by Various
“Good.” He stroked her hair, pulling him toward her. “Tarzan happy, too.”
Mayola Williams lay her head on Tarzan’s chest, his arms strong around her. He pressed his lips lightly to her forehead, and she didn’t move, but closed her eyes and sighed deep into herself, listening to his heartbeat and the calm lapping of the water, the tranquil stillness broken only once by the wailing cry of a limpkin.
2.
The Beastie
Underwater was the best. On the surface, sure, he gained some speed, but the sun was too hot, and with all the splashing he couldn’t see much above or below. If he slowed down or treaded water he was too easily spotted, at risk of a thrashing at best and, at worst, a call to the sheriff. When he was both deep and still, he might as well have been a rock, or a bass, or a mastodon’s jawbone, for all the notice he attracted from the kids above, the ones confined to the swimming area, the ones who didn’t live here.
Levi liked to creep surefooted along the rock face—his toes seeming almost to stick froglike to the ridges, fixing himself there, crouched and bobbing—and watch the swimmers overhead, the girls especially. Against the sun-bright surface their shapes should have been featureless black cutouts, but the light seemed to shine through them, illuminate them from inside, the way the color photos of mossy trees and egrets shone brightly in their backlit brass frames on the Lodge’s lobby walls, getting brighter as the sun set and the wood and marble darkened all around them.
In the H. G. Wells story the boy had read five times, light passed through a scientist and made him the Invisible Man. The boy didn’t know what kind of sun H. G. Wells had in England, but when Florida sun passed through the girls on the surface of Wakulla Springs they became more visible than ever before. Certainly more visible than they had been last year. The boy was what his mama called “going on twelve”—which wasn’t as good as straight-up twelve but sure beat the hell out of eleven—and the light at going-on-twelve must be different somehow, because whenever two or more girls were overhead, he could not look away from their floating, somersaulting, shoulder-straddling, bubbling, dazzling blue-green brightness.
As a result, almost without noticing, he was getting better and better at holding his breath. Not until the last possible moment did he allow himself to kick off from the ledge, across and down into the friendly cool rush from the cave mouth that propelled him forward, far beneath the floating rope that fenced the tourists. He had learned to stop kicking when the springs swept him up, to allow himself to be flung across the water, until he was only a few lazy strokes from surfacing amid the weeds on the far bank. There he hopped onto his favorite cypress stump—though its knees no longer fit his butt so well and its bulk no longer hid him so easily from the waterfront—and shook his head like Big Man Jackson’s coon hound, spraying underground water in all directions.
“That boy’s half fish,” Big Man had said in the boathouse one day, while the boy lay on the dock, eavesdropping beneath the window. Levi had flushed so hot and heavy with pride that he might have burned through the boards and dropped into the river hissing and steaming, like a stray coal from the stove. Now he perched on the knobby stump and screwed fingers into his ears to scrub out the water and heard the far-side swim-sounds—“Marco! Polo!”—and wondered, not for the first time, what a colored girl would look like suspended in the water between the Florida sun and the bottom of the springs.
He knew, of course, what his friends looked like in the Sink. That’s where he’d first learned to swim, paddling around at an age when other younguns were just learning to walk, or so he’d been told. But Wakulla had a light entirely different from the Sink’s, and he could talk none of the Shadetown girls into dipping so much as a toe into these springs, not under cover of the new moon.
“You gonna get your fool self killed,” they told him.
But he wasn’t killed yet. In fact, he was hungry. Maybe Aunt Vergie would give him a piece of cornbread, if he looked dry and presentable and less like what the cook called “a naked Injun.”
Levi crept through the woods on the western shore of the springs until he reached his dry clothes, tucked amid the branches of a fallen pignut hickory. This was no wad of clothing but a carefully folded square. Levi’s mama ironed his next day’s clothes every night, and she gave him strict orders not to walk around looking “chewed.” His daily disobedience of his mama’s sternest warning—“You stay out of that white swimming hole, you hear? I lose this job, we got no place to live, and you and me will be thumbing to Orlando.”—made him all the more determined to mind her other rules. She always said “Orlando” as if the town were the back of beyond, so Levi had a notion that his cousins there must be living in upended packing-crate sheds beneath the orange trees, and fighting the crows for food.
