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

Raygor introduced himself, gave Lee hell for not getting off the train at San Bernardino, and accompanied him over to his cabin where Lee toweled off the sweat and changed his shirt. As Lee bent over to wipe off his dusty boots, Raygor said, “Sit down a minute, Fontana. We’re going into town on an errand, but first I want to read you your parole instructions. Here’s a copy, and here are the forms you’re to fill out and send in, the first day of every month.” All business, stiff and cold and full of authority. These guys didn’t warm up until they got some years of experience on them; even then, some of them never did. Raygor sat in the straight-backed wooden chair, watching Lee button his shirt, patronizing and impatient.

The last PO he’d had looked more like a lumberman, they’d got along just fine, even shared a swallow of moonshine now and again. But this one—Lee would like to punch him out, shake him up a little.

Well, hell, he’d felt cranky all morning, the pickers too loud, their hot tempers getting on his nerves, and twice the truck had broke down and he had to get Tony to fix it. Tony said it needed a new fuel pump, and Raygor had to pick today to come down on him. Hell, he’d done his time, or most of it. Parole board had no right to send some snotty-nosed kid still wet behind the ears to hassle and annoy him, kid probably just out of school with his fancy paper degree, thought he was big stuff driving back and forth across the desert hassling his federal caseload, pretending to help guys who didn’t want his help. PO living fat off a good salary, looking forward to a secure retirement twenty years down the line, a nice nest egg for the rest of their worthless lives, courtesy the U.S. taxpayer.

Raygor, sighing patiently, began to read to him from the printed instruction form: “Your travel is restricted, you’re not to leave Riverside County. You are not to change your job, or your address, without notifying me and getting permission. You are not to violate any law. You are not to own or possess a firearm of any kind. You are to fill out one of these reports each month, have it to me by the fifth, listing your present address, where you are working at that time, and what kind of work you’re doing.”

“Even if I’m still here at Delgado Farms, doing the same job?”

“Same job, same address. Fill it all in, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. Besides the monthly report, I’ll be seeing you once a month, every month. In your report, you are to give me a detailed account of all monies you have received, and all monies you have spent.”

“I buy a candy bar, I have to write it down?”

Raygor nodded. “Right now, we’re going into town where you’ll put your prison earnings in the bank. Every week you’ll deposit your earnings into the account. Mr. Ellson will see you get into town or will do it for you.”

“What the hell do I want with a bank, I don’t trust banks. Why is it your business where I keep my money?”

“It’s my business because you’re on parole. You can keep out a little for spending money but make sure you account for it.”

Lee said no more, he swallowed back what he’d like to say. Silently he took off his boot, removed and unfolded the brown paper fitted along the inside, removed his prison-earned money and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. He didn’t reveal to Raygor the seven hundred dollars he’d had when he entered McNeil, it was in his other boot.

Raygor stared at Lee’s makeshift safe. “That’ll be a nice start on a savings account, with your wages to build it up. I talked with your boss. Mr. Ellson’s going into town later, on business. He’ll pick you up, bring you back to the ranch. You can have a look around Blythe, Fontana, but stay out of trouble. You were inside for ten years, this is your first time on your own except for the train trip down here. Take it easy, watch your step, you don’t want to end up behind bars, locked up on the island again.”

Lee stared at him coldly. “What the hell do you think I’m going to do in Blythe, hold up some mom-and-pop candy store in the middle of the day, rip off some old couple for forty, fifty bucks?”

Raygor looked back at him, and said nothing, his lean tanned face drawn into long, sour lines. Lee knew he was being unreasonable. The guy was just doing his job, doing what the authorities told him to do—but did he have to be so officious about it? His urge to pound Raygor didn’t cool down until they were on the road, until he had slipped into the hot seat of Raygor’s dusty Plymouth and they were headed away from the ranch, up the dirt road toward Blythe, bumping along between fanning rows of melons and string beans. Looking away over the rich green carpets of crops to the dry desert beyond where the sand stretched pale and virgin, Lee told himself that his anger at Raygor was a stupid waste of time, but he knew that what he’d felt back there wasn’t all his own rage, that some of it came from the dark haunt like a residue of grease rubbed off on his hands and staining deep.

The cat, sitting on the paddock fence, had watched Lee and Raygor leave the ranch in the officer’s tan Plymouth, the four-door vehicle so thick with dirt it could have just been dug out of a nearby sand hill. As they drove away, and Misto felt Lee’s anger at Raygor, he knew it was magnified by the heavy spirit that still sought to manipulate Lee; but the cat had to smile, too. Lee’s eagerness to look Blythe over, with thoughts to an alternate plan, greatly pleased the tomcat; and as the Plymouth disappeared in a rising cloud of dust, as Misto watched it turn onto the highway heading for Blythe, he lashed his tail once, disappeared from the fencepost, and joined the two men, stretching out unseen on the mohair seat between them.

Lee glanced down, aware of the faintest breeze and then of the cat’s warmth, and he smiled just a little. The cat, settling in for the ride, pressed his head against Lee’s leg. Lee’s Levi’s smelled of cantaloupes and mud. But it was Lee’s thoughts that held the tomcat, the various businesses he wanted to look over as he sought a plan that would not touch Jake, that would direct Lee’s thieving onto a new path not so severely damning to Lee, as well. In this world of men, certain crimes stink of evil. Other crimes, though not strictly moral, do not burn so caustically into the fabric of the human soul.

Have to make your savings deposit at the post office,” Raygor said. “Bank had a fire just a few weeks back. Moved their operation next door until they can rebuild.”

“In the post office ? You’re asking me to give all my money, all I have in the world to some post office clerk for safekeeping?”

Raygor gave him a patronizing smile. “They have the biggest safe in town, big old walk-in number, walls a foot thick. No one’s going to pry your few hundred dollars out of there, Fontana.”

As Raygor pulled up in front of the post office, Lee eyed the burned-out bank building next door, its windows shattered, smoke-blackened glass swept into a heap on the sidewalk mixed with dead crickets. Two of the burned walls had already been torn away, and a tractor and bucket sat beside the gaping hole. Big Dumpster was parked behind that, half full of blackened wood and debris. The stink of burned, water-soaked wood rivaled the smell of white poison and dead crickets. “How’d the fire start?”

“Electrical,” Raygor said. “Fire marshal said it was a short in the lighting, sparks started a box of papers burning.” Lee could see blackened file cabinets inside, their drawers pulled open, nothing but ashes within.

“Burned a lot of their paperwork,” Raygor said, “and some hundred thousand in cash.”

Lee stared at the man. “And now they’re camping out in the back room of a post office. They can’t keep their papers or money from burning, and you want me to put everything I own in there.”