The Woods at Barlow Bend (3 page)

Chapter 4

February 1, 1934

Frisco City, Alabama

The next day,
I held on tight to Albert’s hand as we walked down the aisle of the First Methodist Church of Frisco City. The church was full with nearly everyone from town. Daddy and Reverend Howlington walked in front of me with Meg and Billy behind us.

As we passed each row, the people seated on the ends looked
at me with such sad eyes. One woman, as I passed her, held a handkerchief to her lips. I remember thinking,
Is she sad that Momma died, especially in such a horrible way, or did she feel sorry for Addie’s four motherless children?
I couldn’t tell.

When we reach
ed the first pew, Daddy stood at the end as we filed in and took our seats. Reverend Howlington walked to the pulpit. When I sat, I noticed the choir at the altar. I didn’t recognize the song they sang that day, but I think Momma would have liked it.

Before that day, we
never sat in the front row. Momma usually chose a pew toward the center, proclaiming that the center rows were “Close enough for God to see you, far enough back so He won’t see me pop your behind if you act up.” She would look at us very sternly as she said this, then smile and wink at me.

But
, there we sat, in the front row with Papa and Grandma Andrews. Grandpa Lowman and Aunt Audrey sat on the pew directly behind us. Cousin Stephen and more family were on the third row. Aunt Audrey hadn’t stopped crying since she’d arrived at the house earlier that morning. I looked around for Uncle John, but didn’t see him. I assume he stayed outside. Aunt Mittie, Momma’s twin sister, and Uncle Melvin, Mittie’s husband, weren’t there. I would learn later why they didn’t come to Momma’s funeral, but at the time, I couldn’t understand why Mittie didn’t show up. Maybe saying goodbye to a sister was too hard for her, but she should’ve been there. Momma would have been there for her if Mittie was lying in that coffin. When I turned to see who else was in the church, Aunt Audrey looked at me with such sadness that I quickly turned back around. Sitting in the front row, on display to the entire town of Frisco City, I smoothed the dark fabric of my dress, crossed my ankles as Momma always told me, and folded my hands neatly in my lap.

I held Meg’s hand in mine and tried to focus on anything but Momma. I gazed at the sunlight streaking the altar. I examined the robes worn by the choir–the pleating and piping surrounding the collars. I even listened intently to Aunt Audrey’s sniffling, but all I could feel was the absence of my mother.

Reverend Howlington spoke for a really long time about Momma, but I couldn’t concentrate on what he said. I heard syllables and some full words, “beauty,” “spirited,” “charming,” “devout,” but all I could think of was Momma’s face. I wanted to see her light up with pride when I told her how I got Billy and Albert neatly dressed in their suits and kept them out of the backyard so they wouldn’t mess up their church clothes. I wanted to see her smile when she saw how pretty Meg looked in her navy dress, white stockings, and French braid.

I wanted to hear her say, “Chin up, Sweetie, what’s
all those tears for?”

I wanted her.

After the church service, we rode over to Union Cemetery on the outskirts of Frisco City, about half a mile from our house. Momma’s place was near a magnolia tree. Momma loved magnolias. A few feet from Momma’s site was a tiny, unmarked grave, barely two feet long. To the right, were the headstones of a couple I never knew: Frank something or other and Fannie, beloved wife of Frank. I wondered what Momma’s headstone would say.

Once agai
n, we were seated in the front. Albert and Billy had been quiet all day: Divine intervention I guessed. Everyone else gathered behind us. I decided then that I didn’t like front rows. If I looked forward, all I could see was a coffin, a coffin that had Momma in it. If I looked to the sides, I saw Daddy’s face, older than the day before, and Meg, all red and splotchy rather than her usual creamy alabaster. Albert looked so angry and hurt, like he’d been robbed of his favorite toy, only much worse, and Billy hadn’t lifted his gaze from the ground once since we left the house that morning. I think pieces of all of us were buried with Momma that day.

Behind me, I heard
whispering: Soft, feminine voices talking about how Daddy carried Momma over two miles through the woods, and then drove to Jackson with her body in the back seat. Male voices whispered questions about why Daddy left her body with Cousin Stephen at the police station in Jackson. There was talk of gunshots, women who hunt, and the gruesome aftermath of a rifle misfire. I heard trite sentiments like, “Those poor babies,” and “She was just lovely, so charming.” Liars! With every word, I felt my anger toward them growing.

