Captain Saturday

by Robert Inman

  “Yes, your honor,” Morris said.

  Nettles ticked off the charges in a monotone. “Running a red light, failure to yield right-of-way, leaving the scene, failure to obey an officer, obstruction of justice…” Now he looked down at Will. “Mr. Baggett, how do you plead?

  “Not…”

  “Stand up when you address this honorable court,” Nettles ordered.

  Will stood. “Not guilty, your honor.”

  Nettles picked up the file and waved it. “All this is just a…fabrication?”

  “I can explain.”

  Nettles let the file fall from his hand. It landed with a soft smack on the desk. He shook his head. “Maybe a script for a TV show, Mr. Baggett. ‘Law and Order?’ Or maybe ‘Truth or Consequences.’”

  Will managed a weak smile. Judge Nettles didn’t return it.

  “You have witnesses, Mr. deLesseps?”

  “Mister Baggett is our sole witness.”

  He turned to the prosecutor. “And the state?”

  Sinclair was looking back toward the spectator section of the courtroom. He turned with a jerk. “Your honor, our witness…” he made a helpless gesture. “Officer Pettibone doesn’t appear to be in the courtroom.”

  Will looked. He had spotted Officer Pettibone at the rear of the room this morning -- trim and crewcut, a poster boy of a policeman -- but he hadn’t seen the man since the lunch break. There was, at the moment, not a single uniform in the courtroom except for the bailiff.

  “Hot damn,” Morris said softly.

  “What was that, Mister deLesseps?”

  “Nothing, your honor.”

  “I hope not.”

  “If I could have a moment, your honor…” the prosector looked stricken, shuffling about desperately among his papers as if hoping he might uncover either Officer Pettibone or a hole into which he could disappear.

  “No,” Judge Nettles said simply. “If you ain’t ready, you ain’t ready.”

  “Then the state would move for a continance.”

  “Denied.”

  “Defense moves for dismissal,” Morris spoke up.

  “On what grounds?”

  “Defense avers that Mister Baggett did not run a red light, did not do any of those other things that he’s accused of. The state is obviously unprepared to present any evidence to the contrary. No tickee, no washee.” Morris was on his feet now, looking positively magisterial. Will felt a rush of exhilaration. Was it really going to be this easy?

  “Don’t you try to foist any of your homespun levity on this honorable court, Mister deLesseps.”

  “No, your honor. Beg pardon.”

  “So that’s what you aver, Mister deLesseps?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “That’s a good old-fashioned word, ‘aver.’ I haven’t heard it used in my court in years.”

  “One tries to raise the level…”

  “And what do you aver, Mister Sinclair?”

  Sinclair could only shrug.

  Nettles glared at them all for a moment, then furiously slashed the air with his hand. “Get up here. You too, Mister Baggett. I want you to hear this.”

  They all scrambled toward the bench, Morris and Will and the young prosecutor bumping into each other in haste. They arrayed themselves in front of the bench, looking up at the wrathful, glowering face of Judge Broderick Nettles. He fixed them all with a furious stare. And then his gaze jerked away. “Bailiff, what’s the matter?”

  “Your honor…” They all turned to look at the bailiff, who was rising from a crouch, holding a small plastic bag that he seemed to have retrieved from the floor.

  “What’s that?” Nettles demanded.

  The bailiff opened the bag, sniffed, then reached inside and plucked out a pinch of withered brown substance. “Based on my previous experience,” the bailiff said somberly, “I’d say it’s marijuana. Your honor.”

  “Where did it come from?” the judge asked, his voice rising.

  “Mister Baggett’s jacket pocket.”

  There was a long, terrible silence and then Morris said softly, “Will, I don’t believe I’da done that.”

  Will stared. He could feel the floor opening up beneath his feet, could hear a thundering roar in his ears like waves crashing. “Oh my God,” he said.

  “That’s right,” Judge Broderick Nettles agreed. “Oh my God.”

