Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

Henry toward her. Seeing the water, the boy ran to his mother and reached for the container. Annalaura guided the rim to his lips. She called over her shoulder to Lottie without looking at her daughter.
    “Stop that skippin’. Take yourself a draw of water and get on back to work.” She nodded her head in the general direction of a second Mason jar laying on the ground near the smoke house.
    With Henry squatting on the dirt watching the antics of an earthworm, Annalaura took a swig of liquid from her own jar. She wet her palm with a few drops and rubbed her hands over her cheeks. So much heat sprang from her legs that she felt they had been wrapped tight in a feather quilt. She flapped her long skirt to stir up a bit of air. The relief was short-lived. Sucking in her lower lip, she bent down and grabbed the back hem of her skirt. She brought the cloth forward through her legs and up to her waist. Annalaura snatched up the wide sides and tied the whole thing into a knot at her middle. While the briars might prick at her bare legs, at least from ankle to mid-thigh, her legs would get some relief from the suffocating skirt. Rolling up her shirtsleeves and flapping her arms in the air, Annalaura tried to stir up another breeze while her eyes scanned the acres for Cleveland. The boy was nowhere to be seen.
    Ever since John disappeared, Cleveland had taken on the toughest jobs without being told. Annalaura reckoned he must have been working the fence line dividing McNaughton’s mid-forty from his back acreage. She knew the tenant farmers on that piece had a better spot of land than she and John had been given to farm. At her colored church on Sunday mornings, she spotted the family as newcomers to Lawnover. While the woman was round and pudgy, the man was of good size and their two sons looked almost grown. The family hadn’t said more than a polite “howdy do” to the old-time Lawnover colored. Still, even with all their back-forty hands, it had been the Welles family who brought in the most, and the best quality, tobacco of all the McNaughton acres last year.
    The new family was on the back acres again this harvest. Like everyone else in Lawnover, they would know of her troubles. Annalaura realized they believed they could best the Welles family in ’cropping now that John was gone. She tried to swallow away a lump that came into her dry throat. If only she could say a good, out-loud cuss word against her missing husband. She shook the notion away. Annalaura didn’t have the energy to waste on a man as stuck on himself as John Welles.
    When the dandy of Lawnover came courting, nobody had been more surprised than she. Annalaura even told her Aunt Becky she wasn’t sure about this caller. Didn’t folks call him a “sportin’ man?” But Becky said John had more than gambling, drinking, and woman-chasing in his head. With his good sense and fine looks, he was the colored catch of the county. Annalaura had never wanted a “catch.” She just wanted a man who would work alongside her—a man who wanted more than to sharecrop some white man’s acres for the rest of his life. John Welles was not only discontent to tenant farm, he also wasn’t happy staying true to just one woman. Annalaura tossed her head to clear it. She had no more time for a man who would leave his wife and children in such a fix.
    She dropped to a squat and pulled at a particularly bothersome weed. From her spot, she looked up at the sky to see nothing but an uncommon blue. Almost all the rest of Montgomery County was praying against rain this close to harvest, but not her. Annalaura needed those shoots to grow bigger, and she needed that spurt right away.
    A twitch shot through the right side of her back. She unwound her knees and hips and arched herself to her feet. Raising her hands over her head to stretch out a threatening kink, she looked down at Henry. Still spread-legged on the ground some ten yards distant, the boy played both parts in a make-believe puppet show using two weeds to act out the parts. Annalaura shook her head. She had no further words for either of her youngsters. She could only drive them so far. As she swung around toward Lottie, two crows on the fence post separating the main lane from the rough path leading to the barn and smoke house took sudden flight. Annalaura shaded her eyes with a hand. Her heart did a two-step as she stared down the path at a horse and rider trotting toward the barn and her.
    “Henry, get