Railroad put down his empty glass and slipped on his paper hat. “I can’t afford to lose this job. And, you don’t mind my saying, Mr. Cauthron, you’d come to regret it if I was forced to leave.”
“Weren’t you listening, Lloyd? Isn’t that what I just said?”
“Yes, you did. Now maybe we ought to quit bothering Maisie with our talk and get back to work.”
“I like a man that enjoys his job,” Cauthron said, slapping Railroad on the shoulder again. “I’d have to be suicidal to make a good worker like you leave. Do I look suicidal, Lloyd?”
“No, you don’t look suicidal, Mr. Cauthron.”
“I see Pleasure all the time going down the block to pick at the trash by the Sweet Spot,” Mrs. Graves told him as they sat on the front porch swing that evening. “That cat could get hurt if you let it out so much. That is a busy street.”
Foster had gone to a ball game, and Louise Parker was visiting her sister in Chattanooga, so they were alone. It was the opportunity Railroad had been waiting for.
“I don’t want to keep her a prisoner,” he said. The chain of the swing creaked as they rocked slowly back and forth. He could smell her lilac perfume. The curve of her thigh beneath her print dress caught the light from the front room coming through the window.
“You’re a man who has spent much time alone, aren’t you,” she said. “So mysterious.”
He had his hand in his pocket, the ring in his fingers. He hesitated. A couple walking down the sidewalk nodded at them. He couldn’t do it out here, where the world might see. “Mrs. Graves, would you come up to my room? I have something I need to show you.”
She did not hesitate. “I hope there’s nothing wrong.”
“No, ma’m. Just something I’d like to rearrange.”
He opened the door for her and followed her up the stairs. The clock in the hall ticked loudly. He opened the door to his room and ushered her in, closed the door behind them. When she turned to face him he fell to his knees.
He held up the ring in both hands, his offering. “Miz Graves, I want you to marry me.”
She looked at him kindly, her expression calm. The silence stretched. She reached out; he thought she was going to take the ring, but instead she touched his wrist. “I can’t marry you, Mr. Bailey.”
“Why not?”
“Why, I hardly know you.”
Railroad felt dizzy. “You could some time.”
“I’ll never marry again, Mr. Bailey. It’s not you.”
Not him. It was never him, had never been him. His knees hurt from the hardwood floor. He looked at the ring, lowered his hands, clasped it in his fist. She moved her hand from his wrist to his shoulder, squeezed it. A knife of pain ran down his arm. Without standing, he punched Mrs. Graves in the stomach.
She gasped and fell back onto the bed. He was on her in a second, one hand over her mouth while he ripped her dress open from the neck. She struggled, and he pulled the pistol out from behind his back and held it to her head. She lay still.
“Don’t you stop me, now,” he muttered. He tugged his pants down and did what he wanted.
How ladylike it was of her to keep so silent.
Much later, lying on the bed, eyes dreamily focused on the light fixture in the center of the ceiling, it came to him what had bothered him about the grandmother. She had ignored the fact that she was going to die. “She would of been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life,” he’d told Bobby Lee. And that was true. But then, for that last moment, she became a good woman. The reason was that, once Railroad convinced her she was going to die, she could forget about it. In the end, when she reached out to him, there was no thought in her mind about death, about the fact that he had killed her son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren and was soon going to kill her. All she wanted was to comfort him. She didn’t even care if he couldn’t be comforted. She was living in that exact instant, with no memory of the past or regard for the future, out of the instinct of her soul and nothing else.
Like the cat. Pleasure lived that way all the time. The cat didn’t know about Jesus’ sacrifice, about angels and devils. That cat looked at him and saw what was there.
He raised himself on his elbows. Mrs. Graves lay very still beside him, her blond hair spread across the pineapple quilt. He felt her neck for a pulse.
It was dark night now: the whine of insects in the oaks outside the window, the rush of traffic on the cross street, drifted in on the hot air. Quietly, Railroad slipped out into the hall and down to Foster’s room. He put his ear to the door and heard no sound. He came back to his own room, wrapped Mrs. Graves in the quilt and, as silently as he could, dragged her into his closet. He closed the door.
Railroad heard purring, and saw Pleasure sitting on the table, watching. “God damn you. God damn you to hell,” he said to the cat, but before he could grab her the calico had darted out the window.
He figured it out. The idea of marrying Mrs. Graves had been only a stage in the subtle revenge being taken on him by the dead grandmother, through the cat. The wishes Pleasure had granted were the bait, the nightmare had been a warning. But he hadn’t listened.
He rubbed his sore shoulder. The old lady’s gesture, like a mustard-seed, had grown to be a great crow-filled tree in Railroad’s heart.
A good trick the devil had played on him. Now, no matter how he reformed himself, he could not get rid of what he had done.
It was hot and still, not a breath of air, as if the world were being smothered in a fever blanket. A milk-white sky. The kitchen of the Sweet Spot was hot as the furnace of Hell; beneath his shirt Railroad’s sweat ran down to slick the warm pistol slid into his belt. Railroad was fixing a stack of buttermilk pancakes when the detective walked in.
The detective walked over to the counter and sat down on one of the stools. Maisie was not at the counter; she was probably in the ladies’ room. The detective took a look around, then plucked a menu from behind the napkin holder in front of him and started reading. On the radio Hank Williams was singing “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”
Quietly, Railroad untied his apron and slipped out of the back door. In the alley near the trash barrels he looked out over the lot. He was about to hop the chain-link fence when he saw Cauthron’s car stopped at the light on the corner.
Railroad pulled out his pistol, crouched behind a barrel and aimed at the space in the lot where Cauthron usually parked. He felt something bump against his leg.
It was Pleasure. “Don’t you cross me now,” Railroad whispered, pushing the animal away.
The cat came back, put her front paws up on his thigh, purring.
“Damn you! You owe me, you little demon!” he hissed. He let the gun drop, looked down at the cat.
Pleasure looked up at him. “Miaow?”
“What do you want! You want me to stop, do you? Then make it go away. Make it so I never killed nobody.”
Nothing happened. It was just a fucking animal. In a rage, he dropped the gun and seized the cat in both hands. She twisted in his grasp, hissing.
“You know what it’s like to hurt in your heart?” Railroad tore open his shirt and pressed Pleasure against his chest. “Feel it! Feel it beating there!” Pleasure squirmed and clawed, hatching his chest with a web of scratches. “You owe me! You owe me!” Railroad was shouting now. “Make it go away!”
Pleasure finally twisted out of his grasp. The cat fell, rolled, and scurried away, running right under Cauthron’s car as it pulled into the lot. With a little bump, the car’s left front tire ran over her.
Cauthron jerked the car to a halt. Pleasure howled, still alive, writhing, trying to drag herself away on her front paws. Her back was broken. Railroad looked at the fence, looked back.