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

foot. Still she did not look at him. Dr. Benton was talking—“What a thing! Lordy! You’re a lucky man!” Mickelsson did not listen, watching the girl instead. Tears came to his eyes. He remembered the eyelid that wouldn’t quite open and raised one finger to touch it. Neither the eyelid nor the tape-covered finger had any feeling.

“How is he?” he heard Tinklepaugh ask.

“Very well, considering,” Dr. Benton said. “Gahd only knows what Tim did to him.” He chuckled.

“Can he talk?” Tinklepaugh asked.

Dr. Benton glanced at Tim, who smiled, all innocence, and opened his arms in a crucifix shrug.

“You want us out of the room?” Dr. Benton asked.

Tinklepaugh said nothing, merely hunkered down beside Mickelsson and sullenly gazed at him. Mickelsson closed his eyes.

“You able to talk?” Tinklepaugh asked.

Mickelsson waited. The smell of stale whiskey on Tinklepaugh’s breath made Mickelsson breathe through his mouth.

“We’ve arrested your pal Professor Lawler,” Tinklepaugh said. “He’s over in the Montrose jail right now, learning about toilets without seats. We’re holding him for unlawful possession. I assume there’s more—I guess I gaht a pretty good idea what it is, but I’d be glad if you’d tell me what you know.” He waited a moment, breathing heavily. “Take your time. I’ve gaht no place to get to.”

Mickelsson could hear Lepatofsky talking on the phone down in the kitchen.

“Lawler claims—” Mickelsson said, then faltered. He tried to think where to begin, then was filled with confusion, then heard himself talking.

Once in a while as he told his story he opened his right eye; the left still wasn’t working. Tinklepaugh, each time Mickelsson looked at him, seemed bored, but he paid grudging attention, sometimes helping Mickelsson along when he lost his place. Dr. Benton hovered at the door, near Tim, undecided about whether to hear the story to the end or go back to the hospital, where he was supposed to be on duty. At last, sometime while Mickelsson’s eyes were closed, he left. Only Tim seemed really interested in the story. But Tim was interested in everything. Was it possible, Mickelsson wondered—in his befuddlement mixing up the story he was telling and the book he was supposed to be writing—was it possible that the story, for all it had taken out of him and despite the fact, even, that it had almost been the story of his death, was essentially boring? MADMAN BEHAVES BADLY, ACCIDENTALLY THWARTED BY FELLOW MADMAN? He concentrated, trying to find for Tinklepaugh the deeper significance of what had happened. The dog moved back and forth, just beyond the door.

Tinklepaugh’s questions were mechanical; he took no notes. “So you think he murdered this Michael Nugent.”

“I’m certain of it. The boy in the … hospital too.”

“Neither one of them was reported as a possible homicide,” Tinklepaugh said. “It doesn’t seem likely that the one in the hospital had his throat slit.”

“They were homicides,” Mickelsson said weakly. “Check it.”

“Oh, I believe you, all right.” His voice was sullen, full of something like self-pity.

“You think it’s possible he really is a Danite?” Tim asked.

“No chance,” Tinklepaugh said with heavy disgust. He stood up, as if finished and ready to leave, then hooked his thumbs inside his gunbelt and looked at Lily Lepatofsky, who still had her hand resting lightly on Mickelsson’s foot. “You people always want things interesting,” Tinklepaugh growled. “They never are. I know about you.” He glanced at Tim, then away, back at Lily. “You have your secret midnight meetings and you talk your mumbo jumbo, maybe take all your clothes off like a bunch of little kids”—quickly he raised his hand to block protest—“I don’t say I ever saw it; I just figure you people go to movies too. That’s what they do, isn’t it? And then when your power’s up you go stand on some bridge and put black magic curses on the trucks that come sneaking in at midnight with their shit.”

“Me?” Tim said. He got out his pipe, then changed his mind, maybe thinking about Mickelsson’s heart.

“You and all your nuts,” Tinklepaugh said. “You make me sick.”

Mickelsson found himself sitting up on his elbows, though he wouldn’t have thought he had the strength to manage it. “Wait a minute,” he brought out, “did you say it was Tim that fixed me up, not Dr. Benton?” He sank back again, as if pushed, trying in vain to hook the word witchcraft with apple-faced Tim and his motorcycle friends, or Dr. Bauer, Donnie Matthews. …

“First aid,” Tinklepaugh said, emphatic, turning away. “That’s all, just first aid. For a while they had trouble getting hold of anything but a witch-doctor.” Then, without a word, he left. Mickelsson listened to his boots going down the stairs.

“Naht me,” Tim said, raising his hands in sign of innocence. “Tink’s as crazy as everbody else.”

Mickelsson closed his eyes. After a while he said, “Does it work? Those curses on the trucks?”

Tim said nothing for so long that Mickelsson decided he meant not to speak; then Tim said, jokingly, “Naht all by themselves. Sometimes you add just a little engineering, owt at one of those dumps. You’d be supprised what can happen to a truck.”

Mickelsson said, after another long pause, still with his eyes closed, “I take it you know where Donnie Matthews is.”

“She’s fine.”

“I know. I talked to her on the phone.”

“You must be special,” Tim said. “The rest of us she’s cut off.” As if eager to change the subject, he said, “I’ll tell you one thing, it’s lucky old Lawler didn’t work out that dahrn box of keys. I could shoot myself for not grabbing it the minute I figured it owt, when I came here with the doc.”

Mickelsson thought of opening his eyes but lacked the energy. At length he said, “You worked out the fire at Spragues’, then, and the murder?”

Tim said, “Yeah, finally.”

Mickelsson drifted awhile. Then: “It’s a queer religion, witchcraft.” Now he did open his eyes.

“Naht me!” Tim said, but he was resisting less now. He was grinning, possibly flattered, shaking his head.

“You