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

go through all this, all these years, not just the two he hadn’t paid. Neither did they explain why both of them had to come, though one of them did nothing. Once, when they were between stacks of photostats, the man asked, “Would you say you’re personally responsible for your unpaid taxes, or were there others involved?”

Something about the way he asked it made Mickelsson feel that they knew about his wife’s having “borrowed” the tax-money he’d saved in ’77. The same instant he saw the opening he turned his eyes from it. “No, I’m responsible,” he said. “Ultimately, anyway.”

“Ultimately?”

He reached for his pipe and matches. “I’m responsible,” he said.

Without comment, the man slid him the next stack of photostats.

The night was still, unbearably muggy. Both men, like Mickelsson, had taken their coats off, though only Mickelsson’s shirt was pasted to his back. Moths bumped against the lamp on the table, occasionally striking the metal shade, softly ringing it. He could feel around him, stretching out infinitely in all directions, the government’s silent watchfulness.

Once, between stacks of photostats, the man drew out an envelope, took the folded paper from it, and placed both the paper and the envelope on the table in front of Mickelsson. “You don’t need to sign this now,” he said. “Talk to your lawyer, if you like.” Mickelsson saw, just glancing at it, that it was some kind of medical disclaimer. They knew about his bouts with mental illness. He was hardly surprised. He nodded, put the paper back in the envelope, and laid it to the right of his workspace.

“You think of everything,” he said, and smiled.

The man said nothing.

Was it possible that they had wives and children, troubles of their own? He bent over the stack of photostats the man had placed in front of him. “Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure,” he said, “business, I think. Pleasure. Business.”

All Binghamton was asleep, all but the moths, Mickelsson, and the United States government.

“Would you care for a beer?” he asked.

“No thanks.”

“Coffee?”

“No thanks.”

Once the man asked, “Is your son still financially dependent on you?”

“I’m not sure, legally,” Mickelsson said. “I still send him money.”

“He’s engaged in anti-nuclear activities. Is that right?”

“He’s a student,” Mickelsson said, blushing, his muscles subtly tensing. “As for his politics—”

The man said nothing.

“What do you mean? What are you implying?”

The man studied his notes. His right hand moved to the upper corner of the page, closed on it, and turned it. “The question’s routine,” he said. “We’re not interested in his politics.” The statement was so flat, so mechanical, that Mickelsson, despite his better judgment, was inclined to believe it. The man looked at the stack of photostats to be identified.

Mickelsson looked down, unable to read for a moment, then said, “Pleasure. Business. Business.”

In the night outside a siren went off, police this time. He thought of the black dog.

The leaves outside his windows were stirring. Rain coming on. He got an image, sharp as an image in a dream, of rain and wind whipping the trees in the yard of the Bauer place—or rather, Sprague place.

“Pleasure,” he said. Mechanically, the man noted it.

He looked at the next of the photostats.

“Pleasure,” he said.

4

Though he would not entirely deny the possibility of the existence of ghosts, or of anything else in this crazy universe, he was skeptical, to say the least; or, to put it more precisely, while he was not quite willing to deny absolutely that Swedenborg or William James’ cousin, or Mickelsson’s own grandfather, might now and then have communicated with “the other side,” or even that certain living psychics, much studied of late, might indeed, as they claimed, get occasional help in their work from spirits, he could not help dismissing as country foolishness the idea that the Bauer place—Sprague place—was haunted. If he felt uneasy, it was not about the ghosts but about the people who’d sold him the house without mentioning—that is, without giving more than delicate hints of—its local reputation. In a sense, of course, there was no reason they should have. If they considered the whole thing superstitious nonsense, as well they might—if none of them actually believed the place haunted—then perhaps it had simply slipped their minds. A man of sense would let it go at that. It was a mark of his paranoia that, despite what he knew to be the sensible course, he felt uneasy.

He could see no evidence, carefully thinking back, of any special eagerness to be rid of the house on Dr. Bauer’s part, much less on Tim’s. It was true that she’d come down considerably in price, but in all likelihood only for the reason she’d given, that she had to get away soon to Florida. (On the other hand, neither had she seemed at all reluctant to see a house so magnificent go cheaply.) Perhaps—abstracted and gloomy as he was, and eager to get the place—he hadn’t been watching very closely.

He’d been rather more depressed than usual, he remembered, the only time he’d really talked to the woman, when he’d gone up to the house to get the keys. The idea that had at first seemed just a madcap notion—a possibility to toy with at cocktail parties or when his apartment got him down—had changed, the minute he was granted that loan, to a sober, dangerous commitment: he’d agreed to buy the thing; now he must pay for it, actually move out to it, cough up money to movers, deal with upkeep and repairs. Sometimes when he thought seriously about his financial situation, his hands became so weak he could hardly keep his grip on a pencil. The words Out of control would flash into his mind. Out of control! But then he would tighten his jaw, rein in. All the universe was out of control, or at least showed no signs of the kind of control his grandfather’s dry, stern sermons on works and grace had read into it, the underlying order Mickelsson had taken for granted all those years, even