The Woods at Barlow Bend

by Jodie Cain Smith

  “May I help you, Miss?” the secretary asked.

  “My name is Hattie Andrews, and this is my sister Meg. We would like to enroll,” I said with all the confidence and poise I had gained from my short time at Thorsby. “Do you charge tuition?”

  I didn’t know if Blacksher was a public or private school, and in my haste to find something better than what was happening inside Sarah Walker’s house, I hadn’t even thought about the fact that I couldn’t pay tuition until I was standing in front of the Blacksher School Secretary.

  “Well, it’s good to meet you both. I’m Miss Walker, School Secretary. And, no, Dear, this is a public school. We don’t charge tuition.”

  “Okay then, Meg is in the 9th grade, and I am in the 11th grade. We would like to start classes as soon as possible.”

  “Well, that’s good, Dear, but where are your parents? They should be here.”

  “I told you,” whispered Meg, “Now, let’s go.”

  Ignoring Meg’s plea, I continued, “My father will come by tomorrow to sign anything if necessary, but our mother is dead, so I take care of everything now.”

  “Oh,” Miss Walker shifted uncomfortably in her chair, “bless your heart. Now…um…do you live around here? I’ve never seen you before, Miss Andrews.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. We just moved here. I was at Thorsby, but Daddy thought…”

  “Oh, wait, are you Hubbard Andrews’s girls? My sister told me ya’ll were comin’ to town.”

  “Your sister?” I asked.

  “Yes, Sarah Walker.”

  “Oh. Um, yes, Ma’am,” I said, feeling my cheeks flush, “we just got here today.” A rude version of an old nursery rhyme went through my head as I stared at Miss Walker: Sarah Walker could eat no fat; her sister could eat no lean. I couldn’t believe the two were related.

  “Well, then. How ‘bout you get your Daddy to come see me tomorrow, and we’ll get you girls set up. Does that sound good?” the squishy Miss Walker asked.

  No, that did not sound good, but I didn’t see any other option. I would have to convince Daddy to go to the school tomorrow and enroll all of us. I was determined that Meg and I would both receive our diplomas, and the boys did not need to have a long break in school either. They would need to be enrolled in the grammar school next to Blacksher High School. I had promised Aunt Mittie that I would earn my diploma. I also promised her I would be responsible for Meg, Billy, and Albert’s education as well. On the way back to Sarah Walker’s house, I told Meg to let me talk to Daddy about school. I was afraid that Meg would give in too easily if Daddy wanted to drag his feet for whatever reason.

  “Well,” Daddy said when we walked into the dining room, “did ya’ll find anything excitin’?”

  “We need you to go to the school tomorrow to sign our enrollment papers. It’s not far from here, just down Route 21,” I said and waited for the debate to start.

  “All right, I think I can do that,” Daddy said and smiled as he went back to his newspaper.

  Daddy didn’t protest or object in any way. He just smiled at me with a smile I hadn’t seen in almost two years, relaxed and easy. Sitting at the table with a glass of iced tea and newspaper in front of him, he looked rested, almost happy. He looked like he used to in the kitchen in the little house in Frisco City before our lives were shattered. Maybe he really loved us and hadn’t become the grossly selfish man that I feared he had. Maybe this won’t be so bad, I thought to myself, still determined to honor the promise I had made to Momma several weeks before: to love Daddy despite his weaknesses.

  Who knows? Maybe I could even learn to love Sarah Walker. Maybe I could accept this stranger I lived with into my life. Stranger things have happened than a man moving on with his life after his wife dies. Then, I caught a glimpse of Sarah Walker through the doorway of the kitchen. She was barefoot, standing at the stove with her back to me. I stood in the dining room and watched her slip a wooden spoon between her cotton dress and sweaty skin and start scratching away. Then, she stirred the contents of the pot on the stove with the same spoon. Disgusting. Maybe, if I offered to help her, I could make sure that supper was at least sanitary. Maybe, I could hide that spoon.

