The Tiger Rising (5 page)

“Give me some clothes,” she said, “and we’ll go see the tiger.”

He gave her a pair of pants and a T-shirt, and left the room and went outside to wait for her.

It was still raining, but not hard. He looked at the falling Kentucky Star. He thought for a minute about one of the not-wishes he had buried deepest: a friend. He stared at the star and felt the hope and need and fear course through him in a hot neon arc. He shook his head.

“Naw,” he said to the Kentucky Star. “Naw.”

And then he sighed and stuck his legs out into the rain, hoping to cool them off, hoping to get some small amount of relief.

They walked together through the scrub. The rain had stopped, but the whole world was wet. The pines and the palmettos and the sad clusters of dead orange trees all dripped water.

“This is where my mother grew up,” Sistine said, swinging her arms wide as she walked. “Right here in Lister. And she said that she always told herself that if she ever made it out of here, she wasn’t going to come back. But now she’s back because my father had an affair with his secretary, whose name is Bridgette and who can’t type, which is a really bad thing for a secretary not to be able to do. And my mother left him when she found out. He’s coming down here to get me. Soon. Next week, probably. I’m going to live with him. I’m not staying here, that’s for sure.”

Rob felt a familiar loneliness rise up and drape its arm over his shoulder. She wasn’t staying. There was no point in wishing; the suitcase needed to stay closed. He stared at Sistine’s shiny shoes and willed his sadness to go away.

“Ain’t you worried about messing up your shoes?” he asked her.

“No,” she said, “I hate these shoes. I hate every piece of clothing that my mother makes me wear. Does your mother live with you?”

Rob shook his head. “Naw,” he said.

“Where is she?”

Rob shrugged his shoulders.

“My mother’s going to open up a store downtown. It’s going to be an art store. She’s going to bring some culture to the area. She could sell some of your wood sculptures.”

“They ain’t sculptures,” Rob protested. “They’re just whittling. That’s all. And we got to be quiet because Beauchamp don’t want people walking around on his land.”

“Is this his land?” Sistine asked.

“Everything’s his,” said Rob. “The motel and these woods.”

“He can’t own everything,” Sistine argued. “Besides,” she said, “I don’t care. He can catch us. He can put us in jail for trespassing. I don’t care.”

“If we’re in jail, we won’t get to see the tiger,” said Rob.

“Where’s your mother?” Sistine demanded suddenly. She stopped walking and stared at him.

“Shhh,” said Rob. “You got to be quiet.” He kept walking.

“I do not have to be quiet,” Sistine called after him. “I want to know where your mother is.”

He turned around and looked at her. Her hands were on her hips. Her black eyes were narrowed.

“I don’t want to see your stupid tiger!” she shouted. “I don’t care about it. You don’t know how to talk to people. I told you about my father and my mother and Bridgette, and you didn’t say anything. You won’t even tell me about your mother.” Keeping her hands on her hips, she turned around and started marching back in the direction of the Kentucky Star. “Keep your stupid secrets!” she shouted. “Keep your stupid tiger, too. I don’t care.”

Rob watched her. Because she was wearing his jeans and his shirt, it was like looking into a fun-house mirror. It was like watching himself walk away. He shrugged and bent to scratch his legs. He told himself that he didn’t care. He told himself that she was leaving soon, anyway.

But when he looked up and saw her getting smaller and smaller, it reminded him of his dream. He remembered Sistine riding into the woods on the back of the tiger. And suddenly, he couldn’t bear the thought of watching her disappear again.

“Wait up!” he shouted. “Wait up!” And he started to run toward her.

Sistine turned and stopped. She waited for him with her hands on her hips.

“Well?” she said when he got close to her.

“She’s dead,” he told her. The words came out in short, ragged gasps. “My mama’s dead.”

“Okay,” said Sistine. She gave a quick, professional nod of her head. She stepped toward him. And Rob turned. And together they walked back in the other direction, toward the tiger.

The cage was made out of rusted chainlink fence; there was a wood board that served as a roof, and there was a chainlink door that was locked tight with three padlocks. Inside the cage, the tiger was still pacing back and forth, just as he had been the last time Rob saw him, as if he had never stopped pacing, or as if Rob had never gone away.

“Oh,” said Sistine in the same voice that she had used when she saw Rob’s carvings. “He’s beautiful.”

“Don’t get too close,” Rob ordered. “He might not like it if you stand too close.”

But the tiger ignored them. He concentrated on pacing. He was so enormous and bright that it was hard to look directly at him.

“It’s just like the poem says,” Sistine breathed.

“What?” said Rob.

“That poem. The one that goes, ‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night.’ That poem. It’s just like that. He burns bright.”

