Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

head. He would be getting over eleven dollars, counting Bubba’s tip.
    Zeola made quick work of counting up the pot, but she slowly and carefully placed each of the coins and bills into the winner’s hands. With the two remaining players watching, she fanned out six one-dollar bills and laid one five-dollar gold piece into John’s hands.
    “That extra forty-five cents is from the house cut.” She turned to the plaid-suited fellow. “Since this is yo’ first time here, I want you to enjoy Miz Zeola’s hospitality. I’ll charge you only a dollar for one of my best girls.” She reached over to the bourbon bottle and filled up the winner’s glass and handed it to him as she walked him to the door.
    John clutched his twelve dollars. If the pots continued to be this good, he could be home by Christmas with enough money to make the day very merry indeed for Annalaura and the children.
    “Don’t put that money in yo’ pocket just yet, John Welles.” Zeola closed the door behind the last two players. She kept both hands behind her back, holding the knob shut tight.
    “How much of that money you sending home to yo’ wife?” Her fake eyelashes swept her face like big black cobwebs as she reached a hand toward him.
    Startled, John swung his eyes toward her.
    “Yeah, I know you country boys leave yo’ women at home when you come over here to Nashville.” She turned her palm upward and rubbed her fingers together.
    “Beggin’ yo’ pardon, ma’am, but I know how to take care of my family.” John pulled out his special grin, the one he always used when it was especially important to put the charm on a woman getting too big for her drawers.
    Zeola dropped her hand and walked a slow circle around him. At his back, he could feel her eyes boring into him.
    “Looky here, Johnny-boy, I don’t need you makin’ eyes at me. I been in this business since befo’ you ever laid yo’ first woman.” She stood flat-footed in front of him. “Now, I likes you well enough to see that you don’t mess up.”
    “No, ma’am. I ain’t got no intentions of messing up.” John clamped down on his tongue to control himself. He wasn’t used to not speaking his mind with a woman unless it was Annalaura. He knew an argument with her was useless.
    “You ain’t my first country boy, you know. I seen a lot of them come and go. Some get so full of theyselves that they go outta here feet first with a Texas jacknife stuck in their gut. Others try to shuck and jive me, and I show them the do’ fast.” Zeola waved her chiffon sleeves in the air. The scent of her perfume attached itself to John’s new coat. “You may think it, but I’m not meddling in yo’ business. But, if you don’t know that a good-lookin’ country boy—who thinks he’s the smartest thing to ever hit Nashville—and his money is soon parted, then you ain’t nothin’ but a fool.”
    “Yes’m. I do understand but there’s no need for you to worry ’bout my family. I’m gonna take care of them just fine.” His grin came so automatically when he tried to fool the women that he now had to work hard to keep Zeola from seeing it.
    “I’m proud to hear it, but I’m takin’ five dollars a week outta yo’ pots to save for yo’ woman whether you likes it or not.” Her hands went to her hips, and all of her chins waggled when she shook her head for emphasis.
    John seethed as he let the smallest of smiles cross his face. He’d done without a mother since he was six years old. With more than twenty dollars already stashed in the floorboard box back at Miz Brown’s, he knew what he was doing.
    “’Tending no offense, Miz Zeola, but I’m used to taking care of my wife myself.”
    “Man, how long you been in this town? You been at my place fo’ months. How long you think any woman on a cracker’s farm, sharecroppin’, can take care of herself on her own?”
    “She ain’t on her own, Miz Zeola. She’s got her people to go to.” It wasn’t quite a lie.
    “You done good tonight.” Zeola nodded.
    “Now I’m gonna cut yo’ rate on my Sally ’cause she done got herself in a family way. You can have her fo’ a dollar, but it betta be after business hours.”
    John swallowed twice before he trusted his voice. “That’s most kind of you, Miz Zeola, but ain’t Sally too old to have a baby?”
    The idea of paying for a woman had never set well with John. He had always been surrounded by women who had been more than willing to give him