by Robert Inman
Will studied the clouds -- wisps of high, thin cirrus against pale blue, drifting in from the Atlantic. No rain there. A dry, mild day in the making, though that could change pretty quickly along the coast. If you got a front moving in from the west, things could deteriorate pretty quickly. Gusty wind, heavy rain, a surf advisory out at Wrightsville Beach. He didn’t know about all that, though. He hadn’t seen or heard a forecast in a couple of days. He hadn’t wanted to. But he couldn’t help studying the clouds. Always the weatherman. Maybe for the few days he was here along the Cape Fear he would just let the weather happen, simply go on instinct -- the taste and feel and smell of what it was like outside, not satellite photos or prognosis charts with their snaking lines of isobars and millibars.
A freshet of breeze drifted in off the Cape Fear, rustling the tall marsh grass at water’s edge.
“Is that old alligator still there?” Will asked.
“Barney.” Billy grunted. “Hunh. Haven’t been down there in years to look. Could be. I don’t know how long alligators live.”
“Wingfoot tried to blow him up one time.”
Billy chuckled. “I know. I was with Wingfoot when he found the dynamite in that old shack up by the lighthouse. He wanted to see if he could take out a bridge, but I talked him into going after the gator.”
“Where is Wingfoot, Billy?”
Billy scratched his chin, as if trying to decide what to say, how much. “Like Min says, he’s got his own agenda.”
“Which is?”
“I guess you’d better ask him about that.”
“Does he live here?”
“Off and on.”
Will felt a little nibble of irritation. Whatever Wingfoot was up to, Billy wasn’t revealing. And no telling where Wingfoot was or what he was doing. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be any more of surprise than his showing up unannounced and unexpected in Raleigh to haul Will off to Brunswick County. “Well, I don’t want to get stuck down here. I’ve got things to take care of.”
“So I hear.”
“Do you know all the gory details?”
“Pretty much. It was in the paper down here, too.”
“My God. Well, don’t believe everything you read in the paper. When you’ve got a couple of hours, I’ll tell you my version.” Will cupped his bum knee with his hand and rubbed it gingerly. “The doctor said I can start putting weight on the knee in a couple of days. A week or so, I ought to be a lot better.”
“And you don’t want to be stuck down here.”
“No.”
“Well, Wilbur, no sense in being in a rush. You might find you like it. Might want to stay on for a good while.” He turned and looked at Will, a straight-on look sort of like the kind Will imagined he might give a suspect he was questioning. Was this a question? Was Billy fishing for something? It was unsettling. But then, he was aware of a vague but gathering notion of unsettlement that had begun when he had waked a couple of hours ago in the time capsule that was Uncle French’s study. Billy just added to the feeling.
“I don’t think so, Billy.” Then, “What’s going on here?”
Billy pursed his lips fish-like and held the expression for several seconds. But he didn’t say anything. After a moment he rose and hitched his britches, snugging them up under his paunch. “Guess I’d better get on over to Southport and see what kinds of atrocities the criminal element of Brunswick County are committing this morning. You’ll be okay?”
“Sure. I can get around.”
“Remember what I said about those crutches. We don’t want to find you at the bottom of the stairs with your neck broke.”
“Okay,” Will said. “Don’t tell me what’s going on. I guess I’ll have to figure it out for myself. But do you have any advice?”
Billy smiled down at him benignly. “I’ll tell you like I tell my deputies when they go out on a domestic disturbance call. Keep your head up and your ass down.”
*****
He spent that night in his old bedroom, easing slowly and carefully up the stairs on the crutches with Min just behind, her hand at his beltline, steadying him. He slept well and woke the next morning to the soft sound of rain.
It rained for the rest of the week -- a thick soup of fog and drizzle, interspersed with galloping downpours. The radio said a front had stalled along the coast.
Will had the house mostly to himself. Min left early for the store and returned after dark to fix supper (she insisted on calling it supper in the old-fashioned way), which they ate at opposite ends of the big table in the dining room, the vast expanse of mahogany keeping conversation rudimentary, like two people calling to each other from opposite banks of a river. He wasn’t much help in the kitchen while the meal was being prepared, but he insisted on cleaning up, propping on the crutches at the sink. It took a good while but he was happy for the simple activity of it, and by the time he had finished, Min was gone, up to bed.
During the day he clumped about the house, rubber-tipped crutches squeaking across the polished heart pine floors, and began to negotiate the stairs fairly nimbly. He worked diligently at his rehabilitation, pushing himself, occasionally overdoing it a bit and having to rest for several hours and take aspirin. By the end of the week he was putting a good deal of weight on the knee and had discarded one crutch. Early next week, he vowed, he would walk on his own.
While he rested, he read. Among the books that lined the shelves in the study were the complete works of James Fenimore Cooper. He spent hours with Cooper’s Chingachkook, outwitting the wily Indians. A man could survive and thrive in all kinds of wilderness, he thought. Even with a bum knee.