  Chapter 25

  Winter 1936

  Uriah, Alabama

  The truck Daddy bought in Luverne before we moved to Uriah turned out to be the heart of his new business venture. Officially, he called himself a truck driver, but that did not accurately describe what he did. He hired himself out to local businesses and Uriah residents for pick-ups and deliveries, but most of his time was spent on junk dealing. Day in and day out, he drove around Monroe and the surrounding counties, from moving sales, to junkyards, to abandoned houses or buildings. He would rescue whatever copper, metal, or otherwise valuable objects he could salvage from the garbage and then sell the scraps to anyone who was buying. He had successfully found another career that required total anonymity and odd hours, qualities Daddy seemed to prefer in a job. He left the house early in the morning, and would often be out long after the supper dishes were washed and put away. The exact details of what he did with the many hours between breakfast and bedtime were a mystery to all of us, including Sarah Walker.

  At first, Sarah made a real attempt to welcome all of us into her home. I imagine she was quite lonely before we showed up, being widowed before having any children of her own, but I think playing house with Hubbard Andrews and his brood was more than she bargained for. Daddy tried to run the household as he did the hotel. He dictated supper menus to Sarah and chore lists for us kids to me, but then disappeared until the sun was down. I think Daddy enjoyed the fact that he could control the people in his life better than when Momma’s impulses ruled our home. I don’t remember him dictating anything to Momma. Sarah honestly tried to live within Daddy’s strange conditions, but when he stopped coming home for supper altogether, Sarah’s loneliness returned. I knew that Daddy was running around again, but Sarah was unfamiliar with Daddy’s bad habits. By the New Year, her patience was running thin.

  “There’s some ham hocks in the icebox. Put em in with some greens,” Daddy said one morning in January as he buttoned his coat. “Hattie will make the corn bread.”

  “And do you plan on eating this meal?” Sarah asked.

  “Of course, Sarah,” Daddy answered, “I’ll have some tonight when I git back.”

  “With me or should I eat alone again?”

  “Sarah, you never eat alone,” Daddy said sloughing off Sarah’s question as if it were of no importance at all.

  “I guess you’re right,” Sarah said gaining steam, “I eat supper every night with your kids! Your kids! Not mine! I deserve to know where the hell you go day and night!”

  I realized then, as I sat at the table, that I was physically stuck in the middle of an argument that started long before I walked into the dining room, probably long before any of us woke up that morning. Sarah looked crazed. She definitely lacked Momma’s dominance. Momma would get wild sometimes, but never with anger. Momma’s anger was controlled and effective, terrifying at times with its pointed assaults. Sarah, on the other hand, lost the argument as soon as she opened her mouth. Really, she screeched more than spoke. I wanted to laugh at her naivety, but didn’t out of kindness. It wasn’t her fault that she lost the argument. She had no idea how to handle Daddy. Sarah was far too honest for the subtlety and cunning that Daddy required in a mate. She didn’t know how to choose her battles with him. She definitely didn’t know that it was way too early in the game to show her hand. Daddy gave her a look of total and complete dismissal. If he hadn’t started to before that argument, Daddy moved on from Sarah Walker in that moment. She was weak, and Daddy grew bored with weakness very quickly. I knew it wouldn’t be long before we would be moving again. After all, we were just houseguests, not family. Family has to be honored. Houseguests can be kicked out on their rear ends.

  The final straw for Sarah Walker came one afternoon in March. Sarah, Albert, and I were walking h
ome from the co-op on Main Street. Daddy’s truck was parked in front of the Cotton Café. Supper was only a couple of hours away, but I guess Daddy wanted an afternoon treat. I hoped that Sarah would just walk by without stopping, but, like I said before, she just didn’t know the game or how to play it. She stood in the front window and peered inside. Pathetically, she stared at Daddy as he leaned over the counter and ran his thumb over the delicate fingers of the waitress standing between the soda machine and a sink. His boyish grin and clear blue eyes danced in the direction of the waitress, plain as day. After a couple of minutes, he glanced toward the window. I know he saw Sarah standing there, but Daddy didn’t react at all. He turned back to the waitress and took her small hand in both of his. Sarah didn’t say a word, but her face changed. Her skinny features became even more pointed, and her skin looked feverish. She turned and walked, nearly running, back home. Our time in her house was done.

