Wakulla Springs Read online

  She waited until the boss was back on the dock before she stood up from behind the bush.

  “You been there the whole time, Miss Mayola?”

  She nodded. “Eating my lunch.” She looked down at the water. They were all swimming again. “I don’t get it. They want colored people, why they have to go and paint up white boys? Ain’t like we short on colored folk round here. And most looking for work, too.”

  “I don’t know for certain,” he said, scrubbing away, “but what I hear is Mr. Ball won’t let them.”

  “How come? It ain’t his movie.”

  “Nope. But it’s his water, and, movie or not—” He gave the porcelain fountain one last flick of his rag. “—he doesn’t want folks like us swimming in it.” He touched the brim of his hat to Mayola, and returned to his flowers.

  * * *

  “Shit, Newt. I don’t want to go on any boat tour. I spent all day in that goddamn river.” Johnny Weissmuller said. He’d worked with Perry on three pictures, and knew he didn’t have to put on his company manners.

  “I know. But it’s the Tallahassee Ladies Club, and they are the lovely wives of the Pork Chop Gang.”

  “Mr. Ball’s friends?”

  “Indeed. The stalwart men of commerce and politics who are bringing purity and prosperity to the great state of Florida.”

  “I get it.” Weissmuller sighed. “Smile and look manly.” He struck a Tarzan pose.

  “That’s the ticket.” Perry slapped him on the shoulder. “Oh, and by the way, Mr. Ball said I should tell you that he recognizes how valuable your time is, so once the tour is over, you’ll find a bottle of Jim Beam waiting in your room.”

  Weissmuller smiled. “For that, first crocodile we see, I’ll even give them the Tarzan yell.” “The nearest croc is almost five hundred miles away, down in the Everglades. They’re all alligators, here.”

  “Same thing.” Weissmuller looked down at his slacks. “I don’t have to jump in and wrassle one, do I?”

  “No, Johnny. These animals aren’t rubber.”

  The Jungle Cruise boat was a long, shallow box, open to the air, with five rows of wooden benches. That afternoon it was full of tittering ladies, all hats and gloves and floral cologne. A few of them weren’t bad looking. Johnny sat at the back with the boatman, a genial, fixed grin on his face.

  The outboard motor started up with a roar and a belch of blue smoke, which dissipated, along with the reek of gasoline, when they were away from the dock. The roar settled into a purr, and Johnny felt the breeze ruffle the ends of his hair. He’d left it loose, Tarzan-style, for the occasion.

  “Good after-noon, ladies,” boomed the boatman. “My name is Odell Watkins, and I will be your chauffeur on this fine, fine Florida day.”

  He had a big voice, and Weissmuller could tell he was starting a speech he’d practiced many times.

  “WAH-kulla Springs. One’a nature’s paradise. Now the crystal clear waters’a this springs flow out of the grawn at more’n a million gallons ever single day, a-formin the Wah-kulla River you now a-floating on. Look there! Over on the right, you see a bird with spread-out wings. That there’s the anhinga, also known as the snake bird, or water turkey. An-hinga!”

  The ladies turned, but were watching Tarzan as much as the wildlife, so Weissmuller kept the smile on his face and let his gaze wander. It really was a stunning bit of landscape. He could see why Thorpe wanted to film the location shots here. No sign of modern civilization. The sky was a deep clear blue, and the vegetation was wild, even primitive. It would look African enough on film, even in black-and-white. He wondered if they’d shoot the next picture in color. After The Wizard of Oz came out, two years ago, it was all anyone talked about. Would they have to remix his makeup? He’d ask one of the—

  “Now there’s a sight!” Odell said, pulling Johnny back from his reverie. “Four cooter turtles, all a-sitting on the same log like they was waiting for a bus. They got no idea Wah-kulla means waters’a mystery in the language’a the Injuns used to live here. They was here when Mr. Poncey de Leon come up this river four hunnert years ago, a-lookin for the fountain’a youth. He kept a-going, but they’s some folks think he done found it right here in these pure waters, and died ’fore he could come back to claim it. Now ever’one, keep you hands in-side the boat, cause over there is a big old gator. American alligator, born and raised right here in Florida.”

