Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

Little Ben over her shoulder to burp.
    Eula grabbed at her ear. She was certain that sudden roaring coming through the open window had distorted her hearing.
    “What?” She could manage no other words.
    “Your nigger tenant is ’bout to let loose another pickaninny on Thornton land. Tillie, come and get this baby.”
    Eula felt Tillie’s groan. She could neither see nor hear anyone or anything else in the room.
    “I wonder who the daddy is?” Nothing of a proper question lingered in Belle’s voice.
    By the grunts coming from Little Ben, Eula surmised that her sister-in-law had handed over the baby to Tillie.
    “Aunt Belle, I swear you don’t listen sometimes. Aunt Eula just told you ’bout the hired man. Of course he’s the father. You know colored. They just rut around every chance they get.” Tillie walked out of the room as Belle stood to smooth her crumpled dress.
    “I don’t believe that hired man was there long enough to give anybody a baby, do you, Eula Mae?” Belle swept past her.
    Eula tried to make her feet move. There had to be some mistake. The woman…what was her name…couldn’t be pregnant, not if her husband hadn’t come home. Every imaginable thought poured into her head, but only one stuck to the inside of her brain like honey to a hive. She had to get home right now.
    As she clicked the harness moving her horse faster, Eula’s buckboard bounced on a rut in the lane. She could barely remember how she had gotten this far. She recalled stumbling out of Fedora’s kitchen and mumbling something about forgetting her corn bread and she had to return home immediately to retrieve it. As she passed the stand of trees near her barn, she peered at the sky. The sun, a shade past its peak, told her it must be close to half past one. She had just missed the onslaught of men coming out of the fields and into the Thornton yard to begin the prayer dinner. She thought she spotted Reverend Hawkins as she made her hasty retreat, but she really couldn’t be sure. She pulled the buckboard in front of the barn. Without unharnessing the animal, Eula led him to the horse trough filled with water, and ran into her own kitchen. Frantically, she reached for her journal.
    Eula almost ripped the pages with her twitching fingers as they turned back to December, November, October, and finally September. All together the harvest had brought in over forty-five hundred dollars. Her books told her that after paying for food, supplies, and tenant needs for seven months, she and Alex should still have way over two thousand dollars. Grabbing one of her kitchen chairs and dragging it across her kitchen, parlor, and dining room floors to her bedroom, she stood it in front of the closet door. Gingerly stepping up onto its seat, she reached for the top shelf and began shifting boxes and bags until she felt the tin with her fingers. Dislodging a box of Confederate money left over from Alex’s father that nearly spilled out over her head, she pulled down the tin. Eula wobbled off the chair, almost tipping it. She carried the box to the bed and dropped it down onto the feathered four-poster. Her hands worked to pry it open. The box was locked. Eula’s mind rummaged over the whereabouts of the key. Remembering, she rushed to the closet and to Alex’s funeral-and-wedding suit. There, in a breast pocket, she pulled out the key. Her hands shaking, she ran back to the bed and slipped the key into the lock. It turned easy as though it had been opened frequently in recent months.
    Inside, Eula found, and tossed aside, the deeds for the house and land. She piled the sale papers for the animals on top of the bed. She scattered supply receipts across the floor. She dug her hands deep into the box until her fingers pulled out the envelope that should have been fat with cash. Her hands still trembling, Eula counted out one thousand four hundred fifty-five dollars and seventy-five cents. She shook her head. That couldn’t be right. Her journal records told her they should have over two thousand dollars. She recounted. One thousand four hundred fifty-five dollars and seventy-five cents. Just like the records on her preserves in the smoke house, there had been no mistake. Over five hundred dollars was missing.
    A wave of dizziness came up sudden from her stomach. She felt like she did as an eight-year-old when she slid off a slippery rock and fell into the slow-flowing creek on the far side of Lawnover. She clutched at her middle and