by Various
“Gosh, he’s good,” murmured Winnie, hands on hips.
Scotty, goggles and breathing device in place, had years of experience on Ricou, but his drop into the water seemed, by comparison, as loud as a tourist boy’s cannonball.
Levi slid into the water as noiselessly as he could, slipping across the river to the far side, hugging the bank, swimming just beneath the surface until he reached the place where he could dive deep. The springs were so clear that, even yards away, he could see Ricou getting his mimed cues from Scotty as the two camera operators treaded water beyond. The underwater camera was really two cameras bolted together, a necessity for the 3-D effect, with a frogman on each side pushing it forward.
Levi stuck close to the submerged cliff face, so he wouldn’t get into the shot by accident.
Though filmed relatively early, in the movie this would be the Beastie’s final scene. On Scotty’s signal, Ricou went into his death throes, his supposedly bullet-riddled body pluming black-dye “blood” from multiple plastic packets as he burst them. His twitching slowed, and he began to sink. The frogmen angled the camera down to keep him in focus as he dropped farther and farther, webbed feet first, his arms seeming to float listlessly but actually gently sculling, propelling him toward the bottom of Wakulla Springs, toward his next breaths of air, at the end of a bubbling hose held by another frogman. Levi watched until he thought his own lungs would burst, and then he kicked toward the shore, marveling that anyone could make death so graceful.
* * *
When darkness ended shooting for the day, Levi slipped into the woods, put on his dry clothes, and walked home to the three-room apartment in the employee dorm that he and his mother shared. He wasn’t surprised to find Jimmy Lee there, too. For the past couple of weeks, the veteran was officially bunking with two of the boatmen on the second floor, but he mainly used that as a place of retreat whenever he and Levi’s mama had a falling-out, which was every couple of days. They weren’t fighting now, though. Mama was sprawled on the couch, in the fitful breeze of a slowly swiveling table fan, drinking lemonade and reading a book called The Day of the Locust. Tourists brought books on vacation then just left them behind, so Mama always had something to read on her day off.
“And here he is,” murmured Jimmy Lee. He sat in a chair, leafing through a stack of mail, as usual, all of it politics. Jimmy Lee Demps got more mail every day than the Lodge itself.
“Hi, baby,” his mama said.
“Hey,” said Levi, pushing his head into his mama’s neck for the obligatory hug. She squeezed him even harder than usual, then held him at arm’s length for inspection.
“You been bothering those movie people again?” she asked.
“Ricou’s teaching me to breathe through a hose underwater,” Levi said, “just like the swimmers at the Weeki Wachee.”
His mother shook her head and sighed. “Honey, they don’t need no colored mermaids at the Weeki Wachee. You got to get your mind back on school. Ain’t that right, Jimmy Lee?”
“Mmm,” said Jimmy Lee. He opened an envelope and slid out a bumper sticker that said, DON’T BUY GAS WHERE YOU CAN’T USE THE RESTROOM.
What good was a bumper sticker, Levi wondered, when you ain’t got a bumper, or a car neither?
Jimmy Lee winked at Levi and nudged Mayola in the ribs, trying to show her the sticker. “We ought to go to this Negro Leadership rally one year, baby. It’s really something.”
“I got another note from your teacher,” Levi’s mama said. She put her book down and gave him her full-on attention.
Levi gulped. Mama was always going on and on about school, like it was holy as church, but she looked fearsome serious this time.
“Daydreaming,” she continued with emphasis. “Falling asleep in class. Levi, I know it’s exciting, your very own monster movie right here at the springs, and I’m trying to be patient. There ain’t much for a growing boy hereabouts, I know that. But if you really want to get out of this place one day, you gotta concentrate on your studies.”
Levi nodded, but said nothing.
His mama took a long, slow drink of lemonade, without taking her eyes off him. “So here’s how it’s gonna be. If I get one more note about your sorry-ass ways, young man, you won’t be dipping a single toe into any kind of water ’cept a bathtub till you’re a bent-over, white-haired old man. You hear me?”
“But Mama,” Levi said. “I got to keep swimming. Ricou says people can make a good living at it. Cameras are getting smaller, so lots more movie crews’ll be coming to Florida, and they’ll hire locals to help. Ricou’s thinking about starting his own business.”
