The Tiger Rising (4 page)

“Uh-huh,” said Rob, rubbing his eyes, “yes, sir.”

“If it don’t stop soon, the whole state ain’t going to be nothing but one big swamp.”

“The rain don’t bother me,” Rob muttered.

On the day of his mother’s funeral, it had been so sunshiny that it hurt his eyes. And after the funeral, he and his father had to stand outside in the hot, bright light and shake everybody’s hand. Some of the ladies hugged Rob, pulling him to them in jerky, desperate movements, smashing his head into their pillowy chests.

“If you don’t look just like her,” they told him, rocking him back and forth and holding on to him tight.

Or they said, “You got your mama’s hair — that cobwebby blond,” and they ran their fingers through his hair and patted his head like he was a dog.

And every time Rob’s father extended his hand to somebody else, Rob saw the ripped place in his suit, where it had split open when he slapped Rob to make him stop crying. And it reminded Rob again:
Do not cry. Do not cry.

That was what the sun made him think of. The funeral. And so he didn’t care if he ever saw the sun again. He didn’t care if the whole state
did
turn into a swamp.

His father stood up and went back into the motel room and got himself a cup of coffee and brought it back outside. The steam rose off of it and curled into the air.

“Now that I’m a working man,” Rob said shyly, “could I drink some coffee?”

His father smiled at him. “Well,” he said, “I guess that’d be all right.”

Rob went inside and poured himself a mug of coffee and brought it back outside and sat down next to his father and sipped it slowly. It tasted hot and dark and bitter. He liked it.

“All right,” his father said after about ten minutes, “it’s time to get to work.” He stood up. It wasn’t even six o’clock.

As they walked together alongside the back of the motel to the maintenance shed, his father started to whistle “Mining for Gold.” It was a sad song he used to sing with Rob’s mother. Her high sweet voice had gone swooping over his father’s deep one, like a small bird flying over the solid world.

His father must have remembered, too, because he stopped halfway through the song and shook his head and cursed softly under his breath.

Rob let his father walk ahead of him. He slowed down and stared into the woods, wanting to see some small part of the tiger, a flick of his tail or the glow from his eyes. But there was nothing to see except for rain and darkness.

“Come on, son,” his father said, his voice hard. And Rob hurried to catch up.

Rob was sweeping the laundry room when Willie May, the Kentucky Star’s housekeeper, came in and threw herself down in one of the metal chairs that were lined up against the cement-block wall.

“You know what?” she said to Rob.

“No, ma’am,” said Rob.

“I tell you what,” said Willie May. She reached up and adjusted the butterfly clip in her thick black hair. “I’d rather be sweeping up after some pigs in a barn than cleaning up after the people in this place. Pigs at least give you some respect.”

Rob leaned on his broom and stared at Willie May. He liked looking at her. Her face was smooth and dark, like a beautiful piece of wood. And Rob liked to think that if he had been the one who carved Willie May, he would have made her just the way she was, with her long nose and high cheekbones and slanted eyes.

“What you staring at?” Willie May asked. Her eyes narrowed. “What you doing out of school?”

Rob shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

“What you mean, you don’t know?”

Rob shrugged again.

“Don’t be moving your shoulders up and down in front of me, acting like some skinny old bird trying to fly away. You want to end up cleaning motel rooms for a living?”

Rob shook his head.

“That’s right. Ain’t nobody wants this job. I’m the only fool Beauchamp can pay to do it. You got to stay in school,” she said, “else you’ll end up like me.” She shook her head and reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a single cigarette and two sticks of Eight Ball licorice gum. She put one piece of gum in her mouth, handed the other one to Rob, lit her cigarette, leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. “Now,” she said. The scent of smoke and licorice slowly filled the laundry room. “Go on and tell me why you ain’t in school.”

“On account of my legs being all broke out,” said Rob.

Willie May opened her eyes and looked over the top of her glasses at Rob’s legs.

“Mmmm,” she said after a minute. “How long you had that?”

“About six months,” said Rob.

“I can tell you how to cure that,” said Willie May, pointing with her cigarette at his legs. “I can tell you right now. Don’t need to go to no doctor.”

“Huh?” said Rob. He stopped chewing his gum and held his breath. What if Willie May healed him and then he had to go back to school?

“Sadness,” said Willie May, closing her eyes and nodding her head. “You keeping all that sadness down low, in your legs. You not letting it get up to your heart, where it belongs. You got to let that sadness rise on up.”

“Oh,” said Rob. He let his breath out. He was relieved. Willie May was wrong. She couldn’t cure him.

“The principal thinks it’s contagious,” he said.

“Man ain’t got no sense,” Willie May said.

“He’s got lots of certificates,” Rob offered. “They’re all framed and hung up on his wall.”

“I bet he ain’t got no certificate for sense though,” said Willie May darkly. She rose up out of her chair and stretched. “I got to clean some rooms,” she said. “You ain’t going to forget what I told you ’bout them legs, are you?”

“No, ma’am,” said Rob.

