The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana

24

Morgan woke dizzy and sick, jammed in a dark, cramped space, his face pushed up against something rough that, when he felt it with his unsteady hand, he thought was automotive upholstery, rough fabric almost like the mohair with which he’d upholstered the Dodge. Even moving his hand that few inches sent a sharp pain through his head, a shock so severe that his stomach went sick and he thought he was going to throw up. He remained still for some time, then gingerly he tried to ease out of his confinement, to straighten his legs, but when he tried to sit up, the effort made his head pound and throb. Gingerly he fingered his forehead expecting to find blood, but he could find no wound. Moving slowly, he eased onto his side, the pain jabbing through his skull. The back of a car seat rose in front of him, the map pocket with a familiar silver flashlight sticking up, and under the driver’s seat a child’s blue jacket wadded up, Sammie’s jacket with the bunny on the pocket that had gone missing weeks ago. He was in his own car, lying doubled up on the floor of the backseat, his legs bent under him twisted and stiff. Slowly he rose up clutching at the back of the seat, pulling himself painfully off the floor until he was able at last to kneel and could see out the window.

Low sun shot between a tangle of trees, its rays blinding him. How could the sun be setting? He thought, when he could think at all, that it should be around noon, he had a hazy memory of someone coming into the shop at lunchtime, of someone in the car with him.

Falon? Brad Falon? Wanting him to go somewhere? Why would he go anywhere with Falon, he had nothing to do with him anymore.

The low sun was so harsh that when he closed his eyes, the red afterimage of overhanging tree branches swam painfully. He realized he was parked in a dense woods, he had to be somewhere outside of town. Why would he be hunched down in the backseat of his car, alone, parked somewhere in the woods? Shielding his eyes, he could make nothing of the location, there were woods all around Rome. And if the sun was setting, how could he have slept all afternoon? He felt so heavy, thick limbed, even his tongue felt thick and the taste in his mouth was sour. If he had gotten sick suddenly, why hadn’t he gone home? Why would he have come out here, into the woods, alone?

And when he looked at the sun again it had lifted higher. That wasn’t right. He squinted at it, puzzled. The sun wasn’t setting, it was rising. How could that be? It wasn’t evening, it was morning. Slowly he reached for the window handle. With effort, he rolled down the glass. Cool, fresh air caressed his face. Morning air, not the stifling heat of a Georgia dusk.

Trying to clear his head, trying to think back, he was sure he’d left the shop around noon. Yes, he had left with Brad Falon, something about Falon’s car breaking down. He couldn’t remember where they had gone, but he was sure it was lunchtime. So how could it be morning, now? If he’d gotten sick, he would have left Falon and driven home, not come out here into the country. When he tried to get up and shift onto the seat, the pain in his head brought tears, and again his stomach heaved, dry heaves that sent pain shocking through him.

Had he gone somewhere with Falon and there’d been an accident? And Falon slipped away from impending trouble, leaving him alone? That would be like Falon. Through the open window the sun rose slowly higher between the trees. He didn’t have his watch. He thought it might be around seven o’clock. He didn’t wear his watch working, it got beat up too bad. A little breeze blew in, stirring a sour smell within the car, the same as the sour taste in his mouth, a taste and stink that it took him a while to recognize.

Whiskey, he thought. The sour smell of bootleg whiskey, same as when a few of the boys got together with a half-gallon jug out in the woods or at someone’s house, you could smell it on them four hours afterward. Why would whiskey be in his car? You couldn’t just walk into a store and buy liquor, even beer, this was a dry county. And neither he nor Becky bought bootleg, neither of them drank. With unsteady fingers he searched again for a head wound, feeling for blood, knowing he had done this just moments before. His mouth tasted like he’d swallowed something dead. The inability to remember, to know why he was here or how he had gotten here, struck fear through him. He had turned away from the blinding sun, pressing his face into his hands trying to think, trying to remember, when behind him the door was jerked open. He was pulled out onto the ground stumbling and falling. Trying to get his balance he spun around hitting out at his assailant, scraping his knee painfully on the metal doorsill.

