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

Didn’t seem like twenty years since he and Jake rode into California over the dry mountains to lay up after that Tucson train job, Jake nearly dead from loss of blood. And then a week later outside Blythe, when Lee was alone, the feds had grabbed and arrested him. Jake was holed up by then, Lucita taking care of him. And with Lee arrested and in jail, Lucita was all Jake had.

Thinking about all that had happened since, about the mistakes he had made, thinking how he’d promised himself not to get trapped in any more screwups, now Lee cursed himself for not getting off the train in San Bernardino. That could mean trouble, too. What the hell was he thinking? He’d better come up with a good excuse for his parole officer, he could have blown his release right there.

As the train slowed for Blythe, Lee stepped out to the vestibule. Peering around the side of the cars, he could see the town up ahead, a dry wart on the face of the ungiving plain. Stepping back to his seat, he checked the watch pocket of his jeans, fingering the tightly folded bills. Unlike the seven hundred more in his boot, this was clean money, money he’d earned in prison industries. But all together, enough—if the parole board got snotty with him—to get him a good distance away, in a hurry. When the train bucked to a halt, a heavy black cloud rattled against the windows turning the passenger car nearly as dark as night. What the hell was that? Not Satan’s shadow, this was different. And not blowing leaves, there weren’t that many trees in Blythe; and the black cloud made a clicking noise, hitting the glass, so loud he thought for a minute it was pebbles blowing—but this was clouds of something small squirming as they hit the glass, and some of them were clinging and crawling, were crawling up the glass . . .

Crickets. Swarms of crickets, thousands of flying bodies beating against the glass. And at a break in the swarm, when he could see the train yard, it too was black with them, they had turned the afternoon as dark as night. The station lights had come on, crickets surged in their glow, swarming, and where they swept against Lee’s window they left trails of silver mucus. Peering down, where lights lit the track, he could see them fall and die there, glistening brighter than the slick metal.

Well, hell, he knew Blythe had these swarms now and then, over the years, like the grasshoppers in South Dakota. But did he have to arrive right in the middle of this mess? He rose when the car stilled; and as the rest of the passengers stood up, gathering their belongings, he felt a brush of fur against his hand. Sometimes, he couldn’t understand why the little cat stayed with him. A ghost cat must have the whole universe at its disposal, must have all of time to travel through and to choose from, so what was he doing here? Had they bonded so well that the yellow tom simply wanted to be with him, wanted to remain where Lee was, or was there some other reason, some mystery yet to unfold? Moving on out of the train, stepping down onto the platform, his boots crunched dead and squirming crickets, the steps and sidewalk were alive with them, masses of dark, brittle insects swarming around his boots, swarming up his boots, creeping and flying up the walls of the station and inside whenever the door opened, swarming over the newspaper rack and shoeshine stand, dark stinking bugs crawling through the white powder that had been sprinkled along the street and sidewalk and across the thresholds of the shops to kill them.

It hadn’t seemed to kill many, they were still thick on the varnished oak benches before the station, dark bodies crawling in and out the slots of the cigarette and candy machines, the sound of their beating wings against metal and glass like some dark prediction he didn’t want to know about. The streets and gutters were dark with glistening bodies, crickets clinging to fenders and windshields, to tires, to license plates and chrome grills. Heaps of dead crickets had been swept up along the curb, the piles dusted with the killing white powder; crickets flew in his face or flew past him to beat their hard little bodies against the hot overhead lights—he wondered if the ghost cat was invisibly diving at them, swatting and gobbling up crickets. A shout made him spin around.

“Fontana! Lee Fontana!”

Lee stepped back out of the light, watching the approaching figure. Only when he saw the horseman’s stride, the Stetson and boots and then the familiar face and crippled hand did he step forward, grinning.

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.