Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner Page B

If so, rattlesnakes were better than twisters: they were always there, steady-hearted, dependable; unlike wind, they had a certain dim intelligence or, to be precise, had almost no intelligence but were nonetheless alive: struck out from their cover of lacy ferns with murderous volition and no thought of the future. This much was sure: the snakes, like the hexes on the barns, were “something.” The fact of their existence, their indifferently deadly otherness, brought on a shudder of consciousness, a spasm of sharp awareness that one was alive. (Fancy talk; he’d readily admit it. Nevertheless, he was pleased that there were rattlesnakes.)
    The doctor had turned just after he did to look out across the valley. She stood for a moment, her arms still folded, as if lost in thought, basking in the view—gazing at the railroad far in the distance, the famous stone viaduct built, according to the sign he’d seen beside the road, in 1847—then bent her head as if making some decision, and started down the path. She sang out, not turning, “The first time I saw one, I thought I’d have a stroke!” As she said it, she made a gesture with her right hand: fist clenched, knuckles forward, she moved her arm out slowly to the right of her, so exactly like a snake that his heart skipped.
    â€œScary things,” he said, probably too softly for her to hear. Mickelsson drew his pipe out and patted his pockets for matches, then, finding none—he’d left them, along with his hat, in the car—followed her carefully down the slippery shale path, trying to think what more he ought to ask her. Nothing came to him.
    Back in the house, the doctor had walked with him again from room to room, most of them as bare as the insides of empty wooden boxes—she’d used only a little of the house—the doctor taking long, light strides, pointing out once more what wonderful views he had from every window, not another house in sight. He imagined her sweeping through the hospital corridors, coming like sunlight into her patients’ rooms, chattering with them of their children while she clamped on the blood-pressure cuff or took a pulse, exclaiming “My! Oh my!” as she’d done with the big-breasted woman in the lawyer’s office. No wonder she was liked. Such pleasure in life! It was a great mystery, these powerful, inhumanly vital spirits. In her presence he felt weak.
    As they travelled through the rooms she mentioned trivial faults and problems that had slipped her mind when he’d come to look at the house the first time, with Tim. The bedrooms upstairs had no heat except what came up through the registers, it would be best to leave the doors open to pick up what came up the stairs; the livingroom floor was buckled from the moisture of the spring under the house; in the kitchen and one bedroom at the back of the house small fires—defective space-heaters, from the looks—had left smoke damage, a sort of mouldy rottenness. That reminded her that the wiring in the room he would use as his study (as he’d decided at once; it looked out on roses and a birdbath) was a farmer’s cobble, in the long run probably not safe. She shook her head sadly and laughed. Mickelsson nodded, troubled but at the same time amused by her belated concern.
    When the keys were in his pocket and he was ready to leave, she had stood for a moment at the hexigrammed door that opened from the kitchen onto the livingroom, a long room grubbily panelled, carpeted in drab mustard yellow, like the lobby of a seedy motel (he would change that with wallpaper and a hardwood floor), and she’d gazed, expressionless, at some point beyond the far wall of the room, presumably trying to think what more she ought to warn him of. She was faintly smiling.
    â€œWell, thanks very much,” he’d said. “Good luck to you in Florida.”
    She hadn’t seemed to hear, so he’d cleared