Sistine stared at him hard.
And Rob opened his mouth and let the word fall out. “Keys,” he said. Every secret, magic word he had ever known — tiger and cancer and Caroline — every word in his suitcase seemed to fall right out of him when he stood before Sistine.
“What?” she said.
“Keys,” he said again. He cleared his throat. “I got the keys to the cage.”
“How?”
“Beauchamp,” he told her. “He hired me to feed his tiger. And he gave me the keys.”
“All right!” said Sistine. “Now all we have to do is open the locks and let him go.”
“No,” said Rob.
“Are you crazy?” she asked him.
“It ain’t safe. It ain’t safe for him. My friend Willie May, she had a bird and let it go, and it just got ate up.”
“You’re not making sense,” she told him. “This is a tiger. A tiger, not a bird. And I don’t know who Willie May is, and I don’t care. You can’t stop me from letting this tiger go. I’ll do it without the keys. I’ll saw the locks off myself.”
“Don’t,” said Rob.
“Don’t,” she mocked back. And then she spun around and grabbed hold of the cage and shook it the same way Beauchamp had earlier that day.
“I hate this place,” she said. “I can’t wait for my dad to come and get me. When he gets here, I’m going to make him come out here and set this tiger free. That’s the first thing we’ll do.” She shook the cage harder. “I’ll get you out of here,” she said to the pacing tiger. “I promise.” She rattled the cage as if she were the one who was locked up. The tiger paced back and forth without stopping.
“Don’t,” said Rob.
But she didn’t stop. She shook the cage and beat her head against the chainlink, and then he heard her gasp. He was afraid that maybe she was choking. He went and stood next to her. And he saw that she was crying. Crying. Sistine.
He stood beside her, terrified and amazed. When his mother was alive — when he still cried about things — she had been the one who comforted him. She would cup her hand around the back of his neck and say to him, “You go on and cry. I got you. I got good hold of you.”
Before Rob could think whether it was right or whether it was wrong, he reached out and put his palm on Sistine’s neck. He could feel her pulse, beating in time with the tiger’s pacing. He whispered to her the same words his mother had whispered to him. “I got you,” he told her. “I got good hold of you.”
Sistine cried and cried. She cried as if she would never stop. And she did not tell him to take his hand away.
By the time they started walking back to the Kentucky Star, it was dusk. Sistine was not crying, but she wasn’t talking, either, not even about letting the tiger go.
“I have to call my mother,” she said to him in a tired voice when they got to the motel.
“I’ll go with you,” said Rob.
She didn’t tell him not to, so he walked with her across the parking lot. They were almost to the laundry room when Willie May materialized out of the purple darkness. She was leaning up against her car, smoking a cigarette.
“Boo,” she said to Rob.
“Hey,” he told her back.
“Somebody following you,” she said, jerking her head at Sistine.
“This is Sistine,” Rob told her. And then he turned to Sistine and said, “This is Willie May, the one I was telling you about, the one who had the bird and let it go.”
“So what?” said Sistine.
“So nothing,” said Willie May. Her glasses winked in the light from the falling Kentucky Star. “So I had me a bird.”
“Why are you hanging around in the parking lot trying to scare people?” Sistine asked, her voice hard and mean.
“I ain’t trying to scare people,” said Willie May.
“Willie May works here,” said Rob.
“That’s right,” said Willie May. She reached into the front pocket of her dress and pulled out a package of Eight Ball gum. “You know what?” she said to Sistine. “I know you. You ain’t got to introduce yourself to me. You angry. You got all the anger in the world inside you. I know angry when I meet it. Been angry most of my life.”
“I’m not angry,” Sistine snapped.
“All right,” said Willie May. She opened the package of Eight Ball. “You an angry liar, then. Here you go.” She held out a stick of gum to Sistine.
Sistine stared for a long minute at Willie May, and Willie May stared back. The last light of dusk disappeared, and the darkness moved in. Rob held his breath. He wanted desperately for the two of them to like each other. When Sistine finally reached out and took the gum from Willie May, he let his breath go in a quiet whooosh.
Willie May nodded at Sistine, and then she extended the pack to Rob. He took a piece and put it in his pocket for later.
Willie May lit another cigarette and laughed. “Ain’t that just like God,” she said, “throwing the two of you together?” She shook her head. “This boy full of sorrow, keeping it down low in his legs. And you,” — she pointed her cigarette at Sistine — “you all full of anger, got it snapping out of you like lightning. You some pair, that’s the truth.” She put her arms over her head and stretched and then straightened up and stepped away from the car.
Sistine stared at Willie May, with her mouth open. “How tall are you?” she asked.
“Six feet two,” said Willie May. “And I got to get on home. But first, I got some advice for you. I already gave this boy some advice. You ready for yours?”
Sistine nodded, her mouth still open.
“This is it: Ain’t nobody going to come and rescue you,” said Willie May. She opened the car door and sat down behind the wheel. “You got to rescue yourself. You understand what I mean?”
Sistine stared at Willie May. She said nothing.
Willie May cranked the engine. Rob and Sistine watched her drive away.
“I think she’s a prophetess,” said Sistine.
