Out in the lot Railroad set down his bag and looked around. Cicadas buzzed in the hot city night. Around the corner from the diner he’d noticed a big Victorian house with a sign on the porch, “Rooms for Rent.” He was about to start walking when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a movement by the trash barrel next to the chain-link fence. He peered into the gloom and saw the cat trying to leap up to the top to get at the garbage. He went over, held out his hand. The cat didn’t run; it sniffed him, butted its head against his hand.
He picked it up, cradled it under his arm, and carried it and the bag to the rooming house. Under dense oaks, it was a big tan clapboard mansion with green shutters and hanging baskets of begonias on the porch, and a green porch swing. The thick oval leaded glass of the oak door was beveled around the edge, the brass of the handle dark with age.
The door was unlocked. His heart jumped a bit at the opportunity it presented; at the same time he wanted to warn the proprietor against such foolishness. Off to one side of the entrance was a little table with a doily, vase and dried flowers; on the other a sign beside a door said, “manager.”
Railroad knocked. After a moment the door opened and a woman with the face of an angel opened it. She was not young, perhaps forty, with very white skin and blonde hair. She looked at him, smiled, saw the cat under his arm. “What a sweet animal,” she said.
“I’d like a room,” he said.
“I’m sorry. We don’t cater to pets,” the woman said, not unkindly.
“This here’s no pet, Ma’m,” Railroad said. “This here’s my only friend in the world.”
The landlady’s name was Mrs. Graves. The room she rented him was twelve feet by twelve feet, with a single bed, a cherry veneer dresser, a wooden table and chair, a narrow closet, lace curtains on the window, and an old pineapple quilt on the bed. The air smelled sweet. On the wall opposite the bed was a picture in a dime store frame, of an empty rowboat floating in an angry gray ocean, the sky overcast, only a single shaft of sunlight in the distance from a sunset that was not in the picture.
The room cost ten dollars a week. Despite Mrs. Graves’s rule against pets, like magic she took a shine to Railroad’s cat. It was almost as if she’d rented the room to the cat, with Railroad along for the ride. After some consideration, he named the cat Pleasure. She was the most affectionate animal he had ever seen. She wanted to be with him, even when he ignored her. She made him feel wanted; she made him nervous. Railroad fashioned a cat door in the window of his room so that Pleasure could go out and in whenever she wanted, and not be confined to the room when Railroad was at work.
The only other residents of the boarding house were Louise Parker, a school teacher, and Charles Foster, a lingerie salesman. Mrs. Graves cleaned Railroad’s room once a week, swept the floors, alternated the quilt every other week with a second one done in a rose pattern that he remembered from his childhood. He worked at the diner from six in the morning, when Maisie, the cashier, unlocked, until Shorty took over at three in the afternoon. The counter girl was Betsy, and Service, a Negro boy, bussed tables and washed dishes. Railroad told them to call him Bailey, and didn’t talk much.
When he wasn’t working, Railroad spent most of his time at the boarding house, or evenings in a small nearby park. Railroad would take the Bible from the drawer in the boarding house table, buy an afternoon newspaper, and carry them with him. Pleasure often followed him to the park. She would lunge after squirrels and shy away from dogs, hissing sideways. Cats liked to kill squirrels, dogs liked to kill cats, but there was no sin in it. Pleasure would not go to hell, or heaven. Cats had no souls.
The world was full of stupid people like Bobby Lee and Hiram, who lied to themselves and killed without knowing why. Life was a prison. Turn to the right, it was a wall. Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was a floor. And Railroad had taken out his imprisonment on others; he was not deceived in his own behavior.
Railroad did not believe in sin, but somehow he felt it. Still, he was not a dog or a cat, he was a man. You’re one of my own children. There was no reason why he had to kill people. He only wished he’d never have to deal with any Hirams and Bobby Lees anymore. He gazed across the park at the Ipana toothpaste sign painted on the wall of the Piggly Wiggly. Whiter than white. Pleasure crouched at the end of the bench, her haunches twitching as she watched a finch hop across the sidewalk.
Railroad picked her up, rubbed his cheek against her whiskers. “Pleasure, I’ll tell you what,” he whispered. “Let’s make us a deal. You save me from Bobby Lee and Hiram, and I’ll never kill anybody again.”
The cat looked at him with its clear yellow eyes.
Railroad sighed. He put the cat down. He leaned back on the bench and opened the newspaper. Beneath the fold on the front page he read,
Valdosta—Two escaped convicts and an unidentified female passenger were killed Tuesday when the late model stolen automobile they were driving struck a bridge abutment while being pursued by State Police.
The deceased convicts, Hiram Leroy Burgett, 31, and Bobby Lee Ross, 21, escaped June 23 while being transported to the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane for psychological evaluation. A third escapee, Ronald Reuel Pickens, 47, is still at large.
The lunch rush was petering out. There were two people at the counter and four booths were occupied, and Railroad had set a BLT and an order of fried chicken with collards up on the shelf when Maisie came back into the kitchen and called the manager. “Police wants to talk to you, Mr. C.”
Railroad peeked out from behind the row of hanging order slips. A man in a suit sat at the counter, sipping sweet tea. Cauthron went out to talk to him.
“Two castaways on a raft,” Betsy called to Railroad.
The man spoke with Cauthron for a few minutes, showed him a photograph. Cauthron shook his head, nodded, shook his head again. They laughed. Railroad eyed the back door of the diner, but turned back to the grill. By the time he had the toast up and the eggs fried, the man was gone. Cauthron stepped back to his office without saying anything.
At the end of the shift he pulled Railroad aside. “Lloyd,” he said. “I need to speak with you.”
Railroad followed him into the cubbyhole he called his office. Cauthron sat behind the cluttered metal desk and picked up a letter from the top layer of trash. “I just got this here note from Social Security saying that number you gave is not valid.” He looked up at Railroad, his china blue eyes unreadable.
Railroad took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. He didn’t say anything.
“I suppose it’s just some mixup,” Cauthron said. “Same as that business with the detective this afternoon. Don’t you worry about it.”
“Thank you, Mr. Cauthron.”
“One other thing, before you go, Lloyd. Did I say your salary was thirty a week? I meant twenty-five. That okay with you?”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Cauthron.”
“And I think, in order to encourage trade, we’ll start opening at five. I’d like you to pick up the extra hour. Starting Monday.”
Railroad nodded. “Is that all?”
“That’s it, Lloyd.” Cauthron seemed suddenly to enjoy calling Railroad “Lloyd,” rolling the name over his tongue and watching for his reaction. “Thanks for being such a Christian employee.”
Railroad went back to his room in the rooming house. Pleasure mewed for him, and when he sat on the bed, hopped into his lap. But Railroad just stared at the picture of the rowboat on the opposite wall. After a while the cat hopped onto the window sill and out through her door onto the roof.