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

gray hair was stiff and went out in all directions, and though he’d recently shaved, every crack on his chin and lower cheeks was full of bristles, feathery and silver as frost. He looked out through the screen with an expression of sharp curiosity, perhaps alarm, and even when Mickelsson said “Hello!”—smiling, his voice as hearty as a farmer’s—the man said nothing. “My name’s Mickelsson. I live down the road a ways, down by Susquehanna,” Mickelsson said.

Perhaps the man nodded; it was hard to be sure. Then he turned to look up at Jessica with the same animal curiosity he’d shown as he sized up Mickelsson. At last he smiled, showing naked gums and one last yellow tooth. “I know who ya are,” he said—a high, thin whine, merry grin like a boy’s. “Come on in!” He pushed at the door and, when it stuck, kicked it hard with his boot. As the screen swung out he stepped back, making room for them to pass. Jessica stepped in as if completely at home, then stopped, two steps into the room, to wait for Mickelsson. The old man slammed the screen door, then the wooden door, and came in behind them. “I see you down there at the doc’s,” he said. “Yore place is right down under my place.” His head came forward, tongue lolling, as if he meant to make an obscene suggestion. “Sometimes I hear you, workin away in the middle of the night.”

“I do that sometimes,” Mickelsson said. He spoke loudly, on the presumption that the old man was deaf.

Jessica stood looking around, smiling vaguely, at the dark, filthy kitchen—dishes in the sink, the dirt on them caked as if it had lain there for months; grocery bags full of garbage along the walls; patches of linoleum torn away or worn through; on the sagging ceiling and upper walls, immense dark stains. In the center of the kitchen stood a long pine table filled to the last inch with boxes of cereal, mason jars, an open milk-carton, dishes, silverware, balls of string, jumbled piles of sewing, bits of mail. Everything in the kitchen was the same color, the bone gray of long-fallen timber.

“Gwan along into the parlor,” the old man piped, waving in the direction of the doorway beyond them. “It ain’t as bad in there. If you need—” He broke off to cough, doubling over, covering his mouth with the hand that held the cigarette.

Carefully, they picked their way toward the parlor. The room, when they reached it, proved as messy as the kitchen and cold as a barn, but at least it was lighter here, sunlight pouring in through the curtainless windows. The old man, still coughing, took a stack of magazines and old clothes from the sofa between the two windows, making just room enough for the two of them, then, when they were seated, took a waffle-iron from the plywood-patched seat of a wooden chair opposite and sat down himself, facing them, four feet away. Again he showed his gums and his single up-stabbing tooth in a smile. “Make you a cup of Offaltine?” he asked.

“No thank you,” Mickelsson said.

“I had coffee just before we left,” Jessica said. Her eyes moved from corner to corner of the room, half fear, half sharp disapproval.

“Good,” the old man said, and laughed, poking his tongue out. “I doubt we could find it ennaway!” Then he leaned back in his chair and just looked at them, smiling sociably, tongue lolling again, waiting. At the far end of the room a door opened—the old man did not turn to look, merely watched his guests in amusement—and an old woman with a haggard face and snow-white hair poked her head in, then drew it back again quickly and closed the door. “That’s Mother,” the old man said, and gave a laugh. “She don’t like company. It ain’t that she don’t like ’em, really. She had a stroke, while back. She thinks she don’t look good.”

“Poor thing!” Jessica said. The fear and disapproval sank away as if by magic, replaced by a troubled look.

“Wal, we all got our crosses,” the old man said. Then: “So you went and bought the doc’s place.” He drew the cigarette to his mouth and pulled at it, sucking the smoke in deep.

“Yes, me and the bank,” Mickelsson said, mechanically smiling. He sat unnaturally erect, partly to give Jessica room, partly for fear that the sofa might give way if he put his full weight on it. “I understand you used to have relatives living there.”

“That’s right,” the old man said. He was quiet a moment, smiling and nodding, letting smoke drift out. He studied Jessica, considering whether or not to say more, and at last said, “Great-uncle and -aunt of mine. Uncle Caleb and Aunt Theodosia. Some people say they’re still down there.” He coughed.

“As ghosts, you mean?” Jessica asked, turning away from him, looking toward the door where the old woman hid.

“That’s it, ma’am.” He laughed, then looked mock-stern. “They was never close with the rest of us. That’s why it got ’em. There’s Spragues all through these here mountains from one end to th’other, but they didn’t want no part of that. They had no use for kin.”

“It?” Jessica asked, turning back to him, frowning a little, leaning forward.

The old man looked blank.

“You said, ‘That’s why it got ’em.’“

Sprague stretched his lips out, lifted his hand a few inches, then dropped it to his knee again. “Didn’t mean nothing by it,” he said. “Sometimes people just get taken over, ya might say. By their moods or suthin. Some kinda feelin that’s in the woods.” He looked to Mickelsson as if for help. “You know, there’s us and there’s all that other. If people stick together, take care of their own—”

Mickelsson nodded. “It’s not always easy, though. You, for instance, way out here in the wilderness …” He just missed saying “sticks.”

The old man nodded, smiling again, then came to. “Oh, we see people,”