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

“No, that’s—” He faltered. “It’s good that you’re appealing it.” He struggled against guilt. “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”

“Don’t be silly. You know they’ll get away with it. It’s just a formality, proof that ‘we care.’ ”

“Maybe it will work, though.”

“Maybe.”

His feet ached from the cold. He was shivering all over.

After a long moment Jessie said, “You missed your classes again today.”

He thought of telling her all that had happened since he’d seen her last—the fire at the Spragues’, Dr. Bauer’s visit, the insanity of the Reich’s good dog diSapio; but one fact stood out for him above all others—the town’s suspicion that he was a murderer—and he knew it was impossible to say anything at all; to mention any part would be to commit himself to telling all of it. And what that would lead to he hadn’t the strength for. Nor had she, probably. He got a mental image of the two of them struggling to stay afloat, far apart, in a dark, night sea, too weary even to call to one another. The image was not quite accurate, he realized. She, at least, was still making the attempt. But it wouldn’t last. For all its furor—the valiant struggle against death one saw even in Mayflies—the life-force could hold out for only so long. It gave him a kind of serenity, this realization that despair was not all it was cracked up to be, back in the days of archangels and kings, when one drifted from catastrophe to catastrophe on ceremonious barques. Despair was not, as the world had once dreamed, the most terrible and dread of the Seven Deadly Sins. It was simply a part of the natural entropic process.

He felt what seemed the beginning of a change coming over him. If it was a noble thing to see life from the mountaintop, as Collingwood liked to say, there was something to be said, too, for the calm at the bottom of the sea. Jessie, weakened by successive blows, having been nearly destroyed once before, or rather, twice, was going through what he was, though she hadn’t yet reached—this time around—his stage in the process. Like an old man watching his grandchildren crying their hearts out in childhood’s immeasurable, brief sorrow, he felt not anger at the bitterness of life or dismay at his inability to help, but only cool sympathy, a guarded Boethian amusement.

She had asked him something and was waiting for his answer. He remembered at last what it was: “Will you be coming in tomorrow?”

He said, “I’m not sure yet.”

Again she was silent. At last she brought out, “I see.”

“If not tomorrow, then one day soon,” he said. Something not himself added quickly, “We’ll have a drink, take in a movie, maybe drive to New York!”

“Are you getting someone to cover your classes?”

“I should, shouldn’t I,” he said.

That too she seemed to find too queer to deal with. After a time she said—one last cry across dark waters—“I would like to see you, really.”

“We’ll get together.”

“I keep pacing and pacing, sort of yelling and yelling inside my head. I think the strangest thoughts.”

He thought of Finney’s idea—nobody out there, nobody, nowhere, nothin.

“Keep the chin up,” he said.

When the conversation finally ended, or withered to stillness, a perfunctory good-bye, he knew that the next time the phone rang, he wouldn’t answer. He went back to stand beside the bed, reasoning with himself. He should at least call the oil company, try whining and cajoling; otherwise the pipes would freeze. And anyway, it was a bad business—theoretically at least—letting himself give up. He should eat, drink a cup of coffee. As his body got going, his spirits would revive. (Well, something like that. Descartes was behind every tree.) He should listen to the radio, start up a fire in the stove, maybe go down in the basement and make something—more picture frames, why not?—or the rolltop desk he’d been meaning to make for his daughter. But already he was leaning down over the bed, already half dreaming, drawing the covers back, preparing to crawl in.

Behind him, the phone rang again. Mickelsson looked down at his gray, loose stomach—how long had it been since he’d touched the weights?—and tried to decide what to do. The stomach was slimmed down by his forgetting to eat, but lifeless, toneless. The hairs running down toward the genitals were silver. He thought of how when he was drunk he liked to tell young women of his years as an athlete.

He climbed into bed, rolled onto his back, and pulled the covers up tight around his chin. The phone at length stopped ringing. He thought of how Jessica had said, when they made love, “Wow! Wow!” Poor creaturel Poor race! He smiled, vanquished. In his mind he saw the viaduct, the color of wheat in the late-afternoon sun, arch after arch crossing the river against dark blue mountains. It was a splendid creation, each stone hand-cut, hand-fitted, built when the river could still remember Indian canoes and drum music, and the people of the thriving town of Susquehanna looked forward to a time of even greater prosperity—the dazzling white restaurant rising above the depot; mansions precariously raised on the steep, dark hillside, reflected in the water; and up on the crest of the hill the red brick church, spire gleaming like a sword.

God damn the government, he prayed. Destroyers of railroads, thieves and liars in cahoots with the brainless, heartless bankers, oil men, nuke men, auto men, men of the Pentagon; freezers of patents for wind, solar, geothermal, and the rest; poisoners of the earth, poisoners of people’s minds … But the curse trailed off, he’d lost interest. There seemed to be no stopping them, and nowadays, thanks to their computers, not much chance of avoiding their sweeping, witless eye. Voice of the people. That was a comfort. It was the people, all America, all the world, that were insane.

When he closed his eyes