Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

came out faster than she could listen.
    “I have four children, sir.” Even though talking proper to a white man could earn her a good beating for being “uppity,” she made sure he heard every syllable of her carefully enunciated sentence. She let every bit of the teaching she had received that one winter from the colored teacher down from Fisk University linger in each word. Her children deserved to hear from their momma’s own lips that they were more than a white man’s insults.
    She dropped her eyes to just above McNaughton’s belt buckle praying that he hadn’t caught her twin infractions—raising her eyes to his face and speaking like colored could be educated the same as whites. She watched him sit upright in the saddle as his left hand jerked on the reins. Then he slid his forearm to his knee again. Barely aware, Annalaura dug her fingers hard into Lottie’s shoulder as she fought not to look into this man’s face a second time. She heard little Lottie’s soft whimper of pain, and Annalaura began rubbing the sore spot.
    “Tell me then, woman, where are your other two children?” His words and his sound didn’t match, and Annalaura had to catch herself from looking directly at him.
    He had called her a “woman.” Coming out of the mouth of a white man addressing a black female, the word meant little more than hussy or worse—a woman ready to be led to a man’s bed. If that’s what he thought, she had to make quick amends. But the sound of him had suddenly softened, and that worried Annalaura even more.
    “My older boys is workin’ the far field, suh. One is almost fo’teen and the other jest about twelve.” She knew the Lord would forgive her the lie.
    With the greatest care, she eased her head up so she could see McNaughton’s mouth. He was pursing his lips like he was thinking over some weighty issue.
    “That would make ’em big enough to do some work.” His tone sounded promising.
    Annalaura couldn’t help letting her eyes flash on his whole face. The top half of his head was shaded by his wide-brimmed straw hat, which kept her from reading his eyes. The lower half of his face was not as red from the sun as she expected. He turned his head slightly, and the light caught his deep blue eyes fixed on her.
    With dawning horror, Annalaura realized that McNaughton had locked his eyes onto her bare legs. Thoughts tumbled in her head as her hands spasmodically opened and closed on the shoulders of her children. She wanted to loosen the knot at her middle and drop her hem to the ground. But nothing in God’s Tennessee would allow her that modesty. No colored woman could ever show a white man that she believed he could be thinking those kinds of thoughts about a field hand. The heat and the worry made her head go light, and she felt herself sway.
    “Ain’t your man John Welles?” McNaughton eased the horse to the edge of the tobacco rows.
    More to keep herself from falling, Annalaura’s head came up. She fixed her eyes on his shoulders hoping that her offense would not be too great. Though she tried, her dry throat would not let her answer.
    “Or do you have a man at all?” He didn’t bother hiding the smirk in his voice.
    She sensed his eyes scanning her thighs. One hand slipped from Henry’s shoulder and almost went to the tie at her middle. She willed it back in place.
    “Yas, suh. My husband is John Welles. He’s gone up to Hopkinsville to see ’bout his folks. They doin’ better now. My John should be back just about any hour now.” She knew better than to ramble on like this with white folks, man or woman, but she had to let this man know that she was not an unattached colored woman. A colored woman without a man was fair game for every white man in Montgomery County.
    “Hopkinsville is it?” McNaughton straightened in the saddle.
    Annalaura kept her eyes on his shirt.
    “What’s Welles doin’ in Hopkinsville?”
    That he was about to catch her in a trap was draped over every word he uttered. McNaughton would want to know why John had taken off for Kentucky when he had forty acres of white man’s tobacco to harvest in the next two weeks. Annalaura dropped her head lower. Hitched up skirt or no, she had to let him think that her husband knew his duty to white folks, to his family, and to his wife.
    “My husband’s family ain’t from around here. They is from Kentucky. His auntie took bad off sick, but sick or well, my husband will be back to get in your