Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

grade education.
    “Less advances.” He spoke again, wanting to bite his tongue. A white man didn’t bargain with a nigger, especially a woman.
    But, then, if the miracle came and she brought in fifteen hundred dollars this year, she would be entitled to only five hundred instead of the contracted six. He had already advanced her that much. If he took the deal, he would get to keep the entire year’s sale in exchange for letting her stay in the barn for the winter. Now, he had to convince her to give him a little something extra.
    “Yes, suh. I would take it kindly if you would allow me seed money for my fall vegetables and for a new sow and maybe a dozen or so more chickens.” Her eyes locked onto his.
    Alex breathed hard. A young sow alone was worth almost sixty dollars. Where had a woman learned to figure like a man?
    “Woman,” his voice was hoarse, “I’ve told you before. I’ve got me a man who wants to farm this place right now. I know your man will be back, but if the God’s truth be told, even you don’t know when. You and those kids need food so you can work the harvest proper. Without it, there’s no reason for me to let you stay, now is there?” Though he had dropped in his own bargaining chip, he had also just given a colored woman a power over her fate that he hadn’t given even to Eula Mae.

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    “John Welles, John Welles. Open this do’. I know you is in there.” If the sound of the afternoon train rumbling down from Chicago hadn’t been enough to wake him from his sleep, the rusty-razor voice of his landlady more than finished the job.
    John put the rolled-up rag he used for a pillow over his head to block out the sound. He had no need to hide his eyes from the light in the crowded, windowless storeroom. The thin stretch of daylight that did make its way miraculously under Miz Sarah Lou Brown’s storeroom door was all that he ever saw of brightness when he finally was lucky enough to fall asleep on the pee-stained mattress after his thirteen-hour workday.
    “It’s the first Friday in September, and you ain’t gittin’ out of here this day ’til you pays me my rent.” Miz Brown’s fist pounding on the door matched the voice in grating on his nerves.
    John peeked out from the makeshift pillow. The little dab of daylight that had been there disappeared, covered over by Miz Brown’s more than ample body. He knew she would either stand there all day or put a shoulder to the door and break through it like a cardboard oatmeal box. John rolled to his hands and knees and pushed his tired body to standing. Without the sun to guide him, he depended upon the three p.m. train heading to Florida from Chicago to give him his time bearings. Wearing only his summer drawers, John stepped over a crate of corn and two tins of lard to reach down to the floorboards he had first pried open right after he moved in to the two-story clapboard house. Squatting on the floor, he pulled the loose board up and lifted out the blue bandanna that held his money. Fumbling in the darkness, he retrieved four quarters, seven dimes, and sixteen nickels. Damn. He had hoped to have enough in change so that he wouldn’t have to break one of his silver dollars. They were too hard to come by. For the flash of a second, Annalaura’s disapproving face flicked into his mind. He pushed the vision away. He loved that woman more than he could show, but she had more mouth on her than he had time to deal.
    “John Welles, I got no time to fool with you. I’ve got me people lined up ’round the block to take this here place. Country boys comin’ into Nashville, fifteen, twenty a day. I don’t need none of yo’ foolishness.” Sarah Lou’s voice just about shook the storeroom door off the hinges.
    That the old biddy was right riled John the most. So many men from out in the country got the same idea in their heads. No colored was ever going to amount to anything if he kept sharecropping for the white man.
    “Let me get my britches on Miz Brown, ma’am, and I’ll hand yo’ money right to you.” Even if he could have afforded better, there were too few rooms to rent for all the colored who were pouring in to the city.
    Too few places to lay his head, too few jobs to make the rent, that’s what a country man could expect if he decided to risk everything on Nashville. John pulled on his overalls and reached for his shirt as he walked over to the door, only stubbing his toe once on a forgotten box