  He turned the boat toward the shore, and Johnny saw the dark, ridged back moving slowly through the weeds. That was his cue. He stood up and put one foot on the stern of the boat.

  “Aaahhh-eeeeeeee-aaahhhh-eeeee-aaaahhhh-eeeeee-aaaahhhhh!” he yodeled. He saw a few women jump in their seats. Then there were oohs and aahs and giggles and a polite spatter of applause. He gave a small bow, more of a nod, and sat down again. There. That’d give ’em a story for their next meeting.

  “If you look to your left,” Odell continued, “you’ll see the anhinga, also known as the snake bird, or water turkey. An-hinga!”

  The boat cruised down the river about a mile, then turned and came back up on the other side of an enormous stand of towering bald cypress festooned with pale gray moss. Pointing out several more anhingas—snake birds—water turkeys—the increasingly repetitious boatman took them through a back channel, a dark and decidedly swamp-like section, then returned to the open water, directly over the springs.

  “Wah-kulla Springs. One’a the biggest and deepest springs in the en-tire world. So clear that when I drop this here penny in—watch now—you can see it shining all the way to the bottom, one hunnert eight-y feet below. Under that platform over there is the spot where some diver-mens discovered the drownded skeleton of a woolly mammoth elephant, a pre-storic animal that walked the earth more’n ten thou-sand years ago.

  “Now, look down to the right. See them stone ledges, all pretty and green and blue? If it was dark, you would see some itty bitty lights a-glowin down there, too. Ain’t no paint or magic, no siree. It just nature’s natural beauty.” He lowered his voice to a spooky timbre. “There’s also an Injun legend says them lights is fairy critters, playing in the deeps. I guess y’all never know what might be a-lurking in them limestone caves.”

  As if on cue, he was interrupted by a loud wailing sound that raised the hair on the back of Johnny’s neck.

  “Gracious!” A woman fluttered a handkerchief to her mouth. “What was that?”

  “That there is the limpkin bird, one’a the rarest birds there is in this state.” The boatman lowered his voice again. “There’s folks say it sound just like the cry of a woman, lost forever in the swamps.”

  It was a good line, and Johnny saw that it had its intended effect on the twittering audience. Including him. As they pulled into the dock, he was more than usually comforted by the thought of the bottle waiting in his room.

  * * *

  When Mayola came to work on Thursday morning, a big color poster was propped on an easel in the lobby. Tarzan and His Mate. Across one corner, a hand-lettered sign said:

  SPECIAL SHOWING!

  ON THE PORCH

  FRIDAY NIGHT - 9:00 PM

  The changing room downstairs was all abuzz. A Hollywood movie right in the Lodge! Bennie Mae went to ask Mrs. Yancey if they could see it too, or if it was just for guests. She came back and said since there wasn’t a separate balcony, it being a porch, Mrs. Yancey didn’t think so. But later that afternoon, when they were polishing the marble tables in the lobby, Mr. Perry walked in, and Bennie Mae walked right over to him, bold as brass, and asked.

  He looked a little surprised, but he rubbed his chin, and said that since it was a fine summer evening, he supposed the colored help might enjoy the show too. “I’ll have the boatmen bring up some benches, set you up right out on the lawn,” he said.

  Mayola had never seen a real movie. There wasn’t a picture show in Wakulla County, and she had only been to Tallahassee once, for Easter. A traveling preacher had brought The Life of Jesus and showed it to the Sunday S
chool, a few years back, but she reckoned that didn’t exactly count.

  Friday afternoon, a couple of the men from the movie crew set up a big projector machine on the glassed-in porch of the hotel, and hung a white sheet at one end for a screen. Mayola and the other girls stayed in their uniforms after their shift was over and ate sandwiches in the kitchen, then moved all the wicker porch chairs into nice neat rows while the guests had a barbecue supper under the magnolias and the live oaks.

  By the time everything was set up, Mayola was tired on her feet and sweaty inside her uniform. The thermometer had inched close to one hundred that day, and the air was just about soup.

