The Cat, The Devil And Lee Fontana

11

Jake was still lean, but he’d grown a bit of a paunch over his belt. Same grin, big wide mouth ringed with laugh creases. His thin face was wrinkled some from the sun, his dark hair was turning gray in streaks, and white along the temples.

“Didn’t expect you to meet me,” Lee said. “Damn glad you did. Crickets are about to crawl up my leg, swarm in places I don’t want ’em.”

“You look bushed, Lee. Suitcase?”

“Travelin’ light,” Lee said.

Ellson turned away quickly, maybe uncomfortable that Lee had done the jail time, and Jake hadn’t, because the cops hadn’t had enough to hold him when he had been suspected of robbery later. He led Lee through the crickets along the line of parked cars. On the curb a woman huddled cuddling a baby, ignoring the swarming insects as she held the child to nurse. Ellson headed for a red pickup that looked brand-new, its doors professionally lettered with the signature of Delgado Farms. Lee slid in onto the soft leather seat, shut the door quickly but even so half a dozen crickets slipped in. Lee caught them in his hand, threw them out the window and rolled it up again fast. The truck smelled new, the red leather thick and soft—a lot fancier than the old, rusted-out trucks they’d used to drive. Jake had been with Delgado Farms almost twelve years now, a big switch for him, staying in one place. Lee guessed he’d changed some after their messed-up train job. Jake and Lucita were married long before that robbery, he knew Lucita had come down hard on Jake about that. Jake looked more respectable now, calmer, more settled and sure of himself. He had to be doing well, head foreman of the whole Blythe outfit, which was only one of several farms Delgado owned. Jake did the hiring and firing. He’d said in his letter that Lee would be ramroding a crew of braceros and locals.

The Delgado family lived up in Hemet where they raised Steel Dust horses. They owned four big farms in the Coachella Valley, growing hay and dates and vegetables, land totaling over six thousand acres and stretching from the Chocolate Mountains to the Colorado River. Land that, before water was piped from the Colorado, had been dry rangeland, the grass so sparse it must have taken twenty square miles to feed one steer. Now, with water brought in, every acre was as valuable as gold.

Just a little speck of that wealth would set a fellow up real nice, Lee thought. Sitting in the new truck beside Jake, Lee wondered if Jake handled the Blythe payroll—then he turned away, angered at himself. What the hell kind of thought was that? Jake was his friend, just about his only friend.

As they headed through town, Lee began to see other changes in Jake, the calmer way he drove, the lowered timbre of his voice. As Ellson turned down a dusty side street, Lee could smell wet, burned rags from the town dump, and he grinned, remembering the night they had sat in there under a wrecked truck, passing the jug. Jake remembered, too. A little smile touched the corner of his mouth. Lee said, “What was that we were drinking?”

Jake laughed. “Homemade tequila, fermented cactus juice.” They passed a line of feathery tamarisk trees crowded against weathered shacks and pulled up in front of a graying house, its window frames painted turquoise, its door bright pink. A neon Budweiser sign hung from the eaves. The smell of chiles and garlic mixed with the blaring jukebox rhythm of castanets and brassy trumpet stirred a lot of old memories. They got out, crunching crickets, moved past a young Mexican boy who stood outside the door with a broom, brushing crickets away. They stepped inside fast, but a few insects leaped in past them and under a table. Lee hoped to hell they weren’t in the kitchen, but he didn’t know how they could keep all of them out. He didn’t let himself think too long about that.

The walls of the café were built of rough, dark wood. Down at the end, at one of three windows, a swamp cooler chugged away, keeping time to the Mexican brass, belching out cool, damp air. The tables were crowded with braceros and with a few dark-eyed women. They slid in at the only empty table, the oilcloth still damp from the waiter’s towel. When Jake reached for the chips and salsa, Lee tried not to look at the stump of his right hand where three fingers were missing, an accident Lee felt guilty for.

They’d taken down one of the last steam trains, a short run from San Francisco up the San Joaquin Valley. They got the only money bag they could find, had swung off the train when one glancing shot by a train guard hit Jake. Lee ran, in plain sight meaning to lead the cops away, hoping Jake would vanish around the far side of the train. He knew Jake had made it when he heard a horse pounding away. Lee made a lot of noise to draw them off, then slipped away on his own mount, moving silently in the dark.

