Captain Saturday

by Robert Inman

  Will took it. It swallowed his own. “Charmed,” he said.

  Peachy moved with an athlete’s swift grace, pulling him with her into the trailer, where Wingfoot was putting the plates of stir fry on the table along with fresh bottles of beer. “Hi,” she said. And the way they looked into each other’s eyes made Will tingle. She was a bit taller than Wingfoot, so she had to bend a little to give him a peck on the cheek. The movement tightened the fabric of the jeans across her rear end even more, and Will felt a rush of pure desire. Peachy turned just in time to catch him looking. She smiled a great big knowing smile.

  She was, she told him over dinner, the former Miss Greater Greenwood. She had been born and raised in Greenwood, South Carolina and was the tallest girl to ever enter the Miss Greater Greenwood Beauty Pageant. “There was this one other girl who had a shot at it,” Peachy said. “I told her if she’d drop out, I’d teach her how to yodel, and if she didn’t, I’d whip her butt.”

  “She dropped out,” Will guessed.

  “Yeah. But she went to Nashville and she’s doing backup vocals with Aron Tippett.”

  Will didn’t know who Aron Tippett was, but it sounded impressive. “And let me guess again,” he said. “She yodels.”

  “Like a songbird.”

  “And after Miss Greater Greenwood?” Will asked. “I hope that wasn’t the end of your beauty career.”

  “I came in third runner-up in the Miss South Carolina Pageant. And then I got a scholarship to play basketball at Clemson.”

  “She invented a move,” Wingfoot said. He had been deep in his stir fry, but he looked up now and winked at Peachy. “Show him.”

  It was a lightning fast head fake and double-clutch glide to the basket, she explained, and she stood and gave a demonstration.

  “The Peachy Pump,” Wingfoot said. “Imitated by female basketball players, and some male, all over the Atlantic Coast Conference.”

  “We won the ACC championship my junior year,” she said, looking down at him after she had jammed an imaginary basketball through an imaginary hoop with such vigor that it made the floor of the trailer shake.

  Wilbur stared, realizing his mouth was open, hoping he wasn’t drooling. He had his chair tipped precariously far backward, looking up at her.

  “You ought to see her do it in bed,” Wingfoot said.

  She rapped him on the top of the head with her fork as she resumed her seat. “Mind your mouth, Wingfoot.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said with a grin.

  They finished dinner, and while Peachy was back in the rear of the trailer freshening up, Will helped Wingfoot clear the table and do the dishes.

  “Goddamn, Wingfoot,” he said. “Can you handle that?”

  “I reckon,” he said. Then he gave Will a long look. “Don’t get the wrong idea about her, Wilbur. There’s a lot going on there.”

  “I can see there is.”

  “No, I don’t mean that. She graduated magna cum laude in finance at Clemson. When I met her last year she was one of the top brokers at the Merrill Lynch office in Wilmington.”

  “Then why the hell is she out here on the backside of East Jesus messing with the likes of you?”

  Wingfoot lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Because I think she’s in love.”

  “Where are we going?” he asked when they left the trailer an hour later -- Will and Peachy in the Spitfire, Wingfoot, Pedro and Cisco following in the van. Peachy drove fast but well, both hands firmly gripping the steering wheel. Even with the seat pushed back as far as it would go, she was folded under the wheel like an accordion and she had to shift her weight to move her right foot from gas pedal to brake. That didn’t matter a great deal, however, because she rarely used the brake. They sped along a rural two-lane blacktop at near seventy, the wind howling in the open windows and rattling the canvas top of the Spitfire. They had to shout to hear each other.

  “We’re going to see your cousin,” she said.

  “Min?”

  “No.”

  “Who?”

  “Another cousin. Don’t ask so many questions, Wilbur.”

  “That’s how you find out things,” he said. “I confess, this whole business has me pretty flabbergasted. Wingfoot said you gave up being a stockbroker to raise nandinas and stuff.”

  “Well, that’s not the only reason.”

  “What’s the other?”

  “Wingfoot plays drums,” she said, beating a little tattoo on the steering wheel.

  “I’m not even gonna ask about that.”

  “Don’t. Just keep your eyes open.”

