Ross MACDONALD - The Underground Man

A rattle of leaves woke me some time before dawn. A hot wind was breathing in at the bedroom window. I got up and closed the window and lay in bed and listened to the wind.

After a while it died down, and I got up and opened the window again. Cool air, smelling of fresh ocean and slightly used West Los Angeles, poured into the apartment. I went back to bed and slept until I was wakened in the morning by my scrub jays.

I called them mine. There were five or six of them taking turns at dive-bombing the window sill, then retreating to the magnolia tree next door.

I went into the kitchen and opened a can of peanuts and threw a handful out the window. The jays swooped down into the yard of the apartment building. I put on some clothes and went down the outside stairs with the rest of the can of peanuts.

It was a bright September morning. The edges of the sky had a yellowish tinge like cheap paper darkening in the sunlight. There was no wind at all now, but I could smell the inland desert and feel its heat.

I threw my jays another handful of peanuts and watched the birds scatter on the grass. A little boy in a blue cotton suit opened the door of one of the downstairs apartments, the one that was normally occupied by a couple named Waller. The boy looked about five or six. He had dark close-cropped hair and anxious blue eyes.

“Is it all right if I come out?”

“It’s all right with me.”

Leaving the door wide open, he moved toward me with exaggerated caution, so as not to frighten the birds. The jays were swooping and screeching, intent on outwitting each other. They paid no attention to him.

“What are you feeding them? Peanuts?”

“That’s right. Do you want some?”

“No thanks. My daddy’s taking me to visit my grandma. She always gives me a lot of stuff to eat. She feeds birds, too.” After a silence, he added: “I wouldn’t mind feeding the jays some peanuts.”

I offered him the open can. He took a fistful of peanuts and flung them on the grass. The jays came swooping. Two of them started to fight, raucously, bloodlessly.

The boy turned pale. “Are they killing each other?” he said in a tense small voice.

“No. They’re just fighting.”

“Do jays kill other birds?”

“Sometimes they do.” I tried to change the subject: “What’s your name?”

“Ronny Broadhurst. What kind of birds do they kill?”

“Young birds of other species.”

The boy lifted his shoulders and held his folded arms close to his chest, like undeveloped wings. “Do they kill children?”

“No. They’re not big enough.”

This seemed to encourage him. “I’ll try one of the peanuts now. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He placed himself in front of me, face up and squinting against the morning light. “Throw it and I’ll catch it in my mouth.”

I threw a peanut, which he caught, and after that quite a few others. Some he caught and some fell in the grass. The jays were all around him like chunks of broken sky.

A young man in a peppermint-striped sport shirt came into the yard from the street. He looked like a grown-up version of the boy and gave the same impression of anxiety. He was puffing rapidly on a thin brown cigarillo.

As if she had been watching for the man, a woman with her dark hair in a pony-tail stepped out through the open door of the Wallers’ apartment. She was pretty enough to make me conscious that I hadn’t shaved.

The man pretended not to see her. He spoke to the boy formally: “Good morning, Ronald.”

The boy glanced at him but didn’t turn. As the man and the woman moved on him from different directions, the boy’s face had lost its look of reckless pleasure. His small body seemed to grow smaller as if under the pressure of their meeting. He answered the man in a tiny voice:

“Good morning.”

The man turned brusquely to the woman. “He’s afraid of me. What have you been telling him, for God’s sake?”

“We haven’t been talking about you, Stan. For our own sake.”

The man thrust his head forward. Without moving his feet, he gave the impression of attacking. “What does that mean, ‘for our own sake’? Is that an accusation?”

“No, but I can think of a few if you like.”

“So can I.” His eyes moved in my direction. “Who’s Ronny’s playmate? Or is he your playmate?” He brandished the hot-tipped cigarillo in his hand.

“I don’t even know this gentleman’s name.”

“Would that make a difference?” He didn’t look at me.

The woman’s face lost its color, as if she had become suddenly ill. “This is hard to take, Stan. I don’t want trouble.”

“If you didn’t want trouble, why did you move out on me?”

“You know why.” She said in a thin voice: “Is that girl still in the house?”

“We won’t discuss her.” Abruptly he turned to the boy. “Let’s get out of here, Ron. We have a date with Grandma Nell in Santa Teresa.”

The boy was standing between them with his fists clenched. He looked at his feet. “I don’t want to go to Santa Teresa. Do I have to?”

“You have to,” the woman said.

The boy edged in my direction. “But I want to stay here. I want to stay with the man.” He took hold of my belt and stood with his head down, his face hidden from all adults.

His father moved on the boy. “Let go of him.”

“I won’t.”

“Is he your mother’s boyfriend? Is that what he is?”

“No.”

“You’re a little liar.”

The man threw down his cigarillo and drew back his hand to slap the boy. I took hold of the boy under the arms, swung him out of reach, and held him. He was trembling.

The woman said: “Why don’t you let him be, Stan? You can see what you’re doing to him.”

“What you’re doing to him. I came here to take him on a nice trip. Mother’s been looking forward to it. So what happens?” His voice rose in complaint. “I run into a nasty family scene, and Ron’s all fixed up with a substitute father.”

“You’re not making too much sense,” I said. “Ron and I are neighbors – very new neighbors. I only just met him.”

“Then put him down. He’s my son.”

I put the boy down.

“And keep your dirty hands off him.”

I was tempted to slug the man. But it wouldn’t do the boy any good, and it wouldn’t do the woman any good. I said in the quietest tone I knew:

“Go away now, mister.”

“I’ve got a right to take my son with me.”

The boy said to me: “Do I have to go with him?”

“He’s your father, isn’t he? You’re lucky to have a father who wants to take you places.”

“That’s right,” his mother put in. “Go along now, Ronny. You always get along better with your father when I’m not around. And Grandma Nell will be sad if you don’t visit her.”

The boy went to his father, head down, and put his hand in the man’s hand. They headed for the street.

The woman said: “I apologize for my husband.”

“You don’t need to. He means nothing to me.”

“He does to me, though, that’s the trouble. He’s so terribly aggressive. He wasn’t always like this.”

“He couldn’t have been. He wouldn’t have survived.”

I meant this to be a light remark, but it fell heavily. The conversation died. I tried to revive it.

“Are the Wallers friends of yours, Mrs. Broadhurst?”

“Yes. Professor Waller was my adviser when I was in school.” She sounded nostalgic. “As a matter of fact he still is my adviser. He and Laura both are. I called them at Lake Tahoe last night when I–” She failed to finish the sentence. “Are they friends of yours?”