Read Online Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition) by Francine Thomas Howard - Free Book Online

child to her other hip. She hoped the sight of him would keep Aunt Becky from asking too many questions. Annalaura loved her aunt, but the woman had the all-seeing eye of her Cherokee mother. She would know what the trouble was before Annalaura could get out a good word. Annalaura nudged Henry awake as she turned up the path to the old mud-chinked cabin where Aunt Becky had been born a slave on Thornton land sixty years earlier. After the War, she had married a man who called himself Murdock, though Becky never used his name, nor did she ever move away to live with him. Rebecca Murdock had always lived on Thornton land, and she had always been far more than an aunt to Annalaura.
    Geneva Thornton Robbins had been just twenty-nine, and Annalaura four, when the galloping consumption separated mother from daughter. Steps from the gray, weathered front door of the old slave cabin with its iron ring for a knocker, Annalaura rummaged in her head for a memory of that day. Her mother’s face was less than a blur these twenty-five years later. Not even her smell lingered in the adult Annalaura. What was clear as a pond after a springtime thaw was the remembrance of how the four-year-old had begged to be allowed to live with her pipe-smoking grandmother after her mother’s death.
    Grandma Charity’s lap had always been inviting even when Annalaura’s mother was alive. The woman with the strong nose, straight, still-black hair, and cinnamon-colored skin had rocked young Annalaura to sleep many a time. As a youngster, she nestled into her grandmother’s ample bosom and let her drowsy mind take in the stories of the old woman’s own girlhood.
    Charity was just nine when the soldiers marched her entire village out of their North Carolina home. The woman had repeated the story so oft en that Annalaura could almost see the Cherokee cabins. Grandma had always insisted to her doubting granddaughter that the Indian cabins had been much finer than the ones the white men built for their slaves. The Cherokee had always lived in houses of wood that kept a body warm and snug in the winter with fireplaces that were built right in the center.
    Annalaura set the half-asleep Henry on his feet as they paused outside Becky’s front door. The unhappy-looking child set up a wail that sounded just like the one Charity used to imitate all the crying that occurred on that long walk out of North Carolina.
    “That walk to Oklahoma was from sunup to way past sundown, with the soldiers on their tall horses poking their fire sticks into the backs of anyone who lagged.” The old woman had always begun the tale the same way, as her bare and calloused feet set the old rocker in motion.
    “That piece of a trail was just about washed away in Cherokee tears.” Grandma Charity creaked the chair.
    Henry stamped his feet in time to his wailing as he reached his impatient arms up to Annalaura. The cabin door creaked open on its rusty hinges, and Aunt Becky peeped her head out of the gloom. She looked her visitors up and down, and as usual, Annalaura could not read her impassive face.
    “You feedin’ that chile?” All Cherokee women had the knowledge of the herbs, and most had at least a smattering of the gift of second sight. Aunt Becky always told her that. Rebecca Thornton Murdock was only half-Cherokee and that should have slowed her down, but the speed with which the old woman could read anybody’s intentions both annoyed and amazed Annalaura.
    “Just had dinner.” Even if Becky was close to knowing why she had come to her cabin, Annalaura couldn’t just blurt out that her children were so close to starving that it seemed an actual fact.
    Becky still held the door open only a crack. She turned that eye on Annalaura again. When the earthen-skinned woman finally did open the door, it was to grin a gap-toothed smile at Henry.
    “Come on in here, chile. Auntie’s got a treat fo’ you.” Becky slid a thin, calico-clad arm around the back of Henry’s head