He carefully unfolded the bundle and gently shook out his shirt and pants, looking for chiggers, before putting them on. Then he laced his shoes, propping each foot in turn against the hickory trunk. He brushed some bits of bark off his shirt and headed through the woods again, angling away from the water so he wouldn’t come out at the diving platform, as crowded as the Tallahassee train station, even during the off season. Instead he ducked beneath a stand of towering magnolias, their gnarled bottom limbs and great greasy leaves hanging nearly to the ground, and walked in a crouch along his cool secret path, shared by raccoons and other night creatures. He liked to imagine that swamp panthers crouched in the limbs overhead and watched him pass, not attacking because they knew Levi was their friend and would never bother them, or maybe because the heat of the day just made them drowsy.
He emerged onto the entrance road and sighed with relief, both because the warmth of the setting October sun was welcome on his face and arms and because he no longer needed to be quite so furtive as he headed back toward the Lodge. Levi wasn’t nearly as dark as many of the Shadetown children—“high-yaller” was what they called his coppery skin, though not when Levi’s mother was around—but he was plenty colored enough that his breaching the surface in the middle of the swimming area would empty the beach as quickly as a sea monster.
Out here, though, rich visitors off the highway were actually pleased to see a neatly dressed colored boy strolling along the shoulder of Mr. Ball’s newly paved mile-long drive. He was a part of the exotic Florida landscape they had traveled to see, like an ibis in the marsh or a gator in the ditch. They figured he was on his way to bus tables or shine shoes at the Lodge. Sometimes they stopped to take his picture and, less frequently, give him a nickel.
But the road was deserted at the moment, it being a Sunday afternoon, so Levi was in his preferred state: alone with his imaginings. As he walked, he repeatedly pulled an imaginary gun on an invisible saboteur, pretending he was Herbert A. Philbrick, hero of I Led Three Lives—Levi’s favorite TV show—on assignment to infiltrate a Communist cell headquartered at the Wakulla Springs Lodge. It could happen. Famous people had stayed there—though his mama didn’t like to talk about them much—and weren’t those the most likely targets of Soviet assassins? Famous people? Ordinary people just got killed.
Given this morbid line of thought, he was spooked when a voice called out behind him: “Big House, Mister! I got your Big House!”
It was just Policy Sam, hurrying to catch up. As usual, he paid little attention to where he was going, focused instead on re-counting the dozens of strips of paper he clutched, plucking them out of one fist and sorting them between the fingers of the other. As he ran, stumbling once or twice, the strips fluttered in the breeze like tails of Spanish moss. “Oh, it’s you,” Policy Sam said when he caught up. His disappointment was obvious: He knew Levi’s mama would whale both of them if she ever caught her boy wasting good money playing the numbers.
Policy Sam had been simply Sam when the boys were growing up, but Levi hadn’t seen him at the Sink for more than a year, since Sam had been hired as a runner for old Cooper, up at the Crawfordville Big House. Every boy in the area knew that once he was old enough to do the math, he
could earn pocket money running numbers. Young boys were easy to overlook and hard to apprehend; they also were easy to hurt if they got caught pocketing more than the five percent due them. After a few weeks, once they realized the boss expected them to hawk numbers to everyone they met morning, noon, and night, most boys tired of the racket. But Sam always had been a motormouth, and the twenty-four-hour sales pitch suited him. Now everyone called him Policy Sam, and Levi could seldom get him to talk about anything else.
“Good day today?” Levi asked.
“Middling,” Sam replied. “But no interesting numbers. Everybody’s playing 19 and 53, for the year, or 18 because it’s 1-9-5-3 added together, or 5 because the Yankees have won five straight series, or 16 because that’s how many series they’ve won total, or 13 because the Yankees won game six 4 to 3, or—”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” Levi said. “Hard to surprise you with a number these days.”
“Folks ain’t even trying,” Sam said. “The dull ones, they play the same number every day. Your Aunt Vergie, I know you love her, but it’s always 3 with her, ’cause her little girl was three when she died. Ain’t that the sorriest-ass reason for picking a number you ever heard? Some policy, betting on the age of a little dead girl?”
