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

garb with which he’d meant to stun his Cosima, kingly suitor arriving in tarnished splendor to ask his lady’s hand. He looked down at the cane and the glossy black bear-rug to his right, grand tsarist cloak over the Jeep’s old battered plastic seats, broken springs.

He would sit for just a few seconds longer, looking in.

He became aware of the Jeep’s steady jiggling and the rumbling of the motor, the clouds of oily smoke pouring up from the rear end like special effects from a clown-car in the circus, and partly because of the waste of gas, partly because he was sure to be noticed if he left the thing running, he turned off the engine. The jiggling stopped and an impression of silence leaped up all around him. Only an impression, he realized at once, because now he was aware of the sounds of the party, crisp and clean, comforting as music in the streetlamp-haloed air. He could hear voices and the sound of the stereo no one was listening to—good old Haydn, or else Mozart (he could never get the difference)—and all around him, here outside, another sound, subtle yet surprisingly distinct, once it caught one’s attention: water moving gently in the gutter under his tires, occasional plump drops hitting the Jeep’s tin roof.

Beyond the lighted doorbell and the parted curtains, Jessie’s house was teeming with life. He could see shapes, undoubtedly people he knew, some of them anyway. It was a large party, probably allies. The moving silhouettes in the windows weighed on his heart. Sometimes on summer nights, in the big Wisconsin farmhouse, his mother and father had had parties like that—he could no longer guess what the occasion might have been; maybe family reunions. He and his cousins had looked in from the lawn, eager aliens, at the rooms full of grown-ups who moved back and forth beyond the curtains and drapes, eating and drinking, talking happily, their noise coming out into the huge, star-filled night, both loud and oddly distant, as if lost already in vanishing time. Ah, how he had loved them—those majestic grown-ups of his childhood, farm people gathered from far and wide, some of them not even names to him, but bright with life, luminous-faced Olsens, Johnsons, Ericksons, here and there a Schmidt or a Dupree. How he—and no doubt the cousins around him—had longed to be grown-up like them, making shy little jokes at the pretty young woman with braids wrapped tight as a glove around her head! And ah, how he loved these strangers too—these defenders of Jessie Stark—or potential defenders—against the powers of barbarism! “Sentimental, you may say,” he said to the heavy, breathing darkness around him, and brushed tears from his cheeks, “but perhaps you judge too quickly. These are all we can honestly call our own, these shitty human beings.” Granted, he should love the barbarians too—so reason demanded—since they too were human, and alive; and perhaps he did. However strong his feelings for Jessie, it was all still partly just war-games. Sitting like a stranger, looking in (God’s spy), he could hardly miss how much there was of play in all these antics—here a grand party of anticipated victory or mourned defeat, somewhere else (down in basements in another part of the city, he liked to think) the crazy-bearded Marxists (some of them, he corrected himself) planning further strategy, banging tables with their fists. All his kinsmen, or none.

He became aware of dogs. They seemed to materialize from everywhere at once, at the sides of houses, on porches, or walking—fake casual—across the damp, shiny street. One in particular: a golden Lab bitch—ghostly or living, he could not tell—looking up at him with puzzlement and interest from the sidewalk in front of Jessie’s house. She seemed about to speak.

Very well, he thought, he would expand his view: partisan of the whole world’s mammalian life. Take up Peter Singer’s line: animal liberation. But mammalian life was it, his limit. Well, maybe birds. He sent his thought to the Lab: We understand, don’t we! Happy the snake, eggs indifferently buried in the earth and forsaken!

The night seemed to be building toward a winter thunderstorm.

Time to leave, he thought. The darkness at his back stepped closer. The same instant, he saw Jessie’s face at a window, looking out, luminous as a moon. She seemed not to see the Jeep. Her face was like a heart, a flower. Her eyes bespoke something else. Terrible watchfulness. With a shock, he remembered making love to her.

The dogs sat observing, not barking yet, wondering what this hushed red beast might be up to. He became aware that Lincoln Street was also full of cats, some of them visible at windows or on porches, others not visible, psychically warm places in houses up and down the block. He felt the freezing chill that meant the old woman was right behind him. “Help me,” he whispered, but there was no one to help, and his mind had quit, utterly resourceless.

Then on Jessie’s front porch he saw that someone was standing looking out at him, smoking a cigarette. Where he’d come from so suddenly, Mickelsson couldn’t guess, but he knew the man’s appearance was a gift, a sign. The shape of the man was familiar, though Mickelsson couldn’t place it. He wore no coat. Perhaps he’d stepped out for a minute to escape the noise—yet that seemed not right. He was looking at the Jeep as if he’d seen it from inside and, pleased that Mickelsson had come, had stepped out to offer him greetings.

Again Mickelsson thought in dismay of the great confidence with which he’d dressed in his best and driven here to Jessie’s, imagining a man could simply step into life again as if nothing ever changed. The light of the man’s cigarette brightened, then dimmed. He seemed not to notice the cold at all. He stood very still in the soft, spring-scented breeze. Something touched Mickelsson’s shoulder, making him cry out.

Abruptly, before he