Jernigan by David Gates Page A

on the edge of the bed, in shirt and trousers, pulling a sock over my right foot. Martha was lying face-down, cheek against my left thigh, pulling down the sock I’d just put on my left foot. I wasn’t complaining, true, but this wasn’t the time for her to be proving she was still seductive. I was alreadygoing to miss the 7:48, and I’d be lucky to get the 8:04. Although I was probably misreading simple playfulness.
    She caressed my bare left foot with both hands, burrowed her head into my clothed crotch and kissed, rolled over onto her back and then sat up. “I don’t mean us being together,” she said. “I mean you and Danny shuttling back and forth with your clothes and everything. At least you’re not rousting him out of bed at the crack of dawn anymore to drive him over to your house for the bus.” She cocked her head, stuck out her tongue, crossed her eyes and made crazy-circles around her ears with her index fingers.
    “I still think I was right about that.” I picked up the other sock from the floor and pulled it back on. “I don’t think you’re taking into consideration how weird this whole arrangement is,” I said. “Somebody’s going to start burning fucking crosses on the lawn.” This was Peter Jernigan talking, taker of twenty-three acid trips (I had kept count) and sworn enemy of convention.
    “Well if anybody’s freaking out,” she said, “I haven’t heard about it. Nobody here even knows anybody.”
    “Isn’t it pretty to think so,” I said.
    “Why pretty?” she said. Oh well.
    “Dear Peter,” she said. “If we could only get you to quit worrying about what people are going to do to you.”
    “And live the rational life?”
    “I like it when you’re angry sometimes,” she said, rubbing the small of my back, “I’m not saying stay home and fuck me”—she slipped a hand down into the back of my trousers and fingered my coccyx through my shirttail and jockey shorts—“because I know you have to go to work. But just think if you didn’t have to.”
    “The unlived life,” I said, raising an Uncle Fred forefinger, “is not worth examining.” Neatly turned, I thought. Sailed by.
    “But it’s so stupid,” she said. “You said yourself it was like being in high school.”
    “Right,” I said. “Builds character. Teaches citizenship.”
    She worked her hand inside the jockey shorts and poked with a nailed finger. “Mr. T says think straight.”
    “Hey,” I said. She reached in further, up to her elbow, hand all the way between my legs and up the front of me. “Hmm,” I said.
    “But promise you’ll always wear a business suit,” she said in my ear, undoing my belt with her other hand. “I like reaching around in baggy pants.”
    “If I quit my job,” I said, lying back and letting her, “even my jeans are going to be baggy.” I was alluding, obscurely, to starvation.
    “I would never let you go hungry,” she said, somehow understanding.
    A knock on the door. “Dad?”
    “He went to work for Christ’s sake,” I called. “You think the breadwinner can lollygag around the house all day?”
    “You want me to come back later?” said Danny.
    Martha nodded yes.
    “Nah, hold on,” I called. “Be with you in a second.” Martha shook her head and silently booed me. “He’s got to catch the bus,” I whispered, standing up and zipping my trousers. “Back in a trice.”
    “Drat,” she said.
    Down in the living room, Danny had spread out the tablecloth I’d forgotten to put back over the tv the night before, and was sitting on it in full lotus position, the soles of his sneakers turned to the ceiling.
    “Sbantib shantib,” I said. “ ’S’up?”
    “Listen,” he said, uncurling. “Do you mind if I use the house after school for something?”
    “For something?”
    “Well, like, for band practice?”
    “What band?” I said. Thinking of gold braid and tubas.
    “It isn’t really like a band band,” he said. “I was just talking to this