“Oh,” said Rob. He nodded. He liked the fierce and beautiful way the words sounded. Just as he was getting ready to ask Sistine to say them again, she whirled around and faced him.

“What’s he doing way out here?” she demanded.

Rob shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “He’s Beauchamp’s, I guess.”

“Beauchamp’s what?” said Sistine. “His pet?”

“I don’t know,” said Rob. “I just like looking at him. Maybe Beauchamp does, too. Maybe he just likes to come out here and look at him.”

“That’s selfish,” said Sistine.

Rob shrugged.

“This isn’t right, for this tiger to be in a cage. It’s not right.”

“We can’t do nothing about it,” Rob said.

“We could let him go,” said Sistine. “We could set him free.” She put her hands on her hips. It was a gesture that Rob had already come to recognize and be wary of.

“We can’t,” he said. “There’s all them locks.”

“We can saw through them.”

“Naw,” said Rob. The mere thought of letting the tiger go made his legs itch like crazy.

“We have to set him free,” Sistine said, her voice loud and certain.

“Nuh-uh,” said Rob. “It ain’t our tiger to let go.”

“It’s our tiger to save,” Sistine said fiercely.

The tiger stopped pacing. He pricked his ears back and forth, looking somewhere past Sistine and Rob.

“Shhh,” said Rob.

The tiger cocked his head. All three of them listened.

“It’s a car,” said Rob. “A car’s coming. It’s Beauchamp. We got to go. Come on.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her into the woods. She ran with him. She let him hold on to her hand. It was an impossibly small and bony hand, as delicate as the skeleton of a baby bird.

They ran together, and Rob felt his heart move inside him — not from fear or exertion but from something else. It was as if his soul had grown and was pushing everything up higher in his body. It was an oddly familiar feeling, but he couldn’t remember what it was called.

“Is he behind us?” Sistine asked breathlessly.

Rob shrugged; it was hard to move his shoulders up and down and keep hold of Sistine’s hand at the same time.

Sistine said, “Stop shrugging your shoulders at me. I hate it. I hate the way you shrug all the time.”

And that made Rob remember Willie May saying that when he shrugged he looked like a skinny bird trying to fly. It struck him as funny now. He laughed out loud at the thought of it. And without asking him what he was laughing about, without dropping his hand, without stopping, Sistine laughed, too.

Then Rob remembered the name of the feeling that was pushing up inside him, filling him full to overflowing. It was happiness. That was what it was called.

By the time they made it back to the motel parking lot, it was dark outside, and they were both laughing so hard that they could barely walk.

“Rob?” said his father. He was standing at the door to their room. The blue-gray light from inside seeped out around him.

“Yes, sir,” said Rob. He dropped Sistine’s hand. He stood up straight.

“Where you been?”

“Out in the woods.”

“Did you finish up all them jobs I told you to do?”

“Yes, sir,” said Rob.

“Who you got with you?” his father said, squinting into the darkness.

Sistine drew herself up tall.

“This is Sistine,” said Rob.

“Uh-huh,” said his father, still squinting. “You live around here?” he asked.

“For now,” said Sistine.

“Your parents know you’re out here?”

“I was going to call my mother,” said Sistine.

“There’s a pay phone down in the laundry room,” said Rob’s father.

“In the laundry room?” Sistine repeated, her voice full of disbelief. She put her hands on her hips.

“We don’t got a phone in the room,” Rob said to her softly.

“Good grief,” said Sistine. “Well, can I have some change at least?”

Rob’s father reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. He balanced the money in the palm of his hand, as if he was preparing to do a magic trick, and Rob stepped forward and took the coins from him and handed them to Sistine.

“You want me to go with you?” he asked her.

“No,” she said. “I’ll find it. Thank you very much.”

“Rob,” his father said as Sistine marched away, swinging her arms, “what’s that girl doing in your clothes?”

“She had on a dress,” Rob said. “It was too pretty to wear out in the woods.”

“Come on in here,” his father commanded. “Let’s get that medicine on your legs.”

“Yes, sir,” said Rob. He walked toward the room slowly. His happiness had evaporated. His legs itched. And the motel room, he knew, would be as dark as a cave, lit only by the gray light of the TV.

When his mother was alive, the world had seemed full of light. The Christmas before she died, she had strung the outside of their house, in Jacksonville, with hundreds of white lights. Every night, the house lit up like a constellation, and they were all inside it together, the three of them. And they were happy.

Rob remembered, and as he remembered, he stepped into the motel room. He shook his head and scolded himself for opening his suitcase. Just thinking about all the things that were gone now seemed to make the darkness darker.