by Robert Inman
“Well,” said Sheriff Billy Hargreave to the assemblage, “here we are. I’m just here to make everything legal and proper, and there’s not a lot I need to say, especially after Miss Peachy put so beautifully into song what we’re all feeling today. Now, we haven’t rehearsed any of this. I just told Peachy and Wingfoot to say to each other what they’re feeling this morning. So,” he said to the bride and groom, “if you two will join hands and gaze into each other’s eyes, the rest of us will just be quiet and listen. And then I’ll sort of wrap things up.”
“Wingfoot Baggett,” said Peachy when she had taken his hands in hers, “you are the light of my life and the crystal clear note of my symphony. There’s just nobody else in the world I want to be with, now or ever. I’m glad you let me go off to Nashville and try my wings. I would have stayed here if you’d asked me to. But you didn’t, and I love you for that among all the other things. But I’ll tell you this, I spent a lot of lonesome nights in Nashville and out on the road. Even with all the good things going on, there was always this empty spot,” she released one hand and tapped her heart, “and I knew exactly what it was.”
Peachy took up Wingfoot’s hand again looked over at Will. “Wilbur, I thank you for your telephone call.” To the audience she said, “Wilbur called me one night while I was out on the road. What was that place?”
“Newton, Kansas,” Will said.
“Right. I was sitting there in my motel room and feeling about as empty as you can get. And then Wilbur called to tell me he had heard my record on the radio. And to make a long story short, he told me to call Wingfoot and sing him a love song. Which I did.”
She turned back to Wingfoot. “The way I sang it that night, it said that you ought to be with the one you love. But the version I sang just a minute ago said you’ve got to be with the one you love. So, like Billy says, here we are. Here I am with the one I love and now I don’t have to be lonesome and empty when I’m out on the road. When I sing love songs to an audience, you’ll know I’m really singing ’em just to you.” She paused for a moment, then said, “I guess that does it.”
Wingfoot shuffled his feet a little bit and turned loose of one of Peachy’s hands long enough to tug at the collar of his tux shirt and clear his throat. “I can’t top that,” he said. He gave a jerk of his head in the Best Man’s direction. “Wilbur here told me not to be a fool in general, but that it’s okay to be a fool in love. Well, I’m a fool in love. I can’t write love songs and I can’t sing ’em, but I’ll do all those other things a fool in love is supposed to do.”
There was a long silence and Sheriff Billy asked, “Is that it?”
“I guess so,” Wingfoot said.
“Then you two can put your rings on.”
Palmer bore the two rings, plain gold bands, on a small satin pillow which Min had retrieved from a trunk in the attic the day before. It had been used at Baggett family weddings since before the Civil War and was somewhat yellowed and musty-smelling with age, but the fabric was still in decent condition. Min and Palmer had spent a couple of hours up in the attic at mid-afternoon and had emerged dust-smudged and sweaty with pillow in hand. Palmer confided later to Will that he had never seen such a pile of “family shit.” Min had raised the possibility of his writing a history of the Baggett family -- after he finished medical school, of course. He had been noncommittal.
He offered up the rings now. Wingfoot took one and slipped it onto Peachy’s finger and she reciprocated. Wingfoot held up his hand and looked at the ring closely. “Feels sort of strange,” he said. “I’ve never worn jewelry before.” He grinned. “But I think I’ll get used to it pretty quickly.”
“You’d better,” Peachy said. And the entire multitude laughed.
Sheriff Billy pronounced them man and wife and the groom kissed the bride and then they all trooped out into the morning to enjoy the feast and the breeze blowing in off the Cape Fear River.
It was, Will thought, the best wedding he had ever attended.
Will and Palmer wandered down to the river and tossed chunks of french fries to Barney, the old alligator who lounged in the reedy shallows. Was it the original Barney or some descendant? No matter. An alligator went with the place. Will told Palmer how Barney had survived Wingfoot’s attempt to dynamite him, how the entire family had been blasted from their beds in the dead of night by the explosion.
