Captain Saturday

by Robert Inman

  Junior high, he thought, was goddamned complicated. Everybody trying to figure out who the hell they were and trying not to be pigeonholed as one kind of oddball or another. You really had to be careful, especially if you were a new kid. Here, too, he was on probation.

  One thing he had going for him was that he was something of a curiosity: the kid whose parents disappeared in an airplane. He played on that a little, feeling a bit guilty about it. But by the end of the first month the novelty had worn off and people had stopped either giving him strange looks or coming right out and asking him about it.

  Wingfoot was a help -- not because he was physically present in the junior high building, but because he was making a mark for himself over at the high school. During the first week of school he had left a garter snake in an English teacher’s desk drawer, been caught with a wad of chewing tobacco tucked in his jaw at lunch break, and booby-trapped the janitor’s closet with a smoke bomb that went off when the door was opened. The junior high kids thought all that was pretty awesome, and Wilbur benefitted from the kinship. Then in November, Wingfoot went out for basketball. He was, the coach told anyone and everyone, the most talented sophomore who had ever played at Southport High. “We’ll win the regionals,” the coach said, “if I can keep the little sonofabitch out of detention, and if I can get him to stop fighting on the court. He acts like basketball is hand-to-hand combat.”

  Wingfoot’s best friend was Billy Hargreave. He was a year older than Wingfoot, already established as both a big man on campus and a college prospect in basketball. North Carolina State was already showing some interest. Billy had both a level head and the sharpest elbows in the region. The coach assigned him to keep Wingfoot out of trouble, at least enough so he could remain on the team. And when it appeared that Wingfoot was about to strike a blow on the court, it was Billy’s job to wrap his long arms around him until he cooled down.

  Billy was also nice to Wilbur. The first time Wilbur met him, he poked his head into Wilbur’s room one afternoon after school as Wilbur was practicing scales on his saxophone. “You’re pretty good,” he said. Wilbur’s mouth dropped open. Billy Hargreave was the tallest boy he had ever seen. “Want to shoot some hoops?”

  “I’m not very good at it.”

  “Aw, come on. I’ll teach you a hook shot.”

  The three of them played for a half-hour at the goal attached to the rear of the garage, Billy keeping Wingfoot partly under control and letting Wilbur get off some shots. He never did sink a hook, but he vowed to practice before Billy came home with Wingfoot again.

  Wingfoot left for the bathroom and Billy and Wilbur sat down on the hard clay with their backs to the garage wall and Billy spun the basketball on the end of his index finger.

  “I hear Wingfoot’s pretty good,” Wilbur said.

  “Coach says he has court sense. You know what that is?”

  “No.”

  “He knows where everybody is on the court every second -- our five guys and theirs -- and where they’re gonna be the next second. Sometimes he makes passes to places where there ain’t nobody, and suddenly there’s somebody there to catch it. And on defense, he steals a lot of the other guys’ passes because he knows what they’re gonna do before they do. It’s like he can read your mind or maybe even control your thoughts. Like he’s playing some sort of basketball that ain’t been invented yet. If he keeps improving and quits fighting, the college coaches are gonna be slobbering over him next year.”

  “He’s going to West Point.”

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “What a waste.”

  But for now, Wingfoot was anything but a waste. Just his mere presence over at the high school was a boon indeed to Wilbur, who eased into life at the junior high, kept a low profile, and enjoyed the light and warmth of Wingfoot’s reflected glory.

  *****

  He arrived home from school (and he had finally begun to think of it as home) on a December afternoon to find Min in the study, hunched over some papers at Uncle French’s roll-top desk. “Min…” he said from the doorway.

  “I’m busy,” she said, but she didn’t tell him to go away, so he slipped inside and closed the door behind him. The first thing he noticed was that all those boxes and crates French had been working on were gone.

  “Where’s the stuff?” he asked.

  She didn’t look up. “In the attic.”

  “Aren’t you…”

  “Not now.”

  “I thought you were all into that history business.”

