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

“He was something,” Donnie said, “though I guess it’s not something you should laugh abowt.” She laughed, then made her face drunkenly stern.

“I think they said he came owt from Sunny,” Tim said. “Course he didn’t live here. Whole different situation, and he wasn’t in philahsaphy either, I don’t think. Psychology, was it?” He looked at Donnie. She didn’t know.

Tim grinned and shrugged. “So you haven’t seen the ghosts yet,” he said then. “I guess I’m naht real surprised, to tell the truth.” He raised his beer and swallowed a swig of it, then set it down and glanced around the room, wiping his mouth with his hand. “I guess the thing is, a town like this, crazy stories are abowt all there is to keep things lively. You wonder if there’s any truth to any of it.”

Mickelsson nodded, agreeable, then raised his eyebrows and asked, “Any of what?” Tim apparently didn’t catch it.

Donnie’s foot—she’d taken off her shoe—came to Mickelsson’s. At first he thought it was an accident, but the foot remained, and then after a moment her toes came up to touch his ankle. He glanced at her. One would swear the foot and the girlish, wet-mouthed face were unconnected. It was a pretty face, he began to think. Small, dimpled chin; light brown, myopic-looking eyes. The blond of her hair was unconvincing, but the dark lashes weren’t exactly convincing either.

“What a weird idea,” she said, “living in a house with ghosts in it!” She laughed. Her foot came back to the toe of his shoe and pressed several times, rhythmical.

Mickelsson nodded, for some reason not sure even now what she was signalling. He knew, of course, but his mind kept going over it, rechecking. He found he couldn’t remember at all what they’d been talking about. Someone bumped his shoulder, pushing past him toward the bar, and leaned over to shout in his ear, “Excuse me!” Mickelsson glanced up and nodded, then raised his glass and drank. The man moved on. His gray underpants showed above his trousers, outside his tucked-in shirt.

“Warren, that was his name,” Tim said.

Now Mickelsson remembered what they’d been saying. “You happen to recall his last name?”

“I think maybe that was his last name. I only saw him once or twice, myself. I remember people said he was very interested in the stories about your house.” He smiled.

“I guess that’s not so strange, necessarily. Any particular stories?”

“Oh, well, you know,” Tim said. He shrugged again, then after a moment’s thought took the stainless-steel ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket to play with it. “Man with a lot of questions, everybody said. That’s all I know. I guess he thought he was being pretty canny, and I guess maybe people had him on a little. They’ll do that, place like this. At the time they were still smahrting from the things that feller Skinner said—B. F. Skinner. He grew up here. Put all the local dirt in his autobiography—whorehouses all up and down Main Street, things like that. Fahr as I can say, it was mostly true, but you know how it is. Things look different when somebody writes ’em owt on paper.”

“So what happened to the man?” Mickelsson asked.

“Warren, you mean?” Tim asked. “Or Skinner?”

“I don’t think we should talk about it,” Donnie said. She was rhythmically pressing on Mickelsson’s shoe again, smiling and meeting his eyes.

Mickelsson looked thoughtfully from one to the other of them, trying to make out whether or not he too was being teased. He could no more tell than with old Pearson.

“I meant Warren,” Mickelsson said.

Tim shrugged, pursing his lips, then raised his beer and finished it.

“Really, I don’t think we should talk about it,” ‘Donnie said. She smiled and glanced past her shoulder.

Tim made his hand into a gun and pretended to shoot himself in the head.

“He shot himself?” Mickelsson asked, leaning forward.

“Well, not exactly.”

“Someone else, you mean—?” He smiled, covering himself, in case it were all just a joke on him.

“That’s about it. Of course nobody’s saying there was a connection. But you know how people talk.” Tim gave his head a little jerk and smiled, apologetic. “I don’t know how I got off on that. You’re nothing like him, and the whole thing’s just silly anyway. It happened up in Binghamton, the murder, I mean, and the man had never been down here more than three or four times.”

“More than that,” Donnie said.

“Well, six, maybe.”

“Now you’re getting closer, anyway,” she said.

Mickelsson drained off his Scotch and held the glass up to look at it, still brooding on whether or not they were having him on. Maybe they thought if you told a man his house was haunted, then filled his head with vague, scary stories … He thought again, as he’d been thinking off and on for a week, of that brief, violent nightmare, if nightmare it was. Was it possible that they’d somehow planted that in his mind too? Strange sense of humor!

“Jeez,” Donnie said, looking at her little gold wristwatch, “I’ve gotta go! Prafessor, you wanna walk me home?”

“If you like,” Mickelsson said after a moment’s hesitation, looking at Tim.

The boy was still playing with the pen, popping the point in and out.

“OK, Tim?” Donnie asked.

“Sure,” he said, and grinned. “Catch you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” she said, and kissed the air in his direction.

As soon as they were outside the door, Mickelsson asked, “Maybe you’d like to come up to my place. Have a little nightcap?”

“Are you kidding?” she asked, and smiled, then took his hand.

He glanced at the Jeep, the troll-doll dark and still behind the windshield, as if hanged, and decided to walk.

She lived in an apartment on the fourth floor of an old brick building overlooking Main Street and the river. The first floor was Reddon’s Drugs; the rest of the building consisted of apartments no doubt much like Donnie’s, approached by the darkest stairway in the world, a long row of battered metal mailboxes on the first-floor entryway, then nothing but