Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

chest. Her aunt’s comforting arms helped ease some of the pain.
    “I’m takin’ yo’ chil’ren to Hettie. I’m gonna take Ben Roy’s buggy to find somebody to take you in fo’ one or two weeks ’til yo’ baby come. Where can’t neither John nor Mr. Alexander get to you. Baby stay with them awhile. If the baby’s color come in dark, maybe John might let you bring it back. Now, I’m gonna pick you some herbs to keep that baby in you ’til its time. Ben Roy ain’t gonna bother none of yo’ chil’ren, ’cause he know I got the paper.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
     
    The sun readied to shut down for the day, though Alex had tried by hours to beat its demise, and get back to the mid-forty. After dropping the new hired man off there right before sunup, he had spent the time before the planting and prayer dinner setting up the rest of his acres. He hadn’t even gotten to the Thornton place until close to three o’clock. With Reverend Hawkins droning his prayer a good thirty minutes, the dinner hadn’t been over ’til way past six. After asking Tillie and Wiley George to check on Eula, who had strangely gone home before he arrived, Alex finally made his excuses and left to pick up the hired man and bring him back to the main barn. Since Eula had taken the buckboard, he borrowed Ben Roy’s high-seated wagon and Fedora’s slow-stepping mare.
    Alex watched the day’s shadows grow longer as he whipped at the horse. If he could get to the mid-forty twenty minutes before nightfall, he might find Laura before the hired man came in from sowing seed. He knew this was not one of those nights she had agreed to his staying, but a quick kiss and a touch could do no harm to the baby. He gave the reins two rapid flicks, but Fedora’s horse, unaccustomed to a quick pace, decided to slow down even more. Wishing for the gray, Alex finally marshaled the old animal down the lane. He trained his eyes on every foot of the familiar road knowing that when he cleared the stand of sycamores a hundred yards distant, the path to the mid-forty would be no more than a minute’s ride away. He looked up at a sky filled with deepening reds, oranges, and yellows. Alex reckoned he still had fifteen minutes of daylight before cooling evening arrived. He hoped the hired man was as good a worker as he pretended, and wouldn’t leave the new-plowed fields until after the sun had settled in for the night.
    In answer to Alex’s constant snap at her flank, the horse finally got the message and quickened her pace. With the sycamores behind him, he spotted the path and the figure of a standing child, dwarfed by a large pile of what looked like household furnishings. Sticking out of the heap were the four wooden legs of a chair turned bottom-side up. As Alex neared the path, he pulled on the reins so hard the horse nearly reared up on her hind legs. Young Cleveland took a half step forward to greet him.
    “What’s this?” Puzzled, Alex pointed to the pots, shoes, coats, skillets, quilts, dresses, cotton sheets, dolls, and dishes.
    Half buried beneath the blanket that just two days ago had served as the cover separating the open alcove doorway from the rest of the living quarters was Laura’s blue serge coat. The new hired man, sitting on the ground at the edge of the pile, stood up, removed his sweat-stained straw hat, and walked a few steps back into the fields. He could feel the man’s eyes sidle in his direction. Alex grunted his dissatisfaction at the tenant’s too-early quitting time. Cleveland looked at the family’s belongings and then turned back, his eyes staring down at the wheels on the buckboard. The boy shrugged his shoulders as Alex followed the tilt of the lad’s head.
    “Momma says to tell you that my papa done come home.”
    Alex shook his head trying to clear his ears. The boy stood somewhere between pleased, confused, and frightened.
    “Your papa? John Welles is home?” The man had been gone almost a year without a word to anyone. What the hell was the nigger doing back in Lawnover? Alex pulled out his big square handkerchief and swiped it across his forehead.
    Cleveland nodded his head. Welles back in town, and for what? Alex looked at the tumble of clothes and furniture. Whatever brought the nigger back to town couldn’t hold a man like him for long. Unless…Alex glanced over at the hired man who stood flat-footed, slowly twisting his hat in his hands. Welles was no ordinary hired hand. He would never stand