  *****

  They allowed him one phone call. He called home, of course. He got the answering machine. If Clarice was back from Cincinnati, she wasn’t at home. But then, what would he say if she had answered? He wasn’t ready to say anything just yet -- not to anybody, including Clarice. He needed some time to think. So he hung up without leaving a message, a little relieved. Morris could break the news to Clarice.

  After that, Will sat, miserable and frightened, in a holding cell for two hours. A jailer brought food. Will politely declined. Finally, Morris showed up with the news that Judge Nettles had refused to set bond, at least immediately. He would consider that tomorrow. Meanwhile, Will Baggett, who had committed the unpardonable outrage of showing up in the good judge’s courtroom with marijuana in his pocket, could just cool his heels in jail overnight.

  “For God’s sake, Morris,” Will croaked as he felt his throat constrict and his rectum tighten, “horrible things happen to people in jail.”

  “Yeah,” Morris said, looking around at the holding cell where, for the moment, Will was the only occupant. “This place’ll start filling up before long, I imagine. Drunks, bad asses, the dregs of humanity.” Morris had dropped his professorial air and now had a wry, worldly-wise demeanor about him.

  “Maybe I can work something out,” Morris said. He left and came back with a jailer who took Will to a regular cell with only one other occupant, an emaciated young man of perhaps twenty with a wisp of a goatee, wearing knee-ripped jeans and a leather vest over bare torso. He gave Will a disinterested glance as the jailer clanged the door shut behind him. Morris stood in the hallway outside and Will had to talk to him through a small square of barred window. “Am I gonna be okay?”

  “I think so,” Morris said.

  “You think so.”

  “You’ll be fine. You’re bigger than he is. If he messes with you, beat the shit out of him.”

  “I tried to reach Clarice. She’s not home. Will you call her?”

  “Sure,” Morris said.

  “What’ll you tell her?”

  “That you’re in jail. And why. Is there anything else you want me to tell her?”

  “No.”

  They had taken his watch, wallet and belt. He was thankful not to have been strip-searched and made to wear one of those orange jumpsuits with INMATE on the back. They had said that overnight guests were allowed to keep their own clothes. If he came back for a longer stay, he would get a jump suit, just like everybody else.

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost seven.”

  “Tell Clarice I’m okay. Not to worry.” He tried to picture her hearing the news. And then there were the Greensboro Palmers…

  “Do you need anything?”

  Will glared at him. “That is the stupidest question I have ever heard you ask, Morris.”

  Morris smiled. Then he went away again.

  The cell had the barest of furnishings -- long metal benches securely bolted to opposite side walls, thin cotton mattresses, a metal toilet at the rear. The place smelled of human waste and despair, and Will couldn’t tell whether the odor emanated from the premises or from his fellow inmate. Probably both.

  Will took a seat on the bench opposite the young man.

  “Hey man.”

  Will tried to ignore him, but he got up from the bench and plopped down next to Will. He smelled rank, all right, but no worse than the cell itself. Okay, Will thought, here it comes. Ain’t you that fellow… He didn’t want to be recognized, didn’t want to be singled out, just wanted to melt into a gray anonymity, keep his mouth shut and his pants firmly about his wai
st, and get the hell out of here as quickly as possible. He edged a couple of inches away on the bench.

  “Got a cigarette?”

  “I don’t smoke. Sorry.”

  The young man shrugged and returned to his own bench where he stretched out and went promptly to sleep.

  Will sat perfectly still, listening to the alien sounds of the jail -- inmates and jailers yammering at each other, the hum and clank of electronically-controlled doors, harsh laughter and ragged curses, the snoring of his cellmate, all of it echoing along the steel and concrete hallways and splintering into a thousand jagged pieces that sliced through him and left him shattered and bleeding. And then it got worse. The catcalls started. “Yo Will! What’s the weather? Will Baggett. Yo! Will baby, wanna see my lightnin’ rod?” Well, the word is out.

  It went on for a long time. Will kept total silence.

