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 him 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 Dianne 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 Cajun 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, 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 started, "You know Glenn, 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 question. You know, a man to man kinda 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 Food Store and maybe stop by the Montco Motors used car lot to look at the pickups and sometime maybe even eat at the Dairy Queen 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 trucks.
A wild evening for the others would most likely be a spaghetti supper or a singing at the Davis Hill Baptist Church. And, 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 girl's pussy really run crossways? So, he was actually shocked when Billy Earl begin talking.
"You know Glenn, just about 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 its even painful to me, trying to get it in. 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.