  Sarah stormed through the front door. She went to the kitchen and threw the day’s prescribed groceries on the stovetop. A head of cabbage fell out of the bag and rolled to the floor. She stared at the cabbage for a full minute before storming through the dining room and down the short hallway.

  “Sarah,” I said, standing a few feet from her in the hallway, “he’s done this before.”

  “What?” Sarah asked.

  “It’s just who he is. There was nothing you could do,” I said, and Sarah slammed the door to her bedroom.

  For the next several minutes, I heard the sounds of clothes and shoes being thrown around on the other side of the door. I went to my room where Meg was sitting alert on the bed, the dress she was mending gripped in both hands.

  “What’s going on?” Meg whispered.

  “You better start packing,” I told her, not bothering to whisper, “I don’t think we’re gonna be here much longer.”

  Chapter 26

  Spring 1936

  Uriah, Alabama

  In my opinion, Sarah Walker was nicer than she had to be after she witnessed Daddy holding hands with the waitress at the Cotton Café. She let Meg and I stay in our room and let Daddy sleep in the front room with Billy and Albert until he found us a new place to live. She could have kicked us all out immediately. I knew Daddy didn’t have much money, and hotel rooms were expensive. I’m not sure what we would have done if Sarah had thrown us all out on the street. We couldn’t go back to Aunt Mittie. I think Daddy had officially severed that relationship when he took us away from her after the trial. Of course, I was partly to blame for Aunt Mittie’s heartache. I could have fought harder to stay with her, but I chose Daddy over Aunt Mittie. Unfortunately, I don’t think Daddy thought about us or what might happen to us while he was flirting and doing God knows what with that waitress. In the end, what Sarah Walker lacked in beauty she made up for in generosity. It’s a shame that her generosity was wasted on Daddy.

  Within a few weeks, Daddy saved enough money to move us to a little place on the north side of Uriah. Nine dollars a month got us two bedrooms, one bathroom, a tiny kitchen, and a front room that I guess was supposed to function as a living room, but had barely enough room to fit the love seat and single wing-backed chair that Daddy found during one of his daily searches.

  We learned quickly that this particular fresh start, our own place with an indoor bathroom, meant that everyone had to pitch in to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. Across the street from our new home were cotton fields as far as the eye could see. So, Billy talked the owner of the fields into hiring him to work a few hours before and after school for a couple of dollars a week.

  Just off Route 21 in Uriah sits the Blacksher Home, a grand antebellum home belonging to the founding family of Uriah. The place was huge with wrap around porches, multiple fireplaces, and enough staircases and bedrooms to require breadcrumbs in order to travel from one end of the house and back again. Within days of moving into our new place, Daddy struck a deal with the Blackshers. He would haul debris and trash away, and Meg would help the staff with the laundry in exchange for a few dollars a month. Meg was less than thrilled to be back in the laundry business, but she was still too young to work in any of the shops downtown, not that there were many shops to choose from in Uriah.

  I became a shop girl at Main Street Fashions. I straightened the racks of clothing, swept the floors, and helped customers decide which dress to pick for church dances and town gatherings. Mr. Simpson, owner of Main Street Fashions, gave all of his shop girls a discount on the previous season’s dresses, gloves, hats, and other accessories. I didn’t understand why the older stuff was discounted because it was just as nice as the new stuff, but I didn’t dare ask, just in case Mr. Simpson decided the practice was as silly as I thought it to be. I gave half of my earnings to Daddy every week to help with rent and food, as did Meg and Billy, but I always saved a dollar or two for myself every month.

  Once a month, Mr. Simpson would have me drag the mannequins to the back of the shop and change them into my pick from the latest shipment. Then, I would wrestle the mannequins back into the window. It was like playing with very heavy, life sized dress-up dolls. Even though I only changed the mannequins once a month, every afternoon I was to make sure the window displays looked neat and fresh. At 4:45, fifteen minutes before the end of my shift, I crawled into the front window and spruced up the display.