  There was another sound, a voice in his head. You can save yourself, it kept saying over and over. Just tell ’em. Well, he would have the long night to think about that.

  But he didn’t. He couldn’t. His mind wouldn’t focus on it. It was just all too insane. At some point, after the jail had settled down to a dull whimper, he drifted off to sleep.

  He awoke sore and stiff and lay there, numb and empty, for a long time until the jail woke around him. Still, he couldn’t make much sense of things. There was a lot of stuff careening about in his head like space junk, one thought clanging against another, but he was too busy dodging the junk to bring any order to it, not here in the Wake County Jail at six o’clock in the morning when he was sore and weary and desolate with worry.

  So he decided that for the time being, he would say nothing. Tell no one. Leave everything open. It was just the best he could come up with right now.

  *****

  It took all morning to secure Will’s release.

  Morris showed up at ten with news that Judge Nettles was having one of his best days and had, without a great deal of bitching and moaning, agreed to set bond. Two hundred-fifty thousand dollars.

  “Isn’t that a little steep?” Will asked.

  “Outrageous.”

  “I don’t have two hundred-fifty thousand dollars.” He didn’t think he knew anybody who did, not anybody he knew well enough to ask. Well, there were the Greensboro Palmers… Will who? Never heard of him.

  “ Oh,” Morris said airily, “you don’t need that much in cash. A bondsman will secure it for fifty thousand.”

  “I don’t have…” then he thought about the check from Spectrum Broadcasting, his hush money. It was still in the drawer of a bedside dresser at home. With all that had happened, he had forgotten to deposit it.

  “I’ll call Clarice,” Morris said.

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I suppose you could say she’s in a state of shock.”

  “Is she coming to get me?”

  “I think so.”

  The thought of finally facing Clarice filled him with dread. At least there was no need to approach the Greensboro bunch. At least not for money.

  Morris was back at eleven with the check, which Will endorsed to the Ace Bail Bond Company. An hour later he returned to fetch Will. “Clarice isn’t here,” Morris said.

  “Why?”

  “I advised against it. There’s a pretty good crowd outside. Oh, and I have some good news.”

  “I could use some.”

  “Judge Nettles has dismissed the other charges. The red light, all that stuff.”

  “As you say,” Will said, “that is good news. I now have only this felony charge to worry about.”

  It was raining, but that apparently hadn’t put a damper on the curious, which included a fair-sized contingent from Raleigh’s news media, all of them shouting questions at Will as Morris sped him out of the jail doorway and across the sidewalk toward a car parked at the curb. Will felt the splat of raindrops on his face and thought with a sense of wonder that he had been totally disconnected from the commonplace world for almost twenty-four hours, suspended from ordinariness, from the mundane human traffic that was the stuff of just getting along in a slightly-skewed world. So that’s what it means to be locked up. Ah, how blessed is the mundane. The reporters jostled and cursed each other, sticking microphones and recorders in his face, shouting questions. He kept his mouth shut, as Morris had ordered. He felt the rough edge of a microphone scrape past his ear. They moved enmasse like a swarm of bees surrounding a queen, darting about and buzzing angrily. Then they were in the car -- Will in the front seat beside the secretary from Morris’s office who was driving, Morris in the rear. He had to shove a radio reporter out of the way to get the door closed. When the car pulled away from the curb, they heard a bellow from the sidewalk. “Sonofabitch! You got my mike cord!” They stopped abruptly and Morris opened the door and freed the cord, then slammed the door again. They roared away. They were only a block from Morris’s office, but they weren’t going to Morris’s office. They were going home.