  She sat down at the end of one of the benches, a few feet from the shrubbery where she ate her lunch, and watched the light change around her. The lawn was still and quiet, no people bustling around. The water looked just like a sheet of glass, with shifting colors beneath it—deep, dark greens and blues dappling the white sand bottom. It made the painted tiles of the lobby seem shabby. The clouds had gone all pink, and they reflected in the water as perfect as any mirror. She felt like she was in some place out of a storybook, not part of the ordinary world, so pretty it like to take her breath away.

  The last of the sun touched the very tops of the trees; everything else was shadows. Then even that light faded, the blue of the sky deepened, and stars began to wink on. The moon rose over a bend in the river, and a trickle of white light made a river of its own, sparkling down the middle of the dark water.

  All around her the grass and the trees were a-hum with the soft shirring of unseen creatures. Mayola remembered what Odell had said in his tourist voice, about the fairies that lived deep below in the springs. In the daylight, she had known it for a tale, but now it seemed like it might really be true.

  The benches began to fill up with the hotel staff. Maids and gardeners and cooks chattered with each other, waiting for the show to begin. Through the arched windows of the lighted porch, Mayola watched the guests come in from the lobby—men in suits and ties, ladies in dresses with flowers and sparkles, all talking and smoking cigarettes. She didn’t see Mr. Tarzan, but the little fella they called Boy came in holding the hand of the big monkey that did so many tricks, and they sat right in the front row.

  When it was so dark that Mayola couldn’t tell where the land ended and the water began, a man turned out the lights on the porch and started up the projector. It whickered so loud it drowned out even the cicadas, and then the sheet was full of a map that said “Darkest Africa.” All of a sudden, there was Mr. Tarzan, swinging from tree to tree, yelling his special yell, like he did every morning, out his window, wanting his breakfast.

  Too bad Vergie was off dancing with that Odell. She’d be sorry when she heard about all this.

  Mayola could hear Mr. Tarzan’s yell through the glass, but not much of the talking parts, so she just watched the pictures. Mr. Tarzan was in the jungle, with that same funny monkey, and he had visitors—white men in those round hats, with colored boys to carry their bags, just like the hotel. The white men had guns, and got into a big fight with some other colored boys who had spears and not much clothes and mostly got killed. These ones weren’t white boys in minstrel paint, neither. Mayola leaned forward and looked close, to make sure.

  Then Mr. Tarzan was back, with a lady friend. He treated her real nice. Woke her up in the morning by puffing his breath in her hair, gentle-like, and she smiled and they kissed, and she ate striped fruit like little watermelons that grew right on the jungle trees. Then he must have said, “Swim,” ’cause the lady smiled again and next thing you know they dived off a tree into water so clear you could watch them underwater.

  They swam together like they were playing, like swimming was their most favorite thing in the wide world. She held onto his shoulders, and they dived deep down, and then she took hold of his feet, and they turned slow circles in the water, looking at each other and laughing to make bubbles. Mayola hugged her arms to herself to stop them aching for the want of being able to swim like that.

  When the round-hatted men came back, she got up and walked away a piece in the darkness, wanting to keep the swimming part in her head long enough that she’d never forget the picture of it. She walked across the lawn, careful, looking over her shoulder to make sure no one saw. But everyone was too busy watching the make-believe paradise on the screen. Mayola tucked herself deep under the shadow of the diving platform and leaned against a wooden post, a foot from the water.

  Out there was the deepest, coolest part, where the spring welled up from underground. She edged a toe close enough to feel the different surface on the sole of her shoe, and half-whispered, “Oh, Lord, I wish I could jump in, just once, and swim like there’s no tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Johnny Weissmuller smiled and posed for pictures with Mr. Ball’s friends, shook hands, and signed autographs all through the picnic supper. But when everyone trooped out to the porch for the screening, he made his excuses: dinnertime out in California, want to call my wife before she puts the baby to bed. They were family men and said they understood and patted him on the back as he headed toward the elevator.

  Up in his room, he didn’t touch the phone. He’d talked to Beryl two days ago and doubted she had anything new to say. It had only been a way to escape having to watch the movie.

  Johnny didn’t mind seeing himself on screen—since the Olympics there had been so many newsreels and premieres and Hollywood must-shows that he was used to it. It was this movie. He’d seen it so many times. And the print they were showing tonight was the one the Hays Office had censored.

