Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

The Lawnover colored Baptist church would ban her as a Jezebel. Fresh tears began their frigid roll down her cheeks. She swiped them away with a mittened hand. There was no need to cry over a man who had left her over seven months ago, not when she had to put all her smarts into Alex McNaughton. His was the immediate threat.
    What would Alex do if he learned this baby was his? Annalaura plodded past an oak tree. Would he treat her the way most Montgomery County white men did when they tired of their colored women? Would he just move on to his next one and drop by with an occasional silver dollar, or a ham, or a suit of hand-me-down clothes for his yellow child?
    There were many such women and children in Lawnover, and if the baby didn’t look too white, people could pretend that the father was some strange colored man from down county. If the woman was lucky enough, and the baby came out looking tan with dark eyes and frizzy hair, then maybe she could find a man who would take her to wife. Annalaura brightened for the first time that day. If Aunt Becky’s herbs really worked, perhaps one day, she could find a toothless, old, widowed colored man to take her and her children into his house. The flash of encouragement that quickened her step along the lane faded as fast as it had come. Even such a man wouldn’t want a woman carrying the sin of divorce.
    Annalaura looked up the lane to see the barn in the distance. Each step felt as though she pulled fifty pounds of tobacco behind her. She had to make sure Alex tired of her.
    In the beginning, she was sure her amateur ways would run him away in a few days, but he had stayed and she wondered why. She had steeled herself for quick and rough, even hurting, lovemaking. Instead, he had been considerate, tender, gentle, and especially passionate. His caresses were soft and warm. His kisses long and lingering. And when she didn’t respond in kind, there had never been an explosive blow, or an angry word. He talked to her like he cared what she felt, and on some things, he even listened to her answers. And after lovemaking, he always held her close.
    Sometimes, the kindness he showed to her and her children almost made her forget that she should hate this man. Still, if the state of Tennessee gave her the right to say no to him, she would use it. A woman ought to be able to say yea or nay to any man who wanted to come into her body. Yet, if Alex had been colored…well then, maybe her answer to him would be y…She pushed that thought deep into a box in her mind. There could be not even a little love with a white man.
    Maybe Alex would treat her the way Ben Roy Thornton treated his Hettie. Together, those two had two-and-a-half yellow-skinned children living right there on the Thornton side-forty. Right under Fedora’s nose. Of course, Ben Roy’s wife, like all the other white wives in the county, had to pretend that those babies got dropped off at the side-forty by a passing peddler cart. Mr. Ben Roy had fed, housed, and clothed Hettie and his children for the past five years. Everybody in Lawnover, black or white, knew the parents of those children. The path leading to her barn was just a hundred yards away. She stopped again and jammed her hands into the pockets of the coat.
    No matter how sweet his ways, it would be far worse for her if Alex treated her like Hettie. Being a white man’s “other family” was almost as bad as being divorced. Annalaura started the final few yards to her turnoff thinking the words in her head so loud that she burst them out in the air.
    “God, don’t let me be Hettie. Don’t make this man want to stay.” With the path looming before her, she dropped her eyes to the ground. She had one more choice.
    The hired man. Aunt Becky hadn’t believed her, but if she could convince Alex that the tenant farmer who helped bring in the harvest in September was the father, he would leave her. And, with any luck, Alex might beat the baby out of her. She prayed that he wouldn’t kill her only because her four children needed her alive. Turning onto the pathway, she kept her head down, trying to build her courage. For the sake of them all, she had to convince Alex McNaughton that he was not the father of this baby.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
     
    Alex pitched the last of the hay bale to the cows for their afternoon feed. He glanced over at the remaining hay loosely piled under the ladder near the back wall. That should be enough to last the animals through