David Gates - Jernigan

“You’re saying they stay here.”

“Yep,” I said. She could be testy, I could be testy. “Ah, listen, screw it. Let the tools go too. I’m just going to take a couple of screwdrivers and wrenches and shit. Got a table saw here, bench grinder, the router I bought new, what else, good bench vise.…”

Now she was looking worried.

“If you really have no use for them,” she said, “you’d be better advised to sell them privately. They’re not really going to add to the value of the home. Generally buyers who want these things tend to already have them.”

I saw what she was saying, though literally it made no sense: you can’t want what you actually have , right? I mean, look at the old usage: Thou art weighed in the balances, and found wanting .

“I see what you’re saying,” I said. “But they sort of go with the house, you know? Whoever buys the house can do what they want with them. Same with the lawnmower, all the shit in the garage, string trimmer, whatever’s out there. They’re buying the whole life, okay?”

“Well—”

“Dishes,” I said. “Dishes, silverware. All the”—the expression escaped me—“the linen. Household linen. Right? The Mr. Clean under the fucking sink.” I had said fucking. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You have to excuse me.”

Silence.

“I understand this can be upsetting for people,” she said. Finally. “Then, I take it, the kitchen appliances as well?”

“Poof,” I said. “Gone. Like a cool breeze.”

“I don’t think I need to trouble you any further,” she said. “If you’ll come by the office this afternoon, we can get things moving for you right away. You’ll be seeing our Mr. Pagliarulo.”

Oh, she did it smoothly, all right, but I’ll bet you one thing: the first old Pagliarulo heard about it was later on, when she got back to the office and said she’d owe him one if he’d take this asshole off her hands.

“Pagliarulo like the baseball player?” I said.

“I don’t follow baseball,” she said.

After seeing her to her car, I went back in and found the fat kid slipping his bass into a bass-shaped black vinyl bag, and the platinum-haired kid lifting a cymbal off a threaded rod. Danny and Clarissa were on the sofa, arms around each other’s waists, the picture of persecuted young love.

“You two,” I said, and nodded toward the kitchen. They looked at each other, got up and went in. I pulled out a chair for Clarissa. She sat. I gestured at another for Danny. He sat. I leaned against the refrigerator.

“So,” I said.

They said nothing. Clarissa stared at the tabletop, her leg going.

“What am I supposed to say?” I said. “You know you should be in school.”

Nothing. Crafty little bastards: if they could keep me talking, eventually I was bound to say something for which they had an answer. Well fuck that. All I had to do was keep the silence going, and one of them would sooner or later blurt out something for which I had an answer. I looked up at the clock high above the sink. It had been there when we bought the place, and I’d always hated the beige oblong son of a bitch. Beige: the oblong of colors. Oblong: the beige of shapes. The second hand was now on the two. Now a hair after. Then I looked at the kids, who were looking at the roosters on the wallpaper. On one of the days when Judith’s sense of camp was at its most manic, she’d gone to half a dozen places before she found wallpaper with roosters. You could hear the other kids packing up out in the living room. Sizzle of a cymbal, rrrip of a zipper.

After what seemed a long time I peeked again at the clock. Second hand was on the nine. They seemed willing to sit there for as long as I pleased. Probably because they didn’t have much in the way of inner lives. Or maybe they had exceptionally absorbing ones. Or they could have been stoned. The second hand passed the twelve.

“The hell with it,” I said. “You guys want to flunk out of school, it’s your lookout, okay? I’m officially out of the cop business as of right now.” I stood up straight, a free man. “Ta ta,” I said.

“Does that mean it’s okay if we stay here?” said Danny.

“Nice try,” I said, “but I won’t play. If you want to be told what’s okay, go find a guru or something. I am weary of the job.” I touched a farewell hand to my head and extended it palm up, Jimmy Durante saying Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are , and headed for the door. “See you when I see you,” I said.

“Hey Dustin?” Danny called. “It’s o-kay , we don’t have to split. Mitchell?”

2

The next morning I filled out papers with their Mr. Pagliarulo—“Jim!” he cried (meaning himself), and shot out his hand — and by the following afternoon he had an offer of one thirty-five. “I’m obliged to bring this to you,” he said on the phone. “But crash or no crash, I can virtually guarantee it’s going to be no problem you getting at least your one sixty. Not out of these people necessarily. But sooner rather than later.”

“You mean people have actually heard about that?” I said. I couldn’t believe this. “And it freaks them out about buying the house?”

“What do you mean have people heard about it? What else is even on the news?”

Now I understood that it must be the stock market crash he was talking about.

“Fact is,” he said, “nobody really knows how it’s all going to shake down. My personal opinion, I don’t think it’s going to hurt real estate one iota. Interest rates look like they’re going to stay low, and people who didn’t totally get wiped are still going to need a place to live.”

Three weeks later Jim Pagliarulo called to say the couple who had offered the one thirty-five had come back at one thirty-seven five.

“Do it,” I said.

“I think you might be well advised,” he said.

I pawed around under the sink and came out with an unopened jar of Tim’s moonshine. Any excuse to celebrate, right? It was about two in the afternoon; Martha was out making a dumpster run, kids still at school supposedly. I poured a couple of inches into a jelly glass, topped off the jar with tapwater so Martha would be none the wiser, screwed the lid back on as tight as it would go, and put the jar back where I’d found it. I tried to compose a joke: You’re not losing twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars, you’re gaining whatever. But I couldn’t think what I was gaining. Around three, Danny and Clarissa burst in, singing. “The way you make-a me feel,” sang Danny. “You knock me offa my feet,” she answered, in some other key. If it was a key. Then they saw me in the Morris chair, and that shut them up fast enough.

“Just be a sec,” she said to Danny, and headed off to the bathroom.

Danny said “Hiya Dad” and went upstairs. Came back down with his guitar case. He stood looking out the window, as if he gave any more of a shit than I did about what was out a window. It was another astonishing fall day for those in the mood to be astonished by fall days. Sky such a pure blue that it bothered me. Because here I was, sulking and spurning yet another gift from the Creator.

“I’m going to give you forty thousand dollars,” I announced.

“Yeah, what’s the catch?” said Danny, still looking out.

“No catch,” I said. “Somebody bought the house today. And I’m setting aside forty thousand dollars off the top for your college. Probably put it in CDs. But it’s going to be in your name.” This made him turn around, at least, though probably because he thought I was talking about forty thousand dollars’ worth of compact discs. “Now ten thousand a year,” I said, “is not going to buy you a hell of a lot anymore, but it’ll buy you something . Basically what it will buy you is enough of a degree someplace so you won’t have to work in a factory. Provided your grades are decent enough so you can get in somewhere, and then provided you work hard enough so you don’t flunk out.”