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

“What man?” Blassenheim asked.

Mickelsson looked away as if guiltily.

Blassenheim rolled a look back at the Swisson woman; it was for her that he was getting the ice. “I guess I didn’t notice,” he said. “I wasn’t really paying much attention.”

Jessie met Mickelsson’s eyes.

Then Edie Bryant was in the kitchen with them. “Git out! Git outl Everybody in the livinroom!” she called excitedly. “We’re to have Freddy at the fiddle and Lady Kate will sing!”

“Thank you, Alan,” Kate Swisson said, letting her head fall limply sideways, taking the glass of ice from him. “Now if I can just find some juice or something.” To Mickelsson she explained, shyly smiling, flutteringly helpless, “It’s my throat. It’s like this all the time, these days. It just scares me to death.” She touched her white throat with three long fingers.

“I’ll find you something,” Alan said. “I think there’s some grapejuice.”

“Alan,” Brenda Winbum called from the livingroom, “are—you—coming?”

“I’m getting Miss Swisson some grapejuice,” he called.

Mickelsson and Jessie moved into the livingroom as Brenda said, “Mrs. Swisson.” Her eyes locked angrily on Mickelsson’s for an instant. Then, guiltily, she smiled.

As soon as Brenda was out of earshot, Jessie said, “That young lady has a crush on you, Mickelsson.”

“Jessie, that’s silly. Look how jealous she is of Alan.”

“That’s at least partly for your benefit. She’s a very proud young woman.” She smiled, sliding a covert look back at Brenda. It was true, he saw, that she valued herself, and for good reason. But then what of Jessie, smiling down fondly at the poor innocent like some serene, possibly dangerous Chinese goddess?

In the corner of the room, with their backs to all the others, Tillson and Garret were in earnest conversation, Tillson’s hand on Garret’s arm, Tillson nodding, shaking his head, nodding again, speechless with interest.

10

When he awakened the next morning he was aware at once that the room was filled with bright, eerie light, and it came to him that, even as he slept, he’d been aware for hours that it was snowing heavily, a cold blizzard snow, wind whistling around the corners of the house, softly banging the shutters, knocking for admission. When he got up, shivering, and went to pull up the white windowshade, he saw, through the swirling clouds of whiteness, that snow lay deep on the porch roof and down on the lawn below, the road, the slope toward the pond beyond that, half hidden among pines—great unbroken drifts five or six feet deep, maybe higher. Even with the Jeep there was no possibility of his getting to school within the next day or two, assuming school would run, and if the icy snow kept falling and the wind kept blowing, no likelihood of his getting to school all week. All the shadows over his life—Donnie Matthews’ pregnancy the darkest of all—must sit tight, bide their time. He remembered “the blizzards in Wisconsin in his boyhood, how he and his cousins had dug tunnels through the drifts—labyrinths, large rooms, windows looking up at white light. Even his grandfather’s mood would lighten on days like this. He remembered the cold white light in the old man’s study in the manse, how the old man would stand, his shirt very white against the darkness of his suit, his white hands knotted behind his back, bent like a crow toward the window, almost smiling, his odd, bent nose aiming slyly to the left, teeth like a shark’s, nostrils flared as if sniffing things his straightforward eyes refused to recognize. His white hair glowed. “God is merciful,” he would say, apropos of nothing, as if the thought were unutterably baffling.

Even now Mickelsson could not quite help thinking of Donnie Matthews. It crossed his mind that this would be the time to go to her, bundle himself up like an Eskimo and laboriously struggle into town. No one else would be there. He could spend the whole day with her, work out calmly what they meant to do. More than the whole day. Several days, perhaps. They would make love, talk, make love, talk. … It was an at once appealing and sickening thought—the struggle into town perhaps the most appealing part of it. He remembered going out with his father and uncle for firewood in the winter, riding on the perfectly silent bobsled behind the shaggy brown Belgians, no sound but the whuff of wind and the creak of harness-leather, the collar bobbing slowly like an old man wagging his head from side to side, listening to music, the crupper now slack, now tight as a muscle cramp. He would explain to her his feelings, how it was not just a foetus but a child, his child and hers—not that he believed that it was knowably his; but no matter. A child. A living, suffering being.

Something silver, the top of a garbage can, perhaps, moved solemnly across the snow, hardly touching it, leaving no track that he could see. He thought of all he ought to do at the university, fight for his department’s rights, protect Jessica, among other things—though the threat against her was not yet definite. Strange to say, he felt none of the anger at Blickstein he’d felt last night. Blickstein was, as surely as Mickelsson, an idealist at heart. But he had his job. It was as if years had passed since last night’s conversation. He put on his glasses, slippers, and robe, and went downstairs.

The kitchen phone had no dialtone—predictably, he realized, and felt pleased. Here as upstairs, the snowlight was astonishing. Outside the kitchen door, where the woodpile should be, there was a mountain of sugary brightness. It was incredible that just a few hours ago there had been cars outside that door, and that they’d driven home on the road in front, now invisible, markless. Had Tom Garret gotten back to his wife at the hospital? Not likely. But no way to find out—no phone, no means of transport; he owned neither skis nor snowshoes. So he need not