by Robert Inman
SIX
It was a fine house -- two stories of white-stuccoed brick with thick round columns across the front, set back about a hundred yards or so from the Cape Fear River in a shelter of towering trees with a magnificent, spreading liveoak in the front yard between house and river’s edge. There was a plaque by the front door that said Baggett House was on the National Register of Historic Places, which meant that you couldn’t ever tear it down or pee in the front yard. Not that Uncle French and Aunt Margaret would ever think of doing either, nor would their daughter Minerva. Their son Wingfoot, now that was another matter. Wingfoot had built a ramshackle tree house in the liveoak, and he didn’t care whether the place was historic or not. Uncle French had tried to get him to tear it down and rebuild it in a tree someplace else on the property, but Wingfoot was, at fifteen, rock-solid stubborn and (as Aunt Margaret put it) “as slippery as mud and as hard to handle.” Wingfoot would go up in the tree early in the morning with a jug of iced tea and a couple of ham sandwiches and stay there all day. Sometimes, when the weather was warm, he stayed all night. When he had to pee, he just let ‘er rip into the yard.
“Can I come up?” Wilbur asked as he stood at the base of the liveoak the morning after they arrived.
“You’re too young,” Wingfoot said, peering out the treehouse window. It was reached by a rickety ladder that Wingfoot could pull up after him. Wilbur thought he could probably shinny up the tree if he wanted, but Wingfoot was making a statement with the ladder business.
“I’ll be thirteen next week,” Wilbur said.
“Okay. When you’re thirteen you can come up. You can spend the night when you’re thirteen. That’ll be your birthday present.” He disappeared inside.
“What do you do up there?” Wilbur called out.
Wingfoot just laughed. It sounded wicked.
Uncle French was a tall, thin, quiet man. There was a quality about him that reminded Wilbur of gauze, sort of transparent and wispy. But that could fool you, because French seemed to know his own mind and keep his own counsel. Wilbur never heard him argue with Aunt Margaret or Min or Wingfoot. He just went about his business.
French called Wilbur to his study on the day after he fetched them from Dysart.
It was the largest and most elegant room in the house, even more so than the dining room with its huge crystal chandelier that Aunt Margaret said had been imported from Paris when the house was being built in 1761. (Aunt Margaret seemed to know as much about the history of the house as Uncle French, and carried on about it at the slightest provocation. Wilbur thought she seemed more of a Baggett than her husband.) The study -- actually, a library and office and sitting room all in one -- had dark wood-paneled walls and a lot of leather furniture and a huge oak roll-top desk and bookcases that soared to the ceiling, filled with old books that gave the room a slightly musty smell. There was a big bronze coat of arms mounted on one wall, paintings on the others: a scene of a harbor with tall-masted sailing ships, gloomy portraits of men and women in old costumes. Despite the dark walls, it was well lit by the tall windows. And it was a neat and orderly room except for the mass of wooden crates and cardboard boxes stacked along one wall and on a leather settee. One box was open on the long table where Uncle French was working, sorting through a tall pile of papers, another next to the oak roll-top where Min was going through another stack. Min rose when Wilbur entered the room. “I’ll let you two menfolks be,” she said, and she gave him a wink as she closed the door behind her.
Uncle French had a nice, gentle smile. “Sit down,” he said, indicating a tall leather chair with curved wooden arms. Wilbur’s feet barely touched the floor. He sat quietly for a time, studying the room while French kept at the pile, perusing each sheet and consigning it to one of the several smaller stacks spread across the table. “September fourteenth, 1862,” he said, his voice breaking the quiet and startling Wilbur a bit.
“Sir?”
French was reading from a piece of yellowed paper. “Dear Mama and Papa. We have just been through a hot time at a place called Chancellorsville. The Yanks were just about on us, and fighting as well as we’ve seen them since the beginning, but then General Jackson came up with some more of our Carolina boys and rallied us and we carried the day. I’m sorry to say that Pierce Bledsoe was mortally wounded and I hope you will visit with his folks and express my condolences. He was a brave fellow and often entertained the boys around the campfire with his fiddle.”