Strong hands forced him upright, he struck at the man, still trying to get his footing, and then he saw the uniform. Cop’s uniform. Morgan dropped his fists, stared into the round face of Richard Jimson, the youngest member of the Rome police force. Light brown hair, the cowlick that wanted to hang over his forehead pushed back beneath his cap, light brown eyes that usually were smiling. Jimson wasn’t smiling now. What was this, why the anger? He and Jimson had gone through grammar school together, were on the baseball team, went squirrel hunting together when they were kids, had always been easy with each other, even in high school when Morgan was still running with Falon. Jimson watched him coldly, the officer tense with rage. Jimson was a stranger, now. His eyes hard on Morgan, he slipped the handcuffs from his belt, pulled Morgan’s hands behind him, and snapped them on, the metal chill around his wrists.

“Move it, Morgan.” Jimson’s round face was hard with anger. He forced Morgan across the narrow dirt road toward his patrol unit. Morgan could see, beyond the police car, a white farmhouse with a red barn. The old Crawford place, the narrow dirt road leading back to it lined with sourwoods and maples. Jimson opened the back door of the black-and-white, silent and remote. He put his hand on Morgan’s head so he wouldn’t bump it, getting in. Pushed him into the backseat behind the wire barrier and slammed the car door. Morgan didn’t fight him, he didn’t resist. Sitting handcuffed in the backseat, knowing he was locked in and feeling dizzy and sick, he realized that the stink of whiskey wasn’t just inside his own car, it was coming from his clothes, his shirt and jeans.

He looked out through the side window toward his car. It was pulled so deep in the woods that from the road it was hardly visible. He could see just beyond it the twisted oak that marked lovers’ hollow; he guessed every small town had such a hideaway, a tree-sheltered clearing scattered with empty bottles, Coke bottles, unmarked bootleg bottles. He hadn’t been out here since high school when he and Becky used to come out and park.

Jimson stood by the open driver’s door, the radio in his hand, calling for assistance. Why would he need assistance? Morgan couldn’t see enough of his own car to tell if it had been wrecked. At the thought of a wreck, fear iced along his back, brought him up alert. “Becky and Sammie,” he shouted at Jimson, “was there a wreck, are they hurt? Where are Becky and Sammie?” He couldn’t remember them being in the car, couldn’t remember bringing them out here. Pressing his face into the wire barrier, he shouted crazily at Jimson. “Where’s Becky? Where’s my little girl? Were we in an accident? Are they hurt? Are they all right?”

“They’re all right,” Jimson said dryly. “As right as they can be.”

“What does that mean? Are they hurt? Tell me.”

Jimson was silent, staring in the mirror at him.

“Was there an accident?” Morgan repeated. “Is that why my car—why I’m out here? Where are they?” Becky’s face filled his vision, her brown eyes steady on him, Sammie’s elfin face so close to him he thought he had only to reach out and touch her soft cheek, reach out and hug her. “Where are they?” he repeated. “What’s this about? Was there an accident?”

“They’re at home,” Jimson said. “You know there was no accident.” Why was he so enraged? Morgan started to press him, to ask what he meant, when another patrol car came barreling down the road and pulled up beside Jimson’s unit.

Sergeant Leonard stepped out. Morgan had known the brindle-haired police veteran since he was a kid, had an easy friendship with the older man, but now Leonard was as hard-faced and angry as Jimson. Morgan watched a young trainee get out the other side, a blond-haired young college type who, Morgan had heard, was good at cataloging evidence. Leonard stood looking into the backseat at Morgan. “Give me your car keys.”

Handcuffed, Morgan dug clumsily in his pocket for the keys and handed them over. Jimson slipped in behind the wheel of the black-and-white, as Leonard moved away toward Morgan’s car. Jimson started the engine, spun a U-turn on the narrow, empty road. Morgan hunched down in the moving car aching and sick, trying to figure out what was happening, what had happened, trying to put the scattered pieces together—and worrying about Sammie and Becky, still terrified for them. And ashamed, because somehow he had failed them, because he had suddenly and inexplicably lost control of his life, had failed the two people in the world who were his life.

