garden shears. Together, they made their way through the thick growth toward the center of the island where there was a giant sweet gum tree. Dropping to her knees, Louise pulled from her carry bag a bunch of bags and dampened cheesecloths, as well as several tools. Handing him a knife and a jar, she said, “You can cut away some bark and scrape the sap into the jar.” She was busy gathering star-shaped leaves which she put in one bag and the spike-ball seed pods in another.
While they worked, Louise instructed him. “It takes these trees twenty to thirty years to mature enough to produce fruit. And many of them get destroyed in storms before that time. That’s why they’re so rare in the wild.”
“What do you use these things for?” He held up the jelly jar of sap he’d half-filled, and nodded toward the various bags she had arranged on the ground around her where she still knelt.
“Everything from the rheumatiz to diarrhea.”
After she carefully placed each of her prizes in their designated pockets in the carry bag, they explored the rest of the little island. She found the lizard tail flowers, and he dug up the roots of several plants for her, one of which she claimed gave men a boost when their virility was on the wane. She waggled her eyebrows when she told him this, so, he wasn’t sure if she was kidding or not.
“Are you inferring that I might need a lift?” He waved at his groin, just in case she didn’t understand what he meant.
She did if the blush on her face was any indication. “Me, I would never make such an accusation about you.” She batted her eyelashes at him in an exaggerated fashion. “Your swagger says it all.”
“I do not swagger.”
She shrugged, as if that was debatable.
He grrr-ed inwardly. “Just so you know, Louise, I am keeping a tally of all your digs at me. You will have some whopping bill to pay when this day is over.”
“Really? And how do you expect me to pay for them? I’m just a poor bayou girl.”
“Kisses,” he replied.
She didn’t respond to that. And her silence was telling to an experienced seducer like Justin.
Finally, she said, “Maybe I’m keeping a tally, too. Of all the times you come off as big-headed and snooty.”
“I don’t do that,” he protested. At least not knowingly. “And how would you expect to collect from me? I’m just a poor almost-doctor.”
She cast him a little Mona Lisa smile, the one as old as Eve.
And, like Adam, he was tempted.
For the next two hours, they paddled and poled along the murky waters of the swamp. Through its translucent depths, he saw catfish, the white crappies known as sac-au-lait, even an occasional grindle, the tough bottom feeder that liked the swamp mud—and wished he’d brought along some fishing gear.
Once they ran into a sheet of water hyacinths that covered practically the breadth of the stream. As beautiful as it was, like a floating island of fragrant flowers, they were the bane of the bayou, having been introduced to Louisiana at the International Cotton Exposition in New Orleans in 1884. They choked other vegetation, cut off sunlight necessary for aquatic life, clogged waterways, and were in general a pain in the ass, almost impossible to destroy. Some frustrated farmers had even tried dynamite, to no avail.
They stopped here and there where Louise noticed particular plants that interested her. Goat weed, hackberry, Jesuit’s tea, French mulberry. And the more fanciful names of Silver Drop, feverfew, tansy, horehound, and angelica. For each of them, she gave him a brief discourse on the benefits of the plant and its particular parts. He was impressed. Honestly, she could give a seminar on herbal remedies at his medical school and be praised for her expertise.
He noticed that when she spoke of her chosen profession…bayou traiteur…she used language peppered with educated terminology, but many other times she lapsed into the almost illiterate Cajun patois. Which he did as well, or at least he used to before moving north where he’d been subjected to so much laughter—and not the good kind. He heard way too many not-funny redneck inbreeding jokes about being married to his cousin, or a sister, for God’s sake. Didn’t matter that he had no sister. To his shame…okay, not too much shame…he’d been involved in more than one barroom brawl over that derision until he’d learned to just ignore the idiots. More likely, the mockery