“What’d I tell you then?” she said, towering over him. Willie May was tall, the tallest person Rob had ever seen.

“To let the sadness rise,” Rob said. He repeated the words as if they were part of a poem. He gave them a certain rhythm, the same way Willie May had when she said them.

“That’s right,” said Willie May. “You got to let the sadness rise on up.”

She left the room in a swirl of licorice and smoke; after she was gone, Rob wished that he had told her about the tiger. He felt a sudden desperate need to tell somebody — somebody who wouldn’t doubt him. Somebody who was capable of believing in tigers.

That afternoon, Rob was out in front of the Kentucky Star, weeding between the cracks in the sidewalk, when the school bus rumbled up.

“Hey!” he heard Norton Threemonger yell.

Rob didn’t look up. He concentrated on the weeds.

“Hey, disease boy!” Norton shouted. “We know what you got. It’s called leprosy.”

“Yeah!” Billy shouted. “Leprosy. All of your body parts are going to fall off.”

“They’re going to
rot
off!” Norton yelled.

“Yeah!” Billy screamed. “That’s what I meant.
Rot
. They’re going to rot off.”

Rob stared at the sidewalk and imagined the tiger eating Norton and Billy Threemonger and then spitting out their bones.

“Hey!” Norton shouted. “Here comes your girlfriend, disease boy.”

The bus coughed and sputtered and finally roared away. Rob looked up. Sistine was walking toward him. She was wearing a lime green dress. As she got closer, he could see that it was torn and dirty.

“I brought your homework,” she said. She held out a red notebook stuffed full of papers. The knuckles on her hand were bleeding.

“Thank you,” said Rob. He took the notebook. He was determined to say nothing else to her. He was determined to keep his words inside himself, where they belonged.

Sistine stared past him at the motel. It was an ugly two-story building, squat and small, composed entirely of cement block. The doors of each room were painted a different color, pink or blue or green, and there was a chair, painted in a matching color, sitting in front of each door.

“Why is this place called the Kentucky Star?” Sistine asked.

“Because,” said Rob. It was the shortest answer he could think of.

“Because why?” she asked.

Rob sighed. “Because Beauchamp, the man who owns it, he had a horse once, called Kentucky Star.”

“Well,” said Sistine, “it’s a stupid name for a hotel in Florida.”

Rob shrugged.

It started to rain; Sistine stood in front of him and continued to stare. She looked at the motel and then over at the blinking Kentucky Star sign, and then she looked back at him, as if it was all a math equation she was trying to make come out right in her head.

The rain made her hair stick to her scalp. It made her dress droopy. Rob looked at her small pinched face and her bleeding knuckles and dark eyes, and he felt something inside of him open up. It was the same way he felt when he picked up a piece of wood and started working on it, not knowing what it would be and then watching it turn into something he recognized.

He took a breath. He opened his mouth and let the words fall out. “I know where there’s a tiger.”

Sistine stood in the drizzly rain and stared at him, her eyes black and fierce.

She didn’t say “A real one?”

She didn’t say “Are you crazy?”

She didn’t say “You’re a big old liar.”

She said one word:
“Where?”

And Rob knew then that he had picked the right person to tell.

“We got to walk through the woods,” Rob said. He looked doubtfully at Sistine’s bright dress and shiny black shoes.

“You can give me some of your clothes to wear,” she told him. “I hate this dress, anyway.”

And so he took her to the motel room, and there, Sistine stood and stared at the unmade beds and the tattered recliner. Her eyes moved over his father’s gun case and then went to the macaroni pan from the night before, still sitting on the hot plate. She looked at it all the same way she had looked at the Kentucky Star sign and the motel and him, like she was trying to add it up in her head.

Then she saw his carvings, the little wooden village of odd things that he had made. He had them all on a TV dinner tray beside his bed.

“Oh,” she said — her voice sounded different, lighter — “where did you get those?”

She went and bent over the tray and studied the carvings, the blue jay and the pine tree and the Kentucky Star sign and the one that he was particularly proud of, his father’s right foot, life-size and accurate right down to the little toe. She picked them up one by one and then placed them back down carefully.

“Where did you get them?” she asked again.

“I made ’em,” said Rob.

She did not doubt him, as some people would. Instead, she said, “Michelangelo — the man who painted the Sistine ceiling — he sculpted, too. You’re a sculptor,” she said. “You’re an artist.”

“Naw,” said Rob. He shook his head. He felt a hot wave of embarrassment and joy roll over him. It lit his rash on fire. He bent and rubbed his hands down his legs, trying to calm them. When he straightened back up, he saw that Sistine had picked up the carving of her. He had left it lying on his bed, intending to work on it again in the evening.

He held his breath as she stared at the piece of wood. It looked so much like her, with her skinny legs and small eyes and defiant stance, that he was certain she would be angry. But once again she surprised him.

“Oh,” she said, her voice full of wonder, “it’s perfect. It’s like looking in a little wooden mirror.” She stared at it a minute more and then carefully laid it back on his bed.