The Reincarnation of Peter Proud Read Online Free Page A

R. Proud, had made a fortune in real estate, buying choice land, when it was low, on Wilshire and in Orange County and the Valley. Nobody had dreamed California would have the tremendous migration after the war, and John Proud had sold high. He was now more or less retired and lived with Peter’s mother in a house in Palm Springs, complete with sauna and swimming pool and facing a golf course.
    For some reason he, Pete Proud, had always been passionately interested in Indians and Indian history. Not because of his remote heritage in this regard. It was something more than that, something deeper. He felt some kind of definite identification with them, some kind of real kinship. As a boy he had read every book that concerned Indians he could get his hands on. He went to the movies and saw every film that was made about them. At ten he could name most of the principal tribes in the nation.
    As an undergraduate at Berkeley, he had taken courses in the history and anthropology of the North American Indian; he had spent two years as a teaching assistant and had got his doctorate after a brilliant dissertation on the Plateau tribes. It had attracted considerable attention, and he became somewhat of a name in his field.
    Finally he received an offer to teach at UCLA, and he accepted, passing up the opportunity to work in his father’s real estate business. He had two brothers who were already engaged in running the Proud Corporation, and he simply had no interest in the building and selling of condominiums or shopping centers. His fatherwas disappointed, but generous, and settled a healthy income on him. And so he was able to live comfortably and still teach.
    He was now twenty-seven and had never been married. He was reasonably good-looking and attractive to women. There had been a couple of affairs of some duration, and he had lived with a psychology major at Berkeley for a while. He had liked many of the women he’d known, and had thought he loved a few, but never enough for a permanent relationship.
    He had developed a taste for classical music; he liked an occasional game of chess and bridge; and in golf his handicap was five. He had played football at Berkeley, but tennis was really his game.
    Actually, he thought, it was all pretty damned dull. And, when you come right down to it, rather empty. Without any particular purpose or future. Everyone was going to the same place anyway.
    Solomon Grundy, he thought. How did it go? Solomon Grundy. Born on Monday. Christened on Tuesday. Married on Wednesday. Took ill on Thursday. Worse on Friday. Died on Saturday. Buried on Sunday. And that was the end of Solomon Grundy.
    And the end of us all. Amen.
    Today, he thought, I am not only a dreamer. I am, God help us all, a philosopher, too.
    He continued to drive west on Sunset. He entered the campus by turning left on Hilgard. Then he drove to Parking Structure Number Three.
    A striped barrier blocked the entry. It could be raised electronically by reaching out of the car window and inserting a sensitized card into the slot. He reached into his inside pocket for his yellow car card, But it wasn’t there. He swore softly as he remembered that he had left it in another jacket. A hell of a way to start the day) he thought. It always meant a certain amount of inconvenience) time lost. The parking situation on campus was impossible. The first thing you always made sure to remember was that damned card.
    Well, no help for it. He backed out and drove around until hefound one of the open parking lots. There was a windowed kiosk there, with a guard in attendance. The guard gave him a token. Then he returned to Parking Structure Three, waited for five minutes until a line of other cars went through, dropped his token into the slot, and passed under the gate.
    Even in his irritation, he couldn’t help smiling wryly.
Score One for Edna
.
    He parked the Mercedes on the second level. It looked somewhat conspicuous among the Volkswagens and Datsuns