Captain Saturday

by Robert Inman

A crowd had gathered at the door of McDonald’s, muttering and pointing. Inside, diners were staring out the window.

  Palmer turned to the crowd. “You know who that is?” he yelled, pointing at Will, “that’s Will Baggett. The TV star. Go on over and meet him. Get his autograph. He really loves his fans. Hell, you people know him a lot better than I do.”

  Will felt a blow, a palpable fist, hammering the pit of his stomach. He staggered backward, raising his hands, then turned and scrambled toward the truck. Palmer’s voice flailed at his back but he couldn’t hear the words any longer, just a terrible noise blasting away, like someone cranking up a chain saw next to his ear. He flung open the truck door and threw himself inside and sat there gripping the steering wheel, knuckles white, heart racing, stomach lurching. After a moment, he looked back toward the McDonald’s. Palmer was gone. And then Will got a glimpse of his car, tearing out of the parking lot, disappearing into the morning traffic. Several people from the crowd outside McDonald’s were headed across the lot toward him. Will fumbled in his pocket for the keys, started the engine, backed out of his parking space, and fled.

  *****

  He went through the day in a fog, numb and shaken. He sat for a long time in the truck in Morris’s driveway, then finally climbed out and hitched up the trailer. He pulled the list out of his pocket and stared at it, uncomprehending, until the names and addresses finally came into focus. Move, he told himself. Move or give up.

  It took him all day to do the three lawns. The customers Dahlia Spence had lined up were all, like Dahlia, elderly widows with older homes on fairly small lots. But he was slow, still unfamiliar with the equipment, and he took his time, concentrating on the work. At the end of the first stop he consulted the price sheet from Buddy’s Lawn Service and charged thirty-five dollars, undercutting Buddy’s price by ten. He did the same for the others. He worked on through mid-day, applying sunscreen to his arms and the back of his neck, taking frequent drinks from the water cooler he had brought along. There was an apple and some snack crackers in the glove compartment of the truck, but he wasn’t hungry. At the third stop, the woman brought him a glass of lemonade while he worked, and when he finished, he carried several boxes of junk from her garage to the curb for the trash people to pick up the next morning.

  It was after five-thirty when he left the trailer again at Morris’s house. No one was at home, but a neighbor walking his dog gave Will an odd look.

  When he returned to his apartment, Dahlia’s Oldsmobile was gone from the garage. He took a shower, changed clothes, and then went to sit quietly on the love seat in the garden. He still wasn’t hungry. There was a great empty void somewhere down near his stomach, but it had nothing to do with food.

  Whatever anger he might have felt there in the parking lot at McDonald’s this morning was replaced by the inescapable conclusion that Palmer was right. Will had counted on the summer as a time to re-connect, reconcile, forge a bond that had slipped loose in the blur of the past ten or twelve years when Palmer had grown up and Will had grown…well, what? Busy. Distracted. Perhaps even a little obsessed. He had, face it, conceded Palmer to all of them -- partly because he was too busy and distracted and obsessed and partly because he just didn’t know what to do with Palmer, how to find some common ground. He just didn’t know how to be a father. Maybe it was because his own father hadn’t really been much of a father. No role model there. But that was no excuse. He had blown it. He had let other things get in the way of fatherhood.

  Will had imagined a time somewhere in the depths of the summer, probably when neither really expected it, when they would have a quiet man-to-man talk, get a lot of things out in the open, say what needed to be said on both sides. They would be doing something mundane, maybe changing the oil on the mowers, and something offhand would be said by one or the other and that would start it.

  There would be, of course, the undercurrent of the magnificent thing Will had done on his son’s behalf. Noble Will, throwing himself in front of the speeding bullet, giving up all. Palmer would be riven with remorse and gratitude. He would welcome that opening, that moment in which they could reconcile all.

  Instead, they had had a vicious shouting match in the parking lot of McDonalds and they had both said some nasty things and it had blown sky-high. And Palmer had said, “We’re even.”

