The Cat, The Devil And Lee Fontana

20

The first time Lee left the ranch, first time he set foot off Delgado property since he arrived, was the day his parole officer showed up unannounced, as was the way of the U.S. Federal Probation and Parole system. George Raygor was waiting for him when he got in from the fields at noon with a truckload of melons and his noisy crew. Even in the hundred-and-ten-degree heat, Raygor wore a dark gray business suit, a red necktie closing the stiff collar of his starched white shirt. He was a young man, maybe thirty, his reined-in look as ungiving as that of any cop. Crisp brown hair cut short, rangy body, a deep tan, he looked as if maybe he played basketball. He stood on the porch of the mess hall as Lee headed there from the truck. Lee knew at once who he was, and from the way he looked Lee over, Lee guessed he was going to miss the noon meal.

Raygor introduced himself, gave Lee hell for not getting off the train at San Bernardino, and accompanied him over to his cabin where Lee toweled off the sweat and changed his shirt. As Lee bent over to wipe off his dusty boots, Raygor said, “Sit down a minute, Fontana. We’re going into town on an errand, but first I want to read you your parole instructions. Here’s a copy, and here are the forms you’re to fill out and send in, the first day of every month.” All business, stiff and cold and full of authority. These guys didn’t warm up until they got some years of experience on them; even then, some of them never did. Raygor sat in the straight-backed wooden chair, watching Lee button his shirt, patronizing and impatient.

The last PO he’d had looked more like a lumberman, they’d got along just fine, even shared a swallow of moonshine now and again. But this one—Lee would like to punch him out, shake him up a little.

Well, hell, he’d felt cranky all morning, the pickers too loud, their hot tempers getting on his nerves, and twice the truck had broke down and he had to get Tony to fix it. Tony said it needed a new fuel pump, and Raygor had to pick today to come down on him. Hell, he’d done his time, or most of it. Parole board had no right to send some snotty-nosed kid still wet behind the ears to hassle and annoy him, kid probably just out of school with his fancy paper degree, thought he was big stuff driving back and forth across the desert hassling his federal caseload, pretending to help guys who didn’t want his help. PO living fat off a good salary, looking forward to a secure retirement twenty years down the line, a nice nest egg for the rest of their worthless lives, courtesy the U.S. taxpayer.

Raygor, sighing patiently, began to read to him from the printed instruction form: “Your travel is restricted, you’re not to leave Riverside County. You are not to change your job, or your address, without notifying me and getting permission. You are not to violate any law. You are not to own or possess a firearm of any kind. You are to fill out one of these reports each month, have it to me by the fifth, listing your present address, where you are working at that time, and what kind of work you’re doing.”

“Even if I’m still here at Delgado Farms, doing the same job?”

“Same job, same address. Fill it all in, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. Besides the monthly report, I’ll be seeing you once a month, every month. In your report, you are to give me a detailed account of all monies you have received, and all monies you have spent.”

“I buy a candy bar, I have to write it down?”

Raygor nodded. “Right now, we’re going into town where you’ll put your prison earnings in the bank. Every week you’ll deposit your earnings into the account. Mr. Ellson will see you get into town or will do it for you.”

“What the hell do I want with a bank, I don’t trust banks. Why is it your business where I keep my money?”

“It’s my business because you’re on parole. You can keep out a little for spending money but make sure you account for it.”

Lee said no more, he swallowed back what he’d like to say. Silently he took off his boot, removed and unfolded the brown paper fitted along the inside, removed his prison-earned money and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. He didn’t reveal to Raygor the seven hundred dollars he’d had when he entered McNeil, it was in his other boot.

Raygor stared at Lee’s makeshift safe. “That’ll be a nice start on a savings account, with your wages to build it up. I talked with your boss. Mr. Ellson’s going into town later, on business. He’ll pick you up, bring you back to the ranch. You can have a look around Blythe, Fontana, but stay out of trouble. You were inside for ten years, this is your first time on your own except for the train trip down here. Take it easy, watch your step, you don’t want to end up behind bars, locked up on the island again.”

Lee stared at him coldly. “What the hell do you think I’m going to do in Blythe, hold up some mom-and-pop candy store in the middle of the day, rip off some old couple for forty, fifty bucks?”

