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

he said, abruptly defensive. “I got a brother Bill over there in Gibson, and a sister in Hallstead. They come by here now’n again, with the kids and all. We see people, all right. Not like we used to, now that Mother ain’t so well and the car don’t keep runnin. But Bill’s a mechanic, my brother. Soon’s he gets over here, he’s gonna take that old automobile apart and get it runnin just like new.”

Mickelsson nodded. He was sure the car had lain dead in the weeds for years.

Jessica asked, looking at the old man’s hands, “How do you do your shopping?”

“Oh, I walk in, usually. Lot of time people will pick you up, you know. Everybody knows us. We been livin here sixty-seven years. Course soon’s the car’s fixed I’ll start drivin again.”

“How far is it?” Jessica asked.

“Bowt five mile,” the old man said. He smiled, little fires in his eyes, as if something about her tickled him.

Now the door at the end of the room opened again, and the old woman’s voice came out, fretful. Her words were slurred, not easy to understand; her false teeth were noisy. “He walks all the way in and he walks all the way back with a big box of groc’ries. Don’t nobody pick him up.”

Jessica straightened up, trying to get a glimpse of the old woman.

The old man smiled. “She don’t know,” he said. He leaned forward and winked. “I fly, that’s the truth of it. I been granted the gift of flight.”

“His heart’s bad, too,” the voice called. “All them cigarettes.”

“Now, Mother,” the old man called, grinning at his lap.

Jessica stole a look at Mickelsson.

“One of these days he’ll be dead on the road there like a woodchuck, nobody find him for two, three weeks, and here I’ll be all by myself up here, can’t even do for myself.”

“Lord God protect us from crabby old women,” the old man said. He tipped his head up to smile at the ceiling.

“But you do have company sometimes, don’t you?” Jessica asked, leaning forward again. “I thought I saw car tracks out by the road in front, as if somebody had been here not too long ago—yesterday, maybe, or last night.”

The old man thought about it, grinding out his cigarette in an aluminum frozen-pie plate on the floor beside his boot, then shook his head. “Nope.”

“You sure?” Mickelsson asked. His voice was accidentally stern. “I noticed them myself.”

The old man lifted his chin, his eyes narrowed, on guard. “Ain’t seen nobody in a week,” he said. “Mebby that car that sets and watches us.”

“More like a month,” the old woman shouted from her place behind the door.

Mickelsson frowned. “Maybe just somebody turning around in your driveway,” he said. “What kind of car is it?”

“Kids, mebby,” the old man said, and nodded. “I don’t go out and mess with ’em.”

Now Jessica stood up, her movements too smooth and restrained, as if she thought herself in danger. “Well,” she said, “it certainly was nice of you to invite us in. If there’s ever anything we can do for you—that is, anything Peter …”

“We get a lot of kids up here,” the old man said. He spoke quickly and peevishly, lest they not let him say it. He too got up, bending far forward, pushing down hard on the sides of the chairseat with his arms. “Give ’em half a chance, they’ll burn you out.”

“Really?” Mickelsson asked. Now he too was standing.

“Yup. They got a gang. Burn people’s houses and barns down for money. Whole thing was in the Seskehenna paper.”

“And you think—” Jessica began.

He was leading them back through the kitchen now, making his way between garbage bags. “That’s right,” he said. “But tell the truth, they don’t scare me. We’re pretty well protected.” He turned, head bowed, to smile back at them. “See this?” he said. He reached up to seize a rope near the kitchen door—a dark, frayed rope that went up into a hole in the ceiling above. “Give this rope a good jerk,” he said—he suggested a pull without carrying it out, then pointed through the grimy kitchen window—“and out there in the dog-house the door on the side there pulls open, and out they tumble.”

Jessica leaned down by the window, pressing her hands against her knees, to look. “Are they dangerous?” she asked. Even bent over she was taller than old Sprague.

“Wal,” the old man said, smiling, “there’s worse dogs and better dogs, but I’ll tell you this: they’re hungry.”

Mickelsson said, “You really think there’s somebody that wants your house burned down?”

“Sure I do!” Though he continued to smile, his cheek twitched. He reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, and his knobby fingers came out with just one, as if he had them in there loose. “There’s Dudak and Pearson—they’d like to get my land if they could grab it off cheap. And there’s the doc.” He raised his eyes to meet Mickelsson’s, then smiled, pretending the look was not a challenge. “She’s a killer—that’s right. Believe me, I know! And she knows I can prove it in a court of law. We been goin at it a long time now, her ’n’ me.” He hesitated, studying Mickelsson, still smiling. “She stole that house, ya know. Stole it right from under my shoes.”

“My place?” Mickelsson asked.

“That’s it.”

Jessica asked, “What happened?”

The old man held a match to his cigarette and sucked in, then coughed. When he was able to talk again, he said, “It’s a long story, but the long and short of it is, there was some taxes on the place and she paid ’em and took it, just like that.”

“You couldn’t afford—” Jessica began.

“She was quicker, that’s all,” the old man snapped. “Got there to the courthouse before I ever knowed what was doin.” Again a coughing fit came over him, ragged smoke-clouds spewing from his lungs with each cough.

“Hmm,” Jessica said. She had her hand extended toward him, getting ready to say good-bye, but now