“Tell Rob that he should unlock the cage and let him go,” Sistine demanded.
“I ain’t,” said Willie May. “You got to ask yourself what’s going to happen to this tiger after you let him go. How’s he going to live?”
Rob was flooded with sad relief. Willie May wasn’t going to make him do it. He wasn’t going to lose the tiger.
“Panthers live in these woods,” argued Sistine. “They survive.”
“Used to,” said Willie May. “Don’t no more.”
Sistine put her hands on her hips. “You’re not saying what you believe,” she accused. “You’re not talking like a prophetess.”
“That’s ’cause I ain’t no prophetess,” said Willie May. “All I am is somebody speaking the truth. And the truth is: there ain’t nothing you can do for this tiger except to let it be.”
“It’s not right,” said Sistine.
“Right ain’t got nothing to do with it,” muttered Willie May. “Sometimes right don’t count.”
“I can’t wait until my father comes to get me,” said Sistine. “He knows what’s right. He’ll set this tiger free.”
Rob looked at Sistine. “Your daddy ain’t coming for you,” he said softly, shaking his head, amazed at what he suddenly knew to be the truth.
“My father is coming to get me,” Sistine said through tight lips.
“Naw,” said Rob sadly. “He ain’t. He’s a liar. Like your mama said.”
“You’re the liar,” said Sistine in a dark cold voice. Her face was so white that it seemed to glow before him. “And I hate you,” she said to him. “Everybody at school hates you, too. Even the teachers. You are a sissy. I hope I never ever see you again.”
She turned and walked away, and Rob stood and considered her words. He felt them on his skin like shards of broken glass. He was afraid to move. He was afraid of how deep they might go inside him.
“She don’t mean it,” said Willie May. “She don’t mean none of what she say right now.”
Rob shrugged. He bent and scratched his legs as hard as he could. He scratched and scratched, digging his nails in deep, trying to get to the bottom of the itch that was always there.
“Stop it,” Willie May told him.
Rob looked up at her.
“Let me tell you something,” she said. “I would love to see this tiger rise on up out of this cage. Yes, uh-huh. I would like to see him rise on up and attack Beauchamp; serve him right for keeping a wild animal locked up, putting you in the middle of this, giving you the keys to this cage. Come on.” She grabbed hold of Rob’s hand. “Let’s get on up out of here.”
As they walked back to the Kentucky Star, Rob thought about what Willie May had said about the tiger rising on up. It reminded him of what she had said about his sadness needing to rise up. And when he thought about the two things together, the tiger and his sadness, the truth circled over and above him and then came and landed lightly on his shoulder. He knew what he had to do.
He left Willie May at the motel and went down the highway.
“Sistine!” he shouted as he ran. “Sistine!” he screamed.
And miraculously, he saw her — her orange dress with the pink polka dots — glowing on the horizon. Sistine Bailey.
“Hey,” he shouted. “Sistine. I got something to tell you.”
“I’m not talking to you,” she shouted back. But she stopped. She turned around. She put her hands on her hips.
He ran faster.
“I come to tell you about the tiger,” he said when he caught up with her.
“What about him?”
“I’m fixing to let him go,” said Rob.
Sistine squinted her eyes at him. “You won’t do it,” she said.
“Yes, I will,” he told her. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys and held them in front of her, proudly, as if he had just conjured them out of thin air, as if they had never existed before. “I’m going to do it,” he said. “I’m going to do it for you.”
“Whoooooeeee!!!!!” somebody screamed, and Rob turned and saw Beauchamp come speeding right toward them in his red jeep.
“Oh no,” whispered Rob.
“Is it him?” Sistine whispered.
Rob nodded.
Beauchamp pulled over to the side of the road, spraying mud and water everywhere.
“You out getting your exercise?” he hollered.
Rob shrugged.