  They’d made the studio butcher the best scene. Him and Josie, Maureen’s stand-in. O’Sullivan couldn’t swim a lick. Josie was a beautiful girl who had swum in the ‘28 games. He’d had his loincloth, of course, but she’d worn nothing at all when they shot it at Silver Springs. Tarzan and Jane, skinny-dipping at dawn. Innocent fun. Art, even.

  A week later, the word had come down to reshoot, with “Jane” fully-suited, for theaters in less-sophisticated markets. That was bad enough, but seven years later, it seemed the whole country had gone puritan. The Legion of Decency had made sure that scene was chopped and chopped until it was almost unrecognizable. He couldn’t stand to look at it.

  Weissmuller paced the length of the little provincial hotel room. Fidgety energy. He looked at the bottle of bourbon on the nightstand, but shook his head. What he needed was to get in the water, really kick it loose. He stripped, put on his trunks, and slipped into khakis and a loose shirt, grabbed his wallet and keys. He went down the side stairs, skirting the lobby for the parking lot door and walked around the building, making a wide swing to avoid the flickering porch. He whistled under his breath when he was clear, like he was playing hooky.

  Even with the moonlight, he might not have noticed the tall colored girl, deep in the shadows of the diving platform, if he hadn’t heard her whispered prayer. He smiled. Didn’t matter if she was just one of the maids. Tonight, she was someone else who wanted to swim.

  Bare feet padding over the soft grass, quiet as a jungle hunter, he stepped over to a canvas tent a dozen yards away. He helped himself to Newt’s sister’s costume, hanging on the line to dry, and returned to the platform.

  Johnny Weissmuller held out his hand. “So, you want to swim?”

  * * *

  Mayola nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard the man’s voice a few feet away. She was caught, and nowhere to run. Taking a deep breath, she stood straight up and stepped out to take her medicine. “Sorry, suh. I was lookin’ at the water, tha’s all. I didn—”

  Then she stopped, because it wasn’t Mr. Perry or one of his men. It was Mr. Tarzan. Mr.—Mr. Weissmuller.

  “Come. Swim with me,” he said. He held out a piece of cloth.

  She stared at him for long enough to feel the rudeness of it before she spoke. “S’cuse me?”

  “Swim with me. I brought you a suit.” He took a step forward and draped it
over her arm.

  Mayola recognized it as the jungle suit one of the pretty women wore. She smoothed her hand over it, soft as a baby’s blanket on her arm, and thought how it would feel on the rest of her skin, to wear something that fine. Then she came to her senses, and handed it back. “I can’t.”

  “I’ll teach you. I taught Boy to swim. Little John.”

  “No sir, it ain’t that.” Mayola shook her head. “I been swimming since I was knee-high. Just like a fish, my daddy says. I can—” She stopped before pride got her tongue wagging too much.

  “Good. Then come swim.”

  “Not in Mr. Ball’s springs, sir.” Mayola watched his face twitch in puzzlement, then remembered he wasn’t from around here. “Colored people ain’t allowed.”

  He stared at her for a long minute, with an odd expression, like that was a brand-new idea coming into his brain. Then he looked away, out over the water, and when he looked back, he held the suit out again, his face all a-grin.

  “Tarzan not care for white man’s law.”

  Mayola sighed. If only it was that easy. Because she wanted to, as much as anything she’d ever pined over in the Sears Christmas wishbook. Wanted to dive into that clear water and swim just like the lady in the movie.

  But this wasn’t pretend.

  “Thank you, sir, but no,” she said out loud with her mouth while the rest of her was busy imagining how it would be. “If anyone was to see, I’d lose my job.” She stroked the suit again, then sighed deep into her true self, and said, softer, “It’s a good job, and I’m saving the money. I’m gonna go up to the Florida A&M some day.”

  She waited for him to laugh like everyone else, chuckle at her biggity dreams. But he didn’t. He just looked at her with those big, dark eyes.

  “I never went to college,” he said after a moment. “I had to work, and then I was swimming.” He sounded sad about it, and put his hands in his pockets. He took a step away, then a step right back, and next thing she knew, he was nodding, like someone had asked him a question.