Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

gun.
    “I ain’t havin’ it, woman. That cracker ain’t gonna have a chance to get his hands on my children. Not none of ’em.” He let his eyes narrow to slits. “I will have all of ’em with me.” Cleveland, Doug, Lottie, and Henry. I’ll have ’em all.”
    Annalaura looked worse than when he’d punched her.
    “But Lottie and Henry is too young to leave me.” Her eyes tried and failed to blink back more tears.
    “Ain’t no chile too young to leave a ten-cent whore.” His words banged around the cabin. He saw Annalaura fall back onto the pillow.
    She looked like she was dying. He knew his words slammed hard, crushing every hope, every prayer, and every plea for mercy in its path. He could see the light go out of his wife’s eyes, but what she couldn’t see was what that sledgehammer was doing to his own heart. Every mean word, every cruel name he let spark out of his mouth and aimed straight at her, did not belong on those brave shoulders. Even a fool, crazy mad like he was, could see that it wasn’t Annalaura who deserved the stoning. But he couldn’t fix his heart, nor his mouth, to tell her that. None of this was the blame of Annalaura. Even with all of his hurt, he knew that none of the fault lay at her feet. That damn cracker.
    “He’s right, Aunt Becky,” Annalaura’s reed-thin voice pronounced. “I’ll send all yo’ chil’ren with you as soon as you is ready for them.”
    “I’ll be ready as soon as I kill that cracker.”
    “You ain’t killin’ nobody.” Becky stroked his earlobe with the gun. “You gettin’ yo’ ass out of Montgomery County as fast as yo’ legs can carry you.”
    He turned around to face her. “You think I’m gonna run? You think I’m gonna let some cracker ruin my wife?”
    This was not the time to let the women know that Annalaura was everything to him. She always had been ever since he picked her out from the edges of that crowd of silly women always around him.
    “Night riders will kill you dead.” Becky’s voice was low, soft, and certain.
    “Old woman, do you think I is afraid to die?” He couldn’t tell Rebecca Thornton that he was already dead. That he’d died yesterday afternoon when he first saw Annalaura’s swollen belly.
    “Ain’t no white man gonna put his thing in my woman and get away with it even if she ain’t nothin’ but a worthless slut.” He couldn’t bear the pain.
    What he really wanted more than anything was to wrap his arms around that wounded body, that shattered mind, and tell her that all of her misery, all of her shame, all of her pain belonged on his soul, not hers. He longed to tell her that he loved her far more than anything else in this world. But he couldn’t say the words. When he spoke, all that came out were devil thoughts and low-down names that he could never mean against her in a thousand years. John knew the real whore, and it wasn’t Annalaura.
    “You is a bigger fool than I took you fo’.” Becky waved the gun around. “First, you run yo’ ass off to God-knows-where for most parts of a year. Then you hauls yo’ sorry self back home and bad-mouths Annalaura when she ain’t had no mo’ say in what happened than little Henry. Next, you talk ’bout killin’ a white man.” The gun steadied again and its aim was dead at his heart. “You think you can kill a white man and that’s gonna be that? He dead and you dead and you got no mo’ worries?”
    Although he hadn’t seen the telltale wad in her cheek, the old woman spit out a stream of weak tobacco juice.
    “Ain’t you got sense ’nough to know that it ain’t just you who gonna die?”
    “Crazy old woman.” He muttered in Becky’s face. Why didn’t she shut up? His heart couldn’t take the truth right now.
    “They’ll string up my Annalaura as sure as you standin’ there. They’ll say she stole all that stuff offen that white man.” Becky waved the gun in the air.
    “Woman, you is crazy as a bedbug. Why would they put a hand to Annalaura? She ain’t the one gonna kill that cracker. Lawd knows, she sho’ should have.” He turned a glare on his wife that he did not feel or believe.
    “You know as well as me that every white farmer in these parts know that Alexander McNaughton been layin’ with my girl. If you kills him, they gonna kill you and her, too, so she won’t be ’round to tell the truth of the tale.” Becky’s words only chunked away a part of the fuzz in his head.
    That he had to die was all right