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

the flying motion of an eagle’s wing, and the one at the steeringwheel turned off the engine and, after a moment, came away, closing the door. They both stood with their hands in their pockets, elbows out, looking in at the engine like graveside mourners.

Mickelsson leaned nearer. Though he knew nothing about motors, even he could see that this one was peculiar. What he noticed first was a spring that didn’t look like an auto part—possibly a spring from some farmer’s screen door. Then he noticed that a hose coming from the radiator was held on to the thing it hooked to by a piece of coat-hanger wire. One could still see the question-mark-shaped hook for the closet rod. Where a number of wires came together, there was a blackened clothespin. It was that—the clothespin—that made his heart sink.

“Think you can fix ’er, Jim?” the younger one asked. When he smiled, the perfect white teeth transformed him to a child.

The older one, Jim, lowered the hood and said, “We can tow her in if you want.”

Mickelsson pulled his glove off to hunt through his pockets for a Di-Gel. “How much do you think it will cost to fix?”

“You got water in your oil,” the older one said. “Could mean you need a new engine. If that’s what it is, and if we can find an old junker, we could hold it to five, six hunnerd dahllers.”

“Jesus,” Mickelsson said, and bit his lip. “If you don’t mind waiting,” he said then, and looked shrewdly at the older boy, then at his brother.

“We’re in no hurry,” the older one said. “We got all the time in the world.” He smiled and shrugged.

“In that case …” Mickelsson said. “God knows I need the Jeep. If it’s all right with you …” He got out his billfold. In the bill compartment he had fifteen dollars. “Will this cover towing?”

“Keep the ten,” the older boy said, putting the five in the pocket of his shirt. “Merry Christmas!” He gave Mickelsson a bow and raised his right hand as if to shade his eyes, smiling, forming a soft salute that might have been Chinese.

So Christmas came and went. Mickelsson saw no one, went nowhere, except for his furtive runs to the hardware store or post office, though he did talk briefly with Jessie on the phone. She called, ostensibly, to ask if she’d left her gloves. Neither of them mentioned Jessie’s trouble with her department. He knew that it was up to him to bring it up. She was no doubt hurt that he’d still done nothing to help, but he knew her pride. If he didn’t feel like helping, the hell with him. He didn’t like himself for keeping silent on the matter, but he kept silent. New Year’s came and went (Mickelsson spent New Year’s Eve at home, not even drinking, but only because he’d forgotten what night it was) and still he kept himself busy in the cellar, all his lights off upstairs, and put off driving in to Binghamton.

Though he thought of it again and again—looking over at the gun, or picking it up to feel the heft of it, run his fingers along the stock, the cool, blue barrel—he did not go hunting. The cat no longer showed nervousness when Mickelsson picked up the shotgun. He seemed a little more wearied, if anything. What the ghosts thought, Mickelsson couldn’t tell. He could avoid both the cat and the ghosts by working down in the woodshop, where neither showed their faces. He kept the phone off the hook. The cellar became crowded with his, so to speak, works.

The first night he didn’t leave the phone off the hook, hoping he might hear from his son or daughter—they always called late—he got a call from Edie Bryant. “Isn’t it wonderful about the hostages?” she said. He couldn’t tell whether or not her voice had a hint of irony. It seemed there was a possibility of a breakthrough while Carter was still in office. Then Edie got down to what she’d really called about.

She was just sick, she said, about what those people were doing to Jessie, and to tell the truth she was very very cross with Mickelsson. “You’re the only person that can help her, you know,” she said. “Phil says so too, and he ought to know, with all his experience in administration. That Blickstein makes me so mad ah could just spit!”

“It’s as bad as that?” he asked.

“Peetuh, if you’d just drive in here and talk to some people—talk to the president himself, if you have to. Even if you weren’t some famous philosopher, you could make ’em sit up and notice. They’re afraid of you. Phil says the same thing. They think you’re crazy, you know. They’re afraid you might punch ’em right in their little ole mouths. I tell you, I’d approve. Do ’em a world of good, that’s my opinion! Sometimes it’s the only way to get folks’ attention.”

Mickelsson laughed.

“And you should phone up Jessica,” Edie said. “It’s not right that woman havin to go it all alone.”

“I imagine it’s hard for her, all right.” He wondered how Edie had learned that he wasn’t keeping in touch with Jessie.

“You call her now, hear? And get in that ole Jeep and get right down here and do some talkin. Isn’t it just like ’em, pullin a stunt like this at vacation time when nobody’s around?”

When she paused, waiting, Mickelsson said, “I doubt that they’ll get away with it.”

“Well, they’ll sure as hell try,” she snapped. Then, after a moment: “You promise me you’ll phone up Jessie?”

There was no way out. “I’ll do it right away,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “Listen now, you come on by and visit sometime?”

“I will.”

After Edie Bryant’s call he fixed himself a large martini and began drinking it, too fast, pacing back and forth in the livingroom. Outside the windows it was pitch black.

There could be no doubt that his failure to help Jessie