Sometimes he'd tell her, Now quit that. Or he'd snap at her, What're you talking to me like that for?
Leanne might look surprised and say to him in her own voice, Like what? Claiming she had no idea what he was talking about. If someone had spoken to him, it was this other person occupying her body.
That was the first year or so of their marriage. Now Leanne claimed she could be present while the other person spoke, the other person occupying only her invisible etheric body, her spiritual self. See, while she remained in her actual body.
The one putting on weight.
Going on seven years of this, since the day she had her Experience.
The way Leanne thought of it, it began just after one in the afternoon of a gorgeous day.
She remembered rising from the underwater chamber behind the screen of air bubbles, their curtain for the show, and seeing the surface of the spring above shimmering in bright sunlight. She remembered flashes going off inside the glass front of the theater, families on vacation with cameras and little girls who wanted to be mermaids. She believed this was the way spirits might see our world, like looking at us through sparkly water and glass from over on the other side.
She remembered they were doing the magic show that day, one of the Kims working dry, playing the theme music and doing the narration topside. Another Kim went into the box they pierced with swords and came out with a few rolls and flutters, smiling, showing the kids she was okay. Leanne remembered swimming to her position, flipping her tail out in the mermaid crawl, holding the end of her air hose and the banana in the same hand. Her part in the show was to make the banana disappear. How? asked Kim the narrator. By eating that banana, sixteen feet underwater! Actually about twelve feet, closer to the surface than the other four mermaids in the magic show, Kim out of the sword box now getting ready to drink a Coke. Yes, sixteen feet underwater! the Kim working dry said. Leanne believed she might have been even a bit closer than twelve feet, because she felt herself rise just a little as she was peeling the banana.
She remembered placing herself in profile to the audience, so they would see what she was doing, raising her chin slightly as she took a bite, began to chew This was the part that still gave her goose bumps. First, the shadow, or a feeling something was up there, right above her. Then looking up and seeing the alligator, its pale belly, its snout, its stubby legs moving in the water almost on top of her as she was swallowing the bite of banana, in that exact same moment, that's why she choked and it got caught in her throat and she gagged, swallowing the banana but also a lot of water. She didn't remember dropping her air hose until she realized she didn't have it, but did remember not knowing which way to go. She saw the alligator's tail fanning in the water as it turned and came back, so she started to dive, coughing now, knowing she couldn't make it all the way to the air lock chamber, not without her hose. She remembered twisting frantically in that sheath of lam+! binding her legs. She remembered the swirl of bubbles and sounds, her breath rushing out of her lungs and a terrible pain pressing against her chest The next part she remembered even more clearly, because it was the actual experience.
Being underwater okay, then just for like a few seconds seeing her body being pulled out of the water into a boat and the Kim who'd been working dry starting to give her mouth-to-mouth, seeing four mermaids in the water, their heads showing, seeing all this from way above looking down. Then it got dark and she was somewhere else that was like being underwater only she could breathe now.
Leanne was asked later on by different people if it was like that tunnel you hear about. The one with the bright golden light at the end?
No, because there wasn't any shape to where she was that she noticed, or any light, just kind of a soft fuzzy glow. Like being way up in the sky as dusk turns to night except there was no wind as you might expect and it wasn't cold, it was nice. Leanne said she was moving, but not swimming now or doing the mermaid crawl, she was standing upright and sort of gliding through this huge expanse of nothing without moving her legs. Until all of a sudden she saw the little girl appear out of the mist, a little black girl raising her hand, and something stopped her. The little black girl had on a simple white dress and stood, oh, about twenty feet away, though not actually standing on anything, she was just there. She put her hand down and said, Go on back, Leanne. She did, she called her by name. Said, Go on back, Leanne. You cain't come here yet.
Leanne would tell about it many many times later on in psychic workshops and seminars in Florida, Georgia, and as far north as Ohio, get to the part, You cain't come here yet, and there would be a chill in the room you could feel, people in the audience holding their arms.
