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

come here to hunt; he simply walked, watching the ground for whatever he might see there, admiring ice-beaded weeds and branches, observing how the sun struck on patches of snow that had melted and refrozen to a glaze. He was not himself.

Once, half a mile above his house, he came upon John Pearson, also out walking with his gun. Snow was lightly falling, flake by flake. Mickelsson spotted him while still a long way off, up in a blue-shadowed grove, the black dog circling him, nose to the ground. After debating with himself, Mickelsson moved in Pearson’s general direction. When he’d drawn near enough for the old man to see him, Mickelsson stopped, thought some more, then shouted hello. Pearson stopped moving and raised one hand to shade his eyes. “That you, Prafessor?” he called at last. The dog sat down not far from Pearson and scratched itself.

“Hello!” Mickelsson shouted again, stretching out the “o,” and waved. He continued climbing, keeping his eyes on the slippery, snowy rocks, holding the shotgun out far to one side and helping himself along by pulling with his left hand at saplings. They met on a flat open shelf overlooking the valley, a long-fallen maple tree rotting away in the middle of it, mounded in snow.

When they’d come together, Pearson said, “Seen them ghosts yet?”

“They’re down there,” Mickelsson said.

Pearson raised his eyebrows. “You’ve heard ’em, then?”

“More than that,” Mickelsson said.

“No foolin.” Pearson stretched back one side of his mouth. “Wal, I’ll be damned.”

The man had dead squirrels tied to his belt. Mickelsson pointed at them with his gloved left hand. “You’ve had some luck, I see.”

“Nothing fancy,” the old man said, then leaned over and spit. He looked around past his shoulder at the fallen tree, then moved toward it and half sat, half leaned against it. Mickelsson joined him. Pearson said, “So you’ve seen ’em, hay?” He straightened his neck, working a crick out. In his eyebrows there were droplets of water, melted snow. The dog remembered something and ran off into the brush.

“You thought it was just stories?” Mickelsson asked.

“I might’ve,” the old man admitted, and nodded, one quick jerk. “I can’t say’s I more’n half believed it, all in all.”

Mickelsson looked over where the dog had disappeared. “I wouldn’t lie to you,” he said.

Pearson almost grinned, just a momentary tuck at the corners of his mouth. “I don’t s’pose it matters much, one way t’other.”

“No, that’s true. Be a funny thing to lie about, though.” He met Pearson’s eyes.

“Oh, I don’t know. Naht really. World can be a mighty dull place, time to time. I guess that’s why people go around whistling, or writing verses on bathroom walls.” He continued to meet Mickelsson’s eyes. “I’m not a whistler, myself, or a wall-writer. Other hand, I’ve seen that the world’s gaht a certain amount of strangeness to it. Ball lightning, now. People can swear till they’re blue in the face that it don’t exist, but I’ve seen what I’ve seen.”

“I guess ball lightning’s accepted now. By scientists, that is.”

“That may be, I wouldn’t know. Used to be people’d just wave their hand at you. You know you can see ball lightning right through the floorboards? I don’t mean the cracks, I mean right through the floor. I’ll tell you something stranger. When my dad was a boy, there was a woman was dying—old woman named Radwell, she’d been normal all her life—she’d point at the wall and yell owt, ‘Look!’—scared to death—and right where she’d been lookin the wallpaper’d catch fire. My dad saw it himself. Swore to’t.”

Uncomfortably, Mickelsson nodded.

“Wal,” the old man said, looking off into the air, “I’m not surprised abowt the ghosts. There’s times when I believe I’ve seen ghosts myself, just as plain as day—and then again there’s times when I’m not sure I wa’n’t fooled. I guess that sounds peculiar, don’t it.” He watched Mickelsson with level eyes. “Ye’d think at least a man would know what he seen from what he ain’t seen.”

“You’re sure you saw the ball lightning, though.”

“Whole bunch of us that time. Cyrus Tyler, Arthur Cole, Omar Bannatyne, Hobby Jayne—he used to be the local auctioneer, mainly cattle. … Everybody saw it. I’ll tell you a fact. It’s more common for a whole group to see things than for one man alone. Like the night of the Baker murders, in 1918. My whole family felt it happenin, just as clear as anything, though the Baker place was two miles away. We was sitting on the porch, all nine of us, and the strangest feeling you can imagine come over us. We all remarked on it. One man by himself—except for certain sort of strange men—it don’t come through near as well. That’s my opinion.”

Mickelsson looked down, remembering his student Alan Blassenheim’s tentative gropings for some connection between intersubjectivity and truth. Pearson was arguing something more than that. Mickelsson slowly turned his bull-neck to gaze across the valley. “I know what happened down there,” he said. Though he spoke with assurance, he was seeing if he believed it. He was thinking of that trick of his grandfather’s, asking a question and proposing an answer, seeing if the hunch came that told him it was true.

Pearson said nothing, waiting.

“Caleb and Theodosia Sprague had a child,” Mickelsson said. “They kept it hidden from the world—name was David, I think. The child died. Somehow it must’ve been Caleb’s fault, or anyway Theodosia believed it was.” He mused a moment, recalling something else. “Caleb wouldn’t take the boy to a doctor, thought he could somehow manage it on his own. After the child died, the woman brooded on it. Years and years later, when her brother was up on the roof cleaning the chimney, she shot him.” He looked at Pearson for some sign that it was so or not so.

After a long moment Pearson shook his head. “It’s a strange story,” he said.

“That’s not what happened, then?”

“Who knows? Way I heard it they found him cut to