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

might indeed have been someone else, a hobo who’d recently lost weight. She did not smile. “So anyway,” she said, “eat your eggs.” She pointed with her fork.

He hurried to his chair and sat down. He liked her in the ratty, baggy sweater. He smiled, watching as she laboriously rolled up the cuffs. “You’ll admit, it’s nice to be warm,” he said.

She said, wrinkling her nose, “It smells of turpentine.” He knew that instant that nothing of Buzzy’s had ever smelled of anything if he could help it.

When he’d cleared away the dishes, piling them in the sink, and they were seated, each working on a third cup of coffee—the sun risen higher now, pouring into the kitchen from the entry-hall, making one bright place on the wall and floor, throwing the rest of the room into greater darkness—Jessie asked, breaking what had grown to an extended silence, “What did you make of Mr. Sprague’s talk about flying?”

“Do you mean do I think he believed it?”

She shrugged, then waited.

“They have funny ways of joking, around here. It used to throw me, but I guess I’m catching on.” He added after a moment, “It’s not like anyplace else I know of. I suppose if I were a sociologist—” When she glanced up at him, he moved his head as if nudging away objections. “All I mean is, everyplace has its own oddities, things that make people feel part of the group.”

“Nearly all human beings joke,” she said. “It’s one of the defining characteristics.”

“I know.” He raised his cup, cautiously sipping. When he’d lowered the cup again, he said, “But it’s something you especially notice in Susquehanna. Maybe it’s a way of denying that the whole place is moribund. Anyway, it seems unusual how much joking goes on. At the check-out counter down at the market, at the post office, on the street … There’s a farm, over by Gibson, where they have these strange-looking long-haired cows, they look like musk-oxen or something. One day when I was passing, the farmer was out with them, breaking open bales of hay, and I pulled over and asked him what kind they were. He looked at them, very thoughtful, pulling at his chin, you know; then he looked at me, as if puzzled that I didn’t know, and he said—very serious—‘Them’s mice.’ I laughed, but not him. You’d be surprised how long it took him to admit they were Highland Something.”

“He must’ve liked your company,” she said.

“He looked like a smart, discriminating sort of man.”

She sat very still, gazing at her coffee, smiling. Only one tapping finger showed her restlessness. “It’s funny, though. He sounded as if he meant it, about flying.”

“No doubt he’s used it for years,” Mickelsson said. “In fact somebody else here mentioned to me once they’ve got a man in these parts who flies. Maybe Sprague’s used that joke so long they’ve all come to believe it.”

“Pray he doesn’t try taking off from the roof sometime.” The finger tapped on.

He put his hand over her hand to stop the barely audible drumming. “I wonder if I should have offered him the use of my car,” he said, and watched her face. “The blue one, I mean. It just sits there in the barn, doing no one any good—”

“Are you crazy? If he went over one of those … moraines or whatever they call them, those big bluffs up there—”

“That would be flying,” Mickelsson said with a grin, then at once put on charity. She was a sucker for Christian charity, he was beginning to see. She’d been hanging around with the bleeding-heart Marxists too long. He wondered what would happen if he pushed it a little. “It did cross my mind that he might hurt himself,” he said gravely. “Not that I’d care about the car …”

“I understand.” An instant after she spoke, she looked at him, suspicious. He smiled benevolently and signed the air with three limp fingers, like the Pope. “Jesus,” she whispered crossly, not even pretending to smile, and looked away. “You really are crazy,” she said.

He’d finished his coffee. She still had half a cup, too cold to drink. “Shall I put on another pot?” he asked, his voice bright, trying to pull her out of her mood.

She shook her head. “I hate coffee.”

He sighed.

Uncomfortable as he was feeling—all this formal informality, these complex games they both somehow kept losing—he minded nonetheless that it would soon be time for her to leave; minded it more with each small failure. He hunted for something to say that might keep her longer, but it was hard to concentrate. He found himself haunted by images of Donnie Matthews. It was of course true that he could drop his little nightlight just like that, put all that behind him, a sordid but ultimately trifling affair of the sort human beings, shitty beasts that they were, were prone to get mired in. But even as he thus consoled himself, he knew it was not as true as he might wish. He couldn’t imagine himself telling Jessie about Donnie, nor could he imagine continuing this … whatever … with Jessie without confessing. Neither could he imagine—despite the brackish taste that came with the thought of Donnie, all those Di-Gels rising in armed revolt—that he could simply stop visiting Donnie’s apartment, put behind him forever the thought of holding her slippery, pale waist in his two hands, screwing her upright like some animal he’d grabbed from the pen, his trousers around his feet, his sick heart slamming.

Remorse rose into his gorge. Jessica too he’d grabbed from the pen, if he admitted the truth. Or they’d grabbed each other. If she was sorry for him, and attracted, she was also repelled, at very least distrustful. He again slid his hand over the tabletop toward her, inviting her to take it. After a moment, she did. Her hand was surprisingly warm and soft. The old dog stirred.

“Do you teach today?” he asked.

Rising out of some