  “My head up and my ass down?”

  “That, too.”

  Will gave himself over for awhile to the wind and the highway and the rich smell of Peachy sitting thigh-to-thigh beside him there in the Spitfire, making him jump every time she reached to shift, brushing against his leg. She had changed before they left into a pair of jet-black jeans, also skin-tight, and a loose-fitting blouse affair with a lot of fringe on it and a good bit of shoulder showing. He couldn’t remember when he had had so many of his senses engorged at once.

  Where in the hell were they? He was so far off the beaten path that he had absolutely no sense of geography or direction, physical or mental. Physically, he guessed they were somewhere in the general vicinity of Pender County, and confirmed it when he got a quick glimpse of a road sign at an intersection: “Burgaw 10 miles” with an arrow off to the right. Burgaw, he knew. He had judged a cornbread cook-off there a couple of years before as a representative of Channel Seven. But they weren’t headed for Burgaw.

  “May I just ask you one more question? What’s your real name?” “Peachy.”

  “That’s on your birth certificate?”

  “Yep.”

  “Let me guess. Your father grows peaches.”

  “Nope.”

  “Well then…”

  “Mama went through sixteen hours of labor when she had me. Daddy fell asleep. When the doctor woke him up and told him he had a daughter, he said, ‘That’s peachy.’ And that’s what they put on the birth certificate. Don’t you think I’m peachy?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Will said, “I sure do.”

  *****

  The big red-and-white neon mounted over the front door read: “Baggett’s Place. Eat, Drink and Boogie Down.” There was a brightly-lit sign on a small two-wheeled trailer sitting out front of the place: “Appearing Tonight: Peachy Delchamps and Minor Ailment.”

  “Appearing…” Will said.

  Peachy wheeled the Spitfire into the gravel parking lot. It was jammed with an asssortment of automobiles, pickup trucks, vans, all-terrain vehicles, and a dump truck. “The boys and I are the ‘boogie down’ part,” she said.

  They parked around back, the van pulling alongside the Spitfire. “You wanna help us?” Wingfoot asked as he and the Mexicans climbed out. “Just take some of this light stuff. Don’t strain your knee.” He handed Will a cardboard box full of microphone cords and assorted electronic gear. Wingfoot grabbed a guitar case and headed for the back door. Will followed.

  He was assaulted by an explosion of noise and beer-and-grease-and-sweat smell and a thick pall of cigarette smoke that made his eyes water and his throat constrict. It was a single cavernous room with a wide bar at one end and a dance floor and stage at the other. In between was a sea of tables and a seething mass of people -- men in jeans and overalls, bright flowered shirts and cowboy hats; women packed into tight pants and blouses and industrial-strength makeup; waitresses struggling through the crowd, precariously balancing platters of food and beer bottles. Recorded music -- Clint Black, he thought -- thundered from a huge set of speakers on the stage, competing with the shouts and laughter of the crowd.

  They cut around the edge of the dance floor and deposited the guitar case and the cardboard box on the stage. Will looked out at the crowd. Rowdy, raucous, loud, joyous. The music pulsed, making the smoke-riven air dance and setting off ripples among the stir fry in his bell
y. He felt a little woozy. Wingfoot clamped a firm hand on Will’s shoulder. “Wilbur, this could be a life-altering experience here tonight. You might find salvation. A state of sublime grace.”

  “Or I might throw up,” Will said. “I’ve never heard so much noise in my life.”

  “Well, get ahold of yourself. If you throw up, just don’t do it on anybody’s woman.”

  Wingfoot turned loose of his shoulder and plunged into the crowd and Will had no choice but to plunge after him. They emerged after a moment in front of the bar. “Cousin Norville!” Wingfoot shouted over the heads of the people pressed up close.

  There was another crowd behind the bar, a whirlwind of arms dispensing beer and food as fast as they could manhandle it from the taps and the open window of the kitchen beyond. A stocky, balding man wearing a white apron popped up. “Hey Wingfoot! Did you bring him?” Wingfoot pointed to Will.

  “Say hello to Cousin Norville while I help Peachy and them set up,” Wingfoot yelled in Will’s ear, and then he was gone back into the mass.