Palmer stood gazing at the water, at the gator’s knobby leathered back, just barely showing above the surface. “Min told me a little more about your parents while we were up in the attic yesterday.”
“Your grandparents.”
“I’ve tried to think of them that way, but I’m not having much success. I just don’t know ’em. Daddy Sid and Mama Consuela are the people I think of as grandparents.” He turned and looked back at the house, the sprawling lawn party. The house looked the best it had in years. Min had consented to let Wingfoot have it painted for the occasion, and he had taken things somewhat further than that. He had had the stucco repaired, rotting wood replaced, the roof re-covered -- a madhouse of activity in the two weeks since Will had last been here. It seemed to sit rather proudly now among the live oaks, presenting its best face to the Cape Fear.
“God,” Palmer said. “All this history.”
It surprised Will. “Interesting to hear you say that. I told your mother once a long time ago that I didn’t have a history, not in the way she understood the term. She fairly reeks with it, and I don’t mean that in a bad way, or critical, or anything like that. She comes from a fine family. Sid and Consuela are a little stuffy, maybe, but good people. They have a history.”
Palmer waved his arm at the house. “But this is history too. I know something about Daddy Sid’s family, and they don’t hold a candle to this. These people go back centuries, Wilbur. Min told me you’re named for the original. Squire Wilbur. Helluva guy, the way she tells it.”
“Min’s always harped on all that stuff,” Will said. “I guess I just tuned it out. For me, history began when I left here. But you know, I’ve thought about the history business a lot lately, at least my particular part of it. And you’re the reason.”
“Me?”
“You said something back a few weeks ago about my parents. Did I miss ’em? Well, yes, I do. I guess I always did, but I just didn’t admit it. Until you said that.”
Palmer started to say something, but instead he just smiled. Then he put his arm around Will’s shoulder and they walked back to the house.
*****
Will was up early the next morning, intending to hurry on back to Raleigh where work was piling up and customers would be antsy. End of the week, grass growing. People liked to have freshly-mowed lawns for the weekend. You couldn’t mow every lawn on Thursday or Friday, but you did what you could. It was already Wednesday.
But at breakfast in Min’s kitchen Palmer said, “No. We’re not going back until this afternoon.” He had been up even earlier than Will. He looked clear-eyed and fresh-faced this morning. Scrubbed and neatly dressed, but not as buttoned-down as he would have been a few months ago. Perhaps the summer had something to do with it. On the job, he had taken to wearing old tee-shirts and cutoff jeans and a ratty pair of sneakers. He was browned by the sun. Some days he didn’t shave. He had peroxided his hair, showing up one morning a month ago with it bleached a fine almost-white yellow. His mother had raised hell at that, he said. He looked forward to going to Greensboro on the weekend. “Mama Consuela will shit,” he said. He reported back on Monday that the Greensboro Palmers had gone to enormous lengths to avoid saying anything about his hair. As he was about to depart, he finally asked them what they thought. “It will grow out,” Consuela had said. It was multi-hued now, darker strands growing in among the lighter. Palmer said that if he didn’t make it in medical school, he would become a cartoon character like Funky Winkerbean and play air guitar. He could be, Will thought, quite astonishing. Wingfoot must have thought so too, thought enough of Palmer to take him off to a ni
ght of frivolity in Pender County, the way he had done with Will back yonder.
“We’ve got work,” Will said, protesting around a mouthful of Min’s eggs scrambled with chunks of french fries left over from yesterday’s wedding reception. That had been Peachy’s idea: barbecue, slaw, french fries; gallons of incredibly sweet iced tea, so thick a spoon might float in it. And for dessert, hand-made and hand-scooped ice cream.
Min turned from the stove and looked at Palmer. Something passed between them, but Will had no clue.
“Why aren’t we going back this morning?” Will asked. He looked again at Min, but she had given him her back.
“Because there’s something we need to do here.”
“What?”
“Something you should have done a long time ago.” Palmer looked at his watch. “Eat up, Wilbur. It’s time to go.”
*****
It was 9:45 when they left the house in the pickup truck, Palmer driving, an old manila envelope on the seat between them. Will picked up the envelope. “What’s this?”