“What was it, Jimson? What did I do, what happened?” He didn’t expect an answer, as closemouthed as Jimson had been. The woods swept by, the familiar farms, the long, stinking rows of metal chicken houses. As they neared town and turned onto Main Street, Jimson glanced in the mirror again at Morgan, his brown eyes flickering between rage and puzzlement; for an instant a touch of their friendship showed through, conflicted and uncertain.

And now, nearing the jail, all Morgan could think of was Sammie’s nightmare where he was locked behind bars, her terrified screaming that his friends were locking him in a cage. He wanted to fight his way out of the squad car and get home, find Sammie, tell her everything was all right, he wanted to hold her safe and tell her Daddy was all right.

But he wasn’t all right: he was coming more awake now, and as Jimson circled the block to park behind the police station, slowly Morgan began, with effort, to put events together. He had gotten into the car at noon, he was certain of that. Falon had come into the shop, urging him real pushy as was Falon’s way. He remembered he’d been working on John Graham’s Chevy, replacing the fuel pump, remembered hearing Falon’s voice, looking up to see Falon there on the other side of the raised hood. He was sure, now, that he’d left the shop with Falon. They’d gone to look at Falon’s car? He thought Falon had wanted to tell him something, but he couldn’t remember what.

But that had to be yesterday, he’d apparently spent the afternoon and night in the car, and he could remember nothing of those hours. A whole afternoon and night wiped from his memory. He knew he hadn’t been drinking, no matter how he smelled or what he tasted. Had he been drugged with something worse than bootleg? And then left there in the woods alone, passed out cold, abandoned by Falon?

He remembered wiping up Falon’s spilled Coke, but didn’t remember much at all, after that. He looked into the rearview mirror at Jimson, wanting to ask if this was Friday, wanting to know if it had been just yesterday that he and Falon had gotten in his car, wanting to ask Jimson why he couldn’t remember anything after pulling away from the curb where he’d parked, driving just a few blocks, and then growing so dizzy and confused. He thought there was something about the Graystone Apartments. Was that where they were headed? He couldn’t remember arriving there.

“Jimson, I have to call Becky.” When he hadn’t been home all night, she’d be frantic. What had happened after Falon spilled the Coke? Those hours between yesterday and this morning had been taken from him as if they never existed, the whole night had been stolen from him. What had he done during those lost hours, those vanished and terrifying hours?

Jimson pulled around behind the impressive stone courthouse to the basement area below at the back, the entrance to the jail. Morgan watched his own car pull in behind them, to a fenced, locked area. He supposed the car would be held as evidence. Morgan knew, from walking through the lockup area, that the cells were small and dirty and they stank. Jimson parked the patrol car just at the back door of the jail, killed the engine, and got out. He opened the back door and motioned Morgan out, Morgan awkward with his hands cuffed behind him. Morgan stumbled up the steps ahead of the officer, herded along by the man who should be his friend, who now was as cold as if they’d never met. Jimson opened the big steel door, pushed him inside, forced him along the hall, on past the cells and up to the front, to the booking desk.

Morgan was booked into Rome City Jail at ten-fifteen that morning. Reeking of whiskey, he drew sharp, surprised looks from the staff and the other officers. At the front desk, Jimson fingerprinted him and filled out the forms, asking Morgan coldly for the answer to every printed question though he already knew the answers, he knew Morgan’s personal history as well as Morgan himself did. It was the charges that Jimson wrote down, that left him shocked.

Bank robbery? Murder? He looked at Jimson, feeling sick, looked at what Jimson had written. That couldn’t be right, not murder. He couldn’t have killed anyone. Nothing that could have happened to him, a hit on the head, some kind of drug, could make him kill someone. Nothing would allow him to forget killing someone. It was hard enough to forget what he had done during the war. Now, he wanted an explanation, he wanted to shout at Jimson and shake him until he found out what this was about.

But to make a fuss now might only make the situation worse. When Jimson finished filling in the report, he marched Morgan down the hall, shoved him in through a cell door so brutally that he fell sprawling across the concrete.

