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

a long time with his legs planted in one place like pillars, the shotgun cradled in his arm, his eyes gazing around balefully, trying to think where he should put the gun. He had no mantel—there was only the woodstove—and he was reluctant to put it in some closet, out of sight. From the couch, the sickly, angry gray and white cat watched him carefully. No doubt the old bastard knew about guns. Yet he did not leave.

At last, as a temporary measure, Mickelsson leaned the shotgun against the wall by the door, next to the flowerstand holding Jessie’s gloves. Then he went into the kitchen, switched on the light, opened the refrigerator door, and for a long time—he had no idea how long—stood gazing in, cold air pouring over him.

He was roused from his reverie by a whine of trucks passing on the road in front of his house. He ran to the front door and looked out. They were driving without headlights. “Call the police!” he told himself. But he was more afraid of the police than of the trucks. He wiped perspiration from his forehead.

Late that night, in his damp, stone-walled cellar—all the lights upstairs turned out, the cat asleep on the rug near the stove—Mickelsson built a workbench, eight feet long and solid as a rock, with a deep drawer below and cupboards above for stains, glue, and tung oil, and a large space of bare wall for peg-board, which he meant to buy tomorrow. (Slink into town, dart back again …) He made the bench with meticulous care, measuring, levelling, fitting, bevelling. He’d definitely decided now to make things; he wasn’t sure what. Boxes, coffins, windowboxes, wheelbarrows … He’d get himself a band-saw, table-saw, drill-press, and belt-sander, possibly a lathe. Thomas would not press for payment. It didn’t matter what he made, as long as it was more or less useless, and craftily done. He sawed and hammered, puffing at his pipe, sweating, filling every pore with dust. He pegged and glued every carefully fitted joint and rabbet, and, while the glue dried, tied the whole thing drum-tight with fishline. When he plucked the taut nylon holding the deep pine drawer together, it rang like the string of a guitar. When he finished, swept up, and went upstairs to take a bath, once more soothe his aching muscles, there was watery light above the mountains to the east.

He slept till noon, then immediately, without eating (he stopped to eat less and less, these days), removing the telephone receiver from its hook, went back directly to his project. First he went down cellar to look at the bench—everything was as it should be—then he drove to Susquehanna to order tools. Owen Thomas had in stock a band-saw, slightly used, and a drill-press, new, also a belt-sander, a back-saw and picture-frame clamps. The rest he’d have to send for. By suppertime that night, Mickelsson’s new woodshop was whining and growling, spreading clouds of white dust. He imagined his father and uncle looking on, pulling at their chins—imagined them so clearly they were almost there, though they were not.

Neither was Rifkin there, though Mickelsson pretended to talk with him and the daydream was sometimes as vivid as daydreams of childhood.

Rifkin leaned against the workbench, crookedly smiling, his chin bunched up. “So what’s it all mean?”

“No meaning,” Mickelsson said, carefully lining a board for the saw-cut, a curve he knew to be a hair too tight for the saw. “I’m entering into mindless ritual. Just me and things.”

“Bullshit.”

“Very well, I’m making Christmas presents. One has one’s responsibilities. Ich soill! Ich soill! Possibly I’ll make something for Ellen and The Comedian.” Forcing the blade just a little, he managed the cut.

“I’ll bet.”

“You have no faith, Rifkin. That’s your problem.” He lined up the next cut.

“I have faith that if you keep drinking gin in the middle of the afternoon on an empty stomach, you’ll lop off your hand with that band-saw.”

“And you don’t believe in accidents.”

“Not the intentional kind.”

“Good point. I must be careful with the band-saw.” He drank, then sawed his mark.

With one finger, Rifkin pushed his glasses up his nose. “Why’d you buy the gun?”

“To kill myself, you think?” He made his eyes wide in mock-horror.

“Just asking. I notice you cry a lot.”

“I noticed it myself,” he said with exaggerated interest, tilting his head. “Sometimes I don’t even feel anything when I cry, I just happen to touch my face and—slippery! It’s vile.”

“You use that word a lot,” Rifkin said with distaste.

“I do.” He was suddenly wary. The imaginary Rifkin should not notice what he hadn’t noticed himself. He said, as if covering himself, “I must watch that.”

“Mickelsson, I like you,” Rifkin said, devious and saccharine. The finger with which he pointed was as stiff as the barrel of a pistol. “I’m just trying to help you. Why must you make it so difficult?”

Mickelsson’s hands leaped back, thinking on their own. The band-saw was screaming, the blade off its track. He was all right, but his heart was whamming and he was itchy all over, fear-sweat exploding through every pore. He reached down with a shaking left hand to turn the power off. Gradually he calmed himself.

“Doctor,” he began, loosening the thumbnuts that held the plastic shield, preparing to retrack the blade; but the word doctor stopped his mind, or redirected it. Looking down at his sawdusty hand, he was thinking of the large, pale woman who’d sold him his house. For an instant he was convinced that she’d sold the house and moved to Florida, where her brother was also a doctor, because she was dying. The whiteness was some terminal disease.

He was stilled, as if her death too, like the fat man’s and like Nugent’s, were his fault. Tears of self-pity washed down his cheeks. Christ, he thought, half praying.

He must make these presents for his children. Pull himself together.

Rifkin was there again. “Doesn’t it bother you that you’re doing nothing at all for your friend