by Andy Duncan
“The sass of that nigger,” one of the men said.
“Where’s the Klan when you need ’em?” said the other.
“Those are employees, Mr. Demps,” Mr. Teale said, raising his voice as if to drown out the murmured ugliness across the room. “As you well know.” He cleared his throat. “Now, there are some very nice colored boarding houses between here and Tallahassee. I’m sure our kitchen staff would be pleased to tell you all about them, and we will even call a taxicab on your behalf, if you’ll just step around to the delivery entrance.”
“Do you see these?” Jimmy Lee pointed to the row of decorations on his chest. “I earned these in Korea. This is my National Defense Medal. This is my Bronze Star. This is my Purple Heart. I won’t show you the scar—it’s on my right leg—but I was one of the lucky ones. I don’t even limp anymore.”
“Mr. Demps, please.”
“And this one, which you may not have seen before, is the Korean Service Medal. You may be interested to know that the blue and white in the ribbon are the colors of the United Nations. All free peoples, of all colors, united. And on the medal itself, see that? Here, let me hold it up to the light for you. That design is from the South Korean flag. It’s called a taegeuk, and it’s an ancient symbol, dating from the seventh century. It shows the yin and the yang, the opposites—low and high, light and dark, black and white—swirling together in harmony. How about that?”
Mr. Teale’s voice was cold. “Mr. Demps, we thank you for your service in Korea, but it does not entitle you to a room at the Wakulla Springs Lodge. I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”
Jimmy Lee stepped back from the front desk and balled both hands into fists.
Behind the desk, Mr. Teale stepped back as well, and reached for the telephone.
Both the tennis men stood. One stepped toward Jimmy Lee.
Mr. Hubert picked up his waxer and ducked through the arched doorway to the enclosed porch, out of sight. Miss Carla had already disappeared.
And a three-foot alligator walked out from behind a potted palm, claws smacking wetly onto the tile, snout raised as if smelling the possibilities.
The tennis woman stood, took hold of a companion’s arm—whether to cling to him or pull him back, Levi couldn’t say—then saw the gator. She was closer to it than anyone else in the room. Her eyes widened. The cords in her neck stood out. Her mouth opened.
Levi was already at the foot of the stairs, clearing the last flight in two leaps.
The woman shrieked. “It’s a monster!”
Levi ran across the lobby. He had no plan, exactly, but he hoped to put himself between the woman and the gator, the way Herbert A. Philbrick might have done. But he was only halfway across the lobby when the gator ran beneath the sofa. Without slowing, Levi changed course, skidded past the tennis woman, and jumped onto the sofa. The cushions were softer and deeper than he expected; he had to grab the back to keep from bouncing into the air.
The shrieking tennis woman was halfway across the lobby, her companions close behind her. Jimmy Lee ducked around them and ran for the sofa.
“Levi, don’t move!” Jimmy Lee hollered. He picked up a freestanding ashtray and swung it before him like a club. Ashes and butts scattered across the tiles. “He’s a little guy, but he could still take your hand off.”
“I can flush him out,” Levi said. He hopped up and down on the sofa.
“No, don’t do that,” Jimmy Lee said, but it was too late. The gator scuttled into view again, whipped its tail, and snapped its many teeth at the veteran.
“God almighty!” Mr. Teale cried.
Levi vaulted off the sofa, snatching up a pillow. He shook it at the gator, which whirled, darted forward, and clamped it in its jaws. Levi let go, and the gator thrashed its head back and forth, shredding the pillow in a blizzard of feathers.
“Shoo!” Jimmy Lee told the gator. “Go that way. Outside. That way.” He wasn’t having much luck.
Strong hands gripped Levi’s upper arms from behind. “Hang on, son,” said an unfamiliar male voice. The next thing Levi knew, he was in midair, then behind the sofa. The stranger had just picked him up and set him down again out of harm’s way, as easily as Jimmy Lee had picked up the ashtray. Levi turned. The man was big, more than six feet tall, very tan and broad-shouldered in a tight knit shirt, muscled legs bare beneath damp swim trunks.
