Captain Saturday

by Robert Inman

  Two mowers: $5,398.

  On Wednesday morning they acquired a used flatbed trailer through a classified advertisement in the News and Observer. Using the measurements of the two mowers, they determined that they would fit nicely onto the trailer and still leave plenty of room for smaller equipment.

  Used trailer: $750.

  On Wednesday afternoon they towed the trailer to a welding shop to add sturdy metal sides and a fold-down rear ramp and, at Palmer’s suggestion, a metal enclosure at the front end of the trailer to hold the smaller equipment and protect it from bad weather, road dust, theft, etc.

  Welding: $390.

  Thursday morning, while the trailer was being outfitted, they returned to the lawn equipment dealership and purchased a string trimmer, a backpack leaf blower, and a shrubbery clipper, all gasoline-powered.

  Assorted power equipment: $1,825.

  On Thursday morning, they ordered two plastic signs with magnetic backing to place on the doors of the pickup. Then they spent a couple of hours at Home Depot, where they bought two five-gallon plastic gasoline containers, tie-down straps, assorted hand tools (wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers, etc.), grease-cutting hand soap, a length of rope, a roll of duct tape, a can of WD-40 ("You never can tell when you’ll need rope or duct tape or WD-40,” he told Palmer), a case of thirty-weight motor oil for the mowers and another of two-cycle oil mixture for the hand-held equipment, a large thermos jug for ice water, and a first aid kit.

  Magnetic signs, Home Depot purchases: $461.

  They stood at the rear of the pickup outside Home Depot after loading their purchases into the tool chest. “Uniform Supply,” Will said. “I thought maybe green. To match the truck.”

  “Hell no,” Palmer said. “I ain’t wearing no goddamn uniform.”

  “Son, that’s not like you -- using improper English.”

  “I’m doing it for emphasis.”

  “Oh.”

  “You can tell Mom and Daddy Sid and Mama Consuela and the dean and anybody else what this is all about. You can gather a crowd on the Capitol steps and sell popcorn and inform the world. But I ain’t wearing no goddamn uniform.”

  Since Monday morning, Palmer’s mood had ranged from mild interest to outright disdain, even occasional flashes of righteous anger, with a great deal of determined sullenness in between. Will had managed, for the most part, to ignore it. At least, Palmer had not out-and-out refused anything. Until now. “Just trying to be helpful,” Will said. “Didn’t want you to get your good clothes all messed up. Grease and grass stains and stuff.”

  “I’ll mow buck naked if I have to, but I ain’t…”

  “…wearing no goddamned uniform.”

  “Bet your sweet ass.”

  “Do you mind if I do?”

  “Look like a goober if you want to,” Palmer sniffed.

  “Okay. No uniforms. For now.”

  On Friday morning they picked up the trailer from the welding shop. The welder had had done a nice job. The sides and fold-up rear ramp were of a thick wire mesh material -- sturdy enough to protect the equipment without adding a great deal of weight. The metal enclosure for the smaller gear was of similar construction, with a solid aluminum top much like the tool chest on the pickup. Both ramp and enclosure had hasps for padlocks. The welder had even fashioned a couple of triangular metal chocks to go under the rear wheels of the big mower to keep it from rolling about in transit.

  They attached the trailer to the pickup, connected the lighting harness to give them brake and tail lights and turn signals, and then drove slowly away toward the lawn equipment store with Will at the wheel. He thought it handled just fine. You could tell there was something back there -- it had a feel and noises of its own -- and you had to be careful turning corners to give it plenty of room, but if you were careful and didn’t get in a hurry, you’d probably do okay.

  The equipment fit perfectly -- big and small mowers at the rear, tied down with the straps they had bought at Home Depot, the string trimmer and other smaller equipment stowed neatly in the metal enclosure along with the gasoline containers. Everything else went into the tool chest on the pickup.

  Will stood back, admiring truck and trailer and equipment, then walked all the way around the rig, admiring it some more. It was all of a piece. It fit. It looked right. They had scrimped on nothing, buying only first-rate stuff that was unlikely to break down, become balky, cause bothersome and irritating problems.

  Will harbored a natural suspicion of machines -- going back, he thought, to that wretched excuse for a lawnmower he had pushed through the clotted bermuda grass of Dysart in his twelfth summer. Now he had an entire truck and trailer rig full of machines, and the sight of it all, this collection of engines and carburetors and wheels and blades and gears and belts and other assorted moving parts, made him just a bit queasy.

  Will pulled a small notebook out of a rear pants pocket and totaled the figures of the purchases he had made over the past five days. $16,209. He had bought so well that he was now virtually broke. There was a little money in his personal bank account, but the business account was all but bone dry. The goddamn stuff better work.

  He turned to Palmer, who was sprawled on a bench in front of the lawn equipment store -- legs splayed, arms folded across his chest, eyes closed. “What do you think?” Will asked.

  Palmer opened his eyes and grunted.

  Will indicated the rig. “It appears we’re combat ready.”

