Featured Spotlight on "Unspoken" by Jann Alexander - Blog Tour & Book Excerpt

BOOK EXCERPT

WILLA MAE

There are times my memories are so clear.

The odor of burning paper that accompanies a blue norther in March, with its low, blue-gray clouds stretching across the horizon

I can smell the acrid reek behind the glove factory where the smiths tanned the hides they hung and stripped. The smooth feel of the leather on the table where my sewing machine sat, as I fed it into the stitcher, the smell of it I came to love once it was tanned and dyed. The plum leather was my favorite of the ones I fanned out on my table, their edges revealing the warm sienna, the reddish rust, the rich chocolate brown, the deep black, the lovely pale cream color, all in a blend I would rearrange daily in a daydream until the foreman yelled at me.

The rumble of thunderheads massing north and northwest of Hartless that signals a dry norther

I hear the freight trains thundering past our little shack near the Rock Island tracks, where Beck found work after we married in 1921. The earthy smell of the cattle and their dissatisfaction sounding in low moans as the FW&DC train rocked past to Denver. How slippery the soapy water was when we paid a nickel to wash in the bathhouse tub.

The sky makes us feel as though we have no limits. It’s as endless as our promise

The sound of rain hammering the roof, soaking the tracts we’d buy from the land agent. The rainfall nearing thirty inches in 1923 alone.

All around us, wheat growing tall and strong, finally golden and ripe for the cutting. Combines crawling the vast fields. Bins overflowing with unending yields, prices steady, demand rising. Good harvests for the big wheat producers, better for the small farmers we’d become.

The look of pride on my husband’s face when he made his down payment and signed the deed at the bank for our section carved from the old XIT Ranch. How secure his hand felt, tucking mine inside his, as we walked out of the bank together, standing on the brick-paved street a moment, allowing our adjustment to our new status as landowners.

The way the Panhandle wind shifted our bountiful wheat crop lazily, gold and green waves shimmering in endless Texas sunshine, ours blending with everyone’s as far as the eye could see. Plentiful rains, as the land company promised, making for fertile fields

Beck coming home after a September morning of setting the winter wheat to eat his noonday supper, sitting down to my rabbit stew and the buttermilk biscuits I’d pulled hot from the oven. Ladling thick honey onto one, his eyes lighting up at the mingling of the sweet and warm. The way our humble dugout smelled from my home cooking and his sweaty earthiness. The feel of his rough finger, dunked straight into the honey pot and rubbed across my lips, our happy laughter, his insistence on kissing the honey from my lips.

The way we made our first baby

I knew then William would be a boy to name for the rambling father I had craved in my childhood, so willing to send me off with my new husband yet certain he’d never see me again. Daniel Wilhelm Eckhart, my father the geologist, ever exploring, mapping new terrain in search of oil, and leaving little to recall of our times together. Yet asking that one thing from me. Keep my name alive.

Those things are as vivid to me as the sharp chill of the ice baths they force me into each day, before the shock injections.

For my memory, they tell me.