Billy Earl Jimmson spat a thin brown stream over the side of the flat bottomed boat. It caught the dragonfly in mid flight and knocked it into the water. Then he returned his attention to the Hula Popper that he was working between the Cypress trees. He made the lure twitch and sputter with small jerks and random movements of the casting rod.
"Dat damn!!!" he hollered and jumped at the sound of the loud splash beside the boat. It was almost like someone had thrown a log in the water.
"You sap sucking bass, you're supposed to hit on my lure not a darn ol' tobacco soaked dragon fly.
Billy Earl always felt that he was a little higher on the social scale then his minnow dipping neighbors because he fished with artificial lures like his buddy Glenn had taught him. Almost everyone else in these river bottoms fished with minnows or worms except for he and Glenn.
Billy Earl was a maintenance man up past the hill near Texas 321 at the Tarkington Prairie High School where his buddy Glenn was a math teacher. Glenn was an usual resident of Sam Houston Lake Estates. He was well educated and a high school teacher, but he was smart enough not to talk down to his neighbors or flaunt his "learning" as they called it. His neighbors in turn overlooked his intelligence and accepted he and Diann as part of the community.
He loved the slow moving life style in this little river bottom community. It was almost like living in the mountains of Arkansas or Tennessee or the Cajon bayou country of Louisiana at the turn of the century. Hunting in the thickly wooded river bottoms and cat fishing in the near by Trinity River and bass fishing in the little oxbow lakes provided both entertainment and food.
Glenn had finally gained the respect of his backwoods neighbors until now they often came to him for advice, particularly about affairs in the outside world. Sometime they even ask for advice on personal problems like one day last week when Billy Earl surprised him.
They were fishing along the lake Sam's shore line when Billy Earl ask, "I admire your wisdom cause you're a teacher and all and you've been in big towns all over like Texas like Houston and Huntsville and Lufkin and all. Do you mind if I ask you a kinda personal man to man type of question about women?"
It wasn't that Glenn's neighbors were less intelligent then outsiders, it was just that they were insulated from the outside world, living in this small corner of the big thicket. A trip into Cleveland to shop at Wally World (Wal-Mart) and Holiday Foods and maybe stop by the Montco Motors used car lot to look at the pickups was a big Saturday family outing for most of the residents. Of course the sinners in Sam Houston Lake Estates also had some wild Saturday evenings. For most of these however, it meant a local country western band holding a dance at the community center and the really bad ones would have a bottle stashed in their pickup. A wild evening for the others would most likely be a spaghetti supper or a singing at the Davis Hill Baptist Church. On good nights you could pick up Beaumont pretty good and enjoy watching a show on the television.
"Sure Billy Earl, I'll help you if I can." Glenn answered, expecting some kind of question like, does a Chinese girls thing really run crossways? So, he was actually shocked when Billy Earl begin talking.
"You know Glenn, almost every time I start making love to Wanda Sue she cries out or whimpers like I'm hurting her. I know it must be true because she's so dry down there that sometime it even rubs and is painful to me. Of course a man can't hardly tell his wife something like that. What do you reckon might be wrong with her?"
"Billy Earl," Glenn answered after thinking a few moments, "I already know you've been married a few years, but I'll have to ask you a couple of personal questions before I would be able to help you. Now I don't mean anything by them, but you ask for help and that's what I'm trying to do. Do you and Wanda Sue kiss much any more?"
Billy Earl clinched one fist and kind of sat up straighter on the boat seat. His face was flushed red, but he settled back down when he decided there wasn't any humor in Glenn's eyes.
"Well I guess I did kinda open the door for you to ask some real personal questions. Of course I kiss her, like on her birthday and at Christmas time. Well, not to much at other times. She always makes a sour face and kinda shies back. She says men smell like tobacco juice. Course she didn't seem to mind so much when we were courting."
"Well would you say she's affectionate toward you in other ways?" Glenn ask.
"Yeah, she always cooks everything she thinks I might like to eat. And she's always coming up and hugging me from behind. And . . . as far as love making even though it hurts her when we do it, she tries to encourage me to do it to her anyhow if it's been a long time and she figures I'm hurting."
"OK Billy Earl, that's about what I thought. I can help you, but you will have to do exactly what I tell you. If you don't do it exactly, it just won't work. Believe it or not I had the same problem when this ol' girl was living with me over in Huntsville when I was going to the teacher's college. I cured her without a bit of trouble."
"You already know I was raised by my old granny over in New Caney," Glenn continued, "but you may not know that she was a kind of witch woman. I learned a lot from her about love potions and such. She sold potions and spells to people all over that part of the country. Anyway, she taught me that the greatest secret of all to use as a love potion is factory made. What you need most is in one of those little tiny spray cans of breath freshener."
"Now there's very few people that know about this so don't you go spreading it around. You see, there is a certain chemical that they put in that stuff. Then there's another chemical that's created in everybody's salvia that if you mix them together and work them into a woman's skin it does wondrous thinks.