  “Norville Baggett,” he bellowed over the noise when Will had made his way behind the bar. He offered a beefy hand. Will judged him to be about sixty.

  “Will Baggett.”

  Norville’s handshake was firm and manly. “The family celebrity.”

  “Well…”

  “Damn, you look like your daddy.”

  “I do?”

  “Spitting image. What’s your handicap?”

  “Well, I have this bum knee…”

  “No, I mean golf.”

  “I don’t play.”

  A middle-aged bleached-blonde woman with large braless breasts straining to escape from her barely-buttoned denim shirt leaned across the bar, waving a beer mug. “Norville, are you gonna get me a beer or ain’tcha?”

  Norville beamed at her busom. “Maylene, you look like you’re smuggling grapefruit.”

  Maylene looked down at herself, “Why thank you, Norville. Ain’t you the sweetest one.”

  Norville took Maylene’s mug and filled it from the Pabst Blue Ribbon tap, slid it across the bar to her, and rang up her dollar bill in the cash register. Then he filled another mug and shoved it into Will’s hand. “Hope you like it on tap.” Before Will could answer, Norville grabbed him by the elbow and steered him to a corner of the bar, out of the traffic pattern. “It’s a little quieter over here,” Norville said. Will couldn’t tell any difference. Noise crashed against them like rough surf and he and Norville had to stand close and talk loudly.

  “You’re just about the only famous Baggett I know,” Norville said.

  “Well, it’s just local TV…”

  “Last year when we opened this place, I started to send you an invitation. But Wingfoot talked me out of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, this is the trashy side of the family.”

  “How big is the trashy side of the family?”

  “Well, there’s Min and then there’s the trashy side.”

  Will took a sip of beer. Norville grabbed a handful of redskin peanuts from a bowl on the shelf behind the bar and started popping them into his mouth one by one. “Want some peanuts?”

  “No thanks.”

  Norville seemed to be studying him, sizing him up. Will looked out across the dance floor where a woman in pedal-pushers and high-heeled shoes was dancing on the top of a table. Music exploded from the speakers at the far end of the room. Mary Chapin-Carpenter now. I feel lucky… Norville polished off the fistful of peanuts and wiped his hands on his apron. “Wingfoot said Min was trying to get you to write a family history.”

  “News travels fast,” Will said.

  “So we figured if you were gonna write the family history, you might as well know about the whole family.”

  “I reckon so.”

  Norville winked. “Are you into municipals?”

  “What?”

  “Bonds.”

  “No.”

  Norville swept the air with his arm. “I owe a lot to municipals.”

  “Is that so?”

  Norville held up a stubby finger. “Correction. I owe a lot to Peachy.”

  “She’s quite a girl,” Will agreed.

  “You ever heard of Microsoft?”

  “I think I have.”

  “She got me into Microsoft six years ago. Put every dime I could scrape together into it. I said to Peachy, ‘Peachy, if this don’t work, my tit’s in a wringer.’ And Peachy said to me, ‘Norville, I’m the one with the tit.’”

  “You did okay, I take it.”

  Another sweep of his arm, taking in the entire premises. “What you see is the house that Microsoft built. I was barely scraping by in a little hole in the wall over at Moore’s Creek until Peachy introduced me to Microsoft. We cashed in last year, built this place, and put the rest into municipals. So you see, even the trashy side of the family can do all right for itself. All we need is a little sound investment advice.”

  “So you’ve known Peachy for six years.”

  “I was the one who introduced her to Wingfoot. She taught him to play drums.”

  “I’ll bet. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

  Norville gave him a broad grin. “Yep.”

  “It’s quite a place,” Will said.

  “Lyle Lovett was in here a couple of months ago,” Norville said, just as the speakers erupted in a crash of Garth Brooks sound. Shameless! Garth bellowed.

  Will couldn’t quite make out what Norville said. “Who?”

  “Lyle Lovett. The country singer.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “He was making a movie over at the studio in Wilmington and somebody told him about this place and he and a whole mob of the movie people came over here one night.”

  “Did he sing?”