“A what?” Rob said.
“A prophetess,” said Sistine. “They’re painted all over the Sistine ceiling. They’re women who God speaks through.”
“Oh,” said Rob, “a prophetess.” He turned the word over in his mouth. “Prophetess,” he said again. He nodded. That sounded right. If God was going to talk through somebody, it made sense to Rob that he would pick Willie May.
“You out in the woods with that girl again?” his father asked as soon as Rob stepped into the room.
“Yes, sir,” said Rob.
“Look over here, son.” His father was standing by Rob’s bed.
“Sir?” said Rob. His heart sank. He knew what his father had found: the meat. He had hidden it under his bed until it was time to go and feed the tiger again.
“Where’d this meat come from?” his father asked, pointing at the bloody brown bag.
Without thinking, Rob said, “Beauchamp.”
“Beauchamp,” his father repeated, low and dark. “Beauchamp. He don’t hardly pay me enough to get by, and now he’s giving us his rotten meat. He thinks I ain’t man enough to put meat on my own table.”
Rob wanted to say something, but then he thought of Beauchamp and held his tongue.
“I ought to teach him a lesson,” his father said. The cords in his neck stood out like twigs. He kicked the bag of meat. “I ought to,” he said. “Making me work for less than nothing, giving us rotten meat.”
He went and stood in front of the gun case. He didn’t unlock it. He just stood and stared and cracked his knuckles.
“Daddy,” said Rob. But he couldn’t think of anything to say after that. His mother had known how to calm his father. She would put her hand on his arm or say his name in a soft and reproachful voice, and that would be enough. But Rob didn’t know how to do those things. He stood for a minute more, and then he walked over to his bed and grabbed a piece of wood and his knife. As he left the room, his father was still standing at the locked gun case, staring t
hrough the glass at the deer-hunting rifle, as if he was trying to will the gun into his hands.
Rob walked to the Kentucky Star sign. He sat down underneath it and leaned up against one of the cold, damp poles and started to work on the wood.
But his head was too full of his father’s anger and Sistine’s tears. He couldn’t concentrate. He looked up at the dark underside of the sign and recalled lying on a blanket, staring up at a big oak tree. His mother had been on one side of him, and his father, asleep and snoring, had been on the other. He remembered that his mother had taken hold of his hand and pointed up at the sun shining through the leaves of the tree and said, “Look, Rob, I have never in my life seen a prettier color of green. Ain’t it perfect?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, staring at the leaves. “It looks like the original green. The first one God ever thought up.”
His mother squeezed his hand hard. “That’s right,” she said. “The first one God ever thought up. The first-ever green. You and me, we see the world the same.”
He concentrated on that green. He let it seep through a crack in his suitcase of not-thoughts and fill up his head with color. He wondered if Willie May’s Cricket had been the same bright and original green. That’s what he thought about as he carved. And so he wasn’t surprised, when he stopped and held the wood away from himself, to see a wing and a beak and a tiny eye. It was Cricket, Willie May’s Cricket, coming to life under his knife.
He worked on the bird for a long time, until it looked so real that he half expected it to break into song. When he finally went back to the room, he found his father asleep in the recliner. The gun case was still locked, and the bag of meat was gone. He wouldn’t be able to feed the tiger in the morning. He would have to wait until Beauchamp brought him another package.
Rob went and stood over his father and stared down at him. He looked at his heavy hands and the bald spot on his nodding head. He was memorizing him and trying, at the same time, to understand him, to make some sense out of him, out of his anger and his quiet, comparing it to the way he used to sing and smile, when his father jerked awake.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” Rob said back.
“What time is it?”
“I ain’t sure,” said Rob. “Late, I guess.”
His father sighed. “Go on and get me that leg medicine.”
Rob brought him the tube of medicine.
Outside the motel room, the world creaked and sighed. The rain started in again, and his father’s hands were gentle as he applied the ointment to Rob’s legs.
The next morning, Rob put the keys to the tiger cage in one pocket and the wooden bird in the other, and set out looking for Willie May.
He found her in the laundry room, sitting on one of the foldup chairs, smoking a cigarette, and staring into space.
“Hey there,” she said to him. “Where’s your lady friend at?”
“School,” said Rob. “But today’s only a half day.” He kept his hands in his pockets. Now that he stood before Willie May, he was afraid to give her the bird. What if it was wrong? What if he had carved it wrong and it didn’t look anything like the real Cricket?
“What you giving me them shifty-eyed looks for?” Willie May asked.
“I made you something,” said Rob quickly, before he lost his nerve.
“Made me something?” said Willie May. “For real?”
“Uh-huh. Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”
“I ain’t,” said Willie May. But she smiled and closed her eyes and put out her enormous hand, palm up. Rob carefully placed the bird in it.
“You can look now,” he told her.
She closed her fingers around the little piece of wood, but she didn’t open her eyes. She puffed on her cigarette; the long gray ash on the end of it trembled.
“Don’t need to look,” she finally said. The cigarette ash dropped to the floor. “I know what I got in my hand. It’s Cricket.”
“But you got to look at it and tell me did I do it right,” said Rob.