“Come on, honey,” the newcomer cooed at the gator. “Come on, now.” He moved toward the gator in a crouch, arms spread wide. Jimmy Lee did the same from the other side, jabbing with the ashtray. Their unspoken mutual goal was to turn the gator, force it onto the enclosed porch, then outside. Instead the gator looked from one threat to the other, then dashed between them, across the lobby and through the archway leading to the ground-floor guest rooms.
Jimmy Lee and the newcomer said in unison, “Uh-oh.” They ran to the archway, Levi right behind them.
Halfway down the otherwise deserted corridor, the gator sauntered along the carpet, long head swinging from side to side, snout almost nudging each door in turn. At the far end was a closed exit door, its handle far out of the gator’s reach.
“This isn’t good,” said the guy in the trunks. “Any ideas?”
“Not really,” Jimmy Lee said. “But maybe we oughta bang on some doors, warn people to stay in their rooms?”
At that moment, the door alongside the gator opened, and a white-haired gentleman in a seersucker suit stepped out of Room 124 into the hallway, closing the door behind him with a snick, juggling too many small items in his hands: room key, pince-nez, pipe. The gator turned its head and regarded the old man with its cool prehistoric gaze. After interminable fumbling and muttering, the old man finally jammed the pince-nez onto his nose and stood motionless for a second, looking at the freshly revealed gator. He nodded and half-smiled, as he might have acknowledged a passing matron in the lobby, then turned and stepped back into Room 124, closing the door behind him just as gently as before. At the sound of the bolt being thrown, the gator was off again, scrambling down the corridor toward the far door.
Suddenly inspired, Levi turned and pounded back through the lobby—past a gasping Mr. Teale, who now knelt atop the front desk, a thin brass letter opener clutched in one scrawny hand—and through the main door, into the courtyard. He ran to the end of the brick walkway, flew around the corner to the outside door that led directly to the guest rooms, and flung it open, practically in the gator’s face.
The gator stood there a moment, blinking in the sunlight.
Standing as clear of the doorway as he could, the boy held the door open as Jimmy Lee and the stranger in the swim trunks yelled and charged the gator from the far end of the corridor. It balked only an instant, then dashed for freedom, scrambling into the open air and heading across the parking lot, on a beeline for the little sinkhole in the woods opposite.
It would have made it, too, if a DeSoto Powermaster had not rounded the corner. The driver saw the gator just in time to yank the brakes. The DeSoto slewed sideways, raising dust, and a child in the back seat screamed, “Daddy, don’t hit the dinosaur!” The gator reversed course, heading back the way hitcame. It was just past the doorway when the two men ran out. The gator made for the waterfront, and Levi ran behind it as Jimmy Lee and the swimmer fanned out to either side, waving their arms and yelling at the folks on the beach.
“Make way!”
“Let him through!”
“Here he comes!”
None of this, Levi thought, quite addressed the kernel of the situation, and the few tourists who had looked up just seemed confused, so he cupped both hands around his mouth and screamed, “GATOR!”
In a moment the waterfront was aboil. Swimmers and sunbathers leaped about like corn popping from a pan. Most of the swimmers thrashed toward the boathouse on one side, most of the sunbathers ran toward the diving platform on the other, and like Moses the gator steered unerringly for the part in the sea. It ran out of grass and launched itself across the
beach, plowing a furrow in the sand to the water’s edge. Suddenly graceful, hardly rippling the surface, the gator slid into Wakulla Springs, narrowed to a bumpy black sliver, and was gone. A few yards out, a drifting Donald Duck inner tube jerked, as if kicked from below, then began to slowly deflate. Levi stood on the beach between the soldier and the muscular stranger, all three out of breath, as they watched the now-tranquil water and listened to Donald’s prolonged dying fart.
“What damn fool,” Jimmy Lee finally asked, “let that gator into the hotel in the first place?”
“Um,” the man in the swim trunks said. Jimmy Lee and Levi both stared at him. He glanced back, looking sheepish. “I thought he’d stay in the bathtub.”
“You?” Jimmy Lee asked.
“You got me.” He kept talking as they turned and walked back across the grass, toward the Lodge. “It was a dumb joke, a prank on one of our cameramen. He’s had an alligator phobia, ever since he got to Florida. I swear he was afraid to get off the plane, thought they’d be waiting for him at the bottom of the gangway.”
