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

hair and beard were snow-white, his hue leaden, and behind the thick bifocals, his eyes, dark blue as a mountain lake deadened by snow-flakes, had that blurred-at-the-edges look of eyes gradually going blind. He stood with his head unnaturally lifted and drawn back, like a watchful ghost. Mickelsson had seen him—it was almost as if he’d been expecting him—the minute he stepped out from under the eaves of the woods above the house: erect, wide-shouldered, angular and unstooped, no fat on him anywhere, though he was not a man with muscles of iron either, Mickelsson had observed as the man drew near. When he reached out to shake Mickelsson’s hand, the old man, John Pearson, held his hand horizontal, palm down, like a country politician. It was a style of handshaking Mickelsson hadn’t seen in years, not since boyhood, and with part of his mind he thought about it as he turned his own hand palm up, as if in submission, to take the old man’s. Pearson had a shotgun on his left arm, and at his side a mongrel dog sat grinning, black and rather small, not a hunter, part collie; that and a few sheep were the only animals he kept anymore, he said. He’d once had cows and a team of horses, but his wife had been poorly, the past two years, and had spent a lot of time at the hospital down in Scranton. (He spoke of it with seeming disapproval, annoyance.) With the dairy it had been hard to get down there to see her, and anyway, these days a herd the size he’d been able to manage, up there among the pines and boulders, had been not worth the keep. He grew a few vegetables, hunted a little, sold firewood—he’d sold to the doctor. Maybe the professor would need some, he suggested, one eyebrow raised. The reason he’d dropped by this morning, he said, was to find out if Mickelsson minded if he shot a few squirrels now and then, up in the wooded stretch between their two properties. “Why, I guess that would be all right,” Mickelsson said. From the way the old man nodded and pulled back his angular mouth for a grin, it was clear that the question had been just a formality; whatever answer Mickelsson had given him, Pearson would have done as he pleased.

Though it seemed they had nothing more to say, the old man went on standing there, looking at Mickelsson as if he, Mickelsson, were the visitor, and the reason for the visit had not yet come clear. Mickelsson waited, impatient to get back inside to his unpacking, resisting the temptation to ask some question or volunteer information about his life and work, as the old man was apparently hoping he’d do. He felt the awkwardness of the silence growing, and though he was nearly as tall as Pearson and a good deal heavier, he felt increasingly like a young man under suspicion, an intruder. Then, abruptly, not from embarrassment, it seemed to Mickelsson, but simply because he’d decided to do so—Pearson turned his head and looked over at the large, sharply gabled farmhouse. “Seen any sign of them ghosts yet?”

It did not seem intended as country humor, much less a cruel reference to Mickelsson’s bouts with illness. Anyway, there was no way the man could know. Pearson’s eyes, swinging back to judge Mickelsson’s reaction, showed no sign of teasing—no sign of anything, not even much interest.

“There are supposed to be ghosts?” Mickelsson asked after an instant.

“That’s what folks say. They never told you that?”

Mickelsson fished his pipe out of his coatpocket and turned to look at the house. Poking tobacco into the bowl, he said, “No, they didn’t mention it.”

The old man nodded, eyebrows drawn outward, ends lifted. Though he did not say so, he seemed of the opinion Mickelsson himself was now privately entertaining, that they’d kept the matter secret for fear that if they let out the truth Mickelsson might not buy. Pearson said, his head tilted like a dangerous bird’s, “Old brother and sister use to live here, years ago. Odd pair. I remember seeing them a time or two, when I was a boy.” He hung his right hand from the bib-strap of his overalls. “Sprague was their name. The brother and sister looked exactly alike, except the man wore a beard and the woman wore long dark dresses. Killed theirselves, or that’s what folks say. Or one killed the other and then was hanged.”

“Anyone know why?” Mickelsson asked. He lit the pipe, for a moment sending out smoke-puffs one after another, like an engine. Pearson looked at the smoke with interest.

At last he said, “I suppose it’s easy enough to speculate.” Though he did not go on to speculate, it was somehow clear what his own idea would be: strange goings-on behind those high, harsh windows—incest, most likely; at any rate something that had made them outcasts, no one to turn to in time of trouble. Mickelsson allowed his mind to toy for an instant with the queer idea that he could see someone standing at the upstairs south-east window. Secretly he knew from the beginning that it was only a reflection of the maple in the yard.

“Well, life has strange twists and turns,” he said.

Pearson glanced at him as if he thought it an odd thing to say. Then, with his tongue in the corner of his mouth, still keeping his opinions to himself, he looked over at the dog. “I guess we better get back,” he said. The dog threw a look at the woods, then up at his master. “Any time you need somethin,” Pearson said, “you just phone me, hay? Number’s in the book. John Pearson. I got a pickup truck, might help you clear all this owt.” He flapped his right arm in the direction of the junk outside Mickelsson’s back door—cardboard boxes and trash from the basement.

“I may take you up on that,” Mickelsson said.

Pearson