Mickelsson''s Ghosts by John Gardner
It had been, in a way, the mountains, not Mickelsson, that had created the theory. He had long before given up theism, and finding himself writing like some latter-day Christian apologist, making casual, fashionable use of the scientific myth of the moment (the Big Bang, anyway, and evolution-theory), he’d been surprised and amused, though not put off. He’d understood well enough that the God he was talking about could not really be made to jibe with the Christian Jehovah; but it had pleased him, there in the mountains, with the trees full of birds, bears and wolves in their shadow, to talk with childhood’s confidence of God—any God. Later, back in Providence (ironic name!), he could not recapture that feeling and had occasionally ranted about the cowardice of Tillich.
All the same, it was a theory he should have mentioned to Alan Blassenheim, he thought now. It would have been a comfort to the boy’s religiously grounded idealism, nonsense or not. It might have guy-wired the touch of prudery, old-fashioned faithfulness, he was seeing his way past. And anyway, he was not certain that the theory was nonsense, though heaven knew there were arguments against its meaningfulness. It would have satisfied Blassenheim’s wish, even need—like Mickelsson’s and, worst of all, poor Nugent’s—that the universe make sense. It allowed for randomness, the seemingly undeniable fact of our physical experience—the Heisenberg principle, the implications of plasma compression, electrons spinning out in unpredictable directions, so that even if some all-embracing intelligence existed and could know the solutions of all the equations that govern events, no completely accurate prediction of the future would be possible (random electrons, random universe)—yet at the same time it offered not only hope but certainty: the very randomness that made prediction impossible was Nature’s tool for insuring the emergence of life in each expansion cycle, Nature’s guarantee of the approach to perfection and harmony as increasingly complex forms evolved: out of atoms, layering upward, God’s grandeur, answer to the flounder-heart’s need, soft cry to the lutists: “That was nice!”
He imagined Blassenheim asking him, glancing up at him, not quite meeting his eyes—petulant as a child, Adam in the garden, who’s been offered some gift and then seen it, apparently for no reason, withdrawn—“So what’s wrong with the theory?”
“Ah,” Mickelsson said, and feebly moved his arm on the covers, in his mind waving Blassenheim away, “the trouble is the psychics. Time theory.”
“Go on,” Blassenheim said.
“Nobody worries about it, here on the East Coast, but in California they’ve been studying it for years; also other places—England, Russia. … Psychics, the authentic ones, can tell you the future, often the past, sometimes even the distant past. Sharks have some prescience, apparently—in fact there’s some evidence that lower forms have an advantage in these matters. You’ll find proofs of psychic phenomena mountains high, if you care to look. Ask the police who use psychics to find missing children or solve crimes. Never mind that often they can’t do it; notice that occasionally—with great accuracy of detail—they do. A number of scientists are looking into such things these days; mostly physicists. The Stanford out-of-the-body experiments, dream labs, studies of dream predictions like the famous one last year, before the DC-10 crash. If it’s true that psychics can occasionally tell you in advance, in precise detail, what’s going to happen, and if it’s true that once the psychic has seen it there’s no preventing it, no more than one can prevent today the accident one witnessed yesterday, then in a random universe (unpredictable electrons, unpredictable universe) it would seem—tentatively, anyway—there’s only one clear avenue of explanation: the future has already taken place. Maybe part of it, maybe all of it; in any case, the moving bubble of ‘now’ is in some sense—no one knows quite in what sense—an allusion. It’s true, you can make up theories to explain it—hundreds of theories, whatever you’ve got the math for.” He waved again, dismissive. “But a hundred untestable theories are as good as no theory.”
“But that’s what science is for, isn’t it?” Blassenheim asked—or rather, Mickelsson (Mickelsson’s self-fiction) made him ask, forcing himself through a fool’s Socratic dialogue, stacking the deck, the shadowy teacher oonching cards into the shadowy student’s hand: “Make up hypotheses and test them, one after another, the way Edison tested materials for the lightbulb?”
Mickelsson closed his eyes, dropping the game, losing interest. The image he’d been fleeing rose up again, long-legged, beautiful Jessica Stark giving tit on the couch in Tillson’s office, Tillson snuffling like a humping wet rat. Venus and the deformed Vulcan. He clenched his teeth, but lightly, turning his thought away, mine-sweeping waters he knew to be more safe, trying to remember what he’d been thinking just a minute before. It came to him at last: typing, late at night, in his Adirondack camp. Silky-winged moths fluttered drunkenly around him, crawled like soul-weary “new philosophers” on the tabletop, nibbling at his papers and books. Sometimes he’d get up and go out on the porch to listen to the sounds of the night—animals brustling about in the fallen leaves not far away, wind moving softly through diseased beechtrees and pines. Far, far in the distance, on an island in the acidy lake below, he could sometimes make out warm yellow lights. Ah, community, he would sometimes muse. He’d written about that too. Why do we think what we think and not all the other things equally possible, once prejudice is defused? (Why, he thought now, do we choose not to believe in frog falls, blood falls, falls of bricks, cookies in plastic bags?)