It was the first time he had been physically restricted in years, since the day he had wrenched his back lifting a lawnmower from the trunk of his car. He had lain abed most of the rest of that Saturday and all day Sunday, but he had insisted on going to work on Monday afternoon (Clarice, shaking her head in disbelief, had had to drive him and then pick him up at 11:30), shuffling along half-bent, smelling of Icy Hot, moving stiffly at the weather map and joking with the viewers about the dangers of yard work.
Now, he decided not to let the bum knee cloud his thinking.
Or the weather, as morose as it was. The rain continued, unabated. The Cape Fear swelled and ran sluggishly brown and debris-logged, but much of the time he could barely see it for the shroud of mist that hung about it. When the downpours came, they were wind-lashed, whipping the limbs of the liveoak in the front yard between house and river, scattering bits of branch and leaf across the yard.
On television, he had made light of long, water-soaked stretches like this, inventing an imaginary celebration he called the “Raleigh Mold and Mildew Festival.” Any time the weather was damp for more than three days at a time, he hailed the beginning of festival days at 6:00. During one especially lengthy rain event he had gotten the mayor to issue a proclamation. Channel Seven printed tee-shirts which went to lucky viewers who submitted their names on postcards for a nightly drawing. The weatherman couldn’t let the weather get him down. Or his viewers. A little humor went a long way.
So he wasn’t going to let a bum knee or bad weather get him down. Or this business back in Raleigh. As the week went on he tried to work his way mentally through it, to look it straight in the eye and figure out exactly what it was and how he ought to act. There were aspects of utter disaster, of course -- lost job and dignity, appalling publicity, humiliation and dread and yawning uncertainty. He wallowed in that for awhile, but as the week wore on he decided that there was nothing to be gained by wallowing. He was by nature an upbeat and optimistic man. Old Man Simpson had been right: stay calm. Watch and wait. Clean up the debris and rebuild. All right, so he was out of commission as a Raleigh weathercaster for a year. There were other things he could do, or he could do nothing. There was no problem with money. They had some savings. He had a check for fifty thousand dollars, which he had won by what he was coming to think of as physical combat. He had scars to prove it. And of c
ourse there was Clarice the real estate whiz. But they wouldn’t need to get into that. He had always provided. He still would.
Two telephone calls helped considerably to boost his spirits.
On Thursday, Morris: “I think you need to fight this thing, son.”
“I thought you were working something out with the District Attorney to drop the charges.”
“Well,” Morris drawled, “the D.A. is between a rock and a hard place on this, Will. If he drops, the police department and the paper are gonna be all over his ass. Favoritism for a celebrity, you know. And he’s got an election coming up.”
“I don’t know, Morris. I just want to get it over with. Plead guilty, if that’s what it takes.”
“But you say you didn’t run the red light.”
“I don’t remember running a red light.”
“Then it’s just one cop’s word against yours. Cops make mistakes all the time. Maybe the light was yellow and he thought it was red.” A long pause. “They don’t have any witnesses. The D.A. did tell me that.”
“What if the judge believes the police officer and not me?”
He heard Morris’s chair squeak and he could picture him easing back in it, propping feet on desk, maybe reaching for the pipe. “Look, old son, I’ve had this conversation with the D.A. Let me be circumspect about what I say here. He can’t drop the charges, but he’s…ah…I get the distinct impression he won’t be too upset if he loses the case. You get me, Tiger?” Then there was the click of Morris’s lighter. Yep, he had the pipe, all right.
“Puff on your pipe for a moment, Morris, and let me think about this.”
“While you’re thinking, add this to the pile. I wasn’t going to say anything about it, but I had lunch today with Charlie Timkin from Channel Thirty-Two.”
“ Why weren’t you going to say anything?”
“Didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
“I could stand some up hopes, Morris.”
“Well howsomever, they’re interested. More than interested. They’d like to sign you up right now, get the public relations goody out of it, maybe even put you on retainer, and wait a year while your non-compete runs out.”
“Can they do that? The non-compete says I can’t help another station during the year.”
“I doubt Spectrum would challenge you on it.” Will could hear him take a puff, let the smoke out easily. “I get the impression they consider you damaged goods. If you went on the air at Thirty-Two right away, they’d sue. But just an announcement that you plan to in a year…probably not.”
“I see.”
“But here’s the hitch. Charlie Timkin is concerned about these court charges. More publicity, you see. He’d like to see you cleared.”
“And the only way to do that is fight it.”
“Seems to be.”
Channel Thirty-Two. It wasn’t much of a station, mired in third place in the local news ratings, plagued by aging equipment and a listless staff. Compared to Channel Seven, it was a dump. But it was a job and it was in Raleigh. And Will Baggett could be a hero at Channel Thirty-Two. Raleigh’s most popular TV weatherman, boosting an also-ran to respectability.
“Did you talk money?” Will asked.
“Low six figures.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And there’s this one other thing, Will…”
“What’s that?”
“Politics. I had lunch yesterday with the chairman of the county Democratic Party. Republicans have been eating their lunch in Wake County. So he’s practically salivating at the thought of Will Baggett at the head of the ticket. He wants to meet. After we get this thing behind us.”
“Meaning…no record.”
“Yessirreeebobtail,” Morris said brightly. “You’re coming on strong, son.”
