The Cat, The Devil And Lee Fontana

10

Having agreed to certain terms, Russell Dobbs spread the word quickly that the Northern & Dakota out of Chicago would be carrying a heavy payroll and that he meant to take it down. He put out that information in ways that would not be traced back to him, he let it be known that he would slip aboard at Pierre and work the job from inside the train, alone and that he meant to leave the train with half a million in cash.

His plan worked out very well. The five Love boys, and the three Vickers brothers lay in wait for the Northern & Dakota, stopping and boarding the train at different points, both sets of brothers unduly heated and aggressive with the promise that Russell Dobbs would already be aboard. Dobbs waited in the woods, quieting his horse as, inside the train when the brothers discovered each other, a small war fought itself to a bloody finish. When it was all over he rode away hoping he’d seen the last of the Loves and the Vickerses and of his phantom visitor.

Not until two weeks later, when Cage Vickers and Tessa Love were married, did Russell wake at dawn in his cabin to see the finely dressed figure standing before him, fancy black suit, embroidered vest, black string tie. He could not see the man’s eyes. The elegantly groomed haunt put him at a distinct disadvantage. Lying naked in bed, Dobbs rose on one elbow, pulling the blanket around him.

“You have destroyed both gangs,” the devil said coldly. “You knew I wanted them unharmed. You have, of course, lost the wager.”

“I didn’t lose anything. I agreed only to prevent Cage from getting them caught and arrested. Nor did I harm them. They harmed each other.”

“The three who lived were arrested, you knew I did not want them arrested, you failed at your task.”

“That wasn’t part of the agreement. I said I would prevent Cage from getting them caught—Cage didn’t cause that, they trapped themselves. That was the bargain,” Russell said. “I didn’t allow Cage to give up either gang, I kept that part of the agreement and you are bound to it. You promised me a long, healthy life, unwounded, unharmed.” Though Dobbs had no idea whether the haunt would keep his end of the bargain. What made him think hell’s messenger was bound by any code?

“Perhaps,” said the dark one, “perhaps I will honor what you call a bargain. And perhaps not. Whatever I do, Russell, you have only one lifetime to enjoy the fruits of such an agreement—while I have all eternity to retaliate for your deception by twisting and manipulating the lives of your heirs, and never think, Russell Dobbs, that those who come after you will not suffer. Your heirs will be bound to me through your deceit, they will know me, Russell, I’ll wield my hold over them in ways you have never dreamed.”

“You don’t have that much power. If you did, I would not have beaten you.”

“You will see what power I have when you view the lives of your descendants, when you see them from the other side, when you witness the suffering and agony of your own kin that you have deliberately destroyed.” But even as Russell rose, pulling the blanket around him, the devil vanished, was gone from the room, no faintest shadow remaining, the cabin dim and empty. Russell stared around at the log walls, the iron stove, his pants hanging over a chair. He got up, pulled on his pants and shirt, his boots, took up his rifle, and went to shoot some breakfast.

When Lee woke, the passenger car was hotter than a bake oven, the midafternoon sun burning in through the train’s smeared windows as they sped across the high desert. Far ahead, the land dropped down steeply onto the wide and ancient riverbed, dry now, forever waterless. And there lay Blythe, a jumble of faded rooftops, the end of the world, some said, the asshole of creation. He doubted the town had changed much, these twenty years. A small, ugly cluster of forlorn wooden buildings set along wandering dirt tracks.

But the dusty roads led, out beyond Blythe, to another vast spread of brilliant bright green fields just as in Indio, another welcome oasis, and that was where he was headed, out among the farm crops, the miles of melons, summer vegetables, and alfalfa, huge fields that, even as far as they stretched away, were dwarfed by the endless desert that spread on beyond, parched and ungiving. He remembered too well, when he’d run with Jake, the sour salty smell along the dry washes where the tamarisk trees thrived, remembered the beery smell of the little town when you passed a bar, the high sidewalks above the one paved street, the cross streets of powder dust so fine it would splash up over your boot tops. Remembered the dirty faces of the little Mexican kids and the patient-eyed women with that deep, lazy Mexican beauty. Mexicans, blacks, whites, and Indians all working their tails off making money for the farmers, and what little money they put in their own pockets lasted only one trip to town, where they lost it to backroom gambling and to booze and prostitutes, and what they didn’t spend someone waited to take forcibly from them.

