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

a nightmare perhaps: he’d thought the cellar would be hip-deep in rattlesnakes. As he moved tread by tread down the cellar stairs, the center of evil seemed to shift to another part of the house. He stood for several minutes, with the fingertips of his right hand spread on the damp stone wall as if waiting for an earth tremor, then moved to the doorway opening to the cellar chute. The padlock was broken. It was here, then, that his visitors had come in; that was why the kitchen door, which had been open when he’d come in that night, had not been broken. All this time, ever since the break-in, the house had, unbeknownst to him, stood open. He would nail the thing shut, but not till he was rid of this sixth-sense certainty that something was amiss. He went back upstairs.

In the middle of the livingroom he stopped walking and looked around in alarm. If it was not fire or snakes in the cellar, it was a violent outpouring of electricity, some fallen power line, something wrong in the TV. … He closed his eyes.

No …

He had thought all this time that it was a force outside himself, invisible, crackling, so powerful it bent him almost double and made all his joints cry out with pain. If he’d believed in spirits he’d have said it was the angry native spirit of this place—the earth god, still smarting over the digging of the cellar or the reservoir higher on the mountain; or the waterfall god, across the road, annoyed by the frequent intrusion of tourists (through the livingroom window Mickelsson could see that there was a car out there now, its smooth dark top gleaming in the sunlight, the driver and his family no doubt out there littering, breaking branches from saplings, lining each other up for pictures against the falls)—but he did not, of course, believe in spirits. The malevolent Shockwaves he felt all around him in the house must come from within.

No wonder. He, Mickelsson, had fled from the world’s complexity to what he’d hoped might be Eden, and he’d found the place polluted, decaying—filled to the tongue-roots with low, slimy secrets: gossips, pompous asses, crudely cunning whores, con-men, idiots, mysterious intruders. He’d taken risks, like the merchant in the parable, who sold all his goods, or like the man who found the treasure on another man’s land, and what he’d gotten for his trouble was neither paradise here nor freedom from his troubles in …

“Shit!” he whispered, and bolted to the window. The car he’d thought belonged to tourists was gone. Dark green, utterly without ornament. No doubt the Pennsylvania contingent of the I.R.S. “Shit!” he whispered more bitterly than before, and hit the wall with the side of his fist, so hard that his hand went numb.

As if it might help, he showered, shaved, trimmed the hair in his nostrils, cleaned his nails, then dressed as if for an English picnic, white sportcoat, blue slacks, blue ascot, white shoes, took the silver-headed cane and went out to the Jeep, ground the starter till it caught, then drove down, square in the middle of the road, to the Susquehanna bank. He hadn’t hit them yet with one of his Binghamton checks. With luck … At the drive-in window he wrote a check for seventy-five dollars, drawn to “cash,” and handed it to the woman. She gave him the money without a moment’s hesitation, and wished him good-day. He drove back onto Main Street and parked in front of Reddon’s Drugs, for all to see.

He knocked and knocked. Finally she called out, “Who is it?”

“Pete Mickelsson,” he said. “I brought your money.”

There was a pause, then she called, “What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty, maybe nine. Donnie, could I come in?”

“Eight-thirty in the morning?”

“I brought your money,” Mickelsson said, leaning closer to the door. “I brought cash—the full amount. Donnie, I’ve really got to talk to you.”

Silence.

He tapped at the door with one knuckle. “Donnie? Can I come in?” When she said nothing, he called, “Are you alone in there?”

Now she did answer, and to his surprise she was only a few feet from the door. Desire leaped in him, stirring in his chest and groin. “I can’t let you in,” she said. “Can you slide the money under the door?”

“Let me talk to you for just one minute. That’s all I want—just to talk to you. No funny business.”

“There’s somebody here,” she said, barely audible.

He thought about it, not quite believing her but trapped. “Can I talk to you later, then? When will you be free?”

“First slide the money under the door.”

He smiled, then got out the bank envelope, removed twenty dollars from it, and slid the rest under the door.

Almost at once she said, “It’s not all here.”

“When can I see you?”

“Jesus,” she whispered. From the way she said it he thought perhaps there was someone in there with her after all.

“Tell me and I’ll slide in the rest,” he said.

“All right, all right,” she said. “How about midnight?”

“You’re kidding.” It struck him immediately that if she was serious he could stay with her till morning.

“No, I mean it.”

He pulled at the twenty-dollar bill, then after an instant bent down and slid it under the door. “OK,” he said, his voice thinned by emotion, “midnight.”

As he turned from the door, still smiling, she called, “Hay, Prafessor, I just remembered something. I have to go visit my sister tonight. She’s in the hospital.”

His mouth opened of its own volition and he turned. At last he said, “Bullshit.”

“It’s the truth,” she said. “Listen, tomorrow night, OK? Midnight tomorrow night. I’ll make it worth your time.”

There was no real doubt that she was laughing at him, both she and whoever it was she had with her, maybe fucking him upright even as they talked; yet, crazily, he wasn’t quite sure. He thought of kicking the door in: it wasn’t pleasant to think that some son of a bitch—he might never