The room where she opened her eyes that day was a different story. She said, Where am I? A nurse told her she was at Lykes Memorial in Brooksville, brought here close to death but now seemed to be doing okay. The nurse not too sympathetic or sensitive. So Leanne waited till Big came to visit. He was the first one she told.
I had an out-of-body experience.
Big had hold of her hand lying on the covers, giving it pats.
I did. I drowned, but it wasn't time for me yet so I had to come back.
He said, I want you to quit that job of yours.
Leanne said, Don't worry.
I have a brick ranch house in the country on five acres, an orange grove, all kinds of palm trees, laurel oaks that tell it's spring with chartreuse leaves, orchids growing everywhere, a big screen porch
Leanne said, It sounds nice.
You want to marry me I'll put in a swimming pool, you can be my little mermaid.
Leanne said, We hardly know each other.
I know you're what I want.
Can I think about it? Right now there's so much on my mind.
Have your own car. Go to big society parties in Palm Beach Get some rest, sweetheart.
Patting her hand, kissing her on the forehead.
He smelled nice of aftershave and wasn't too bad looking. He was mature She wouldn't have to worry about her hair anymore or work in the gift shop or do the Birds of Prey Show, those huge things shitting all over the place. She wondered what the wife of a judge was called.
It was the next day Leanne heard voices in the hall and saw the black family walking past her room, come to visit somebody. One of them, she was bringing up the rear, stopped in Leanne's doorway and stood there looking in at her. A little girl about twelve.
Later on Leanne would tell the psychic workshops and seminars from Florida to Ohio, It was the same little girl I met in my out-of-body experience. She smiled and turned as if to go and I said, Wait, please.' She looked at me and said, You be jes fine now, Leanne. I be back when you wants me.' I said again, Wait,' but she was gone. I got out of bed, walked up and down the hall looking in every room. There was no sign of the little girl, or her family. As soon as I returned to bed I fell into a deep sleep. It was evening when I woke up, feeling completely refreshed and at peace for the first time since my drowning. But there was something else I felt, like a presence in the room. I looked around 'a it was on my bedside table. A crystal. It wasn't there before and when I asked the nurse, she said she didn't know anything about it or what it was. I didn't either, then. I didn't learn until later it was Can you guess? Of course, a rose quartz. With its pink rays that focus on the heart chakra and usher in love, forgiveness, inner peace. But at the time I had no idea
At the time the judge hovering over her, his presence so close she could see the blood vessels in his nose afire, a glow over his face that wasn't healthy, Big saying:
I be back when you wants me'?
That's what she said.
And you think she's from the spirit world.
She must be.
Well, if she knows how to get here from the other side, wherever that is, how come she doesn't know how to speak good English? She looked like the same one as in your dream, that's all.
It wasn't a dream.
Listen, I have trouble telling one from the
other myself, and I see them brought up before me every day of the year.
She said, If you don't believe me
And he was all sweetness again.
Honey, you're my little mermaid. I want to take care of you, buy you nice things, make you happy. He said, Look, and showed her pictures of his home in the country, all the trees, the orange grove, the flower gardens and grounds maintained by work-release inmates.
Leanne said, It looks so quiet and peaceful. A wonderful place to meditate, have a little dog to play with. The only thing she didn't like too much was that canal right next to the property, a wide ditch full of water. Are there ever alligators in it?
Big said, Honey, you want it fenced off, I'll have it fenced off. You want a little doggie, you got it, anything you want. Come home with me.
Chapter 4
Every morning, if he got up early enough, he'd see her in the yard meditating: out there with her tiny dog Pokey, between the pair of Cuban petticoat palms she thought of as two women who'd been turned into trees telling him that though she had never heard or read of such a thing in any of her books. Christ, dozens of books on spirit communication, psychic enlightenment, aura reading, crystal healing, getting in touch with your chakras, channeling which was what Leanne did to get hold of the little colored girl she called her discarnate entity, or sometimes her spirit guide. Ask Leanne how she did it, she'd tell you.
Easy as pie. I raise my energy level to resonate with Wanda's, see, then she's able to use my energy channel to manifest herself through me.