“Later,” Palmer said.
It was not until they turned off Highway 133 onto the grounds of the tiny Brunswick County airport near Southport that it began to dawn on Will. Palmer stopped the truck next to the concrete ramp where several single-engine planes were parked -- one of them with its doors open, the young pilot circling it, checking things out, testing the control surfaces with his hand. Palmer got out of the truck and stood with the door open, waiting. Will sat there staring at the plane, feeling something he thought might be panic rising in him. He shook his head slowly. “Palmer…I don’t know…”
“It’s not just for you. It’s for me too.”
They took off, climbing through a thin layer of clouds that had drifted in on an ocean breeze, breaking free at five thousand feet. Palmer sat in front with the pilot, a map spread across his lap, both of them wearing headsets. Will was in the back, just behind the pilot, his ears filled with the steady drone of the engine as the pilot leaned it out and set the trim. The manila envelope was beside him on the empty seat.
Fifteen minutes into the flight, Palmer turned and looked back at him. His eyes sought out the envelope and he mouthed the word open. Will did, understanding that it had come from the attic, from Min, from the hidden-away part of his life.
The young man in the yellowed photograph was leaning on a golf club -- a driver, from the length and shape of it -- dressed in casual slacks and open-necked knit shirt, grinning out from under a snap-brim cap, one two-toned golf shoe crossed jauntily over the other ankle. He stood on a tee, a sweep of tree-lined fairway behind him, green and sand traps just visible over his shoulder. The young man looked like he owned the place. The young woman was holding onto the young man’s arm with one hand. In the other, she held a fistful of cash. She was looking up at him with something between amusement and adoration. They were young and fresh and full of life. Just the two of them. Tyler and Rosanna.
The same photograph was in the newspaper clipping. GOLFER AMONG MISSING IN PLANE DISAPPEARANCE.
…massive search on land and at sea, headed by the Civil Air Patrol…
Will peered out the side window of the plane. The clouds were broken now, showing patches of green and brown, a river glinting in sunlight. Palmer turned again and handed him the map. It had a plastic overlay on which he had drawn with a red grease pencil -- a straight line from Southport to Lake City, then just south of Sumter, the curve beginning, becoming more and more pronounced until it was a great sweeping arc down toward Orangeburg and St. George and Monck’s Corner, across the expanse of the Francis Marion National Forest, and finally crossing the coastline just below McClellanville. The red line went to the edge of the map where it was all colored blue now. ATLANTIC OCEAN, it said.
He felt the plane bank almost imperceptibly, beginning its gentle turn in clear sky. The upper reaches of Lake Marion off to the left. And then the twin ribbon of Interstate 26 headed southeast toward Charleston.
…spotted on radar by air traffic controllers in Columbia…
He looked up at the ceiling of the plane, at the shiny nozzle of the air vent. His hand on the nozzle for a moment, feeling the cold metal, then turning it. A soft whoosh of air on his face. He lowered his hand to his lap, then closed his eyes. Sudden, wrenching memory of a night huddled in a corner of the tree house, wracked with shame, guilt, betrayal. A wave of nausea swept over him now. His vision swam. Then a hand on his knee. Palmer. Are you okay? He nodded weakly and turned away again to the window. He would turn back if he could. But he couldn’t.
They flew on. Cultivated fields, pine forest, cross-hatched streets of small towns beneath them. Interstate 95 now, then again across I-26. Charleston off to their right, barely visible through the haze. The unending green of the national forest. And finally, the yawning Atlantic. Crossing a narrow strip of beach, dun-colored from this altitude. Out, out across the steel grayness and on and on until there was nothing but empty sky and empty water that had no beginning and no end. Only, there was an end somewhere. An end so alone and final that it left a great, aching hole in the ocean somewhere out here, a hole so profound that if you went forever -- as far out and as far down as you could go -- you would never find its bottom.
He should be overcome with emotion now, out here in this vastness, coming at long last to visit the graves of his parents. There should be hot, cleansing tears. But he felt empty, drained, casting about in search of people and things that had eluded him for a great long while.