His mama put her book down onto the couch cushion and rubbed her temples. “Levi, you listen up, and you listen good. How many times I got to tell you, you can’t trust movie people?” She winced, squeezing her eyes shut. “They charm you,” she murmured, “and they tell you how great you are, and they make you feel like you’re something—special, real special. But then they go and pack right up and leave.” She rubbed her head again. “It’s just play-acting, Levi. Our lives ain’t anything to them.” She groaned. “Oh, Lord, I feel another headache coming on. Jimmy Lee, please do turn off that lamp.”
“I’ll fetch you a potato,” Levi said. As he ran to their kitchenette, he felt relieved to escape from the whole subject of school, but ashamed at his relief. As he grabbed a good-sized spud and sliced it into discs, he wondered why every conversation with his mama, these days, made him feel guilty. Was that what growing up was all about?
“A potato,” he heard Jimmy Lee repeat.
“To lay on my forehead,” his mama said softly.
Jimmy Lee laughed, but he cut it off quick—Mama probably gave him one of her looks.
“It always helps,” Levi said, returning with a saucer of potato slices. He set them down at her elbow.
“Bring Mama a handkerchief, too, baby.” She had her arm across her eyes now.
“Yes’m,” Levi said.
“No, here,” Jimmy Lee smiled. “Allow me.” He plucked a bright red handkerchief from his pants pocket and offered it with a small flourish, as if it were a bouquet of roses.
Levi’s mama raised her forearm just enough to glance at the handkerchief through slitted eyes. “That won’t work,” she said, listlessly and automatically. She closed her eyes again. “Levi, honey, bring me one from the dresser, please.”
“What’s wrong with this one?” Jimmy Lee asked, still holding it out.
“It has to be white,” Levi said, and regretted it instantly. He stood there, his mama lay there, and Jimmy Lee sat there, all of them seemingly frozen in place.
“White,” Jimmy Lee repeated. His voice was quiet, but a vein in his temple stood out and, without thinking, Levi backed away, hitting the washstand, which tilted and rattled but didn’t fall.
“If the handkerchief ain’t white,” Levi’s mama murmured, “the healing won’t work. That’s what the root doctor say.”
“Is it?” Jimmy Lee’s voice was even more quiet, and Levi’s mama opened her eyes. She frowned and slowly raised her head just enough to see him.
“Jimmy Lee?”
He was already at the door, his rejected handkerchief puddled on the floor where he had dashed it down.
“Jimmy Lee, for heaven’s sake.”
The door slammed and the framed cameo of Levi’s great-grandfather in American Expeditionary Forces uniform danced against the plaster wall, tap tap, tap tap.
Levi’s mama burst into tears.
“Don’t, Mama, please don’t,” Levi said. “Here, see? I got your potatoes, there they are—don’t that feel better? Lemme get that handkerchief, you hang on, just don’t cry. Please, Mama. Levi’s here. Don’t cry, Mama. It’s you and me, just like always.”
When his mama finally got to sleep, Levi went for a ramble in the woods.
He went down to the riverbank and walked along the south shore of the Wakulla for a few hundred yards. He stopped to listen to every rustle, ev
ery crackle, every slither, every thud of something dropping from the trees into the mulch of the forest floor, every plop of something long and heavy sliding into the water, and especially every chilling wail of the limpkin: Kw-E-E-E-E-E-E-ah!
Familiar as it was, the limpkin’s nighttime cry always seemed weird—alien too. It raised goosebumps on Levi’s arms. Although if he turned his head, he could see the boathouse, the bathhouse, and the water fountains, only a few minutes’ walk upstream, as he stood in a pitch-black thicket, watching the dark streaks of gators crossing the moonlight on the surface of the river, Levi could easily imagine that he was in some faraway jungle. Left to his own devices, he would creep through the woods every night, listening for monsters.
Florida was chock full of them; all the old-timers said so. Employees at Wakulla Springs came from all over the state, and brought their stories with them. The men who had hung out in the St. Marks bait shacks talked about Old Hitler, the thousand-pound hammerhead that cruised north from Tampa Bay to torment fishermen by shredding the lines, eating the day’s catch, and butting holes in the boat. They said the shark was more than a hundred years old—how else could it have grown so big, and as smart as a man? Levi believed every word, but wondered what it had been called before the Nazis came along.
