Wakulla Springs

by Andy Duncan

  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.”

  “Why tell me now?”

  “Because I want you to stop throwing off on superstitions. If I tell you I don’t have a headache anymore when I take the sliced potatoes off my forehead, I want you to say you’re glad of that. A thing that comes down to you because whole generations told it to each other, before you ever showed up, that deserves respect whether you believe it or not. Now, maybe I didn’t half believe what Mr. Gavin had told me, and I still don’t, but I know I wanted it to be true, and I know that the doing of it gave me a lightness.”

  “But, Mayola—”

  “Hush. I also know I’m damn lucky it didn’t work that time, because luck has a way of coming—or not—that is beyond any of our knowing or doing and you can’t convince me otherwise.”

  “All right.” Jimmy Lee was quiet for a minute before he said, “You said there was two things?”

  “Yes. Well, the second thing—” Levi heard the clink of ice and a splash of something wet and a long bit of quiet before he heard his mama’s voice again. “The second thing I ain’t never told another living soul before. Not my mama, for sure. Not even Vergie.”

  “I’m listening.”

  More quiet. Then she said, “He gave me money.”

  “Who did?”

  “The man.”

  “I thought you said he didn’t know?”

  “He didn’t.” Levi heard another pluuuuh of blown-out air, another stall. “He gave it to me—before.”

  “What?” Jimmy Lee’s voice was loud again, and now it had iron in
it.

  “He gave me a hundred dollars. He was rich and it wasn’t nothing but pocket money to him. And that’s what I used for the doctor when Levi was born.” Levi felt his stomach turn over like he’d eaten too many biscuits all at once. He heard the bedsprings squeak. “There, Jimmy Lee. I’ve said it.”

  “Yes, you sure have. Why? Why now?”

  “Because if you and me are gonna have a life together, and maybe have a child of our own, I don’t want no secrets between us. I needed you to know every single thing, and now you do.”

  If Jimmy Lee said anything in reply, Levi didn’t hear it. He was already running across the dew-wet lawn and back into the woods, where even the wisteria seemed to know to get out of his way.

  He used to run like this imagining the TV narrator in his head: This is the fantastically true story of Herbert A. Philbrick, who for nine frightening years lead three lives—average citizen, member of the Communist Party, and counterspy for the FBI. But that suddenly seemed very childish.

  He ran full-out until he reached the little hidden sink nearest the Lodge. Ignoring the grunting bullfrog that on any other night he would have stalked and observed, he sat down and thought about what he had heard, though much of it was hard to think about, literally: It would not hold his concentration.

  The part that he could let through came in a steady beat like the bullfrog’s mating call:

  The doorway.

  She stands in the doorway and watches me when I sleep.

  Why did she never tell me that? Why did I never know?

  He sat there a long time thinking, not really listening to the bullfrog or the other night-plopping creatures until the breathy singsong of someone sauntering up the Lodge driveway made it into his ears—

  Numbers, numbers, ’bout to drive me mad

  Numbers, numbers, ’bout to drive me mad

  Thinking ’bout the money that I should have had

  The voice was heading away from the building and out toward the road when Levi suddenly stirred himself, fisted away the tears he didn’t remember crying, and stepped through the trees and into the drive directly in front of Policy Sam, who jumped a foot into the air with a yelp.

  “Hey, Sam.”

  “Damn, Levi! I thought the Skunk Ape done got me. If I’d’a dropped these tickets, I’d have played hell picking them up, too.”

  “You going to Cooper’s?” Levi asked.

  “Yeah, I’m going to the Big House. Got a late toss tonight.”

  “Can I go with you?”

  If Sam had asked, “Why?” Levi would have been stuck for an answer. All he knew was that he suddenly didn’t want to be alone any more, but he didn’t want to go home, either; if he saw his mama now, he would bust out crying, just like a baby—an unwanted baby was the thought he couldn’t let himself think, nor about another baby that his mama might want. That overheard conversation had set so many grown-up thoughts to swimming through his head that he needed to do something grown-up, this very night.

  But Sam didn’t say a word.

  “Look, I just want to see what it’s like. You been asking me to go with you, right?”

  “Sure I have,” Sam said, though he didn’t sound so sure.

  “Well, let’s go. I’ll buy a number if that’s what it takes,” Levi said. “How about 91?” It was the first number that came to mind: Mr. Gavin’s age when he died. He’d never even heard of Mr. Gavin before.

  “91? Numbers only go up to 78.”

  “Oh. Well, 78, then.” Levi pulled some coins out of his pocket.

  Sam hesitated, but finally handed over a single strip of paper. “Okay, then, come along. But you best pick ’em up and put ’em down, ’cause we got to hustle out to the county road and I’m running late already. The men drinking down at the boats was trying to count lightning bugs, and that is one slow-ass way of picking numbers.” He shook his head. “Levi Williams, playing the numbers. Never thought I’d see it. Ain’t you scared of your mama no more?

