The Cat, The Devil And Lee Fontana

4

On the short run down to Olympia beneath the snowy shoulder of Mount Rainier, they were soon skirting the vast and marshy shore of Nisqually Reach, where dairy cows grazed fat and content in their lush pastures. Among the tall green marsh grass at the water’s edge, two bald eagles fought over a flopping fish, beating with angry wings at each other, tearing the silver body apart between them. But as Lee watched their hungry and brutal battle, the air inside the train, even through the closed windows, soon stank of the area’s paper mills, a sour odor harsher than rotted wood, its thick effluence soon turning the land, the sea, and sky a dull, heavy gray, featureless and depressing.

But maybe, Lee thought, he’d better enjoy, while he could, even these pollution-bound inlets where the mills had soured the land, before he reached the dry desert, the pale dunes where the only water he’d see would be dark and sluggish, where he’d miss looking out every morning at the lapping waters of the sound washing against the ragged and wooded shore.

Now, suddenly, the world turned black as they pounded through a tunnel. When they emerged, the passengers around him strained to see the Cascade Mountains towering in the east, snowcapped, bright even against the graying sky. Only when, farther on, the manmade fog thinned near the ground, could he see the dense city buildings of Olympia, and the Olympic Range rising to the west. In the green surrounding fields, half a dozen eagles soared low over a pasture, homing in on something dead, then one lifted and left the group; he watched it rise on powerful wings to disappear into the overcast above, the great bird soaring free wherever he chose to go, his unfettered flight making Lee want to do the same.

Made him wonder, when he got to L.A. to change trains, if he should fly free, too. End the journey there, take off wherever he chose, never complete his parole plan. Buy a bedroll, put together a kit, hop a freight out of the city, never show up in Blythe, forget the job waiting for him, stop knuckling under to the feds.

Right. And end up back in the joint. Christ, that would be dumb. Besides, he wouldn’t do that to a friend. Jake Ellson had gone to a lot of trouble to get him this job. Without it he might not have made parole, would have finished out his sentence right there at McNeil.

It didn’t seem like twenty-five years since he and Jake had pulled their last train robbery, and now Ellson was married, to the woman they’d both wanted, was settled in a responsible job and had two grown girls—married to Lucita because Lee had turned away from her, because he was too wild to want to settle down. Yet even now when he thought about her dark Latin beauty the heat would start to build and he’d wonder if he should have stayed.

Well, hell, that had been decided when they were young, Jake was the one who’d got himself tamed, and that was what Jake wanted. Lee hadn’t cared to settle down, had no desire to be saddled with a family. Now he wondered what that would have been like, that life, children to love and to love him, Lucita in his bed, a warm, vibrant part of his life.

Leaving Olympia, the train was crowded. He tried to occupy both seats by spreading out newspapers but it wasn’t five minutes, passengers pushing into the car, that a round little man entered carrying a briefcase, headed straight for the seat next to Lee, a nattily dressed little fellow in a baby-blue three-piece suit. Lee glared at him, willing him to move on, but brazenly he pushed the papers aside and sat down, his round blue eyes smiling behind wire-rimmed glasses. “Guess it’s the only seat left.” Still smiling, he made a short attempt at small talk, leaning forward to look myopically at Lee, his blue eyes too earnest, and the first thing Lee knew he had launched into a land-selling scam, intently pushing his worthless, five-acre desert plots. Lee tuned out the man’s sales pitch, staring out through the smeared window at a red-tailed hawk lifting on the rising wind. The little man went right on, garrulous, so annoying Lee wanted to punch him. “You married, sir? You have children? Mister . . . I didn’t catch your name.”

“I didn’t give it,” Lee said shortly.

“Well, sir, if you have children, this land would give you a nice estate to pass on to them. Grandchildren? Think what you could leave to your grandchildren, why, this one piece of land . . .” But then as his blue eyes took in Lee’s increasing irritation, his tapping foot and restless hands, he changed his tack. “What line of work are you in, sir? You look like maybe a retired banker.”

Lee’s temper flared. He rose, shoved past the man, and left the car, went to stand in the open vestibule trying to shake his anger. When he heard the door open behind him he turned, meaning to chase the little scum away.

Light glanced off the man’s glasses revealing, now, eyes very different from the smarmy smile: cold, predatory eyes, a look that forced Lee to step back. Even his voice was different, grainy and hushed.

“You’re getting old, Lee Fontana. You’re old, and you’re all alone. You have nothing,” he said with satisfaction, “you have no one. No money to speak of, no possessions, no one who cares about you. Only the little cash you earned in prison, and the seven hundred dollars wrapped in brown paper in your left boot. How far do you think that will get you?”

