Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

creatures had long passed her piglet days. He’d slaughter her for the fall and advance some of her meat to the tenants against their tobacco shares. Then Alex remembered. The harvest on the mid-forty promised to be a mighty iffy thing at best this year. Just inside the barn, the two cows were busy at work on their short stack of feed. He reminded himself to bring in more hay for the coming fall. That, too, could be held against any profits the Welleses might claim. The ladder to the living quarters above lay in place. He moved toward it, but before he could call out his halloo, the sound of someone struggling for breath in the upstairs living space caught his attention. It was the sound of a child. As Alex moved closer, the woman’s voice, marshaling her children into order, floated down through the square opening.
    “Hey, you up there,” Alex shouted out. “When you comin’ to the fields?” With his booted foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, he looked up to see the woman’s young girl looking down at him, her eyes wide in surprise. Before he could negotiate the first two ladder rungs, the swirl of a skirt thrust the child aside. Two worn work boots and a flash of two milk-chocolate colored ankles confronted him.
    “I’m comin’ right down, suh.” The woman dropped to her knees in a thud as she bent over the opening to look down at him. The top of her shirtwaist lay open and both breasts fell hard against the cloth, almost overflowing it. Colored like first-tapped maple syrup stirred with a cinnamon stick, they were three shades lighter than her sun-drenched face.
    Alex stopped his climb to stare. The woman scrambled to her feet, turned, and began to back down the ladder with her skirt pulled tight over her buttocks. He stepped off the ladder, his eyes never off the rounded shape above him. His hands gripped the side rails as his eyes told him that he wanted to reach up and touch that rounded firmness coming straight at him. This was nothing like the vanilla pudding flabbiness Eula presented him every fortnight.
    “I’m fixin’ my children breakfast. I’ll be with yo’ tobacco directly, suh.” On the ground, the woman turned toward him, her eyes flitting like a hummingbird between his shirt pocket and his face.
    “It’s past sunup. Ain’t you a bit late gettin’ to my tobacco?” He had the uneasy feeling that there was more to this woman’s late start than she was telling.
    Had the husband come home? Was that why her shirt fell open just enough to offer him a teasing glimpse at the top swell of one breast? He felt the heat starting in his britches again. He tried to push the thought away, then reconsidered. Why couldn’t he have business and pleasure, too?
    “Yes, suh. It’s just that my oldest boy had a fall yesterday.” She bobbed her head toward one of the rafters.
    Alex followed her glance and spotted the place where a beam had given way. He turned toward the small pile of spearing cuttings.
    “You ain’t got enough sticks to spear more than five acres. There’s forty that need to be brought in.” He looked back toward her.
    The woman’s eyes flickered up to his face.
    “You surely are right, suh, but my middle boy will be down in a minute to sharpen some more.” Her eyes drifted down to his shirt pocket. “By tomorrow dawn, I’ll have that first acre in for you.”
    “Your middle boy—is he the one I heard wheezin’ upstairs?” Alex sucked in a breath.
    This woman was a good talker. She couldn’t possibly bring in an acre of harvested tobacco by tomorrow, not with nearly two good hours of this day already gone.
    “The wheezin’ sickness only takes him when he’s with dryin’ tobacco. I’m gonna have him sit outside to do the sharpening.” Up went her eyes to his face for just an instant. “He’ll do just fine.”
    “Is this the boy you told me was no more than twelve years old?” He had to hand it to her. She could move her words around with surprising quickness.
    “He strong like a mule, suh, and my girl will fetch and carry the sticks. I’ll do the spearin’ myself.” The eyes met his for the whisper of a second before he watched her drop them to the fourth button on his shirt.
    “Woman, are you tellin’ me that you and your three picka…” he remembered her admonition of two weeks earlier “…children are going to bring in an acre of tobacco by nightfall? What about tomorrow? Where is your man, anyway?” It was his turn to give her the hard