The Woods at Barlow Bend Read Online Free PDF Page B

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