The Hardy Buccaneer

Some brothers are the stuff of legends.

The Weems Boys on the grounds of the Arkansas State Capital, circa 1967. From left to right: Marlon, Wyatt, Orson, and Christopher. Photo courtesy of the Weems family.

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Every family has their stories, tales passed down over generations. These accounts are shared from one family griot to another, each with its heroes and villains. Over time and with each telling, the characters in these stories become larger than life. Sometimes, legends are born.

In my family, Wyatt Weems is one such legend. 

When I was in grade school, an older boy approached me on the playground. Once we were face to face, he informed me of his plan to “get me after school.” In schoolyard parlance, this statement was the equivalent of the gloved slap that precedes a dual, the throwing down of a gauntlet.

Earlier that day, I'd insulted his younger sister, which left him little choice but to issue a challenge to defend his sibling’s honor. 

I have no recollection of what I said to the boy’s sister to earn his challenge, but in truth fourth grade, I’d already developed a reputation as a kid with a smart mouth.

What was less well-known was that this skill was a defense mechanism. I was the wheezy, four-eyed kid found in every grade-school classroom. The proverbial wimpy kid. In other words, I was a prime target for bullying. 

So like the species of fish that puffs itself up to frighten away predators, I learned to inflate myself, if only temporarily. When under threat, I puffed up, subjecting would-be schoolyard bullies to a verbal barrage of ridicule and embarrassment.

Having never been in a serious fight, I was terrified. When the 3:15 bell rang, marking the end of class, I rushed to meet Wyatt, then in the first grade. Hoping for a quick getaway, I beat it to our usual spot on the school’s playground.

My escape plan did not work.

As Wyatt and I ran down the concrete stairs behind the school playground, six or seven boys waited for us at the crosswalk below. I braced for the inevitable scuffle. As the crew of boys closed in, I felt Wyatt nudge me.

A last-minute attempt to strategize, I thought.

“I’ll hold your books for you,” Wyatt said, to my disappointment. Having calculated the odds, he’d determined there was no upside in joining me in what was sure to be a beat-down. 

As I toppled to the pavement in what turned out to be a single-punch fight, I remember seeing my little brother from the corner of my eye. He was watching from the school's concrete stairs, my books in his lap.

The story of the schoolyard fight and the brother who didn’t join in was the birth of The Legend of Wyatt Weems. Although the story is mine, Wyatt stole the show, becoming its star.

Wyatt Weems is the star of so many of our family’s stories. Like the story of my mother’s heart attack. Of course, she never had an actual heart attack. Wyatt just told people she did.

At school one day, he ripped the seat of his new pair of pants. Rather than deal with the embarrassment of his exposed rear end, he developed an alternate plan. Rushing to the principal’s office, he informed the authorities of his mother’s sudden cardiac episode, begging to attend to his stricken parent. 

It’s might wonder how a plan this illogical could succeed. There were no cellphones in the mid-1960s, so how could Wyatt know of his mother’s alleged heart attack? If such an event occurred, wouldn’t the school’s office be the first to know? These are reasonable questions, but they do not account for Wyatt’s singular persuasiveness.

As the story goes, upon hearing of the heart attack, a panicked school secretary instructed my brother to rush home to deal with our mother’s medical emergency. 

I first heard of my mother’s heart attack after school that day when Wyatt failed to show up at our meeting place on the playground. As I stood waiting, several classmates approached me, shouting, “Why ain’t you at home? Your Mama just had a heart attack!”

All I remember is running and running. I had to make it home fast as possible. By the time I arrived home, I was on the verge of an asthma attack. To my horror, my mother was in our yard, raking leaves. She greeted me with a smile.

Although I could barely speak, I shouted, “Mama, shouldn’t you be laying down? You just had a heart attack!” As she stared at me like I was out of my mind, I noticed Wyatt Weems standing behind her. He’d changed into a new pair of pants. 

Like any family legend, stories of Wyatt’s exploits abound. There’s the one about his homemade boobytrap that nearly sent him to the hospital. The time he secretly tried out for the basketball team in junior high, even though doctors said he could never play sports.

Only in family legends could the boy with one leg slightly shorter than the other be good enough to play first string. 

From the beginning, Wyatt and I were roommates. One of my earliest memories is of a baby boy in a yellow jumper, tumbling over the edge of the crib at the foot of my bed, crawling, then snuggling up next to me.

I remember the little bedroom on Little Rock’s Marshall Street, a bigger room with a faux fireplace in Pine Bluff, and the duplex we shared across from Brenda’s Bigger Burger at the University of Arkansas. It was always us two.

In college, we were so inseparable that my Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity brothers often greeted Wyatt with the fraternity’s secret handshake, although he was never an official member.

While I’m sure he’d deciphered our greeting, Wyatt always politely refused to accept their proffered hand. 

All too soon, we went down our separate paths as brothers do, marrying and starting families of our own. Then as luck would have it, Wyatt and I landed jobs at the same investment firm.

For years we worked on an enormous trading floor, separately yet in tandem, two young Black men in a sea of whiteness. Occasionally our eyes met from across the trading room, and we’d smile at each other simultaneously, in awe of our good fortune. 

Wyatt Weems was larger than life. He was the only person I ever saw watch Australian Rules Football, a NASCAR race, and a rodeo, all at the same time. He was the boy who knew the name of every sports team, the college kid who always won at dominoes and spades, the man who entered a room of strangers and departed as everyone’s newest friend.

As children, my brothers and I jokingly referred to him as “The Hardy Buccaneer.” I don’t know how he earned the nickname, but it rang true. Perhaps it was his zest for life. He lived life in a hurry. It was as though he knew his time was short.

Even after I left Arkansas for New York City, we spoke every day. We consulted each other on the markets, told dirty jokes, and sought relationship advice. 

The last time he visited me in New York City, Wyatt was a shadow of the man I knew. As we shared stories over Mediterranean food that afternoon, I could not know it would be our last meal together.

When I invited him to visit my wife and two young children that night and he asked for a rain check, it never occurred to me the visit would never happen. I never imagined that he would never meet my two youngest children . 

When I traveled to Arkansas a few months later, Wyatt was on his deathbed. Not long after, my brother, my roommate, my partner in crime—my best friend—was gone. It was so unfair. I was the oldest, the sickly one, the asthmatic kid.

I should have gone first. 

It has been more than ten years since his passing, but Wyatt Weems is an unfaded memory, a beloved ancestor. His is a loss marked, not with sadness, but with the bittersweet ache of joyful, bygone times, moments never to be repeated. 

He is the star of our family’s mythology, the hero of the stories I tell my children.

And as is the case with legends, my children will pass on the tale of the boy who would not fight, of the mischievous child who lied about his mother’s heart attack.

They’ll retell the story of the Hearty Buccaneer, the boy with a limp who made the basketball team against all odds. 

As for me, I am sure I’ll see Wyatt Weems again. When I reach my destination, I’ll wait for him at our favorite meeting spot. The one on the playground of our elementary school, just as I did so long ago.