Read The Long Journey Home for Free Online Page A

there. And while we didn’t see it being made, just knowing that someplace in the jungle a cast and crew were busy creating another Tarzan movie thrilled me. Wakulla was supposed to be someplace in Africa. The Wakulla, a relatively straight, narrow, and short river flowing from the springs to Saint Marks, Florida, was supposed to be the Congo.
    We happened onto the living evidence of the movie being made on our way back to the Lodge. There, in the shade, was a newly erected pen made of logs. On its straw-covered floor two elephants stood swinging their trunks and swatting flies with their tails. Dust rose from their hides with each swat. Bubba and I followed as Mother pushed baby Mercer over to see the elephants. Their keeper, a thin, unshaven man, stood nearby with a small group of people clustered around him listening to him talk about the movie. I waited until the crowd left and there was just the man and my family. Then hesitantly I said: “Sir?”
    “Yeah?” He looked at me, his friendly face bolstering my courage.
    “Where are the other elephants?” I asked.
    “What other elephants?”
    “The other elephants for the movie.”
    “Ain’t none.” He spat a dark stream of chewing tobacco on the ground.
    “But what about all those herds of elephants stampeding through the jungle?”
    “Them things are done with camera tricks.”
    “Camera tricks?”
    “Camera tricks.”
    He dug into one pants pocket, drew out a pocketknife, and opened it. With the blade he began to scrape at the dirt under his fingernails.
    I swallowed my disappointment. But at least, I comforted myself, Johnny Weissmuller had ridden those very elephants who stood just feet from me, batting their lashes to chase away the gnats clustered around their runny eyes. Or at least he’d
probably
ridden one. I didn’t dare ask the man if this was true. I’d accepted without a problem that Wakulla was supposed to be a jungle in Africa; Wakulla was mysterious and junglelike. But until my conversation with the elephant keeper, I hadn’t been aware of the possibility of camera tricks to create the appearance of what wasn’t there at all. It was too much for me to accept that the herds of elephants were like the magic tricks that a magician had performed one day in the school auditorium. I stood in the shade of a moss-covered live oak, looking at the elephants and feeling miserably betrayed. I didn’t want to find out that Johnny Weissmuller hadn’t even laid eyes on those elephants.
    Daddy thanked the elephant keeper for his attention, and we walked on up the path toward the Lodge, a 1930s stucco Spanish-style building with arched windows and doors and a red tile roof. Mother, Daddy, and Mercer went into the Lodge, where swimsuits and bare feet weren’t allowed. Bubba and I went back to the bathhouse and changed into shorts, T-shirts, and sandals before going to the soda shop for ice cream.
    The Lodge always felt magical to me, with its long marble soda fountain, marble floors, and staircases. The large color photographs of cypress trees, water, and boats on opaque glass, bordered in deep frames and lit from behind, enchanted me. After having ice cream with our parents at the soda shop, Bubba and I headed to the lobby to play a game of checkers before going home. Usually there were at least a few well-dressed adults in the lobby sitting on sofas or chairs, smoking and talking softly, but that one late afternoon my brother and I were the only people there. It was more a sense of a presence than a sound that caused me to stop in midmove and look up from the checkerboard and across the broad expanse of floor. Just yards from where I sat, Johnny Weissmuller was striding silently across the lobby, bare feet on the marble floor, his tan and muscular body naked except for a loincloth.
    It felt like time itself had taken note of his arrival and had slowed everything to the slowest slow motion possible. Johnny Weissmuller looked even taller and larger in