Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

his great aunt’s lap. Annalaura started to whisper to Rebecca that freedom had come to her for real this time. They had crossed over into the North, where a colored person’s life was supposed to be easier.
    She glanced over at Henry’s still body, dreaming his little boy dreams of drums and shoes that didn’t pinch. Staring out of the window into the darkness as the colored porter pulled up the portable steps, Annalaura spotted Becky’s wavering reflection in the window. Her aunt sat with her chin on her chest, her mouth open. The unfamiliar feel of a tiny smile played across Annalaura’s lips, the first since the beating John had laid on her three days ago. If she could believe her husband, Alex still lived. She let her shoulders sink into the seat back.
    It would be midnight in another two hours, and the porter had already announced that Chicago was eight hours away. Dawn would come soon enough, and with it, her own uncertain future. As the railroad man made his way out of their train car, clanging the heavy connecting door behind him, Annalaura caught a glimpse of movement across the aisle and four rows up. John carefully stepped over a sleeping Cleveland and swayed his way down the aisle. Before she could let the full fright take hold in her brain, her hand clutched the shawl covering baby Dolly. The husband she had betrayed walked toward her, his face bathed in flickering shadows.
    Since this morning, when he had stormed into the cabin before Becky could get the old blunderbuss off its fireplace hook and ordered them all to come with him “right now,” he hadn’t said more than a dozen words to her. When she scooted her sore and bruised body to the far side of the bed, fierce to let no harm fall on Dolly, John let his words come out as cold as the barrel of Becky’s gun.
    “McNaughton ain’t dead…yet,” he’d said, “and if you wants to keep it that way, you’d best be comin’ with me.”
    Annalaura couldn’t recall much more about that moment, only that her brain felt like it was pushing her eyes right out of her head. Little Dolly’s gasping cries brought her back to herself in the train car. She searched in her head for the right questions to ask her husband the why of it. She remembered that John had swooped her and the baby into his arms and shoved past a flabbergasted Becky. Even when he laid the two into the back of a wagon already crowded with Doug, Henry, and a shivering Lottie, Annalaura couldn’t muster a word. Was it a trick? Had John killed Alex after all? Before the night riders caught up with them, was John driving her to take a final tormenting look at Alex’s lifeless body? In the wagon, she’d clung tight to the swaddled infant as she grabbed at Doug’s foot, resting in the small of her back.
    “Cleveland?” had been the only sound she’d managed.
    “Up top with Papa and Aunt Becky,” Doug had whispered back.
    Annalaura felt Lottie wrap her skinny arms around her mother’s drawn-up knees. Why was John taking his own children to see a dead man? Even in her bewilderment, she’d felt the tears forming.
    Under Becky’s blanket, and a pile of old burlap that still smelled of last year’s husked corn, Annalaura stretched out a hand to pat Henry’s face, now snuggled hard into Doug’s chest. Where was her husband taking them?
    With Doug’s shoe putting fresh bruises on her back, Annalaura tried to reach for Lottie as the wagon jolted to a wobbly stop. She remembered croaking something at Doug about covering little Henry’s eyes. She would stop her children from seeing the sight of white-hooded men, stout trees, and knotted ropes, for as long as she could. She shut her own eyes tight, clung to Dolly, and let the darkness swoon over her.
    The feel of rough hands, and the sharp stab of daylight, brought her back to the world. Annalaura worked Lottie’s head and shoulders between her knees and rolled her own body on top of the newborn. But, it was too late. Before she could blink, she felt John take her in his arms and toss the blanket over her and the baby. She turned her face into his chest. She didn’t want to see where he was carrying her as the hissing sound of steam beat into her ears.
    By the time John set her down on the second of the train steps, Annalaura already knew that her husband had taken her to the Clarksville railroad station. With her eyes blinking in the light of the early morning sun, she looked up to see a stern-faced Cleveland grab for her