Also Known As Harper (7 page)

Hem grabbed on tight to the long chain and tried to hoist himself up.

I wrapped my arms around his belly and pulled
him back. “You can let go of that right now,” I said. “The whole rusty thing is liable to topple back onto you.”

Hem looked to be tightening his grip, but Randall shook his head. “I'm not allowed on it, either.”

Behind the swing set the chipped-up concrete crumbled into dark, wet dirt, and a wide cluster of fir trees rose up in the short clumps of weeds.

“Watch out for the sticker bushes.” Randall rubbed at a long scratch on his arm as we followed Lorraine down a narrow dirt path between the trees.

“So where's the pool?” I asked. The trees were getting thicker the farther we went, and I couldn't figure out why the pool was so far from the motel.

“We're 'bout there,” Randall said.

If you didn't know it was there, you could easily have missed the tunneled-out passageway off to the left in the blackberry bushes.

“Duck your head and tuck in your arms,” Randall called back to us. “Dorothy's got to get in here with her hedge clippers now that winter's over.”

I brought my arms in close to my sides and ducked through the short, stickery passageway. And there it was. A perfect square of a pool that still had a cracked concrete border around it. Three green lawn
chairs that looked to be almost new were scooted up to the edge at the far end.

I could see right off we were the first ones there, and the water in the pool was as still as could be, without one single ripple.

“No diving,” Randall said. “It's not deep enough yet. We got to wait for a few more rains.”

The pool was about halfway full with what I figured to be rainwater and maybe some melted snow from the past winter. Clumps of dirt made polka dots throughout the water. The inside edges of the pool were blue-green concrete that had worn itself off in white blotches, so that it looked like it had been sponge-painted.

I pulled my sweatshirt tighter around me. I was shivering, and I hadn't even stuck a toe in the water.

Lorraine smiled at me, as if she knew what I was thinking, and kicked off her blue sneakers.

“It's fine, once you get in.” Randall peeled off his socks.

The pool was surrounded by a fence of tall, thick sticker bushes. And when I looked off above them real hard, I could see what I thought were white flags fluttering in the distance.

I pointed toward the flags. “Is that a carnival over
there?” I thought about how nice it would be to have a Ferris wheel or even a merry-go-round nearby.

Randall followed my finger with his eyes and shook his head. “That's the old drive-in.”

I wanted to head right over there, but I knew those things didn't usually start up until after dark. You couldn't see the movie screen until the daylight was completely gone.

I turned back toward the pool and thought about taking off my shoes.

Lorraine was the first one in. She didn't jump off the edge like I usually did, but she stepped backward down a broken ladder into the side of the pool. Randall and Hemingway followed right after her.

Randall treaded water, his hands moving the water like the inside of a washing machine. “Do like this,” he said. “It makes the dirt settle down to the bottom.” He pushed aside the top of a yellow plastic truck.

“Doesn't someone come around and clean it, like they do at the Y?” Hem asked. “They come round every Saturday in the summer and chase us out of the pool early, so they can clean it.”

Lorraine shook her head.

“No one comes round here but us,” Randall said. “We try to scoop out the big stuff.” He cupped his
hands together and lifted some dead leaves from the corner of the pool.

I couldn't believe Hemingway remembered about going to the Y. Daddy was the one who used to take us, but that was a good two years ago. Before the whiskey took over his breathing and talking. Before Flannery.

I could still remember my eyes and nose watering from all the chlorine they put in the pool. And I could almost feel Daddy's hands, gently wiping over my eyelids.
Blink, Harper. It'll flush it out. Saturdays are free, and they have to put all the chemicals in because of kids like Hem, who use it for a second toilet.
And he'd laughed and scooped Hem up above the water, like Hem couldn't do anything wrong if he'd tried. I had always wanted Daddy to laugh that way with me.