People who lived at the mouth of the Apalachicola said a snakelike thing lived in the river. Bigger around than a cypress trunk, the creature swam against the current like an inchworm, each stinking mossy hump rising so far above the surface that it once splintered beams on the John Gorrie Bridge.
Howard, the pantry chef, hunted coons in Tate’s Hell Swamp. Several of his friends had staggered out, swearing their missing dogs had been taken by black panthers that lay silently along high oak branches, motionless and drowsy, until scenting the hounds—and the men, for which they had acquired a taste during the Civil War.
And everybody in Florida talked about the wilderness-dwelling Skunk Ape. Taller than a man, it shambled along on its knuckles, reeking of sour cabbage, harrumphing deep in its chest, woomp, woomp.
Levi believed in all of those creatures, believed in them utterly and completely, because they had been seen and described and attested to a hundred times over by grown-ups, and because he was half-convinced that he had seen and heard them on his own walks. Every night, it seemed, he heard and saw things even stranger and more awful—and therefore better—along the whirring chirping grunting splashing midnight shore of the Wakulla River, which he knew as well as any gator.
Besides, who would want to grow up and live in a world where every living critter was known and explained and catalogued, or penned up in a zoo or alligator farm or serpentarium? Levi was even willing to believe in the Clearwater Monster, which had famously churned up the sand a few years back and been declared by experts as something like a giant penguin, even though a giant penguin in Florida seemed a lot less likely than even a Skunk Ape. Levi’s mother said anyone who would believe in a giant penguin waddling down Clearwater beach was dumb as limestone and probably jake-leg drunk to boot. But Levi still believed.
On this night, Levi stared at the moonlit river more intently than usual, almost desperate for something out of the ordinary to happen, and was eventually rewarded when a big black shape glided past, accompanied by a repeated plunk like water being displaced by a paddle. For a moment, Levi was certain it was the phantom Indian brave that the Seminoles believed patrolled the river at night in his stone canoe, keeping the waters clear and the air free of evil spirits, then realized it was Old Joe. Eleven feet long, the Springs’ most famous alligator played second fiddle to no dead Indian. The plunk was Old Joe’s massive tail cleaving the water as he swam. Levi fancied that Old Joe looked his way as he passed, one river creature acknowledging another, but who could say for sure? Late at night along the mysterious Wakulla, all certainty flowed eastward with the current, as Old Joe’s sidewinder motions sent little waves lapping over Levi’s toes, and the limpkins’ screams pierced the silence of the woods, and something a ways off went woomp, woomp.
It took Levi more than an hour to make his way back to the dormitory. Past his bedtime. The lights in their apartment were off, and he kept his shoes in his hands as he swung his legs over the railing and padded across the porch, hoping to slip inside the door without disturbing his mama. But he heard low voices as he approached, and instinct made him stop and listen. His mama and Jimmy Lee were talking in the dark. Levi couldn’t quite make out their words until he crept along the stucco wall to a spot by the azaleas, beneath her bedroom window. He smelled cigarette smoke, and heard the tink of a bottle against a drinking glass.
“Hold up, there,” his mama said. “I’ve had enough already.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Jimmy Lee, laughing.
Nobody spoke for a while, though Levi heard something rustle, and his mama actually giggled.
How was it that grown-ups could have knock-down-drag-out fights one minute, and be snuggling and kissing the next? Levi sometimes thought that adults must make up their moods randomly as they went along.
“Jimmy Lee, wait. Wait, I said. Not now.”
“Why not now?”
“Because now I need to tell you some things I did years ago. Two things.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, baby. I already know about the white man.”
Levi held his breath.
She laughed, an odd laugh, like that was funny and sad at the same time. “He’s always ‘the white man’ to you. He was a man. Ain’t that enough?”
Jimmy Lee said, after a moment. “You’re right. That is enough. But I know about it, and it doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
“I’m glad. But that’s not what I need to tell you. It’s about after. After I knew I was—pregnant.”
“With Levi.”
“Yes, with Levi. Who else I been pregnant with?”
