It hadn’t seemed to kill many, they were still thick on the varnished oak benches before the station, dark bodies crawling in and out the slots of the cigarette and candy machines, the sound of their beating wings against metal and glass like some dark prediction he didn’t want to know about. The streets and gutters were dark with glistening bodies, crickets clinging to fenders and windshields, to tires, to license plates and chrome grills. Heaps of dead crickets had been swept up along the curb, the piles dusted with the killing white powder; crickets flew in his face or flew past him to beat their hard little bodies against the hot overhead lights—he wondered if the ghost cat was invisibly diving at them, swatting and gobbling up crickets. A shout made him spin around.
“Fontana! Lee Fontana!”
Lee stepped back out of the light, watching the approaching figure. Only when he saw the horseman’s stride, the Stetson and boots and then the familiar face and crippled hand did he step forward, grinning.
11
Jake was still lean, but he’d grown a bit of a paunch over his belt. Same grin, big wide mouth ringed with laugh creases. His thin face was wrinkled some from the sun, his dark hair was turning gray in streaks, and white along the temples.
“Didn’t expect you to meet me,” Lee said. “Damn glad you did. Crickets are about to crawl up my leg, swarm in places I don’t want ’em.”
“You look bushed, Lee. Suitcase?”
“Travelin’ light,” Lee said.
Ellson turned away quickly, maybe uncomfortable that Lee had done the jail time, and Jake hadn’t, because the cops hadn’t had enough to hold him when he had been suspected of robbery later. He led Lee through the crickets along the line of parked cars. On the curb a woman huddled cuddling a baby, ignoring the swarming insects as she held the child to nurse. Ellson headed for a red pickup that looked brand-new, its doors professionally lettered with the signature of Delgado Farms. Lee slid in onto the soft leather seat, shut the door quickly but even so half a dozen crickets slipped in. Lee caught them in his hand, threw them out the window and rolled it up again fast. The truck smelled new, the red leather thick and soft—a lot fancier than the old, rusted-out trucks they’d used to drive. Jake had been with Delgado Farms almost twelve years now, a big switch for him, staying in one place. Lee guessed he’d changed some after their messed-up train job. Jake and Lucita were married long before that robbery, he knew Lucita had come down hard on Jake about that. Jake looked more respectable now, calmer, more settled and sure of himself. He had to be doing well, head foreman of the whole Blythe outfit, which was only one of several farms Delgado owned. Jake did the hiring and firing. He’d said in his letter that Lee would be ramroding a crew ofbraceros and locals.
The Delgado family lived up in Hemet where they raised Steel Dust horses. They owned four big farms in the Coachella Valley, growing hay and dates and vegetables, land totaling over six thousand acres and stretching from the Chocolate Mountains to the Colorado River. Land that, before water was piped from the Colorado, had been dry rangeland, the grass so sparse it must have taken twenty square miles to feed one steer. Now, with water brought in, every acre was as valuable as gold.
Just a little speck of that wealth would set a fellow up real nice, Lee thought. Sitting in the new truck beside Jake, Lee wondered if Jake handled the Blythe payroll—then he turned away, angered at himself. What the hell kind of thought was that? Jake was his friend, just about his only friend.
As they headed through town, Lee began to see other changes in Jake, the calmer way he drove, the lowered timbre of his voice. As Ellson turned down a dusty side street, Lee could smell wet, burned rags from the town dump, and he grinned, remembering the night they had sat in there under a wrecked truck, passing the jug. Jake remembered, too. A little smile touched the corner of his mouth. Lee said,“What was that we were drinking?”
Jake laughed.“Homemade tequila, fermented cactus juice.” They passed a line of feathery tamarisk trees crowded against weathered shacks and pulled up in front of a graying house, its window frames painted turquoise, its door bright pink. A neon Budweiser sign hung from the eaves. The smell of chiles and garlic mixed with the blaring jukebox rhythm of castanets and brassy trumpet stirred a lot of old memories. They got out, crunching crickets, moved past a young Mexican boy who stood outside the door with a broom, brushing crickets away. They stepped inside fast, but a few insects leaped in past them and under a table. Lee hoped to hell they weren’t in the kitchen, but he didn’t know how they could keep all of them out. He didn’t let himself think too long about that.
The walls of the caf? were built of rough, dark wood. Down at the end, at one of three windows, a swamp cooler chugged away, keeping time to the Mexican brass, belching out cool, damp air. The tables were crowded withbraceros and with a few dark-eyed women. They slid in at the only empty table, the oilcloth still damp from the waiter’s towel. When Jake reached for the chips and salsa, Lee tried not to look at the stump of his right hand where three fingers were missing, an accident Lee felt guilty for.
They’d taken down one of the last steam trains, a short run from San Francisco up the San Joaquin Valley. They got the only money bag they could find, had swung off the train when one glancing shot by a train guard hit Jake. Lee ran, in plain sight meaning to lead the cops away, hoping Jake would vanish around the far side of the train. He knew Jake had made it when he heard a horse pounding away. Lee made a lot of noise to draw them off, then slipped away on his own mount, moving silently in the dark.
He had ridden for maybe an hour, could still hear them behind him, but then their sound faded as they took a wrong turn. When at last Lee holed up, hid his horse in dense woods, and opened the canvas bag expecting a big haul, the bag contained a measly four thousand bucks.
Days later, when Lee thought the cops had eased off their searching, he’d gotten half of the money to Lucita. She kept it, but she was mad as hell. She wouldn’t tell him where Jake was, she said his hand, what was left of it, was healing just fine. She told Lee, snapping out the words, her black eyes flashing, that this was the last jobthey’d ever pull, that Jake was done with that life, done for good, or she’d send him packing and divorce him.
Lee didn’t hear from Jake for a long time after that, long after the marine payroll job and the bank fiasco when that damned teller nearly cut off his own fingers. Then, somehow, Jake heard where he was, maybe from someone they had worked with at one time, and Lee started getting a letter now and then, up at McNeil. A thin thread to keep in touch, but it had meant a lot to him.
Now, beneath the table, something brushed his leg, but when he lifted the red checkered oilcloth and glanced down, nothing was there. Only the faintest purr reached him, and in the shadows he saw a scrap of tortilla disappear into thin air. He dropped the edge of the oilcloth wondering, not for the first time, how a ghost could eat solid food.
But at McNeil when the cat had made himself visible in the prison mess hall, he’d gobbled up every handout he could beg. Well, hell, Lee thought, what didhe know about the talents of a ghost? When the purring became louder, he scuffed his feet hoping to hide the sound; and then when the waitress approached, the cat silenced.
Not only was the beer ice-cold, the chiles rellenos when they arrived were light and fresh, the corn tortillas homemade. It was all so good Lee thought maybe he’d died and gone to heaven. If he could just make it from one small Mexican caf? to the next, without having to deal with the rest of the world, he could get along just fine. Jake, rolling beans and salsa into a tortilla, said, “Parole, rather than conditional release?”