“How’d you catch it?” Levi asked, eyes wide.
The man laughed. “Catch it? Son, I bought it at a roadside stand, on the drive here.” He spread his big hands and shrugged. “So yeah, the damn fool was me. I doubt if it’ll be the last damn fool stunt I pull, either. Thanks for helping.”
He held out his hand to Jimmy Lee, and after a pause only a Southerner could have registered, the soldier shook it.
“And thanks for your service,” he added, nodding at the soldier’s ribbons.
“You’re welcome,” Jimmy Lee said. He stopped walking, looking at the parking lot, and sighed. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Mr. Teale had just set his suitcase and duffel bag on the curb. Without looking up, the desk clerk walked briskly back inside, dusting his palms together. As he closed the glass door behind him, he flipped the hanging sign to read NO VACANCY.
“You could try again. I’d carry them back in for you,” Levi said, surprising himself. “I’m pretty strong.”
Jimmy Lee smiled, shook his head, squeezed Levi’s shoulder. “We’ll have plenty of chances, son,” he said. “Right now, I think I need more help with your mom.” To the swimmer, he said, “My name’s Jimmy Lee Demps. My young friend here is Levi Williams.”
The swimmer grinned as wide as the gator, his teeth almost too much for his mouth. “Pleased to meet you, Jimmy Lee. Levi,” he said. “I’m Ricou Browning, the Beastie from the Black Lagoon.”
* * *
The monster’s official name, in the daily flood of insignificant updates marked urgent from the studio in Hollywood—all delivered to the front desk of the Lodge by courier—was the Gill Man, but everyone on the Wakulla crew called it simply the Beastie.
At the moment, the Beastie was whining.
“Ouch!” Ricou cried.
“What a big baby you are,” Winnie muttered around the clothespin clenched in her mouth. She gave the mesh skullcap an unnecessary yank. “If you’d just cut your hair, Mr. Handsome, you’d have an easier time of it. It sticks up like the Big Boy’s. Bet you look good in those checked overalls.”
Levi shinnied onto the riverbank to get a better look as the makeup woman tugged the skullcap over Ricou’s unruly hair, then glued the back of the Beastie’s head into place. To Levi, the companionable bickering of the two professionals was just one more element to admire. Levi no longer cared that Richard Carlson and the other credited stars of Black Lagoon would get no nearer Wakulla Springs than the Universal lot in Hollywood, where all the “dry” scenes were being filmed. He had a new hero, and his name was Ricou Browning, this tall, handsome, goofy-grinned Florida State Seminole who wasn’t just an athlete—he was a professional swimmer! Levi hadn’t known there were professional swimmers.
And Ricou—he pronounced his name as in “Puerto Rico”—made his living right here in Florida! At the Weeki Wachee! With real mermaids! Sort of. That was what brought Black Lagoon to Levi’s backyard: Mr. Newt Perry had worked at both places, and had recommended Wakulla and Ricou to Universal-International.
Ricou winced as some of the hot glue seeped through the mesh, burning him, and Levi grimaced in sympathy. Winnie had learned quickly enough not to overdo the glue in any one place, but accidents still happened.
Early each morning during the month-long shoot, Ricou had to sit at the water’s edge in a form-fitting, head-to-toe leotard, while Winnie glued on the rubber Beastie suit piece by piece, one hand-sized fragment at a time. Latex, the rubber was called. By the second week, they had the process down to ninety minutes.
Until he absolutely had to leave or miss the school bus, Levi hovered about, bringing Ricou newspapers, butterscotch candies, whatever he needed, quizzing him and Winnie about everything they were doing, everything Scotty’s camera unit was doing, everything Jim the Wakulla unit director was doing—which, Ricou maintained, wasn’t much. All the underwater sequences had been storyboarded in Hollywood, which meant they had been drawn out frame by frame like a comic strip.
At first Levi had offered to bring Ricou drinks, but chugging orange juice in costume was a no-no. Ricou explained that the studio had invested $18,000 in that suit—a fortune, far more than Levi’s mama, than Winnie and Ricou, than anyone, really, earned in a year—and so Ricou was under strict orders not to pee in it.
Knowing this sort of thing made Levi very proud.