  “No, but he did say he might record one of Peachy’s songs.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s the one called ‘Shit Fire.’ Maybe she’ll sing it tonight.”

  “I sure hope so,” Will nodded. “She writes songs?”

  “Writes ’em and sings ’em. She’s damn good, boy.”

  “And she sure does fill up a pair of britches,” Will said, taking a big swallow of beer.

  “You bet your booties, Wilbur. Are you gonna write all this down, what you see here tonight? For the family history?”

  “Well,” Will said, “I don’t think I’ll have any trouble remembering it.” He drained his beer and handed the mug to Norville. “I think I’ll have another one. Can you run me a tab?”

  Norville smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “Hell boy, you’re family.”

  Billy Hargreave showed up a half-hour later, wearing a Hawiian print shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. He threaded his way to the bar and waved to Will, who was on his third beer and feeling quite nice.

  “Hey! Sheriff Billy!” Will called out, “do the Dukes of Hazzard. Wooooaaaahhhhh .”

  “Norville,” Billy said, “give me some of whatever that boy is drinking.”

  Will and Billy Hargreave had a ringside seat at a table right in front of the stage. A waitress brought a fresh pitcher of Pabst Blue Ribbon and two ice-cold mugs.

  Norville took the stage with a flourish, bouncing nimbly on the balls of his feet and holding his thick arms wide to take in the whole rowdy crowd. “Everybody happy?”

  “Yeah!” they roared.

  “Well, put your hands together and welcome the best damn country music band that ain’t made it to Nashville yet -- Peachy Delchamps and Minor Ailment.”

  And then Peachy and Wingfoot, Pedro and Cisco came in from a door just behind the stage through the wall of cheering. Cisco slid onto a stool at a portable keyboard while Wingfoot took his place behind the drum set and Peachy and Pedro plugged into amplifiers -- Pedro cradling a bass, Peachy running her fingers up and down the fretboards of a double-necked guitar. Peachy stepped to the microphone. “Awright,” she thundered, “y’all shut up and sit down. We’re gonna play you some musi
c.”

  The crowd answered with a roar. Nobody sat down and the noise just got louder. Will was on his feet, pounding his hands together.

  Peachy slashed a chord from her guitar. Will sat down and topped off his mug from the pitcher. “This is a brand new one,” Peachy said, “and it’s for all you sorry-assed men who came here tonight looking for sympathy. You ain’t getting any, y’hear?” She turned to the band. “One, two three…” and they launched into a hard-driving country rock beat that seemed to suck the air from the area in front of the stage. His eyes went wide and he looked over at Billy Hargreave. Billy winked. And then Peachy leaned into the microphone…

  I see you lookin’ at me across the dance floor;

  I see that mournful teardrop in your eye.

  You look like you been had

  By a woman that’s mean and bad;

  But let me tell you this before you cry:

  I’m the kind of gal that likes to have a good time;

  When the party starts I’ll always do my part;

  I’ll laugh and dance and sing,

  I’ll do most anything,

  But I ain’t babysittin’ no broken heart.

  Peachy had a strong, clear, resilient voice that wrapped around a song and squeezed it and made it part of her. She closed her eyes and made love to the microphone, and then stepped back wide-eyed, grinning at the crowd, and ripped off lightning runs on the guitar, her fingers a blur on the strings and frets. She and the band played nonstop for two hours and her voice never seemed to lag or waver. She sang a few old Patsy Cline songs, some Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, and a new thing by the Dixie Chicks. But mostly, she sang her own -- songs about losing your love and breaking your heart, about cheating women and hard-drinking men, and they fit right in with all the old stuff. It was pure, old-fashioned country music straight from its roots, none of the clever ditties you heard on the radio these days backed up by lush symphony strings and a chorus that sounded like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Not that Will had ever listened to much country music on the radio. But here tonight, he decided that he had missed a lot by not paying much attention to it. He found himself singing along with the choruses of songs he barely knew. The beer pitcher was always full and Billy Hargreave kept transferring it to his glass. He thought at some point in the evening that he should probably stop drinking, but the surging beat of Peachy’s upbeat numbers and the lonesome ache of her ballads and a glass full of beer just seemed to go together, to fit.