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

seem to watch over people. You do bad spells on the trucks, good spells for people like me, apparently—plus a little engineering. …”

“Hay, Prafessor,” Tim said, mock-surprised, “what’s got into you? Hay, look at me! No pointy hat, no broom—”

Lily Lepatofsky’s bright sparrow-eyes were on Mickelsson’s face now. It seemed that possibly she too was a witch, and her father. How else would they have known to call Tim?

Then her father was at the door. “Somebody from the I.R.S. calling you,” he said. “Office down in Scranton.” He shook his head, pushing his jaw out and smiling uncertainly. “When I told him what happened here, he went right out of his gourd. Talked a whole lot about the willful destruction of government property.” He grinned but rolled his eyes from one of them to the other, hoping for explanation.

“Weird!” Tim said, grinning happily. So he knew about that too. No doubt heard it from his friend the banker.

At last Lepatofsky reached for his daughter’s hand. “We better go, honey,” he said.

She nodded solemnly, gave her shoulders a queer little shake, patted Mickelsson’s foot, then took her father’s hand and rose.

“Thanks. Thanks to both of you,” Mickelsson said. “I’m sorry.”

“Hay, ‘sorry’!” Lepatofsky said, and waved. Then they were gone.

He was spacy, almost weightless—whether because of something Tim had given him or Dr. Benton’s pills or as an after-effect of the adrenaline he’d pumped, he couldn’t tell. “Bed-rest,” Dr. Benton had said. Mickelsson had not consciously disobeyed, but he found himself standing at the phone in the kitchen, freeing his right hand from the gauze and tape, then dialing Jessie. If he were clear-headed, he would realize later, he might not have called her.

“Pete?” she asked groggily. He’d apparently wakened her again from sleep.

Slowly, having a little trouble with his tongue, he told her what had happened. He did not mention that he’d perhaps had a light stroke and ought to be on his back, but she knew something was wrong. She said nothing about Lawler, nothing about the tearing apart of his house; said only: “You sound strange. Are you drugged?” Her voice was reserved.

“I don’t think so.” He remembered now the reason for her reserve and thought of saying no more. But he heard himself continuing, “Tim did something—maybe gave me something. It sounds stupid, and he denies it, but I guess he thinks he’s a witch.”

“It’s not that surprising,” she said, musing. “We always think romantically when we hear the word witch. But why shouldn’t they be ordinary people—nice people, even? Interesting, though. Tim went to college—didn’t you tell me that?”

“I think he once mentioned it. I guess I may have told you.”

“And he was a paramedic in Vietnam, wasn’t he?” She laughed. “I wonder what they thought when he put on the tourniquet and then did some backwards-Latin spell!”

Mickelsson smiled.

“I should come out,” she said suddenly. “I have a feeling it’s not solved yet. This whole witchcraft business—”

“No, don’t!” he said quickly. Then, to soften it: “Please.”

She was silent.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll talk about it.”

There was a long pause.

“Are you all right, Pete?”

“I’m fine.”

“I ask that a lot, don’t I.”

“I provoke it.”

“Well, if you need me—” She was quiet for a moment.

Paramedic, he thought. Half scientist, half witch. A little engineering.

“I’ll call,” he said. He added, hastily, before he could think better of it, “I have some … terrible things to confess.”

“Who doesn’t?” she said irritably.

He said nothing, his mind snagged on the oddity of their having been able to say such things; the strange assumption—or faith, rather—that even quite terrible evils, betrayals, mistakes might be forgiven. Then his mind wandered. He was seeing the holes cut into the moleboards from the inside, rat or insect work. Maybe.

“You said Tim ‘did’ something, or ‘gave you’ something. What was wrong?”

“I’m fine,” he said as heartily as he could. “I have to go now. You’ve helped a lot.”

After he’d hung up, he made his way, like an old man, down the cellar steps, his left shoulder bumping against the damp, discolored wall. He found what he was looking for almost at once. In a mould spot in one of the cellar beams someone had gouged out a small patch, maybe two inches long, one inch deep. The notch was recent.

He found himself parking the Jeep outside the Montrose jail—it was late, very dark, especially dark in the parking lot in the shadow of the large brick building with its black iron bars. Though he had no memory of driving here, he remembered why he’d come.

The young, blond beast at the desk seemed to know who he was and raised no objection to his going in to talk with Lawler. The officer went into the cellblock with him and stayed, beautifying his nails with silver nail-clippers. The cells were empty except for one man sleeping off a drunk—a fat, bearded man in a lumberjack shirt—and Lawler himself, who sat motionless on his pallet like a satiated spider, still in his dusty suit but wearing no belt or tie, no spectacles. “They think I might try to commit suicide,” Lawler said, emotionless. His cheeks showed that he’d been crying. He gazed with distaste at the guard, then back up at the ceiling.

There was a light over Mickelsson’s head, another beyond the last of the cells, so that the whole area was marked by the shadows or bars, part of the area crisscrossed like graph-paper. The bars were of gleaming steel, the concrete and stone walls glossy battleship-gray, the color of the walls in the locker-room of Mickelsson’s college-football days. Lawler sat with his chin raised, maculate fat hanging down toward his open collar. He wore an offended, long-suffering look.

Mickelsson folded his sore, still-bandaged hands, closed his eyes, fighting down revulsion, and said, “Those bruises on your neck, they’re from my fingers. Sorry I gave out, old man. Maybe another time.”

Lawler shook his head, just an inch to the left, an inch to the right, and chose not to speak. Even here, for