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

What he didn’t understand was, why did he still dream of her? Dreams so real, as if she were still alive, as if she were still a little child as he’d last seen her. In his recent dreams, she was in a house he’d never seen, or in a flower garden unlike any place where they’d grown up, and she was dressed in a way she wouldn’t have been, back on the ranch, back in their own time. He was still wondering about those dreams as they moved out into the shabby street, both men full of the good Mexican dinner, the street darkening around them as evening fell. Along the row of little shacks, faint lights glowed behind curtained windows. They slipped into the truck fast, dodging crickets, tossing crickets out the windows. Moving on through the small town, they headed out a dirt road, its pale surface caught in the light of a rising half-moon, the long straight rows of bean plants polished by the faint glow. Now when they were moving fast and no crickets swarming in, Lee cracked open his window, letting in the musky wet smell of the river, of the tamarisk and willows silvered along the steep, silt banks.

Twelve miles out of town they turned onto a dirt lane, cutting through a cantaloupe field, the smell of the fruit sweet and cloying. Half a mile up, they turned into the ranch yard under bright security lights, their dust rising white against a row of packing sheds, long bunkhouses, and small frame bungalows. Jake drove on past the big mess hall with its long screened windows and deep porch, past rows of assorted tractors and field trucks. He parked in front of a cement-block house with a white picket fence. A statue of the Blessed Virgin stood in the sandy yard, the little, two-foot-high figure carefully outlined by a circle of miniature cactus. Near the house was a paddock and a small stable, and he could see a couple of horses. Beyond were more packing sheds, then more ranch trucks and some old cars. They got out beside the picket fence, but Jake didn’t head into the house. No lights burned there, with Lucita gone. They moved across the dusty yard toward the cabins, where Jake turned up the steps of the first one, the porch creaking under their weight.

The cabin door complained as Jake pushed it open, reached in and flipped a switch so a sudden light flared from an overhead bulb. The cabin held an iron bed, a brown metal nightstand, a small battered desk, a small wooden chest of drawers, and a straight-backed chair, painted purple. An ornate wooden crucifix hung above the bed, hand carved and gilded. There was a bathroom with a little precast shower, and spotless white tile around the sink. A new bar of soap still in its wrapper, two clean towels and a washcloth, clean white shower curtain, all touches that spoke of Lucita, as did the little pitcher of wildflowers she had placed on the old, shabby dresser.

“Not elegant,” Jake said. “You’ll find a new razor and shaving cream in the cabinet.”

Lee sat down on the bed to pull off his boots. “It’s elegant to me. Clean. Private. Even flowers,” he said, grinning. “No prison bars, and a real door I can shut. No screw coming to lock me in.” He dropped a boot. “Bathroom all to myself, private shower without some jock elbowing me or reaching to feel me up, a razor I don’t have to account for every day.” He grinned up at Jake, as he dropped the other boot.

Jake looked back at him unsmiling. Too late Lee realized he’d hurt Jake, that he had rubbed it in that he’d been in prison all the time Jake had been free and making a life for himself. Lee didn’t mean to do that. Jake turned toward the door, his white-streaked hair catching the light. “See you in the morning,” he said shortly. “Breakfast in the mess hall, five-thirty,” and he was gone, shutting the door softly behind him.

Feeling bad, Lee fished into the paper bag. He took out his few clothes, laid them on the dresser, and set the picture of Mae beside the flowers. He undressed, removed the seven hundred dollars from his boot, shoved that and his prison-made knife under his pillow. He turned out the overhead light and slid into bed, pushed down under the lightweight blanket, and stretched out to ease his tired body. It had been a long day, too many hours on the train, his muscles were all stove up—but not a moment later he felt the cat leap on the bed, landing heavily beside him, and this time he could see it clearly silhouetted against the shaft of moonlight that struck through the cabin window. How the hell did the cat do that, invisible one minute, and then there it was as solid and heavy as bricks, kneading the blanket and pushing him with its hind paws to gain more room, its rumbling purr rising as it settled in for the night. And now, for the first time, the cat spoke to Lee, its yellow eyes glowing in the thin moonlight, its yellow tail twitching.

“You’re sorry you hurt Jake’s feelings? You’re sorry ?”

Startled, Lee sat up in bed, staring at him. The cat had never spoken to him, not during all the years at McNeil, neither as a living cat nor later when Misto returned there as a ghost cat. Yet always Lee had had the sense that Misto could have spoken if he chose, that he understood the conversations of the inmates around him. By his glances, by the set of his ears, by the attention he paid to certain discussions, Lee had always felt that even the living cat was wiser and more clever than ever he let on.

“You’re sorry ?” Misto repeated with a hiss. “ Sorry? Why are you sorry when, all through dinner with Jake you were thinking about ripping him off, and you were lusting after Jake’s wife, you sat there laughing and joking with him while you lusted after the Delgado payroll, too, while you planned to double-cross Jake in two ways. And now, you’re sorry ? Sorry you hurt his feelings? What the hell is that about? What kind of friend is that?”

“I didn’t think about it for long,” Lee said crankily. The shock of hearing the cat speak was nothing to the realization that the ghost cat could read his thoughts—even if the beast did exaggerate, even if he did take an overblown view of Lee’s short-lived temptation. When Lee moved uncomfortably away from the cat, to the edge of the bed, the tomcat remained relaxed and easy, glancing at him unconcerned as he casually licked dust from his paws.

“It’s one thing,” Lee said, “to travel with a ghost following me, with a damned haunt hanging on my trail. It’s another thing when you start criticizing, telling me what to do, acting as if you know what I’m thinking, like some damned prison shrink.”

It was unsettling as hell that the cat knew things that were none of its business, thoughts Lee wasn’t proud of and that, facing the cat’s righteous stare, shamed Lee all the more. The yellow tom stopped washing and looked back at him steadily, his wide yellow eyes stern and unblinking. Then he closed his eyes, twitched a whisker as if amused, curled himself deeper into the blanket, and drifted off to sleep as if he hadn’t a care.

Misto was well aware that Fontana’s defensive retorts, his anger and surly responses, had grown harsher as the cowboy grew older. But this was only a part of Lee’s nature, a defensive shell to protect a normal human weakness. Lee’s very temper was part of why the cat loved him. Lee’s sometimes frail, sometimes volatile nature was why Misto guarded Lee so fiercely in wary defense against Satan, against the inroads the devil plied so adroitly in attempting to own Fontana.

12

Misto’s dreams that night, as he slept at the foot of Lee’s bed, were visions he knew were a part of Lee’s future. And though he felt fiercely protective of Lee, staying close to him since his parole, his thoughts tonight were on Sammie, too, so far away in Georgia.