  “I ain’t studying about her,” Levi said, and then walked in silence, because in fact she was all he was studying about, all down the long drive and out to the paved road, the cracked white paint of the center line seeming to glow like a ghost trail leading off into the darkness.

  Policy Sam stopped by the side of the road heading south.

  “What’re we waiting for?” Levi asked.

  “Henry. On late-toss nights, him and me got an arrangement.”

  Levi was about to ask who Henry was when a battered taxi tooted its horn and pulled off onto the shoulder, motor running.

  “C’mon,” Sam said. He tugged Levi across the pavement and opened the back door. “Hey, Henry.” He slid in, and Levi followed.

  “Well, well, well. If it ain’t swimming boy.”

  Levi was startled until he noticed the man’s white stubbled hair and the pictures of Lena Horne on the dashboard.

  “That soldier with the big ideas, he still keeping company with your mama?”

  “Yessir,” Levi said, to be polite, then slumped way down into the cracked leather seat to put an end to any further conversation.

  “39 and 42,” Sam said, peeling off two strips of paper from the bundle in his fist. “There you go.” He handed them over the seat. Henry pocketed them and grunted, then put the car into gear.

  It was eight miles from the springs to the county seat at Crawfordville. More than two hours walking—and that was fast walking the whole way—but Henry pulled the cab to a stop in front of Cooper’s no more than twenty minutes later.

  * * *

  Levi had heard talk about Cooper’s his whole life, in dribs and drabs of conversations he was not supposed to have any part of—listening to Aunt Vergie and the rest of the crew tell tales, especially after a weekend, when lots of folks seemed to get headaches and have shorter tempers than usual. He had imagined it to be a grand palace, a party that never stopped, with the bright lights and music that signified grown-up fun.

  But when he got out of Henry’s cab, his first thought was that it ought to be called the Chicken House instead of the Big House. It was a long, low, swaybacked building with double doors on either end, built of concrete blocks, sallow light escaping through square chicken-wire windows every few feet. Sam and Levi joined the stream of people jostling into the south door. People added themselves on from all directions in ones, twos, and threes, men and women, mostly colored but some whites and Cubans as well, and of course plenty of boys, running in last-minute numbers.

  Levi was shorter by a head than most of the crowd. After a minute he couldn’t see anything but the back of Sam, and he held on tight to the tail of the other boy’s shirt, half-suffocated and half-crushed by the time they finally pushed their way inside. Some palace. A battered tin-top bar ran the length of the east wall. The scattered furnishings were all mismatched: orange crates, card tables, upturned buckets and barrels, funeral-home chairs, anything you could sit on or set a beer on. Off in a corner, a scratchy nickel phonograph was playing Nat King Cole and scores of people just stood around, talking, laughing, whooping.

  Runners stood in line before a desk in the corner, where a fat colored man gnawed the butt of a cigar as he collected stacks of coins and wadded bills. A skinny colored woman sat beside him with a pencil and a thick notebook. His voice loud to be heard over the crowd, Sam said she was recording the numbers sold that day: how many of each, and who bought them. He pointed to a quiet spot along the west wall and told Levi to stay put until he was done with his business.

  Levi watched, hands in his pockets, afraid to look at anything but Sam as he made his way through the runners’ line. Occasionally the fat man and the skinny woman turned from their counting and writing to whisper into each other’s ears, and once, Levi was startled to see them kiss on the lips.

  When the runners left the desk, they simply threw down their unsold numbers. Discarded paper strips covered the Big House floor, forming ankle-deep drifts along the walls. Walking in here meant wading t
hrough numbers.

  Men all around Levi were betting on everything: how many drinks would be on Mae’s tray when she left the bar; how many more runners would come in the door at the last minute; who in the group had the biggest knife in his pocket.

  Levi was less interested in Mae’s glass-laden tray than in the shortness of her skirt. He got a very good look as she passed by, because she slowed down and brushed nearer him than was strictly necessary.

  “How old are you, baby?” she asked him. She had a big mole on her right cheek, and a gap in her front teeth that a gar could swim through. Levi couldn’t make his tongue answer.

  “Older’n he was when he come in,” a big man laughed.

  “Ain’t that right,” another man added. “And if you keep rubbing against him he’ll get bigger yet.”

  “Screw you,” Mae said, and the men roared like that was the wittiest thing ever said.

  When Sam finally reached the desk, the fat man and the skinny woman performed the necessary transactions and paid him no more attention than they did anyone else. But Sam walked over to Levi, jingling change in his pockets, beaming at everyone as if he owned the place. “Some party, huh?” Sam asked. They leaned side by side against the wall, watching the crush. “Line’s about done. They’ll do the toss in fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  Levi kicked at the ruck of slips on the floor. “Do they throw these away later?”

  Sam laughed. “Like hell. Don’t you know it’s bad luck to throw away a Policy number? Or burn one, or tear it up? Makes that number bad for you and bad for everybody else, too. No, you got to bury them, so your luck keeps growing.”

  Levi nearly said something about how country ignorant that was, but then he remembered what his mama had told Jimmy Lee about respecting superstitions, and he held his tongue and thought of a more practical objection.