I knelt down and ran my hand along the bumpy edge of the concrete. Daddy used to go in the pool with us. And if we got too close to the deep water, he'd be right behind us.
You're past the line there, Harper Lee.
His voice was slow and easy, and he'd grab me around the middle and tugboat me back to the other side. Just like he'd done with Mama when he came around and rescued her from her old life. He'd scooped her up from that Louisiana bayou. I
used to like to imagine him carrying her suitcase for her and carting her away.
Come on with me where I can take care of you, Georgia
, he might have said.
We got nothing but time to hear all those nice stories you have in your head.
If I knew I could have that Daddy back, I'd wait right next to Hem every day.

I stood up and walked to the old blue slide at the end of the pool. The end that was supposed to dip into the pool had snapped off, making it look like you were sliding off a cliff or a big drop-off. I had my foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, and I was thinking on how I might like to try that drop-off, when I saw the sneaky coyote eyes peeking through the opening in the blackberry bushes.

 

 

 

 

 

“
NO ONE INVITED YOU
, Winnie Rae Early.” I saw her poke her nosy old self through the opening in the blackberry bushes. “Go right on back through those stickers and find someone who wants your company.”

I watched her scrape her arm on one of the blackberry thorns as she moved the rest of the way through the bushes.

“What are you doing with the retarded girl?” Winnie Rae rubbed at her arm and pointed her elbow in Lorraine's direction.

I thought about the special-education room at the end of the long hallway at school where they had the big tricycles and Sebbie Weaver, the girl who still brought her baby doll to school in the fifth grade. “That word is full of meanness, Winnie Rae,” I said. I remembered what my teacher had
told me back in the third grade. “You don't say ‘retarded,' you say ‘developmentally delayed,' and Lorraine's not that
at all.
”

I looked at Lorraine, who was willing Winnie Rae back against the sticker bushes with her eyes.

But as usual, nothing stopped Winnie Rae once she got her mouth in motion. “How come you weren't at school today, Harper Lee? Mrs. Rodriguez finished up my poems today. She said they were the best she'd seen.”

I'd heard Winnie Rae's story writing before, so I doubted that. She would never take my place. There was no way I was going to let that happen.

“You better get yourself to school tomorrow, Harper Lee.” Winnie Rae's coyote eyes zeroed in on my blue notebook on the ground by the pool. “Mrs. Rodriguez is almost to your row.”

I felt my heart beating in the pit of my stomach when I thought about Mrs. Rodriguez missing my poems.

“I'll get there when I get there.” I tried to remember Mama's exact words as she was telling me she needed me to stay home. It had been just this morning, but it already seemed like so long ago. She had to let me go to school tomorrow.

I stared right through the middle of Winnie Rae's face, which usually made her back off. “What are you doing hanging around here, anyway?”

But I could see Winnie Rae wasn't in a backing-off mood. She took a few steps forward and grabbed hold of the rail on the ladder. “Mama works here. I can be here any time I want.”

“Just because your mama owns our house doesn't mean she owns the whole county.” My foot was itching to give her a good kick.

“That's not your house anymore, Harper Lee Morgan.” I could tell Winnie Rae enjoyed reminding me about that. “Your daddy owes us so much money, Mama says he could've bought and sold the place a few times over.”

I thought about Daddy and how our house must've looked to him if he'd happened to turn in his seat as he drove away. I imagined our house getting smaller and smaller in the rear window of his pickup, and all of a sudden it was him I was mad at, and not Winnie Rae Early. Plenty of mad was swirling around my face right about then; maybe even enough to make Winnie Rae go on back the way she'd come in.

But Winnie Rae had a long stubborn streak to her, and her feet stayed planted where they were.

I looked over at the other end of the pool. Everyone was climbing out. Winnie Rae sure knew how to spoil a good time.

Lorraine snatched her towel from the ground and wrapped it around her shoulders. Her eyes said what her words didn't need to.

“I know what you mean, Lorraine.” I pressed my lips together and willed my arms to stay at my sides and my feet to stop getting ready to give Winnie Rae Early a good sharp kick. “The other end of this pool has developed a stink to it.”