  Would he have told? Having once made the decision to help Palmer cover his ass, having told him to lie like a dog, of course he wouldn’t have told. Well, Palmer was smart and clever and could figure out all that and had called his hand. So, it was over, and just a big fine mess in the process. Will Baggett had lost the two people he should have clung to most fiercely. His wife wanted a divorce and his son said they were even. So now he felt utterly alone, as alone as he had been when they brought the news to Baggett House that his parents were gone for good.

  He hadn’t thought much about losing his parents for a long, long time. For years, he had made a habit of not doing so. Nothing to be gained by dwelling on that. Go on and make a life. Be somebody. Get off probation. But now the old bleak aloneness, the feeling of being on the outside of things, came back -- and with it, a parade of the other lost pieces of his life. It hadn’t been a perfect life, but it had been pretty damn good. And now all he had left was a trailer full of lawnmowers.

  *****

  And thus it was that the knock on his door at five o’clock on Tuesday morning surprised him. A man as alone as he did not expect company.

  But what utterly astonished him was to open the door and find Palmer standing there. Palmer didn’t say anything. He wrinkled his nose and pulled at his earlobe, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have the look of a person who was bringing bad news, but he did look like he hadn’t had much sleep.

  “I’ll make coffee,” Will said.

  “Mom said I was acting like an ungrateful little shit,” Palmer said.

  “She used that word?”

  “Yeah.”

  Palmer sipped his coffee. He sat deep in the chair by the window. Will had pulled over a chair from the kitchen table. He waited. He was very still, very careful not to say or do anything that might disturb the delicate thing that hung between them just now.

  “I told her what happened,” Palmer said. “All of it.” He paused, choosing words. “I didn’t intend to. But we got in an argument. I’m not sure how it came out, but once it started, I couldn’t stop.”

  “All of it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what…how did your mother react?”

  “She started crying.”

  “Oh.”

  “And then she was pissed.”

  “Who is she pissed at, Palmer?”

  “Both of us.”

  Palmer finished his coffee and Will got up and fixed them another cup. Black for him, cream and sugar for Palmer.

  “Did your mother elaborate on why she’s pissed at both of us?”

  “She said we’ve both made an incredible mess of things.”

  “Well,” Will admitted, “I suppose that’s the gospel truth.”

  Palmer made a face. “Me, especially.”

  Will couldn’t help but smile. “I think we’re running about neck and neck on that score.”

  “Except that my mess can be fixed. Yours can’t.”

  “Well,” Will spread his hands, “there’s fixing and then there’s fixing. I can’t put everything back like it used to be, but I’m trying to cobble something together here.”

  Palmer put down his coffee cup, got up and walked to the window. He leaned on the sill and looked out into the early morning darkness. There was nothing to see, not right now. And not much to hear except for the faint rustle of traffic a few blocks away on Wade Avenue. The early risers

  “I’m sorry,” Will said softly.

  Palmer turned back from the window and looked at him for a moment. He nodded. “Me too.”

  “You’re right about one thing. We’re even.”

  “Well, that’s
what I said to Mom, and she said it’s better for a relationship when you owe each other something. That way, you keep trying.”

  He sat for a moment, letting the words tumble around in his head. Well, maybe that’s what happened with Clarice and me, at least some of it. We broke even and there wasn’t anything left to try for. No sense of obligation. And without an obligation…

  “So,” Palmer went on, “she said we ought to figure out something we owe each other.”

  “How do you want to go about that?” Will asked.

  Palmer shrugged. “I guess we should spend some time together.”

  “When?”

  “I’ve got a few weeks this summer. How about you?”

  “Well, I have to make a living.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking, too.”

