Agnes Amour: Daughters That Swap

Tootsie's wasn't open yet; too early in the morning. Sue Belle Jamison turned slowly and strolled on down Broadway, past the Pink Pussy Massage Parlor, almost colliding with a balding, middle-ager who hurried out the doorway looking guilty. Sue Belle stared at him briefly, wondering if she should follow him and see if he would spring for a room, but he was gone and away before she made up her mind. Finally, with some resignation, she turned and jaywalked across the street to Deeman's.

Too early for the tourists, even, but they would be here. In their walking shorts and brightly colored sport shirts, carrying their camera cases around their necks, the cameras resting on their pot bellies; the men would be sounding off to their equally tourist wives, gawking at the souvenir shops, the record stores and the Alamo-home of fine Western-type clothing.

Sue Belle glanced at the clock over the Easy Loan Pawn Shop doorway. Ten and already Nashville was sweltering in a midsummer heat wave. She pulled a dirty handkerchief from her battered leather purse and dabbed at the sweat rolling down the side of her tanned face. As soon as she wiped it clear another bead swelled up and rolled downward, shining and glistening in the sun.

It was cooler than this in Atlanta. Maybe she should have stayed there a while longer, at least until fall; and the waitress job was a fairly decent one, but what the hell. If she was going to make it big in Nashville she had to get her feet wet.

A fat, dirty-looking delivery man walked out of Deeman's, wiping the foam from his full lips. He belched, nodded to Sue Belle and hurried on up to his delivery truck parked in front of old Ernest Tubbs's Record Shop. Sue Belle watched him until he started the dingy truck and pulled slowly onto the half deserted street.

She was trying to make up her mind whether or not it was too early to make a pickup. She had to eat and eat soon or she just knew she would fall flat on her face. She had decided last night, after sitting all night in that twenty-four-hour cafe near the Greyhound Bus Station that she had to get somebody to shack with. After making all the rounds of the recording studios and booking agents she had tried the restaurants for anything from waitress to dishwasher, but there already were too many others in the same fix ahead of her.

So, she reached her decision. Even though she had grown up around the honky tonks and red necks in that small Georgia town where she had been half-raised, she was still a virgin. She had fought for it many times in the past six years, but she did still have it. When she realized that she wasn't going anyplace she had packed her belongings and thumbed to Atlanta. From there to Nashville, and…

Counting her change, even though she knew she had exactly seventy-three cents to her name, she decided to enter the bar. At fourteen, Sue Belle looked much older. There was a look of wisdom and understanding in her eyes that would have fit a woman twice her age. She had learned much of sex from her mother, a beer bar waitress who took customers into a back room and fucked them for a five-dollar bill. Even at eight she was wise in the way of men. One of her mother's "overnight" guests had sneaked to her bed after her mother had passed out. When he found out that Sue was just too small to enter, Sue had obliged him by playing with his cock until he shot his semen all over her tiny body. There had been many other occasions, too. Sue was wise enough even then, not to put up a fight, but always, she managed to keep them from penetrating her vagina. She had even sucked an overzealous guy's cock. But she had remained a virgin.

She had never been close to her mother, but the older woman had told Sue that her Daddy was a country music singer and that he was working out of Nashville. He had called himself Curly •Bill, but after checking for many months, Sue decided that he was either dead or had changed his name. She didn't have a picture of him, but her mother had described him enough. Usually when she did talk about him, she was so drunk that sometimes her faded past was more dreamlike than real, and Sue didn't know where or at what point fact gave way to fiction. She did know she had inherited her father's talent for singing, and she did know that she was in love with the image of the dream-man her mother had pictured for her so many times. It would be a man like her daddy who would get to pop her cherry. She had said this over and over to herself for the past few years, but now, broke, hungry, and without a bed, she knew she couldn't hold out. She would have to give in so she could continue to live.

She stepped inside Deeman's doorway. Standing for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dimness, Sue Belle was aware of the only other two customers inside. One was probably a cook, by the looks of his white pants and shirt, who was having a cold beer before going to work, but he could have been a painter, Sue realized. She couldn't decide which. She liked to look at people and imagine what they did or who they were. Back in Atlanta she could sit by the hour in a busy shopping center and study people. Maybe, too, down deep, she just hoped she might find her daddy.

She pushed the painter or cook, whatever, out of her mind and studied the other customer. He was a country music picker.

Even though she had been in Nashville only two weeks, she could already spot pickers. This one was young, older than she, but young, maybe twenty-two or three. He would be wearing, in addition to the black felt cowboy hat, faded jeans and an equally faded print, long-sleeve shirt. Sue Belle couldn't make it out in the dimness, but she knew she was right in her appraisal.

"What're you having?" The bartender, a tall dark-haired gambler-type with a thin mustache, stood waiting for Sue to order.

"Coke." She had wondered which had more food value, a coke or a milk. She couldn't stand milk and maybe the coke would give her more strength. At least she hoped so.

She eased her lithe young body up on the stool and counted out a quarter from the loose change. Before the bartender could reach for it, the picker called out from down the bar, "I got it, mac.”

Sue Belle raised the coke in a mock salute. The picker moved from his end of the bar and swaggered to the stool alongside Sue Belle's. "Mind if I join you?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I sure to hell hate drinking alone, and who'd a thought such a pretty little ol' gal would pop in on me this early in the morning." His voice was deep backwood North Carolina or maybe Eastern Tennessee.

Sue Belle watched him.

"Man, honey, this beer sure do go down fine. I just got in early from a gig in Bowling Green, and I aim to get rip roaring drunk today. Watch out Nashville!" He grinned an infectious grin and Sue Belle felt it getting to her as she watched the picker's reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

Now she turned to him, "Do you pick?”

"Hell yes, honey. Doesn't everybody. I pick a mean guitar and once in a while Bonnie lets me sing one.”

"Bonnie?”

"Yeah, Bonnie Dale. I work with her group.”

"Bonnie Dale!" Sue Belle's heart skipped a beat. "I know most of her songs by heart. Oh!" She was suddenly so excited she thought she was going to fall from the stool. Righting herself, she continued. "She's so sweet and that voice of hers… oh my!”

"Hey, honey, don't you believe it. Bonnie Dale's the hardest woman or person for that matter that I've ever worked for. She's about as sweet as an old diamond-back rattler, and that's putting it mildly.”

"Why, why I simply couldn't believe that.”

"Believe what you want, honey, but it's the truth, so help me.”

Sue Belle shook her head, "I swear it's hard to believe. Why do you stay with her if she's so hard?”