Oh.
That's her name, Wanda?
Wanda Grace.
How old is she?
Twelve.
That's all? And she knows everything?
Age doesn't matter.
But why her? Why not somebody more like yourself?
Wanda was killed by an alligator.
Ask a simple question The time he did he saw Leanne get that scared look for a second, saw her eyes close, her eyelids flutter and now she was speaking in her little colored-girl voice.
The gator drug me into the swamp and spun me round and round and round till I was drowned. Then what he did, he took me down to his house and lef' me, didn' eat me till I turn ripe. Tha's the way they is, like you ripe.
Leanne opened her eyes.
She said, Wanda Grace's little dog ran away. It was when she was down by the swamp looking for Pokey it happened. The same month, the same day and hour as my Experience, except Wanda passed over in the year 1855. She lived on a plantation in Clinch County, Georgia, as a slave.
Maybe, the judge said, you can get her to dust and do the windows.
Oh, you didn't kid about Wanda Grace. Leanne's face would turn to stone and the judge would have to act innocent.
Honey, I thought she wanted us to open our hearts and be happy, have some fun in life.
Leanne said, Your idea of fun is cruel. Sending people to prison, degrading those less fortunate. Wanda Grace was a slave. All her people died of the fever except she.
What happened to the healthy girl who used to wiggle her tail and could smile underwater? Now she communicated with a spirit and played with crystals to improve her inner vision. Show you how much sense that made, she'd bury the crystals in the backyard every few days, in the dirt, she said to cleanse them and restore their energy. Get her in bed, she might just as well have her tail on. It was like doing it to a woman in a trance. Hey, where are you? He would never ask who are you, afraid she might answer in her little colored-girl voice. She never did it with the lights on or spoke while they were doing it.
When she did speak during the day, in her mild, airy tone, it was to pass on information.
Big, Wanda says you need psychic counseling, maybe even alchemic hypnotherapy, have a specialist take a look at that negative ego.
I will if you'll get your head examined.
Wanda says you need a good psychic cleansing, you won't be so irritable.
Is that right? She ever take a look at the kitchen? The dishes piling up in the sink
Some things, Big, are more important than others. I'm trying to help you.
Why don't you go someplace else and do it? Like back to Ohio.
Wanda Grace says I have to keep trying, use my mediumistic gift to raise your vibration level and you'll come to know your Higher Self.
And on that note Bob Gibbs said, Why don't you tell that little nigger to mind her own business.
So frustrated he was admitting her existence. Going on seven years of this because Leanne had been scared by an alligator.
He did get her a dog from the pound, a tiny brown-and-white hyperactive mutt that yipped and jumped up on your lap, a cute little pup Leanne named Pokey after Wanda Grace's dog. (I calls him Pokey cause he like to poke his little nose where it don't belong. I tells him he goin' poke it in the wrong place sometime ) He got her a car, too, a Ford Escort she drove to health food stores and now and then to Winn-Dixie when he hollered for meat and potatoes.
Big, how can you eat the flesh of once-living things?
Easy, I chew each bite forty times.
But he didn't fence off the canal or put in a swimming pool or take her to any Palm Beach society functions where she might start talking like the help and embarrass him.
Was that the sign of a negative ego?
If it was, then maybe he'd better start thinking positive. Instead of not doing anything that would make her want to stay, work on an idea that would get her to leave. Of her own free will, without any hassle, legal complications.
And thought of a way to do it that made him smile it was so simple, sometimes wheeze out loud with delight as he entertained the idea and refined it. But then for months he continued playing with it, taking his time, not quite ready to commit himself Until this morning talking to the little-girl probation officer, Kathy Bacar, he realized she was the incentive he needed to get going. Kathy Baker.
He wasn't sure why at first, but this little girl raised his vibration level, got him feeling energized for the first time in almost a year, since his girlfriend Stephanie moved to Orlando and for a while there he enjoyed a few casual encounters. But, man, it was work getting them from drinks and dinner into the sack the same evening. One-nighters could kill you. It was better to have a girl right there you could count on. Like Stephanie.