  She looked up at him then and he saw that her face was white and drained and there was a strange hollowness around her eyes. It startled him. “Min, what’s wrong.”

  She stared at him, or rather stared through him, for a long moment. Then she shook her head, a quick side-to-side jerk, and told him, “Sit down.”

  He took a seat in the leather chair next to the desk and waited. She looked again at the papers. Then, “There’s not as much as I thought there was.”

  “As much what?”

  “Money.” She held up the papers. “Uncle Harbert brought these over today. They probated the will and Papa’s lawyer went through his holdings and wrote everything down. There’s…” she laid the papers gently on the desk, “…a good bit of debt.”

  She explained it all to him in great detail, much of which he couldn’t follow, but he understood that she needed to say it all to somebody and he was the only one around. Some of it was just thinking out loud, he thought, getting all of it straight in her mind. There had once been a good bit of land here along the Cape Fear River and some commercial real estate in Wilmington and a business that involved selling things to the shipping industry. And there was the small general store out on Highway 133 between here and Wilmington. The store had no connection whatsoever to the rest of the family’s business interests, but Baggetts had always operated a store on Highway 133 from back in the long-ago years when rice had been grown on the place and the Baggetts were the wealthiest and most prominent landowners in Brunswick County. So there was never any thought of not operating a store because that’s something that Baggetts just did. But now, the store was the only solvent enterprise. The Wilmington business had taken a downturn in concert with a slump in the shipping business. There were loans, and banks wanted their money, and the commercial real estate would have to be sold to satisfy them. The business would be shut down.

  Out here on the Cape Fear, there was less land than Min had suspected. French had been selling off pieces of it for years. Aunt Margaret had expensive tastes and French had tried mightily to keep her happy. The long and short of it was, there was the store and there was the house and about a hundred acres of land around it. And what was left of the Baggett House Baggetts would have to make do with that.

  “What are we gonna do?” Wilbur asked.

  “Run the store.”

  “Do you know anything about running a store?”

  “I’ll learn. You can help after school. It’ll be good experience.”

  “For what?”

  “Later, when you go into business.”

  “What about Wingfoot?”

  “He’s got other things to do.”

  Min got up from the desk and walked over to one of the tall windows and stood there for a long while looking out at the liveoak and the river beyond. “We’ve faced adversity before,” she said. “Squire Baggett had this whole place blown away by a hurricane. And Doster Baggett had to stare utter ruin in the eye when the rice failed.” She turned back to him with a defiant jerk, something almost wild in her eyes. “This will get Uncle Harbert and Aunt Grace out of our business. It’s just us out here, and the rest of the world can go to hell. We’re Baggetts, and we don’t need a thing from anybody. Not a damned thing. I’m not going to fail my Mama and Daddy, Wilbur. I’m not. And neither are you.”

  *****

  “ I had a talk with Min last night,” Wingfoot said. “She says I’ve got to get my shit together.” It was late summer. Wilbur would sta
rt the eighth grade in another week and Wingfoot would be a Junior. They stood on the banks of Orton Pond, fishing. Min had given Wilbur the afternoon off from the store. Wingfoot had rigged up some makeshift gear from instructions in a jungle survival book -- a piece of vine for string and hooks made out of sapling branch with sharpened points on which he had impaled crickets. The fish in Orton Pond didn’t seem to think much of the rigs.

  “What did she mean, get your shit together?”

  “Well, she didn’t say it exactly that way.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “She said if I’ve got any hope of getting in West Point, I’ve gotta get my grades up and stop carrying on a lot of foolishness.”

  “What do you have to do to get in West Point?” Wilbur asked, pulling his line out of the water and studying the drowned cricket.

  “Take an exam, get a lot of recommendations…”

  “Like teachers and stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  That, Wilbur thought, might take some doing. Wingfoot, from all reports, was not a favorite with the faculty over at the high school. Some of them docked his grades as punishment for his unruly and unpredictable behavior. It had almost gotten him kicked off the basketball team at mid-season. The coach had had to personally plead for him.