  All the way there, nobody said a word. When they pulled into the driveway, Will turned and looked into the back seat. Morris was in repose, eyes closed, arms crossed, head tilted back against the seat rest. “Morris…”

  Morris opened his eyes and blinked. “It’s one of the more interesting cases I’ve had in some time,” he said. “Not like your usual charitable remainder trusts and bankruptcy proceedings. Although bankruptcy can, on occasion, have its roguish moments.” He was the professor again. “Go talk to your wife. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Will got out of the car and stood next to the driveway as it backed out and headed down the street. The rain had stopped, leaving a fresh-scrubbed aftertaste. He looked at his lawn -- lush and weed-free here in the fullness of mid-Spring, freshly-mowed sometime during his brief incarceration. Then he spotted a flaw, knelt and plucked a mere infant of a crabgrass plant from the narrow gap between concrete and fescue. A lawn was an exquisitely simple thing. So simple it made him want to cry.

  THIRTEEN

  He found Clarice in bed, the shades drawn against the day, the only sound the faint purring of the clock radio. He sat on the edge of the bed next to her and put his hand on her cheek. “I have a headache,” she said. “No, that’s not entirely right, Will. I have a sick headache.” Her voice seemed to float up to him from a distance, almost as faint as the clock.

  “I’m not surprised,” he replied, trying to keep his own voice light. It would be a way to approach this, he thought, at least for now, at least until he had some more time to think things through. He sat there for awhile and then said, “I think I’ll go take a shower. I didn’t get one last night. In a place like that, you don’t want to take a shower if you don’t have to.” But he made no move to get up.

  Clarice was having none of it. “Do you want to tell me what in God’s name happened?”

  Well, God is not involved in this at all. Blind, stupid bad luck, maybe. But that isn’t the same as God, at least not like I think of God.

  “ Clarice,” he said slowly, drawing out the words, “Could we just put what and why on hold for a little while?”

  She sat up then, slid back in the bed with her back against the headboard. It was difficult to see her in the dim light, to see what was moving about on her face. “Is it okay if I turn on the light?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Well, he could hear it clearly enough. Hurt, anger, disappointment.

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” she said.

  “I’ll get you a cold wash cloth,” he offered.

  “No.”

  They sat, neither moving, for a minute or so. “I suppose it’s all over the paper,” he said.

  “The front page.”

  “I’m becoming a real regular.”

  She massaged her temples and forehead. “I’m going to ask you again, Will. What happened?”

  Will took a deep breath. “I’m not ready. Not just yet. “
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  “Not ready?” She lowered her hands to her lap and tried again. “What the paper said…?”

  He didn’t answer that.

  “When are you going to be…ready?”

  He didn’t answer that, either.

  At the end of the next long silence she said, “Is that what two weeks in Brunswick County did for you?”

  He almost laughed, but managed to check it. So that’s what she thinks. My crazy family, weird and dysfunctional, and now into controlled substances. That, at least, would help explain things to someone like Clarice who had no frame of reference to understand people like the Brunswick County Baggetts, much less the other, up-river bunch, Cousin Norville and his clan.

  “Could I fix you a bowl of soup?” he asked. “It might help.”

  “As opposed to an explanation?”

  “No, just as a love offering.”

  “I’d rather have an explanation,” she said quietly.

  “As I say…”

  “You’re not ready.”

  “I just don’t want to rush into anything.”

  “That’s a very odd thing to say, Wilbur.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “Do you have any earthly idea what this does to us? To all of us?”

  He reached to touch her cheek again, but she turned away from him. And it was more than that. A turning-away and a sliding-away, both a twist of her head and a shift of her body, much as Will himself had done in the jail cell when his fellow inmate sat down next to him. A sliding-away from…what? In his case, it had been fear. What was it with Clarice? She hadn’t done that before, even at times when she had been terribly exasperated with him. She always stood her ground and fought, though they rarely had what you could call a real fight. But now, she had…what? Was recoiled too strong a word. No, it wasn’t. It was the smallest of movements, but she had indeed recoiled. Not just from conflict, from confrontation, from shock and embarrassment, but from him. From his very person.

  It terrified him. For a brief instant he thought that he might tell her everything, at least the unadorned facts of the case, unburden himself completely, and make it okay. Tell her and tell her quickly and then deal with the fallout of all that.