As a boy, Lee had known exactly how his grandpappy felt, had known the wild need that kept Dobbs robbing the trains and moving on to rob again. On the ranch, even when Lee stood on a knoll looking across emptiness as far as he could see in every direction, he felt the same trapped need to move on. He could still see that look in Dobbs?s eyes, the intensity in Dobbs?s movements and in his impatient ways.
Lee, with his own hunger for the fast trains, would do anything as a kid to get into town to see the train pull in, to watch that thin line of smoke curling up from the bell-mouthed stack, the black engine belching steam, steam sighing from the big pistons and drive wheels. His father always wanted Lee to go with him to the stockyard, to take an interest in the cattle trading. But the minute their buggy hit town Lee would sneak off to the station and beg the engineer to let him aboard. He could still feel the warm iron floor under his bare feet as he stood inside the engineer?s cab looking at the bright brass gauges and levers, drinking in the power of the engine, a power that filled him right up like a dipper of water on a hot day.
But then his eyes would turn to the engineer?s heavy thirty-thirty hanging beside the seat in its scarred leather scabbard, and he would imagine that weapon turned on his grandpappy during a robbery, imagine his grandpappy shot, twisting and falling, and Lee?s excitement would turn to fear.
When the engineer shooed him off the train again he would wait beside the track feeling the ground rumble as the engine got moving, would stand there caught in the scream of the whistle and the jolt of the drive wheels as she gathered speed. Would stare up, entranced, at the big pistons pushing to a gallop and the rocking cars heaving past him.
Now, remembering that day flying from the West Coast to Kansas City looking down from the airliner at his old home, he had that same sense of living in two times. As if part of him was still a young man back on the prairie sixty years in the past, while part of him stumbled along toward the end of his life?s journey.
In the end, what was it all about? What did it all add up to?
But when he paid attention to the ghost cat draped over his shoulder, one paw resting playfully against Lee?s neck, to the frisky, small ghost, he knew what it all added up to: If Misto had transcended from earthly life into a vast and more complicated dimension, why would humans be different?
Lee felt uncomfortable thinking about such matters, but Mistowas the living?more than living?example that something more lay ahead, after this life. Not just the dark weight of evil, that was only part of it. Something more, so bright it shamed the golden wheat fields through which the car sped. Crushed in the limo beside the cigar-stinking deputy, Lee was embarrassedbysuch thoughts, but the proof of a better life was right there, draped over his shoulder, warm, heavy, invisible.
IT WAS A long pull, a two-day trip moving south, crowded against the sweaty deputy. And the layover in Tennessee was no picnic. Lee was lodged in Jackson?s dirty county jail while the two deputies went off to a hotel and a steak dinner. Lee?s meal, shoved through the cell bars, was some kind of watery stew that had been around too long. The coffee was the color of dishwater and tasted like it. He ached from sitting in the car and his back was sore where the belly chain gouged him. He lay on the jail?s dirty cot thinking there wasn?t one damned person in the world who cared whether he made it to Atlanta or dropped dead before he got there. But then the ghost cat nudged him, and Lee smiled; and soon, eased by the insistent presence of the ghost cat, Lee slept.
The next day?s travel was worse than the first. The weather grew hot and humid, and Lee?s seat partner, without his smokes, grew increasingly cranky. They made half a dozen extra stops, pulling over at some turnout or campground so Ray could light up a stogy. Afterward he would heave himself back in the car stinking all the worse. At seven that evening when they pulled into Atlanta, Lee was done in. He wanted only to fall into a prison cot, to stretch out with no chains binding him, and ease into sleep. Moving through the city he could see, off to the right, a fancy section of big, beautiful homes withtheir spreading shade streets. ?Buckhead,? the driver said when he saw Lee looking. ?Too fancy for you, or me neither.?
They moved down Peachtree past closed, softly lit shops until they hit narrower streets, shabby little houses packed close together. In the fading evening, kids played ball in the street, running and shouting. The deputy honked impatiently at a bunch of Negro boys in a game of kick-the-can. Ahead loomed the penitentiary: thick concrete walls, one guard tower that Lee could see, the glint of rifles reflected from big spotlights glaring across the entry doors.
Belly-chained, Lee slid awkwardly out of the car and climbed the marble steps, aching tired. Once inside and through the sally port the deputy marshals freed him of the cuffs and chain. He stood rubbing his sore wrists where the cuffs had eaten in, rubbing his back, listening to the hum of the heavy barred gate sliding closed behind him.
Down both sides of the long passage were vaulted openings that led to the cellblocks. He followed along beside the uniformed admissions officer, a trim, dark-haired young man with a full mustache. Down at the end of the corridor he could see open double doors and could smell greasy dishwater and boiled cabbage, could hear pans clanging and male voices. The corridor was hung with inmates? paintings, some crazy paranoid, some nostalgic. An oil painting of a cowhand riding across open prairie struck him hard.
When he had showered and been issued prison clothes he was led into a cellblock five tiers high. He had stuffed his savings book and Mae?s picture, which he was allowed to keep, into the pocket of his loose cotton shirt. He followed the officer up the metal stairs that zigzagged back and forth between metal catwalks. Some fifty feet above the main floor were barred clerestory windows, their glass arching up another thirty feet. Hecraned his neck to look up, the height dizzying him. ?Some hotel, Lieutenant.?
?Sorry, no elevator,? the officer said in his soft Southern speech. ?You?ll be on the third tier.? They climbed in silence as the rumble of a train broke the night from behind the prison, its scream shrill and demanding. By the time Lee reached his tier he was breathing so hard he had to stop twice to get enough air. ?Long drop,? he said when the train had passed and he could talk again. ?Anyone ever cash it in and jump??
?It?s happened,? the guard said. ?Not often.?
At midpoint of the catwalk he was ushered into a single cell.
?You?ll see Mr. Hamilton, the section custodian, in the morning. Then the classification officer. After that you?ll be able to move around the prison.?
His cell was no different than the others he?d lived in: stainless steel washbowl, stained metal toilet. A cot bolted to the wall, with a cotton pad, a worn-out pillow, and a gray prison blanket. He didn?t bother to undress. He pulled off his shoes, lay down and drew the blanket up around him, listening to the familiar prison noises, mensnoring, metal clanging, the crinkle of paper as a candy bar was unwrapped. Maybe life was just one long cellblock after another until they planted you outside the wall.
But this thought brought a flurry of hissing. The cat leaped heavily onto the cot, right in Lee?s face, as solid as any living beast. Solid and very visible, shocking Lee. Quickly he looked up and down the corridor at the cells on the other side.