Jernigan by David Gates Read Free Book Online Page A

out there and get him in for you.” I shook my head no. This much, these few more minutes, I was damn well going to let him have, no matter how much he might make me pay later for having let him have it.
4
    I woke up in my chair. On the screen, that commercial was going where the dogs’ jaws flap open and they sing, “Lies! Lies!” The idea being that their owners can’t bullshit them into eating inferior dogfood. A song Danny will always know as a dogfood commercial, just as I’ll always know that waltz tune—whatever the hell it actually is—as Think of Rheingold Whenever Y’Buy Beer. I had my usual thoughts about everything being debased.
    What had awakened me, apparently, was the kitchen door slamming—was the ballgame over?—because in came Danny, who gave me a pitying look right out of his mother’s repertoire. “You fall asleep again?” he said.
    I picked up the remote control and hit MUTE just in time to avoid hearing the strongman bellow, “I’m not gonna pay a lot for this muffler!”
    “Maybe you work too hard,” Danny said, without a lot of conviction. There I was, stubble-faced, shoes off, stinking t-shirt, and beer bottles all over the floor. Which really gave an unfair impression, although there it all was. On the screen, something that looked like a Fourth of July sparkler was welding a muffler in place, and I could hear the God damn Meineke Muffler March in my head even with the sound off.
    “You been out?” I said, still looking at the screen so as not to miss the thing where they show the Meineke logo with the pronunciation: Mine-a-key.
    “Just over Clarissa’s,” he said. This was the girlfriend. A depressed little dyed-platinum blonde who only came up to about here on him; you saw her in black jeans a lot, and a denim jacket with Grateful Dead patches. I didn’t know if that still meant you were an acid head or what the hell it meant anymore. I remember seeing a thing in the paper not too long ago about some asshole who made his living tie-dyeingGrateful Dead t-shirts; he said the skull meant we were all the same under the skin. I couldn’t imagine whether or not I would have understood that when I was fourteen, or whatever the hell this Clarissa was. Assuming it made any sense to begin with. At any rate, she was obviously a piss-poor influence on Danny’s schoolwork and general attitude. So what could you do. I wondered sometimes if they talked together, and if so what about. In addition to the obvious things to wonder. She was pretty, this Clarissa, in a brutalized kind of way.
    “Hey Dad?” said Danny. “Wake up, okay?”
    “Sorry,” I said.
    “Listen,” he said, “do you want to come over?”
    “Come over,” I said. When I repeat something that way, it means What do you mean?
    “Clarissa’s house. Her mom said you could. She’s real nice and everything. She’s having this party in the backyard.” Backyard party on the Fourth of July, and even that didn’t seem to be reminding him. Well, hey, fine, more power to him.
    “Kind of party?” I said. “Kids, grownups?”
    Danny shrugged. “Whoever wants to,” he said. “It’s not any big deal or anything.”
    “Sounds like it’s about my speed,” I said. “She told you to invite me?” This sounded like a pretty casual way of doing things for someone who was an adult and a parent, sending a message through the kid. We were in the phone book, for Christ’s sake. I mean, I was in the phone book. No: come to think of it, we were still in the phone book. One of a bunch of things I hadn’t had the heart, if that’s the word, to see about.
    “Sort of,” he said. You could see him thinking. “It was like, Clarissa and I asked if you could come and she said sure.”
    “Very gracious,” I said.
    “Come on , Dad,” he said. “You’re not doing anything.”
    “Out of the mouths of babes,” I said. “Yeah. Well. Why not. I suppose it’s time I met this alleged woman.” Not to be outdone in