He opened his eyes again. The sky outside his window was distinctly lighter. Why was it, he thought—putting the question in a way he had never thought to put it before—that people were increasingly interested, of late, in alternative (so to speak) reality options? Castaneda—Carlos, not Hector—UFO books, quack speculations like The Secret of the Pyramids or The Cosmic Egg. The Western way of thinking had held its own since the pre-Socratics. Could it be because lately the community had expanded—it was possible now to read good, thoughtful books about the Tibetan way of thinking, or the ideas of Peruvian Indians? Perhaps, to take the optimistic view, human beings instinctively widened their horizons, at least in certain situations, to take in views held by strangers. Perhaps, in accord with a principle he’d explored in the one book he was at all well-known for, on medical ethics—the ultimately Platonic idea that justice and reason give advantage in the battle for survival—people were programmed by Nature to make an effort, if they were given sufficient time to rise above their fears, to find merit in the opinions of people not like them superficially, that is, culturally. Or was it, to take the darker view, that people of the Western tradition were turning from their tradition in disgust, jettisoning the community and the “reality” it cherished, because the tradition had led to the kinds of things his son was concerned about, greed, bestiality, fascistic rectitude—the same kinds of things he himself was concerned about now, not just in his mind but in his misanthropic heart: above all, the murderously logical righteousness with which he himself cringed from the image of Jessie in Tillson’s office—cowardly bitch, afraid to let his car be seen parked near her house. (His original sympathy was, he saw, long gone.) Jessie of all people! He saw her as in the picture when she was twenty-five—radiant, innocent. And Tillson, that miserable, crooked-backed, chittering … He shuddered, seeing the fat man’s dead eyes. The weight of his guilt, rage, and helplessness rolled over him again, and again he slept.
It was mid-day, maybe later. Clean golden light streamed through the windows. Mickelsson groaned before he knew why he was groaning, imagining he’d missed some appointment or class, and threw his legs over the side. Then it all came back. He touched his chin and found it grown out like a bum’s, and from the feeling of bristles under his fingertips he got a brief, puzzling image of himself as a hobo, maybe the Wandering Jew, walking forever along a highway in a ragged coat.
He dressed in his work clothes—old jeans, tattered shirt—though he had no idea what he intended to work on, more puttering in the wood-shop, perha
At the foot of the stairs he found the cat waiting, looking up at him. When Mickelsson was five feet away the cat turned quickly and ran toward the kitchen, pausing just once to look back, balanced like a squirrel on a branch, then moving on again, more silent than Mickelsson outside Tillson’s office door. Mickelsson got out a can of 9-Lives, fitted the top into the electric canopener, opened it, then dumped the meat into the bowl beside the sink. The misshapen cat hung out of reach, head on one side, one paw lifted, until Mickelsson stepped back; then, after one more careful glance in Mickelsson’s direction, the cat lowered his huge, wide head and glided toward the dish as if the meat might be still alive. Mickelsson fixed himself cereal and carried it to the livingroom, where he sat on the couch to eat. On the stand by the door, near the shotgun, he saw the box he’d made, marked Jessie’s Gloves. She was everywhere. He remembered how she’d sat here on the couch beside him, the back of her head resting gently against his arm; how she’d gazed out the window, the night of the party. He remembered the awkwardness about the mistletoe. While he was down at the hospital, had she and Tillson slipped away from the others? Maybe fucked standing up in the bathroom, or used Mickelsson’s bed?
His heart felt swollen; he couldn’t eat. He stood up, then stopped, listening for some hint that he might not be alone, but there was nothing; the house was empty except for the cat. The most powerful presence in the room was the shotgun by the door.
He thought again, abstractly, with no flicker of intention, of what it would be like to kill oneself. Would he hear the report, or would the instant, all the time he had left for all Time, be too brief? Almost without meaning to, he went over to the shotgun and touched it, then picked it up by the barrel. He had nothing in mind, simply felt an impulse to look at it. He saw in his mind’s eye Ellen’s streaked, angry face in the courtroom, then his daughter’s face, smiling, a shine of tears in her eyes as she turned from him and ran toward the car. He saw Mark, bearded, standing beside a road somewhere, hitch-hiking. Mickelsson held the shotgun in two hands, looking around and through it, lost in thought. He must do something, he whispered to himself. He slipped the shells back in and closed the chamber. He was looking out the window. Snow. Sunlight. He might have been the only living creature in miles.
When the phone rang he jerked, almost pulling the trigger, frightening himself, then carefully set down the gun. He turned, wiping his hands on his pantlegs, trying to remember what it was that, an instant ago, he’d meant to do, then heard the phone again and walked into the kitchen. He lifted the receiver to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Professor Mickelsson?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, good. I’ve been trying and trying to get hold of you. This is Lawrence Cook’s secretary—”
“Cook?”
“Your lawyer? Dealing with your tax case?”
“Oh, yes.” He leaned against the wall.