“Jimson?”

The officer turned, watched him as he struggled up.

He tried to talk to Jimson, tried to tell him he thought he’d been drugged, tried to reconstruct what little he could remember: Falon showing up at the shop, his leaving with Falon, Falon spilling the Coke, Morgan turning to wipe it up.

Jimson said, “There was no Coke, no Coke bottles, no bottles of any kind except the empty moonshine bottle.”

“I didn’t have any moonshine. You know I don’t drink—no matter how I smell,” he said sheepishly. “You searched the car, and found nothing else? There were two Cokes, Falon bought them at the shop, from the machine. Ask Albert, he was there, working at the other lift.”

Jimson’s face softened, but just a little. “There was something sticky spilled on the seat.” He shrugged. “It might be Coke. We’ll look into it.”

Morgan looked back at him, deflated. What could a detective find in a stain of spilled Coke? Maybe a trace of some drug? Or maybe nothing. And Falon could have ditched the bottles anywhere. Easy to toss them back in the woods in lovers’ hollow, two more empty bottles rolled in dirt and buried among years of collected trash.

He watched Jimson lock his barred door, drop the key into his uniform pocket, watched his retreating back, watched the heavy outer door close. He was locked in a cell by himself—at least for that he was grateful, thankful for the privacy. Maybe Jimson had taken pity on him. Or maybe Jimson thought Morgan had turned too dangerous to share space with the town’s three drunks. All he knew was, this wasn’t happening, couldn’t be happening. There was no way he could have killed someone, and no way he could have forgotten such a horrible act as if it had never happened.

When Jimson had gone, Morgan sat down on the stained bunk. The cell wasn’t as big as their small bathroom at home, but this cubicle wasn’t blue and white and sweet smelling, it was scarred with the filth of generations, that the janitor had tried repeatedly to scrub away, he could see the paler but still visible scour marks. Walls scarred with the shadows of old graffiti, newer smears of dirt, and stains of urine behind the toilet. He read the scribbled messages that were still legible, repeated the four-letter words to himself as if they might help him hang on to his sanity. Two inscriptions begged God’s mercy, penned by someone lying on the iron cot writing at a forty-five-degree angle. The cot’s striped mattress was grimy along the edges and sported three long brown smears. A threadbare blanket and a worn sheet were folded at the foot of the cot beside a grimy pillow. The washbasin was streaked brown with years of iron-rich water. Above the basin hung a ragged, torn towel. Across the corridor a drunk was singing dirty words to “Down in the Valley.” He used the toilet, washed his hands and face with the tepid water but avoided the towel. He smoothed his hair with his wet hands, cupped water in his hands, rinsed his mouth again and again but couldn’t get rid of the dead taste. What had Falon put in his Coke? This had to be something stronger, even, than moonshine. There was no other explanation for the way he felt and for his loss of memory. Whiskey wouldn’t do that, and how could Falon have forced that much whiskey down him? No, the liquor was soaked into his clothes; even his boots, when he pulled them off, smelled of booze, and the leather was still faintly damp.

But as he sat there in the cell alone, his sense of innocence began to fade. What might have happened during those long hours he couldn’t remember? What might Falon have made him do, what would he have been willing to do, drugged, that he wouldn’t do while sober?

He spread the sheet over the cot and lay down. The corridor light in his face made his head throb. From the moment Jimson had jerked him out of his car, scenes from yesterday and detached snatches of conversation had swum through his head in a muddle, none of it making sense, Falon’s voice urging him to leave the shop, Falon trying to get him to go somewhere . . . He remembered telling Falon he never left the shop for lunch. Well, it was too late now to change whatever had happened. What he didn’t understand was why? Falon was mean, had always been mean, but why this horror just now, when he and Becky and Sammie were finally together again?

But that would be exactly Falon’s way: hit them when they were happiest—out of sadism, out of a hunger for Becky that she had never encouraged and that, for all these years, could have festered, could have left Falon waiting for just the right moment, the cruelest moment. But was fate—certainly not the good Lord himself—so cruel that Falon’s evil would at last be allowed to destroy them?