by Robert Inman
Palmer’s face flushed, his fists clenched. “Okay. That was a helluva thing, what you did. But you did it on your own. I didn’t beg you to bail me out.”
“I can’t force you to do anything,” Will said. “You’re a grown man. Making your own grownup decisions. The master of your fate, the captain of your soul. And now, by the grace of God and the dean’s committee, once again a medical student, a disciple of Hippocrates, a healer in training. Therefore, I can certainly understand why you don’t want to push a fucking lawnmower around Raleigh all summer. Yadda, yadda, yadda.” Then he got up and went in the house.
The telephone number at his former home had been changed. No surprise there. Clarice had sent adamant instructions through Morris: Will was not to attempt to communicate with her in any way. If he did, she would get a restraining order, and that would just mean more legal trouble for Will. But she had taken no chances. She had changed the number.
It was Saturday morning. She wouldn’t be at home anyway. One of Raleigh’s best and most successful real estate agents would be out there hustling houses on a day when prospective buyers were out there looking.
“May I ask who’s calling?” the woman at Snively and Ellis Realty inquired.
“It’s her husband and it’s urgent and it’s about our son,” he said.
He could hear some kind of saw in the background when she answered her cell phone, a high-pitched whine that dropped a bit in pitch as it cut through a board. He had come to know the sound well in the days that he had been at home with the Christian Brothers while they demolished the rear of the house. Clarice was obviously at a construction site, one of those new subdivisions.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, a rush of panic in her voice. “Is he hurt? Where is he?”
“He’s fine. A little distracted, I think. He’s been studying so hard.”
Will looked up to see Palmer in the bedroom doorway. He stopped there, but his hand came up, reaching out toward the telephone receiver, as if he might levitate it out of Will’s grasp from several yards away. He was shaking his head. Don’t do that, his eyes pleaded.
“Just a moment,” Will said to the phone. He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and waited. Palmer’s shoulders sagged.
“I wanted to tell you about some plans we’ve made for the summer.”
“We?”
“Palmer and me.”
“He told me he was going to be doing research in Chapel Hill.”
“It seems he’s changed his mind.”
Palmer disappeared from the doorway.
“To what?” Clarice asked.
“He and I are starting a lawn service.”
There was a long pause. The saw whined and the engine of some fairly hefty machine started up in the background. “Is he there with you?” Clarice asked.
“Not at the moment,” Will said. In the living room, the television came on. The tinny sound of explosions, pulsating music, frantic voices. A kids’ show.
“Tell him to call me,” Clarice ordered.
“I will. I’m sure it will be soon.” He paused. “Just one other thing, Clarice, are you handling celibacy any better than I am? Or are you not handling it at all?”
Click.
In the living room, Palmer was on the sofa, hunched forward toward the television set, staring blankly at the screen. He didn’t look up.
“We’ll have a good summer,” Will said. “Father and son bonding. Lawnmowing, after all, is a guy thing.”
“Blackmail,” Palmer said bitterly, biting off the word.
“Why, Palmer…did you think I was about to rat on you?”
Palmer shook his head in disgust.
Will started for the front door. “By the way,” he said, “you don’t have to push.”
Palmer looked up then. “What?”
“You don’t think we’re going to run a professional lawn service with a rinky-dink push mower with a twenty-one-inch cut and a two-horsepower Briggs and Stratton engine, do you? Son, we’re talking self-propelled. Big-ass mowers with a little platform on the rear that you stand up on and ride like a Roman chariot. They’re magnificent machines, son. Magnificent machines.”
TWENTY
Will had cruised the strip of automobile dealerships on Capital Boulevard on Sunday afternoon, stopping to check the used truck sections, and he had spotted what he thought was a likely candidate. He and Palmer were in the lot now at nine-thirty on Monday morning, giving it a once-over. Or at least Will was. Palmer didn’t seem much interested.
It was a 1991 medium green Ford F-250 with 107,852 miles on it. Automatic transmission, air conditioning, AM/FM tape player, 8-cylinder 5.0 liter engine, power brakes and steering. It had a large metal tool chest that took up almost a third of the open bed in the rear, the kind he had seen on trucks driven by carpenters and plumbers and the like. It was a useful-looking truck, nothing fancy, in good shape inside and out except for a minor crease on the left corner of the rear bumper. Splashed in big white letters and numbers across the passenger side of the windshield: LOW MILEAGE GREAT BUY $7,495.