French looked up. “That was from your great-great grandfather. Lieutenant Sprague Baggett. Do you know what was going on in 1862?”
“The Civil War?”
“Some folks around here refer to it as the War of Northern Aggression. I think of it as the War of Misplaced Southern Honor.”
“He was in a battle?”
“Several of them, until he lost his leg at Cold Harbor.”
“Did he die?”
French chuckled. “In his bed, upstairs in this house, at the age of eighty-five.”
Wilbur looked over at the stack of boxes and crates. “Is all of this stuff about the Civil War?”
French rose and walked over to the stack and placed his hand on one of the crates, as if testing its warmth. “Actually, very little of it. Most of it is pretty ordinary stuff. Bills of lading, receipts and invoices, picture postcards and recipes, sheet music and dance programs, love letters and newspaper clippings.”
“Are you cleaning it out?”
“Oh, no. I’m writing a family history. Or at least, organizing the pile to try to make some sense of it. Min’s helping me catalog things. Baggetts have never cleaned out much of anything, just tossed it all in boxes and crates until the weight of it threatened to collapse the attic.” He looked straight at Wilbur. “Are you much interested in history?”
Wilbur wanted to be helpful, but this mass of stuff was more than he could comprehend. This seemed to go back to the dinosaurs. No, he wasn’t much interested in history.
“Well,” French said without waiting for him to answer, “it matters, and then it doesn’t.” He sat back down at the table and leaned across it toward Wilbur. “I think a fellow ought to know where he came from, because that gives him an idea of where he stands. But a fellow’s history ought not to be a burden to him. He can either use it as a guide or set off on his own direction.”
“Yes sir.”
“Like your father has done.”
Wilbur looked over at the stack again. There didn’t seem to be anything there, or in fact anything in this particular place on earth, remotely connected to Tyler Baggett.
But instead of going on about Tyler, French gave him a brief family history lesson. The Baggetts, he said, had been among the first settlers on the Cape Fear River, not long after the explorer Verrazano had found the place in the early 1600’s. They had started with a grant of land from the English king and established their fortune with rice crops, and by the time the rice business petered out, they had land holdings and businesses in and around Wilmington, just upriver. Baggetts spread out all over southeastern North Carolina. But there was a straight line running from the original Baggett settler to Uncle French and an ironclad family tradition that the oldest son of each generation always occupied the big house. “As a caretaker,” he said. “Of the house and…” he waved at the boxes and boxes of family history. The pile.
“Two things stick in my mind when I think about the Baggett family going back in history,” French said. “Baggetts have always been enterprising folks. And we’ve had a streak of orneriness, too. Sometimes those things come together. There was apparently a falling-out over some aspect of family business not long after the Civil War and some of the Baggetts left in a huff and settled over in Pender County, well up the river to the northwest of here. They haven’t fared as well as the branch that stayed here, but it seems to have been important that they struck out on their own. My own father referred to them as the Trashy Baggetts. That was probably unfair. I’m sure there are some fine people
among the Pender County Baggetts.”
It occurred to Wilbur that Uncle French was talking to him as if he were an adult, just two Baggett men sitting here in this manly room surrounded by ages and ages of family history that you could take or leave. He sat up a little straighter.
“So the Baggetts are enterprising people,” French said. “Your father is, in that sense, very much a Baggett. He lives by his wits and his skills.”
“And,” Wilbur put in, remembering the other half of the equation, “he’s a little ornery.”
French nodded. “Some years ago, he set off on his own direction. He has never let this,” he indicated room, house, land, history, “tie him down in the least.”
“Dad says a fellow has to tend his own fire,” Wilbur said.
“And I respect him mightily for that,” French agreed. “Although, that manner of getting along can, on occasion, cause difficulty for those about him.”
“Yes sir.”
French leaned back in his chair and made a steeple of his fingers. “I believe your mother is more than adequate for the challenge,” he said with a smile. “I have thought that from the first. More than adequate.”
“Yes sir.”
“I just want you to know, Wilbur, that you are always welcome here. This is Baggett House and you are a Baggett. Don’t let that be a burden, but rather an opportunity.”
