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

“From the freezer,” she said, laughing. “I made a big batch at Christmas. Do you remember, Lee, that Christmas in Flagstaff, ten feet of snow, and the young horses all playing and bucking, where we’d cleared the road, chasing each other like kids? And when the truck broke down and we couldn’t get into town, all we had to eat, all that week, was the oats for the horses, until you and Jake shot that big buck?”

Lee smiled, remembering how good that venison stew had tasted, after a week of oat porridge. They’d lived on oats and venison until they’d got the truck fixed, had finally jerry-rigged the broken part with bailing wire.

When she led them in to dinner, he watched Jake seat her at the table, gently pushing in her chair; and the meal she served, concoctions of chiles and cumin, of onions and garlic and lean, roasted meat, would entice the angels right down from heaven. She talked nonstop, and that was unusual for Lucita. Was she as uncomfortable as he, afraid of the silence between them? Or maybe she didn’t want to mention his prison years, bring up a painful subject. They talked about the cowponies Jake used to break, on that five barren acres she and Jake had rented, with the one-room squatter’s shack. Jake had broke some good colts that year. Lee remembered Lucita’s gentleness with a wild new colt, always patient but never backing off when the youngster needed to be worked, never stopping until the colt had finished his lesson.

He remembered how Lucita had found four baby rabbits in the hay barn, and had shut the dogs out, wouldn’t let anyone fork hay from that part of the barn until the rabbits were grown and gone. Sitting with her and Jake remembering the old times, the good times, he remembered, too, the times when their skuzzy friends had shown up, had stayed for maybe a week or two holing up from the law, remembered how irritable Lucita would grow, angry at Jake for letting them stay, for ever running with them—angry at them both for attracting what she considered scum, the dregs of humanity. And that thought turned him quiet. If he lifted the Delgado payroll, and destroyed Jake’s job, he was no better than those others.

He told himself Delgado had more money than any man had a right to, told himself he could pull this off without ever hurting Jake or Lucita, but he knew that wasn’t true. One way or another, such a theft would spill over and hurt them, bad. The truth was, when he looked at it squarely, whatever wealth Ramon Delgado had, he had earned with hard work and sweat and he had every right to it. Lee might rob a man, but he had never before fooled himself that he had a right to what he stole. What he took by force was just that, robbery. That was the game he’d played, steal and get out, vanish where the cops couldn’t find him. Now, taking an honest look at himself, he didn’t much like what he saw. And that night, leaving Jake and Lucita, leaving the nearness of her—but still thinking about crossing her and Jake—he lay on his bunk confused, badly conflicted, tossing and unable to sleep.

He’d never felt this kind of uncertainty. In the old days he’d known exactly what he wanted and had gone for it. Had made his plan, carried it out, and, more times than not, had got away clean, with a nice haul. But now he tossed all night, drifting in and out of sleep, thinking with shame of betraying the two people he valued most in the world, but then his thoughts drowning in darkness as he coveted the Delgado money, so near, so easy to lift for his own.

He came awake before dawn to the clanging bell from the mess hall. He looked out at the stars, rolled over, and wanted to sleep again, he was worn out, so tired that even his mind felt bruised. In sleep and in wakefulness he had fought himself, and fought the insistent urgings of the dark spirit. And as he twisted and turned, as the dark voice whispered to him, the ghost cat pressed close, sometimes rising to pace across the blanket, standing bold against the invasion that sought to mold Lee to its design.

Now, this morning, even as Lee woke more fully to the second clang of the breakfast bell, the yellow cat sat at the foot of the bed looking hard at him. This time, the cat didn’t have to speak, Lee knew exactly what he was thinking: Lee had won this battle, he had awakened knowing he would not betray Jake and Lucita, and the cat was pleased.

Rising, hastily washing and dressing, he thought about choosing a new mark for his retirement stash, about surveying the ranches and businesses in the area until he found one that kept sufficient cash on hand to be of use. The gypsum plant, maybe. Or one of the big cotton or alfalfa farms. These were places he knew nothing about, he didn’t know how they were run, he would have a lot to learn about their operations, a lot to catch up on. You didn’t just walk into an office, wave your gun, and expect to walk away with a haul. He’d have to know the layout, see where and when the workers moved about, have to know what they did in their jobs, as best he could find out. Needed to know how the staff was paid. In cash? If they were paid by check, that put them out of the running. If by cash, he had to know who transported the money and when, where it was dealt out, and on what day. He’d have to work out the timing, have to know the whole drill, and that would take time. Time, and a degree of energy and stamina that he wasn’t sure he could still muster. He had already blown one job because of poor planning. That had sent him to McNeil, he wasn’t doing that again.

The local motels and restaurants wouldn’t have the kind of cash he needed, not there on the premises. And if he hit a bank, pulled a federal crime and got caught, he’d spend the rest of his life, for sure, in the federal pen, would most likely die there, breathe his last gasp on some hard prison cot with no one to give a damn. The minute he got stressed trying to work out a plan, his breathing got worse; he knew that only part of his coughing and lack of breath was the dust. Why he had thought the blowing desert sand wouldn’t irritate his lungs, he had no idea. And the Federal Bureau of Prisons wouldn’t care, why the hell would they? He’d agreed when they said the heat would help him, and he’d thought it would be easy work, driving the truck back and forth, he hadn’t thought any further than that. But now, with a new robbery to plan, he could feel the pressure constricting his lungs again, and he knew he’d better get on with it, better figure out what he wanted to do before the emphysema took a turn for the worse and he wouldn’t have the strength to even hold a gun steady.

16

The harder Satan pressed Lee, the stronger the cat seemed to grow. No matter how Lucifer tried to manipulate Fontana, either the cat or Lee himself found a way to best him. Misto’s exuberance for life, even when he traveled between lives, the ghost cat’s love for the living human spirit was poison to Satan, Misto generated a joy so willful and strong, so stubborn, that the dark spirit at last backed away—for the moment. Repulsed and defeated, Satan melted from Lee’s cabin out into the night where he restlessly wandered the ranch yard looking for lighter entertainment, seeking some mindless diversion to cool his seething rage.

At last, smiling, he took the form of a coyote, rank and mangy and flea-ridden. Slipping in through the walls of the nearest bunkhouse, he amused himself for a while weaving terrifying dreams among the sleeping workers, bloody nightmares that stirred memories of childhood hunger and beatings in the tired men, of adolescent atrocities, the pain from knives and attacks with broken bottles. He rekindled terrors that made the dreaming men shudder and cry out and made the shaggy carnivore smile, yellow toothed, grinning with the lusty evil that was so easy to press into the simple minds of these otherwise happy-go-lucky men.