Free Wakulla Springs by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages Page B

at the Springs because the water was crystal clear. “You’re smarter than any studio executive,” Ricou said, and Levi beamed.
    Around the adults, Levi knew he was as much tolerated as welcomed, and he was desperate to show Ricou what he could really do. The chance came late one afternoon, after a long day’s filming.
    By then the waterlogged Beastie suit weighed a ton, and Ricou, exhausted,was unable to climb out of the water on his own. So he looped two nooses beneath his armpits and allowed himself to be hauled out by the same crane that raised and lowered the camera. Water pouring off him, looking like some deep-sea fisherman’s nightmare catch, Ricou was swung ashore, where Winnie removed his mask and went to work on his chest plates.
    “Hey!” Winnie poked Ricou in the side. “Whathappened here?”
    He lifted his arms and craned his neck to look where she was poking, as if checking himself for ticks. “I’ll be damned,” he said, his catcher’s-mitt paws reaching toward the sky in surrender. A triangular plate was missing, revealing the leotard beneath. “I knew that glue hadn’t set up good. Hey, Scotty!” The frogmen on the far dock stopped fussing with their apparatus and lookedtoward Ricou, who gestured to his side and yelled, “You didn’t film a piece of my hide coming off, did you?”
    The frogmen conferred, all shaking their heads. “Not that we noticed,” Scotty called back. “Where’d it go?”
    “Beats me,” Ricou muttered. He checked the ground beneath his feet, each fin flapping and cascading water as he lifted it. “Ah, hell. It must be in the river.” Winnie knelt andraked her hands through the eelgrass along the shore.
    “There it is!” Scotty cried.
    Prompted by the cameraman’s pointing finger, everyone looked far across the lagoon, where a bobbing bit of latex was moving steadily away from the Lodge on the current.
    “Crackers,” cursed Winnie. “There goes our left abdominal oblique.”
    “Hang on a sec,” Scotty said. “Mitch is suiting up.”
    “No, I got it,” Ricoucalled, instinctively turning to dive, but Winnie thrust the palm of her hand into his chest. The foam plates buckled inward with the pressure, spoiling the illusion of solid flesh.
    “Nothing doing,” said the makeup woman. “You’re worn out, and we need to get these other pieces off you. We can’t afford to lose any more, and you’re shedding like a pinecone.”
    Ricou opened his mouth to protest,then held it open to gape as a small, lithe figure dashed past him and Winnie, diving headfirst into the lagoon.
    Levi arrowed across the basin, just beneath the surface. He emerged only a few feet from the floating bit of latex. Hardly pausing to breathe, he plunged forward, grabbed the side-plate with both hands, brought his feet up beneath him and propelled himself backward toward the Lodge.Clutching the suit fragment to his chest like an otter, he swam with only mighty kicks of his feet. A few yards from shore he righted himself and stood, shaking his head and spraying water. He held the plate above his head like a diving trophy.
    “I got it, Ricou! I got it!” Levi waded ashore, grinning, then froze as he realized what he had done. In public. He looked down at the off-limits, restrictedwater of Wakulla Springs sloshing around his ankles, then gaped at the all-white faces of the movie people. He turned toward the lodge, sure that he would see Mr. Ball himself standing there, hands on hips. Tomorrow Levi and his mama would be hitchhiking to Orlando.
    But Mr. Ball wasn’t there, only more movie people and, in the distance, some groundskeepers moving back and forth, paying Levi noattention at all.
    “I’ll take that,” said Winnie, plucking the plate from the boy’s hands and fanning it in the air to dry. “Thank you.”
    “Yeah, thanks,” Ricou said. He shook his head in amazement. “Son, you are one fine swimmer. Anyone ever tell you that?”
    “Everybody,” Levi said, beaming. A safe