Captain Saturday

by Robert Inman

  The top of Uncle French’s grand mahogany desk was bare except for a legal pad and a row of freshly-sharpened pencils and a single sheet of white paper with some writing on it. He gathered himself and walked to the desk and picked it up.

  Wilbur,

  It would do you a world of good to have a true appreciation for the Baggett family history. It is all here, and it just needs to be catalogued and put in some chronological order so that it can be turned into a historical document. You are a communicator, and I know that you have the smarts and the talents to do that. And now you have the time to devote to it. I wouldn’t trust just anybody to do this.

  Min.

  He laid the sheet of paper gently on the desk and looked about at the boxes and crates stacked one upon the other, the ancient, musty mass of it crowding the parlor like a convention of molding ghosts. He opened the box nearest the desk and gazed in at the jumble. He opened another, and another, digging down into the contents with a sort of horrified fascination -- letters and documents, leather-bound ledgers and receipts, deeds and invoices, wills and testaments, books and diaries, manifests and calendars. “My God,” he said softly. “French was right. These people never threw anything away.” These people. His people. But he felt no connection to them. A gene pool, but what else?

  After awhile, the sheer mass of it drove him from the room. He opened the french doors that led to the front porch and then wandered out across the limb-strewn yard, past the liveoak, down to the river. It was still swollen and turgid. Out in mid-current, a tugboat struggled against the red-stained mass of water, pushing two barges laden with huge boxy metal containers. The doors of the wheelhouse were open and he could hear the faint, unintelligible snap and crackle of the tug’s radio.

  SOS. SOS. I am adrift in a sea of paper history. Maybe I should bring it all down here and toss it. Too bad there’s not anything in there for old Barney to eat. But then, he’d choke on all that stuff.

  He stood there for awhile and then his knee began to ache and he hadn’t figured out anything by staring at the river, so he went back into the house. He made a wide detour of the study, and went instead to the kitchen where he made another pot of coffee. He drank two cups at the kitchen table, washed the breakfast dishes, took out the garbage, picked up a few wind-blown twigs by the back door.

  Back inside, he turned on the radio on the kitchen counter and listened for awhile to a talk show on a Wilmington station. Doctor Lara was dispensing no-nonsense advice to a woman who was involved in the latest in a string of messy, destructive relationships with men who couldn’t quite get free of their mothers. Dump him, Doctor Lara said. Get the heck out of there. Doctor Lara took a break and a local announcer read the forecast -- sunny to partly cloudy for the next two days with a steadily warming trend.

  He turned off the radio with a sigh and emptied the remains of the coffee in the sink and went back to the study.

  It looked like the aftermath of an eviction -- a business gone bust, deputies arriving with legal papers and emptying the offices of the company’s records, piling it all unceremoniously on a sidewalk while passersby gawked and clucked in sympathy. The sheer volume of it was daunting. How had the attic stood the accumulating weight over the years? It was a wonder the entire house hadn’t collapsed in on itself, reducing the family to litter and rubble.

  Finally, he cleared a place on the leather sofa and sat down, rubbing his knee and flexing his leg. He opened the box next to him on the sofa and took out the top sheet. It was a bill of sale for two mules, made out in now-fading ink to Lemuel Baggett on April 27, 1873 and signed by one Fonzell McQueen of Burgaw. April 27. He realized with a start that it was today’s date. More than one hundred twenty years ago on this very day, Lemuel Baggett had paid thirty-five dollars for two mules. Lemuel and his mules were long departed, but here was evidence of their existence, of money and goods fairly traded.

  He remembered with sudden vividness something he had said to Clarice years ago when they were in the first mad throes of love. She had asked him about his family, his history. “I have no history,” he had said to her, “not in the sense you think of.” What history he had, he had shaped himself, and it began the day he climbed in the 1954 Plymouth with the full tank of gas and headed off for Chapel Hill. But now here he was, surrounded with this vast archaeological dig of paper, this chaotic mass of family detail. It made him weak, just looking at it. What did Min expect him to do with it? And why? Was it penance? Here I am on probation again. I’m going to spend my whole life on probation.