“I ain’t got to do nothing,” said Willie May, “except stay black and die.” She opened her eyes slowly, as if she was afraid she might frighten the bird into flying away. “This the right bird,” she said, nodding her head, “this the one.”
“Now you don’t got to dream about him no more,” said Rob.
“That’s right,” said Willie May. “Where’d you learn to work a piece of wood like this?”
“My mama,” said Rob.
Willie May nodded. “She taught you good.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Rob. He stared down at his legs. “I know a wooden bird ain’t the same as having a real one.”
“It ain’t,” agreed Willie May. “But it soothes my heart just the same.”
“My dad said he ain’t got no jobs for me until this afternoon. He said I could help you out this morning.”
“Well,” said Willie May. She dropped the bird into the front pocket of her dress. “I might could find some way for you to help me.”
So Rob spent his morning following Willie May from room to room, stripping the dirty sheets from the beds. And while he worked, the keys jingled in his pocket, and he knew that soon Sistine would be out of school and that she would demand again that he unlock the cage and let the tiger go.
“Where’s the prophetess?” Sistine asked him as soon as she stepped off the bus. She was wearing a bright orange dress with pink circles all over it. Her left knee was skinned and bleeding, and her right eye was swollen.
“Huh?” said Rob. He stood and stared at her and wondered how she could get into so many fights in only half a day of school.
“Willie May,” said Sistine. “Where is she?”
“She’s vacuuming,” said Rob.
Sistine started walking purposefully toward the Kentucky Star. She talked to Rob without looking back. “My mother found out that I was wearing your clothes to school,” she said. “She took them away from me. I’m in trouble. I’m not supposed to come out here anymore.”
“You know,” said Rob, “you don’t always got to get in fights. Sometimes, if you don’t hit them back, they leave you alone.”
She whirled around and faced him. “I want to get in fights,” she said fiercely. “I want to hit them back. Sometimes, I hit them first.”
“Oh,” said Rob.
Sistine turned back around. “I’m going to find the prophetess,” she said loudly. “I’m going to ask her what we should do about the tiger.”
“You can’t ask her about the tiger,” said Rob. “Beauchamp said I ain’t supposed to tell nobody, especially not Willie May.”
Sistine didn’t answer him; she started to run. And Rob, to keep up with her, ran too.
They found Willie May vacuuming the shag carpet in room 203. Sistine went up behind her and tapped her on the back. Willie May whirled around with her fist clenched, like a boxer.
“We need some answers,” Sistine shouted over the roar of the vacuum cleaner.
Willie May bent down and turned the vacuum cleaner off.
“Well,” she said, “look who’s here.” She kept her hand balled up, as if she was still searching for something to hit.
“What’s in your hand?” Sistine asked.
Willie May uncurled her fist and showed Sistine the bird.
“Oh,” said Sistine. And Rob realized then why he liked Sistine so much. He liked her because when she saw something beautiful, the sound of her voice changed. All the words she uttered had an oof sound to them, as if she was getting punched in the stomach. The sound was in her voice when she talked about the Sistine Chapel and when she looked at the things he carved in wood. It was there when she said the poem about the tiger burning bright, and it was there when she talked about Willie May being a prophetess. Her words sounded the way all those things made him feel, as if the world, the real world, had been punched through, so that he could see something wonderful and dazzling on the other side of it.
“D
id Rob make it?” Sistine asked Willie May.
“He did,” said Willie May.
“It looks alive. Is it like your bird that you let go?”
“Just about exactly,” said Willie May.
“I . . . ,” said Sistine. She looked at Willie May. Then she turned and looked at Rob. “We,” she said. “We need to ask you something.”
“Ask on,” said Willie May.
“If you knew about something that was locked up in a cage, something big and beautiful that was locked away unfairly, for no good reason, and you had the keys to the cage, would you let it go?”
Willie May sat down on the bed. A cloud of dust rose up around her. “Lord God,” she said. “What you two children got in a cage?”
“It’s a tiger,” Rob said. He felt like he had to be the one who said it. He was the one who found the tiger. He was the one who had the keys to the cage.
“A what?” said Willie May.
“A tiger,” said Sistine.
“Do Jesus!” exclaimed Willie May.
“It’s true,” said Sistine.
Willie May shook her head. She looked up at the ceiling. She let out her breath in a loud slow hiss of disapproval. “All right,” she said. “Why don’t you all show me where you got this tiger locked up in a cage?”
The three of them walked through the woods in silence. Sistine and Rob chewed Eight Ball gum, and Willie May smoked a cigarette, and nobody said a word.
“Lord God,” said Willie May when they came up to the cage. She stared at the pacing animal. “Ain’t no reason to doubt the fierceness of God when He make something like that,” she said. “Who was the fool that caged this tiger up?”
“He belongs to Beauchamp,” Rob told her.
“Beauchamp,” said Willie May with disgust. She shook her head. “One person in the world that don’t need to be owning no tiger, and that’s Beauchamp.”
“See?” said Sistine. “It’s not right, is it? Just like you told Rob about your bird and how you had to let it go.”
“A bird,” said Willie May, “that’s one thing. Tiger belonging to Beauchamp is another.”