Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

ferrying water from the pump outside the smoke house to the barn where Cleveland, Laura, and Lottie hung the tobacco. With Harris’s help, the two men had been able to spear the tobacco on all forty acres. Even though it was far from prime, the crop had fetched a little over sixteen hundred dollars, not as much as last year but still a hundred dollars better than the tenants on his back-forty. Alex had thought it a miracle. All during those two weeks, he had kept close tabs on Isaiah Harris.
    A man, any man, black or white, knows to mark out his territory. And, he had no doubt, Harris understood that Alex had marked out Laura as his own. Sometimes, the two men finished their spearing way after supper. Isaiah offered to sleep on the floor of the smoke house to get an even earlier start the next day. Alex would have none of it. He put Harris in the back of Eula’s buckboard and drove him back to the main barn each and every night. He stashed the gray’s saddle on the porch, and he seriously doubted that Isaiah Harris would walk all the way to the mid-forty at midnight only to come back again at four o’clock in the morning. No man, including Isaiah, would be fool enough to take another man’s woman when she had been clearly spoken for. Laura was lying, but why?
    “What makes you think Isaiah is the father? I was with you before he ever stepped foot on the mid-forty.” He watched her eyes open and blink, although the shaft of sunlight coming through the barn door fell nowhere near the stack of hay.
    “I…I just do.” His head shook its confusion. “A woman knows these things.”
    Alex hadn’t paid much attention to what Eula knew or didn’t know, and maybe a woman did feel more when she was pregnant, but he doubted it. He pulled Laura into his arms and kissed her. He felt her body push into his as her lips responded for the wisp of an instant before she pulled away. He tightened his grip on her shoulders and he knew the truth.
    “This baby is mine and ain’t nothin’ you say can make me think different.” He pushed her down to the pile of hay and dropped beside her.
    The rungs of the ladder lay angled above them. He saw her hand clutch at a piece of hay as he finished unbuttoning her coat. She turned her head to look at the bits of straw in her outstretched hand while he shifted her skirt to her waist. She brought a fistful of straw to his shoulder as he untied the string to her winter drawers and lowered them to just above her triangle. He put his face lightly to her stomach. Brushing her belly with his cheek, he was certain he felt something inside her move.
    “Alex,” she sounded almost out of breath as she let the straw trickle across his back. “If this baby frets you too much, I understands.” Her voice grew stronger. “Sometimes a baby with the wrong woman can be bothersome to a man.” Her breathing came easier and she let her eyes rest full on him. “It ain’t too late if you don’t want it. It would pain me to bring a world of trouble with yo’ family down on yo’ head.” Her voice carried a strange mixture of fear and hope.
    What did she mean? What possible difference could it make to Eula if he had an outside child with a colored woman as long as he looked after the farm and clothed and fed his wife? He could see Laura was just about bowed down with fear. He rubbed his hand over her belly as he raised up to look at her face. She looked as though she were willing him to say some particular words she wanted to hear. But what?
    “Laurie, quit your worryin’.” He brushed her forehead with his lips. He tasted the dampness of sweat, although the barn was just about cold enough to freeze the water in the pails by the cows. “I’m gonna take care of this baby. You don’t need to worry about no midwife. I’ll get the best colored doctor in all of Clarksville out here.” Did he feel her shudder?
    When she didn’t respond, he stroked the side of her face with his fingertips. Didn’t she understand that a man can’t really call himself a man until he can show the world the living proof of his manhood?
    “I’ll send this child all the way to the eighth grade if you want.” He leaned over to kiss her again.
    Annalaura turned her head just as his lips approached her face, and he caught the corner of her mouth. Her breathing was coming in harder again. He reached down to pull off her drawers. Her hand stopped him.
    “If you really want this chile, we can’t be together so oft