  “And then I get a nomination from somebody in Congress. Fill out all these forms, take some tests. It’s pretty competitive. Min says if I don’t get my shit together, I won’t make it.”

  “When did you start wanting to go to West Point?” Wilbur asked.

  “Daddy took me up there one time when I was a little kid. He said I had a rebellious streak about a mile wide and just enough sense to be dangerous. He thought the military might be good for me. Lots of Baggetts have been military men.”

  Wilbur thought of the portraits hanging on the walls of Uncle French’s study. A couple of them were in uniform. Uncle French had been in World War Two. And of course there was Tyler, with the medals and the plate in his head.

  “What’s it like? West Point?”

  “It’s awesome, Wilbur. All these guys marching around in their gray uniforms and all these old stone buildings and the parade ground and Michie Stadium and the Hudson River. And the museum. Godawmighty. Military stuff that goes back to the Egyptians. Did you know that George Washington thought West Point was the key to defeating the British in the Revolution?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “He had a big garrison of troops there, and they put this huge chain across the river so the British ships couldn’t use it.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Wilbur said. He replaced the cricket with a live one from the box they had brought and tossed the line back in the water. “If Uncle French had taken you to a landfill when you were a kid, would you have wanted to be a garbage collector?”

  Wingfoot gave him a disgusted look. “Do you know who I’m named for?”

  “No.”

  “Colonel Wingfoot Baggett. He went to West Point. When we went up there, we saw the room where he stayed when he was a cadet. But when the war broke out, he quit the Army and came home and fought for the South. A guerilla fighter. Some guy at Chapel Hill wrote a book about him. Wingfoot Baggett, Southern Marauder. It was all about how he and his men hid out in the Great Dismal Swamp and ambushed Yankees. There was a price on his head. A thousand dollars for Wingfoot Baggett, dead or alive. But they never caught him. Daddy gave me the book when I was ten years old. I’ve read it a hundred times. He said Colonel Wingfoot was the best of the Baggetts. He was one tough sonofabitch. If he’d stayed in the Union army, he’da been a general. That’s what I’m gonna be. One tough sonofabitch of a general. It’s what I’m supposed to do, Wilbur.”

  Wilbur thought it sounded a lot like Min saying, “Papa left me in charge.” Biblical. Carved in stone. He remembered the little lecture Uncle French had given him in the study, about how you can appreciate your history without it being a burden to you, and about how a fellow could strike off in his own direction if he wanted, like Tyler had done. French left all sorts of room for taking your history or leaving it. But neither of his children seemed to have gotten the message. Wingfoot sounded like he was toting some old dead Confederate around on his shoulders. And Min was toting the whole damn Baggett family, bag and baggage. Surely, Uncle French hadn’t intended for that to happen. But Uncle French wasn’t here to set ’em straight.

  “If I was you,” Wilbur said, “I’d lots rather go to State and play basketball than go someplace and get my ass shot off.”

  “Well, Wilbur,” Wingfoot said, “I can’t imagine you doing either one. Maybe you’ll be a hustler like your old man.”

  Wilbur flung down his fishing line and barrelled into Wingfoot’s midsection so fast that he caught him completely off-guard and was sitting astride his chest, pummeling him with his fists, before Wingfoot knew what hit him. “You take that back, you goddamned sonofabitch!” he screamed.

  Wingfoot tossed him off easily with a twist of his body. Wilbur landed in the soft mud at the edge of the water, scrambled to his hands and knees and headed for Wingfoot again. This time he was ready. He held out a long arm and grabbed Wilbur vise-like on the shoulder and held him at bay while Wilbur swung his fists wildly, flailing air, cussing and screaming. “Take it back, you motherfucker! Take it back!”

  “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry.” He pushed Wilbur away with a shove.

  “You better be! Goddamn you!”

  “Really. I mean it.” He rubbed his stomach and his mouth twisted into a grin. “Damn. That was a pretty good pop.”

  “Don’t laugh at me.”

