing away our stuff?”

I thought about my green dresser with the daisy decals and I shook my head. “I think they were selling it.” I remembered Winnie Rae Early coming across the lawn with her Radio Flyer wagon and I wondered if she'd already had the price tags made out.

All of a sudden, I was dog-tired, and the only thing I wanted to do was see Mama and sit down with my pen.

Hem didn't say much on the way home, which was good, because there was a poem writing itself out in my mind the whole way back.

 

Dear Flannery

It's a good thing you aren't around

To see this, Flannery.

I'm glad you can't see someone else

Sitting around on our front porch

And digging through our dirt pile.

That would have been

Your very own dirt pile in a couple of years.

I would've helped you make roads with your fingers

And haul water for the lakes

In the middle.

And when you got old enough,

That green dresser with the daisy decals

Would have been yours, too.

 

 

 

 

 

WE WERE ONLY
about five minutes away from the motel when Hem started up with his whining again. I just wanted to get back and work on my school plan, so I held tightly around his wrist and pulled him along behind me, trying to block out the sound.

But when we got to the next bend in the road, he stopped dead still and seemed to bury his heels right into the asphalt.

“Come on, Hem.” I pulled a little harder, but all it did was put him off-balance.

He rocked forward and back on the balls of his feet a few times and dug his heels in hard. “I'm tired and my legs are done walking.”

There was only one thing that would get him moving again. “It's almost time to do your waiting,”
I said. “It's just about time to do your waiting for Daddy.”

He shook his head, because he knew I was wrong. “I got three or four hours still.” His inside clock never failed. “Besides,” he said, “it's even better to be out here. I can see all the cars that go by.” He kicked over a wide curve of old tire that had blown off a truck and sat down on it.

It was big enough for the both of us, so I breathed out a long puff of air and sat down next to him. I had to admit, I was tired of walking, too. And my stomach was letting me know it was past lunchtime. I pulled the peanut-butter sandwich out of my backpack and unfolded the washcloth.

“Here.” I handed the squished part to Hem, because I knew he wouldn't notice. Sure enough, he pointed it in the direction of his mouth and took a bite.

I was starting to wish for something to wash it down with when I saw her. The last person in the world I wanted to see standing in front of me.

“Not in school again, I noticed.” Winnie Rae Early walked herself on over, without one hint of an invitation. “The school nurse has been calling your
house,” she said. “But I told Mrs. Rodriguez you're not sick. You just don't live there no more.”

The thing was, I felt like I was sick right then. I was imagining Mrs. Rodriguez giving my desk away. Or emptying it out and putting it in the hallway, for the custodian to drag off.

Winnie Rae kept right on talking, not stopping for any rest breaks. That's what guilty people did, I'd noticed. They kept the words coming, so you didn't get a chance to accuse them.

“I got permission to ride the morning kindergarten bus to the motel.” She was talking as if I cared one ounce about what she did with her day. “Mama told the school I had an important doctor's appointment and she didn't have a car to pick me up.” She talked out of the side of her mouth, like she was sharing some big secret with Hem and me. “But really she's getting off work early and taking me to her hairdresser to get my hair permed. We are trying out a new hairstyle. If we don't like it, we still have plenty of time to switch to something different. She wants me to look nice at the hospital when the new baby comes.”

I raised one eyebrow at her, because who cared
about what she looked like, anyway? Her enormous mother was having the baby.

She fluffed the frizzy tuft of hair at the side of her head. “Miss Cynthia didn't have any more evening appointments, so Mama took me out of school.” She looked me dead in the eye with those beady pig eyes of hers. “I didn't leave till
after
Mrs. Rodriguez had me practice reading my poems in front of the class.” The left corner of her mouth always got to twitching to the side when she was lying. “She said I read better than anyone she'd heard in all her years of teaching school.”

I knew Mrs. Rodriguez hadn't said any of that, I knew it in my heart. But my mind was asking, what if she had? Maybe Daddy was right. Maybe my words really didn't matter to anyone.

I'd had enough. Winnie Rae was getting to me so bad, my fingers were tightening themselves into hard fists. Those daisy decals were swimming around in my head, and I hated Winnie Rae Early more than a person ought to hate someone. I stood up so the toes of my sneakers were getting ready to bump up against hers.

“You stole my dresser.” I said the words slowly, and evenly, so she wouldn't miss one bit of what I was
saying. “You took it and sold it and it wasn't yours to be selling.”

She took a step back and looked to be gathering herself up to leave. But then she leaned in again so I could smell her lying Early breath. “My mama says we had plenty of right to it.” Her evil eyes were pinholes. “She said we could consider it as a tiny drop in the big bucket of rent your daddy owes.”

She had torn open the Daddy wound, but somehow all I felt was a strong, sad anger at Daddy for giving Winnie Rae a good reason. He had made it all right for the Earlys to do what they did. And he'd gotten off free of charge. He'd taken everything he cared about with him, so it was all safe from the Earlys' thieving hands.

And then, even though Winnie Rae knew she had me with that one, she had to keep on with her venomous viper words. “Besides,” she said, “I needed to get
my
daddy a birthday present. I needed some quick cash. He works long hours driving across the entire United States of America in his eighteen-wheeler.” She shrugged. “You got plenty of dresser drawers at the motel, anyway. What would you be needing that ratty old green dresser for?”