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

looking up at Lawler’s lighted window, he understood what a fraud he himself was—understood because once, in graduate school and for a while thereafter, he too had been a true philosopher. Once for him, too, nothing could have touched the joy of thought. And so it had been for Nugent, it struck him. Now at last the young man’s death sank into his understanding. He tightened his grip on the steering-wheel and, bending forward as if in cartoon supplication, looked up at the library tower and the starry night beyond. Even with its lights, the building reminded him of an immense tombstone. At last he remembered himself, raised his heavy, numb arm to the gearshift, and nosed the Jeep toward Campus Drive.

At first no one at the address he’d gotten for Randolph Wilson—Randy, the dancer, Michael Nugent’s friend—would admit to any knowledge of where he’d gone when, as they all insisted, he’d moved. Mickelsson stood in the large, grungy entryway; it was one of those tall houses by the railroad, and all the occupants except for one pale, pregnant girl were black, roughly of college age, fake sleepy-eyed and cautious. They stood blocking the stairway in front of him and the doorway, to his left, beyond which lay a large room with pillows on the floor and dark blue walls. Smells of pot and recently cooked food hung in the air. He stood smiling falsely, eager to show them he was friendly, not dangerous, eyebrows lifted, teeth gleaming—his slightly insane look, he knew, but could find no way to fix it.

A strikingly pretty girl with slanting eyes, black slacks, and a ratty red sweater asked, “What do you want with him?”

“It has to do with his friend Michael Nugent—the student who killed himself,” Mickelsson said, his voice as eager to please as his smile.

As if for no reason, bored with the conversation, the tall young man behind the girl who had spoken—he’d been leaning, on the doorframe looking sullen, maybe grieved—rolled his head away, then followed with his body, fading back into the room.

Mickelsson nodded. “Nugent was a student of mine. The suicide was a terrible shock to me. I thought perhaps if I could talk to Randy, get some idea of, you know—”

“Mooved,” the girl said, shaping the word with care, as if for someone slow-witted.

“And you don’t know—”

“Man,” she said, and cocked her hip, half lowering her eyelids, “for all we know that dude’s in Paris, France.”

Mickelsson slightly scowled, to give her a hint that he wasn’t fooled by her funky act. But he was not in a position to pursue the matter. “And the rest of you?” he asked, glancing around. Except for the pregnant girl, who looked down, half turning away, they met his eyes with what might have been hostility and might have been only a kind of habitual sadness. No one could say where he’d gone.

Mickelsson saw that he was beaten, not that he believed them for a minute. He sighed, thanked them, and went back out to the street, where his Jeep was parked. He started up, wondering what a detective would do in a case like this, and in his thoughtful daze almost missed the furtive wave as he came up to the corner a block from the house. There stood the tall boy who’d left the conversation, leaning against a lamppost as if he’d been there all day, his arm extended toward Mickelsson is if by accident. Mickelsson pulled over and, at once, without a glance left or right, the boy climbed in.

“Maybe you’d drive on?” the boy suggested, smiling widely, and clamped his locked hands between his knees.

Mickelsson studied him an instant, then understood and drove on.

“D’you say your name was Mickelsson?” the young man asked.

Mickelsson nodded.

“You got a license or checkbook or something that says that?”

Again, this time in alarm, Mickelsson glanced at him.

“I don’t mean to be overly suspicious,” the boy said, and went on waiting, smiling.

Mickelsson drew out his billfold and, after an instant’s hesitation, handed it to the boy. He opened it, looked at the license in its plastic window, then closed the billfold and nodded. He handed back the billfold then just sat. The smile was gone now. He sat with his knees far forward, his weight almost on the small of his back, his chin resting on his collarbone. He looked for all the world like one of those blacks one sees waiting forever in big-city police stations.

“I heard of you,” the boy said, looking out the window. “From Nugent. Well, I guess I get out here—up there by the light. Thanks a lot.”

Now wait a minute, Mickelsson thought; but he said nothing, more baffled than ever. It seemed clear that it would be useless to press. He pulled over to the curb and the boy opened the door and dropped one leg out. He paused and said, more to the floor of the Jeep than to Mickelsson, “Try the hospitals.”

“What?” Mickelsson asked. “Wait a minute!” He reached out to catch the boy’s shoulder, but his hand closed on nothing. The door fell shut.

He found Randy Wilson in the second hospital he visited, Binghamton General. At the third-floor desk Mickelsson asked, “What’s he here for, could you tell me?”

“Bicycle accident,” the nurse said. She was middle-aged, graying. Her hair made him think of Jessica. The nurse had once been pretty—was still pretty, but her flesh had that weakened look of late-middle-age, and one could not guess what her color would be without the make-up. “They should wear helmets, but you know kids. He’s lucky to be alive.”

“I take it it’s all right if I visit?”

She nodded. “He won’t be able to talk. Broken jaw.”

Mickelsson nodded, turning to go down to Wilson’s room, moving slowly, like an old man, then on second thought turned back to ask, “Do you know where the accident happened, by any chance?”

“Vestal Parkway, I think,” she said. “We get a lot of them from there. Hit and run of course.