  It was there in the shop window that I first glanced at Ray Gordon Riley. After a couple of weeks, I began to linger in the window in order to steal a peek at the handsome, young basketball player from Blacksher High School. Each afternoon, not long after I crawled into the window, I would see him walking down Main Street on his way home from basketball practice. After that first sighting from the window, I saw him in the hallways of the school and at pep rallies with the rest of his team, but I didn’t have any classes with him and didn’t have the guts to speak to him. I wanted to, though. If I had Momma’s nerve, I would have walked right up to him and said, “My name’s Hattie Andrews, and you want to get to know me better.”

  Instead, I asked my friend and lifelong Uriah resident, Sandy Bramwell, what she knew about him. According to Sandy, who sat right behind me in most of my classes, the handsome young man was the point guard for the Blacksher High basketball team and was the same year in school as Sandy and me. He went by his middle name, Gordon, and was the youngest of five children. Sandy said that some distant relative of Gordon’s had been governor of Alabama in the 1800s but that you would never know it by his relaxed attitude.

  “Oh, yeah, the Rileys are pretty well known ‘round here, what with an ex-gov’ner in the family, but they ain’t uppity ‘bout it.” The words flew out of Sandy’s mouth as she tried to give me Gordon’s entire history between classes. “You see, Gordon’s daddy was a mail carrier here in Uriah, actually mapped out the first route in this part of the county so he was pretty well known himself. The family owns a little farm on the north side. Oh, it was real sad. Years ago, when we was all real little, Gordon’s daddy just dropped dead one day, right in the middle of the field. Must have been ‘round 1929, ‘30, cause we was just in grammar school at the time. Supposedly, Gordon’s momma found him just lying there, dead in the middle of the cotton.”

  Gordon and I had something in common. We both knew how it felt to lose a parent. I wondered how his mother told him about his father. I wonder if she brought along Uriah’s version of Aunt Matt to soften the blow.

  “Gordon’s Momma, everybody calls her Ms. Bessie, still lives on the family farm with two of Gordon’s brothers, Elmer and William. Elmer’s the basketball coach here. I’m sure you’ve seen him around. I guess the others moved away. My daddy says the boys pretty much do all the farmin’ now. Ms. Bessie’s health ain’t so good anymore.”

  Sandy went on for a few seconds more about the family, Ms. Bessie, and the former governor before finally getting around to the important part. Gordon Riley had no sweetheart to speak of. He was fair game to all of the young ladies at Blacksher.

&
nbsp; Knowing that Gordon worked so hard for his momma, the way I did for Daddy, made him even more appealing. He would understand why I felt broken without having to explain a thing to him. Once I learned all of that from Sandy, I couldn’t help falling for him. My face flushed and butterflies flew around my stomach every afternoon at 4:45 when I saw Gordon walking down Main Street with his basketball shoes tied together, casually tossed over one broad shoulder. He carried his 5’9” athletic frame with confidence. His dark brown, wavy hair bounced as he walked. As the days grew warmer, he would sweep his hair back from his face with his strong hands. Standing in the front window, between the mannequins and hat displays, I had to be careful not to stare too long. Sometimes, I would steady myself on the shoulder of the wooden lady next to me as I watched him approach and pass the window.

  One afternoon late in April of that year, I left the store at my usual time of 5 p.m. to walk home. Waiting at the corner of Main and Oak, just to the left of the store, was Ray Gordon Riley. My breath caught in my throat when I saw him waiting there, and again when he smiled at me. At the corner, he approached me.

  “You’re Hattie Andrews, right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’m Ray Riley, but you can call me Gordon.”

  “I know,” I said and couldn’t help smiling back at him.

  “Oh, do you? Well then, can I walk you home?” He offered me his arm as he stepped off the corner to cross the street. “You live on 21, right?”

  “Um, yes…how do you know that?”

  “Oh, I’ve noticed you, Hattie,” he answered. His chocolate brown eyes twinkled as he smiled at me, “I have definitely noticed you.”

  “Oh,” was the only syllable I could think of before I carefully wrapped my hand through the crook in his arm.