Also Known As Harper Read Online Free PDF Page A

and a closet that hadn’t been aired out in a while. And that smell held on, too. Every time I took even a little ride in that car, I could smell it on me for a good two hours after.
    I pointed at a box of kitchen bowls with some toilet-tissue rolls spilling over the top. “I say we try to organize by room.” I picked up a toilet-tissue roll and tucked it under my arm. “Like this here.” I tilted the box so Hem could see. “It’s mostly kitchen bowls. So we just ignore the toilet paper and put the whole box in the kitchen section.”
    â€œThat’s a good idea, Harper Lee.” Mama nudged one of Hem’s dresser drawers with her toe. “Then we can figure out what to take with us tonight.”
    â€œWe can’t get all this in the car, can we?” I imagined my bed and the big mirror from Mama’s vanitybalanced on the top of Daddy’s mama’s car. If only Daddy hadn’t driven away in the big white pickup last year, we might have had something to work with.
    Mama’s eyes went from the car to the yard, and she shook her head. Her eyebrows wrinkled up tight, like they did when she was paging through the back of her checkbook. “I haven’t yet thought what to do with it all. I guess we’ll just have to get what we can for tonight and come back tomorrow.”
    I wanted to ask her where we were going to come back from, but she had that closed-up look on her face, like she got when she was done with people bothering her for the day.
    Hem helped for a while, until he found a box with food from the kitchen and settled down on the couch with it.
    Mama looked over from the bathroom pile. “He’s not nibbling on any raw meat or anything from the fridge, is he, Harper Lee? I had a chicken defrosting before I left this morning.”
    I squinted my eyes up at him. “Naw, it looks like a couple of graham crackers is all.”
    I’d started to go over and get a better look at what he was gnawing on when I caught sight of somethingover my right shoulder, and it was stinking like Winnie Rae.
    â€œYou just go on back where you came from, Winnie Rae Early.” I held up a long box of fireplace matches, like I might be getting ready to fling them at her.
    â€œAnd that’s just like you, isn’t it, Harper?” Winnie Rae stood next to a Radio Flyer wagon. She peeled at flecks of black paint along the handle. “Here I come offering up my assistance, and you’re your mean old self. My mama pointed out to me just today that you can have a bite like a venomous viper snake.”
    Anyone in her right mind knew that Winnie Rae Early never offered up anything just for the sake of niceness. There was a price of some sort rolling around in that Radio Flyer of hers. There always was.
    â€œMrs. Morgan.” She gave up on me and turned her handle toward Mama. “We got a nice old shed out to the side of the house. Mama said you could maybe use our big rolling cart with the fold-down ramp and put some of your stuff out there. She said you could store some of your things that aren’t too heavy out in the camper.”
    I noticed no one offered to let us stay out in that camper. Just a few things that didn’t weigh too much. I guessed that left Mrs. Early out of the campingtrailer, which meant she was one less person trying to rifle through our personal belongings.
    But when I thought about it that way, it made it a whole lot easier to sort and pack things away. Big things like furniture went into the shed, things I couldn’t bear to have come in contact with anything Early went into the car, and everything that I didn’t care much about, or could have the Early washed off of, went into the camper up next to their house.
    â€œOh, yeah.” Winnie Rae pointed at the front porch behind us. “Mama said to make sure no one tries to put anything back up on the porch. She doesn’t want Grandma’s house looking