  Wingfoot’s grin disappeared. “Wilbur, I really am sorry.”

  “Don’t you ever say anything about my Dad again.”

  “Okay. Calm down.”

  They glared at each other for awhile and then both sat down on the long grass. Wilbur could feel tears stinging his eyes, but he fought them back. He was fourteen years old and he was goddamn well not going to let this sonofabitch make him cry. They sat there for a long time, not speaking. Finally Wingfoot said, “Min shouldn’ta done that.”

  And then the tears came anyway, and there was nothing he could do about it. He had been holding a lot inside for a good while. Wingfoot let him cry. And after couple of minutes, when the sobs had subsided, Wingfoot said, “Well, it’s okay if you talk about ’em around me. I ain’t Min.”

  “It wasn’t their fault.”

  “It just happened, Wilbur. It wasn’t nobody’s fault.”

  “Then why does Min…”

  “I guess she’s gotta have somebody to blame. Don’t take it personal.”

  “How else am I gonna take it? She makes me feel like my Mom and Dad are terrible bad people.”

  “Well, they weren’t. No more, no less than anybody else.”

  They sat for awhile longer and then Wingfoot rose and picked up the two makeshift fishing rigs and gave them a fling out into the lake. He looked down at Wilbur. “She’s holding this whole fuckin’ business together, Wilbur. The place, you and me, everything. She’s had to give up just about everything she ever wanted. So cut her some slack. You need to talk about your folks, you come to me. You’re in my platoon.”

  Wilbur didn’t say anything.

  “Do you know what the motto is at West Point?” Wingfoot asked.

  “No.”

  “It’s ‘Duty, Honor, Country.’ It’s a good motto. I like it. I intend to abide by it, and I’m gonna get my shit together like Min said so I can be the best, meanest goddamn general in the whole fuckin’ U.S. of A. Army.”

  “I sure hope you do, Wingfoot.”

  “And Min feels sort of the same way about things. Without the ‘Country’ part, of course.”

  “You and Min both, you make all this sound like, well, like Moses gave it to you on a tablet or something.”

  “Something like that, yeah. And maybe one of these days, you little fart, you’ll find something you just gotta do, something
you care so much about you’ll move heaven and hell to do it. Maybe Moses will hand you a tablet. People that don’t have a tablet…they’re just blowin’ in the wind, Wilbur. Blowin’ in the wind.”

  EIGHT

  Wingfoot’s transformation into a prospective West Point cadet was awesome to behold. He went at it with an iron will and a religious fervor. He became a model of comportment at school. He bore down on the books and his grades improved. He stopped fighting on the basketball court. He went out for football, because the West Point application form said it was good to be athletically versatile. He joined the Glee Club and the Debate Team, where his stubborn tenacity served him especially well. Teachers were astonished, and because the contrast with his previous behavior was so remarkable, they gave him more credit than they might have otherwise. At the end of his Junior year he was inducted into the National Honor Society and was elected Senior Class Treasurer. He could have run for President of the class, but he told Wilbur that it showed more responsibility to be entrusted with money.

  At home, he gave Min no lip and no trouble and made sure Wilbur didn’t either. He rose early, did thirty minutes of calisthentics in his room, and then bolted from the house for a five-mile run along Highway 133. Some mornings he dragged Wilbur, bleary-eyed and protesting, from his bed to time him with a stopwatch. He improved his time so much that he became the star distance runner on the track team and placed second in the three-mile run at the regional meet, just behind a kid who had gotten a partial scholarship to Virginia Tech. To the rippling muscles of his frame, he added lean sinew. There was not an ounce of fat on him. Warm weather or cold, he ran without a shirt. “You are built,” Wilbur said, “like a brick shit-house. And you stink like one, too.”

  Wingfoot didn’t smile. It seemed to Wilbur that he had put aside, along with his foolishness, his sense of humor. He was unremittingly grim about this West Point stuff. He wasn’t much fun any more. But what he was doing, the way he was making himself over, was astonishing. Wilbur could only look on in amazement.