Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

her even though the Thornton clan stood more than two notches above his own in what passed for Lawnover society. But, before he could act, some rich dandy from Kentucky swept her away. With his hundred and sixty acres of hardscrabble tobacco land, Alex couldn’t compare to a man with three hundred and sixty acres of good Kentucky bottom.
    After Bessie Thornton, no respectable, single white women were left in Lawnover except for two widows, and they both had children. Alex did not fancy raising another man’s get. Since his place had to be farmed, he needed a no-nonsense woman who didn’t need a lot of petting or pretty words. He took his chances with Eula. Though she was a Thornton, her homely, round face and big-boned body had already made her a spinster. When her father said yes and Eula didn’t object, they married.
    Eula took her seat opposite him at the table just as Alex mopped up the last of the bacon grease with a biscuit. She set the fresh bowl of fried potatoes down. He signaled that he wanted no more. He spotted the look of mild surprise on her face.
    “Got to go check on the mid-forty this morning.” He was not in the habit of telling his wife his comings and goings but today was an especially busy one. “That friend of Ben Roy’s is comin’ by to leave the rest of the money for the calf. Tell him to put it on the bench in the smoke house.”
    Running his hand through his still thick, pale yellow hair, Alexander moved to his feet, sloshing a bit of coffee onto the table. He caught Eula looking at the top of his head. At least he hadn’t gone bald like almost all of Eula Mae’s male Thornton kin. As she wiped up his coffee spill with a clean dishrag, she worked her mouth to speak.
    “Did I hear that the colored man on the mid-forty run off?” Eula didn’t usually start a conversation with him.
    Alex had already moved toward the door when he turned back to the sound of his wife’s voice.
    “Something like that.” He took in her look as she worked her skinny lips to say something more.
    Lucky for her that she had never been pretty because time hadn’t done too much more damage except for the gray streaking her field-mouse-colored hair. Her sun-reddened skin had long ago taken on the look of badly tanned leather, pockmarked with pea-pod-size brown dots. Alex knew that was the way of it with white farm women.
    “Isn’t he the same colored man that brought in the big money last year on that po’ piece of land you rented him?” She held her eyes at the collar of his shirt.
    It didn’t pain him much to give Eula her due when it came to managing the household money. There was none better in all of Lawnover, but no woman needed to know all of her husband’s business. He didn’t like discussing money with a woman, but Eula was right. He had let the sharecropper family farm his worst forty acres last year, and they had made him three thousand dollars, more than twice as much as any other tenant farmer he ever had, black or white.
    “I remember when they come here asking to farm the place. The man…what was his name…he said he could make some money for you.” Eula turned her eyes directly on him.
    “I recollect him saying some words like that, but all niggers pretend they can bring in a bumper crop. You can’t set no store by what a nigger says.” Alex remembered the man. “Name of John, I recall. Said he was John Welles.” Then, he remembered the woman. She was part of the colored family that had lived on Thornton land since way before the War of Secession.
    “He looked strappin’ big enough to do the job, and that oldest boy looked like he could be a pretty good help too.” Eula looked him straight in the eye as she spoke. “Ben Roy says he hasn’t seen him around in a month of Sundays.” Eula walked back over to the sink and pumped water over the dirtied dishrag.
    Alex frowned. Why was Eula’s older brother meddling in his business?
    “Ain’t the first time that nigger’s run off. Usually stays a week or two. I reckon I know the ways of my hands better than your brother.” Alex glared at his wife. She knew as well as he that the tenant farmers were his business, not hers, and especially not Ben Roy Thornton’s.
    “It’s just that I had a feeling early on about that man.” She wrung out the dishcloth as she turned toward him, her eyes searching for a spot somewhere between his collar and chin. “Did it seem to you that the man was a bit too forward? Not uppity, mind