Shirley Murphy - Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Coming_Home_BookFi

She dreamed that Benny was trapped underneath a whole stack of Maudie’s quilts. Maudie kept frantically pulling off quilts, trying to free him—but then the quilts were pale hands, thin, white hands reaching for him, Maudie throwing quilts over the hands to try to smother them.

She woke at first light, cold and cramped, and startled that she was in the parked car. Some time during the night she had crawled over into the backseat and lay twisted up in the blanket Cora Lee had thrown over her. Rising up, she looked into the front.

Cora Lee was asleep behind the wheel, her head resting against the side window. Her dark curly hair was so short it was never out of place. She had pulled her creamy down jacket over her legs. Her hand lay inches from her cell phone, and from the can of pepper spray half concealed beneath the edge of her jacket. Looking out across the freeway, Lori studied the huge, pale box that was the prison, a cold, impersonal building. She hated this place, it made her feel as small and helpless as a bug. Pa shouldn’t be here, he should have gotten a medal for killing those two men, not be locked up. She hated the powers in the world that you couldn’t reason with, powers that sucked the life out of a person.

Cora Lee didn’t wake until the cars around them began to start up, their engines grumbling in the cold morning. At once Cora Lee was awake, starting their own car, nosing along in the slow line to the 101 freeway and crossing over, above it, then into the prison yard. Through the gate and into the parking lot, where everyone piled out of their cars and made a dash to get in line, or for the Porta Pottis. They got in line, and in a little while Cora Lee turned to the lady behind them, a short, square, black-haired woman, and asked her to hold their place. They couldn’t take turns standing in line to use the Porta Pottis, if a guard saw a child standing there alone he’d come to investigate, tell them that was against the rules. It was so cold they were both shivering. Coming back, they washed their hands with the wipes Cora Lee had brought; then Cora Lee unwrapped their sandwiches, to eat standing in line. Cream cheese and ham, from their paper bag. Milk for Lori, which they’d kept cold in an ice chest in the car. Orange juice for Cora Lee. Around them, the lawn was neatly cut, the bushes trimmed so perfectly they looked artificial. As if the trustees who cared for them had all the time in the world, and she guessed they did.

It seemed hours until they reached the gate, dumped their trash in a receptacle, and went inside. People ahead of them had to empty their pockets, hand over their purses, go through a body scan. Like at the airport. At least they weren’t patted down, she’d hate that, a stranger’s hands all over her. Cora Lee had locked her purse in the trunk. She dropped her car keys on the table. A guard pulled Pa’s file, their picture IDs were checked, and they signed in. They moved on through the narrow entrance building, a few people at a time, and through a barred gate into a prison yard, then into the prison itself. Down a hall, this time not to the visitors’ big, open room with its long table and vending machines, but to a small room where they sat down at a little square table, in hard chairs, but again facing a clear glass barrier, with a phone on either side of the glass. “Why is it different?”

“Security,” Cora Lee said.

“Why? Pa didn’t do anything.”

“The other guy did. They’re protecting your pa.” Cora Lee looked down at her, her brown eyes concerned for her. They watched the prisoners march in, glimpses of them between the pillars as they moved down the table to take their seats facing their visitors. Pa arrived in a wheelchair pushed by a nurse. It shocked her to see a woman in the men’s prison, though she knew women worked there. Pa’s legs were covered by a brown blanket. He looked so frail. But as he was wheeled up to the table, he grinned at her through the glass. She hated that glass, she hated the phone that filtered their every word, their whole visit wasted on meaningless questions and canned answers: “How are you feeling?” “Much better, it doesn’t hurt so much. How’re you doing in school?” “Fine.” “How’s your pony?” “He’s fine. I’ve been riding with Charlie Harper.” So stiff and unreal, eating up their precious time. She could see Pa wanted to tell them something, something he couldn’t say with the phone monitored. Was this another message for Max Harper? She wanted to crawl through the glass so they could talk—like Alice stepping through the looking glass—so she could hug him and tell him she loved him. She wanted to tell him Harper had gotten his first message all right, Cora Lee had seen to that.

“Thanks from our friend,” Lori said, “from Charlie’s husband.”

Pa smiled and nodded, and looked relieved. Whatever more he wanted to say, he kept to himself, until, Lori thought, they could be back in the family visitors’ room again, where they might not be monitored. She hoped that wouldn’t be long, she hated this, hated being listened to, with no privacy; she hated it more for Pa, even, than for herself.

THE LAST JACK saw of Lori was her rigid, angry back, angry at the rules, he thought as she and Cora Lee filed out of the visiting room, Lori’s long brown hair shining in the overhead lights. On his side of the glass the line of prisoners marched out, too, and he was wheeled away to the infirmary, his message for Max Harper unspoken. He knew Harper would figure it out when the pieces started coming together, but meantime who knew how much damage Arlie Risso would do? He felt worn out, even with only that short time in the visiting room. With the stress of being unable to talk freely, to let Max know about Risso—about Marlin Dorriss. The doc said it was normal to tire out easily while his body was healing. Well, he didn’t have to like it, he was done in. Not since he’d tried to protect Lori when she was just a little girl had he felt so damned useless.

33

CATS WEREN’T OFFICIALLY barred from city council meetings but only because no one had ever imagined that a cat would want to attend. It was Ryan who’d insisted they bring Joe. She’d hung tough until she won the argument, and just for an instant Joe was chagrined to be the cause of the newlyweds’ heated conflict. But if the two had to battle, what more urgent subject was there than the happiness of the family cat?

“He’ll be good,” she’d told Clyde, fixing Joe with a threatening gaze that made his fur twitch. He’d tried to look innocent, but they all three knew his behavior would depend on the situation of the moment, on his anger as a few biased citizens rose to criticize Max Harper and make trouble for the chief.

The city hall had begun life, early in the last century, as a village church. The peak of the handsome redwood building rose steeply between two lower wings that now housed a variety of city offices, from administrator to public works and zoning. The gnarled branches of a twisted oak sheltered the deep porch, which was reached by a sturdy ramp to accommodate the occasional wheelchair. Beside the front door stood two ceramic pots of holly bushes heavy with red berries. Taped to the rail were paper cutout Santas and reindeer, hand-colored by the local schoolchildren. Within the wide entry foyer stood a six-foot Christmas tree, thick and dense, decorated with silver and white bells. Deeper in, against a long expanse of wall, the crèche had been arranged, the wise men as tall as six-year-old children, the little Christ child snuggled in his crib. The wooden figures, carved by hand nearly a hundred years before, were still celebrating the traditional spirit of Christmas despite a few hard-nosed citizens who didn’t approve of such sentiments.