  Will shook his head. “Palmer, I don’t want you to do this if it’s, like, a threat. Coercion. Not on my part or your Mom’s. I hope she didn’t lead you to believe…”

  “That she’s gonna spill the beans about my mess?” Palmer smiled. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Will tried to picture Sidney and Consuela Palmer having an accident in their pants. No, Clarice wouldn’t do that. What she might do, though -- in Will’s case, not her parents’ -- that was something else. She had fought for Will Baggett once a long time ago. In a way, she had done that again just now with Palmer. Maybe it was a stretch to think of it that way, but Will would settle for a stretch. There might be something beyond all this as far as Clarice was concerned. Or maybe not. That, too was a very delicate thing.

  “What do you think we ought to owe each other?” Will asked.

  “Well, we could start with breakfast.”

  “McDonald’s?”

  “No,” Palmer said, “I don’t want to go back to McDonald’s.”

  *****

  They ate at a Waffle House, and after breakfast they left Palmer’s BMW on the curb at the house on LeGrand. Clarice’s car was still in the driveway, and Will took a close look at the house to see if she might be peering out the window, but he got no glimpse of her.

  They took the pickup to Morris’s, where they hitched up the trailer-full of equipment. Morris, unlike Clarice, was very much in evidence. He emerged in jogging suit and bedroom slippers, hair still wet from his shower. “Will,” he said, “this can’t go on. The neighbors are complaining. It violates the restrictive covenants.”

  “Against what?” Will asked as he and Palmer swung the trailer around to the hitch on the truck.

  “Commercial vehicles.”

  Will straightened. “That sounds awfully picky,” he said. “What if you owned a plumbing company and had a truck with ‘deLesseps Plumbing’ on the side?”

  “I couldn’t park it in my driveway,” Morris said firmly. “Plumbers don’t live in this neighborhood, or at least if they do, they don’t bring their trucks home.”

  “It is an upscale place,” Will agreed.

  “And you can’t leave your,” a wave of his hand, “stuff here any more.”

  “Then you don’t get free lawn care,” Will said.

  Morris’s voice rose a little. “I never asked for free lawn care. I told you, I’ve already got a lawn care service. They do perfectly good work.”

  Will considered. “On second thought, I think we will give you free lawn care because you are a splendid fellow and a long-time friend and confidant. We’ll mow your grass right now and we’ll return on a weekly basis, taking care to park our,” a wave of his hand, “stuff on the street and be here and gone in the wink of an eye.”

  Morris flapped his arms in frustration and retreated to the house. Will turned back to his work.

  Palmer was watching him. “He’s a little stuffy, isn’t he?”

  “Let’s get busy,” Will said. “We’re lowering property values.”

  They were pulling away from Morris’s house when Will said, “There’s just one problem here. We don’t have any more customers.”

  Palmer said, “Drive by Mom’s office.”

  “Oh no,” Will said. “The last time I was over there, I came pretty close to getting myself arrested.”

  “This time, you stay in the truck. Mom’s got something for us.”

  He parked across the street in front of the Kinko’s, taking up several spaces in the lot of the strip shopping center and getting some dirty looks from the people in a florist shop. Palmer was back in five minutes with a computer printout. “Names and addresses of everybody who’s bought residential property in Wake County in the past month,” Palmer said. “Mom figures that at least some of ’em need a lawn service.”

  Will started to say something, but Palmer shook his head. “Don’t read too much into this, Dad.”

  “I’ll try not to,” Will said.

  There was also a solid lead, a nursing home owned by a woman whose cousin was another agent at Snively and Ellis. It was set well back off the street on a wide expanse of lawn with more grass along both sides and a paved parking lot in back. The owner told them she had fired her lawn service the week before because one of their mowers leaked oil on the front sidewalk. “I’m picky about the way this place looks,” she said. “If the sidewalk is a mess, people wonder if the inside is too. You aren’t going to put your Aunt Sally in a place where you think she might get bed sores.”

  “Our mowers don’t leak,” Will said. “They’re brand new.”

  “How much?” the owner asked, gazing out across the lawn.

  “Two-fifty a month,” Palmer spoke up before Will could answer. “Twelve-month contract. Guaranteed, no leaks.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a little steep?” Will asked when she had gone back inside and they were unloading mowers from the trailer.