  “May I go now?” Palmer asked. “I’m spending the weekend in Greensboro.”

  “Not yet. We’ve got to try all this stuff out.”

  Palmer’s face twisted into a disgusted snarl. “Where?”

  *****

  They tried three of the corporate headquarters in Research Triangle Park before they finally found one that would let them mow the sweeping expanse of grass that surrounded it. We don’t want money, we just need to test some equipment. Pay your regular guys. Palmer sat glowering in the truck, looking each time Will returned as if he might bolt, flag down a cop, and yell that he was being held captive by a madman. He didn’t, but he said to Will after the third stop, “You’re a fucking lunatic, you know that?” Will made what he hoped was a reasonable imitation of a lunatic -- mouth twisted, eyes rolled, guttural sounds -- and drove on.

  The building manager at the pharmaceutical company headquarters, though as taken aback as the ones at the first three buildings, at least had a sense of humor. When Will explained what they were about, he shrugged and said, “Be my guest. Just be careful around the azalea beds.”

  It took them the rest of the afternoon. The parking lot began to empty just after five, everybody heading home for the weekend, joining the flood of cars backing up along Cornwallis Road. Will rode the big mower, feeling a bit like General Patton driving hard to rescue the Bloody Bastards of Bastogne. It sang and vibrated underneath him with a deep bass voice that pulsated through his limbs, surrounding him with the smell of grass and the tang of the engine settling itself into a groove. It was a bit scary at first, so much machinery, so much power. But by the time he had ridden it for a half hour, learning how to maneuver, shift gears, handle the throttle, he began to feel somewhat more comfortable. The thing was, he realized, to let the machine do the work. Just ride and guide.

  Then he turned it over to Palmer, who was by now fairly seething with anger, his motions jerky and impatient while Will showed him the controls and gave him a few pointers. He barrelled off across the lawn -- back rigid, eyes flashing -- while Will started the Honda and cut close around the flower and shrub beds. He used the string trimmer around the trees and then powered up the blower and scoured the sidewalks and driveway of grass clippings.

  He finished and was stowing away the blower in the trailer’s locker when Palmer eased the big mower up to the ramp at the rear and cut the engine back to idle. His clothes -- knit shirt and khakis -- were sweat soaked. His hair was plastered to his head. But the anger seemed to have leaked out of him. Will tosse
d him a towel. He wiped his face. “You want to put it on the trailer?” Palmer asked.

  “Go ahead. Looks like you’re doing okay.”

  Palmer shifted the mower into forward gear and gave it a little gas. There was a fleeting look of panic as it clattered up onto the ramp, but then he eased it onto the trailer bed and brought it to a stop beside the Honda. He cut the engine and climbed down, lifting the ramp and securing it in place. “I’ve never done anything like that,” he said, staring wide-eyed at the mower. There was something almost like awe in his voice. He was trying to keep it out of there, but it sneaked through anyway.

  “Well,” Will said, “it all works.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess we’ll get started for real on Monday.”

  Palmer looked over at him now. “Do you have any customers?”

  “I’m still working on that one,” Will said.

  *****

  Morris deLesseps, elegantly informal in khaki walking shorts and purple polished cotton short-sleeved pullover, was hovering over a succulent-looking hunk of pork tenderloin on his patio cooker when Will pulled down the driveway and eased to a stop on the parking pad at the rear of the house. Morris stared, barbecue fork hovering in mid-air, mouth slightly open. Will got out of the truck and walked over to the grill.

  “All right,” Morris said. “What?”

  “I hijacked a shipment of lawn equipment.”

  Morris kept peering at the truck and trailer. Enroute, Will had picked up the magnetic signs and had attached them to the pickup’s doors: CAPTAIN SATURDAY’S LAWN SERVICE/338-2506.

  “Who is Captain Saturday?”

  Will thumbed his chest.

  Morris put a few hickory chips on the cooker’s charcoal fire and closed the lid. Smoke drifted through vents on the sides and top. He went into house and came back with two bottled beers. They sat. Morris had nice teak patio furniture. Expensive stuff. The beer was a European brand with a rich, full taste.

  “You’re my first customer,” Will said.

  “I already have a lawn service.”

  “But I’m going to tend your lawn for free. Well, almost.”

  “Almost what?”

  “I’m going to park here at night.”

  “The hell you say.”

  Morris got up and walked over to parking area and made a circle of the truck and trailer, carrying his beer bottle, taking an occasional swig. He returned and sat down again. He hiked one leg over the other, showing lean calf. Morris was, in most of his personifications, a trim and well-proportioned man. He had at one point several years ago developed a comfortable paunch to go along with one of his rumpled, tweedy, pipe-smoking phases, but once that was over he joined a downtown health club and took two-hour mid-day breaks to work out on Nautilus machines and slam himself around a racquetball court. Morris referred to the game as squash. He had a lean jaw and a flat belly. He wore clothes well. Now, Will felt grubby in his presence -- clad in old jeans, dirty jogging shoes and a tee-shirt that had SWIFT CREEK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL lettered on the front, a gift from one of his Weather Wizard appearances. He could smell his own sweat, faintly rank but honest.

