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

lift the metal away, they found, wedged in under it, a newborn calf. How or why it had crawled into that small, dark cave was hard to say, but by morning it would have been dead. The cows watched silently as Mickelsson’s father lifted the calf and carried it over to the empty calfpen and laid it in the straw, then moved the mother cow from her stanchion to the pen.

It was hard to believe in the honor and nobility of the profession of philosophy when he compared it to his father’s profession. Humble work, it might seem to some; but standing in his study, looking at the papers and unopened mail on his desk, he regretted his youthful inability, back when he still had choices, to grant proper value to such work. It might have made a difference. Perhaps as a farmer, a cabinetmaker … He thought of Heidegger’s mythologizing of “the Folk.”

He must call the Philosophy Department, he remembered.

By now Susquehanna had been “socked in,” as the locals said, for nine days, the roads never open for more than a few hours at a time. It was still windy and bitterly cold—so cold that if one went outdoors without gloves on it was like having one’s hands shot with a gun, first terrible pain, then numbness. The roads had at last been cleared all the way to the highway, but the semester was over; Christmas vacation was upon them. Two days after the call from Michael Nugent, Mickelsson phoned in his grades. It was irregular, but he hadn’t been the only professor to give no finals, no last-minute conferences. When the secretary had taken down the grades and checked them twice she said, “Professor Mickelsson, I think Professor Tillson was hoping to talk to you. Can you hold while I see if he’s in his office?”

“I’ll hold,” Mickelsson said.

A moment later, Tillson’s old-ram voice was on the line. “Hello, Pete?”

“Hello, Geoffrey.” He leaned his elbows on the limited bare space on his desk—he was phoning from his study—and gazed out the window in front of him at the gleaming white valley, blue-snow mountains in the distance. Though Tillson’s voice was friendly, Mickelsson was conscious of waiting impatiently, almost crossly, for the phonecall to be over.

“How’s the weather out there? I bet it’s beautiful!”

“It is.”

“God, how I envy you! I imagine the skiing must be wonderful!”

“I suppose so. I don’t ski, myself.”

Tillson laughed. “To tell you the truth, I don’t either.” He laughed again, then asked, “Listen, Ruth wants to know if you could come to a party. Just a few friends—the usual, pretty much. But you know how it is, Christmas season and all that. Also—” He hesitated, no doubt hoping to be interrupted. When Mickelsson said nothing, Tillson said awkwardly, probably grinning, cheeks twitching, “I thought maybe we could kill two birds with one stone, get some people together and have a talk about you-know-who.”

“You-know-who?”

“Well, you know, the Marx brothers, as Jessie says.” He laughed. “They really are becoming quite a nuisance, to tell the truth. They’re not kidding, this business about wanting to teach our courses.”

“Blickstein’s putting up with it?” Mickelsson asked.

“Not actively,” Tillson said. “But of course it’s not his business to interfere.”

“Ah, it’s interdepartmental politics now!”

“You may not think so, and I may not think so,” Tillson said. “I may as well mention another thing too, on the chance you haven’t heard. They’ve begun their assault on Jessie.”

Mickelsson took what Dr. Rifkin would call a neurotic’s deep breath. “I’m not surprised.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?” Tillson laughed again, this time caustically.

“It’s all I’ve got to say at the moment,” Mickelsson said.

Perhaps Tillson caught the sound of hopelessness in Mickelsson’s voice. At any rate, he backed off a little. “Yes, I see what you mean. Well, as I say, it might be a good thing if we could talk, you and Garret and I, Phil Bryant, maybe Freddy Rogers, a few others, old Meyerson. … Mix business and pleasure …”

“When is the party?” Mickelsson asked.

“Friday night.” Tillson’s voice was lively again. “I know it’s short notice … we’ll have a little singing, egg-nog, that sort of thing—”

“Ah. Friday.”

“That’s a problem?”

“Well, something of a problem,” Mickelsson said.

“You’re out of town that night?”

Mickelsson seized on it. “I’m supposed to be. I’ll see what I can manage.”

“I do hope you will, Pete.” He sounded hurt, trying to disguise the fact. “For Jessie’s sake. We need your feistiness.”

“I’ll see what I can manage,” Mickelsson said again.

“One other thing,” Tillson said. “I know you don’t always take time to read the papers.” He paused, loath to go on, though he must. “Did you hear about that student of ours, young Nugent?”

Mickelsson closed his fingers on the telephone cord. Something stopped him from mentioning that he’d just talked to the boy. “What about him?”

“I’m afraid he’s—killed himself. It’s a shocking thing. Always terribly shocking when they’re so young. Slit his throat in the dormitory bathtub—I think it was three days ago. It’s a miracle nobody found him; apparently he might have been saved. Poor devil! You hadn’t heard?”

“It can’t have been three days ago,” Mickelsson said. A soft hiss came into his brain, the sound of a TV after the station goes off.

“It was, I’m sure. I have a note here. Sunday evening; that’s why he wasn’t found.”

“I see,” Mickelsson said after a moment. (“Well?” he imagined Rifkin saying; and himself answering, “Just hang on a minute, will you?”)

“I’m sorry to be the one to—”

“That’s all right.” His tone was sharp. To Tillson it would seem inexplicably so. Mickelsson would have said something to cancel the effect, but nothing came to him. It was as if his mind had stopped dead. Like Nugent’s—if Nugent’s had.

After a moment Tillson said, “Friday night then, around seven? You won’t forget? I know it’s short notice. You’ll write it down?”

“I’ll write it down,” Mickelsson said, almost a whisper. He picked up a pencil from the desk and lowered the point toward a slip of