“I’m sorry. I guess I just needed to talk. I’ll hush.”
“Hush, then. Let me tell it, so that I can say why I need to tell you.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“I knew, and my mama knew, but no one else. It was early. I mean, I didn’t show. But I was sick every morning. Lord, what sickness! I haven’t touched okra since. I was really just a child myself, and scared to death.”
“So the father didn’t know?”
“Never knew. Like I told you before. You just gonna have to take my word that was impossible.” A rustle. “Besides, I thought you were going to hush.”
“All right. I’m hushing. You were scared.”
“Scared, and wanted a way out. Wanted the baby to go away and leave me alone, have him go get born to somebody else and give me my old life back.”
“Him?”
“What?”
“You said him.”
“Yes. Somehow I knew, even then, it was a boy. Lucky guess.” She cleared her throat, and Levi heard ice rattle in a glass. “Lucky? Hmm. Anyway, I asked my mama how that would work, how I could end it. Lord, she had a blue fit. ‘Child, that is murder,’ she said. ‘That is the original sin, to kill your own kin. Get down on the floor with me right now.’ So we prayed on it for an hour, there on the kitchen floor. Well, she prayed, anyway, asking God to forgive my childish thoughts. I just lay on my side, wrapped around her knees, crying. Picked up a splinter in my cheek, see? Right there. So when she was prayed out and I was cried out, she got me up and hugged me, then got her tweezers and tried to work out the splinter, which didn’t go so well, ’cause I kept flinching and crying, and finally she set down the tweezers and reached up with her fingernails and plucked it out, just like that. I didn’t feel a thing. That was the last I ever said about getting rid of the baby. Except one time.”
The ice rattled again in the glass, and Levi heard his mama blow out air, pluuuuuuuuh, and he knew she was passing the cold wet glass across her forehead, like she always did when it was hot and she was stalling for time. Jimmy
Lee said nothing, and finally Mama started up again.
“See, Old Mr. Gavin up and died, if you can up and do anything when you’re ninety-one, and we went to the lying-in. Mr. Gavin was related to every colored person between Mobile and Tampa, so Mama and I had to stand in line to pay our respects. I was standing there crying—I cried at the drop of a hat, in those days—not feeling sorry for Mr. Gavin, just sorry for myself, when I remembered a funny old tale Mr. Gavin told me once, when I had the chicken pox. He said one way to cure a sickness is to whisper into a dead person’s ear.”
“To do what?” Jimmy Lee’s voice got louder.
“I wondered if you was paying attention.”
“I never heard tell of that. What are you supposed to whisper?”
“You whisper the dead person’s name, and then you ask the dead person, real nice, whether he’d be willing to take your sickness away with him. It won’t hurt him, after all. He’s already dead.”
“My God.”
“Anyway, right about that time the woman who was blubbering over the casket finally got done, so Mama and I moved up in line, and she reached down and patted Mr. Gavin’s wrinkly bald head, and kissed his cheek, and moved on to say hey to some of the Pensacola people. And even though I knew it was just some old wives’ tale, before I could change my mind I leaned down close to Mr. Gavin’s ear—they say your ears keep growing all your life, and that must be true, because Mr. Gavin’s ear was the size of a cabbage leaf, folded across half his head, and what was even stranger was there was no heat at all, not like you feel when you’re that close to a living person—and I whispered ‘Mr. ’Lonzo Gavin, this is Mayola Williams, and please won’t you think about taking this baby with you when you go, thank you kindly.’ Then I stood up, and someone asked me to tote a plate of chicken out to the porch, and it was over. I’d done it.”
“No one heard you?”
“Jimmy Lee, Mr. Gavin couldn’t hear me, him being dead and me whispering so low and fast. Wasn’t really a whisper, more like a breath with a thought inside it. But that thought was there. And when I come through the house with the plate, even though it was a gracious amount of chicken, I felt lighter than I had in weeks, almost bouncing when I walked, and I knew—I mean, I just knew—that Mr. Gavin had taken my baby with him. But he hadn’t. Six months later, Levi was born, and to this day, every night when I stand in his doorway and watch him sleep, I thank God and Mr. Gavin that neither one of them heard what I whispered—and that Mama didn’t hear it neither.”