  He got up from the sofa and poked around the room until he found the volume of James Fennimore Cooper. He took it to the front porch and sat in a rocking chair and started reading. Chingachkook. Outwit the Indians and save the settlers. A simple life.

  *****

  He heard a car around back. A few minutes later, men’s voices in the front hall, detouring through the study. Then Wingfoot appeared in the doorway, Sheriff Billy Hargreave looming tall behind him. Wingfoot glanced back into the study. “You look like a man who could use an outdoor burning permit,” he said.

  “Where in the heck have you been?” Will asked.

  Wingfoot ignored the question. “Billy was at the store this morning. Min told him you’re writing a family history.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Ummm hmmm,” he grunted, then turned to Billy. “Billy, what did Min say?”

  “That Wilbur’s writing a family history.”

  “Ummm hmmm.”

  “Did Min say…anything else?”

  “Nothing in particular,” Billy said. “Well, she said the Pakistani messed up the cash register again.”

  “About me?”

  “Only that you were writing the family history.”

  “Shit,” he said softly. This was all just too much. Should he tell Wingfoot what had transpired last evening? Would Wingfoot give a damn? No, Wingfoot had his own agenda. “Wingfoot, I’ve got to go home.”

  Wingfoot said. “Come with us.”

  They rode for more than an hour, Billy Hargreave driving his Sheriff’s Department cruiser, Will sitting beside him in the front seat, Wingfoot lounging in the back and reading a pamphlet from the State Agricultural Extension Service: Everything You Need To Know About Nematodes.

  Wingfoot and Billy had hustled him out of the house, fairly kidnapping him. Shouldn’t he call Min, tell her where he was going? Where was he going? “Never mind all that,” Wingfoot said. “Billy will take care of it.” So he and his suitcase were in Billy’s cruiser, heading away from Baggett House, from ruckus and history. Will felt a great sense of relief.

  They meandered upcountry, heading generally northwest through the Cape Fear lowlands, sharing the backroads with pickups and logging trucks and an occasional school bus full of wilted children. It was mostly pine trees and marsh and low scrub growth, an occasional small frame house along the roadside. Will tried to make conversation for awhile, but Wingfoot said, “Wilbur, this ain’t tee-vee. Silence is perfectly okay.” So he shut up and watched the scenery. They rode with all the windows rolled down, the wind rushing easily past the car. It mussed Will’s hair, and he didn’t even care.

  It was a fine Spring day, the landscape straining for as much lushness as the sandy soil would allow. He watched a pair of hawks circling lazily over a field freshly-plowed for soybeans, spotted a thick-bodied water moccasin crossing the road just ahead of the cruiser, Billy slowing the car to let him clear the road and slither into tall grass. Will thought he probably would have tried to run over the snake, but for Billy, the act of mercy seemed off-handedly natural, done without comment. Live and let live.

  They skirted the Little Green Swamp and then followed busy U.S. Highway 74 west for a few miles, past a sign that said WELCOME TO COLUMBUS COUNTY. “Aren’t you out of your jurisdiction?” Will asked Billy.

  “Anybody asks, I’ll tell ’em I’m transporting a prisoner,” Billy said.

  “Who’s the prisoner, me or Wingfoot
?”

  Billy just laughed.

  They rode on, turning north again, crossing the Cape Fear River into Bladen County. Will pondered the strangeness of it, this easing off into remoteness and uncertainty with not the foggiest idea where he was headed or why. And with no deadline, no schedule. No school children for the Weather Wizard to entertain, no red light blinking on the front of a studio camera to display him to the world. He was unfettered. It was a novel idea. Go with the flow, Will. Go with the flow.

  He jerked awake with a start, realizing that he must have nodded off not long after they crossed the river. They were bumping along a narrow sandy road now, a winding cut between stands of tall pine that loomed on either side of the car. “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Almost there,” Wingfoot answered.

  They emerged after another minute or so into a broad clearing and the cruiser pulled to a stop in front of a green-and-silver mobile home. A green canvas awning stretched across the entire length of the trailer, providing a sort of open patio. Beyond the trailer were two large glass-enclosed greenhouses, and past that, several acres of open ground where shrubs and plants grew in well-tended rows. Wingfoot’s van and a large stake-body truck were parked in the bare sandy yard of the trailer.

