Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

Then for a while he seemed to think nothing at all, simply watched the wreckingbar stab deep beneath the plaster and lath and pry them free. Once he barked his knuckles and swore; yet in a way he was pleased, remembering his father’s hands, and his uncle’s. Once, reaching down for what he thought to be a large scrap of wallpaper, he discovered with a start—as if the wallpaper had magically changed in his hand—the picture of Jesus looking sadly toward Heaven, a beautiful young man with no hope for humanity or himself. He thought of his son’s look of sorrowful detachment as he rode in the Marin Riding Show, winning prize after prize, a born athlete—his sister clapping wildly and shouting herself voiceless, Mickelsson beaming, his weight-lifter arms folded on his wide chest. “Son, I can’t tell you how proud we are!” Mickelsson had said as they drove home. His son had said, “Thanks,” and without another word had turned to stare out the window. “Did I say something wrong?” Mickelsson had asked his wife. She’d smiled, her large teeth brilliant, as always, and had said nothing. His only consolation was that Leslie too seemed baffled, her expression as thoughtful as a cat’s. And now, as if there were some connection, Mickelsson’s thought drifted to the un-beautiful, earnest young Mormons pressing through the world with red noses and ears—like ants, like bees, as Pearson had said—urging their gospel of safety in numbers, organized conspiracy against death and the Devil, Utah’s vast army of locked-together minds. They would prevail, no question about it. They, with their plain, shabby clothes, their dull eyes, were the Future, the terrible survivors. They were good with computers, wonderful at business administration; no unruly habits.

While he was thinking this—concerned, really, about his own situation, and even that not quite consciously, his attention unfocused, only dimly aware of why the Mormons so bothered him in his present mood—a man adrift between yellow-lighted worlds like a dustcloud mindlessly wandering in space, toying with the possibility of collapsing into a planet—Mickelsson thought he heard a woman’s voice say, angrily but desperately hiding her anger, “I’m not well, I guess,” and then another voice answering with a grunt. Surprised, Mickelsson turned his head, straining to pierce the room’s dimness, but there was nothing; a dream-voice, some old memory. He shook his head as if to wake himself, then sucked in breath and stabbed hard into the plaster and lath, prying away a great hunk above the door into the livingroom. “Dad?” someone said, making Mickelsson jump. But no; another dream. As the wall-section fell he heard a clink such as coins might make, or old brass jewelry. He got down off the chair, stepping clumsily because his legs were overtired, and bent down to sort with his gloved hand through the trash on the floor. After a moment, he found something and raised it toward his goggles to study it more closely: an old-fashioned wooden cheesebox with a sliding top. He forced the top open; then, removing the glove from his right hand, still holding the box up close to his goggles, poked inside with two fingers. The box was full of keys.

Mickelsson carried the box into the livingroom, carefully closing the door of the dust-filled workroom behind him. Slipping off his goggles and mask, he bent by the lamp in the corner to inspect his find more closely. It was evident at a glance that whatever doors, gates, trunks, or boxes the keys had once opened, whatever treasures or keepsakes they had guarded—whatever hands had turned those keys or reached in for the keepsakes—had long since vanished from the earth.

That instant a crash came from the cellar, right under his feet. He strode to the cellar door, determined this time to catch the damn thing, whatever it might be. He opened the door, switched the light on, and thudded on wobbly legs down the steep, narrow steps, almost falling in his haste. He stopped at the bottom and looked carefully all around. Mouldy, crooked beams, the filthy oil furnace, shelves crammed with rusted, mouldering paint cans—all he had left from the mountains of junk that had lain here when he came … He could see no sign of an intruder. The shadows seemed to peer back at him, like children in hiding, but nothing moved. Was it possible, he wondered, that rattlesnakes could come into a cellar and, in its warmth, stay awake through the winter? Not likely. He would get a book from the library, try to find out. Probably it was rats. Carefully, step by step, he went back up to the kitchen, watching and listening all the way. In his gloved left hand he held an old rusted key, the teeth blurred away to nothing. He imagined he smelled freshly baked cake. Then the scent was gone.

4

Before the concert, Mickelsson and Jessica had drinks at her house. He could hardly tell what he felt as he pushed the lighted-up button that rang her doorbell—guilty, shoddy, angry at having been put in this position of fake respectability, at the same time miserably unworthy: she was a beautiful woman, he a laboriously cleaned-up derelict; for all he knew, he had the clap. Not that he’d noticed any sign yet. Matter of time.

But as soon as she opened the door and gave him her smile, at the same time taking a step back, saying “Hi! Come in!”—Mickelsson tipping his hat to her like a big friendly sheriff—his churning emotions settled; he felt safe. Her hair flowed around her shoulders, and her tanned and freckled skin was radiant. She wore a white blouse and string-tie and tweedy light brown trousers, part of a suit—the coat lay on the arm of the couch. She held her fingers apart as if she had wet nailpolish on them, though he could see none.