David Gates - Jernigan

“Danny,” I said. “Nobody has to live that way. I mean unless they live in fucking Beirut.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess what I mean is, things come with stuff attached, you know?”

I hadn’t thought Danny capable of discerning, let alone enunciating, a general truth. Even in so inchoate a form.

“That’s very linear of you,” I said. Oh, it didn’t matter: he never knew what the fuck I was talking about anyway. I mean, if he could sit still for fucking Megadeth, for Christ’s sake, he could sit still for me.

“Clarissa says he did this before a couple of times,” he said. “One time she like tried to stab him with a pair of scissors and everything. He was grabbing at her or something and she just — yah!” He came at me like Mother in Psycho , mouth wide open, eyes bugging, imaginary knife raised.

“And you think this man isn’t dangerous,” I said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Coming from Clarissa, it might not even be true.”

“Either way,” I said, “this is a freak show, and we are getting the hell out of it.”

“It’s okay most of the time, it really is,” he said. “It’s better than living in some trailer.”

“Well, fortunately or unfortunately,” I said, “it’s not your decision to make.”

“How come?” he said. “I thought we were having this big democracy.”

“To put it at the very crudest level,” I said, “you are a minor, and you will do what I say.”

“Dad,” he said. “Don’t push it. You can’t back it up.”

“You just try me, sonny,” I said. Knowing he was right.

We trudged another block, to absolutely no point. Danny stopped at the curb: obviously the place he’d told himself he was going to turn and make his stand. “Dad,” he said. “My feet are getting cold. I’m going back.”

“Mine too,” I said. They probably were. We turned back and walked into our footprints as they filled with snow. The farther we went, the fuller they got. Hey, I thought, just like life.

“What are you laughing for?” said Danny. Damned if he wasn’t right, too. Little joke must have really struck me funny.

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m overtired.”

“I guess you’re pretty smashed,” he said. Not disapprovingly: just a simple explanation for why his father might be walking along in the snow tittering away to himself.

“Look,” I said. “Got another thought. How would it be if I went up there first, checked it all out, got settled in there, check out the schools, so forth, whole place squared away and everything, and then you come up? ’Cause right now, not going to lie to you, probably sort of a mess up there. You know, it hasn’t been lived in or anything. Don’t you think that’s a much much better plan?”

“What is?”

“Danny. What I just said . I went up first, took care of some things

No answer.

“You know something,” I said, “for that matter you could probably finish out the school year, you know? And come up weekends.” Still nothing. “Mrs. Peretsky, I mean, whatever she thinks of me at this point, I’m sure she’d be glad to have you stay. You know, during the school week. And then on the weekends you could sort of come up and check it out. Sort of do it gradually.”

Nothing.

“That actually might be the way to work it,” I said.

We kept walking and the snow kept coming down. Really starting to pile up, boy, really making me wonder how good an idea this actually was, taking off in all this shit for New Hampshire. Though they did say on the news that the snow, the worst part of it, was only supposed to go as far up as Westchester and Rockland.

Danny said, “When would you go up there?”

“Actually,” I said, “I was thinking of driving up part way tonight. You know, I get too tired, just lay over someplace, do the rest in the morning. Or if the snow gets too bad.”

“You have a fight with Mrs. Peretsky or something?” he said.

“Or something,” I said. “Doesn’t affect you , really.”

He thought about that. Or about something.

“What does it take you?” he said. “To get up there.”

I shrugged. “Six hours?” I said. “Little more? Listen: what do you say? You want to come along? We’ll be a couple of old beatniks, you know? Play the radio loud all the way up. You pick out the stations for us.”

“You don’t have a radio,” he said.

“Hell with it, I got the Walkman,” I said. “You bring your tapes and the headphones from your Rockman. You got one of those little Y things we can plug ’em both in?”

“Dad.”

“Okay, so bag the Walkman. Bring your guitar along. The ole gittar. Or I mean we could always talk. Like sort of a last resort? You know, like the pioneers, man. In the old Conestoga wagon, you know? Like one of ’em would be reading the new, I don’t know, John Stuart Mill book or something. So they’d have this big talk about Utilitarianism.”

“Hey Dad? Maybe we should talk about this tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” I said. “What tomorrow? Today , am I right?” I scrunched down and pretended to be playing a guitar, jerking my head. “Wock and woll,” I said. He just looked. “Hell,” I said. “Thought you were supposed to be a free spirit.”

“Dad,” he said. “It’s snowing like a bastard, and it’s already like midnight. And you’re drunk and everything and I don’t even want to be up there, you know?”

We were back at the corner. You could just about make out our footprints coming up the hill from Martha’s house.

“Okay,” I said. “Fine. No problem. Get you home here, then we do whatever we end up doing.”

We walked down the hill. I was fanatical by now about keeping right in my old footprints — which I could distinguish from Danny’s because he had running shoes on — like a careful child coloring only within the lines. Danny just walked.

“You know,” I said as we passed the next-door neighbors, “I never even knew these people’s names. But they sure do have one ugly fucking house.” And all those Christmas lights didn’t help any.

“The Molloys,” said Danny.

“Jaysus,” I said, “there goes the neighborhood.”

No response. It occurred to me that Danny probably didn’t even know he was Irish. I sure as hell didn’t remember the subject ever coming up. Well, if he ever got curious, which I doubted, there was probably someplace you could look a thing like that up. Looking stuff up, whew. That was way back with John Stuart Mill and hang down your head Tom Dooley. All these things you didn’t think about anymore. Dooley: huh. Tom Dooley must have been Irish too.

Danny held the gate open for me. Snow was burying the lid of the garbage can, which was lying there on the ground because somebody hadn’t cared.

3

Being in this place, among all these drunks, hearing their family histories, always the same family history pretty much, it just makes you think, No escape for old Danny. I mean, not just me and Judith, but going way the hell back. My father. Judith’s father, who’d died the year before I met her. (Sixty-two years old, heart attack, heavy smoker, heavy drinker.) Judith’s grandfather , for Christ’s sake, her father’s father. (I forget anymore what the story was with her mother’s father.) I saw the grandfather once. We were on the way to Boston for Rick’s graduation — which the family had agreed just not to tell Gramp about — and stopped off at his bungalow in Westerly. An empty Four Roses bottle lay among empty Broadcast Corned Beef Hash cans in the grocery bag he used for garbage; another Four Roses bottle, half full, stood beside his recliner chair. He just sat there, not reclining, a tartan blanket over his knees. Unshaven, cheekbones sticking out to here, false teeth in a peanut butter jar on the end table. Watching a western on a snowy black-and-white tv. Said he was sorry the place stunk so bad: the government was putting something in the water to make him piss his pants. This is not a moral failing, I told myself, but an affliction.