Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner Page B

innumerable rooms, occasionally a small, discreet apartment, a side-door physician’s office. Sunlight, filtering down through the trees onto the high lawns and green-shuttered houses of Montrose, the rounded, fading red brick of Lake Avenue (Susquehanna’s brick streets were asphalt-patched, shabby and lumpy as the skin of a witch), gave an effect that, in a sentimental fifties movie, would call for a background of angels’ music. Indeed, music something like that might actually be heard there, in summertime at least, since at the far end of Lake Avenue stood the buildings and grounds of the Montrose Bible Conference.
    It was true that Montrose was beautiful; but Mickelsson was unmoved. It was a village of old and dying rich people, superannuated doctors, lawyers, bankers, many of them retired to this place from Philadelphia. Nothing much had changed here in two hundred years, but not because it stood outside time, like the Bauer place (in Mickelsson’s admittedly queer opinion): in Montrose one had the feeling that time had been stubbornly resisted, refused lawful entrance, with the result that, somehow, nothing was secret here, nothing more mysterious than a Baptist’s sweet smile or a banker’s jovial “Good morning.” Nothing to be learned.
    It was odd, a sympathetic observer might say, that the great white houses stirred in him no emotion. If the house he was buying were ever brought back to its former state, it would be much like one of these. Professor Mickelsson smiled, thinking of the warped, peeling shutters of his house, the dangling eaves, the knotty, slanting floors of native chestnut. It made him feel a little like a secret agent, standing here—a tall, stout scholar spy, pipe in hand, hat level now—thinking of his battered old shadow-filled monster in the presence of these proud, white, Christian homes.
    Well, he was glad Montrose existed. He turned, bowing to Lake Avenue, touching his hatbrim, excusing himself, then walked to where his rusted, dented car was parked, down on the sidewalk in front of the lawyer’s office. Charley Snyder, Mr. Cook, and tall, wide-hatted Dr. Bauer all stood looking more or less in Mickelsson’s direction, laughing uproariously—too far away to hear—teetering, hanging on to one another’s elbows. He blushed, then on second thought nodded in their direction and touched his hat. There was no reason to believe they were laughing at him. He climbed into the car, switched on the engine, and covered his nose and mouth with his right hand while with his left he hastily rolled up the window against the foul-smelling cloud that exploded all around him, a great shameless blast of yellow-gray luminous pollution from the Chevy’s rear end.
    Driving back to Binghamton, he noticed for the first time how many slag-heaps there were on the road out of Montrose, how many signs reading FILL WANTED — STONE ONLY , and NO DUMPING!
    When he reached his apartment, late that evening, the first thing he saw was the dark, completely unornamented car parked, more or less in shadow, under the trees across the street. For some reason he did not think about it, merely registered its existence, as he pulled the old Chevy up the driveway to the back of the house. He got out, noisily closed the car-door, and crossed the pitchdark back yard to the door opening onto the stairs up to his apartment. He heard a car-door close, like a belated echo, somewhere in front of the house, and then footsteps. Even now he did not quite understand, though some animal part of him came alert. He climbed the stairs more quickly than usual, hunting in his trouser pocket as he did so for the key to his apartment door. Then he knew there was someone on the stairs below him, and his mind came fully awake. He turned, craned his head around, and saw in the stairwell’s dimness two men in suits. Fear flashed through him, and he imagined himself running up the stairs