Free Wakulla Springs by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages

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 momentthe 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 listenedto 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 theLodge. “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, shookhis 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 fromthe Black Lagoon.”
    *   *   *
    The monster’s official name, in the daily flood of insignificant