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

makes you see things a whole different way. Like a cheval is a completely different thing from a horse, but it is a horse, and so the next time you look at a horse you see more.”

“Leslie,” he said, “it’s long past your bedtime.”

She smiled and closed her eyes. “Je t’aime, Papa,” she said.

He’d arrived at his house now. He pulled over to his mailbox, praying that there would be no mail.

He must start writing something, he thought, walking up to the house. Its shadow fell over him. Something worth real money, this time. Such things were possible, not even prostitution. The world stood more in need of philosophy than it believed. Just get the world’s attention, that was the trick—a mighty, zinging style (he was capable of that), an initial focus on matters of common, maybe prurient interest. He would be mocked, of course; he was mocked already. But there was much that could be said, starting with such subjects as rape, the modern return to witchcraft, the grotesque tendency he saw in his students to be willing to believe in anything, from the Great Green Soup Cure to saintly levitation—or believe in anything but the fundamental goodness of life. (He was conscious of standing back from himself, watching and listening to himself. The self he watched and listened to was florid, heavy. It gestured in angry jerks. His grandfather, influenced by Luther, would call the thing a devil. Mickelsson was powerless.) It could be done, he thought. There was hope. There was always hope! He would get out of all this—nothing to fear but fear itself, et cetera. He would start at once, begin the first chapter this very evening.

He (they) began to pace. Unconsciously, he’d set down the mail on the kitchen counter, one or two envelopes spilling onto the floor. Bills.

The next morning he was at Thomas’s again, getting wallpaper rolls, paste, and brushes. He would start immediately, he thought, but then for no reason changed his mind and carried the whole caboodle down to the cellar to store till the proper mood was on him. “First a little writing,” he said aloud. Little control here. Everything in order.

He’d meant only to stop in for a six-pack, to help him with his writing—he was naturally rusty, after all this time—but the bar had trapped him. It was more like a London pub than anything he’d ever before seen in America—no etched glass, no fine woodwork, no ornamentation but the off-and-on Schlitz and Genesee signs—but the sounds and feeling were much the same, despite the blare of country music on the jukebox: the aqueous roar of talk, both adults and children, the occasional yap of a dog, the thick haze of smoke like heavy silt. The woman at the bar called him “sweetie,” sliding him his Scotch and telling him the price, which was surprisingly low. After he’d paid, he moved carefully into the darkness of tables, each table covered with a red and white oilcloth and furnished with a dark, stamped-tin ashtray. The place was packed—farmers, stubbly working people, women with blackness in their eyes and mouths, fat female arms and thighs white as flour—and he’d almost adjusted to standing up, leaning on the dark back wall, when someone waved to him, shouting something—in all that ruckus he had no idea what it was the man shouted—and he made his way, pushing past the sea-sunken clutter of chairs, to where the man was making space for him. The man, young, wearing a blue workshirt, stood up and reached across toward him with a tanned, muscular arm. “Hay, Prafessor!” he shouted—the words just barely came through—”so you’ve fownd the waterhole!” Mickelsson realized at last that it was the real-estate salesman Tim.

“Say, Tim!” Mickelsson shouted back. “Small world!” He looked at the woman beside him. Blond, big-bosomed, slightly drunk. She seemed young to be drinking; only a little past his daughter’s age. He tried to think of Tim’s last name but couldn’t. “Is this the wife?” he asked.

“Naw,” Tim said, laughing with boyish pleasure and shifting his handshake to a power-to-the-people shake. “This is Donnie. She’s my cousin.”

“One of his many, many cousins,” Donnie said, and held her soft, plump hand up to Mickelsson. Mickelsson let go of Tim’s hand to take Donnie’s. She said, “You’re the one that bought the ghost house?”

“That’s it. I’m the one,” Mickelsson said. He drew back the chair across from them—the tables were so crowded he could draw it back only a few inches—then wedged himself into it. He raised his glass in wordless salute, then took a sip.

“Any trouble yet?” Donnie asked, leaning toward him and eagerly smiling. Her dress was a light flowerprint, almost transparent, wide open at the throat and plunging; no bra. Her white cleft instantly aroused him. He thought guiltily of Jessica Stark. The girl’s face, in spite of the slight look of drunkenness, was as innocent and open as a child’s. Compared to Jessica, she was as common as a kitchen sink.

“Not yet,” he said, and shook his head as if in disappointment.

“I can see you’ve settled in,” Tim said, as if proud to have been a part of it.

“You’re really not at all like that other one,” Donnie said, and with slow strokes patted his arm, approving.

It was because of the way she laughed, he’d realize later—and the way she looked at him—that he didn’t quite notice what she’d said. He imagined her white, undersea-soft body in his bed and in some way understood that it might not be impossible to arrange.

Something bumped his feet and Mickelsson leaned over to look under the table and see what it was. A child was crawling past them, a fat, very dirty little girl. She smiled at him, then crawled on.

“Boy, talk about weirdos!” Tim said, and laughed. “I guess you didn’t know him?”

“Know him?” Mickelsson asked. Because of the noise—the general talk and a sudden peal of laughter two tables away—he had to ask it again: “Know