Palmer gave it a sour glance, hands jammed glumly in the pockets of his khakis, his shoulders semi-hunched against the morning, as if he were leaning into a stiff wind. There was, in fact, a bit of a breeze that flapped the plastic pennants hanging above the used truck section, but not enough of a wind to hunch your shoulders against.
“It’s already got a trailer hitch,” Will said.
Palmer shrugged.
“And I guess the engine’s big enough to pull a trailer load of equipment.”
Another shrug.
“What do you think?” Will asked.
“Dad, I don’t know a damn thing about pickup trucks. I drive a BMW.”
“Is your car a stick shift?” When Palmer had arrived home with the BMW a year ago, they had gone for a ride, he and Clarice, she sitting in the passenger bucket seat, he in the back. But he could not remember whether the transmission was manual or automatic. It was the only time he had been in the car.
“Stick shift,” Palmer said.
“Well, the truck will be easier to drive. It’s automatic. We’ll have to get used to pulling a trailer, though.”
Palmer grunted.
A salesman had spotted them and came loping across the lot now, calling out, “Hep’ ya’ll?”
“My son and I are in the market for a truck,” Will said. “We’re going into the lawn care business.”
The salesman, a stocky silver-haired man, gripped the tailgate of the truck reassuringly. “Well, this ‘un will do the job for you. Plenty of engine, low mileage, body’s in good shape.”
“Low mileage? The odometer says more than a hundred thousand.”
“Truck like this,” the salesman said, patting the hood, “well maintained, that’s hardly any mileage at all.”
Will pointed out the crease in the rear bumper.
“You could probably get ‘er straightened out for a coupla hundred dollars,” the salesman said, “but ain’t hurtin’ anything.”
“Gas mileage?”
“You gonna be pulling a trailer?”
“Yes.”
“‘Bout twelve, thirteen in town.”
“That’s not much,” Will said.
“Well,” the salesman drawled, “I can sell you a truck that’ll get better gas mileage. But if you’re gonna be pulling a trailer, you need something with some heft to it. A little dinky-ass truck? You’ll have transmission problems by the end of the summer.”
Will pointed to the windshield. “Is that your best price?”
“That’s our no-haggle price. Wanna drive ‘er?”
“Sure,” Will said. “I guess I’d better.”
While the salesman went back to the showroom for the keys, Will walked slowly around the truck and gave it what he hoped was a careful inspection. He opened the driver side door and slipped in under the wheel. Cloth seats, rubber mats on the floor. No cracks in the vinyl of the dashboard. He found
the hood lever and pulled it, then got out and opened the hood and peered in at the engine. He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for, but it seemed reasonably clean. He closed the hood. Palmer was standing several yards away, back turned to Will and the truck, hands still in his pockets, watching the traffic moving by on Capital.
“Green,” Will said.
Palmer looked back at Will, just a turn of his head.
“Good color for a lawn service truck,” Will said.
Palmer turned back to the traffic.
The salesman returned with the keys and handed them to Will. “Take your time,” he said.
Will offered the keys to Palmer. “Want to drive?”
“No,” Palmer said, and got in on the passenger side.
Will started the truck and listened for a moment to the idling engine. It was…well, idling. Nothing seemed amiss. Just as he was about to back out of the parking place, Palmer rolled down the window on his side and asked the salesman, “What if the transmission falls out next week?”
“Thirty-day dealer warranty,” the salesman said. “Anything happens, you bring ‘er back and we’ll fix it.”
He drove along Capital Boulevard for several blocks, heading toward downtown.
Palmer turned on the radio and flipped through the pre-sets -- a couple of country stations, an oldies, public radio in Chapel Hill. He re-set all of them with pop and rock stations, working intently at it. Will cast sidelong glances at him, and suddenly he had a strong urge to touch Palmer -- anything, just the barest brush of his arm would do. But instinct told Will that trying too hard -- a touch or the wrong word -- might well spoil things. Palmer seemed like a skittish colt, ready to bolt if spooked. And if he did, if he just said, “To hell with it,” what would Will do? Not a damn thing. He would let Palmer go because that would be the only possible thing. But he wanted desperately for that not to happen because he didn’t want to blow this one. He had blown some other things. Not this one.
