Mickelsson's Ghosts John Gardner (read 50 shades of grey .TXT) 📖

“Why?” He reached for her hand. She pointedly ignored him.

“Because I hate being bullied,” she said.

“But I’m on your side, Jessica!—against the Marxists.” He slammed the snowball from glove to glove.

“It’s not a war,” she said. “They’re my colleagues. I wish I’d never mentioned them.”

“All I’m saying is, they manipulate people—exactly like the capitalist managers they—”

She broke in, turning, squaring off at him. “Peter, for heaven’s sakes drop it!”

When he looked down at the snowball he’d been packing all this time he saw that it was as solid as a rock.

“Jesus, you really are far-right,” she said. “I’d been told that about you, but I must say, I’m shocked!”

“I hate the far right,” he said, thrusting his head forward in surprise. He forced a laugh, squeezing the snowball with his right glove. “I also hate the middle.” He looked up at the sky, raised his two arms, and shouted at a circling hawk with all his might, “ ‘I hate your feasts and celebrations! Show me righteousness flowing like a river!’ ”

She backed away from him, eyes wide with alarm. Furtively, she glanced at the snowball, packed into a deadly weapon.

He could think of no defense but a crazy laugh. “Prophet Amos,” he said, and let the snowball fall from his hand. Then, after a moment—she continued to stare at him—he said, voice quavering, “It’s funny. I was told that you were far-right—‘to the right of Adolf Hitler,’ I think was the phrase.”

She went on looking at him. Abruptly she looked down. “Let’s go back to the house,” she said.

He grinned stupidly and extended one hand toward her. “I’m not bad at all, if you’ll study the matter fairly. I never say ‘if and only if.’ ”

They endured another silence.

“It’s true,” she said at last. “You mean to be helping. You don’t mean to be making things harder.”

He waited on. The air smelled of spring, though it was nearly November. At last—for some reason it made him feel a wave of sorrow—she took his hand.

When five o’clock came, she decided—or perhaps, in some subtle way, they decided together—that she wouldn’t have him drive her in tonight after all. The meeting wasn’t really all that important. He would drive down to Susquehanna to pick up something for supper. She would stay, make a few phonecalls while he was gone.

He parked the Jeep beside a meter across from the Acme and got out, then stood a moment at the side of the street, lost in thought, something deep in his mind calling to him for attention. He came to himself with a jolt and stepped back toward his Jeep. Though there was still snow in the gutters and up along the buildings, the street to his right, in the direction of Lanesboro, was filled—or so it seemed to him at first—with motorcycles, their headlights bludgeoning the night, their opened-up tailpipes roaring. On closer inspection, it appeared that there were only six, in fact, and they were by no means the threatening monsters he’d first thought them. The lead cyclist waved as he passed, or raised his black-gauntleted fist in a way that seemed perhaps friendly; and though Mickelsson couldn’t see the face inside the helmet, it came to him that the rider was his friend Tim. Tim, he remembered, had said that his bike was blond, and so this one was. Too late for Tim to see, unless in his mirror, Mickelsson, smiling, raised his fist. Only now, as the rest of the cyclists rumbled past, did he realize that the car parked behind his Jeep was the town’s one police car, and that one of the town’s two policemen was sitting in it, the cowboy-style hat almost to his nose. Mickelsson had heard the man’s name from time to time, something odd, hard to remember—Tacky Tinklepaugh, it came to him. Stupidest name imaginable, for a policeman. No wonder the boys came down off the mountains and did pretty much what they pleased. Mickelsson, realizing he’d been staring—and that Tacky was staring back—bent slightly toward the windshield and gave a salute. The policeman, fiftyish, baggy-eyed and red-faced, maybe drunk, gave him a thumbs-up sign.

Mickelsson crossed the street.

He chose porkchops, canned applesauce, brussels sprouts and green peas, and a Sara Lee cheesecake, then pushed his cart up to the check-out counter. As the woman was ringing up his groceries, a soft voice said behind him, “Hi, Pete. You havin a party?” He hesitated an instant before turning.

“Donnie!” he said. “I never see you here!”

“Gotta eat,” she said, and shrugged. She smiled, looking in the direction of the check-out girl, as if uncomfortable talking with Mickelsson in front of strangers, or maybe friends, he would hardly know. In the store’s fluorescent lights, Donnie’s hair, skin, and clothes looked washed-out, and a pimple on her forehead called attention to itself. He looked at her hands, small and pretty but very white, hanging limply on the push-rail of her grocery cart. She leaned toward him a little—was it possible, he wondered, that she meant to be overheard, though she pretended otherwise? “When you comin up and see me?”

He couldn’t help glancing at the check-out girl. Sure enough, she was spying, expressionless.

“How much is it?” he asked, though the total showed on the register.

“Eight twenty-seven.” She smiled politely.

He thought, blushing, that that was surely too much, but he quickly got out his billfold and reached in for the ten, all he had, and gave it to her.

“You should come by,” Donnie said softly.

He could feel the blush deepening. He took his change from the check-out girl, lifted the grocery bag in his arm, and then—horribly, he knew, as if something had happened to his face—turned to Donnie and winked. She simply looked at him. He moved quickly to the door and pushed through it, not looking back.

Up at the house, as he was getting the groceries out of the sack, still blushing, unable to stop, Jessie said, “Pete, do you mind if I ask you something?”

Once