“Speak up,” roared Beauchamp. He got out of the jeep and came toward them. Rob quickly pocketed the keys. His heart thumped once, loudly, as if it was cautioning him to keep quiet, and then it went back to beating normally.
“Well, looky here,” said Beauchamp when he saw Sistine. “You out chasing girls. Is that it? Man after my own heart. This your girlfriend?” Beauchamp pounded Rob on the back.
“No, sir,” said Rob. He looked at Sistine. She was staring so hard at Beauchamp that Rob was afraid the man might burst into flames.
“I got more goods for you,” Beauchamp said. “I left ’em back at the motel with Ida Belle.”
“Yes, sir,” said Rob.
“What’s your name, little thing?” Beauchamp said, turning to Sistine.
Rob’s heart gave another warning thump. Lord only knew what Sistine would say to Beauchamp.
But Sistine, as always, surprised him. She smiled sweetly at Beauchamp. “Sissy,” she said.
“Well, that’s pretty,” said Beauchamp. “That’s the kind of name worth running down the road after.” He leaned over to Rob. “Remember what we got going. You’re keeping your manly secrets, ain’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” said Rob.
Beauchamp winked. His toothpick wiggled.
“I got me some business in town,” he said. He squeezed Rob’s shoulder hard and then took his hand away. “You and your girlfriend stay out of trouble, now, you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” said Rob.
Beauchamp swaggered back to the jeep, and Rob and Sistine stood together and watched him get in it and roar down the highway.
“He’s afraid,” said Sistine. “He’s afraid of the tiger. That’s why he’s making you feed him.”
Rob nodded. That was another truth he had known without knowing it, the same as he had known that Sistine’s father was not coming back. He must, he realized, know somewhere, deep inside him, more things than he had ever dreamed of.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “What I said about your daddy, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want to talk about my father,” said Sistine.
“Maybe he is coming to get you.”
“He’s not coming to get me.” Sistine tossed her head. “And I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the tiger. Let’s go. Let’s go set him free.”
The first key slid into the first lock so smoothly that it made Rob dizzy with amazement. It was going to be so easy to let the tiger go.
“Hurry,” Sistine said to him. “Hurry up. Get the other locks.”
He opened the second lock and the third. And then he took them off one by one and handed them to Sistine, who laid them on the ground.
“Now open the door,” she said.
Rob’s heart pounded and fluttered in his chest. “What if he eats us?” he asked.
“He won’t,” said Sistine. “He’ll leave us alone out of gratitude. We’re his emancipators.”
Rob flung the door wide.
“Get out of the way,” he shouted, and they both jumped back from the door and waited. But the tiger ignored them. He continued to pace back and forth in the cage, oblivious to the open door.
“Go on,” Rob said to him.
“You’re free,” Sistine whispered.
But the tiger did not even look in the direction of the door.
Sistine crept forward and grabbed hold of the cage. She shook it.
“Get out!” she screamed. “Come on,” she said, turning to Rob, “help me. Help me get him out.”
Rob grabbed hold of the fence and shook it.
“Get,” he said.
The tiger stopped pacing and turned to stare at them both clinging like monkeys to the cage.
“Go on!” Rob shouted, suddenly furious. He shook the cage harder. He yelled. He put his head back and howled, and he saw that the sky above them was thick with clouds, and that made him even angrier. He yelled louder; he shouted at the dark sky. He shook the cage as hard as he could.
Sistine put a hand on his arm. “Shhh,” she said. “He’s leaving. Watch.”
As they stared, the tiger stepped with grace and delicacy out of the cage. He put his nose up and sniffed. He took one tiny step and then another. Then he stopped and stood still. Sistine clapped her hands, and the tiger turned and looked back at them both, his eyes blazing. And then he started to run.
He ran so fast, it looked to Rob like he was flying. His muscles moved like a river; it was hard to believe that a cage had ever contained him. It didn’t seem possible.
