Wakulla Springs (11 page)

“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 through 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.

“Look, Sam, right there at my toe, face-up, is a 5, lying there as pretty as you please. Now, I bought a 78, not a 5. But if a 5 gets drawn, what’s to keep me from throwing mine down, picking that up and hollering, ‘I got a 5, I’m a winner’?”

“Maybe nothing,” Sam replied, smiling in a
way that made Levi’s neck prickle. “Pick it up and see.”

Levi hesitated, because he didn’t like the look in Sam’s eye, but he leaned over and picked up the 5—then couldn’t straighten up. One powerful hand gripped his forearm; another clamped the back of his neck. He feared he could feel his bones grinding together in each spot.

“Drop it,” said a man’s voice, “or I break your arm.”

“It’s dropped!”
Levi said, and it was. A patent-leathered foot kicked through the numbers, burying the 5, and both hands let go of Levi. Dizzy with terror, he slumped against the wall to steady himself and looked around for his assailants. He saw only the same crush of betting men, several of whom looked strong enough, but no one paid him the slightest attention, now that he wasn’t stealing a number.

“You see
how it is?” said Sam.

“I sure do,” Levi said, rubbing his arms. “Anyone standing beside me could be working for the house. Spies everywhere.”

Sam laughed. “You dummy, the house don’t need no spies. Any customer in the place would kill a cheater soon as look at him. You walk out honest, or you don’t walk out. You want a Nehi?” He turned and scanned the crowd. “Hey, Jo!”

A waitress shifted her
tray and looked down. “Hey, Sam.”

“You got any Blue Cream?”

“No Blue Cream, sugar,” she said. Her skirt was even shorter than Mae’s. Jo wasn’t much older than the boys, but she loomed over them; her chest was about level with Sam’s eyes. A small scar descended from her left eye like a tear. “Got Orange, Peach, Ginger, and a few Wild Berry left. They’re warm. Nobody gonna leave for ice and miss
the toss.”

“I
like
my Nehi hot,” Sam said, winking at her, “but Orange is for crackers. Gimme a Wild Berry.” Looking bored, she held her hand out, palm up, and he dropped coins into it. “One for my buddy, too,” Sam said, “and keep the change.”

“My fortune is made,” she drawled. She turned to Levi, who had finally registered her high heels. No wonder she was so tall: She was practically on tiptoe.
“You want a Wild Berry, too?”

“No, ma’am. Orange is fine,” Levi squeaked, his voice cracking. “How do you walk on those things?”

She grinned. “Like this.” She turned and sashayed away, demonstrating.

Levi gaped.

Sam’s elbow jabbed him. “See what you been missing?” Sam was only a year older than him, but Levi could tell he was right at home here. “Ain’t this great?” Sam hollered.

Even face-to-face
conversation had to be hollered now, over the crowd and the din. All the men were sweaty, and all smoking. The top half of the room was a pungent gray haze, and Levi was glad to be below it.

A nearby group of men roared with laughter over something, and one of them smashed a bottle against the wall for emphasis. Another yelled, “If that ain’t a show, I’ll kiss your ass!”

Sam pulled him over
to one of the windows. “They’ll draw a 9 tonight,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“I dreamed about a wild hog last night. It was ruttin’ in the back parlor of my grandma’s house, and no one paid it any mind, like only I could see it. Then it caught me lookin’ and chased me out of the house. A crazy kind of dream.
The Black and White Luck Book
says when you dream about wild animals, you should play
a 5, a 7, or a 9, and they already drew 5 and 7 this week. Hey, there, baby.”

Jo sashayed back into view, their Nehis on a tray. Someone already had popped the caps, and the drinks were flat on top of being warm, but Levi gulped his, feeling the sweet syrup gurgling inside his chest as Jo looked him up and down. A thought came into Levi’s head, one that he’d give anything to chase back out.
Was my mama like these girls?

Jo opened her mouth and said something else, but the room had erupted in such a roar that Levi didn’t hear a word of it. Everyone cheered as the middle of the room cleared to make room for the fat man and the skinny woman. She carried a tray of numbered balls, the man a croker sack.

Levi frowned at Jo and cupped his ear, miming, “What?” She leaned forward, said something
else that Levi lost entirely, then reached up to his chest and twisted his left nipple, right through his shirt, winking as she did. He cried out in pain and surprise. Then she turned and slipped into the crowd, disappearing as completely as an envelope through the mail drop at the Lodge. Levi turned to Sam—for help or confirmation or he didn’t even know what—but Sam had eyes only for the
couple in the middle of the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” squawked the fat man. “May I direct your attention to my lovely assistant’s tray, featuring balls numbered 1 to 78. Please take a moment, you folks standing closest, to confirm that each number is fairly represented.”

A dozen people leaned forward to look, nodding their heads.

“And please note, you folks nearest me, that my sack is entirely
empty.” He made a big show of turning it inside out and back again, stretching the neck wide for all to see. Then he held it out to the skinny woman, who tipped her tray and poured the numbered balls into the sack. The fat man swiftly tied the neck of the sack into a knot, then stepped a few feet away and threw the bulging sack to the woman. She threw it back to him, and the back-and-forth
continued, across a wider and wider space. The crowd surged closer, everyone shouting their favorite numbers at the tops of their lungs.

Levi had had enough of the noise, the heat, the smoke, the greed. He dropped his empty Nehi bottle, feeling sick to his stomach. His nipple ached, and he half dreaded—although a small, unfamiliar part of him also half hoped—that the scarred waitress would reappear
at any moment on her teetering deer’s legs to claim him. “I’m gonna go,” he said to Sam, who was oblivious.

Hugging the wall, unnoticed, Levi sidled toward the exit as fast as the crowd would let him. He stumbled alone into the cool night air, around the building and into the clean freshness of the piney woods that stretched, unbroken, for seventy miles west from Crawfordville.

The Apalachicola
National Forest, the largest in the state of Florida. His teacher said it was almost a thousand square miles, most of it unexplored swampy wilderness, the kind a person could get lost in, never to be seen again. The idea was not without its appeal, right then.

Levi walked in a ways, far enough that the noise of Cooper’s was just a drone, no louder than the cicadas and the frogs, found an old
loblolly pine stump, and sat down to breathe the stink out of his lungs and gather his thoughts.

But his thoughts all bounced around between Jo and Mae and his mama and Jimmy Lee and the white man—whoever he was—that was his daddy, and suddenly Levi was doubled over, vomiting a stream of warm Orange Nehi. When he was emptied out, his throat raw and sour, he took three chest-spreading breaths,
as if he had just returned to the surface after a long, deep dive.

He wiped his mouth with his shirttail and started to sit again when he heard a thump, somewhere off in the darkness behind him and then another, off to his right. Levi vomited again, though this time nothing came up but thin bile.

When they learned about the Apalachicola woods in class, a boy named Emmit said that he knew for
gospel that a wild creature lived in the swamps far back into this forest, hair all over his body, bigger even than a Skunk Ape. It smelled of rotting meat and howled when it was hungry—for human blood. Emmit was dumber than a bag of hammers, but his daddy was a hunter, and knew as much about this part of the world as any man, so Levi thought there was likely some truth to the tale.

After what
he’d seen and heard tonight, he didn’t know what he believed any more.

Levi began to walk back toward the road when, deep in the darkness far behind him, something howled, long and low, raising every hair on Levi’s body and putting his feet in a mood for some serious running.