We gathered up our things and made our way back toward the blackberry bushes. Lorraine was good at ignoring people and keeping her temper. She looked right through Winnie Rae, as if she was the missing part of the pool slide.

Winnie Rae gave Lorraine and me her double snake-eye look, where she lets her meanness settle back and simmer for later. And she took off ahead of us, through the bushes, without another word.

I turned to Lorraine. “I hope she caught a good handful of extra-prickly stickers on the way out.”

Lorraine smiled.

When we got down the path a ways, Lorraine
stopped to tie up her sneakers and motioned for me to go on.

Randall ran to catch up with me. He glanced back at Lorraine and stared me down hard. “She's not retarded, you know.”

“I know that, Randall,” I said. “I'd have known that even if you hadn't told me yourself.”

He lowered his voice. “She stopped talking right after the fire. It started in her room. In the wires in the wall. She wouldn't move.” He made his own legs go stiff and straight. “The firefighter had to carry her out the window.”

“They carry you out, too?” Hemingway looked interested, but not scared.

Thinking about Lorraine all frozen and still with the fire in her wall like that made the skin on my arms get prickly.

Randall shook his head. “I wasn't home. I had a sleepover at my cousin's.”

Lorraine's arms were straight and tight at her sides when she caught up with us, and I knew she'd heard.

“You want to come over for a while, Hemingway?” Randall rubbed the end of his towel over the top of his head.

Hem started to say yes, but I could tell by his shoulders he was thinking about what time it was.

I answered for him. “Maybe later.”

Hemingway's feet automatically started to speed up on the path toward the motel, and I had to take a couple of skips to keep up with him. I looked over my shoulder at Lorraine and Randall. “Thanks for the swim!”

I wondered for a minute where they were going to go. Randall had seemed to find us easily before, but I needed to remember to ask for their room number next time.

For some reason, Hemingway's body knew what time it was. I'd heard in school about the biological time clocks of animals. Hem was like that when it came time to do his waiting for Daddy. His timing was a little off today, though. Probably from being in a new place.

He jogged the rest of the way back to our motel room. He bent his head down and squinted up his eyes when he got to the gravel in front.

“What are you doing?” I unlocked the room and sat down in the doorway.

He moved a piece of gravel with his toe. “I think I see tire tracks. Daddy might have come by looking for us when we were gone.”

I clenched my fists up tight, and I could feel my pulse beating in my palms. Maybe Daddy knew what time it was, just like Hem. Maybe he had come back to spill his whiskey all over my new poems. Just in time for this year's contest. I took a couple of slow breaths and I made my shoulders drop down. My imagination tended to run every which way when Daddy crept into my mind.

I went over and took the wet towel from Hem's shoulders. “He doesn't know where we are yet, Hem,” I said softly.

He nodded his head hard. “Yes, he does. I gave Winnie Rae a dollar to tell him where we are.”

I dug my toes into the gravel when I thought about that mean old Winnie Rae taking Hem's dollar, but I made myself smile. “We weren't gone that long. It's not even quite your usual time. Why don't you change out of those wet clothes and go sit down in the doorway, where it's more comfortable to do your waiting?”

I got him some dry clothes and a graham cracker and he seemed to settle down a bit, so I opened my notebook and sat by the window.

A poem had been forming in my head all day. I didn't have a title for it yet, but I couldn't stop to think one up because my pen was already moving.

 

Lately I've been wondering what it would be like

To keep all my words inside.

I wonder if they'd come out another way.

Through my pen maybe

Or through a piece of chalk on the sidewalk.

It could actually be safer that way.

The words couldn't hurt anyone.

You could take back all the wrong ones.

You'd just crumple up the paper or

Wait for the rain.

 

 

 

 

 

THE RED NUMBERS
on the clock read 8:25 when I finally heard Mama's key in the lock. She was so dog-tired she could barely sit herself down at the little table by the window. I had to uncurl her fingers and take the motel key from her hand.