Kate DiCamillo - The Tiger Rising

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.”

Rob nodded.

“And on Monday,” his father continued, “I aim to call that principal and tell him you’re going back to school. I ain’t messing around with taking you to more doctors. You’re going back and that’s that.”

“Yes, sir,” said Rob. He didn’t mind the thought of going back to school. School was where Sistine would be.

His father cleared his throat. “It’s hard for me to talk about your mama. I wouldn’t never have believed that I could miss somebody the way I miss her. Saying her name pains me.” He bent his head and concentrated on putting the cap on the tube of medicine. “But I’ll say it for you,” he said. “I’ll try on account of you.”

Rob looked at his father’s hands. They were the hands that had held the gun that shot the tiger. They were the hands that put the medicine on his legs. They were the hands that had held him when he cried. They were complicated hands, Rob thought.

“You want some macaroni and cheese for dinner?” his father asked, looking back up at Rob.

“That sounds all right,” said Rob. “Macaroni and cheese sounds real good.”

That night, Rob dreamed he and Sistine were standing at the grave of the tiger. They were watching and waiting. He didn’t know for what. But then he saw a flutter of green wings and he understood. It was the wooden bird, only he wasn’t made of wood, he was real. And he flew up out of the tiger’s grave, and they chased him, laughing and bumping into each other. They tried to catch him. But they couldn’t. The bird flew higher and higher until he disappeared into a sky that looked just like the Sistine ceiling. In his dream, Rob stood and stared up at the sky, admiring all the figures and the colors, watching as the bird disappeared into them.

“See?” said Sistine in his dream. “I told you it was like fireworks.”

He woke up smiling, staring at the ceiling of the motel room.

“Guess what?” his father called to him from outside.

“What?” said Rob back.

“There ain’t a cloud in the sky,” said his father, “that’s what.”

Rob nodded. He lay in bed and watched the sun poke its way through his curtain. He thought about Sistine and the tiger he wanted to make for her. He thought about what kind of wood he would use and how big he would make the tiger. He thought about how happy Sistine would be when she saw it.