Now you can't just spray her and then spit on her. You have to sort of slip it up on her. I used to sneak it on them with kisses. But, one big warning, it will not work at all if it's contaminated with even a little tiny bit of tobacco. The nicotine in tobacco kills it dead as a door knob. If you don't wash every bit of the tobacco juice out of your mouth it will not work."
Billy Earl's left eyebrow raised a little bit at that, but Glenn kept talking. "Anyway I remembered what I learned from Granny and that night I took a good bath, washed my mouth out real good and sprayed it with that freshener before I crawled into bed. I snuggled up to her back and begin kissing the nape of her neck and shoulders, making sure I licked the skin with almost every kiss I kept kissing as I worked her gown down and covered her back with kisses. Then she sort of just flipped over and I was kissing her chest and breasts. It seems to work a lot better if absorbed in the throat and breast area.
Anyhow, that was it. From then on she was cured. Of course you need to repeat the treatment every time you want to make love."
"Huh," Billy Earl ask, looking in Glenn's eyes for a long time before continuing, "Sounds kinda curious to me."
The mornings fishing was just about over by then so Billy Earl dropped Glenn off on his little pier and continued on down the shoreline to his own lot and trailer.
Later that afternoon, Glenn saw Billy Earl and Wanda Sue pass down the road toward their place. Must have went to Cleveland for groceries he thought when he saw the brown paper bags sitting in the pickup bed.
"Glenn . . ., Glenn," Billy Earl begin hollering a half block away as he walked up the road toward Glenn's place a couple of days later.
"Glenn, how do you keep a straight face?" Diann giggled as Glenn got up from his chair.
"He's my friend Diann, just like Wanda Sue is your friend no mater how backwoods she is sometime." He grinned as he got up and walked over to the screen door.
Billy Earl stopped and hunkered down against the big oak tree near the shore. He waited until Glenn hunkered down beside him before he spoke. "I just thought I'd walk down and see if you wanted to run over to Dolan gravel pits Saturday morning and do a little bass fishing. I bought me some new lures at Wally World the other day and I need to try them on some big bass."
"Sounds good to me, I haven't fished over at Dolan in a long time. Besides that will give Wanda Sue and Diann a chance to go to Cleveland by themselves and spend our money doing woman things."
"Sure, Wanda Sue would rather just look around at the new stuff in Wally World then to eat out at Dairy Queen.
Billy Earl cleared his throat a couple of times and poked holes in the ground with a stick before he started again. "Ah, . . . by the Glenn, I gotta thank you for helping me with Wanda Sue's problem."
"Aw, don't worry Billy Earl, that's what friends are supposed to do." Glenn answered trying to let Billy Earl off easy.
But Billy Earl was already rolling in high gear now and kept talking. "At first I feared you were just funning with me. You know, about your old granny and love potions, but I hoped so hard that it was true, I just had to try it. The other night I throwed my cud of tobacco away and took me a hot bath. Then I washed my mouth out real good and sprayed it good with that mouth spray you told me about."
"Wanda Sue kinda looked big eyed when I crawled into the bed and kissed her on the cheek. Then I turned the light out and started kissing her shoulders and throat and chest. I only worked that stuff into her for a few minutes and you was right. That stuff drives Wanda Sue as crazy as a bessy bug. And another thing, you know while I was doing all that kissing and licking that stuff on her I kinda got to liking it pretty good myself. Anyhow the first thing you know she got to breathing real hard and kissing me on the mouth. Then she was a wiggling and squirming and kissing me like she was starving and I was an apple pie. The first thing I knew she had worked herself up on top of me. Then when I put my arms around her, she was stark naked. I still can't figure out how she got her gown off without me knowing it. Anyway, there she was on top of me squirming and kissing like a wild woman when it just slipped in before I knowed it. You know I never dreamed a woman could run the show, so to speak."
"Then the next night I did all those thing again before I went to bed and it was the same thing all over except she pulled me up on her that time. Shee, she's strong for a scrawny little woman. Anyway it was already after 10:00 o'clock when she finally kissed me and turned over. I was so wore out that I musta died before she was all the way turned over. Then the funniest thing, I woke up a 2:00 AM and she was kissing me and rubbing my . . . anyway it was 2:30 AM before we went back to sleep."
"Well Billy Earl, I'm just glad I knew enough to be able to help you with Wanda Sue's problem."
"You know Glenn, I couldn't say anything to Wanda Sue of course, but I think that stuff works almost as good on me while I'm putting it on her as it does on her. Shoot, the next time I go to Wally World I think I'll just buy a whole carton of that mouth spray."
That night about 10:00 PM Diann looked at the clock, laid her book down and hid a yawn behind her hand. "I think I'll take a long hot shower and go to bed. How about you? Then she grinned and added. "By the way, Wanda Sue and I had a very enlightening visit today. She told me all about the new Billy Earl. If you still have some of that magic mouth spray and would throw your tobacco away, it might be a good night to try a cure at home.
