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

on the bench by the traffic light, more poisons coming in, more ruined farmland, more sickness. …” He half turned and for a moment met Mickelsson’s eyes. “We just all gotta be careful, I guess, keep things in perspective, watch out for each other … and watch each other. …” He turned back to the window and tipped his head back, draining the glass.

“So that’s why I go ‘free,’ ” Mickelsson said.

“You go free,” Tinklepaugh said evenly, “because it has not yet come to my attention that you’ve committed any crime.” Now at last, his left hand on the windowsill to steady him, he turned all the way around to face Mickelsson. “And if I were you,” he said, “I would see that no crime does come to my attention. I get crazy sometimes when I think about having to do paperwork.”

“I’ll think about that,” Mickelsson said.

“Yes, do.”

Mickelsson rose from his chair, each movement careful. “Does this mean,” he asked, “I’m supposed to stay up there in that house?”

Tinklepaugh raised both hands and his eyebrows. “Live anywhere you like,” he said. “I wouldn’t be too quick to get rid of the place, though. Poisoned springs can be sealed off—I imagine your neighbors would be glad to pitch in. And they’d probably help lay in pipe from somewhere else. It’s not quite the case that the whole county’s done for. You mention industrial waste, radiation; people lose all perspective. It’s the media. With a little work, little cooperation …” He glanced at the file-cabinet. “Care for that drink now?”

Mickelsson weighed the matter carefully. “No,” he said at last. “But thanks.”

He slept for hours. For the most part it must have been a sleep like death, but he remembered it as one filled with nightmare shapes moving slowly in and out of his consciousness like fish. An effect, perhaps, of the pills Dr. Benton had left with him. He dreamed repeatedly of the huge black dog—possibly it figured in every one of the dreams, moving about at the periphery. Once he dreamed that, lying wide awake, he heard the dog coming up the stairs, grunting with age or discomfort, heard it come toward the door and then through it, perhaps invisible, perhaps exactly the color of the darkness, then felt the bed move as the dog got up into it, for a long time standing over Mickelsson, then settling heavily beside him, lowering its head onto his back. As Mickelsson slept it occurred to him that perhaps this was a dream, and he struggled to awaken but could not. The dog was immense, the size of a small horse. As he lay beside it, partly under it, Mickelsson reasoned by a chain of argument, which in the dream seemed brilliantly illuminating, that the world seemed to mean things, seemed a “language game,” because dreams meant things by making use of the world. Thinking back to it later, he saw that the idea was old and familiar, and understood that the euphoria he’d felt in the dream must have come from elsewhere, perhaps the revelation that one could live with guilt, that the existentialists were to this extent right: one was free to move on.

In another dream he thought it was morning, and he got up and went downstairs and into the livingroom, and there on the couch he saw his son Mark sleeping, dressed in black, with his face to the back cushions, the room around him in ruins. Mickelsson tiptoed past him—the room was icy cold—and made a fire in the woodstove, then went to find a blanket, which he carried to Mark and gently tucked around him. At the last moment his son turned his head, opening his eyes, and said, “Hi, Dad.” “You’re home!” Mickelsson said, and burst into tears. His son smiled, slightly nodded, then closed his eyes and went back to sleep. Mickelsson was suddenly aware of people in the kitchen, fluttering around softly, like bats. The black dog came through the kitchen door, for some reason crawling on its belly like a trained war-dog. It was definitely the dog, but it was confused in Mickelsson’s mind with Edward Lawler. It stopped, not far from Mickelsson, close enough to reach him at one bound, and drew trembling black lips back from its fangs. Mickelsson stretched his arms wide to protect his son, whose black-clothed body became smaller as he watched, smaller and smaller until it was the size of a baby, the neck and the side of the face red and wrinkled. It was not at all strange. If all time was taking place at once—eternal recurrence, the reason psychics could see the future or the past—then the adult Mark was also the infant Mark and Mark long dead. He was looking down at stiff, gray hair. …

He awakened to a smell of food and lay uneasy in his bed—it was mid-morning, judging by the light—then gradually understood that the food smell was real, there was someone down in his kitchen. His heart ticked lightly, sending out tiny shocks of pain, and when he touched his chest with his hand—the bandage loose now, ready to fall off—he found feeling in his fingers again, the hand so sore he could not fully open it.

Tim’s voice called up the stairs, “You awake, Prafessor?”

He did not answer—simply neglected to, his mind gone elsewhere—and after a moment Tim appeared on the stairs outside the room, coming up with a tray. He seemed to float above the floor. “What are you doing here?” Mickelsson asked.

“Ah, feelin crabby!” Tim said. “That’s a good sign.” He helped Mickelsson sit up with the pillows propped behind him, then sat cross-legged on the floor, chattering while Mickelsson ate. Oatmeal, weak tea, toast. Afterward, he helped Mickelsson to the bathroom, waited outside the door, then helped him back into bed.

“Why do you do this?” Mickelsson asked.

“Boy, that really is a mess down there,” Tim said. “I’ll send a couple of kids, see if they can clean things