Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

his hand keep it in motion.
    Eula brought the knife before her eyes, both of her hands clasped tight on the handle. She twisted it in the almost-noonday sun. A ray caught on Alex’s yellow hair. She wondered what it would look like drenched in the red of his blood. She switched the knife to her right hand and took a step toward him. Her feet moved like great lead weights had been sewn into her cotton stockings. Standing right behind him and breathing hard, she wondered that he hadn’t noticed her. She brought the knife handle to her right shoulder, the blade pointed straight at the middle of Alex’s back. She closed her eyes and willed her arm to move with the strength of David in his battle with Goliath. The heavy image brought up a laugh from her gut that she failed to keep down.
    Alexander McNaughton was no giant, and she wasn’t a weak but brave child. She was poised to plunge a knife into the back of a cheating, lying husband, and he hadn’t even noticed. That was just it, Alexander McNaughton had never noticed her—not to hurt her, not to hate her, not to love her. And if she did plunge the knife into his back, straight through to his front, and he turned his dying eyes toward her, he would only wonder at her actions. In his mind, he had done nothing to cause her harm, nothing to inflict pain. He had done nothing wrong. He would go to his Maker with innocence in his mind, pondering what had driven his wife to such an uncalled-for act. The laugh came out of her mouth garbled. It sounded more like she was wishing him a cheery good morning.
    “Sorry ’bout breakfast. I’ll get yo’ pork chops on fo’ dinner.” She lowered the knife and laid it on the table as she moved her lead feet to the stove. Behind her, she heard Alex pick up the cradle and carry it back to her pantry.
    As he walked past her like a dead man, she caught a glimpse of the porcelain-faced doll inside. For long seconds, she stood at the stove, a lit match in her hands, wondering what to do. Should she follow him into the pantry? Should she tell him something about loving him so much that she could die of it right now? That she could forgive him? The match singed her fingers, and she blew it out. She took a step toward the pantry. Trying to find a way to put her feelings into words, she moved almost to the door. Alex turned those vacant eyes on her. She reached out a hand to him just as the pantry door closed. She felt for the knob. She heard the pin drop into the latch. He had locked her out.
    No thoughts came into her head. All the pain had left her heart. All the agony had fled her soul. She felt nothing as she walked to her safe. She didn’t need her calendar to tell her that it was time to check her journal records. She reached up on the shelf and pulled out her account book. She laid it open on her table, reached for her pencil, and sat down. Thumbing through the book until she reached the Planting page, she began to write in her careful hand. Under Vegetables she wrote String Beans: 10 rows. Corn: 20 rows. Lima Beans: 5 rows. She had always been proud of her nicely squared-off handwriting, and though she couldn’t feel the pencil in her hand this day, she saw that her writing was still meticulous. She turned to a fresh page to continue her accounts, but without her hand or her head willing it, the pencil lead began to write.
    May 21, 1914
Township of Lawnover
State of Tennessee
     
    I, Eula Mae Thornton McNaughton, testify that this day I have become, at last, the perfect Southern wife. I now know to the core of my being the lessons my mother, and her mother before her, tried to teach me. On the eve of my wedding, when my mother told me that my husband would give me pain beyond all imaginings, I foolishly thought she spoke of his breaking of my flowering. Now, I know that it was my soul that would be shattered. It is because I am condemned to never be a whole woman that I make this testimony.
    This day I resolve to do what I must. If, and when, my husband ever returns to my bed, I will hold him harmless for any pain he has ever put on me. I vow to never bring shame to him, or his name, by letting the world know that my entire life, and my love for him, have been betrayed in the most foul way. None will hear the cries that I dare not release from my chest even though each one strangles the breath out of me. If my husband ever again puts an arm around me, or even his lips to my forehead, I will never allow him to see the sorrow