“I will.”
“You know where your name comes from, don’t you?”
Wilbur gave him a blank look.
“From the very beginning. The first Baggett to set foot on this land was Squire Wilbur. He built a small fort out of logs on this very soil. And then a hurricane came along and washed it away, and along with it, his wife and small daughter. But he just hitched up his britches and went on. He had a streak of…” French raised his eyebrows, waiting for him to finish it.
“Orneriness.”
“Exactly.”
*****
“ I’ll get work,” Rosanna said at the dinner table. “We don’t want to be a bother.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Aunt Margaret piped up. “I’m sure you’ll be back home before you know it.” What she said and the way she said it, Wilbur thought, were two entirely different things. There was a saccharine surface to it, but lurking just underneath was all sorts of rough-edged junk. Translation: You’re a nuisance and a bother and an embarrassment to the fine, upstanding, cultured side of the Baggett family and the sooner that no-account husband of yours comes to fetch you, the better.
“You’re welcome here as long as you need to stay,” Uncle French said directly to Rosanna, leaping gracefully over Aunt Margaret like a deer bounding across a pasture. “And with your retail experience, I could sure use you at the store. If you think that would be suitable.”
“Of course,” Rosanna said with a sweet smile. “I’d be delighted. And grateful.” Wilbur could hear in his mother’s voice, a tit-for-tat response to dear Aunt Margaret, who was sitting there at the foot of the table with her lips pressed primly together and some tiny muscles fluttering like little animals under the skin of her temples.
Rosanna spoke directly to French, but then she turned her smile on Margaret. “And if there’s anything I can do around the house, you just let me know. You’re so gracious to make us feel at home here.” Translation: Your name’s Baggett because you married one, just like I did. And nothing -- name or otherwise -- makes your doo-doo smell any better than mine.
“I can mow the lawn,” Wilbur put in. “Anything to help out, Aunt Margaret.”
Aunt Margaret didn’t respond, but then at that very moment she had found something terribly interesting among her green beans and was giving it her full attention.
“I think that would be just fine, Wilbur,” French said. “That’s one of Wingfoot’s chores, but he’s been a little negligent about it lately. Maybe you and he can divide the duties.”
“Yes sir. We’ll sure do that.”
Wilbur didn’t dare give Rosanna a look, but she reached under the table and gave his knee a squeeze.
Later, when he and Rosanna were alone, he said to his mother, “Aunt Margaret is a pickle. Sometimes, I could just smack her.”
“Listen,” she said, taking his face in her hands, “we’re here by the grace of God and the goodness of your Uncle French and Aunt Margaret.”
But there was, he thought, just a touch of sarcasm in the way she said it. Maybe even more than a touch.
“I’ll remember that, Mom,” he said in mock-earnestness. “Yassum, I shore will.”
She gave him a wink. Yep, it was sarcasm, all right.
*****
It seemed that Wilbur and Rosanna were the only folks at Baggett House these days who had no particular agenda. Uncle French was running his business and working on the family history. Aunt Margaret bustled about being a Baggett and supervising the hired help -- a cook, a maid, and a part-time gardener who tended the extensive landscaping on the sprawling grounds that surrounded the house. Min and Wingfoot were busy making plans. It was a far cry, he thought, from mowing lawns and checking groceries at the Winn-Dixie and waiting for Tyler Baggett to show up.
“I’m going to Chapel Hill,” Min announced as he poked his head warily into her bedroom on the evening after his arrival. “I’ve already been admitted. And I’m going to be an ADPi.”
“What’s an Eighty Pie?” he asked, holding the door slightly ajar.
She looked at him as if he had just been dropped out of a spaceship. “A sorority,” she said. “Every Baggett woman who has gone to Chapel Hill has been an ADPi. I’m a quadruple legacy. If they didn’t pledge me, they’d have to shut the chapter down.”
Wilbur had only the vaguest idea of what a sorority was. It sounded like life and death stuff, the way Min put it. “Can I come in?” he asked.
“I suppose. And the word is may. ‘ May I come in?’ But don’t touch anything.”
