Read Online The Underground Man by Ross MacDonald - Free Book Online Page B

of the fire became louder, and his face changed. We spaded some more. I was beginning to feel the work in my shoulders and in the palms of my hands. My shirt was pasted to my back.
    “Is Mr. Armistead all by himself on the boat?”
    “No. He’s got a boy with him. He calls him a crew, but I never seen him do any work on the boat. He’s one of these long-hairs, they call ’em.” Carlos raised his grimy hand to his head and caressed imaginary locks.
    “Doesn’t Mr. Armistead like girls?”
    “Yeah, he likes girls.” He added thoughtfully: “There was a girl on the boat the other night.”
    “Blond girl?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Did you see her?”
    “My friend Pedro saw her when he was going out of the harbor yesterday morning. Pedro’s a fisherman—he gets up before the daylight. The girl was ’way up the mast and yelling like she was going to jump. The boy was trying to talk her down.”
    “What did Pedro do?”
    Carlos shrugged. “Pedro, he’s got children to feed. He don’t have time to stop and fool around with crazy girls.”
    Carlos went back to his work with renewed concentration, as if he was digging a foxhole that would shelter him against the contemporary world. I worked along behind him. But it was clear that we were wasting our time.
    The fire appeared at the top of the hill like a brilliant omniform growth which continued to grow until it bloomed very large against the sky. A sentinel quail on the hillside below it was ticking an alarm.
    Carlos looked up at the fire and crossed himself. Then he turned his back on it and beckoned to me and walked away from his furrow through the trees.
    One of the cypresses was beginning to smoke, high beyond the reach of Mrs. Armistead’s hose. She told Carlos to climb the tree.
    He shook his head. “It wouldn’t do no good. The trees are gonna go, and maybe the house, too.”
    The fire was coming down the hill, gathering speed and size. The trees had begun to sway. From the undergrowth beneath them, a bevy of stubby-winged quail flew up fighting for altitude over the house. Smoke like billowing darkness followed them.
    Mrs. Armistead went on spraying the trees with her ineffectual hose. Carlos moved past her to the faucet and turned it off. She stood with the dripping nozzle in her hand, facing the fire.
    It made a noise like a storm. Enormous and hot and wild, it leapt clumsily into the trees. The cypress that had been smoking burst into flames. Then the other trees blazed up like giant torches in a row.
    I took Mrs. Armistead by the hand and pulled her away. She resisted jerkily, instinctively, like a woman who hadtrouble taking direction. She held onto the hose as long as she could, and finally dropped it in the grass.
    Carlos was waiting impatiently by the pool. Fire was falling around him, sputtering and turning black in the blue water.
    “We better get out of here,” he said. “We might could be cut off if she jumps the driveway. What do you want me to do about the fur coat?”
    “Leave it in the pool,” she said. “It’s too hot for mink.”
    I didn’t exactly like the woman, but I was beginning to take her personally. I gave Carlos the key to the Mercedes and went with her to the Lincoln Continental.
    “You can drive if you like,” she said. “I’m a little done in.”
    She grimaced. The admission cost her pain. As we followed the Mercedes down the driveway, she added a kind of explanation: “I love those quail. I’ve been feeding them and watching them ever since we built the house. They were finally beginning to feel safe. They brought their chicks right into the yard this spring.”
    “The quail will come back.”
    “Maybe so. I wonder if I will.”
    We came to a turnaround which overlooked the city. Carlos pulled the Mercedes off the road, and I followed him. Smoke hung over the city, giving it a sepia tint like an old photograph. We climbed out of the cars and looked back at the house.
    The fire bent around it like the fingers of a