Brack breaks out of Birmingham City jail, and the work flashes back to show us how he came to be in prison, as members of the chorus take on various roles such as participants in the square dance at which Brack killed Thomas Bouché in an argument over Jennie Parsons (all three characters are named in the original folk song). As filled out in the opera's libretto, Jennie's father had lost money in business with Bouché and believes his shady partner needs pandering to -- Mr. Parsons forbids her to go out with any man other than Bouché. Jennie attends the dance with Brack anyway, and it is Bouché who draws the knife, drawling, "I come lookin' for my woman, boy." Brack turns the older man's weapon upon him, and already by the next morning the women in town are gossiping, "Might've known Jennie would be getting' somebody in trouble," even though of course it was her own father's encouragement of the loutish, lecherous Bouché that caused the entire mess. Brack valiantly faces up to his punishment; he escapes from prison only so he can spend his last hours with Jennie.
In A Few Touch Birds we've already seen how the local biddies accused Carlisle Floyd's Susannah, of the 1955 eponymous opera, of being a slut just for being physically attractive. Here again, the composer created his own libretto, in this case mixing in excellent pastiches of American folk melodies, from the square dance that opens the work to the knee-slapping "Jay-bird Song" sung by Susannah's brother Sam, to Susannah's own more plaintive "Ain't it a pretty night" and "The trees on the mountain are cold and bare." The setting is New Hope Valley, Tennessee, at the lower tip of Appalachia and smack in the Bible Belt. Eighteen-year-old Susanna, dirt-poor, lives in the backwoods with her oft-drunken but protective brother, and yearns for something better. She muses upon how the stars are able to look down "beyond them mountains to Nashville and Asheville an' Knoxville. I wonder what it's like out there...where the folks talk nice, an' the folks dress nice like y' see in the mail-order catalogs." The fire-and-brimstone preaching Reverend Olin Blitch has arrived in town, inspiring the male elders of her religious community to trespass upon her property in search of a stream to use for baptizing. They come upon Susannah when she is innocently bathing where she has always washed, probably for lack of indoor plumbing. Quivering with self-righteousness -- after having a long, good look -- they declare her a "shameless wench" and hurry home to tell their wives. The townspeople pressure Little Bat, a simple-minded boy who is fond of Susannah, to falsely confess that she's "loved him up," and it is this rumor of her unchasteness that draws Blitch to seduce her. He's "lonely" and thinks she is the town's loose woman already.
