The Underground Man by Ross Macdonald

Author:Ross Macdonald [Macdonald, Ross]
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2010-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Jean was looking down into her husband’s face as if she wondered how it felt to be dead. When Purvis came marching back, with his spade over his shoulder, she gave a start and turned away. Purvis set the spade down quietly and carefully.

He unbuttoned the breast pocket of his uniform and took out a black leather folder with Stanley’s name printed in gold inside. It contained his driver’s license and other identification, a number of credit cards and membership cards, and three dollar bills.

“He didn’t have much left,” the young man said.

I was struck by the feeling in his voice. “Did you know Stanley Broadhurst?”

“I knew him just about all my life, starting back in grade school.”

“I thought he went to private school.”

“He did, after he left grade school. He had some kind of trouble that summer, and his mother put him in a special school.”

“The summer his father went away?”

“That’s right. Stanley had a lot of bad luck in his life.” He spoke with a certain awe. “I used to envy him back there in grade school. His people were rich, and we were as poor as Job’s turkey. But I’ll never envy him again.”

I looked around for Jean. She had wandered off in the direction of the stable, and seemed to be searching for a means of escape. She reminded me of the frightened doe I had seen the day before, but there was no fawn with her.

When I reached her, she was standing beside the incinerated car. “Was this ours?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Do you have transportation, Mr. Archer? I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Elizabeth’s house. I spent the night at the hospital.”

I told Kelsey where we were going and said I might see him later in the pathology department of the hospital. Jean and I started up the hillside path. She took the lead, moving quickly, like a woman trying to climb out of the present.

Near the bleachers where my car was parked, a number of plywood tables had been set up on trestles. A hundred or more men were seated at them, eating mulligan stew dispensed by a motorized chuckwagon.

Most of the men looked up as we passed. Some whistled; a few cheered. Jean kept going, her head down. She climbed into my car as if she was being pursued.

“It’s my fault,” she said in self-loathing. “I shouldn’t be wearing these clothes.”

We drove a long way around through the outskirts of the city. I tried to question her about her husband, but she was unresponsive. She sat with her head down, deep in her own thoughts.

When we entered Mrs. Broadhurst’s canyon, she straightened up and began to look around her. The fire had come down nearly as far as the entrance to the canyon and left its scorch-marks on the trees and on the hillside brush.

Most of the houses in Canyon Estates were untouched. A few had been burned, as if picked out at random. There was nothing left

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