Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen — The Curse

Later one evening Bill and Nell and I were sitting in the living room talking. Nell asked, “Joe, your foot. What in the world is the matter with it? You’ve been limping around something terrible.”

“I don’t know,” I said, “I went to see a doctor today and he can’t find a thing wrong with it. Probably it will be all right in a few days.”

Nell came over and sat on the edge of my chair. “Joe, all you guys do is talk about gold. Surely, you can find something else to talk about. Tell us more about your trip. I know you must have had some exciting experiences.”

I told them about the doctoring of Chase and I thought Bill would split laughing. Also I told them about the poker game at Ocotal.

“Did you take any pictures?”

“Sure,” I said, “lots of them,” and hobbled to my room to get my suitcase.

The first album I opened to show them had a picture of Connie and me standing by the airplane at Siuna.

“She’s beautiful! Who is she?” asked Nell.

“Wow!” said Bill. “Looks like you’d been doing okay down there.”

I told them about Connie, the theater and that night when we went swimming. Then added, “She’s a witch though. She reads the stars. She says we will be married and have one blue-eyed baby girl, and she put a curse on my foot, She said….”

Stopping mid-sentence, I thought to myself, “Good Lord, could it be possible?”

I opened my billfold and showed them the half of the one cordoba note Connie had torn into two pieces. I got up and walked across the room, I must have looked stupid.

“That’s the matter, Joe?” asked Bill.

“The pain in my foot is gone!”

Then I told them the whole story. “In that country they believe in witchcraft and voodoo. When Connie put the hex on my foot, I’m sure she believed it would work.”

Bill remarked, “Maybe she hypnotized you. They call it ‘the power of suggestion.’ There is a lot more to it than most people realize.”

Maybe she had hypnotized me, the little witch.