Instead he said, “That was a good point, about the transmission. I wouldn’t have thought about it.”
Palmer finished fiddling with the radio, left it on a station that was playing a rap song with lyrics that Will couldn’t understand, and sat back in the seat, body turned slightly away.
“The radio…is it pretty good?” Will asked.
“Okay,” Palmer said. “You didn’t expect mega-bass in a ten-year-old pickup truck, did you?”
“I guess not.”
“Are you gonna buy it?”
“I think so. Seems okay to me.”
“Is it a good price?”
“I guess.”
“Drive by the house,” Palmer said. “I’ll find out.” Will gave him a puzzled look. “I’ll look it up on the internet.”
He let Palmer out in front of the house on LeGrand. “I’ll park down the street,” Will said. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
Palmer said, “She’s really pissed at you, you know that.”
Will made a face. “When somebody asks for a divorce after twenty-five years…”
“I don’t blame her,” Palmer said.
Will didn’t want to get into all that just now. They would eventually have to thrash it out. But there was enough on the plate right now without it.
He parked a half-block from the house. He waited ten minutes, twenty. He rummaged through the glove compartment of the truck -- registration, some old state safety inspection reports, an owner’s manual. Safety tip: headlights should always be on when windshield wipers are on. Many states require this. He tried the windshield wipers, emergency flasher signal and dome light. Everything worked except the dome light. A bulb, he thought. He would ask about it when they returned to the dealership.
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and looked up to see Phyllis Durkin jogging by on the sidewalk next to the truck, clad in shorts and tee-shirt, arms pumping. Phyllis had gotten into fitness about the time she had gotten into religion. The Lord’s temple and all that. She occasionally rose early enough to jog with Clarice. She had great legs. Not as good as Clarice’s, but great, nonetheless. She listened to Bible study tapes as she jogged. She had her headphones on now. Phyllis glanced at the truck as she passed, then stopped several yards down the sidewalk and looked back at it. Will started to wave, but he saw that she was really staring hard, brow creased, and realized after a moment that she didn’t recognize him and that she thought he looked suspicious. A Neighborhood Watch kind of stare. He could see her making mental notes: bearded middle-aged man in green Ford pickup truck. He thought for a moment she might retrace her steps and look at the tag, but she didn’t. She turned away and went on, glancing back a couple of times over her shoulder. He hoped Palmer would get back before she called the cops.
Amazing. His next-door neighbor for all these years and she had no idea who he was. Neither did anyone else, apparently. A couple of times in the days since his release from jail, he had noticed a turn of head at the sound of his voice. But the voice and the appearance didn’t connect. He had disappeared into the crowd, into the mass of ordinary humanity, right here in the middle of Raleigh, where he had been, just a month ago, the most recognizable face and voice in town. As he had intended. There were moments when he missed his former persona, but he was finding a freedom in ordinariness that he had only guessed at. People treated you differently if you were ordinary. As Phyllis Durkin had done.
Palmer was back, carrying a plastic grocery bag. “Too much,” he said as he slid in on the passenger side.
“Too much what?”
He produced a piece of paper from his pants pocket, unfolded it and handed it to Will. A computer printout. “This internet site tells you how much used vehicles are worth.” He showed Will the results of his search: a Ford F-250 pickup truck of this vintage, condition and mileage, equipped as this one was, had a trade-in value of $5,500 and a retail value of $7,305. Retail was what you could expect to pay on a dealer’s lot. A fraternity brother, Palmer explained, had showed him the web site. That made sense. Palmer wasn’t a used vehicle kind of fellow. More the new-BMW type. “You sure you want a truck this old? With this much mileage on it?” he asked.
“It’s what I can afford. And it seems to run okay.”
“Then offer seven thousand.”
“The salesman said it was a no-haggle price.”
“Are you gonna just take his word for it?”
“I’ve never haggled over a vehicle before.”
“Neither have I. I’ve never bought a vehicle before. But one of these days, I probably will. And I’ll haggle.”
“Does your mother haggle?”