Raygor looked back at him, and said nothing, his lean tanned face drawn into long, sour lines. Lee knew he was being unreasonable. The guy was just doing his job, doing what the authorities told him to do—but did he have to be so officious about it? His urge to pound Raygor didn’t cool down until they were on the road, until he had slipped into the hot seat of Raygor’s dusty Plymouth and they were headed away from the ranch, up the dirt road toward Blythe, bumping along between fanning rows of melons and string beans. Looking away over the rich green carpets of crops to the dry desert beyond where the sand stretched pale and virgin, Lee told himself that his anger at Raygor was a stupid waste of time, but he knew that what he’d felt back there wasn’t all his own rage, that some of it came from the dark haunt like a residue of grease rubbed off on his hands and staining deep.

The cat, sitting on the paddock fence, had watched Lee and Raygor leave the ranch in the officer’s tan Plymouth, the four-door vehicle so thick with dirt it could have just been dug out of a nearby sand hill. As they drove away, and Misto felt Lee’s anger at Raygor, he knew it was magnified by the heavy spirit that still sought to manipulate Lee; but the cat had to smile, too. Lee’s eagerness to look Blythe over, with thoughts to an alternate plan, greatly pleased the tomcat; and as the Plymouth disappeared in a rising cloud of dust, as Misto watched it turn onto the highway heading for Blythe, he lashed his tail once, disappeared from the fencepost, and joined the two men, stretching out unseen on the mohair seat between them.

Lee glanced down, aware of the faintest breeze and then of the cat’s warmth, and he smiled just a little. The cat, settling in for the ride, pressed his head against Lee’s leg. Lee’s Levi’s smelled of cantaloupes and mud. But it was Lee’s thoughts that held the tomcat, the various businesses he wanted to look over as he sought a plan that would not touch Jake, that would direct Lee’s thieving onto a new path not so severely damning to Lee, as well. In this world of men, certain crimes stink of evil. Other crimes, though not strictly moral, do not burn so caustically into the fabric of the human soul.

Have to make your savings deposit at the post office,” Raygor said. “Bank had a fire just a few weeks back. Moved their operation next door until they can rebuild.”

“In the post office? You’re asking me to give all my money, all I have in the world to some post office clerk for safekeeping?”

Raygor gave him a patronizing smile. “They have the biggest safe in town, big old walk-in number, walls a foot thick. No one’s going to pry your few hundred dollars out of there, Fontana.”

As Raygor pulled up in front of the post office, Lee eyed the burned-out bank building next door, its windows shattered, smoke-blackened glass swept into a heap on the sidewalk mixed with dead crickets. Two of the burned walls had already been torn away, and a tractor and bucket sat beside the gaping hole. Big Dumpster was parked behind that, half full of blackened wood and debris. The stink of burned, water-soaked wood rivaled the smell of white poison and dead crickets. “How’d the fire start?”

“Electrical,” Raygor said. “Fire marshal said it was a short in the lighting, sparks started a box of papers burning.” Lee could see blackened file cabinets inside, their drawers pulled open, nothing but ashes within.

“Burned a lot of their paperwork,” Raygor said, “and some hundred thousand in cash.”

Lee stared at the man. “And now they’re camping out in the back room of a post office. They can’t keep their papers or money from burning, and you want me to put everything I own in there.”

“All the deposits and remaining records are in the safe. Bank is negotiating with the post office to buy the building and the safe, underwrite new quarters for them.”

Sounded dicey to Lee. What made those bank people think they could do business timely with the federal government? That transaction would probably take a decade to complete. How could you depend on bankers who were that gullible and trusting, themselves? Getting out of the car, he moved inside the one-story adobe building beside Raygor. A half-dozen wanted posters hung on the wall to his left, surly, vicious-looking men, and Lee stopped to study them; he always took a good look to see who was roaming loose out there, you never knew when a heads-up might be useful.

Knowing none of them, he committed their faces to memory, then took a good look at the layout of the post office. The activity at the postal counter made his pulse quicken. As a pudgy bank officer met them and led them past the counter, Lee saw that the clerks were not only selling stamps, they were counting out stacks of money, big money.