“Three’s a lucky number, too,” Levi said.
“Not for her,” Sam replied. “You been in swimming?”
“Yeah. How you know that?”
“You digging in your ears like there’s water in there,” Sam said. He laughed. “And I know your mama didn’t give you no bath, ’cause it ain’t Saturday.”
Levi shoved him, but laughed, too. “Get out! My mama don’t wash me. I do that myself.”
“Yeah, washing in Mr. Ball’s water. I bet you pee in it, too.”
“I do not!” Levi said, although he had, some times.
“You know the white people do,” Sam said. “When you’re paddling around in there, and the water gets warm all of a sudden, that’s what it is. You just swam through some white girl’s pee.”
“Shut up!” Levi said, shoving him again. This time Sam shoved him back, his paper strips fluttering, and the boys continued to laugh and pummel each other, all the way down the drive to the edge of the parking lot, then through the pyracantha hedge to the cigarillo-smoky picnic table where the dishwashers hung out. In an instant, Sam straightened up and resumed his chant, ready to do business. Levi shook his head and went on into the kitchen, which was loud and crowded and so dinner-hour crazy that he could sneak up on Aunt Vergie, reach around her considerable bulk, and snatch away a biscuit before she was able to bust him one.
“Boy, I declare!” Vergie yelled. “You’re going to draw back a nub one day.”
“Can I help?” he asked, perching on a stool and biting off half the biscuit.
“You better, if you’re going to wait here till your mama’s done. She’s got extra rooms to do tonight. Go bring me a fresh butter brush out of the rack back yonder. This one’s losing whiskers.”
Levi wedged the biscuit’s second half into his mouth as he hopped down on his errand. The first half of a biscuit was to gulp; the second half was to savor. He dodged a half-dozen kitchen employees on the way across the room, saying hey to each, snatched up a brush, and dodged all the same people on the way back, as they said hey to him in return.
“Here you go,” he said, resuming his perch. “How come the extra rooms?” But all Vergie heard was a mouthful of biscuit dough, so he swallowed and repeated himself.
“Movie people,” she said, spreading melted butter onto a fresh tray of biscuits. “Some of them here already, and they’re eating biscuits like they never saw one before. Maybe they ain’t. No telling what they eat in California.”
Levi’s eyes went wide. “What movie people? Are they famous? Are they making another Tarzan movie?”
Aunt Vergie drew back and hissed like a snake. “God almighty, boy, don’t say that name when your mama’s nigh.”
Levi sighed. What his mama liked and didn’t like was a mystery sometimes. “I’m sorry, Auntie. What movie are they making?”
“Do I know these things? Do I look like Mr. Edward Ball?” She shook her head and went back to her work. “Go run this tray over to the window, quick now.”
This Levi did with great enthusiasm, since Aunt Vergie wasn’t the only source of information in the Lodge kitchen. While helping Jamie sweeten the tea, he learned it wouldn’t be a full movie crew, just the underwater unit. While helping Bess stir the gravy, he learned filming was to start in a couple of days, if the damned camera would just cooperate. While helping Libby slice the lemons, he learned the camera was complicated because this would be a 3-D movie—just like House of Wax, with stuff reaching out in the audience’s faces—only this would be an underwater 3-D movie. And while helping Howard chop the lettuce, he learned the star of the movie—titled Creature from the Black Lagoon—was Richard Widmark.
“It ain’t Richard Widmark, neither,” said old Mr. Adderly the roast chef, the wrinkles in his forehead even deeper than usual as he sawed a beef. “Don’t lie to the boy.” Having passed the thickest, reddest section, halfway through the joint, Mr. Adderly took a break. He set down his two-pronged fork and his angry-looking knife and mopped his streaming face with a handkerchief. He took no notice of the new girl who whisked away the fresh slices; serving was beneath Mr. Adderly. His hands had got to shaking bad, Levi noticed, without a knife to steady them.
“It is so Richard Widmark,” Howard said, cracking a celery stalk for emphasis. “My cousin Arthur was polishing the lobby floor when Mr. Ball come out of the office after taking the call, and he said so.”
