Jernigan by David Gates Read Free Book Online

waist, his legs stillin the cab, his arms and head hanging down, fingers just touching his own bumper, as if he were diving.
    I ran into the house but Rick was already in there shouting into the telephone, and back outside a crowd had gathered around the car and the van. But nobody was getting too close. It looked like a scene out of an old Twilight Zone , neighbors on some little suburban street looking at the flying saucer whose arrival would soon reveal what fascists they all were. Pretty inappropriate thing to be thinking, but. The whole thing, in fact, looked as if it were in black and white. I should have gone and pushed through the crowd and done something. Later they told me it had been over instantly: no blame. Right. But at any rate, I walked around the end of the garage instead and back to the pool, now deserted. I climbed the steps up onto the deck, felt like I was going to black out, quick sat down on something, and when the shiny flecks stopped swimming in front of my eyes I looked down and saw her wet footprints fading.
    They questioned us at the kitchen table, a cop with a heavy gun in a heavy gunbelt sitting in my usual place, from which I had carved turkeys and asked blessings, rolling my eyes ceilingward so nobody missed the irony.
    “It was just a family party,” I said. Except Rick was actually the only family. “I mean family and friends.”
    “Must have been some family party,” the cop said. “Doing a little coke to celebrate the Fourth? We’ll be getting a lab report, but you could save time.”
    I shook my head. “It was just a normal thing,” I said.
    “This is a normal thing to you, your wife out driving the car without her clothes on?”
    Rick spoke up. “What are you saying?” he said. “You’re talking to him like this was his fault. I’m her brother, you know? We all thought she was all right, and she was all right and everybody was just having a good time and it was normal like he said.”
    “And you’re her brother?” said the cop. Looking at Rick’s too-trim body and too-neat mustache.
    At least Danny hadn’t been home. He’d gone off with his friend Warren Robinson and Warren’s family for a picnic at the lake. I sayat least, though in fact it might have been better for him to have been there and seen it happen and know for sure that there was nothing anybody could have done. Although on the other hand, if he’d seen it he’d have those pictures in his head. The hair, the arm. Not that he doesn’t probably have pictures in his head anyway. But at least they’re probably not accurate. Oh, at least at least at least.
    I called the Robinsons’ house but of course got only the machine. So the thing to do was to drive out to the lake and try to find them, if that was the thing to do.
    “Michael,” I said to Uncle Fred. “What am I going to do about Danny? Should I go out to the lake right now and go looking all over hell for him and break up the Robinsons’ picnic? You know, there’s like a million picnic areas. Plus the Robinsons are going to shit. I sort of feel there’s nothing anybody can do anyway, so why not let ’em, you know, have their day?”
    “Fuck the Robinsons and their fucking day , man,” he said. “Whoever the fucking Robinsons are. You let Danny fuck around all afternoon at some picnic and he will never forgive you, man, I’ll guarantee.”
    So we left Penny at the house to answer the phone and Uncle Fred drove me out there. We pulled into pine grove after pine grove, kicking up dust. Eventually we found Henry and Suzanne Robinson (Suzette?) sitting across from each other at a picnic table, drinking Battles & Jaymes wine coolers. Thank you for your support. Henry Robinson spotted me coming his way and put down his bottle.
    Danny and Warren Robinson and Warren’s sister, whatever her name was, were in swimming. Henry Robinson pointed to a cluster of yelling heads and splashing arms. “I got my trunks on under these,” he said. “I’ll go