The clerk, broad of girth in his dark suit, his hair thinning on top and combed to the side above his protruding ears, ushered them into a back room, a combination storeroom and office. Raygor made sure to come in with Lee, to see that he opened the account all proper, that he filled out all the papers. The two of them sat crowded at a small desk beside the pudgy banker, jammed in among rows of metal file cabinets, bookshelves stacked with black binders, and a narrow cot pushed in between with a pillow and rumpled blankets.

“Night man,” the banker said, seeing Lee’s interest. “Because of maybe another fire, you know,” he said, gesturing vaguely, “because, it’s just a post office building and all.” Lee looked at the man as if bored, his heart lifting with another surge of interest. Beyond the bunk and bookshelves, a safe occupied the rest of the wall, a big iron walk-in door that must lead into an iron-clad room nearly as big as the office itself. Big old combination lock that, Lee thought, would take a skilled craftsman to finesse open, if you didn’t have the combination handy.

Behind the desk was a back door maybe to the alley, set between two barred windows. It had a simple spring lock, but below that a heavy hasp with a big padlock that hung open now, during business hours. The inner door through which they’d entered was solid-looking, too. It stood open, and he could see the counter and the line of waiting customers; his interest settled on two men standing just outside, each carrying a zippered canvas cash bag, both bags bulging invitingly. Glancing in at Lee and Raygor, they seemed to be waiting for their turn with the lone banker.

Lee, focused on them, hardly heard Raygor ramble on about how much interest Lee would earn on his prison-earned money. Some piddly sum that would make a goat laugh. In the end, all he got for his cash was a dinky little savings book filled out by the flabby-faced clerk—Lee’s prison money and ranch wages gone as completely as if sucked up by the desert wind, commingled with everyone else’s cash, sucked into a mass of bookkeeping that, with a few strokes of the pen, could be lost forever. As they left the office, moving out through the post office lobby, the two waiting men had been joined by five more, each in possession of a fat canvas money bag. Lee looked them over good, then glanced at Raygor, scowled, and pretended to study his new bank book.

Outside again, standing on the sidewalk, Raygor gave him a dozen more instructions that Lee didn’t listen to and then at last, having fulfilled his federal duty, he departed, leaving Lee on his own with a final admonition to stay out of trouble. Lee watched him pull away in his dirty Plymouth to head back across the empty desert, to harass some other unfortunate parolee. He’d been surprised when Raygor allowed him to keep part of his prison earnings. Lee had told him he needed to buy clothes, which the officer seemed to understand.

Now, alone at last, he wandered up the main street looking in the shop windows but his thoughts remained on the post office as the new job began to take shape. Yet at the same time, dark misgivings pushed at him, a fear of failure that wasn’t his doing, a dark and unrelenting message that this was not the right path to take. Angrily he shook away the invasive thoughts. Walking the wide main street, he passed a small grocery, an ice cream parlor, a drugstore, the broad windows of a dime store. He finally located a shoe repair shop about as wide as a tie stall. In the dim interior, he took a seat on the shoeshine chair. He removed his boots, sat in his stocking feet reading the local paper as the thin, bearded old cobbler put on new heels. He read about the 4H winners at the local fair, studied the picture of a pair of dark-haired sisters with their two fine, chunky Hereford steers. He read about the latest episode in the eternal battle over water rights, with statements by the mayors of four nearby towns, which Lee skipped. A local man had been assaulted by his wife, shot in the foot after he beat their two children. The local sheriff had made him move out and issued a restraining order. The wife was not charged.

He watched the cobbler polish his boots, then pulled them on and paid him, asking for directions to the saddlery. He found it two blocks down, the storefront set back behind thick adobe pillars, the sidewalk in front piled with heaps of dead crickets. Stepping carefully to avoid staining his clean boots, he moved on inside.

The dim interior seemed almost cool, and smelled pleasantly of leather. Wandering toward the back, he found a table of Levi’s, found a pair that fit him. He picked out two cotton frontier shirts, and bought some shorts and socks. Elbowing among the saddles and harness, he picked out a good, wide-brimmed straw Stetson. The saddles, and the headstalls hanging behind them, smelled so sweetly of good leather they made him homesick. He looked with speculation at a couple of used saddles, their wool saddle blankets matted with horsehair and smelling comfortably of sweat. He looked, but didn’t buy. Not here in town, where he might be remembered later.