He had ridden for maybe an hour, could still hear them behind him, but then their sound faded as they took a wrong turn. When at last Lee holed up, hid his horse in dense woods, and opened the canvas bag expecting a big haul, the bag contained a measly four thousand bucks.

Days later, when Lee thought the cops had eased off their searching, he’d gotten half of the money to Lucita. She kept it, but she was mad as hell. She wouldn’t tell him where Jake was, she said his hand, what was left of it, was healing just fine. She told Lee, snapping out the words, her black eyes flashing, that this was the last job they’d ever pull, that Jake was done with that life, done for good, or she’d send him packing and divorce him.

Lee didn’t hear from Jake for a long time after that, long after the marine payroll job and the bank fiasco when that damned teller nearly cut off his own fingers. Then, somehow, Jake heard where he was, maybe from someone they had worked with at one time, and Lee started getting a letter now and then, up at McNeil. A thin thread to keep in touch, but it had meant a lot to him.

Now, beneath the table, something brushed his leg, but when he lifted the red checkered oilcloth and glanced down, nothing was there. Only the faintest purr reached him, and in the shadows he saw a scrap of tortilla disappear into thin air. He dropped the edge of the oilcloth wondering, not for the first time, how a ghost could eat solid food.

But at McNeil when the cat had made himself visible in the prison mess hall, he’d gobbled up every handout he could beg. Well, hell, Lee thought, what did he know about the talents of a ghost? When the purring became louder, he scuffed his feet hoping to hide the sound; and then when the waitress approached, the cat silenced.

Not only was the beer ice-cold, the chiles rellenos when they arrived were light and fresh, the corn tortillas homemade. It was all so good Lee thought maybe he’d died and gone to heaven. If he could just make it from one small Mexican café to the next, without having to deal with the rest of the world, he could get along just fine. Jake, rolling beans and salsa into a tortilla, said, “Parole, rather than conditional release?”

Lee nodded. “Parole board didn’t much like my record. I’m beholden for this job at the ranch, Jake.”

Ellson shook his head. “Except for you, I’d have bought it when that guard shot at me, if you hadn’t led them off they’d have grabbed me. I worried a long time, hoping you got away. The two thousand dollars you got to me, I did a lot of thinking, after that.”

“And you took a lot of flack from Lucita.”

Jake grinned. “That was a long time ago.”

“More years than I like to count,” Lee said. “I’m sorry about Ramon, about losing your boy in the war. I’d like to have known him.” He wondered how that must feel, to raise a fine son, and then see him die so young, so brutally. When he thought about how that must have been for Lucita, pain twisted his belly and he felt a warm longing to comfort her. Though he had never made a play for Lucita, once she and Jake were engaged and then married, he’d never been near her without being tempted, without the heat rising.

“She’s up in Redlands,” Jake said. “Her sister just had gall bladder surgery, Lucita’s taking care of her. She’ll be home next week. She’s sure looking forward to seeing you, planning on cooking up a big dinner.” Jake motioned to the waiter for another bowl of salsa. “Both our girls are married. Carmella’s in San Francisco, her husband’s a fireman. Susanne’s in Reno.” He grinned. “Married to a sheep rancher.”

“Sheep?” Lee said.

Jake smiled. “He’s a good man. Basque. Good people.”

Lee watched Jake quietly. Jake’s family had lived a whole lifetime, the girls grown up into their own lives, Ramon shot down by a German sniper, buried and mourned, while Lee had gone on year after year pulling a few jobs, getting older, getting slower, and then back in the pen scrubbing prison latrines, sanding prison-made furniture, eating prison slop, and then finally out working on the McNeil farm. He’d had no ties at all on the outside except Jake and Lucita, no one else who cared, no family of his own that he’d ever kept track of. Only the thought of his little sister, as if Mae were still out there somewhere, as if she were still alive. But if Mae was still alive, and grown old, where was she? What kind of life was she living? And why had she never tried to get in touch? But how could she have done that when he was always on the move, leaving as few tracks as he could, ever traveling on, aimless as a tumbleweed? And why hadn’t he tried to get in touch?

