Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

could start to hang the tobacco. One of the beams broke and I fell. I’m sorry, Momma.” Cleveland’s voice dissolved into a howl that chilled Annalaura’s heart.
    “Don’t you fret none ’bout that tobacco. Aunt Becky’s heard word that yo’ papa might be comin’ back just in time.” The lie came quick off her tongue as she took a second wet rag from Lottie and patted Cleveland’s face with it.
    She wanted to take her firstborn into her arms, hold him close, and take away all the grown-up worries that had no business on the shoulders of a twelve-year-old. Instead, she hugged Lottie and smoothed her daughter’s hair.
    “You done a real good job. Now go fetch me that broom handle in the corner. Henry, get the sacking off the bed. Doug, once I get Cleveland’s leg tied up, I’m gonna heat you up another big bowl of water to get that ol’ wheezin’ gone.” She spoke as though she had everything under control.
    Only those older than twelve would know that the truth was the exact opposite.

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Alex hadn’t needed to look at the calendar hanging on Eula’s pantry door to tell him that two weeks had passed since he last visited the mid-forty. He had trotted the gray down the lane that bisected his acres every day since he spoke to the nigger woman on the place in mid-August, but he hadn’t wanted to look too close at the tobacco.
    As he slowed his horse this morning, what he had to do was clear. No lone woman, with four pickaninnies way too young to be of any use, could bring in what a full-grown man couldn’t. He’d have to shoo her off the place and do what he could to get at least some of his acres in before first frost. Fifteen hundred dollars was a lot to lose. As he snapped the reins to the right to guide the gray up the path toward the barn on the mid-forty, memories of the woman’s bare thighs fought to push aside his good sense. He shifted his weight in the saddle hoping against everything reasonable that the woman’s husband hadn’t yet returned home. Slowing the horse to a leisurely pace, he let his eyes drift over to the fields. With the barn still some two hundred yards up the path, he stopped the gray and slid to the ground.
    Alex walked over to the tobacco stalks lining the path. Damn, if at least some of them didn’t look just about passable for spearing. Remounting, he scanned the acres on the other side. Sure, the tops of the stalks were uneven, and without much of a look, he could see that all the plants hadn’t reached harvest-ready yet, but the woman had done more than a middling good job. McNaughton galloped the horse to the barn and dismounted.
    The September sky dawned a mild pink with the promise of good working weather. A wren chirped a greeting in this second hour past dawn. Pushing up the wide brim of his straw hat, Alex looked over the fields again. Strange, he didn’t see the woman or her children. They should have been hard at work in the fields by now. He smelled the hogs at their slop and peered over toward the other side of the barn. Although he couldn’t catch a good look inside the dark interior, he heard the cows grunting as they chewed their hay. They had been milked, for sure. Three scrawny chickens sauntered in front of him. He was certain that they, too, had already laid, and their eggs taken. The woman had been up, but where was she now?
    He spotted the opened door of the smoke house and walked over to it. Inside, Alex felt the heat from the coal-fired oven. The whiff of baking biscuits greeted him. Walking closer, he looked into a cast-iron kettle and saw nothing but water dotted with blobs of grease. Where was breakfast? McNaughton looked around the walls of the smoke house. Even though it was September, and summer supplies were bound to be low, still there should have been at least one slab of bacon left on the hanging hook. And, where were the woman’s winter preserves?
    Alex stepped outside to glance at the garden plot between smoke house and barn. Last year he remembered the abundance of vegetables and noted to himself that his newest tenants had the gumption to tend their own food and bring him in a bumper tobacco crop to boot. These were niggers worth keeping. Now, the plot showed only bare reddish-brown Tennessee dirt. Not even the withered top of one green onion was left standing.
    The slurping of the sows struck his ears as he neared the barn. Shaking his head, Alex no longer had any doubt that the slowest moving of the