Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

anything he wanted for free, and now Zeola wanted him to pay for one of her girls as some kind of bonus for his loyalty. He knew he should think of it as just another part of goin’-along-to-get-along just like at the sporting houses, but this one didn’t set right with him. He held nothing against the whore, but he wanted no part of another man’s leavings, business or no business.
    “If you got yo’ eyes set on one of my chambermaids, you can get yo’self ready to step on out my back do’ and don’t never look back.” Zeola’s face looked like the aftermath of the battle of Clarksville.
    “No, ma’am. I don’t want yo’ hired girls, nor Sally neither. I don’t needs to pay fo’ no woman.” The words had slipped out before he could snap them back.
    The darkest, most dreary winter’s day couldn’t compare to Miz Zeola’s face. “Too good to pay, is you? Just stay away from my chambermaids.”
    “Miz Zeola, ma’am, I’d feel real bad showin’ disrespect to a woman ’bout to have a baby. But, if you say she wouldn’t mind, it would pleasure me to take you up on yo’ kind offer of a dollar fo’ her time.” He hoped he’d found the right angle to bend his neck in apology.
    “Hmm. Don’t let Sally be none of yo’ worry. She ain’t but six months anyway.” In a flurry of chiffon, she huffed through the door.
    Alone, John pulled out his new, squared-off handkerchief. He mopped his forehead before he began tidying the game room. He had risked too much to ever slip like that again. Zeola was nosy, and he had already told this woman more of his business than she needed to know, but he was learning quick that she was not a woman to wink at and forget. John had to have her on his side. The idea bounced in his head that his wife and his boss were both women who took more than a shuck and a grin to satisfy.
    At the rate he was going, he would have plenty of money to make a big splash next month at Christmas. But, a big splash would not be enough to ward off Annalaura’s anger. John needed far more than toys, pinafores, and satin sheets to warm up his wife. That made her all the more priceless. He had to get enough money to buy a place of his own, and he needed Zeola to hand him those late-night pots. Big Red had said the second game pots sometimes got up to two hundred dollars with eight men playing two decks. That was the kind of money he had to have to make all this worthwhile.
    John put the dirty shot glasses in the basin Zeola kept under the little table. The room had no mirrors—bad for poker playing—but he made an attempt to pat his hair in place. Cut short, John knew he didn’t need a greasy-style conk to make him attractive to the ladies. After he’d fulfilled his obligations to Sally, so she could rave about him to Zeola, he would head back to the boardinghouse and his two new housemates. One or even both of the colored schoolteachers could help him pass the time away from his wife. When he got home in the next couple of months, he knew not to tell Annalaura about this part of his adventure. In that one way, she was just like all other women. A man gone from home a long time on family business got lonely. Paying for a woman was no substitute. The companionship of the schoolteachers would make the time away from Annalaura tolerable. Even if his wife could never accept it, a man had to be a man, and what the wife didn’t know couldn’t hurt her none.

CHAPTER TWELVE
     
    Eula tugged at her shawl to see if it would fit around her a second time to ward off the mid-January cold in the smoke house. Even the closed door didn’t stop the wind that had whistled at her window most of the night from creeping into the room through the unplastered walls of the outbuilding. With fingers frigid from the weather, she held up the lantern to the shelf she reserved for her canned vegetables. Normally, she checked her stock every Monday, but not until after breakfast. Today, she’d gotten an early start because Wiley George planned to drop off Tillie for a few hours while he and Alex went over to Lawnover. As she held the light higher to read the labels on her Mason jars, the frown in her forehead deepened.
    With her lamp held close, she counted the jars of canned tomatoes a third time, but the number still came up thirty-five. She lowered the lamp to the worktable where her journal lay open to the page marked “vegetables.” She traced one rapidly numbing finger across the rows. There it