Well, hell, he’d stayed in touch for a while. He’d write or make a phone call to the rancher, Sam Gerrard, who owned the land adjoining them, because Lee’s family had no phone. Years ago he’d called Gerrard when he read in the newspaper that his grandpappy was killed. He couldn’t believe it, shot to death during a train robbery, though Russell had taken three Pinkerton men with him. His grandpappy’s death had set Lee back some, he’d been a long time getting over the demise of Russell Dobbs—as if a whole stretch of history had collapsed, as if the whole shape of the world he knew had shifted and changed.

He’d given Gerrard a number where he might be reached now and then, a hotel in Billings where he had a lady friend. That was how he found out when his daddy died, had a stroke, they thought. Died out on the range alone. Must have been a bad one, to make him tumble off his horse. Horse came back to the ranch, and they’d gone looking. They found his daddy two days later lying among the boulders at the edge of a stony draw. After that, Gerrard said, Lee’s ma had left the ranch, sold it for what she could get, took Mae and their two older sisters back to North Carolina, to live with her sister. That was when he lost touch, didn’t try to contact them. He knew Mae would be all right if she was with family. But he thought about her a lot, he hoped she had horses as she’d always wanted, and he’d carried her picture and would look at it, at that bold little girl who wanted to learn everything herself, wanted to do everything her way.

Mae and her older sisters were allowed to ride but only decorously, at a walk or slow trot, and they were kept as far as possible from the cattle and the cowhands. When Lee and Mae could sneak off alone, when he saddled a real horse for her and not the poky pony, she wanted to do everything, she wanted to learn to rope, she wanted to work cattle, she wasn’t afraid and in a short time she handled a horse real well. Their mother didn’t know half of what went on, working in the kitchen or around back in the garden, trusting Lee to take care of his little sister, thinking he was carefully chaperoning Mae on the pony when, in fact, they were off beyond the nearby hills, Mae learning to rein and work a good cowpony, to spin and back him, to chase a calf and learning to handle a rope.

What he didn’t understand was, why did he still dream of her? Dreams so real, as if she were still alive, as if she were still a little child as he’d last seen her. In his recent dreams, she was in a house he’d never seen, or in a flower garden unlike any place where they’d grown up, and she was dressed in a way she wouldn’t have been, back on the ranch, back in their own time. He was still wondering about those dreams as they moved out into the shabby street, both men full of the good Mexican dinner, the street darkening around them as evening fell. Along the row of little shacks, faint lights glowed behind curtained windows. They slipped into the truck fast, dodging crickets, tossing crickets out the windows. Moving on through the small town, they headed out a dirt road, its pale surface caught in the light of a rising half-moon, the long straight rows of bean plants polished by the faint glow. Now when they were moving fast and no crickets swarming in, Lee cracked open his window, letting in the musky wet smell of the river, of the tamarisk and willows silvered along the steep, silt banks.

Twelve miles out of town they turned onto a dirt lane, cutting through a cantaloupe field, the smell of the fruit sweet and cloying. Half a mile up, they turned into the ranch yard under bright security lights, their dust rising white against a row of packing sheds, long bunkhouses, and small frame bungalows. Jake drove on past the big mess hall with its long screened windows and deep porch, past rows of assorted tractors and field trucks. He parked in front of a cement-block house with a white picket fence. A statue of the Blessed Virgin stood in the sandy yard, the little, two-foot-high figure carefully outlined by a circle of miniature cactus. Near the house was a paddock and a small stable, and he could see a couple of horses. Beyond were more packing sheds, then more ranch trucks and some old cars. They got out beside the picket fence, but Jake didn’t head into the house. No lights burned there, with Lucita gone. They moved across the dusty yard toward the cabins, where Jake turned up the steps of the first one, the porch creaking under their weight.

The cabin door complained as Jake pushed it open, reached in and flipped a switch so a sudden light flared from an overhead bulb. The cabin held an iron bed, a brown metal nightstand, a small battered desk, a small wooden chest of drawers, and a straight-backed chair, painted purple. An ornate wooden crucifix hung above the bed, hand carved and gilded. There was a bathroom with a little precast shower, and spotless white tile around the sink. A new bar of soap still in its wrapper, two clean towels and a washcloth, clean white shower curtain, all touches that spoke of Lucita, as did the little pitcher of wildflowers she had placed on the old, shabby dresser.