Leaving the saddlery, he had a good Mexican lunch at the same little café where he and Jake had eaten when he first arrived in Blythe, enchiladas rancheros, beans, tortillas, an ice-cold beer in a frosted glass. Then, with the afternoon to kill, he strolled the town letting his plan ease slowly together. Working out the details, he didn’t sense the cat padding along behind him.

Trotting invisibly up the sidewalk, the cat flicked his ears, lashed his tail, and kept his attention focused on Lee as the old convict thought about the post office, smiling at his foolproof getaway that would leave no possible trail. The cat had no notion whether this plan would work, but to try to prevent Lee from any future criminal activity at all would be futile. The cat, silent and unseen, was caught up with keen curiosity in Lee’s subsequent moves as the old convict put this one together.

Soon the faded storefronts gave way to small wooden cottages set on the bare sand as forlorn as empty packing crates. Some of the sand yards were picked out by low wooden or wire fences. The metal box of a swamp cooler was attached to each house, chugging asthmatically, their ever-dripping water cutting little rivers through the sand. In one small yard two husky little Mexican boys were hollering and jumping up and down throwing each other off a tattered mattress attached to rusted springs. A little girl, younger than the two boys, looked up from where she was playing in the dirt and caught Lee’s eye. She pushed herself up and toddled toward him, gray powder dust falling from her hair and torn dress. She stopped just short of the sagging picket fence that separated them, stared up at him, screamed, squatted, and urinated a little puddle in the dirt. Lee’s eyes flicked from the child to the porch where a black-haired woman sat on the steps holding a naked baby to her hanging breast. Her huge belly stretched her polka dot dress. Their eyes caught, she gave him a tired smile, then he moved on.

Beyond the houses rose the white wooden steeple of the Catholic church. The small sand cemetery next to it was, for the most part, raked and cared for, the individual plots cleared of weeds and debris, and decorated with pots of fading artificial flowers. A few graves were neglected, hidden by dry tumbleweeds and tall dead grass. A low, wrought-iron fence surrounded these, its curlicues woven with dry weeds. Five graves inside, the lettering on the stone markers worn nearly flat by age and by the desert wind. Lee stood at the rusty iron gate glancing around, looking toward the white Catholic church to be sure no one stood at a window looking back at him. When he was sure he was alone he swung open the squeaking gate and stepped on in, stood looking at the headstones choked with weeds, the neglected graves with, it seemed, no one to remember or claim them or to care. He studied the headstone of a child, and of a young man whose epitaph said he had left this world too soon. He paused at a grave marked James Dawson.

Dawson had been born September 10, 1871, the same year Lee was born. He died on November 3, 1945, nearly a year and a half ago. The lettering on this marker was sharp and clear, but from the looks of the grave, it had had no attention since Dawson was laid to rest. Maybe there was no one left, at least in this part of the country, to care or maybe even to remember him. Lee stepped close to the granite headstone, speaking softly.

“It won’t be long, Mr. Dawson, and it’ll be your birthday. You can’t really celebrate it anymore, can you? What did you do with your life? What places did you see?” Lee smiled. “Would you like to come out of there, leave your grave and live a little while longer?”

Lee pulled a weed from the mounded earth. “Would you like to step out now, and live part of your life over again? How would you like, Mr. Dawson, to walk around in my shoes for a while?”

Fishing the field tally pad from his pocket, he found the stub of pencil and copied the dates of Dawson’s birth and death. Slipping the pad back in his pocket, he stood a few minutes thinking, then he turned away, leaving the company of the dead man.

The cat watched him from atop a cluster of angels that guarded a family plot, his striped yellow tail hanging down over a stone wing, twitching impatiently. When Lee headed back for the center of town, again Misto followed trotting invisibly behind him, but once in town he gravitated to the roofs above and became clearly seen, stretched out in full view on the flat rooftop of the Surplus Department Store as he waited for Lee. Just another town cat taking his ease, letting the hot desert sun cook into his fur as cats so like to do. He watched Lee stop along the sidewalk beneath a spindly palm tree where he approached a pedestrian, a thin woman in a white dress, and asked for directions. She nodded and pointed, and Lee turned away smiling.