“You ought to see her at the flea market.”
“What’s in the grocery bag?” Will asked.
“The name of your lawn service.”
“Our lawn service.”
He opened the bag and pulled out a baseball cap. It was the one Clarice and Palmer had given Will for Father’s Day years ago. Gold letters stitched across the front: CAPTAIN SATURDAY.
Will put it on. “What do you think?”
“I think you look like a dork.” He took the cap off Will’s head and bent the bill double, forming a sharp crease down the middle. He handed it back to Will, who put it back on. “Better.”
“Can I pass as a lawn care professional?”
Palmer stared at him for a long moment. “I don’t want you to think I’m getting into this.”
“You mean into as, like, you know, getting with it?”
“Yeah.”
“Why did you bring me the cap, Palmer?”
He shrugged. “I guess it was being in the house, just by myself. Neither you or Mom there. It’s been awhile since I’ve been there by myself. I don’t, you know, like live there any more.”
“Neither do I.”
“That’s just what I thought. I thought, ‘The poor sonofabitch doesn’t live here any more.’”
“I’ll take whatever I can get,” Will said. “Pity will do just fine.�
�
“Dad…”
“Yes?”
“I’m pissed too. At both of you.”
Then he turned his head away and stared out the window at the sidewalk.
Will started the truck and headed down LeGrand. When he passed the Durkin house, he saw Phyllis looking out her living room window. He waved. She didn’t.
*****
They went back to the dealership and made the offer, then settled on a price of seventy-one hundred. So much for no-haggle. The salesman even threw in a full tank of gas. When they sat down in the dealership office to fill out the paperwork, the salesman finally recognized him. “Will Baggett!” His eyes brightened, and then he remembered. “You…ah…”
You could almost see the newsreel playing in his head -- headlines, pictures, dramatic music, Paul Harvey: And in Raleigh, North Carolina, a television legend meets a fateful end…
“Yeah,” the salesman said. “The beard, the glasses…sure fooled me. You don’t look like yourself.”
“He’s not himself,” Palmer said.
The salesman gave them both an odd look.
Will said, “Don’t worry, I’m paying cash.”
Actually, a check drawn on his new bank account. The business account. It was a temporary check, one of a small book of them he had picked up at the bank enroute to the dealership this morning. The permanent printed ones would arrive later in the mail. The account was set up in the name of “Baggett Lawn Service.” He reminded himself to go by the bank when they finished here and change the name. The salesman looked at the check for a long moment. Will thought he was about to say, “I’m sure it’s all right.” But instead he disappeared for a few minutes through a door marked BUSINESS OFFICE and returned apologetic.
“No problem,” Will said. “You can never tell about people these days.”
Ford F-250 pickup truck: $7,385 including tax, tag and title.
The consummation of the truck deal -- including a visit to the bank and a trip to the state Department of Motor Vehicles for registration and a temporary tag -- took the rest of Monday.
On Tuesday Will and Palmer shopped for a mower, their most basic piece of equipment, settling on a massive big-tired yellow machine called a Hy-Ryder. They had done research at McDonald’s, where a couple of the already-established lawn services regularly took their lunch breaks, parking their pickups and trailers in the supermarket lot next door. Will, accustomed to the faithful purring Honda which he had followed about his yard for several growing seasons, was impressed by the size and bulk of the professional mowers with their five-gallon gasoline tanks and muscular engines and huge cutting decks. They reminded him in a way of military vehicles -- self-propelled howitzers and tank-killers, grease-stained and battle-scarred. One trailer held a Hy-Ryder. While Palmer got Big Macs and fries from McDonald’s, Will climbed onto the trailer and stood on the rear platform of the mower, gripping the handlebars, imagining the machine propelling him briskly across a vast expanse of ragged green lawn, leaving a pristinely clipped work of art in his wake. It felt right -- solid, trustworthy, efficient. A sticker, peeling from the side of the mower deck, told where it had been purchased. They took their lunch to a picnic table in Pullen Park, then went to the dealership and, after a lengthy discourse with a salesman, purchased a Hy-Ryder Model XG-70 with three forward gears and two reverse, a twenty-horsepower engine and a forty-eight-inch cut. They also bought a new self-propelled Honda for trim work.