Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

boardinghouse, and he paid a pretty four dollars a week for it too, his only view was of the brown clapboard siding of the house next door. Through the hall window he could see the limbs of the crape myrtle tree in the front yard bending under a gusty March wind. Tiny buds lumped out all over its branches, and he could see more brown dirt than snow on the ground surrounding it. As he looked through the second floor window, it was clear that spring was just about to make its full appearance. A jumble of images flooded his head. Pictures he didn’t want to see. As Christmas gave way to Easter, sometimes he’d imagine Annalaura struggling to put food on the table. It was all he could do not to throw away Nashville and rush back to Lawnover. But if he gave up now, his family would always lead a life of nothing.
    “Close the door,” Savannah hissed. “You know I can’t be seen in a man’s room. The school board would fire me for sure.” Savannah pounded on his arm as she moved her girth against the back of the door.
    John slid his hand away just in time to avoid a broken finger in the quick-slamming door.
    “Red ain’t seen a thing. You got nothin’ to worry ’bout, but you better get yo’self dressed and back to yo’ room before yo’ sister gets back.” He watched her move toward the trail of clothes scattered along the thin carpet on the floor.
    Savannah scurried into her chemise and tugged her winter drawers to just below her waist. She reached for, and then tossed on the rumpled bed, the corset he’d had so much trouble unlacing. As he grabbed at his own shirt, he took another look at the woman he’d been bedding ever since Sally got too big to entertain and Zeola sent her off to do the ironing for the other girls.
    “Oh, my Lawd. I been on this job seven years. I sure don’t want to lose it.” Savannah pushed an arm through her white shirtwaist.
    “It’s Sunday. Ain’t no school board members gonna be ’round to look in on you in yo’ own house.” John was pleased to be with Savannah though she was about the plainest woman he had ever bedded.
    But if she hadn’t been hovering over downright homely, she never would have risked her schoolmarm reputation to sleep with him. She was a smart woman, and at twenty-six, she knew she was already far gone into spinsterhood. She carried about a hundred extra pounds, mostly from chin to knee, Still, she was a kind-hearted woman, and she understood when he told her right up front that he couldn’t do no serious courting. She nodded her head and admitted that her only marrying prospect was a sixty-year-old widowed Baptist deacon with four teenage children who told her plain that they didn’t want another momma. Although he hadn’t been Savannah’s first, she wanted to find out what this lovemaking stuff was really all about before she got saddled with a man known to be tight with a nickel and quick with the hellfire and damnation, especially when it came to girl children and women.
    “My sister won’t be back for another hour.” She stepped into her skirt and tugged hard at the too-tight waistband to get it fastened.
    John sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his high-buttoned shoes. He looked over at Savannah as she tried to lift a leg to buckle her own shoe.
    “I’ll be on my way now.” With one shoe still unfastened, and holding on to the offending corset with its strings dangling in all directions, Savannah cracked the door open a peep and looked both ways before she opened it barely enough to squeeze herself through.
    “I’ll see you next Sunday,” he called after her back.
    The schoolteacher didn’t acknowledge him as she quietly closed the door behind her. On most Sunday afternoons, ever since January, he had slipped Savannah into his room while her younger sister was out courting. The plaid-shirted poker player from Miz Zeola’s had taken a liking to the sister, though John thought he was far more interested in a teacher’s first-of-the-month payday than he was in the charms of a rather ordinary looking woman. Still, it had kept Savannah free for nearly three hours every Sunday afternoon when the sister went off with her suitor to church socials and buggy rides chaperoned by the preacher’s wife. That was just fine with John since Savannah didn’t ask anything more of him than two hours in bed once a week. And being with a woman who didn’t expect courting meant he was being true to Annalaura.
    In all their married years,