Kate DiCamillo - The Tiger Rising

“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.”