“Mr. Cook’s a little hard of hearing, so I’m phoning for him; he’s right here beside me. It seems we’ve run into a small problem. Mr. Cook wants me to tell you that this Ernest diSapio we’re dealing with in Scranton—Mr. Cook wants me to tell you we’ve dealt with him before, and he’s a real s.o.b., for two cents he’d send his own mother to jail—well, he’s making a lot of trouble and—”
“Wait a minute,” Mickelsson said, “I’m not following. What’s the problem?”
He heard talk in the background, the lawyer’s voice, maybe angry; then the secretary said, “This Mr. diSapio’s been over your taxes for the last ten years, and apparently none of the returns you filed suit him. He’s claiming fraud, in fact. Believe me, he’s a lunatic—old Mafia family—but then, I suppose that’s why they hired him, isn’t it!” She laughed, clean bell-tones. “Anyway, with the penalties and fines it could really add up. Mr. Cook wants you to talk to him.”
“Wait a minute! Me?”
“The thing is, you see, these people will push just as hard as they can. They’re the government’s bloodhounds, Mr. Cook says. And he does mean blood! Sometimes if a person just tells them straight out that he can’t pay what they’re asking, they’ll back off. They don’t really want you in jail, they want you in their pocket.”
Mickelsson broke in, “But those returns—most of them—were made out by certified public accountants. How can they be wrong?”
He heard her speak to Cook and heard him answer, then she said, “Any return can be wrong if they want it to be. Mr. Cook says the best thing you can do is just settle with them, try to get the best compromise you can on fines and penalties and such. They’ve got the cards, Mr. Cook says.” There was a pause while Mr. Cook spoke, then she said, “Mr. Cook says, they make the cards.”
“But I don’t owe them anything—aside from those years I missed. At least I shouldn’t.”
“That may be true, and Mr. Cook doesn’t like leaving a client high and dry like this, but he’s just one person, and the I.R.S. has got an army of those young hot-shot lawyers. They’re not human, believe me. Absolutely no conscience. He’ll do whatever you ask, if it’s legal, but his advice is that you compromise and pay them off a little at a time.”
“How much does he expect it to come to?”
“With fines and penalties,” the woman said, then apparently turned from the phone to consult with the lawyer. She said at last, “It could possibly be upwards of three hundred thousand. I know that sounds incredible. …”
Mickelsson was silent. Thirty thousand dollars a year for ten years—his whole earnings. It was so outrageous he was not even shocked, not even tempted to laugh. “They think big,” he said at last.
“Superkill, Mr. Cook calls it,” the secretary said, and chuckled. “But they don’t really want all that. They’ll agree to wipe out some of the fines and penalties, maybe all of them, and you agree to pay what you owe them, which you probably don’t really owe them.”
Mickelsson found he was shaking his head, or rather, his head was moving from side to side on its own. “I won’t do it.”
“Mr. Cook says you ought to think about it. He says to remind you they’ve already got a lien on your house—we understand you’ve fixed it up some—and you do owe for three years.”
He thought about it. At length he said, “They should be shot.”
The secretary laughed again. “That’s the truth!” she said. “But of course there’s nobody to shoot, really—that is, no one who’s responsible. DiSapio’s just awful, but as Mr. Cook always says, take away his style and he’s just one more Doberman pinscher. They all push as hard as they can to get money for the government. They’re like soldiers. They don’t give a darn, really. You might as well be a Vietnamese. I know that diSapio, and a lot of others like him down in Scranton. After work they go sit around in bars and get drunk—ask ’em what they think of what they do, they’ll just laugh at you. But they do it, never think twice. That’s what keeps ’em in their jobs.”
“Interesting,” Mickelsson said, thinking of Wittgenstein—the world as facts, behind the facts nothing visible, traceable, even thinkable. “Interesting,” he said again, more softly. The thought was not new to him, but he’d never before seen it in quite this light: perhaps there really was no government. He said, “All right then, I’ll call him. What do I say?”
“Just tell him how poor you are—make it as sad as possible—and tell him you’re eager to cooperate to the fullest.”
“And that will move him?” Mickelsson asked. “DiSapio will go easy out of pi
He saw her shaking her head, smiling. “Silly, isn’t it.”
“All right,” he said, after a moment. He hung up, musing, unaware that he hadn’t said good-bye. Maybe he would call diSapio and maybe he would not.
It was not yet dark when he started in to town, the shotgun on the seat beside him, the stock protruding from under the bear-rug. There had been thaw—cruel false promise of spring—then a cold snap, so that the roads were like glass, but the Jeep, in four-wheel drive, moved safely past abandoned cars in the highway median and precariously tilted tractor trailers. It had been winter now for a lifetime. As he approached the university he sensed that something was wrong and then, finally, as he drove through the gates, understood what it was. The campus was as full of lights as a sky full of snowflakes. There were cars on Campus Drive, and students were moving on the snowy lawns. The term had begun, then. He had lost track of time. For all he knew, school might have been running for a week. He stopped the Jeep, thinking of turning back toward home, then decided to risk it.