Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

as you needs me.”
    “I tole you befo’ not to mess with me. I knows you tryin’ to lay up money to get back to tobacco country, and I knows it’s plowin’ time. You’ll be outta here lickety-split as soon as you get five hundred dollars in yo’ poke.” She took two quick puffs on the cigarette, then let an ash fall on her fringed rug. She looked at him like she was daring him to call her a liar.
    “I ain’t got but a little over two hundred, Miz Zeola. And I ain’t ’bout to leave you ’cause I…” He didn’t know that a woman her size could flash around a table and four chairs to stand within six inches of him quicker than he could finish his words.
    “I don’t give a damn ’bout the lie you gettin’ ready to tell me, country boy. I want to make you a deal.” In addition to her no powder and no wig, Zeola hadn’t taken the time to clean her teeth. The smell of onions from last night’s smothered pork chops blasted at him.
    “What you offerin’, Miz Zeola?”
    “The big pots.” She took a step back, and John let out a breath.
    “What you mean, the big pots? Alfred sits the big pots.” He didn’t like it when women talked in circles.
    “I wants you to hold the big pots. Leastwise ’til I can get me somebody else. You take over the weekends, Fridays through Sundays. That’s three of ’em.” She sucked in on her cigarette.
    “And Alfred? What pots will he sit?” It would be best to proceed slowly until Zeola could start talking like a woman with at least some of her wits about her.
    “I see Red did keep that loud mouth of his shut and ain’t tole you a thing. Alfred took off with Sally. He the father of Sally’s baby. They both left me high and dry, and I got Bubba Johnson and seven other high rollers comin’ in at ten o’clock.” She jerked her head toward the secret door to the big gaming room off her parlor. “Take it myself, but I got me the police chief comin’ in tonight. I got to make sure everythin’ goes jest right. I gots my hands full. He wants that new young gal I took in last week, and she ain’t nowhere near ready enough to entertain a white man.” Zeola turned around in a swish of wrapper.
    “Whoa, Miz Zeola.” John held up a hand. For a woman used to being close-mouthed, Zeola was pouring a whole barrel of words over him. “You tellin’ me that Alfred ain’t sittin’ pots no mo’? That he took off with Sally?” John flashed on all the nights he’d spent with the far gone pregnant Sally knowing her baby wasn’t his. “What kind of money we talkin’ ’bout, Zeola?”
    She stopped her puffing and her pacing. “Pots with Bubba Johnson playin’ been runnin’ to almost three hundred a night.” Zeola’s voice steadied.
    “Three hundred dollars?” The figures he ran in his head were working wonders to calm him. “You say there’s eight players tonight? What do I get fo’ holdin’ the big pots?”
    “Twenty dollars out of every pot and a dollar a man at the table.” Zeola was settling into her old self again.
    “Make it forty and five dollars a man.” John leveled his eyes at his boss.
    Zeola let out a laugh so deep that it rolled right up her spacious belly to the front of her nightgown.
    “Well, Johnny, I guess you ain’t much of a country boy no mo’. You sure you wanna go back to plantin’ tobacca?” Her laugh came so hard that he could barely catch her words.
    “What ’bout my fo’ty dollars?” He had no intention of her joshing him off target.
    As fast as her laughter came, it dried in her throat.
    “You may not be a country boy no mo’, but you ain’t quite slick enough to git one over on Miz Zeola. I’ll give you thirty out of every pot and two dollars a head. That’ll give you over a hundred dollars a weekend just fo’ yo’self. Take it or leave it.” All of her earlier panic had evaporated.
    “And I keeps my little pot games durin’ the week.” He made sure it sounded more like a foregone conclusion than the question he knew it should be.
    A little smile flickered over Zeola’s lips.
    “You do both pot jobs.” She motioned him to step across the hall and into her parlor. She pointed to the gaming room where the serious poker players sat.
    As John moved to squeeze past her, she clamped her hand over his shoulder. He felt like he was being held in a red-hot blacksmith’s vise.
    “You give me two mo’ months, and you will have enough money to buy them twenty acres in tobacca country. No mo’ plantin’