The minute she appeared in his courtroom charged with indecent exposure, jogging topless in John D. MacArthur State Park, he knew this big redheaded girl would fill the bill. She'd said to him in court, Your Honor, I was doing nothing lewd or indecent. No, but he'd bet she would if given the chance, a woman he decided then and there had to be full of fun. He fined her two hundred dollars had to waited a week, phoned her and said, How about a couple of hundred-dollar dinners to make up for what I put you out? Their first date he learned Stephanie loved to drink as well as expose herself. He said to her, I know where you can jog topless through a garden to your heart's content, while my semi-estranged wife is at a seminar in Ohio. What a picture it turned out to be: this big redheaded nymph, his Nature Girl, ducking through the laurel oak and cabbage palms, not a stitch on, her buddy the judge waiting with a Jim Beam in each hand. Simple pleasures were the best kind. Fond memories to store away while you work on a new set.
Kathy Baker was a different type of girl, more virginal even though she'd been married. He hadn't really noticed her till she spoke up in court and he decided to chew her out. But then talking to her after changed his mind, seeing this was a good-looking girl up close with a cute figure. She had spunk too. If she was Cuban, so be it; there was a lot of it going around. She might not want to run naked through his garden; still, the garden could be used to soften her up, thinking this little girl would be squirmy and fun in bed. There he was wondering how to get to her and she says she'd worked in mental health. Bingo. All he had to do after that was tell about Leanne, ask the little girl her opinion and act interested. Maybe a benign form of schizophrenia, huh? Yeah, I've thought about a psychia
tric evaluation, but the idea of it I have that done to criminals. Nodding, saying yes, uh-huh, and I hope we can talk about this some more. I'll be in the bar at the Helen Wilkes Hotel, five o'clock, if you have time for a drink
Where he was now and every evening at five.
He didn't expect her, so wasn't surprised or disappointed when she didn't show up. The big kidney-shaped bar at the Helen Wilkes was a hangout for judges and lawyers, both sides, and some of the newspaper people. Knowing this, the little girl might prefer not to come rather than feel out of place. That was all right, he was cultivating patience. Trying to.
But three bourbon Manhattans later his vibration level had him out in the lobby at the pay phone, dialing a number in Belle Glade he'd looked up and memorized weeks ago. He said to the woman who answered, I'd like to speak to Dicky Campau.
She said, You want frogs, we don't have none.
This woman would have to be the frog gigger's wife, Inez. He had seen her once or twice out at the lake.
What I want is to speak to the man of the house.
That got a sound from the woman Bob Gibbs couldn't identify. In a moment a male voice came on saying, Yeah?
This is Judge Gibbs speaking. You know that hearing of yours coming up?
I believe it's next week, Judge.
I'm moving it up to the day after tomorrow. How'd you like to do me a favor?
There was silence on the line.
Do I have a choice in the matter?
Bob Gibbs said, Why certainly, sounding surprised. You can be let off with a warning or draw a five-hundred-dollar fine and a year in the Stockade. Take your pick.
Chapter 5
They crossed the middle bridge over to Palm Beach, Dale Crowe Junior driving, his uncle Elvin sitting back to take in the sights, what had changed in the ten years he was out of circulation.
On Royal Palm Way, Dale said, Over here, they see you driving around at night in a pickup truck they're liable to stop you. They don't even need a reason.
Elvin said, I won't worry about it if you won't. He was cool for a guy his age, close to fifty. He had on a straw cowboy hat he said was the Ox Bow model and three-hundred-fifty-dollar boots he said had once belonged to his big brother Roland, now dead. Went off to Miami and got himself shot by a woman. Elvin talked about his brother a lot, saying how Roland had worked for the Italians down there and was paid a good buck for his services, wore three-hundred-dollar boots and suits made in Taiwan China. This was while they'd stopped for pizza at a place on Dixie Highway and had two pitchers of beer. It was going on eight o'clock now, dark out.