"Maximum Bob" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leonard Elmore)

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The first time Bob Gibbs saw his wife she was performing sixteen feet beneath the surface of Weeki Wachee Spring, in a mermaid outfit.

He watched her through the glass wall of the underwater theater. Saw her gold lamé tail undulating, saw her long golden hair moving slow motion, Leanne smiling, showing her perfect teeth in that clear springwater before taking the tip of the air hose in her mouth, making a delicate, feminine gesture of it.

Bob Gibbs, already a judge, saw the purity of this healthy girl suspended in crystal water, air bubbles rising out of her, carrying her breath to the sunlight way above. Young enough to be his daughter, but that didn’t matter. The man inside the judge said, “Oh, my,” lured by a mermaid, taken with the idea of landing her.

He saw her outside after, pink shorts molded to her cute butt, hair still wet, turning wide-eyed and no doubt apprehensive, a man coming up to her in a dark suit and necktie. Introducing himself as a circuit court judge didn’t exactly warm her up, but she did start to relax once he expressed how much he enjoyed the show and began asking her questions. He learned that her name was Leanne Lancaster, that she was from Luna Pier, Ohio, and had been at Weeki Wachee-this was her third year and she loved it, even if it wasn’t doing her hair a lot of good. That their changing room was down underneath “where we zip up our tails,” smiling at him by now. There were three mermaids named Kim in the show, out of thirteen, and last year there were four, really, all named Kim. He learned that a hundred thousand gallons of pure water a minute rose from the depths of the spring, up through cracks way way down there, and that he ought to catch the Birds of Prey Show and then take the jungle river cruise, see pelicans, raccoons, sometimes even alligators. Leanne hunched her shoulders and gave him a cute shudder as she mentioned gators. She said they could swim into the spring from the river but hardly ever did ‘cause the water was so cold, hunching her little shoulders again as she said, Brrrr… Bob Gibbs said, “Why don’t we sit down and have a Coca-Cola?”

He told her he was from right here in Hernando County originally, born and raised, but had never seen the mermaid show before today. “You imagine that? The show’s been here what, forty years and this is my first time?” He told Leanne he had returned home to attend a funeral but came here instead, acting on some impulse. Strange? He didn’t mention being hung over from partying the night before, unable this morning to bear sitting through a Baptist eulogy. “And I used to work for the deceased when he was Hernando County state attorney, back before I moved to West Palm as a prosecutor, ran for judge of circuit court and have been presiding ever since.”

Leanne had kept staring at him, nodding very slowly as he spoke.

She said, “I have been visited by a wise man,” her look becoming strange, trancelike. “You’re famous, aren’t you? Sure, I saw you on the cover of a magazine.”

“That’s right. It was Newsweek.”

Nodding again. “But I don’t recall it had your name.”

“On the cover? No, it said, ‘In Florida Maximum Bob Throws the Book.’ It was a story about the courts getting tough on drug traffickers.”

“Just a while ago.”

“Yeah, what they did, they made a big to-do over my giving a drug dealer thirty years, plus a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar fine, when the state attorney was willing to let him off with probation.”

“I wish I’d read it.”

“I might have a copy lying around somewhere I’ll give you. It’s accurate-what I object to is the tone of the article, like I’m accused of throwing the book at defendants. I said, ‘What is the book for if you don’t go by it and, yes, occasionally throw it at a criminal offender.’ They put that in. Then they cite how I reject pleas of leniency. I said, ‘I send people to prison when they kill somebody. I see that as my job.’ They mention that many of my rulings have not been popular and quote my saying, ‘I’m not in a popularity contest.’ When I sentence a man to death by electrocution, it’s because I think he deserves the shock of his life.” Bob Gibbs smiled at her. “Now you got me started.”

Leanne smiled back saying, “This is interesting,” hunching her shoulders and giving them a little shake.

“Listen, I’ve even been accused of having a low opinion of women. Which I’m here to tell you is a lie,” Bob Gibbs said, and grinned.

“Why would they say that?”

“Oh, one time, sentencing a defendant for wife-beating, I happened to say, ‘You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them,’ injecting a note of levity at a serious moment, that’s all, and the media and different women’s groups jumped all over me.”

