Lee had found, early on, that not only was the library a comfortable retreat but that librarian Nancy Trousdale, with her bobbed gray hair and laughing brown eyes, was nice to be around. She knew her collection, and the shelves held a surprising number of nonfiction books for inmates with a variety of interests, whether from their own professional backgrounds or prisoners planning to branch out into new endeavors. On Lee?s first visit Nancy had guided him to exactly the history section he wanted. She made Lee feel at home as he pursued information about the old train robbers of the last century, looking for mention of his grandpappy. She had helped him find a surprising number of volumes about Russell Dobbs?s time, many with a wealth of information on Russell himself. There were clear descriptions of Russell?s train robberies plus a number of tall tales about the old robber and the devil, stories that Lee knew were more than fiction.
As the ghost cat prowled the library, invisible to Nancy and to the inmates reading at the various tables, Lee moved to the desk to return four books. Nancy looked up at him, smiling as she retrieved three new books that she?d saved for him. ?You?re looking fine, Fontana. Our weather agrees with you??
?The weather,? Lee said, ?the good food?and the good company,? he said, giving her a wink.
?And you?re finding what you want about Russell Dobbs??
?Thanks to you,? Lee said.
?He was a colorful man. You have me reading about him, too. Colorful and bold, a good man to have onyour side,? she said shyly. ?According to the folktales about him, as well as his history, he was bold enough to face up to true evil.?
They exchanged the friendly look of a shared interest; Lee checked out his books, gave her a parting smile, and headed back to his room. Misto followed and passed Lee, a breath of warm wind brushing Lee?s face. The tomcat was crouched on the windowsill when Lee came in, but not until Lee shut the door did the cat materialize, first his furry yellow tail lashing against the barred pane, his whiskers curved in a sly smile, then the rest of him.
Lee laid his books on the small night table and stretched out on the bed. As he doubled the pillow behind him and selected a heavy volume, the cat leaped to the blanket and settled against his knee. Lee checked the index, found the sections on Dobbs, and marked them with some torn slips of paper that he kept on the nightstand. He knew well enough the more spectacular events of his grandpappy?s history, the tales that had been told over campfires or were in the local papers. What he was looking for were the periods in Russell?s life that, whenever he?d asked questions of his mother or Pa, they would ignore and abruptly change the subject to something more ?respectable.? Lee had wanted, even as a child, to understand better the long-standing curse on Russell. He hadn?t known, then, that this curse would spill over to harass him as well.
He?d been twelve years old that morning on their South Dakota ranch when he stood beside his grandpappy watching Satan?s shadow move across the open prairie.
No figure walked there, only the tall, drifting shadow where there should be no blemish against the pale ground and cloudless sky. The haunt had frightened Russell?s horse so he reared back where he was tied and broke his reins, and had made the steers in the pasture wheel away running. The shadow had frightened Lee?s grandpappy in a way Lee would never have guessed. It was the only time ever that he?d seen Russell Dobbs show fear
But Russell was his idol. Lee had put aside his grandpappy?s unease, had put aside the strangeness of that day. As Lee grew older he?d patterned his life on that of Russell Dobbs. Before he was twenty-one, most often working alone, he had taken down some nice hauls of cash?and spent most of the money as fast as he stole it, on women, cards, and whiskey.
Only when the old steam trains began to vanish, replaced by diesels too fast for any horseman, did Russell change his methods. He took on a few partners and moved into the new era. But Lee didn?t like the diesels; he stuck to the few steam trains remaining, on the smaller lines. He had stayed away from the large and vicious train gangs that Russell sometimes confronted. Detective Pinkerton had long ago become a whole army of Pinkertons, and for a long while Russell avoided them, too, ashe avoided the shadow that hounded him.
The cat looked down from the dresser at Lee so deeply lost in tales of the past century, then nosed with curiosity at the picture of Lee?s little sister that Lee had placed beside the lamp, the tintype of Mae taken some sixty years ago, the picture that could easily be of Misto?s own Sammie.
Sometimes in Misto?s spirit life distant events came to him clearly; other times they remained uncertain, endlessly frustrating. Lee knew nothing of Sammie Blake, but Misto felt clearly that the child and the old man would meet.
The ghost cat lost in speculation, and Lee lost in the past, were jerked back to the present when the noon whistle blasted.
Carefully closing the book, Lee rose, washed his hands and face, and headed out to the mess hall. Misto, leaping on the bed, knowing Lee would return to his room directly after lunch for the noon count, pawed out a warm nest among the covers and snuggled down, purring. A count was taken every morning, another after lunch, a third count before supper. Lee had no work detail at Springfield. It still amused Lee and amused Misto that the prison work, the gardening and kitchen, the farm work, the cleaning and maintenance was handled by trusties from other prisons. Men assigned from Leavenworth, from El Reno, or from the Atlanta Pen, first offenders chosen as the most responsible among their prison populations.
Once Lee had left for lunch, closing the door behind him, the cat?s thoughts turned back to Georgia where the murder trial of Sammie?s daddy was about to begin. The tomcat was well aware of Morgan Blake?s arrest. He knew Morgan hadn?t committed the murder he was charged with, he had suffered with Sammie when her daddy was jailed. He didn?t doubt this trial would herald a painful time in the lives of the Blake family; he didn?t like to think what life would be like if Morgan was found guilty and sent to federal prison on a life sentence. Bank robbery and murder weren?t looked upon kindly in rural Georgia. Morgan was just a young man, a clean-living, hardworking man who did not deserve the bad luck, the cold and deliberate evil that now surrounded him and his family.
The ghost cat, vanishing and reappearing as he pleased, visited Sammie often. He would snuggle into her dreams at night and into her arms to comfort her. Though he remained unseen, Sammie stroked and cuddled him, put out a finger to feel his soft paw or gently scratched his ragged ears the way she?d done when he was alive. She didn?t question that he was a ghost, she loved and needed him. But when, deep in the night, Sammie slept soundly, at peace again, Misto would return to Lee.
Often at night Misto was filled with Lee?s sickness; he could feel within his own body Lee?s struggle for breath, his fear of what lay ahead, his desperate bouts of depression. And often at night Misto puzzled mightily over the connection between Mae and Sammie. Always the future blurred, as undefined as if the dark spirit himself had stepped between the ghost cat and whatever beckoned, whatever waited for Lee.
4
LATE AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT shone in through the Blakes? living room windows, brightening the white wicker furniture and flowered cushions, the potted red geraniums on the sill, the hooked rug Becky?s mother had made. Slanting sunlight heightened the carved details of the antique pie safe that had belonged to a great-aunt Becky had never known. Allher treasures gathering the afternoon glow would normally comfort her, warm and welcoming; but now, at this moment, Becky?s beloved retreat seemed close and constricting, the colors too bright, the sunlight brassy. She sat stiffly on the edge of a chair like a stranger in her own house, holding her white purse awkwardly on her knees, her dark hair damp with perspiration. She had no idea how long she had sat there. Thinking too much and then not thinking at all, just sitting, numb and unfeeling, incapable of thought.