The room was awash in blue -- Carolina blue. The bedspread and pillows, the curtains, even a lampshade with “UNC Tarheels” printed on it. There were UNC banners on the walls and a framed watercolor of the Old Well on the Chapel Hill campus and another frame that held an old yellowing diploma awarded to one Edwina French Baggett in 1874.
“Don’t you have a closet?” Wilbur asked as he made a brief tour of the room, as much of it as you could get to with all the items of clothing laying about -- dresses, coats, shoe boxes, stacks of blouses and slacks and some stuff he thought might be undergarments -- covering bed and chairs and dresser top, boxes stacked in the corners. It was a bit overpowering, all this blue and all these garments and all the exotic smells -- cologne and powder and frilliness and God knew what else that was girl-mystery. He had never been in a girl’s room before. His mother’s, of course, had its own good smells, but her wardrobe fit easily into a small closet and a couple of dresser drawers.
“Of course I’ve got a closet.” Min was seated at a vanity, her back to him but watching him in the mirror while she brushed her hair. She was a sturdy girl, just a tad on the thick side, but she had a nice, pleasant face that bordered on pretty, with soft brown eyes and a sprinkling of freckles about her nose and cheeks. She carried herself well, with just a touch of Aunt Margaret’s air of refinement, but she seemed somehow more approachable. If she hadn’t, Wilbur would never have dared to invade the sanctuary of her room.
Min swung around to him on the vanity stool. “This is my college wardrobe,” she said with a sweep of her hand. “Mother and I just got back from shopping in New York.”
“When are you leaving for college?”
“Not for another year. I’m a senior in high school.”
“Oh.”
She turned back to the mirror.
“Who’s this?” he asked, examining the framed diploma on the wall.
“It’s my great-grandmother. And yours too, I suppose. She was one of the first women to graduate from Chapel Hill.”
“Was she an Eighty Pie?”
“She was there before the ADPi’s had a chapter. But if they’d had one, she would have been one.”
He stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. There was no place to sit, and even if there were, he had the feeling that Min didn’t intend for him to stay long enough to take a seat. Still, he wasn’t ready to go yet. He breathed deeply, taking in the smells, watching as Min drew the brush easily through her hair, over and over. It made him a little light-headed. And he had a funny feeling somewhere down below his stomach, the same kind he got when he thought of Nell Dysart, even though she had turned out to be a shit.
“I’ll be thirteen next week,” he said for no particular reason.
“Congratulations.” She was smiling at him in the mirror, but he couldn’t tell exactly what kind of smile it was. Min was hard to read, he thought. She seemed to keep a lot to herself. It might be a warm smile or a mocking smile. Maybe she thought being thirteen wasn’t such a big deal.
“I don’t know where I’ll go to college,” he offered.
She stopped brushing and turned again to him and studied him for a moment. He fidgeted under her gaze. “Baggetts go to Chapel Hill,” she said.
“Actually, I may not go at all.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I doubt Mom and Dad could afford it.” He could imagine himself standing with his old cardboard suitcase on the sidewalk outside some college’s dormitory, evicted because Tyler Baggett hadn’t showed up in the nick of time. “Mom says,” he added, “that we’re here by the grace of God and the goodness of your family.” He put on what he hoped was the same sweet smile his mother had used on Aunt Margaret at the dinner table.
Min studied him for a moment and then something about Min’s face softened, just a slight easing of lines and angles. “Wilbur,” she said, “don’t pay any attention to mother.”
“I’m going to West Point,” Wingfoot announced.
If Min’s room was a shrine to the Tarheels and Eighty Pies, Wingfoot’s was an armed camp. The air above the furniture was a war zone of model airplanes and helicopters, suspended by fishing line from the ceiling. Tanks and armored personnel carriers, artillery pieces and plastic soldiers campaigned across the desk and chest of drawers. The walls were covered with maps and Army recruiting posters. The bookshelves were filled with old military manuals and novels such as “The Hardy Boys at West Point” and “Dress Gray” and Shelby Foote’s three-volume history of the Civil War. A sword dangled from the ceiling in one corner and an ancient musket was suspended above the fireplace.