Shirley Murphy - The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana

Did Misto mean to travel with him clear to his destination, clear to Blythe? Lee hoped that was his intention, though he didn’t know why the big yellow tom would want to head for that parched desert, he didn’t know why Misto was so determined to stay with him. Whatever the reason, the security of the big tomcat eased him—a bold guardian against the dark thoughts that too often pushed and prodded at him. Lee was learning to depend on that steadying sense of rightness that the burly beast lent him, that sense of stubborn protection that Lee found so comforting.

Misto dozed warm and close against Lee, purring as the cat idly dipped into his own memories, into thoughts of his own past lives. He thought about Lee and Mae as children, and then remembered lives lived long before that one, recalling dark medieval times when cats were thought to be witches’ familiars, when he had barely escaped murder as one of these, and he remembered another time when he hadn’t escaped, when he had been hanged with the so-called witch beside him, a lovely, dark-haired young woman whose spirit, too, had moved on into a happier realm.

How variable the fate of cats, and of their consorts, over the centuries, from those times of bloody cruelty, to the luxuriant idolatry a pampered cat knew in ancient Egypt. How indecipherable the vicissitudes of time, how mysterious the meaning of life for all living creatures. Drifting off into sleep, Misto wondered at how unfathomable life was, and of the far more vast spirit, wondered at the mysteries in all their eternal truths that not even the far-seeing ghost cat could decipher.

When Lee woke, the cat was gone. Only the sense of him remained and a lingering warmth against his jacket. The sun was up, the Oregon smog vanished, and the smell of the sea came strong. He looked out at the rolling waves brightening the Pacific, and at the green hills and tall forests north of San Francisco; and on a whim, knowing he shouldn’t spend the money, he thought of having breakfast in the fancy dining car. Rising, he went to wash himself in the restroom. He shaved, cleaned up as best he could, and then headed up through the passenger cars and the sleeping cars with their little, closed cubicles.

In the dining car, he expected to have to stand in line but it was early, the waiters were just getting set up, laying out heavy silverware, fine glasses, and white napkins on bright white tablecloths. He was seated alone at a small table. The East Bay hills swept by on his left, a glimpse of the sea and dark redwoods across to his right. Sipping the best coffee he’d tasted in ten years, he ordered three fried eggs, hash browns, bacon, and a biscuit with gravy. He hadn’t dined like this since well before McNeil, and he didn’t expect to do so again, not in the foreseeable future.

He returned to his seat heavy with too much food, and as they made their way down the coast he tried not to sleep, he sat enjoying the bright green of the hilly pastures and the fat livestock. There were new calves everywhere, and a bull mounting a cow not a hundred feet from the train brought embarrassed giggles down the length of the car.

It was dusk as they approached the outskirts of L.A., too overcast to see the great letters marking the Hollywood Hills, but the nearer lights of the small towns swept by clear enough, picking out homelier neighborhoods, small businesses, and little wooden cottages tucked among tall Victorian homes. He tried to read the cheap dime novel he’d brought, but now he kept envisioning, at every scene he read, a crueler way to handle the action, a colder and more sadistic turn that the writer should have thought of himself.

Approaching the L.A. station, the train edged slowly through what seemed miles of lighted freight yard. As soon as they came to a halt and the conductor stepped aside, Lee swung out of his seat and down the steps, carrying his few belongings. Inside the station he ignored the crowds that pushed around him as he walked the length of the big building trying to ease his aching legs, trying to come fully awake, after sitting too long on the train.

He had a long layover here. He asked questions, found the gate where he’d board, found a wooden bench to himself, and at last he spread out his papers, and settled in. He’d be glad when he hit Blythe. Right now, he never wanted to see another train. Not as a passenger, shut in with a bunch of strangers, and not with even one whining kid. He lay down on the bench trying to sleep, trying to ignore the noise of people hurrying around him, but he had slept too much on the train. Restless, he read for a while, in the poor light, and then rose and paced the station again, trying to make the hours go faster. And then at last, tired out, he found another bench, lay down again covered with his papers and coat, lay waiting for morning, waiting for his train to Blythe.

9

Lee jerked awake as the train’s couplings shifted, he could feel the engine straining as it began the heavy pull up Banning Pass, the passenger car rocking in the sharp wind that swept down between the mountains. He was glad to have left L.A. behind him and San Bernardino, too—he had stayed on the train during that two-hour layover there, hadn’t swung off to report to his parole officer as his printed instructions told him to do, he hadn’t felt like it. If the PO wanted to see him he could find him in Blythe, at work as his release plan told him to do. He had boarded the train to Blythe bleary-eyed and stiff after sleeping on that hard wooden bench most of the night; even a sprung prison cot would have been luxury. Breakfast had been a dry sandwich in the train station, at a little booth where the giggling shopkeeper must have had those dried-up ham-and-cheese treats stashed for a week or more.

As the train strained rising up the pass he looked out below him, down at the vast apple orchards, miles of green trees marching in straight formation across the high desert. Rising from his seat, he moved stiffly out to the vestibule, stood in the fresh wind smelling the heady scent of apple blossoms, the sweetness making him think again of Lucita, of old passions never fulfilled. One time, they’d been rodeoing, he and Jake and Lucita, not riding but just as spectators, just for the hell of it, sitting on a fence at Salinas watching the bull riding, but ready to swing off the rail fast if the Brahma turned in their direction. When the bull did head for them Lucita swung off but she caught her heel and nearly fell. They both grabbed her, pulled her up, but it was Lee she clung to. He’d felt her excitement, clinging close, both of them rising to the same urge—until she looked up, saw Jake’s expression, and she pulled away from Lee straightening her vest and hat. She was so beautiful. Long, dark hair down over her shoulders, so slim in her leather vest, her pale silk shirt and well-fitting jeans, the silver jewelry at her throat and wrists exotic and cool against her deep tan. When Jake turned away, her dark Latin eyes were hot on Lee once more.

That look still made him wonder, sometimes. What if they had pursued what they felt, what if she had married him instead of Jake? What would life have been like? He thought for a while about that, Lucita in bed with him, his hands on her, the two of them in a little cabin just big enough to turn around in, cozy and isolated.

But how would he have made a living for her? Not farming, like Jake. Maybe breaking colts, or general ranch work—but that would have gotten them nowhere. Lucita slaving away in a primitive ranch kitchen, her long beautiful hands roughened, her dark eyes filling with disappointment when he didn’t ever make more than the meager subsistence of a ranch hand. Her disappointment and anger when he began to yearn for the open road again, when he began to hanker for real money, when his thieving ways took hold again: the discouragement in her eyes, her bitter disappointment as she saw her own dreams wither.