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

Before he could think what to say, Tim slapped his shoulder again, about to step past him, and said cheerily, “Hay, gotta run, Prafessor. See ya!” And he was gone. Mickelsson half turned to look after him. He hadn’t quite realized how big Tim was, until this moment. Had he meant, by “murderers,” Mickelsson and Donnie? Had she talked to him, perhaps? Suddenly it seemed to Mickelsson that of course everyone must know who had killed the fat man. He remembered how he’d shouted, that night in Donnie’s apartment; the whole town must have heard it. Lowering his head, chewing his upper lip, he continued on his way to the hardware store.

The bell rang cheerily as he opened the front door, and Owen Thomas looked up from the cash-register and smiled, distant. “Merry Christmas,” he said. Mickelsson nodded and, as soon as possible, feigning interest in this and that, got his back turned to the man.

The store was full of light, as always—a good deal more light than usual: electric wreaths, painted-glass Santa Clauses, tree lights, blinking electric candles. Along with the usual tools, plastic trashcans, plumbing and electrical materials, and the rest, the aisles were now crowded with sleds, trikes, games, plastic dolls, stuffed animals, and, on the shelves along the sides, small appliances to tempt farm wives. Walter Cronkite was talking on the display TV. The sound was turned off.

“I hear you’ve done wonders up there,” Owen said.

“Who told you that?” Mickelsson asked with what he knew must sound like guilty sharpness. He smiled too late.

“Oh, you know”—Thomas grinned, more on one side than on the other, the center of his mouth drawing sideways—”people who make deliveries, maybe Wilcox, the man who fixes furnaces. … Nothing’s secret, little town like this.”

Mickelsson hastily turned away for fear that the blood was draining from his face too visibly. “Well, I keep busy,” he said. His eye fell on the gunrack—rifles, shotguns, pistols, the metal wonderfully solid, all business, the wooden stocks gleaming with soft, reflected light, red, yellow, green, blue.

“Thinking of doing some hunting?” Owen asked.

“They sure are beautiful things, aren’t they?” Mickelsson said. “I wonder whether it’s guilt or pride that makes people put all that devotion into making a gun?”

The storekeeper thought about it.

Mickelsson pointed to the lock on the case. “You got a key to that?”

“I better,” Owen said, and smiled.

He drove back slowly, still surprised at himself, thinking what fear disguised as indignation his ex-wife would feel if he were to walk into the house and hold out to her his purchase, challenge all her twisted, secret violence with the weapon’s stern wood and steel. But she wouldn’t be there, of course. Never again. For a moment, as when he’d first walked out, the realization that their parting was final gave Mickelsson a sharp pang, made the buildings on each side of the street high and dark. He thought of her parents, of whom he’d been fond—gentle, shy people, proud of their brilliant daughter, though troubled by her ways. “Shoot,” her father would say, smiling and blushing; it was all he could think of, whichever way the conversation turned. He owned a dry-goods store and wore a flag in his lapel. He and Ellen’s mother had married when they were eighteen and had lived happily ever after, good Methodists. He’d been the captain of a bowling team. Mickelsson had gone with Ellen to watch him once and had been startled at the sight of him not dressed in a suit, wearing the peculiar purple jacket with gold lettering—he couldn’t now remember the name of the team. When Ellen’s father barbecued steaks, always well done, he wore an apron that said COME AND GET IT! The thought of Ellen’s parents made the grief worse than it might otherwise have been. Surely Ellen had been in some ways like them, salt of the earth, though at first glance there seemed no possible connection between Ellen and those two shy people. According to something in a letter Mickelsson had gotten from his daughter months ago, Ellen and her parents were no longer on good terms. He wished he could see them again, or write to them, at least.

But the wave of unhappiness passed more quickly than it would have done six months ago. One could outlive anything, he was beginning to see. What one would once have called unspeakable—he was thinking of the murder—could become just a private unpleasantness, like an ugly argument in the corner of a crowded, noisily cheerful room.

He drove home past Christmas-lighted windows, the huge gloomy-towered old Catholic church with its doors and windows all aglow, full of people no doubt, then darker streets, the tall, bare trees around the hospital. In all this time he hadn’t spoken a word to Tom Garret. The thought made him draw in his head in the darkness of the car.

He hunched his shoulders and drew his head in more. He must do something to put order back into his life. With a start he remembered that he must think of something to buy his children for Christmas. How many days had he left? He frowned, blinking sudden tears back, leaning toward the windshield, and gradually realized that it was useless to try to work out what the date might be, he couldn’t concentrate. His hands pressed into the steeringwheel. Monday. Some Monday before Christmas. He clamped his lips together and tasted salt. Angrily, with his thumb and one finger, his hand spread wide, he wiped his eyes. His daughter and son would be at home with their mother in Providence for Christmas, he brooded, momentarily forgetting that his son had disappeared. He saw dark hallways, leaded windows, candlelight reflected on old, cracked paintings. Providence was a social place, and no one more sociable than Ellen and the children. He imagined them laughing and singing, arms around the shoulders of their friends, their mother—rolling down the car windows, calling out to strangers, students skulking across lawns: “Merry