But still the migrants kept coming, smugglers with overload springs on their Cadillacs rolling in from the border at night with trunks full of illegals who paid them two hundred dollars a head, innocents who blew their life savings trying to get a chunk of the American dollar, migrants who might end up treated like shit with the wrong farm boss, lucky if they got enough to eat for their stoop labor. And some of them weren’t that lucky. Those who suffocated in the Cadillacs’ locked trunks were stripped of what little they had and tossed out on the desert for the coyotes to finish.

Didn’t seem like twenty years since he and Jake rode into California over the dry mountains to lay up after that Tucson train job, Jake nearly dead from loss of blood. And then a week later outside Blythe, when Lee was alone, the feds had grabbed and arrested him. Jake was holed up by then, Lucita taking care of him. And with Lee arrested and in jail, Lucita was all Jake had.

Thinking about all that had happened since, about the mistakes he had made, thinking how he’d promised himself not to get trapped in any more screwups, now Lee cursed himself for not getting off the train in San Bernardino. That could mean trouble, too. What the hell was he thinking? He’d better come up with a good excuse for his parole officer, he could have blown his release right there.

As the train slowed for Blythe, Lee stepped out to the vestibule. Peering around the side of the cars, he could see the town up ahead, a dry wart on the face of the ungiving plain. Stepping back to his seat, he checked the watch pocket of his jeans, fingering the tightly folded bills. Unlike the seven hundred more in his boot, this was clean money, money he’d earned in prison industries. But all together, enough—if the parole board got snotty with him—to get him a good distance away, in a hurry. When the train bucked to a halt, a heavy black cloud rattled against the windows turning the passenger car nearly as dark as night. What the hell was that? Not Satan’s shadow, this was different. And not blowing leaves, there weren’t that many trees in Blythe; and the black cloud made a clicking noise, hitting the glass, so loud he thought for a minute it was pebbles blowing—but this was clouds of something small squirming as they hit the glass, and some of them were clinging and crawling, were crawling up the glass . . .

Crickets. Swarms of crickets, thousands of flying bodies beating against the glass. And at a break in the swarm, when he could see the train yard, it too was black with them, they had turned the afternoon as dark as night. The station lights had come on, crickets surged in their glow, swarming, and where they swept against Lee’s window they left trails of silver mucus. Peering down, where lights lit the track, he could see them fall and die there, glistening brighter than the slick metal.

Well, hell, he knew Blythe had these swarms now and then, over the years, like the grasshoppers in South Dakota. But did he have to arrive right in the middle of this mess? He rose when the car stilled; and as the rest of the passengers stood up, gathering their belongings, he felt a brush of fur against his hand. Sometimes, he couldn’t understand why the little cat stayed with him. A ghost cat must have the whole universe at its disposal, must have all of time to travel through and to choose from, so what was he doing here? Had they bonded so well that the yellow tom simply wanted to be with him, wanted to remain where Lee was, or was there some other reason, some mystery yet to unfold? Moving on out of the train, stepping down onto the platform, his boots crunched dead and squirming crickets, the steps and sidewalk were alive with them, masses of dark, brittle insects swarming around his boots, swarming up his boots, creeping and flying up the walls of the station and inside whenever the door opened, swarming over the newspaper rack and shoeshine stand, dark stinking bugs crawling through the white powder that had been sprinkled along the street and sidewalk and across the thresholds of the shops to kill them.

It hadn’t seemed to kill many, they were still thick on the varnished oak benches before the station, dark bodies crawling in and out the slots of the cigarette and candy machines, the sound of their beating wings against metal and glass like some dark prediction he didn’t want to know about. The streets and gutters were dark with glistening bodies, crickets clinging to fenders and windshields, to tires, to license plates and chrome grills. Heaps of dead crickets had been swept up along the curb, the piles dusted with the killing white powder; crickets flew in his face or flew past him to beat their hard little bodies against the hot overhead lights—he wondered if the ghost cat was invisibly diving at them, swatting and gobbling up crickets. A shout made him spin around.

“Fontana! Lee Fontana!”

Lee stepped back out of the light, watching the approaching figure. Only when he saw the horseman’s stride, the Stetson and boots and then the familiar face and crippled hand did he step forward, grinning.