Lee found the library two blocks over, and pushed into its dim interior, the smell of the chugging swamp cooler wet and sour. Despite the damp air, the woman at the desk looked dried out, wrinkled from the desert sun. Her flowered cotton dress was limp with the breath of the cooler and with too many washings. When he asked for back issues of the local newspaper, she brushed her gray hair away from her glasses and gave him a tired stare. “What date you looking for?”

“November fourth or fifth, 1945.”

When she found the oversized, bound volume for him, he carried the heavy book to a table and sat down in the hard wooden chair. Opening it out, he turned the yellowed pages with care until he had the dates he wanted. He checked carefully through the obituaries until he found James Dawson, complete with his most recent address.

Dawson had been a retired mining engineer, he died on a Tuesday night of sudden, massive heart failure. His father, Neal Dawson, had been a prominent lawyer in San Francisco. His mother, Claire Dawson, née Patterson, had been well known in San Francisco for her civic work for crippled children. Both were long dead. James Dawson, born in San Diego, California, had one surviving relative, a son, Robert Dawson, a practicing lawyer in New York. Lee jotted down the particulars, returned the book to the desk, and asked for two more sets of newspapers. “I didn’t find what I wanted, I guess I wasn’t so sure of the year.”

He dawdled over the other two volumes for some time before he returned them and headed for the door. Before he pushed out into the hot street he turned back to thank the librarian. She smiled at him as if grateful for his courtesy. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“There is one other thing, I almost forgot. Somewhere I’ve lost my birth certificate. Would you know how to go about getting it replaced?”

“Where were you born? What county?

“I was born in San Diego.”

“That would be San Diego County.” She fetched a directory from the shelf above her, thumbed through and copied down an address. “Send your name and date of birth to this address, along with your father’s name and your mother’s maiden name. You’ll need to send one dollar, and include a stamped, self-addressed envelope.” She studied him with more interest than Lee liked. Maybe the old doll was lonely. Reaching into her desk drawer, she handed him a clean sheet of paper. “Post office will have stamped envelopes.”

He thanked her in a way that brought a flush to her sallow cheeks, and sat down at a nearby table. He wrote out his request and information, folded a dollar bill inside, and placed it carefully into his pants pocket. He gave her a big smile, thanked her again, bringing another blush, and quickly left the library. Stepping out into the late afternoon heat he headed fast for the post office. He opened a post office box in Dawson’s name, using Dawson’s last address, thanking his good luck they were busy as hell and that was all the information they wanted. He bought two stamped envelopes, addressed one to the new post office box. He put that and his birth certificate application in the other envelope, addressed and mailed it, then headed for the train station to meet Jake. Scanning the street ahead, he didn’t see Jake’s truck—but he saw the yellow cat standing in plain sight on the roof of the train station, the big yellow tom looking down at him as if he could see clear through him, see Lee’s every thought and intention.

Though Lee knew the nature of the cat, though they talked together when Misto felt the need, the cat’s sudden appearances where Lee didn’t expect him could still unnerve him. Lee was standing on the sidewalk looking up at the cat when a little girl raced by laughing at a flock of kids behind her. She didn’t see Lee, she ran into his leg and half fell. He grabbed her shoulder lightly to help her right herself. Pausing, she looked up into his eyes still laughing—then stopped laughing, and turned pale.

She saw something in Lee’s eyes that made her go white and still. Then she spun around and ran, her face frightened and grim. Lee stood looking until she disappeared. Pedestrians moved around him, glancing back at him puzzled and then moving on.

What had the child seen? Something of his own nature? Or had she seen that other presence, seen a hint of the dark spirit looking back at her?

But it was the child herself that unnerved him. She looked so familiar, almost like the picture he carried of Mae. She had dimples, long blond hair, so like his little sister. Except this child’s eyes were light blue, not dark, not like Mae’s eyes in the faded photograph that he had carried all these years and didn’t know why, only knew he couldn’t throw it away. Only knew, or thought he knew, that somewhere down the road he’d know why he kept it. But this child, she had seen something in his face that had scared her and, as tough as the old cowboy was, or thought he was, that hurt him. Whatever had frightened her had upset Lee, too, made him turn away uncertain in himself, badly shaken.