“How soon do I have to decide this?”
“Sometime next week I need to tell the D.A. what our intentions are. He’s willing to put it high on the court calendar, get it taken care of.”
“Okay, Morris. I’ll call you next week.”
“Think about it, son. As your attorney, I’m advising you to put your dukes up. You’re gonna win this one. Tie things up in a neat little package and get on about your business.”
“Let me just ask you this, Morris.”
“Shoot.”
“Did you get a couple of free lunches from Charlie Timkin and the chairman of the Democratic Party?”
Morris just laughed and hung up.
The second call, on Friday morning, was from Clarice. It was raining in Raleigh, too, she said, had been most of the week. But the foul weather didn’t seem to have gotten her down. Her voice was light, buoyant. Nothing much in the mail. Some cards and letters for him. She was keeping them in a box. The phone calls had pretty much stopped. No more stories in the paper. She had hired a neighborhood boy to mow the lawn as soon as the rain stopped. Everything taken care of. He was not to worry. She didn’t mention the construction project. Could you demolish the backside of a man’s house in the rain? He didn’t ask.
“We’re going to Cincinnati,” she said.
“What for?”
“A seminar on selling on the Internet.”
“Who’s we?”
“Several of us from the firm.”
“When did this come up?”
“Oh, we’ve had it on the calendar for a couple of months.”
“You didn’t tell me.” Silence. “How long are you going to be there?”
“We’ll be back next Wednesday. So, no need for you to hurry back to Raleigh. Stay there and recuperate. How’s your knee?”
“Much better. How do you sell real estate on the Internet?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out. We’ve got a web site, but Fincher says we’re not getting all the benefit from it we should. He said there’s a way you can put virtual tours of homes on your site. You know, you click on a picture of the house and a video comes up and it’s like you’re just wandering through the house. Fincher says it can save a lot of time for us and our clients. If you like what you see on the video, you go look. But you can eliminate a lot of what doesn’t suit.” She was almost breathless when she finished.
“I see.”
“So…”
“Have a good trip. I imagine we’ll arrive back in Raleigh about the same time.”
“That’s good. You just relax and rest up. Don’t push too hard.”
“I love you,” he said.
“Of course you do.” And she, like Morris, rang off with a laugh.
He mulled it for awhile. She had sounded chipper, almost playful. That laugh at the end. It wasn’t what you would call a gales-of-mirth laugh, but it was the first time he had heard any kind of laugh at all from her in a long time. It was, at least, a laugh that gave him a good, solid notion that things would be okay. It would take some work, but they would be okay. Another week and he would be mostly healed and much rested and he could return to Raleigh and get his life back. That is, if he could locate Wingfoot. Min hadn’t mentioned his name all week, and neither had Will.
That business -- Min, Wingfoot, this house, the larger thing all that might represent -- was the one part of his present circumstance that he couldn’t get a handle on. There was, he was dead certain of it, something unsaid, unapproached, hanging in the damp gloom of this cavernous old house. The first time he got a real peek at it was on Friday evening. He was sitting at the kitchen table while she worked at the stove, her back to him.
“It’s been a good while since you’ve been to visit,” she said.
“Well, here I am.”
“Didn’t they give you any vacation at that TV station?”
“Sure.”
“Where did you go?”
“Usually, I just took a few days to putter around the house. With Clarice’s business, it got to be pretty hard to arrange a trip.”
“Do you still go to Nags Head with those Greensboro people?” she asked.
“The Palmers,�
�� Will said.
“I never can remember their names.”
“Palmer,” Will repeated. “My son is named after them, remember?”
“How’s Palmer doing?”
“Fine. First year of med school is pretty rugged. We don’t see much of him.”
“A Duke man,” Min said.
It didn’t seem to matter that Palmer was now in med school at Chapel Hill. To Min, he would apparently always be a Duke man. A Tarheel fan to the bone, she harbored a deep and abiding enmity for everything associated with Duke. They had argued quite heatedly about it five years before when Palmer had chosen Duke for college. She hadn’t shown up for Palmer’s high school graduation and he hadn’t been back to Baggett House since. It wasn’t worth arguing about now, but it reminded Will how prickly she had become in middle age. Duke-Carolina wasn’t the issue. But what was, and why? Maybe it was menopause, or being by herself so much in this house. Did it have something to do with Wingfoot? Did it have something to do with Will -- resentment, perhaps, over his success, his celebrity? All of the above? Or something even deeper? Whatever, he didn’t have any appetite for getting into it. He had too much else going on in his life that needed his time and mental energy. He had his own agenda. Didn’t everybody?
The morning after their set-to five years ago they had patched things up, at least on the surface, and had parted cordially. But he hadn’t been back and she hadn’t been to graduation. Wingfoot came, but not Min. The relationship had been distant since then. Until she had sent Wingfoot to fetch him.
“Yes, the Palmers still have the place at Nags Head,” Will said now, heading the conversation away from Duke. “We go sometimes.”
“Well, you could have come by here on the way to Nags Head.”
“It’s not on the way to Nags Head,” Will said. “It would be like going through Chicago to get to New York.”