The cat had lived an earlier life in Lee’s company, when Lee was only a boy. A willful kid and hotheaded, but there was about him a presence that had interested the cat, a deep steadiness, even when the boy was quite young, a solid core within that had clashed with the boy’s fiery nature. Drawn to Lee, Misto had, in the ghostly spaces between his nine lives, often returned to Fontana as he grew up and grew older. He had ridden unseen with Lee during a number of train robberies, greatly entertained by the bloody shootings, the excitement and the terror of the victims—though he never saw Lee torment, or seen him kill with malice. Lee had killed his share of armed men, but those shootings were in self-defense, meant to save his own life.
It might be argued that if Lee hadn’t robbed the trains he wouldn’t have been in a position to defend himself, would have had no reason to kill any man. Maybe so. But however one judged Fontana, the cat saw in him a strain of decency that the devil hadn’t so far been able to touch, something in the hard-bitten cowboy that had kept the dark one defeated. If Misto had his way, that wouldn’t change. He had watched as Fontana grew older and more stubborn in his ways and as he grew more sour on life, too. He had watched Lee’s fear of old age and death settle down upon him, the fear that haunted most aging humans, and he didn’t mean to leave the old man now, he would not abandon Lee so close to the end and to his last parole; he meant to stay with the old man to the final breath of his earthly journey, meant to follow Lee in his decline as the dark spirit made a last attempt at Lee’s final and eternal destiny.
As a ghost, the tomcat had chosen perversely to retain the exact color and form in which he’d lived all his earthly lives: rough yellow coat, battle-ragged ears, big bony body moving with an ungainly clumsiness that belied his speed and power. When he made himself visible he seemed no more than a rangy prison cat lying on the warm concrete of the exercise yard soaking up the last of the day’s meager heat or slipping into the mess hall under the tables bumming the inmates’ scraps that were passed down to him by one rough hand and then another; the prison cat that lay now unseen on the cold iron shelf in Lee’s cell, watching Lee’s dark and shadowed visitor that stood at thefoot of Lee’s bed—waiting for Lee to be discharged in the morning, waiting to make one more try at bringing Fontana into his fold, waiting to play some final and unexpected card in his hungry game.
Out beyond the cell block the prison yard lay deserted, and a thin breeze scudded in off Puget Sound across the green and quiet island, touching the lighted windows of the guards’ and staff houses and the small, darkened schoolhouse, touching the peaceful and forested hills—while there within the cell block the devil waited. And Misto waited, ready for whatever would occur tomorrow as Lee left the certainty of his prison home, as he moved out into a free and precariousworld followed and hazed by that hungry spirit who meant, so intently, to steal the will and the soul of the lonely old man.
2
Easing onto his bunk, Lee pulled the rough prison blanket close around him, though it did little to drive the cold from his bones. Maybe hewas coming down with whatever was sending men off to the infirmary, their faces white as paste, doubled over hacking up yellow phlegm. In the old days when he was young, death from the flu was common enough, it would take a whole family, half a town, in one violent outbreak and there was nothing much a doctor could do about it. At least now the docs had what they called wonder drugs, for whatever they were worth.
Well, hell, so what if he did come down with the flu on his last day in prison, so he died from the flu rather than be strangled to death from the emphysema. Dead and buried at McNeil in a convict’s grave. As good as anywhere else, he guessed, because who would know or care? Reaching for his prison shirt and pants, that he’d left folded at the end of the small iron shelf, he spread them out over the blanket for extra warmth. They didn’t help much. Damn screws didn’t have the decencyto run the furnaces, let a man sleep in comfort, the cheap bastards. The cell felt like a South Dakota winter, and he’d seen more than enough of those in his lifetime.
He guessed he should consider himself lucky to have a cell to himself, not shoved in with a bunch of young studs to hassle him, that he’d have to fight and then have to keep watching all the time because the bastards never would back off. Lucky to be on the ground floor, too, thanks to the prison doc. That climb to the upper tiers would take his breath, would make it impossible, on one of his bad days, toget a breath.
His cell was like any other, and he’d seen enough of those, too, stained toilet, stained sink, the narrow iron shelf to hold all his worldly belongings. His black prison shoes lined up side by side, just beneath. Smeared concrete walls where graffiti had been repeatedly scrubbed away. But it was better than some of the places he’d ended up, on the outside. Narrow sagging bed in some cheap boardinghouse, or the rotting floor of an empty miner’s shack, his blanket spread out among the mouse and rat droppings. He thought with longing of a bedroll on the prairie when he was running cattle, the smell of the cook fire and boiled coffee, a steer lowing now and then, the faint song of a herder to soothe them and to keep himself awake, the occasional rattle of a bit or a horse snorting to clear dust from his nose.
Strange, tonight the whole cell block seemed not only colder but unnaturally dark, too. Though there was never any real night under the hanging bulbs, never the night’s soothing blackness to rest your eyes and ease a person into sleep. New inmates, first-timers, found it hard to get used to, hard to sleep at all beneath the invasive lights running the length of the cell block ceiling like a row of bright, severed heads—though tonight even the overhead conesseemed blurred and dim, as if viewed through a layer of greasy smoke; and when he looked out through his bars, along the corridor, the four tiers of sleeping men were so shadowed and indistinct he wondered if his eyesight was failing. Shivering, he pulled the blanket tighter. So damn cold. A deep cold that had cut through his bones at intervals all day. He’d be warm for a while as he worked moving bales of hay, and then suddenly would be freezing again for no reason. He was so cold now that, staring up past the lights through the high, barred windows, he expected to see snow salting the night sky.
None of the other men seemed bothered. Nearby, where hecould make out guys sleeping, their covers were thrown back, a bare leg or bare arm trailing over the side of a bunk, the sleeper snoring away happily, warm and content—as content as a man could be, caged in here like a captive beast.
Well, hell, he’d be out of here tomorrow. Leave the cold behind. Would be heading south to the hot desert, where he could bake in the hundred-twenty-degree sun, soak up all the heat he wanted.
His idea was to work a while down in Blythe, in the Southern California desert, the way his parole plan said, but to stay just a little while and then jump parole, pull one more job, and head for Mexico with a good stash tucked away. He wanted money for his last, declining years, he didn’t mean to end up a pauper, with no money for his needs, that dread was always with him; hard as it might be, he meant to do something about that. A few hundred thousand was what he had in mind, enough to live comfortably for the remainder of his life, for however long that was.