Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

fo’ the white man. Come this here June, the ground you put that seed in will be yo’ own.” She dug her nails deep into his shoulder.
    He felt the blood oozing under his work shirt.
    “You cross me, country boy, and Big Red will do mo’ than wake you up from whorin’ with that schoolteacher.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
     
    The Thornton farmhouse, sitting in the middle of Old Ben Thornton’s six hundred and forty acres like it did, had always been the natural place to host the annual first day of planting dinner and prayer for the Thornton clan. Though the four Thornton boys each received unequal portions as their inheritance, with eldest son Ben Roy getting the biggest and the best, all the kin agreed to gather at the family home to share in the big meal and pray in a successful tobacco season. Farmers all over Montgomery County were doing much the same during mid-May. Throughout the county, farmers would group together on the first day of planting, stand side by side with their local preachers, and pray for warm skies and the proper amount of rain.
    On that sun-filled, wind-free day when Ben Roy declared it planting time, Fedora had twenty-four hours to arrange for all the Thornton women to bring together the meal that would be served after the men had set their tenants to sowing seed. Because Reverend Hawkins had to cover fifteen farms in two days, he wouldn’t get to the Thorntons ’til close to two o’ clock this day.
    While most of the Thornton women spent their time complaining at the short notice that came regular every year, Eula always had her stores in place. She could tell far better than her brother when the sky and the moisture in the earth teamed up to tell all farmers that the ground was ripe for seeding. When the first of May dawned, she went to her smoke house and got out one of the few remaining slabs of bacon to flavor the pole beans canned late last summer. Every May morning during those first couple of weeks, as she walked by the chicken coop, she set her eyes on the pullets that would make the best fryers and gave them extra feed. A day or two before she knew Fedora would come frantically knocking on her door, she began her cooking. She baked her chess pie and shoofly cakes, fried up her chicken, opened her Mason jars of beans, greens, and turnips, and when they were ready, put them all away in a cool place on the porch by the pump.
    Sure enough, as the third week of May dawned, Fedora lashed her buckboard over to the McNaughtons and issued her breathless command to come join Cora Lee, Tillie, Belle, Jenny, and all the other Thornton women for the prayer dinner to wish for an easy plant, good growing weather, and a profitable harvest.
    “My greens ain’t nowhere big enough to pick, and I’ve got none canned.” Belle, as disorganized as ever, made the same complaint Eula had heard for fifteen years now. She ignored her sister-in-law and continued to spread the red-checkered tablecloth over the last of the three tables Fedora had set out in the big yard behind the house. With close to thirty-five Thorntons showing up, Fedora always held the prayer dinners outside since Ben Roy had guaranteed perfect weather by his selection of the planting day.
    “What did you bring then, Belle?” Cora Lee asked, as she spread out a flowered tablecloth on a second table set closer to the house.
    “I had my girl fry up some chicken and make a sweet-potato pie.” Belle stood to the side, acting, for all the Thornton world to see, like she was supervising the other women. Fedora’s colored cook gave Belle a quick glare as the longtime servant started laying platters of smothered pork chops and preserved lima beans onto the first table, which was already set with its white cloth. Cora Lee stood up straight and whispered over her shoulder to Eula.
    “I think your brother must have seen somethin’ else in that one to marry her besides her cookin’.” Cora took a platter of corn bread from Fedora’s cook and set it on her table. Whatever her youngest brother saw in the ill-mannered Belle escaped Eula. Her table covered, she walked past Cora Lee without answering and headed into the kitchen to retrieve her own platter of chicken and bowl of greens. Let Belle and Cora Lee fight it out on their own.
    “Cousin Eula, where do you want me to set this chess pie and cake?” Jenny balanced both in her hands as Eula entered Fedora’s kitchen. She gestured to the red-checkered table just as she heard Belle’s