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

He nodded, slightly narrowing his eyes for an instant, seeing the accident in his mind. The image was vivid, as clear and detailed as a memory—an old car, practically an antique but in excellent condition, gleaming in the light of oncoming cars. He watched it move toward the bicycle, closing in fast, the right wheels almost off the road on the shoulder. It hit as if the driver had never seen the bicyclist at all, and then the car slowed, almost stopped, before abruptly taking off.

“Three-oh-nine, did you say?” Mickelsson asked.

She nodded, glancing at her book.

Randy Wilson’s jaw was wired shut and most of his head was bandaged; only his nose, eyes and forehead looked out, as through a windshield. One leg was in traction, and apparently he couldn’t move his hands either, though what was wrong with them Mickelsson couldn’t tell, since they were buried under the covers. The boy showed recognition, possibly pleasure, when Mickelsson came in, but since his mouth was hidden and he couldn’t move his head, it was clear that the conversation was going to be limited.

“How are you feeling?” Mickelsson asked, standing over him, then quickly raised his hand as if to stop the boy from speaking. “Sorry, I know you can’t answer. Well, you’re a lucky young man, I guess!” Again he cursed himself for a fool. For all he knew, the boy was now finished as a dancer, brooding on Nugent’s example, escape by suicide. Mickelsson lifted his eyebrows and smiled, as falsely as he’d smiled before Randy’s friends at the house. He thought of asking, “Is there anything I can get you?” but stopped himself in time. He raised the back of his fist to his forehead, weakly smiling on. There was a television in the corner of the room, up by the ceiling. That was what he could do—pay for television for the time the boy was here. Another bad check. No matter. With luck—

He said, “I just wanted to tell you, I think I know what you’re going through, Randy. Michael was one of the finest students I’ve ever had, and a fine, sensitive person besides. Perhaps if I’d been a better teacher—if there had been something I’d thought of to say that I didn’t say …” He smiled still more fiercely, though weakly, lowering his hand, his eyes rivetted to the bandage covering Randy Wilson’s jaw. “I guess I’d have to say, in retrospect, my moral guard was down. I hate bigots—I want you to believe that—but God knows I am one. Been one since the day I was born, I suspect. I was put off by the boy, just couldn’t wake up to him. I think you know what I mean.” Mickelsson’s glance fled to the wall and he thought about getting out a cigarette, then for Randy’s sake did not. He said almost sharply, with the look of some Klansman making a wisecrack, he realized an instant later—though that was not what he intended, God knew; he intended to come clean, break the pattern: “I mean his homosexuality, that’s the truth of it; and the fact that you—a person of your race—was, were, his lover.” He heard his voice fairly crackle with anger as he said it. Even if Randy Wilson were much older, much wiser, he could not be expected to understand that the anger was directed inward, toward Mickelsson himself. He stretched his smile wider and bent down closer, desperate, searching for control of his voice and features, some means of making clear what he meant. “I was an ass, that’s what I’m saying. I couldn’t see. That’s been my problem all my life. All I could see was myself, my grandiose, stupidly righteous schemata!” He raised his right arm to suggest the empty grandeur of his thought, not to mention his rhetoric, and realized, in horror, that it must look to Randy Wilson as if Mickelsson were about to hit him, helpless as he lay. “I’m trying to say I’m sssorry,” he said, bending down still nearer, tears springing to his eyes. He was so weak in the knees he was afraid he might fall on the bed. “I don’t say I’m the cause of your friend’s suicide,” he said, “but by God I feel I’m to blame for it. So listen: if there’s anything I can do for you, anything at all—”

When he glanced furtively at the boy’s eyes he saw that he’d triggered extreme agitation. Was he trying to say that Mickelsson was not to blame? Was it fear that the eyes expressed? He realized in surprise and embarrassment that the immense brown eyes were filled with tears. Except for the tears, the expression—the little that was visible—might have meant anything. Guiltily, feebly, Mickelsson patted the covers over the boy’s right arm. “I’m blabbering like a fool,” he said. “I want to help if I can, that’s all. Listen now, I’ll drop by again.” Then, after a moment of frustrating, painful silence, “Bear up, son!”

Perhaps it was his unexpected use of the word son; perhaps it was something more secret. Impulsively, though his hands moved slowly, as if in dismay, he took off the expensive chronometer that had once been Mark’s and laid it on the bedside table, a vague atonement for he hardly knew what—maybe only an absurd, empty gesture by the buried child-angel. “Keep this,” he said, again with the weak, mad smile. Fallen out of Time, he thought of saying, but refrained. “I never use it, myself.” With a false laugh, he added, “When they hook up the TV, you may find a watch useful.” Mickelsson couldn’t tell from the tear-filled eyes whether the boy was pleased or troubled by the gift. “Good-night,” Mickelsson said. “Don’t worry, OK? It’ll be all right, take my word for it!” He smiled, patted the boy’s arm again, and left. On the way to the elevator he stopped at the desk and wrote a check to pay for TV in