Free Wakulla Springs by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages Page A

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 aroundthe 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’shead 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-grinnedFlorida 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 Wakullaand 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 onthe 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 cameraunit 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 inthat 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 mostof 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 flirteda 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 filmingwas all