The tiger went leaping through the grass, moving farther and farther away from Rob and Sistine. He looked like the sun, rising and setting again and again. And watching him go, Rob felt his own heart rising and falling, beating in time.
“Oh,” said Sistine, in that voice that Rob loved. “See,” she said, “that was the right thing. That was the right thing to do.”
Rob nodded. But in his mind, he saw a flash of green. He remembered what happened to Cricket.
“What?” said Sistine, turning to him. “What are you thinking about?”
Rob shook his head. “Nothing,” he told her.
“Roberrttt.” The sound of his name came floating to them from the direction of the motel.
“That’s my dad,” he said, confused. “That’s my dad calling me.”
And then they heard Willie May. “Do Jesus!” she screamed, her voice high and wild.
And then there was the crack of a gun.
They both stood still, stunned and silent. And when Willie May came running out from under the pine trees and saw them, she stopped. “Thank you, Jesus,” she said, looking up at the sky. “Two whole children. Thank you. Come here,” she said. She opened her arms. “Come to me.”
Rob started walking toward her. He wanted to tell her that she was wrong. He wanted to tell her that he did not feel whole. But he did not have the energy or the heart to say anything; all he could manage was putting one foot in front of the other. All he could do was keep walking toward Willie May.
Willie May led them back. And when Rob saw the tiger on the ground and his father standing over it, holding the rifle, he felt something rise up in him, an anger as big and powerful as the tiger. Bigger.
“You killed him,” he said to his father.
“I had to,” his father said.
“That was my tiger!” Rob screamed. “You killed him! You killed my tiger!” He ran at his father and attacked him. He beat him with his fists. He kicked him. But his father stood like a wall. He held the gun up over his head and kept his eyes open and took each hit without blinking.
And Rob saw that hitting wasn’t going to be enough. So he did something he thought he would never do. He opened his suitcase. And the words sprang out of it, coiled and explosive.
“I wish it had been you!” he screamed. “I wish it had been you that died! I hate you! You ain’t the one I need. I need her! I need her!”
The world, and everything in it, seemed to stop moving.
He stared at his father.
His father stared at him.
“Say her name!” Rob screamed into the silence. “You say it!”
“Caroline,” his father whispered, with the gun still over his head, with his eyes still open.
And with that word, with the small sound of his mother’s name, the world lurched back into motion; like an old merry-go-round, it started to spin again. His father put the gun down and pulled Rob to him.
“Caroline,” his father whispered. “Caroline, Caroline, Caroline.”
Rob buried his face in his father’s shirt. It smelled like sweat and turpentine and green leaves. “I need her,” Rob said.
“I need her, too,” said his father, pulling Rob closer. “But we don’t got her. Neither one of us. What we got, all we got, is each other. And we got to learn to make do with that.”
“I ain’t going to cry,” Rob said, shutting his eyes, but the tears leaked out of him, anyway. Then they came in a rush and he couldn’t stop. He cried from somewhere deep inside of himself, from the place where his mother had been, the same place that the tiger had been and was gone from now.
Rob looked up and saw his father wiping tears from his own eyes.
“All right,” said his father, holding Rob tight. “That’s all right,” he said. “You’re okay.”
When Rob finally looked up again, he saw Willie May holding Sistine like she was a baby, rocking her and saying shhhh.
Willie May stared back at him. “Don’t think you gonna start pounding on me now,” she said.
“No, ma’am,” said Rob. He wiped the back of his hand across his nose and slid out of his father’s arms.
“I went and got your daddy,” Willie May told Rob as she swayed back and forth, rocking Sistine. “I figured out what you was gonna do. And there ain’t no telling what that tiger would’ve done once he got out of that cage. I went and got your daddy, so he could save you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Rob.
He went and stood over the open-eyed tiger. The bullet hole in his head was red and small; it didn’t look big enough to kill him.
“Go ahead and touch him,” said Sistine.