But there were no tears. Instead, there was the dawning realization that Tyler and Rosanna weren’t out here, any more than if they would have been a pile of dust-becoming bones beneath a marble slab somewhere on land. They were the people in the picture. You’re the spitting image of your daddy, cousin Norville had said. But it was more than that. They were himself, part of his essence, their echoes and hauntings, and that was something he must consider carefully and at length in the days ahead. Finally, after all this time, must consider. And grieve over, if that’s what it took. Grieve and celebrate. Wasn’t that what you did when somebody died? Even if it took eons to do? No, Tyler and Rosanna weren’t out here, and he couldn’t grieve hot tears now and put them to rest. They were himself and always had been and always would be. They were himself and they were his son, sitting up there in the front seat. The living part, that was the thing -- not what was lost, but what was left. It was all a man had to go on, what you had to make do with.
He looked down again at the Atlantic, at a tiny break in the gray made by the white wake of a sailboat. Even from five thousand feet you could see that it was a sleek thing in full rig. Sailing with the wind or against? He couldn’t tell. Underway, that was the thing. Then he lost sight of it as the plane banked again, turning back at the point beyond which it could not safely go, heading back toward land.
He felt his son’s touch, strong and steady on his shoulder. He turned from the window and looked at Palmer and smiled and took his hand and held it tightly. He did not, would not, let go until they were firmly back to earth.
Back at the house, he said to Min, “You should go.”
“You’re probably right,” she said. “Maybe later.”
“Don’t wait until it’s too late. I almost did.”
TWENTY-FIVE
They were on the Beltline north of downtown, three lanes of brisk mid-afternoon traffic, headed west toward the Glenwood interchange and then to a neighborhood near Crabtree Valley Mall. The next job was a favor to Dahlia Spence -- an elderly friend and fellow garden-clubber who had fallen off her riding lawnmower the week before and was limping about the house, bruised and sore, unable to mow her lawn. The house wasn’t close to anything else they had on the schedule that day and it would cost them an extra half-hour just to get there, but Will had promised that morning that they would work it in.
Palmer had groused about it. “We’ll be mowing until dark. Trying to get the last pound of flesh?”
“Of course.
” Tomorrow, he would be alone. Tomorrow, Palmer started back to medical school. There were forty-two regular customers now, plus an occasional add-on like this one. Will wasn’t sure how he’d manage by himself. At a gallop, he supposed. One thing about it, he was making a living, even after splitting everything fifty-fifty with Palmer during the summer. Palmer kept grousing about that, too. It was Will’s equipment. He should get more than half the income. But Will insisted. Palmer had some money of his own in the bank now. He would still need help from Sidney and Consuela during the school year, but not quite as much. He seemed to take some satisfaction in that, and his grousing was half-hearted.
Cruising along at fifty-five in the left lane. Peachy on the radio:
You gotta be with the one you love…
It was Number Five on the Billboard Country Top Fifty. RCA Victor had released it the week after the wedding. Peachy had wanted to keep the song just to herself and Wingfoot, but Wingfoot said something that sweet ought to be shared with the rest of the world. Wingfoot was becoming a regular sentimental old fart. He and Peachy had called from Jackson Hole, where they were honeymooning, and had sung the song in duet to Will. It was awful. Wingfoot couldn’t sing worth a damn. Besides, Will didn’t think he needed anybody to tell him he should be with the one he loved. Maybe they ought to call and sing it to Clarice.
“She is one more hunk of woman,” Palmer said. He leaned against the passenger side door, elbow propped on the window frame, fingers of the other hand tapping time on the dashboard. Wind rushed past the open windows, rumble of traffic mingling with the music. They had never found time to get the air conditioner fixed, not the one in the truck. But then they had decided that it made no sense to ride in air conditioning anyway when you were between jobs. It just made you feel that much hotter when you climbed out and revved up the equipment again. So with the passing of weeks they had gotten fairly used to the heat of summer. They were, Will thought, adaptable.