David Gates - Jernigan

On the other hand, wasn’t a pint going to leave me just a smidgen short of where I wanted to be?

And then I remembered there was still a bottle of gin — and not some God damn crappy little fifth, either, but a whole big sturdy welcoming quart! — in the kitchen cabinet at Heritage Circle. At least half full, if the kids hadn’t gotten into it. Which wasn’t likely: I’d put it on the top shelf, behind a cylinder of Quaker Oats. Well all right .

Every light in the house was on, and the sagging Cadillac was back in the driveway. God damn shitheap parked there meant I had to walk an extra carlength in the cold. Well, I’d live. At least Danny wasn’t just sitting in his room with guitar and Rockman, looping music back into his own head. I opened the car door to the expected shot of cold air but didn’t hear the expected din. Taking a break? To do what? The screen door onto the breezeway was unlocked, kitchen door too. I stuck my head inside and yelled “Hello anybody home?” to give fair warning, then walked into where it was warm. And in strolled the fat kid, in stocking feet.

“So,” I said. “How’s it going tonight?”

“Pretty reasonably,” he said. “I don’t believe we were actually introduced.” He stuck out a hand. “Dustin Sanders?”

“Pete Jernigan,” I said, giving the man’s handshake. God knows why Pete: I never went by Pete. Powerful Pete. Some compulsion to be hearty. By which I guess I mean not oppressively parental. “Gang all here?” I said.

“Nah,” he said. “I think Danny’s probably still over at Mitchell’s. And I dropped Clarissa off at her place.”

“You’re the only one here, in other words?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t know, we played for about half an hour, and it completely sounded like crap. So we just sort of got depressed and bagged it. I guess we should’ve tried to work through it or something. Did you use to be in a band, Mr. Jernigan?”

“Did I use to be in a band,” I said. “No. No, of the many things I used to be—” Then I decided why give the kid shit. “So now what happened to Danny again?”

“Well, I think he’s still at Mitchell’s.”

“Mitchell being?” I said.

“Kid who plays the drums? We went over to check out his new CD player.”

“But you came back here,” I said.

“I hate CDs,” he said. “It’s like you can’t get away from it. And my dad thinks it’s cold compared to vinyl. Of course he’s into pretty much strictly classical. So anyhow, I decided I’d just go get some videos to watch.”

“But what are you doing here?” I said. “I mean, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“You mean Danny didn’t say anything? Jeez, what a space cadet.” He bethought himself. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean he was really spacey or anything. So this must seem pretty weird to you, if he didn’t say anything. See, he told me I could stay here for a couple days. I hope that was okay.”

“What about your—” I was going to say parents plural, but these days. “Don’t you have another place to go?” I said, meaning to be delicate. Instead it sounded inhospitable, I heard it as soon as it came out.

He laughed. “I’m not a homeless person or anything,” he said. “It’s just a thing where—” He shrugged. “Parents and kids, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” I said. I did know.

“It was like it was going to go critical around there,” he said. “Like when you get too many neutrons bouncing around and then, balooey.” He slowly spread cupped hands as if to show an expanding fireball.

“Do people know where you are?”

He thought, then said, “They know I’m okay.”

“You won’t mind if I call them,” I said. Not a question.

He took a pack of Camels out of the pocket of his white shirt. “Four three seven, seven seven three four,” he said. “Same forwards and backwards. I’ll write it down for you if you want. Or you can just look up under Martin Sanders.” He tapped the end of the pack against a forefinger and the ends of three cigarettes appeared, each a different length, like the pipes of an organ. It made me want one. After, what, more than a year? “If you could try to not give him the address here,” he said, “that would be good. But I guess if he asks you, you have to say, right? Is it okay to smoke in your house, by the way? I could go outside if you’d rather.”

“It’s just barely my house anymore, anyway,” I said. If he didn’t know the place was sold, he must have wondered what the hell that meant. “Enjoy. Wish it was me.”

He lit a cigarette and looked around for where to put the spent match. He chose an empty can of Betty Crocker chocolate frosting on the counter. He’d laid in provisions, apparently.

“You’re a quit smoker?” he said. “That’s excellent. After tonight I’m not going to smoke anymore. Or eat junk.”

“So you’re having a last fling, huh?”

“A fling,” he said. “Yeah, I guess. Were you going anyplace? Or can you stay and talk for a minute?”

“Sure,” I said. “My time is your time. Go in where we can sit?”

I followed him into the living room. A VCR now sat on top of the television; on top of the VCR, three yellow plastic bags. I could make out BED in gothic type on the top one. I thought bedlam , and how that was actually a corruption of Bethlehem. Cheap Christian irony. “You have made yourself at home,” I said.

“What, that?” he said, nodding at the VCR. “Don’t worry, it’s mine from my room. All I really took was one of my dad’s porno tapes that he’s got hidden in the basement, and he’d be way too embarrassed to bust my horns on that.” He sat down in my recliner, facing the tv. I took a corner of the sofa. “I’m actually glad you came by,” he said. “I’m kind of worried about Danny.”

I looked at him.

“It’s kind of hard to say this,” he said. “Like have you noticed that he seems kind of down or something?”

“Like how?” I said. As a matter of fact, Danny had seemed as usual to me. But to say that was to reveal you’d been failing as a father.

“Well, like has he been saying stuff about death to you?”

“Not to me, no.” I mean he hadn’t, had he? “What has he been saying?”

“You’re not going to tell Danny I told you this, right?”

“Dustin,” I said.

“Okay, you know when those two kids killed themselves? The ones on the news, with the car in the garage?” Teen suicide pact, next town over. I remembered. Back in the summer. “When that happened he was saying stuff like that they were better off. And, you know, like that it was peaceful and they were with God and everything.” This didn’t sound like Danny. “But what’s weird to me is, he’s still talking about it.”

“And saying what?”

“I don’t know, a lot of stuff.”

“Like what , Dustin? Has he said something about killing himself?”

“Well, not as such,” he said. “But we had this thing at school, after it happened? Where they come in and talk about it and tell you things to look for. Like if a kid starts giving away all his stuff.”

I might give a lot of my stuff away. Like to poor kids or something .

“Has Danny been giving stuff away?” I said.

“Not as such,” he said. “But he said if anything happened to him he wanted me to have his guitar. And they also tell you that if a kid’s even talking about it that it might be a cry for help.”

“Jesus,” I said. “What else should I know about, Dustin? What about drugs? How heavily is he into that?”