Rob looked up. She was standing beside him. Her dress was twisted and wrinkled. Her eyes were red. Rob stared at her and she nodded. So he knelt and put out a hand and placed it on the tiger’s head. He felt the tears rise up in him again.
Sistine crouched down next to him. She put her hand on the tiger, too. “He was so pretty,” she said. “He was one of the prettiest things I have ever seen.”
Rob nodded.
“We have to have a funeral for him,” Sistine said. “He’s a fallen warrior. We have to bury him right.”
Rob sat down next to the tiger and ran his hand over the rough fur again and again while the tears traveled down his cheeks and dropped onto the ground.
Rob and his father worked with shovels to dig a hole that was deep enough and wide enough and dark enough to hold the tiger. And the whole time, it rained.
“We got to say some words over him,” said Willie May when the hole was done and the tiger was in it. “Can’t cover up nothing without saying some words.”
“I’ll say the poem,” said Sistine. She folded her hands in front of her and looked down at the ground. “‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright / In the forests of the night,’” she recited.
Rob closed his eyes.
“‘What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?’” Sistine continued. “‘In what distant deeps or skies / Burnt the fire of thine eyes? / On what wings dare he aspire?’”
To Rob, the words sounded like music, but better. His eyes filled up with tears again. He worried that now that he had started crying, he might never stop.
“That’s all I remember,” Sistine said after a minute. “There’s more to it, but I can’t remember it all. You say something now, Rob,” she said.
“I don’t got nothing to say,” said Rob, “except for, I loved him.”
“Well,” said Willie May. “What I got to say is I ain’t had good experiences with animals in cages.” She reached into her dress pocket and took out the wooden bird and bent down and laid it on top of the tiger. “That ain’t nothing,” she said to the tiger, “just a little bird to keep you company.” She stepped back, away from the grave.
Rob’s father cleared his throat. He hummed softly, and Rob thought he was going to sing, but instead, he shook his head and said, “I had to shoot him. I’m sorry, but I had to shoot him. For Rob.”
Rob leaned into his father, and it felt, for
a minute, like his father leaned back. Then Rob picked up his shovel and started covering the tiger with dirt. As he filled the grave, something danced and flickered on his arm. Rob stared at it, wondering what it was. And then he recognized it. It was the sun. Showing up in time for another funeral.
“I’m sorry I made you do it,” Sistine said to Rob when he was done. “He wouldn’t be dead if I hadn’t made you do it.”
“It’s all right,” Rob said. “I ain’t sorry about what I did.”
“We can make a headstone for him,” said Sistine. “And we can bring flowers and put them on his grave — fresh ones, every day.” She slipped her hand into his. “I didn’t mean what I said before, about you being a sissy. And I don’t hate you. You’re my best friend.”
The whole way back to the Kentucky Star, Rob held on to Sistine’s hand. He marveled at what a small hand it was and how much comfort there was in holding on to it.
And he marveled, too, at how different he felt inside, how much lighter, as if he had set something heavy down and walked away from it, without bothering to look back.
That night, his father sang to Rob as he put the medicine on his legs. He sang the song about mining for gold, the one that he used to sing with Rob’s mother. When he was done with the medicine and the song, he cleared his throat and said, “Caroline loved that song.”
“Me too,” Rob told him. “I like it too.”
His father stood up. “You’re going to have to tell Beauchamp that you was the one that let that tiger go.”
“Yes, sir,” said Rob.
“I’ll tell him I was the one who shot him, but you got to admit to letting him go.”
“Yes, sir,” said Rob again.
“I might could lose my job over it,” his father said.
“I know it,” Rob told him. But he wasn’t afraid. He thought about Beauchamp’s shaking hands. Beauchamp was the coward. He knew that now. “I thought I would tell him I could work for him to pay for what I done.”
“You can offer him up some reasonable kind of solution,” said his father, “but it don’t mean he’ll go for it. There ain’t no predicting Beauchamp. Other than to say he’s going to be mad.”