Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

with anything she was supposed to do about it.
    “Take with you? You’re takin’ the food out of here? I thought you wanted a big supper tonight—the harvest being over and all.” The grease popping all around her sounded like firecrackers on the Fourth of July.
    Only the sight of Alex’s shocked face brought her back to herself. Realizing too late that she had walked dangerously close to the line of wifely impropriety, she turned to the skillet and pulled out the last of the singed pork chops. Her head down, she scurried to the safe and reached for a clean rag. She busied herself with scrubbing the grease splatters off the stove and her wall as though her life depended upon it. Eula had stunned her husband and herself with her questions.
    “I’m droppin’ some food off for that old woman over on the Thornton place.” Alex had slowed his pace as he moved to the stove to retrieve the remaining pork chops. He turned to the china cabinet, reached to the top shelf, and pulled down her biggest bowl, with its blue sprig of flowers and thin strip of silver around the base.
    Eula stood openmouthed. That oval-shaped piece of china was her only “silver” piece and her pride. In twenty years, she had never actually put anything in her favorite wedding gift. A hundred questions marched themselves into her mind. She worked her mouth hard to get them out, but her mind worked even harder to keep them in. Her mouth won the battle.
    “Ben Roy’s place? Old woman? Surely, you’re not talkin’ about Rebecca usin’ my weddin’ present bowl?” Eula wanted to drive her teeth through her tongue when she saw the quick flash of anger on her husband’s face.
    “Yeah. Rebecca. Ain’t you always tellin’ me she’s a Thornton responsibility? Well, you’re a Thornton. I don’t want your brother thinkin’ we’re too hard up to do our share.” He walked into the pantry and returned with two big jars of pole beans and a Mason jar full of honey.
    “Is it the mid-forty?” Eula’s mind reeled. She didn’t dare chance a look at Alex.
    Her husband appreciated a woman who had her own mind, but he appreciated the female even more when that woman kept it to herself and didn’t bother him with it. Despite all the warnings shooting through her head, Eula had to sort this one out.
    “I thought that colored man you hired was goin’ to start on Monday. Two weeks or more ’til a cold snap.” Though she held her head down, the flashes from Alex’s eyes pierced right down to her belly. If she didn’t look at him, she could finish her words. “That should give him time aplenty to get in most of the forty.”
    Alex’s face flamed the color of over-ripe cherries.
    “I don’t want to hear you fret over the mid-forty again. That’s all taken care of.” His voice sounded like the hiss of a snake in her ears.
    “Name’s Rebecca Murdock, you know. She don’t ever use that name, but she was a married woman once. Married a colored man from outside of Lawnover. Still likes to call herself a Thornton even though she’s not really one. Just one of our colored from before the War.” Eula prayed that what Alex called “mindless woman’s chatter” would guide his own mind away from her wifely slip.
    She could bear his annoyance much easier than his anger. Scooping up the corn bread, he added it to the other wrapped parcels and headed out the kitchen door.
    “You reckon she’s still up this late at night?” Eula fought hard to make her voice sound everyday.
    Alex was already at the porch door when he stopped and turned back to her. Behind him the last of the September sunlight had gone thirty minutes earlier, and the moon had already gained supremacy in the sky.
    “I told you I’m takin’ some of this food over to that nigger woman on your brother’s place, then I’m takin’ the rest to the tavern for a poker game. Don’t stay awake.” The spring in the screen door was a strong one, and when Alex let it close on its own, the sound of it snapping back into place reminded Eula of a rifle shot.
    Moving quickly to the kitchen door, she called after him. “Won’t Ben Roy be there? Fedora usually packs up the food for those poker games when Bobby Lee’s busy.” She tried to put the picture of Alex bringing food to the Lawnover store into her mind. It wouldn’t fit.
    Alex reached the barn and his horse. He gave no sign that he’d heard her call. Eula turned around to stare at the shambles of her kitchen. It wasn’t