“Not elegant,” Jake said. “You’ll find a new razor and shaving cream in the cabinet.”

Lee sat down on the bed to pull off his boots. “It’s elegant to me. Clean. Private. Even flowers,” he said, grinning. “No prison bars, and a real door I can shut. No screw coming to lock me in.” He dropped a boot. “Bathroom all to myself, private shower without some jock elbowing me or reaching to feel me up, a razor I don’t have to account for every day.” He grinned up at Jake, as he dropped the other boot.

Jake looked back at him unsmiling. Too late Lee realized he’d hurt Jake, that he had rubbed it in that he’d been in prison all the time Jake had been free and making a life for himself. Lee didn’t mean to do that. Jake turned toward the door, his white-streaked hair catching the light. “See you in the morning,” he said shortly. “Breakfast in the mess hall, five-thirty,” and he was gone, shutting the door softly behind him.

Feeling bad, Lee fished into the paper bag. He took out his few clothes, laid them on the dresser, and set the picture of Mae beside the flowers. He undressed, removed the seven hundred dollars from his boot, shoved that and his prison-made knife under his pillow. He turned out the overhead light and slid into bed, pushed down under the lightweight blanket, and stretched out to ease his tired body. It had been a long day, too many hours on the train, his muscles were all stove up—but not a moment later he felt the cat leap on the bed, landing heavily beside him, and this time he could see it clearly silhouetted against the shaft of moonlight that struck through the cabin window. How the hell did the cat do that, invisible one minute, and then there it was as solid and heavy as bricks, kneading the blanket and pushing him with its hind paws to gain more room, its rumbling purr rising as it settled in for the night. And now, for the first time, the cat spoke to Lee, its yellow eyes glowing in the thin moonlight, its yellow tail twitching.

“You’re sorry you hurt Jake’s feelings? You’re sorry?”

Startled, Lee sat up in bed, staring at him. The cat had never spoken to him, not during all the years at McNeil, neither as a living cat nor later when Misto returned there as a ghost cat. Yet always Lee had had the sense that Misto could have spoken if he chose, that he understood the conversations of the inmates around him. By his glances, by the set of his ears, by the attention he paid to certain discussions, Lee had always felt that even the living cat was wiser and more clever than ever he let on.

“You’re sorry?” Misto repeated with a hiss. “Sorry? Why are you sorry when, all through dinner with Jake you were thinking about ripping him off, and you were lusting after Jake’s wife, you sat there laughing and joking with him while you lusted after the Delgado payroll, too, while you planned to double-cross Jake in two ways. And now, you’re sorry? Sorry you hurt his feelings? What the hell is that about? What kind of friend is that?”

“I didn’t think about it for long,” Lee said crankily. The shock of hearing the cat speak was nothing to the realization that the ghost cat could read his thoughts—even if the beast did exaggerate, even if he did take an overblown view of Lee’s short-lived temptation. When Lee moved uncomfortably away from the cat, to the edge of the bed, the tomcat remained relaxed and easy, glancing at him unconcerned as he casually licked dust from his paws.

“It’s one thing,” Lee said, “to travel with a ghost following me, with a damned haunt hanging on my trail. It’s another thing when you start criticizing, telling me what to do, acting as if you know what I’m thinking, like some damned prison shrink.”

It was unsettling as hell that the cat knew things that were none of its business, thoughts Lee wasn’t proud of and that, facing the cat’s righteous stare, shamed Lee all the more. The yellow tom stopped washing and looked back at him steadily, his wide yellow eyes stern and unblinking. Then he closed his eyes, twitched a whisker as if amused, curled himself deeper into the blanket, and drifted off to sleep as if he hadn’t a care.

Misto was well aware that Fontana’s defensive retorts, his anger and surly responses, had grown harsher as the cowboy grew older. But this was only a part of Lee’s nature, a defensive shell to protect a normal human weakness. Lee’s very temper was part of why the cat loved him. Lee’s sometimes frail, sometimes volatile nature was why Misto guarded Lee so fiercely in wary defense against Satan, against the inroads the devil plied so adroitly in attempting to own Fontana.