She said now, surprising him, “What’s your sign?”

Bob Gibbs wasn’t sure. He told her he was born on the second of December without giving the year.

“Sagittarius, the Time Traveler,” Leanne said, “I thought as much. You like to explore and have a highly developed sixth sense that guides you even when you don’t exactly understand where it is you’re going. You do know. It’s just that you aren’t in touch yet with your inner self.”

“That must be it,” Bob Gibbs said, and saw her expression change.

“Oh, my Lord,” her eyes going wide. Now she brought her hand to her mouth and seemed embarrassed.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just had a feeling… Don’t laugh, okay?”

“I won’t.”

“You promise?”

“On a stack of Bibles. What?”

“All of a sudden it hit me, that I may have been your mother in a previous life.”

Bob Gibbs smiled, he couldn’t help it.

“You said you wouldn’t laugh.”

“I’m not. It’s just-I’ll tell you, you don’t look anything like my old mother.”

“I’m talking about way before,” Leanne said. “It could’ve been hundreds or even thousands of years ago when we were both somebody else. You understand? In our past lives.”

She kept staring at him in what he thought of at the time as a cute way she had about her. So serious. This healthy girl, good-looking even with wet hair. She said, “You don’t believe in reincarnation, do you?”

“The metaphysical is out of my jurisdiction,” Bob Gibbs said, “but I do keep an open mind as evidence is presented.” Actually believing this.

“But you’re not too good at being told something and just accepting it. You like to do what you want, huh? I mean even though you’re a judge, you’re not tied down by what people think, you’re unconventional.”

It seemed okay to smile at that. “I could tell you some stories, too.”

She said, “Are you married?” and right away got that serious look, half closing her eyes. “No, you were for quite a few years, but now you’re divorced.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Your wife didn’t like it in Palm Beach.”

“You’re right again. Rosellen, being from Ocala, had trouble adjusting to the life.”

Now she was frowning, giving him a puzzled look.

“But you don’t live right in Palm Beach, do you? I was there once, I loved it. All those big homes on the ocean?”

“No, my property is out in the country. All kinds of trees, flowers…”

“You love nature.”

“I do, yes. I’ll tell you, I like being married, too, and almost was again but changed my mind.”

The reason being, you seldom ever married the woman your wife finds out about and divorces you over. It was another type of law, unwritten, he could have told Leanne about that day at Weeki Wachee, trying to see into her tank top whenever she reached down to scratch at sand fleas biting her legs.

Putting on her serious look, no doubt thinking she was reading his mind, Leanne said, “With your sign, it could happen again when you least expect.”

“I’m ready anytime,” Bob Gibbs said. “How about having dinner with me tonight?”

That was how it began with them nearly seven years ago. Before Leanne had her Experience. Before she hung up her lamé tail, moved to Palm Beach and a few months later they were married.

For a time he continued to accept her strange behavior as part of the cute way she had about her.

Not anymore.

The way it was with them now, Leanne would say, “Big, do you know why you’re not a happy person?”

Here we go.

“Why you drink so much?”

She had told him why enough times that it didn’t matter what he said or if he answered at all. Leanne would maintain that serene, netherworld, airy-fairy expression on her face, one Bob Gibbs had come to believe was pure dumbness, and say, “You’re not happy, Big, ‘cause you let your negative ego control you. You haven’t learned how to open your heart and you won’t even try.”

He might say to her, “How do you know my heart isn’t open?”

“I can see it isn’t.”

“Yeah, how?”

“By your aura.”

“I forgot, my aura. What’s it look like today?”

“It’s bright red.”

“Maybe it’s my high blood pressure. Ask me how come, I’ll tell you.”

“Your aura should be mostly blue. Yours is orangy red, Big, and way too wide. Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Only when you bring it up,” Bob Gibbs said.

Then she might get a scared look, eyes rolling up into her head before they closed and opened again and she’d say, in her squeaky little colored-girl voice, “She keep telling you, Judge, what you doing to yourself. She must’ve did a hundred times, you still don’t never listen.”

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 lamé 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… 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.”