I wanted to turn around and scream at each one of them, “Stop it!
You didn’t love her! She didn’t love you!”

I knew what the tru
th was. I knew that everyone in Frisco City loved to gossip about Momma. I knew they thought she was insane to go off on unchartered road trips alone with Meg and me. They thought she laughed too loud and that we spent too much time in a colored woman’s kitchen. They thought Daddy was a womanizer and that Momma flaunted her beauty, but I also knew that when Momma and Daddy were on a dance floor, not a man or woman in the room could keep their eyes off them.

I didn’t scream at them, but
Momma would have been proud of the searing glare I gave them. She would have been proud that when I glared at them, no tears rolled down my cheeks. I kept my head up and held their glance for a moment, willing them to shut their stupid mouths without ever saying a word.

As I looked across the field, I saw Cousin Stephen
near the back of the crowd. Uncle John spoke frantically in Stephen’s ear. Stephen looked annoyed by Uncle John, but every time he tried to move away, John would grab my cousin’s arm and force Stephen to stay with him. Momma always said Uncle John was rude. Well, “uncouth” and “worthless drunk” was her actual description of him. Even at her own funeral, Momma was right. What could be so important that he felt the need to ramble on at a time like this? I couldn’t believe how angry Uncle John looked, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. In his wrinkled suit and loosened tie, he probably reeked of whiskey, even on a Sunday.

Unfortunately, Uncle John was too far back
to meet my stare.

Chapter 5

April
16, 1934

Frisco City,
Alabama

Aunt Matt
stayed with us since Momma died. I kept telling her that I could take care of everyone and that she could go home, but she insisted on being there.

“Pretty girl, your
momma would want me here.”

Secretly, I loved having Aunt Matt with us, and Henry, too.

Henry would come by every evening for dinner. He would tell us wild stories of his work with the railroad. Henry worked at the station loading and unloading the boxcars as the L&N came to the Frisco City station. He helped the passengers with their luggage and unloaded the shipments of fabric and other sundries shipped to our little town. He would tell funny stories of stow-away critters and sad stories of dirty, exhausted men looking for work. Most of these desperate travelers kept moving past Frisco City, unless, of course, the cotton or peanuts were ready for harvest. Sometimes, he would find a stowaway sleeping in an empty car. Henry would leave them be, though.

“They ain’t
doin’ no harm. Just lookin’ to get by,” Henry would say.

Some
how, having the seats filled at the table made losing Momma a little easier. I didn’t want Momma’s chair to be empty, but I couldn’t bear to sit in it myself.

*****

Aunt Matt and I were sitting on the porch that afternoon in April. We were shucking some butter beans for dinner from our small garden out back. Momma, Meg, and I planted the butter beans along with green beans, cucumbers, lettuce, turnips, and okra the prior fall. The butter beans were the first to come in, so Aunt Matt and I picked some and planned to add them to a pot of ham hocks. The beans and hot-from-the-oven corn bread would make a nice supper. I was already looking forward to corn bread crumbled in milk for an evening snack when two police cars pulled in front of the house. Cousin Stephen, accompanied by a serious-looking man in a dark jacket and scuffed boots, got out of one car, and Marshal Brooks of Frisco City, got out of the other.

“Hattie, where’s your daddy?” Stephen asked.
Daddy must have heard the cars pull up, because he walked out of the house as Stephen, Marshal Brooks, and the strange man stepped up on the porch.

“Stephen, wh
at are ya doing over in these parts?” Daddy asked as he looked from man to man and stopped at the strange man in the dark jacket, “Billy, what are you doing in Frisco today? Ya sure Clarke County is safe with two of their finest over here?”

Frisco City was located
in Monroe County, one county over from Stephen’s jurisdiction. Daddy seemed to know the strange man, but I’d never laid eyes on him. He was a big wall of a man with thick, dark hair. I wondered for a second how many yards of fabric Momma would have had to use to make a jacket that big. I wondered if Momma had ever met this man and what she would think of his unruly head of hair.

T
he presence of two police cars on our typically quiet street created a spectacle. Several of our neighbors gathered on their porches and strained to hear what the men were discussing. At least they were honest about their eavesdropping.

“Mr.
Andrews,” the strange man said with a deep, steady voice, “we need you to come with us.”

“Hubbard,
we’ve got some questions about Addie,” Stephen told Daddy, and then quietly, “Hub, John Howard has been running his mouth. I’m sure we can clear all this up at the station.”