  “Hey,” Palmer said, “I’m gonna be a doctor. Think of this job as elective surgery, like a face lift or a tummy tuck. Charge what the market will bear. The little old ladies? That’s Medicare work.”

  It took them a couple of hours to finish the nursing home and then they started knocking on doors in a subdivision out past the Beltline off Six Forks Road. There were several addresses on the list that Clarice had given Palmer, and of the people they found at home, two of them said yes, they did indeed need a lawn service. They stopped at several other homes where the grass was long and ragged, and lined up one of them, too. By the shank of the afternoon, Captain Saturday’s Lawn Service had seven customers and had barely scratched the surface of Clarice’s list.

  “Do you think we should split up?” Palmer asked as they sat in the pickup beside a convenience store, drinking sodas and eating snack crackers. It had been a good day, Will thought. They were slow, feeling their way with the machinery and each other. They took turns running the big mower. All of the equipment worked fine. The weather was warm, but not hot. They had gotten along. They were tiptoeing around each other, being excessively polite. But it was a start.

  “What do you mean, split up?”

  “One of us mow grass, the other look for customers.”

  “We could do that. Which would you want to do?”

  “You’re better with the equipment,” Palmer said. “And since you’re incognito, your former notoriety isn’t doing you any good.”

  They watched as a van from a Day Care Center pulled up to the gasoline pumps in front of the store. It was packed with kids and it rocked slightly from side to side as the kids inside bounced and tusseled. The driver, a plump woman with close-cropped hair, looked weary and harried as she climbed out and began pumping gas. She ignored the kids -- probably, Will thought, happy to get away from them for even a few minutes. She had the same kind of look as the women who used to bring packs of Cub Scouts to tour Channel Seven.

  Palmer was watching the van too. “I wonder what that woman would think if I pulled her over here and introduced her to you. She wouldn’t believe it. The TV guy. Mowing lawns.”

  “The doctor-in-waiting, trimming shrubbery.”

  “It’s not the same,” Palmer said.
“Lots of people do something like this -- mow lawns, drive a truck, camp counselor -- before they go on to something bigger. One guy in my med school class spent two years in the Army. He carried a rifle. Went to Kosovo. He says somebody took a shot at him one time. All the time he was studying for the M-CAT, getting ready to go to med school. Some day he’ll be a doctor and he’ll look back and say, ‘I was in the Army and I went to Kosovo and got shot at.’ But you…”

  “One day I’ll look back and say I used to be a TV guy.”

  “Yeah. You’ve got it reversed.”

  “Well, circumstance…”

  “I used to get really pissed at you,” Palmer said flatly.

  “Are you still pissed, Palmer?”

  Palmer thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, some. But I’m trying to get over it. It doesn’t do any good to stay pissed.”

  “I wasn’t there when you were growing up.”

  “Well, you were…but…”

  “I was gone a lot, especially at night. And I was wrapped up in my own thing.”

  “Being the TV guy.”

  “Yes.

  “And it wasn’t just the TV thing,” Palmer said, “it was the goody-ass thing.”

  “Goody-ass?”

  “Always worrying about what other people would think. Protecting your image. Raleigh’s most popular TV weatherman. Did you ever get really tired of that?”

  “I always figured it was just part of the job. Went with the territory.”

  “Don’t shit me, Dad. You really got off on it, didn’t you.”

  All right, let’s be honest here. “Yeah,” Will said. “I really did.”

  “Will Baggett, TV guy.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “There’s a billboard over near Chapel Hill that still had your picture on it last week,” Palmer said. “You and those other people on Channel Seven. Four of you, lined up like crows on a wire.”

  “Smiling.”

  “Of course. But they papered over it a couple of days ago.”

  “The new Channel Seven anchor team.”

  “No, Pepsi.”

  They both laughed. It felt strange to Will to laugh with his son, and he could tell that Palmer felt the same. But they laughed anyway. It was okay.