  “That’s quite a get-up,” Morris said, indicating the truck and trailer.

  Will took a pull on his beer and eyed Morris across the rounded end of the bottle.

  “I’m really quite astonished,” Morris said.

  “As my able and distinguished attorney says, I’ve got to make a living.”

  “It’s not quite what I had imagined. Where did you come up with the idea?”

  “My cousin Wingfoot, actually. At least, he planted the seed of the idea. Palmer and I…”

  Morris’s eyebrows shot up. “Palmer?”

  “My business partner. For the summer. He’s taking a break from academic rigor.”

  “What does Palmer think about,” he waved at the rig, “all this?”

  “He says I’m not myself.”

  “And does…”

  “Yes, Clarice knows. I’ve talked with her.”

  Morris made a soft buzzing sound, something like a fluorescent light that needs a new ballast.

  Morris rose and tended the grill. The pork tenderloin was bubbling and aromatic, its juices wafting on the smoke from the hickory chips. Will was hungry, but he wouldn’t stay for dinner if asked, not that Morris had given any indication of asking. Perhaps company was coming. Neighbors.

  It was a tony North Raleigh neighborhood, a fashionable address. Morris had lived all over town at one time or another -- even, at one point, on the fringe of a low-income area on the east side, during a particularly liberal period when he was doing a lot of pro bono legal work and serving on the boards of several fashionable charities. But now he was here with the rich folks. Spacious homes on spacious lots, not a thing in the area under a half-million. The developer had hauled in thirty-foot maples and river birch and oaks and had created the illusion of longevity on a hundred acres that had been mostly pasture land only five years before. Snively and Ellis had been the exclusive sales agent for the development and Clarice had sold several lots and homes, including the one Morris and his present wife, Sylvia, were living in. She had probably made enough on commissions here alone to pay for the addition on the rear of the house on LeGrand.

  Back when the development was just getting started, she had mentioned in passing the possibility of their buying a lot and eventually building. But Will had discouraged it. He liked the house on LeGrand just fine. A reversal of roles. She was the one who insisted on an Old Raleigh address at the beginning. But over the years he had become more Old Raleigh than she, while she was now out making a lot of money off the New Raleigh crowd. He wondered how long she would keep the house on LeGrand, once the divorce was finalized (if indeed it was). She would get the house, he had no doubt of that. The woman always got the house, didn’t she?

  “So you’ve talked to Clarice,” Morris said.

  Will glanced at his watch. “Is your meter running?”

  “No. I’m off duty.”

  “Yes. I called Clarice to tell her that Palmer was going to be working with me this summer. And I asked her if she was screwing Fincher Sniveley -- well, not in so many words. She hung up.”

  “Goddamn,” Morris sighed.

  “Is she screwing Fincher?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea. I don’t have any contact at all with Clarice except through her attorney, who is as mean as a shit-house rat and would have my ass if I contacted her client directly. I am your attorney. And as your attorney, I will advise you again not to have any contact with Clarice. None, Will.” He jabbed the air with the beer bottle. “None.”

  “Thank you,” Will said.

  They sipped on their beer for awhile. The back door opened and Sylvia leaned out. She was a busty redhead, an aerobics instructor at a health spa, with a big, throaty laugh and a tinge of country-girl coarseness. She held her liquor well and enjoyed ribald humor. Morris had married her during his buckskin-and-cowboy-boot phase. Now that he was affecting dark pinstripe and Gucci, Will wondered if Sylvia would last. “Morris honey, why is the lawn service here on…” Then she spotted Will. She stared.

  “Hi, Sylvia. That’s my truck and stuff. I’m going to be parking it here.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t recognize you. You look so different.”

  “I’ve lost some weight. That could be it.”

  “Probably.”

  “My son says I’m incognito.”

  “Yes, you are.” Then, to Morris, “Which wine?”

  “There’s a new case of some rather good beaujolais. Might go well with the pork.”

  Sylvia glanced at her watch. “The Thaggards will be here in thirty minutes,” she said to Morris. Then she gave Will a tiny wave and closed the door.

  “So Wingfoot gave you the idea,” Morris said to Will.

  “Not in so many words, but that’s where it came from. He gave me the idea and then he disappeared, and I didn’t even
know it was an idea until I was dreaming and…” his voice trailed off. “Anyway, I worked out the rest myself.”

  “Wingfoot, as I remember you telling me, has a habit of disappearing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you thinking about disappearing?”

  “Why should I disappear?”

  “Might be easier on everyone concerned,” Morris said.

  “But I’d be a fugitive from justice,” Will protested.

  “Yes, there is that.”

  Will said, “When I was visiting with Wingfoot over in Pender County a few weeks ago, after I lost my job and banged up my knee, I told him that I was going back to Raleigh and get my life back. And Wingfoot told me an interesting thing. He said that everybody has two lives -- the one he lives and the one he might live. I don’t remember his exact words, but that’s the gist of it.”