Annie

By John Isaac Jones

"Southern Gothic is alive and well!" - Amazon reviewer

Cousins Billy and Roy were just two mischievous boys--probably meaner than most--but still just bored, country kids looking for some adventure and excitement.

During the nights they spent with their grandmother, their favorite pastime was spying on the tenants of their grandmother's rental houses.

Over the years, the two had spied on all of their grandmother's renters at one time or another, but the one who provided the most fun and excitement was a lonely, desperate woman named Annie Atkinson.

Not for the squeamish!

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Isaac Jones
• Release date: Nov 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781393882190

John Isaac Jones

John Isaac Jones is a retired journalist currently living at Merritt Island, Florida. For more than thirty years, "John I.," as he prefers to be called, was a reporter for media outlets throughout the world. These included local newspapers in his native Alabama, The National Enquirer, News of the World in London, the Sydney Morning Herald, and NBC television. He is the author of five novels, a short story collection and two novellas.

Book preview

ANNIE

By

John Isaac Jones

Billy and Roy were just two mischievous boys—probably meaner than most eleven-year-olds—but still just bored country kids looking for some adventure and excitement. Having grown up together in the small farming community near Hamilton, the two youngsters were more like brothers than first cousins. Their grandparents, John and Gladys McKinney, had migrated to that part of north Alabama in 1922 and homesteaded two forty-acre plots of land from the U.S. government. Over the years, the McKinneys had built a house and a barn, cleared and farmed the land, and raised two daughters. As their offspring grew up and married off, the McKinneys gave their newly wedded offspring plots of land on the homestead to build homes and raise their own families.

So when Billy’s and Roy’s mothers were married, they settled on the McKinney family homestead in houses that were within a stone’s throw of one another. As a result, Billy and Roy had been playing together since the day they were born. After their grandfather died in 1949, the boys’ grandmother requested that their parents arrange for one or both of the boys to come spend nights with her because she hated being alone at night. The parents approved, and the two boys were delighted.

At home, Billy and Roy were well-behaved eleven-year-olds because their fathers were strict disciplinarians and expected them to toe the line. But once they were away from their parents at their grandmother’s house, they loved to engage in every form of mischief imaginable. They knew their grandmother would let their boyishness run free and wild, and she would engage them in forbidden conversations.

Although the two eleven-year-olds found many forms of entertainment during those nights at their grandmother’s house, their favorite pastime was spying on the residents of their grandmother’s rental houses.

Mrs. McKinney had three rental houses on her property. The best one was a two-bedroom white frame home across the road from the grandmother’s house that rented for $35 a month. She called it her Good House. The boys’ grandmother kept the