Daddy stiffen
ed at the mention of Momma. He hadn’t talked about what happened since that Saturday in January. To be completely honest, he hadn’t really talked much at all. Aunt Matt kept saying that he would “brighten back up once his heart don’t hurt”, but over two months passed without much from him other than short orders to Aunt Matt and a “be back later” to us as he was already through the front door. Other than sitting in the parlor listening to the radio most evenings, going to bed earlier than he ever did before, and leaving most mornings before the rest of us awoke, I didn’t know how he spent his time. I assumed he went to work and solitary walks after dinner, but he never said, and I never asked.

Without a word to Stephen,
Marshal Brooks, or the strange man, Daddy squeezed my shoulder and turned to Aunt Matt. “I won’t be long,” he said.

With that,
Marshal Brooks escorted him to the back seat of one of the cars. Stephen and the strange man got in front. Marshal Brooks went to the other car, and then both cars pulled away.

I looked across the street to see the neighbors staring back at me.
Several of the women held their hands over their mouths and whispered to one another. The men shook their heads in disbelief before going back to the business of the day. I pressed my fingers hard into the sides of the bowl of shucked peas until my fingertips turned white and felt my anger, just as strongly as the day of Momma’s funeral, turn my cheeks red. I turned sharply to Aunt Matt, searching for an explanation. What did Cousin Stephen mean by
questions about Addie,
and what did the strange man in the dark jacket need with Daddy? Why did the neighbors think it was any of their damn business? Aunt Matt didn’t answer. She just gathered up our bowls.

“Go on, get in the house.”
Aunt Matt rushed me in without looking at the neighbors still gawking from their porches.

Later that evening
, I lay in my bed, pretended to sleep, and tried to make sense of the day. Earlier, Aunt Matt and I finished fixing supper. She hurried us through dinner, then put the little ones to bed. Aunt Matt, Meg, and I listened to the radio for a while before she ordered us to bed as well.

I kept asking her when Daddy was going to be home, but she just said, “Baby, don’t you worry about that.
Your Daddy will be fine.” Daddy had to be fine. Of course he would be fine.

As I
lay there in my small bed with Meg sound asleep next to me, I heard Henry and Aunt Matt talking on the porch. I don’t think they knew my window was open or that I was still awake and could hear their conversation, even if I did have to strain a little. Mrs. Williams, the old widow across the street, had left her radio on as usual. I swear, as soon as Old Man Williams kicked the bucket a couple of years before, Mrs. Williams ran down to Hendrix General Store and bought the fanciest, most expensive radio Mr. Hendrix had for sale. Rumor has it that Mrs. Williams spent every dime Mr. Williams had saved on that radio. So, every night since, Mrs. Williams fell asleep in the rocker in her front parlor with the window open and the radio blaring. On this particular night, Viviane Seal’s piercing soprano was being broadcast from Mrs. Williams’s window for all of Frisco City to hear. However, if I held my breath and kept perfectly still so I wouldn’t rustle my bedcovers, I could just make out what Henry and Matt were saying on the porch.

Apparently
, Henry had gone into town to find out what happened with Daddy. Henry said that all people could talk about was the police showing up at our house.

“They’re saying it wa
dn’t no accident. They say he shot her out there in them woods and then made the whole story up,” Henry told Aunt Matt.

According to Henry, Daddy was being questioned about
Momma’s death, and the Clarke County solicitor was determined to get an indictment from the Grand Jury, stating that Momma’s death was no accident and that Daddy was responsible. My head started to spin. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to tune their voices out. I tried to concentrate on Vivian Seal and whatever song she was singing, but all I could hear were the words Henry said. Daddy wouldn’t do something like that. He couldn’t. Momma’s death was an accident, a terrible, awful accident. Daddy was a good man!

I
lay awake for most of the night, waiting for Daddy to come home, but I must have drifted off sometime near dawn. When I woke up, I rushed into the kitchen to see if he was there, but only Aunt Matt was sitting at the table.

“He’s come and gone
already, Sweetie. Now, you go on and get ready for church.”

