At Admissions, a soft-faced officer with jowls like a bulldog produced the usual brown paper bag with Lee’s name scrawled on it, shoved it across the desk with a patronizing smirk. “Here’s your worldly goods, Fontana.” He looked Lee over, amused at the baggy pinstripe suit and fresh prison haircut, and at the one pitiful item he saw Lee take from his pocket and drop in the bag, the little framed picture of his sister, Mae, when she was ten. “Here’s your train ticket,” he said, handing Lee a plain brown envelope, “and your prison earnings. Don’t lose them, old man. And be careful, it’s a great big world out there.”
Lee moved away from the counter wanting to smash the guy. As to his prison earnings, there wasn’t much; they didn’t get paid for working the farm, only for splitting cedar shingles that the prison shop made from the trees that grew along the shore—most of that pittance, he’d spent on razor blades and soap, on cheap dime novels the guards would pick up on the mainland, and on candy bars. He wondered if the money was still stuffed into the toe of his boot, from all those years ago when he was brought into McNeil and stripped of his civilian clothes, when all his belongings but Mae’s picture were locked away as he changed into prison uniform. He hoped to hell the guards hadn’tfound it. He needed cash for a gun, for any number of essentials to start life anew.
Now, as Lee headed for the sally port, the ghost cat followed him unseen, his attention on the child’s photograph that Lee had taken from his pocket, that he always kept close to him, the picture of Lee’s little sister, Mae, from those long-ago days in South Dakota. The child who looked exactly like Misto’s own Sammie, who lived now, in this time, in this moment, across the continent in Georgia. Sammie, with whom Misto had lived a short but recent life, and with whom, as ghost, he still spent many nights, unseen, purring close to her as she slept.
The exact likeness of the two little girls continued to puzzle the ghost cat, for even now in his free and far-roving state between his earthly lives, the tomcat did not have all the answers. He knew only that there was a powerful connection between Mae and Sammie, an urgent and meaningful adjunct to their lives of which Lee was the center, a connection that, the cat thought, might ultimately help to save Lee in his conflict with the dark power.
Lee, clutching his brown paper sack and brown envelope, stepped into the sally port glancing at the officer behind the glass barrier. Receiving a nod, he moved on out through the second door. He knew he should be happy at the sound of the metal gate locking behind him. But he felt only unsteady at his sudden freedom, at being turned loose with no barriers, no limits or rules, adrift and on his own after years of confinement, lost and rudderless in a vast and unfamiliar world.
The sky was gray, the morning’s heavy mist chilling him clear through. The small prison bus was waiting. He shoved the brown envelope with his ticket into his coat pocket, tucked the paper bag under his arm, climbed the three steps up into the stuffy vehicle, took a seat halfway back, nodding at the trusty who was driving and at the guard who sat angled where he could see the seats behind him. Lee was the only passenger. Earlier in the morning, and again in the afternoon, the bus would be full of schoolkids, children of the guards and prison personnel who lived on the island.
The bus rattled down the winding gravel road, past green pastures on both sides, past the reservoir and on down to the ferry landing where the SSBennett, McNeil’s forty-foot mahogany powerboat, was tied. The churning waters of Puget Sound looked as cold and gray as death, the hills of the distant shore vague beneath the overcast, grim and depressing, the smear of crowded mainland houses, with taller buildings rising among them, all generated the prisoner’s fear of the vast and sprawling outside world. He knew the feeling would pass, it always did, but every time he was released he felt as off balance as if the cinch on his saddle had broken and he was scrambling to swing away from a bad tumble.
At the dock he left the bus, moved on down to the rocking launch where a uniformed guard and a trusty were coiling lines on the aft deck. The gray waters shifted and heaved as if forces deep down were restless. There was one other passenger, a prisoner chained to a bench on the foredeck sitting between two guards, a two-time felon who had made his third kill at McNeil and was being shipped off to Alcatraz. Lee crossed the wooden catwalk and stepped aboard, staying to the aft deck avoiding his prison mate. The hollowness in his belly was sharp with excitement but sharper with dread, leaving for the first time in ten years his secure cell, the farm where he’d felt comfortable, the animals he’d liked better than his fellow inmates—leaving the old prison tomcat, he thought, surprised he’d think of that. Leaving the old cat he’d come to care about more than he’d imagined. The yellow tomcat that had spent last night on Lee’s bed, easing Lee’s night-fears, somehow coming between him and the phantom that he hadn’t wanted to see or to hear. Now he was leaving the old tomcat that was, it seemed to Lee, the only real friend he’d had at McNeil, the only presence he could really trust. The old cat that had, some said, died and returned again. Sometimes Lee thought he’d been there all along, that what the guard and prisoners had buried had been one of his offspring. Other times, he wondered. Whatever the truth, Lee had a pang of regret and knew he’d miss the old fellow.
He stood at the rail as the tall, lean guard cast off and began to coil line. One of the guards would have a shopping list in his pocket, they’d pick up needed supplies in Steilacoom before they headed back to the island, maybe food stores that had been trucked down from Tacoma, though most of their staples came by boat from there or from Seattle. Easing free of the dock, they were under way, the twin diesels churning the water in a long white tail boiling out behind them. Moving up to the bow, Lee stood chilled by the heavy mist and salt spray, riding the choppy waves liking the speed, and soon he began to feel easier.
Off to his left the overcast had lifted a little above the hills of Tacoma, the sun trying to burn through the murky cover. But it wouldn’t burn away much, sun wouldn’t blaze down on the land like the pure, hot desert where he was headed. As they approached land, the smokestacks from the iron smelters rose black and ugly, smelters that dumped their hot slag into the sound, souring the waters so nothing would grow along that shore. He could picture the streets and sidewalks of the city slick and wet from the mist and busier than he’d known: too many people, too many cars, not the quiet he’d grown used to on the island—the prison had been quiet most of the time, until a rumble erupted to stir things up, a dose of trouble breaking the monotony until armed guards stepped in and broke up the fight. Looking away toward the vast horizon of the mainland, he felt uneasy at so much freedom ahead, so much emptiness, so many choices, no one telling him what to do, no direction to his life except that he made for himself.
The prison counselor said that was what a parole officer was for, to guide him, help him over the rough spots until he’d settled in again. Well, to hell with that. He didn’t need some wet-behind-the-ears social worker hardly out of diapers telling him how to live his life.