  As Billy killed the engine of the cruiser, Wingfoot stepped from the rear and called out, “Muchachos, vengan y miran a la curiosidad que he traido de la ciudad.”

  “ He’s speaking Spanish,” Will said to Billy.

  “Yep.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I caught the muchachos, but that’s about all.”

  “I told ’em to come see the freak I brought from the city,” Wingfoot said.

  “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” Will said out the window.

  “Well, ain’t much call for it back at the big house,” Wingfoot answered.

  A short, stocky man emerged from the nearest greenhouse, and after a moment, a teenaged boy. They waved happily to Wingfoot. “Buenos dias, Wingfoot,” the man called. “Han traido alguien para tocar elviolin??”

  “Lamentablemente no. No mas es un cojo destituido y sin trabajo. Se me occurio darle un balazo, pero decidi ensenartelo primero. Para mi es equal si lo quires blazear.”

  “ What?”

  “Pedro asked me if you play the violin. I told him no, you’re an unemployed homeless man with a bad leg and that we probably ought to just shoot you.”

  “Violin?”

  “Well, fiddle. In these parts, we refer to it as a fiddle.”

  The man and boy walked over to the car as Will and Billy got out. “Will Baggett, meet Pedro Esquivel and his son Cisco,” Wingfoot said. “Muchachos, mi primo Will Baggett, antes era un famoso actor de television en Raleigh.”

  “ I got the television actor thing,” Will said.

  Fernando stuck out a hand. “Eres un luchador?”

  “ What did he say?” Will asked.

  “He wants to know if you’re a wrestler.”

  Will shook hands with Pedro and Cisco. “Buenos dias,” Will said, remembering a bit of his college Spanish. “Me llama Will. No…what was that word?” he asked Wingfoot.

  “Luchador.”

  “No luchador.”

  Pedro and Cisco looked a little disappointed. They chattered with Wingfoot in Spanish for a moment, then turned with a wave and headed back toward the greenhouse while Billy opened the trunk of the cruiser and handed Will his suitcase. “You coming tonight?” Wingfoot asked.

  “Might,” Billy said. “Depends.”

  “We’re trying out a new song,” Wingfoot said.

  “Well, in that case…”

  Billy got back in the cruiser and cranked the engine. Pedro and Cisco had almost reached the greenhouse when Pedro turned back and called, “Sheriff Billy, as como los Dukes de Hazzard.” Billy looked to Wingfoot, who made a siren sound. Billy grinned and turned on the flashing blue lights on top of the cruiser, and then, as he pulled away, heading along the sandy road, the siren split the air with a whoop!whoop! Pedro and Cisco laughed and cheered, and then disappeared into the greenhouse as Billy’s car vanished into the pine forest.

  Will stood there for a long moment with his mouth open and his suitcase in his hand, feeling Wingfoot’s eyes on him. “All right,” he said after a while, “What the hell is this?”

  "My adobe hacienda,” Will said, indicating mobile home, greenhouses, field and woodland.

  “Yours?”

  “Like Thoreau, I went to the woods.”

  “Where…who…what…”

  Wingfoot started for the trailer. “Come on in and take a load off. I’ll explain while I cook supper. Peachy’ll be here in a little while, and if supper ain’t ready, she’ll whip my butt. She gets real ornery when she’s hungry.”

  “Who’s Peachy?”

  “You’ll see.”

  ELEVEN

  Will set three, then sat and watched Wingfoot tend a frying pan of stir fry -- chunks of beef and assorted vegetables -- and a steaming pot of rice. Wingfoot lifted the lid briefly and peered in, then put the lid back.

  “Where are we?” Will asked.

  “The backside of East Jesus,” Wingfoot answered. He reached in a cupboard for a bottle of garlic salt and sprinkled it liberally over the stir fry.

