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

and guided him into the interior.
    Though the sun still showed promise of another good three hours of bright daylight, the kerosene lamp in the center of the old wood-blocked table that Annalaura remembered so well from her own girlhood remained the main source of light within the long room. The open-spaced cabin boasted one window, but Becky kept the lamp-oil-smudged window glass covered with particularly heavy burlap curtains. The heat from the lamp made the room even more suffocating than normal. Annalaura pulled out one of the two table chairs only to discover that a leg had loosened from its seat. Without a word of caution, Becky pulled out the other chair and pointed Henry in its direction. The old Cherokee disappeared into the semi-gloom of a corner where Annalaura knew the food safe, with its supplies, stood. After Rebecca twisted off a lid from a nearly empty jar, she reached for a spoon from the table. Scraping the sides and bottom, Becky came up with a tablespoon of peach preserves and held it out to Henry. The child beamed at the treat.
    “Jest had dinner, did he?” Becky spoke without laying her eyes on Annalaura. “What you gonna feed him fo’ supper?”
    Annalaura knew her aunt was indicting her for not being able to feed her own children. “Times is a little bit hard these days, is all.” She bent down to knock the wooden peg back into the chair leg.
    “Uh huh.” Becky had the weary sound of a woman who knew all about hard times.
    Times had gotten even harder after Geneva died. The good-as-orphaned Annalaura had never understood why her mother’s older sister had insisted upon keeping her at the cabin instead of letting her live with her grandmother. Her aunt would never say more than it had been a promise made to the dying Geneva. “Raise my girl. Don’t let her ever go to Momma.” But, when Annalaura got up to some size, she deviled the other colored children in the neighborhood until they whispered in her ear when they were sure her aunt wasn’t around. “There’s bad blood between yo’ Grandma Charity and yo’ Aunt Becky.” If they knew more, Annalaura couldn’t even beat it out of them.
    “Come on over here, baby.” Becky, her back bent from fifty-five years stooped over the tobacco plants, beckoned Henry who was playing with the spoon in his mouth.
    The boy licked at the long-gone taste of peach preserves. The wraith of a woman walked the child back into the gloom of the cabin and pulled out a small square of corn bread from the food safe.
    “Take that outside, baby, so you don’t get crumbs on Aunt Becky’s clean flo’.” She left the door open a crack as Henry sat on the stoop stuffing the corn bread into his mouth.
    Rebecca walked back over to Annalaura and took over the one sound chair. One bony arm reached out for her pipe. She put it in her mouth unlit.
    “When you last heard from that sportin’ man husban’ of your’n?” Becky tapped at the bowl of her pipe. Her eyes had not yet settled on Annalaura.
    “I reckon he’s too busy to send word,” Annalaura lied.
    “Uh huh.” Becky took a draw on the dry pipe.
    Annalaura stiffened. Her aunt always had a way of dragging out the torment when she wanted to lay into Annalaura. “I ’spect he’ll be back right before the end of the harvest.”
    “Thorntons brought in the last of their tobacco day befo’ yestiddy.” Becky finally let her eyes light on Annalaura’s face. “Yours ain’t barely ready to spear yet. You need a man to help.”
    Annalaura steeled herself against those Cherokee eyes that always made her squirm. “No good not keepin’ yo’ man satisfied in bed,” Becky pronounced.
    Annalaura felt the blood rush to her face.
    “You need the conjure woman.”
    “I don’t need no conjure woman.” Annalaura wanted to take back the rise in her voice, but not the words. “I need a speck of food to feed my children until the tobacco is sold.”
    “A woman who can keep her man happy don’t need to be