Wakulla Springs (6 page)

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
in
to 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 the 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.”

Levi had no idea who his mother meant, though he was
pretty sure it wasn’t Richard Carlson.

“Yeah,” Levi said, tentatively. It seemed a safe thing to say.

“You oughta be,” she said. “Jimmy Lee Demps don’t come home from Korea every day.”

Levi sighed. He might have guessed, since she had scarcely talked about anyone else since her boyfriend’s last airmail arrived. Levi could feel his appetite drying up, the covered dishes becoming a burden. He
was not inclined to share his mama, certainly not with that fast-talking so-and-so. He looked wistfully back at the spot where he had imagined Old Joe lurking, and silently urged the gator to emerge tomorrow and take care of Jimmy Lee Demps in one gulp. But Old Joe didn’t answer, assuming he was there at all, and Levi had no choice but follow his mama back to their apartment, eat a little dinner,
wash up, and go to bed, falling asleep into a series of happy dreams about monsters.

*   *   *

The next afternoon, Levi’s mama made him dress in his church clothes to meet Jimmy Lee, and insisted further that they walk down the drive to meet his taxi.

“He called the kitchen from the Trailways station in Tallahassee an hour ago,” she said as they walked along, looking at her new Timex for the
umpteenth time. Mr. Ball liked to give gifts to valued employees, especially wristwatches; they encouraged punctuality. “So he ought to be here any minute, if he found a colored taxi fast. Poor man, riding all the way from Fort Rucker on the bus. He must be wore out.”

“How will we know his cab from anyone else’s?” asked a grumpy Levi, kicking gravel into the weeds as he trudged along. He was
determined to scuff his shoes as much as possible.

“He’ll know
me
, silly,” his mama said, though she sounded suddenly unsure, and Levi felt a pang of conscience for worrying her. She looked girlish in a bright green dress that swayed just below her knees. She had wanted to wear the heels that matched, but switched to a pair of canvas flats when she realized they’d have to walk almost a mile down
and back, and might have a long wait at the highway.

“Gone two years next month,” she said. “It seems even longer than that. Thank God Ike ended the war, else Jimmy Lee might be there yet.” She rubbed Levi’s head. “You were just a little boy when he left.”

“He never paid me no mind anyway,” Levi said. “He just pretended I wasn’t around when he—”

“Oh, Lord, here he comes,” his mama said, cutting
him off. She waved both arms overhead, and the oncoming cab swerved to the shoulder. Jimmy Lee was out of the car before it came to a stop. He was in full-dress uniform, though Levi’s mama knocked his hat off hugging him. Levi picked it up and held it, not sure what to do, while the adults kissed. He glimpsed some medals before he looked away. The taxi driver, a colored man with white stubbly
hair, smiled at Levi.

“That hat fit you?” The driver gestured for Levi to try it on. Levi reluctantly perched it atop his head, surprised that it only dropped partway across his eyes.

“Yeah, you at that big-head stage,” the driver said. “Don’t worry, the rest’ll catch up soon enough. A-ha, ha, ha.”

Levi glared at him.

“Hey, Levi, thanks,” Jimmy Lee said, snatching the hat off the boy’s head
with his free hand and brushing it on his uniform pants. His other hand was around the waist of Levi’s mama. “Can’t have my parade duds getting dirty, can I? Pretty gals won’t flag me down in the road anymore.” Levi’s mama kissed him again.

“Y’all might as well hop in,” the driver said. “Only what, half a mile, I reckon. No extra charge.”

Levi’s mama hopped into the backseat with Jimmy Lee—hopped
onto
Jimmy Lee, it seemed to Levi. He slid into the front seat beside the driver, whose big belly was dented by the steering wheel like a cushion. In front of Levi, taped to the dash, were a half-dozen faded magazine photos of Lena Horne, aging from left to right. The man thunked the car into gear and pulled forward, asking the rear-view mirror, “Employee dorm, right?”