Mr. Adderly pointed at Howard with the fork while Levi stood wide-eyed, looking back and forth. Howard the pantry chef was in charge of the salads, and was the biggest man in the kitchen, his shoulders so broad he had to go through the dining-room door sideways. He also hunted year-round, and could clean and dress any wild animal; Levi was partial to his deer jerky. Levi knew Howard aspired to be roast chef, and Mr. Adderly knew it, too. “You ain’t the only one Arthur talks to,” Mr. Adderly said. “I got Arthur his job, when you was half the size of Levi here. And Arthur told me it was some other Richard. I just can’t remember his name right off.”
“Please don’t point with sharp things, Mr. Adderly, honey,” called Aunt Vergie, dropping coins into Policy Sam’s outstretched palm.
Mr. Adderly resumed his carving. “It wasn’t Richard Widmark, I know that. It wasn’t Richard Burton.” He looked up. “I tell you who it is. Richard—What’s-His-Name.” When Howard looked unimpressed, he went on: “You know. The one who’s on that TV show, about the Communist spy.”
Levi gasped and dropped a deviled egg with a wet smack. “You mean Richard Carlson?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
Herbert A. Philbrick himself, right here at Wakulla Springs! Why, this very minute he could be in—
Levi slid the deviled eggs into the fridge, ran to the dining-room door, and waited for the right-hand door to clear. First rule: the left-hand door is for getting into the kitchen, the right-hand door for getting out, and Levi didn’t want his face mashed in by mistake. A second later, he poked his head out for a quick survey of the forbidden world beyond.
Checkerboard tile gleamed beneath the chandeliers. Dressed-up white people filled every round table, all crystal and silk and shiny shoes, their light talk and laughter floating into the ceiling. A half-dozen colored people dressed in white uniforms moved among the tables with trays, bottles, and sweating pitchers. Levi registered the staff members automatically—Charlie, Winnie, Bud, Wash, Edith, a cute girl he didn’t know; W.A. must be sick again, because Bud was working the window tables, too—but focused on the diners, and recognized none of them. Maybe Richard Carlson hadn’t arrived yet.
Someone grabbed his collar and yanked him backward from the doorway into the familiar steamy hubbub of the kitchen, just as one of the busboys swept past, empty bin on hip, opening t
he swinging door with his butt.
“Why you always in people’s way?” asked Levi’s mama. She sounded tired and cranky, as she did so often, but her eyes danced to see him, and as she complained, her hands deftly straightened his collar, smoothed his hair, and dusted his shirt, none of which needed doing. “You know I don’t come in from the dining room. Why didn’t you wait out on the picnic table. C’mere.” She hugged him tight. She smelled like detergent and Clorox and clean laundry, with a layer of sweat beneath.
He knew better than to mention the movie people. “It’s too smoky out there,” he said, “and besides, Sam wouldn’t leave me alone.” Sam was nowhere to be seen by then, being even more afraid of Levi’s mama than of the sheriff, but Levi knew this would score him some points.
“You tell that Sam, he bothers my boy, he’ll have to deal with me. Here, Vergie fixed our plates. Carry them for me, will you? You don’t have to open them, just carry them. Nosy thing. Yes, it’s roast beef, and it’s off the end, like you’d eat it any other way. Tell Mr. Adderly thank you on the way out. Vergie, honey, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“’Night, Mayola.”
Levi said good night to everyone as he swept in his mama’s wake back through the kitchen and out into the yard. The warm covered dishes in his arms smelled good and felt good, too; he was suddenly hungry. The sun had gone down, and only lightning bugs lit the way to the staff dormitory, but his mother was easy to follow, as she talked about her day. He tromped through the gravel behind her.
As they skirted the dense wood of the little sinkhole south of the Lodge, Levi imagined that from the midst of the thicket, Old Joe, Wakulla’s largest gator, watched them pass. Levi hoped Old Joe would recognize Levi for what he was—a fellow water creature, deserving of respect—and therefore would not eat him, should their paths ever cross.
“Levi, are you listening to me?”
“Yes’m,” he quickly lied.
“Then why don’t you answer? I said, aren’t you excited that he’ll be here tomorrow? He’s been asking after you, says he looks forward to seeing you.”