Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

the winter. He had already mucked out the barn, and that completed the last of Cleveland’s afternoon chores. It was nearly three o’clock, and Doug had just climbed the ladder after coming home from school. Upstairs, Alex could hear the boy practicing his reading. Cleveland had spent the day looking after Lottie and little Henry. Laura wasn’t home, and Cleveland had been close-lipped about his mother’s whereabouts, telling Alex only that his mother had gone to her aunt’s house. The youngster couldn’t say why. Alex hadn’t pressed, but he hoped that his taking over Cleveland’s afternoon chores would loosen the boy’s tongue. He had unfinished business with the mother.
    The delicious memory of the morning had made him barely able to concentrate on his own morning chores. When he came in for breakfast he vaguely recalled Eula saying something to him but little of it registered. Whatever it was must have been fairly important to his wife, because she never bothered him with talk unless it was of some urgency. He did recall that her journal lay spread in front of her, and she may have asked him something about peach preserves and hams. He only knew that he rushed through his farm jobs with his mind nowhere on his duties. Alex couldn’t focus on anything, or anybody, other than Laura. Her unexpected display of feelings for him, and that plumpness in her belly, crowded out everything else. He rushed back to the mid-forty right after he’d managed to rid himself of Wiley George in Lawnover.
    Alex had returned to the mid-forty about one in the afternoon only to find Laura gone. He waited over two hours for her return. Where was she? His mind whirled back to the one thought that had driven him since morning. Could there really be a baby? Putting the pitchfork back against the wall, Alex walked to the doorway and looked down the path toward the lane. The wind had started to kick up and the sky threatened snow. If Laura was actually pregnant, he couldn’t have her out in this. He took in several deep breaths. Could he believe what his senses were telling him?
    He and Eula had made a baby, but just that once, and at twenty-four, he hadn’t paid much attention to either Eula or what his senses told him about her changing body. They’d been married almost a year when she told him a baby was on the way. Back then, he thought that was the way of a marriage, and he gave neither Eula nor the coming baby any further thought until his child’s birthday also became her death day.
    The doctor hadn’t said one way or another if Eula could ever have more children. She just hadn’t. Mostly, he felt it was a weakness in his wife that kept him from becoming a father and there was no need to worry a good woman on her failing.
    Although some men gave their women a lot of grief because of it, Eula deserved better. But, every now and again, as the years passed with no other babies from any of the four or five women he’d been with besides Eula, he fretted that maybe the fault did not all belong to his wife. Sometimes he thought that maybe there was a weakness in his family line. His own pa had sired only Alex and his sister, though he had lived with their mother more than thirty years. Was Laura about to change all that?
    Standing in the shadows of the barn door opening, he watched her walk up the path long before she saw him. He had told her the coat was a cast-off from the church. In truth, he had bought it brand-new in Clarksville. Alex had purchased two, one blue and the other black. Neither had been very expensive, but both were warm. The black had tortoiseshell buttons, and he had given that one to Eula. He hadn’t realized until he read her surprised face and heard her shocked comment that he had never given his wife a just-for-nothing gift in all of their married years. But it was the blue coat with its extra-thick lining that had really caught his eye. And today, with the snow clouds forming in the afternoon sky, Laura needed its warmth. As she passed the smoke house, it was no wonder she still hadn’t seen him. Her head was bent down and the collar of the coat turned up almost to her eyes. As she closed in on the barn, he stepped out into the pale sun. He didn’t dare risk taking her by surprise. Not now.
    “Your Aunt Becky lives ’most a mile down the road. You shouldn’t be walking that far in weather like this.” Alex watched her stop in the path just beyond the smoke house.
    The startled look on her face