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

“Well, Doctor,” Mickelsson whispered, and glanced nervously at the stairs, then took a deep breath, “there are senses in which these other things are real, too.”

To his distress and grief, brightly wrapped presents arrived from both his daughter and son. He was reminded to ship off the presents he’d made them. They would be late.

Christmas Eve came, and then Christmas Day. Surely never in his life had he experienced anything so painful. He lay in bed as if hoping he might somehow sleep through it, but his mind teemed with memories, each one more painful than the last—Leslie and Mark as children, up at the crack of dawn, running into the master bedroom to show what treasures they’d found in their stockings; the dark, pagan service—as it had seemed to Mickelsson—at the cavernous stone church in Heidelberg where not one note of the Christmas music was familiar; Christmases of his childhood, a brightly painted sled his father and Uncle Edgar had made for him once, had built right before his eyes, telling him it was for “a poor child who wouldn’t get anything if someone didn’t make something for him,” which had made Mickelsson jealous, though he’d hid his feelings bravely, never guessing the child was himself. Oh, cruel holiday! Infinitely more terrible lie than Santa Claus! Day of agonizing human love, awful promise that God would be equally loving and—against all odds, against all reason—would ultimately make everything all right. He got up, simply to be moving, distract his mind from the sound of his own heartbeat, looking out at the world through a wash of tears that gave every stick of furniture, every tree outside, a prism halo. He wanted to call Jessie, Ellen, his children. He would have been grateful even to hear the voice of his successor with Ellen, The Comedian. “Christ!” he moaned, burying his face in his hands; and then, to himself: “Asshole! Get hold of yourself!” Though he knew better, he turned on the radio. Every sound that came over it, even the stupidly pious sermons from the fundamentalist station in Montrose, flooded his heart with love and remorse. Handel’s Messiah made him sit down on the floor and clench his fists, bang them on the carpet like Achilles in his tent, and sob. Redemption, resurrection … what ghastly, unspeakable lies, if they were lies! He, Peter Mickelsson, was the frozen, buried world, and the deep snow that buried him and would never be melted was his murder of the fat man, that and much, much more: his swinish misuse of Donnie Matthews, his failure to love his wife as she’d deserved, his betrayal of Jessie—sins, failures, death-stink blossoming on every hand! At last the need to cry left him, though not the sorrow. He made himself a lunch of lettuce and baloney sandwiches, and drank a beer.

In the middle of the afternoon, like some kind of joke miracle, the two red-headed, extremely dirty-faced boys from Stearns’ Texaco appeared at his back door. He’d called them two days ago to come up and jump-start his Jeep and see what was wrong with it. They’d been too buried in work to come, they said now, but Christmas Day was always light. “You work on Christmas?” he asked. They shook their heads, grinning, looking at the ground. “Man, we’re always there!”

Mickelsson put on his coat, gloves, and boots, and went out with them to look at the long-dead iron monster. He couldn’t tell whether it was the cold or his pleasure in seeing someone that made tears well up in his eyes again, but the world was once more blurry, edged with light.

They found the battery was shot. They could sell him a new one—a cheap piece of junk, but serviceable, they assured him—for twenty-four dollars. After a moment’s reflection—his mind still unfocussed—Mickelsson agreed, and the boys went back to the station and then reappeared a short while later and put in a battery bright as a child’s toy, white plastic sides and a yellow plastic cover with red caps. They started up the Jeep and listened for a while, standing there in the dazzling sun- and snow-light—such brightness that Mickelsson had to shade his eyes and squint—the two young men saying nothing, one red-head holding the door open, bending his ear over the steer ingwheel, head turned sideways, as if listening for some infinitely soft whisper of complaint, the other standing by the left front fender, hands in coatpockets, smiling at the hood. Under the disguise of dirt they were remarkably handsome. They had mysteriously twinkling, potentially dangerous light blue Scotch-Irish eyes, the pupils just now mere pinpoints. The boy leaning in to listen called to Mickelsson, “Does it always run this haht?”

“I don’t know,” Mickelsson said, tensing his brow with concentration and hiding the tremble of his lips behind his hand. He moved close to the window in the open door to look in at the dial. Though the Jeep had been running for only a couple of minutes, the temperature needle was already near the red.

“Could be the thermahstaht’s stuck,” the boy beside the fender said, and gave a little laugh. He didn’t sound as if he thought it would be that easy.

“Smell that?” the boy at the steeringwheel said. When he smiled, his wide mouth tipped up suddenly at the corners.

Mickelsson nodded. The smell was familiar; a musty, burning smell. He realized only now that it was trouble.

The heavy-set, thick-shouldered boy outside went around the front and opened the hood, then poked his head and upper body in under it, disappearing. “Shut her ahff a minute, Perry,” he called.

The engine shut off with a tubercular chuff-chuff-chuff. The boy on the engine fiddled with things, then called, “Stahrt her up again.”

The motor started up and sounded good for a moment, then worse than before. Smoke came up. The boy in front waved at his brother, a slow, graceful movement like