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

Thomas smiled and shook his head. He seemed prepared to draw away, as if afraid he was imposing, but for the moment, tentatively, he remained where he stood. Mickelsson couldn’t help but think it was because the man felt friendly toward him. If so, it was mutual. Even at the university—perhaps especially at the university—there was no man Mickelsson felt more comfortable passing the time with. He said, glancing back at the rack of tools, “I oughtta buy everything you’ve got here. I haven’t got a thing, up on the hill. Been living in apartments.”

“That’s one thing about houses,” Thomas said, “there’s always something needs fixing.”

On impulse, furtively, as if Ellen might walk in on him, Mickelsson took a screw-driver from the rack, then a pair of pliers, then a wreckingbar. Frowning, making a difficult decision, he studied the handsaws. Thomas reached up and drew one from its hook, wiped a speck of dust from it with the tip of his finger, and held it toward him, handle first. “If you’re not a real full-time carpenter …” he said, and let his words trail off.

For the next twenty minutes, increasingly pleased with himself, though increasingly anxious as well, Mickelsson—with Thomas giving advice when he needed it—chose tools. When they took them, together, to the register and added them up—skill-saw, sabre-saw, electric drill, hammer, wrenches, dust-mask and goggles, level … more tools of various sorts and sizes than Mickelsson had ever owned before—he found, not really to his surprise, that he’d spent two hundred dollars. He had half a mind to have Thomas throw in an electric belt-sander, but he decided he could wait. It even crossed his mind, as he stood idly waiting, his hand resting on the wallpaper books, that maybe he ought to get a rifle. Why not? His father had taken him hunting as a boy; the memory rose in his mind with wonderful vividness—creeks, trees, sunlight, squirrels scampering along high, leafy branches, the sky bright blue, like the ceiling at his parents’ church. He’d never been hunting since. Ellen had hated guns. Her irrational fear of them had gotten under his skin, her weird conviction—only now did he fully realize how weird it was—that Mickelsson was a man too dark-spirited and moody to be safe with a rifle in the house. He shook his head. Odd what a man could take for reasonable and natural, if the poison was slipped in subtly enough, over a long enough period of time. Nevertheless, he would not buy the rifle, handsome as it was with its blue-black barrel and gleaming, machine-carved stock. He had far too much to do to be thinking of hunting. He got out his checkbook and took a ballpoint pen from beside the cash-register. Strange to say, though he’d been trying to live dirt-cheap these last months, skimping even on groceries to justify having bought the Sprague place and sending all he could to Ellen, whose expenses seemed greater than ever these days, Mickelsson, parting with two hundred dollars (Thomas had rounded off the bill), felt jubilant.

As he made out the check he said, “Owen, I meant to ask you. What would I do about getting a well drilled?”

“You got water problems?” Thomas asked. His right hand paused a moment, then went on helping the left put Mickelsson’s purchases in paper bags, then fit the bags into two large cardboard boxes.

“Not yet,” Mickelsson said, “but I expect them.”

“I guess first you need a dowser,” Thomas said. He straightened up, looking around the store for something.

“That how they do it?” Mickelsson said.

“Around here they do. You know John Pearson? I thought he was in here, a minute ago.” He leaned to his left, trying to see past counters to the rear of the store.

“He’s a neighbor of mine,” Mickelsson said.

“He’s supposed to be the best. I don’t know, myself.”

Mickelsson reflected. At last, slightly smiling, he said, “He dropped by, not long ago. Wanted to sell me firewood. Mentioned something about the house being haunted.”

Owen Thomas looked at him, then decided to smile, looking away. “They say a lot of things, up there in the mountains. No TV reception.”

They both laughed, then stopped. John Pearson had stepped from behind a counter near the back and stood with his tufted chin raised, trying to see them with those bad eyes of his, trying to separate their shapes from the glare of the windows.

“There he is,” Thomas said, and returned to his packing.

Mickelsson hesitated, then moved down the aisle toward his neighbor. “Hello, there,” he said.

Pearson studied him, at last recognized him, and nodded. He stood even now with his chin slightly lifted, whether from near-sightedness or from some mood that was on him, Mickelsson couldn’t tell. In his square right hand Pearson held, clamped between his thumb and first two fingers, a length of black stovepipe.

“I understand you’re a dowser,” Mickelsson said.

“Use to be.” Pearson jerked back one side of his mouth for a grin.

“You don’t do it anymore?”

“I might. Can’t tell.”

They studied each other. The back of Mickelsson’s neck tingled. He forced a grin and said, “I’m not sure I follow.”

He would wonder later if the old man hadn’t waited longer than he needed to, as if enjoying Mickelsson’s discomfort, before saying, “Sometimes it works, sometimes it don’t. You never know, these mountains.”

“Yes, I see,” Mickelsson said. He felt himself breathing again and was once more conscious of the bright, pleasant store around him, clean coils of rope, red wheelbarrows, hickory-handled hoes and garden-forks. Pearson’s boots were lumpy, permanently wrinkled; in his rolled-up cuffs there was sawdust. “I’ll tell you why I ask,” Mickelsson said. “I’ve been thinking of having a well drilled, if I can—if there’s reason to think I’ll hit water.”

Again Pearson cocked back one side of his mouth. It was probably accidental that the grin looked scornful.

“I thought maybe if you could drop by with your dowsing