While working, Winnie chatted a lot about her friend Millicent, back at the studio. Millicent had designed the Beastie’s face mask, although Winnie said Bud Westmore was taking most of the credit. “She told me the shape of the suit was inspired by the Oscar statue,” Winnie said one morning.
“Huh,” Ricou replied. “Well, that’s as close to an Oscar as this picture’s ever going to get.” He winked at Winnie, and she swatted him with a glue rag. Winnie wore glasses, kept her red hair pinned back, and had freckles all over, at least as much as Levi could see. She and Ricou flirted a lot, when Levi wasn’t interrupting.
One day Levi had asked: “If you came here because the water’s so clear, why is the movie called Black Lagoon? Why aren’t you shooting in dirty water someplace?”
Levi’s new friends agreed that was a great question. While the cameramen had used the Lodge’s boats to get some long tracking shots of the river’s darker, swampier stretches, the underwater filming was all at the Springs because the water was crystal clear. “You’re smarter than any studio executive,” Ricou said, and Levi beamed.
Around the adults, Levi knew he was as much tolerated as welcomed, and he was desperate to show Ricou what he could really do. The chance came late one afternoon, after a long day’s filming.
By then the waterlogged Beastie suit weighed a ton, and Ricou, exhausted, was unable to climb out of the water on his own. So he looped two nooses beneath his armpits and allowed himself to be hauled out by the same crane that raised and lowered the camera. Water pouring off him, looking like some deep-sea fisherman’s nightmare catch, Ricou was swung ashore, where Winnie removed his mask and went to work on his chest plates.
“Hey!” Winnie poked Ricou in the side. “What happened here?”
He lifted his arms and craned his neck to look where she was poking, as if checking himself for ticks. “I’ll be damned,” he said, his catcher’s-mitt paws reaching toward the sky in surrender. A triangular plate was missing, revealing the leotard beneath. “I knew that glue hadn’t set up good. Hey, Scotty!” The frogmen on the far dock stopped fussing with their apparatus and looked toward Ricou, who gestured to his side and yelled, “You didn’t film a piece of my hide coming off, did you?”
The frogmen conferred, all shaking their heads. “Not that we noticed,” Scotty called back. “Where’d it go?”
“Beats me,” Ricou muttered. He checked the ground beneath his feet, each fin flapping and cascading water as he lifted it. “Ah, hell. It must be in the river.” Winnie knelt and raked her hands through the eelgrass along the shore.
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“There it is!” Scotty cried.
Prompted by the cameraman’s pointing finger, everyone looked far across the lagoon, where a bobbing bit of latex was moving steadily away from the Lodge on the current.
“Crackers,” cursed Winnie. “There goes our left abdominal oblique.”
“Hang on a sec,” Scotty said. “Mitch is suiting up.”
“No, I got it,” Ricou called, instinctively turning to dive, but Winnie thrust the palm of her hand into his chest. The foam plates buckled inward with the pressure, spoiling the illusion of solid flesh.
“Nothing doing,” said the makeup woman. “You’re worn out, and we need to get these other pieces off you. We can’t afford to lose any more, and you’re shedding like a pinecone.”
Ricou opened his mouth to protest, then held it open to gape as a small, lithe figure dashed past him and Winnie, diving headfirst into the lagoon.
Levi arrowed across the basin, just beneath the surface. He emerged only a few feet from the floating bit of latex. Hardly pausing to breathe, he plunged forward, grabbed the side-plate with both hands, brought his feet up beneath him and propelled himself backward toward the Lodge. Clutching the suit fragment to his chest like an otter, he swam with only mighty kicks of his feet. A few yards from shore he righted himself and stood, shaking his head and spraying water. He held the plate above his head like a diving trophy.
“I got it, Ricou! I got it!” Levi waded ashore, grinning, then froze as he realized what he had done. In public. He looked down at the off-limits, restricted water of Wakulla Springs sloshing around his ankles, then gaped at the all-white faces of the movie people. He turned toward the lodge, sure that he would see Mr. Ball himself standing there, hands on hips. Tomorrow Levi and his mama would be hitchhiking to Orlando.
But Mr. Ball wasn’t there, only more movie people and, in the distance, some groundskeepers moving back and forth, paying Levi no attention at all.
