Donovan, finished examining him, paused beside the table, his look solemn, his eyes way too serious. Lee waited uneasily. Were his lungs worse, even though he felt better? But then Donovan smiled, running a hand through his short, pale hair.
?I know you like it here, Lee. I hate to tell you this, but it looks like you?re being transferred.?
?What the hell? I?m just starting to get better. Transferred where? Why would??
?Down to Atlanta,? Donovan said. ?We?re receiving two dozen incoming patients, men from a number of states. They?re all pretty sick, we need every space we can muster.?
No one had asked what Lee wanted. His choices weren?t a concern of the U.S. prison system. Scowling at Donovan, he finished buttoning his shirt.
?You?re fit enough to move on, Lee. It?ll be cold here pretty soon, but should still be warm down south. Atlanta will be good for you.?
?Sure it will,? Lee said. ?Thrown in a cage of felons again where every minute I have to watch my back.?
Donovan looked apologetic. Lee knew there was nothing the man could do. They said their good-byes, and early the next morning Lee was out of there, handcuffed, belly-chained, and shoved in the back of another big limo by two surly deputy marshals.
The deputy in the backseat took up most of the space and stunk of cigar smoke. The early morning road was empty, the yellow wheat towering tall on both sides of the two-lane. In the distance Lee could see a row of combines working, cutting wheat just as they would soon be doing outside the prison walls. Crowded into the small space, he couldn?t get comfortable, couldn?t move his arms much, and the belly chain was already digging in. Did they have to leave him chained like a mass killer?
His temper eased only when he felt a breeze behind him where there was no wind, then felt a soft paw press slyly against his cheek. He imagined the ghost cat stretched out on the wide shelf, enjoying the view through the back window?enjoying a little game, Lee realized when the deputy began to scratch a tickle along his neck. Lee hid a smile as the deputy scratched his ear, then his jaw. When the portly man slapped at his balding head, Lee had trouble not laughing out loud. When he scowled at Lee as if his prisoner was causing the trouble, Lee glanced sternly toward the shelf behind him?kitty-play was all right, but the cranky deputy looked like he wanted to pound someone, and Lee was the only one visible.
MISTO STOPPED THE teasing when Lee frowned. He rolled over away from the deputy, hissing softly at the way the heavy lawman hogged the seat, squeezing Lee against the door, deliberately crowding him in the hot car. When Lee?s companion lit up a cigar Misto wanted to snake out his paw again and slap the stogie from the fat man?s face.
And wouldn?tthat make trouble, when the unpredictable lawman felt his burning cigar jerked from his mouth and saw it flying across the car?an armed and unpredictable lawman. Smiling, Misto guessed he wouldn?t try the man?s temper that far.
LEE SAID NOTHING about the cigar smoke, but sat trying not to cough. Neither deputy had said much to him and he didn?t want to get them started; he?d take the smoke and the silence. He looked out the window at the yellow wheat fields stretching away; he stared at the back of the driver?s head until the thin deputy met Lee?s eyes in the rearview mirror, his glance cold and ungiving. Soon the car was so thick with smoke that Lee couldn?t help coughing.
?Can I crack open the window? The emphysema?s getting to me.?
The fat deputy scowled, but grunted.
Taking that as a yes, Lee managed, despite the handcuffs, to roll down his window, and sat sucking in the fresh breeze. The warm wind made him think of the desert, of Blythe, of the buried post office money and the simple pleasures it would buy.
?What?re you smiling about, Fontana?? the fat deputy said. ?You know something we don?t??
Lee shrugged.?Hungering for a good Mexican meal. They ever serve Mexican in the Atlanta pen??
In the front seat, the thin deputy drawled,?Atlanta, you?ll get Brunswick stew. That can be as hot as you?ll want to try.? When Lee began to cough hard despite the open window, the driver glanced back at his partner. ?The doc at Springfield told you, Ray, no smoking in the car. That cough gets bad, he keeps it up, we?ll have to turn around and take him back.?
Scowling, Ray opened his window and threw the burning cigar out on the shoulder of the highway. Lee hoped to hell he didn?t set the wheat afire. This wasn?t going to improve the man?s temper, if he couldn?t smoke. And it was a two-day drive to Atlanta.
Soon, with the cigar smoke sucked away by the wind, Lee was able to breathe again. As he settled back, easing pressure off the belly chain, trying to get comfortable, he felt the weight of the ghost cat stretch out along his shoulder. Felt the insolent tickle of bold whiskers, and again he tried not to smile. Lee wished they were flying instead of driving, he liked looking down at the world below, the patterns of farms and cities, the snaking rivers. He?d been startled when, during the flight out from L.A. to Springfield, they?d passed right over the country he had known as a boy. He?d pressed his forehead to the plane?s tiny window seeing, in a new way, the wrinkled face of Arizona, the great plains broken by dry, ragged mountains. He saw Flagstaff, the San Francisco peaks rising behind. Where the highway moved north of Winslow, and the Little Colorado River made a sharp turn, a lonely feeling had clutched at him. Off to his left, three fields formed a triangle with trees marking their borders. Those had to be the north fields of the ranch where they?d moved when they left South Dakota, when his dad sold out, sold all the stock, hoping for a better living.
The ranch his father had bought was no better for grass except in early spring, and that new green grass had been without much substance to put any fat on a steer. Sparse grazing land again, hot as hell in the summers, and the well water tasted bitterly of iron. He?d worked long hours, as a boy, doctoring and branding their scruffy cattle. He could still smell the dust, could still feel his favorite bay gelding under him, could still bring back the sweet smell of new grass bruised by a horse?s hooves. He could taste the vinegar-soaked beefsteak his mother would cook for breakfast, for the few neighbors who helped each other during roundup, moving from one ranch to the next. Fresh-killed range beef was tough as hell if you didn?t soak it overnight in vinegar.
He?d been fourteen when they moved west to Winslow. His brother Howard was fifteen but as useless in Arizona as he?d been in South Dakota, making more work for others than if you did the job yourself. Ma had kept the girls busy tending the garden and chickens, and canning what she could from their pitiful garden. His two older sisters didn?t want to work with the cattle, but Mae had yearned after horses. She rode whenever she could sneak away, she would have grown into a good ranch hand if Ma had let her.
The year they moved to the Flagstaff land, Russell Dobbs had followed them all the way out from the Dakotas. Lee had been thrilled when his grandpappy showed up, but his mother was cold with rage. She?d been so relieved to come west to get away from her renegade, train-robbing father.
Grandpappy would be with them for a few days, then gone for a few. Shortly after he arrived, the Flagstaff paper reported a train robbery just north of Prescott. Two weeks later a second train was held up, east of Flagstaff. That was the start of a dozen successful jobs, all at night when Russell might have been there at the ranch, asleep in his bed. Russell knew, if the feds came looking, his daughter would lie for him despite her disapproval. It was at that time that Lee?s mother turned inward. She didn?t speak to her father much when he was at the ranch and she didn?t smile often. After Russell left them for good and moved on again, she lived the rest of her life blaming him for everything that went wrong in the family. It was his influence, she said, that hadsoured their lives.