Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

worked his mouth to speak. Ben Roy raised a hand that the kerosene lamp silhouetted against the table into long snakelike shadows.
    “You think about Hettie’s tan-skinned cousin.” Ben Roy laid a hand on Alex’s arm. “We can’t have no trouble right now. Troubles don’t go ’way quick. They have a way of lingerin’ long and makin’ you wish things was different…wishin’ you hadn’t done what you…” Ben Roy’s eyes drifted off an instant. “Get on back to my sister, and do what you ought, ’cause that other one, that Annalaura, she ain’t available no more. Her husband’s done come home. As long as he’s around, she’s John Welles’s woman. Ain’t nobody ’round here gonna run him outta town over a baby that belongs to another man. You got to let her go, Alex. It’s over.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
     
    The clock struck eleven. Eula felt each strike bounce around her skull like apples jostling in a bushel barrel after the fall pick. Funny the things that went through her head since she’d taken to the bed nine hours ago. Not that she slept even one minute in all that time. Silly little things played in her head as she lay there staring at her white-painted ceiling and daisy-printed wallpaper, like the first time the grandfather clock had appeared in her parlor. It hadn’t been new, of course. She and Alex couldn’t afford new, especially in those days. Alex had bought it at a Clarksville auction just two weeks after her thirtieth birthday. She always liked to make believe it was a present from her loving husband, though Alex never said one way or the other.
    The clock’s time had always been right on the strike. Eleven o’clock, and she hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words to her husband in days. As good as she’d been at keeping the pain away these long hours, sometimes those other thoughts crept into her head. Sister-in-law Belle, missing preserves, the money box lighter by five hundred dollars, all insisted on tumbling around in her brain, forcing her to find another way to push them back into that wonderful place of forgetfulness.
    Eula rolled to her side and remembered something about her feet. She had managed to unbutton her shoes and drop them to the floor when the clock had struck six. But she still hadn’t found a way to remove any of her other clothing. The house was dark with the moon only a quarter full. Since it was just mid-May, Eula guessed it was probably still chilly enough this close to midnight to warrant slipping under the bedcovers. She would have done just that if her body and head could tell the difference between hot and cold, comfort and misery. Everything about her had gone numb. Other than the hourly sounding of the grandfather clock, her ears had mercifully screened out the sound of Belle Thornton’s hateful voice.
    Lying on her right side, Eula could see her half-shut bedroom door. She wanted no part of staring at a closed door, counting the hours until it would open. She rolled over to her left and lay her forearm across her eyes. Now she would neither hear, nor see, nor feel Alex, but the smell of him lingered on the feather pillow next to her head. She lowered her hand to cover her nose and mouth and went into herself so deep that the sound of the back porch and kitchen doors opening and boot steps striding across her pinewood floors made no more sense to her than the little breeze tickling her windowpane.
    She finally caught snatches of sound that might have come from a human voice, but she had the feeling that the noises had been repeated over and over before they woke up her ears. It was the unsure touch on her shoulder, rather than the harsh light from the kerosene lamp, that finally forced her mind to come partway back from that quiet, safe place.
    “Eula?” The voice was uncertain, concerned, and befuddled.
    She kept her eyes shut. She had no desire to answer that strained voice.
    “Eula Mae, you sick or somethin’?” The voice sounded tired and downcast.
    The hand on her shoulder became more certain, more familiar. Though she didn’t want it to happen, her ears slowly returned to their job. Outside, somewhere, that little breeze kicked up and rustled the new leaves on the trees. A weight dipping down the small slice of mattress behind her back told her that the owner of the voice had leaned on the bed.
    “Can I get you somethin’?” The sound of the voice shot through her.
    Eula rolled on her back as though a good gust of wind had