  Will looked out the window next to the table. Dusk was settling over the neat rows of plants that stretched from the rear of the trailer to a stand of pines a couple of hundred yards away. Mexican music drifted from the nearby greenhouse. An overhead light was on out there and he could see Pedro and Cisco moving about inside, tending tables crowded with potted plants. Come Sunday, Daylight Saving Time would go into effect and this hour of the day would be bathed in late sun. But now, at just past five o’clock, the fading light was softening everything with shades of gray.

  “Yours?” he asked, turning back to Wingfoot.

  “Partly.”

  “You have a partner.”

  “Peachy. And the bank, of course.”

  “How much land?”

  “About seventy-five acres here, bigger place down the road a ways.”

  “I hope you don’t mind all these questions. I’m just…well, a little astonished.”

  Wingfoot opened the refrigerator and pulled out two bottles of beer, twisted open the caps, and handed one to Will. He took a deep pull. Ice cold. The best thing he had tasted in a good while, though the scuppernong wine hadn’t been half bad. Scuppernong wine. The thought of it, of Min, of the sudden violent eruption in the parlor twenty-four hours ago, made his stomach knot. He took another swig of the beer.

  Wingfoot leaned back against the counter and slugged at his own beer and let the stir fry sizzle in the skillet behind him. “Shoot,” he said.

  “How long?”

  “You mean the place here? Or Peachy?”

  “Both.”

  “The place…ten years. Peachy…a year, two months, thirteen days, and,” he glanced at his watch, “about three hours.”

  “Sounds grim, Wingfoot.”

  Wingfoot just smiled.

  “Tell me about her.”

  “Just wait,” Wingfoot said. “I don’t want to color your first impression.”

  “Okay, what about the place?”

  Wingfoot turned back to the stove and stirred the stir fry. “Well, it’s pretty much as you see, Wilbur. Several hundred acres in pines, and we sell off some of ’em every once in awhile to International Paper. But most of it is the nursery. Grow stuff, sell it all over the south and east. We’ve got Pedro and Cisco out yonder and a couple of dozen more down at the other place.”

  “Mexicans.”

  “Yeah. They’re terrific people. Work hard, make no trouble, send most of their money back south to their families. All of ’em are legals. We make sure of that. No sense in getting yourself crossways with the law when there’s plenty of legals around.”

  “And you speak Spanish.”

  “Si Si.”

  “ How did you learn about
all this?”

  “Just picked it up, I guess. You can read how to do just about anything. You just got to figure out what it is you want to do.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Take you, for instance. You figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life, then go look it up.”

  “I don’t have to look it up,” Will said. He took another big swig of beer. “I know exactly what I want to do. The same thing I’ve been doing. It’s the only thing I know how to do. And tomorrow, I’m going back to Raleigh and do it.”

  Wingfoot took three plates from the cabinet next to the sink. He spooned heaps of rice onto the plates, then sprinkled on a generous helping of Chinese noodles, and topped the whole business with stir fry meat and vegetables. He glanced again at his watch. And that’s when they heard the throaty roar of a car’s engine coming fast down the road toward the trailer.

  “You’ll want to watch this,” Wingfoot said.

  Will opened the trailer door just in time to see a vintage Triumph Spitfire two-seater sports car skid to a stop, throwing up a rooster tail of sand and fine dust. The driver side door swung open.

  It took her a while to unravel herself from the car because there was a great deal of Peachy to unravel. Incredibly long legs, encased in faded jeans so tight they could have been painted on. An orange tank top that was filled to capacity. And finally, a tousled head full of wind-blown jet black hair. Peachy stood. And kept standing. She had a clean, angular face -- a bit too large to be called pretty, but definitely handsome. Will looked her up and down. Six-feet-two, he guessed. The word ‘statuesque’ came to mind. “My goodness,” he said softly.

  “Hi,” she called. “You’re Wilbur.”

  “I sure am,” Will said.

  Peachy grabbed a backpack from the car and shoved the door shut with an incredibly sexy movement of her right leg.

  “Has that rascal Wingfoot got supper ready?”

  “You bet. He said you’d whip his butt if he didn’t.”

  “Peachy Delchamps,” she said, striding toward him with her hand outstretched.