***
**

John
Howard has been running his mouth.
Cousin Stephen’s words haunted me for days. I finally found out from the twin teenage boys next door, what Uncle John had been busy with since Momma died. According to what the twins heard, Uncle John had been talking to anyone who would listen, including Aunt Audrey, Aunt Mittie and Uncle Melvin, Grandpa Lowman, and every man within ear’s reach of the barstools of whatever honkytonk Uncle John found himself in for the evening. He was suspicious of Daddy’s story and was all too eager to distract others from his own shortcomings with a tall tale about a crime supposedly committed by Hubbard Andrews. The way I saw it, this was Uncle John’s chance to finally do something right in the eyes of the Lowmans, to finally be something other than the family disappointment, to finally have something bad to hang over Daddy’s head. Uncle John wasn’t going to miss this chance.

According to Momma, Uncle John showed promise in his youth, but WWI changed him.
After the war, he came back to Crenshaw County, Alabama, with a temper and taste for whiskey. He made his living as a small-time farmer, and was content with rotating a couple of fields every few years between meager cotton and peanut crops. A garden and a couple of dairy cows kept his family of four fed and, until Momma’s death, kept Aunt Audrey occupied and off his back. According to Momma, Aunt Audrey did most of the work around their little farm, and Uncle John did most of the “big talking”. It was only in the last couple of months that Audrey started to tell John how disappointed she was in him.

In
Uncle John’s opinion, Aunt Audrey changed when her sister died. She was consumed with grief, and obsessed with how little her baby sister approved of her choice in husbands. Momma was quite vocal of her dislike of John when she was alive. After Momma died, her disapproval seemed even louder. John began to hear Addie’s contempt for him in his own wife’s voice. He sought solace from the constant judgments in the dark shadows of the local honky-tonks throughout Clarke, Monroe, and Crenshaw counties.

Uncle
John was even more fed up with the Lowmans’ concern for Daddy. Before Uncle John started to voice his suspicions, the entire Lowman clan seemed eager to console Daddy while he wept for Momma. They wanted to help him with his business ventures in Frisco City and Grove Hill while he grieved.

“The Good
Lord would want us to help Hubbard in his time of need,” the God-fearing Lowmans would all agree as they gathered around the table for Sunday supper in Searight, Alabama, just south of Luverne in Crenshaw County.

M
alachi Lowman, or Papa Lowman as we called him, was even trying to save enough money to purchase a headstone for Momma. After John learned this one Sunday afternoon, I heard him mutter that the Andrews clan didn’t needed financial help, and that if Hubbard Andrews wanted a fancy headstone for Momma, then “Hubbard should pay for the damn thing himself!”

Uncle
John couldn’t afford to hire the help needed for his fields or fix the dilapidated farm equipment that littered the small patch of land behind his home. Papa Lowman had never offered to help John Howard, not even when John went to him with his hat in his hand. Uncle John couldn’t stand the idea of spending good money to memorialize a woman who seemed to enjoy torturing him while she was alive and continued to torture him after her death.

I guess
Uncle John couldn’t help but run Daddy’s story of Momma’s death through his mind. Suspicion of whether or not Daddy was telling the truth apparently started to grow in his mind during Momma’s burial in Frisco City. Daddy’s cousin, Stephen, had shared the tragic story of the accidental shooting and of Hubbard’s hike through the woods with Momma’s body. John thought the story lacked plausibility and suspected that the investigation into Addie’s death was insufficient, if there was an investigation at all during the twenty-four hours between the gunshot and the burial. Uncle John was certain that no Andrews in the great state of Alabama, especially Hubbard’s trusted cousin, Stephen, would look for the skeletons in any other Andrews’s closet. John was sure there were plenty of skeletons to be found.

Uncle
John shared his concerns with Papa Lowman. Why were Hubbard and Addie alone in the woods with no porter to tend to the boat? How would Addie know there were squirrels hiding in the vines if it was still dark out? How was Hubbard able to carry Addie, two rifles, and their pack for two miles through the heavily wooded area? How did Hubbard go unnoticed through the woods on the last day of the hunting season? Why did he choose to seek the assistance of his cousin in Jackson, thirty miles away, rather than the authorities in Barlow Bend or Willow Springs? Both towns were much closer. For that matter, why did he choose to drive thirty miles west to Jackson rather than thirty miles east to Frisco City after Addie was shot? Uncle John was also all too familiar with the choice gossip running rampant since Momma’s death. The rumors told of sordid affairs between Daddy and several women in Clarke County near the hotel Daddy owned; Hubbard’s
real business
in Grove Hill according to Uncle John. All of these questions and rumors in Uncle John’s mind added up to only one scenario: Momma’s death was no accident, and Hubbard Andrews should pay for his obvious crime.