Lee waited, chilled. As far as he knew, no one was aware of the seven hundred dollars. If the prison authorities had checked his belongings that long time ago when he first arrived at McNeil, they’d left the money alone—or maybe they’d missed it, tucked deep in the toe of his boot. But this little man had no way to know such a thing, and no way to know his name, either. The wind tugged at the salesman’s seersucker suit and at his thin, pale hair. He watched Lee intently, his eyes as hard and penetrating as the steely stare of a hunting hawk, and an icy dread filled Lee. This was the shadow he had seen last night in his cell, the specter that had appeared to him now and again over the years, whispering, urging him, bringing out the rage and cruelty that seemed to dwell somewhere inside him, that usually he managed to put aside, to ignore. This was the shadow he had seen as a child, so long ago on the prairie, the chill presence that had frightened even his strong and powerful grandpappy.

“What do you want?” Lee managed, swallowing back a cough.

The little man smiled, his face and eyes cold as stone. “I want to see you prosper, Lee Fontana. I want to see you make it big, this time. I want to see you make a nice haul, enough money to take care of your retirement, just as you plan. I want to help you.”

Rage filled Lee, the man was in his space, pushing him hard. He turned away, fists clenched, his anger nearly out of control, looked out at the calm green fields sweeping past, trying to calm himself, but still his temper boiled. He spun around to face the man, tensed to swing.

The vestibule was empty.

Neither door had opened, but Lee was alone. He stood for a long time, numb, not wanting to think about what he’d faced, wishing he had something steady to cling to.

When at last he returned down the aisle to his seat, he walked slowly, studying the faces of the other passengers. No one remotely resembled the stranger, no one looked up at him. On his empty seat the newspapers were strewn as he had left them, his sandwich wrappers crumpled on the floor where he’d dropped them. Still, he stood watching the rows of passengers, then at last slid into his seat. He sat with his eyes closed, but there was no way he could forget that icy stare; the man had driven a shaft of cold through him that left him sick with rage. He fidgeted, engulfed in a heavy silence, in a vast and growing solitude that was soon the silence of the empty prairie.

He was twelve years old, standing at the corral fence beside his grandpappy, the two of them staring out at the flat rangeland where there should be nothing to scare anyone, staring out at a moving shadow where there could be no shadow, at a shifting presence that turned his grandpappy pale. Lee had never seen Russell Dobbs scared, had never imagined his grandpappy could be afraid, but now Dobbs was afraid, something was out there, something beyond even Russell Dobbs’s ken, something that the famous train robber couldn’t have destroyed, even with a well-placed bullet.

Lee’s grandpappy was his hero. When Lee was a boy, he hadn’t spent much time with Dobbs, a few days once or twice a year when Dobbs would show up for an unexpected visit, yet the old man had dominated Lee’s childhood. Lee’s dreams of his grandpappy’s adventures had shaped his hunger for fast trains and fast guns, for gold bullion, for the feel of gold coins running through his fingers. Russell Dobbs was known throughout the West for having taken down more train money than any man alive, and in far more reckless confrontations than any man. Young Lee had dreamed of even more dramatic robberies, had dreamed of far more wealth even than his grandpappy had stolen and had so recklessly spent.

From the time Lee could handle a horse well enough to be of help, he had worked the ranch beside his daddy. His older brother was no good around cattle, and his two older sisters, Nora and Jenny, helped in the kitchen and in the vegetable garden—their parents didn’t believe in girls working with the cattle. Lee worked the ranch, but every waking moment he dreamed of a more exciting life. Even that day leaning on the fence beside Dobbs, staring out at the prairie at what looked like a twist of smoke moving and approaching, the boy was even more alarmed by the old man’s fear than by that half-seen specter, by the shadow of a man where there was no living figure. Dobbs had watched the figure so intently it seemed almost like it was speaking to him. Dobbs’s cheeks were pale beneath the leathered tan and when, after a long while, the haunt vanished, his grandpappy had started as if waking from a dream. And had looked down at Lee, trying to know for sure if Lee had seen it, too.

Well, the five pastured horses and that old steer had sure seen it, they were spooked as hell; but for some reason, none of them had spun and taken off away from it, none of them ran, they just stood staring, twitching and dumb in their fear. That summer, more than sixty years ago, something had visited his grandpappy there at the home ranch. Lee never doubted that Russell Dobbs knew what it was, and that he had seen it before.

Lee had heard talk, back then, that Dobbs drew the devil to him like fire drawn to tinder, some said that Dobbs had made a bargain with Satan, but others claimed that Dobbs, having beat the devil in a wager, would never be shut of him. Whatever the truth, in the pasture that morning, Lee’s grandpappy had been not only afraid, but angry.

After the steer and the horses had settled down, had stopped fidgeting and staring and gone to grazing again, and after his grandpappy had turned away, that was when Lee, still shaken, had turned and seen the yellow cat standing in the door of the barn watching him—and watching the empty prairie beyond, the cat’s back humped, its yellow fur standing up stiff, its golden eyes blazing.

That yellow cat had been afraid of nothing. Lee had liked that tomcat that would kill a rat as big as itself and, fast as lightning, could kill a rattlesnake—the yellow tomcat that was a dead ringer for the McNeil prison cat, for the cat that had slept on Lee’s bunk last night keeping him company after his visitor had vanished, the ragged and battered creature he wished was here now, beside him, to ease his fear of that little blue-eyed man, to calm the chill that, like a finger of ice, seemed lodged in Lee’s very soul.