Close to midnight, both of us naked, tangled together on a bare mattress in a dilapidated stilt house near the village of Curlew, some portion of my subconscious kept nagging at me; would yank me back through the film of awareness each time I drifted downward, downward into the gauzy gray world of sleep.
Then, gradually, the subconscious found an unworn brain conduit, and the question that was nagging at me finally burst to the surface. I sat upright in the darkness . . . felt around for Hannah's shoulder and shook her. "Hannah, are you awake? Hey—wake up." She stirred. "What the hell's in your tea?"
Heard her soft murmur of laughter.
"Damn it, there's something strange about it. The way it affects me."
Enough light came through the window that I could see the charcoal shape of her: long panels of flesh tone ... a segment of cheek ... a wedge of matted pubic hair . . . one dark eye blinking up at me.
"Go to sleep. You worry too much."
Shook her again. "No, there's something strange about it. Makes me feel about half drunk. The same thing happened at Gumbo Limbo."
Her hand explored around until it found my chest, then patted its way downward along ribs, stomach . . . groin. When she found me, her fingers began to gently massage. "Um-m-m-m," she said lazily. "You don't feel drunk. More like warm wood."
"That's another thing. It's not normal. It's not. . . it's not even human. It won't go away. I could get gangrene"
She rolled over onto me, then used her teeth to pull at my chest hair; her tongue to trace the abdominal expanse. Said, "I'm no doctor, but I do know a little first aid," before ingesting me. I felt the siphoning draw of her lips, her tongue ... lay back momentarily . . . then fought my way upright again. Took her hair in my hands and lifted her head. "No you don't. First tell me what's in the tea."
She hesitated, staring at me in the darkness, then scooched her way up and kissed me on the lips. "Is it real important?"
"Then I'm right?"
"I'll show you, but I want you to remember somethin'—you didn't have a drop before the first time. Tonight at your place, I mean. That's what I want you to remember. It was just you and me, both of us feelin' the way we felt. My tea didn't have a thing to do with it."
I was thinking: Jesus, the woman has drugged me. But said agreeably, "Nothing's going to change that. Just the two of us. Our own free will. Exactly."
"We're lovers?" She seemed worried; vulnerable for the first time, which I found touching.
Kissed her on the forehead, then on the lips. "Yep, lovers."
She got to her feet; moved around carefully in the darkness. "I'd like that. You and me; neither of us the marrying kind. I'll have my house at Gumbo Limbo, you'll be over on Sanibel, and when either one of us gets the urge to be together ..." There was the flare of a kitchen match, a sulfur stink. I watched Hannah's face, bathed in gold, as she lit an oil lamp. ". . . you call me, or I'll call you. We can have our own lives, but we can have each other, too. We'll be like . . . secret partners."
I stood behind her, put my hands on her shoulders. "You don't need to get me drunk to have that."
"You sure? I'm gonna tell you, but I want to be sure."
Turned her to me and kissed her. "I'm sure. Now tell me what's in the tea."
She smiled, moved away—naked; comfortable with it—and began to lift away boards from what I thought was a solid wall. "This is Arlis's old hidey-hole. For a time there, he never trusted banks, so he built this himself way back in the thirties. When he was young." From the wall, she carefully removed a black duffel and held it open to me. Inside were a dozen or so small brown bottles, a nub of white candle, a leather-bound book, and an opaque sphere made of green glass. I remembered seeing similar glass balls on the mantel over her fireplace.
She took out one of the bottles and the glass ball. Held up the glass ball and said, "This one's a powder made from the bark of an African tree. It's called yohimbe. It's supposed to grow hair, but it's also supposed to be about the only aphrodisiac that really works." She looked down at me. "By golly, it seems to!" Was still laughing at that as she indicated the bottle. "In here, I've got a combination of what they call blue stone from Haiti and oil from a leaf they call iron tree. Mix the two, plus a drop of turpentine, and you've got a love potion. That's what I put in the tea."
I took the glass ball from her and held it up to the lamp. It appeared to be hand-blown glass, very old, with air bubbles frozen within. It had an ingenious fluted stopper.
Hannah said, "Pretty, isn't it? It used to be my great-aunt's. Hannah's? This one and a couple of more, that's all I've got of hers."
I handed the ball back. "You sure you didn't put something else in the tea?"
"If I wanted to lie to you, I wouldn't've shown you this much."
I was relieved. No amphetamines or amphetamine-tranquilizer mix. Even so, it made me angry. Why pull such a stunt? I said, "No more potions, okay? Ever. You really believe in that stuff? Voodoo?"
She seemed suddenly uneasy. "I can't tell you about it. Sorry, I can't."
I sat her down and made her tell me. It took a while. She had once taken an oath—back when she was in Louisiana—and I had to take an oath in turn. Hannah was very serious about it. I pretended I was, too. When she was convinced I would never share her secret—I was honest about that, at least—she told me that Jimmy Darroux's mother had indoctrinated her. The reason was, the mother so distrusted her own son that she didn't want to see Hannah get hurt. Jimmy's mother was certain that he had fed Hannah a "love potion." To prove it, the mother had demonstrated exactly what Jimmy used to make it. Hannah had such a natural fervor for folk medicines that the mother spent the next several days instructing her. "She wouldn't let me write anything down," Hannah told me. We were on the mattress again, lying naked, my arms around her. "There were some things she wouldn't tell me—some of the real important religious stuff. But it explained why I got so hot for Jimmy so quick."
I said, "Yeah, but why do it to me? You just happened to have the stuff there waiting, and I show up—"
"I recognized you at the door, that's why, I knew we'd be lovers"—she made a sound of self-deprecation—"but you, you took some convincing. You showed up at the door, and I just thought. . . looked in the 'frigerator and all the Cokes were gone, so I just did it. I didn't make the tea planning on you coming. But I knew we would meet someday."
"Then why did you make it?"
"I . . . keep it in the house for Arlis."
"For Arlis? For Arlis . . . and you?"
"That's right. Arlis and me."
I fought off the twinge ofjealousy I felt; said in a tone of manufactured indifference: "I knew you were close."
She rolled over so that we were face-to-face. "That don't bother you?"
"Why should it?"
Hannah snuggled up close to me, very pleased. "That's what I think! Arlis, he's an old man. He's sweet as he can be, and . . . he's one of us. One of the old Cracker people. Like, him and me are part of the same tribe."
I guessed that she was parroting some past remark by Tomlinson, but did not comment.
"Arlis, his wife died more than two years ago. There's no other women on the island he gives a damn about, so . . . sometimes, when he's in a wanting mood, I help him feel like a man again. At his age, he needs the tea to help him. I don't do it out of pity. I care about the old bastard, and he cares about me. It's . . . private . . . and it's real sweet."
"That's why Arlis was glad when Jimmy died."
"Arlis hated Jimmy; he'd tell you the same himself. Arlis was so mad at me when I married him that he wouldn't even talk to me for a week. But he came around when he realized it was just me bein' . . . bein' me. I'm . . . kind'a a different sort of woman. I told you that before."