Kate DiCamillo: The Tiger Rising

“Caroline,” Rob said softly, cracking his suitcase open and letting the word slip out.

Sistine gave him another businesslike nod of her head. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll come back tomorrow. And we’ll make our plans for letting the tiger go.”

“Sissy?” called a voice. “Baby, what in the world? What in the world are you doing out here?”

Sistine’s mother got out of the car and came walking toward them. She had on high heels, and she wobbled as she walked in the gravel parking lot of the Kentucky Star. Her hair was a lighter shade of yellow than Sistine’s and piled up high. When she turned her head, Rob recognized Sistine’s profile, her sharp chin and pointed nose, but the mouth was different, tighter.

“Good lord,” said Mrs. Bailey to Sistine. “What have you got on?”

“Clothes,” said Sistine.

“Sissy, you look like a hobo. Get in the car.” She tapped her high-heeled foot on the gravel.

Sistine didn’t move. She stood beside Rob.

“Well,” said her mother when Sistine didn’t move, “you must be Rob. What’s your last name, Rob?”

“Horton,” said Rob.

“Horton,” said Mrs. Bailey. “Horton. Are you related to Seldon Horton, the congressman?”

“No, ma’am,” said Rob. “I don’t think so.”

Mrs. Bailey’s eyes flicked away from him and back to Sistine. “Baby,” said Mrs. Bailey, “please get in the car.”

When Sistine still didn’t move, Mrs. Bailey sighed and looked back at Rob again. “She won’t listen to a word I say,” Mrs. Bailey told him. “Her father is the only one she’ll listen to.” And then under her breath she muttered, “Her father, the liar.”

Sistine growled somewhere deep in her throat and stalked to the car and got in and slammed the door. “You’re the liar!” she shouted from the back seat of the car. “You’re the one who lies!”

“Jesus,” said Mrs. Bailey. She shook her head and turned and walked back to the car without saying anything else to Rob.

Rob watched them pull away. He could see Sistine sitting in the back seat. Her shoulders were slumped.

A motel room door slammed. Somebody laughed. A dog barked once, short and high, and then stopped. And then there was silence.

“Caroline,” Rob whispered into the darkness. “Caroline. Caroline. Caroline.” The word was as sweet as forbidden candy on his tongue.

The next morning, Rob was helping Willie May in the laundry room. They were folding sheets and chewing Eight Ball gum.

All night, he had tossed and turned, scratching his legs and thinking about the tiger and what Sistine said, that he had to be set free. He had finally decided to get Willie May’s opinion.

“You ever been to a zoo?” Rob asked her.

“One time,” said Willie May. She cracked her gum. “Went to that zoo over in Sorley. Place stunk.”

“Do you think them animals minded it? Being locked up?”

“Wasn’t nobody asking them did they mind.” Willie May pulled another sheet out of the dryer and snapped it open.

Rob tried again. “Do you think it’s bad to keep animals locked up?”

Willie May looked at him over the top of her glasses. She stared at him hard.

Rob looked down at his feet.

“When I wasn’t but little,” said Willie May, “my daddy brought me a bird in a cage. It was a green parakeet bird. That bird was so small, I could hold it right in the palm of my hand.” She draped the sheet over one shoulder and held out a cupped hand to show Rob. It looked, to him, like a hand big enough to hold the entire world.

“Held him in my hand. Could feel his little heart beating. He would look at me, cock his head this way and that. Called him Cricket, on account of him all the time singing.”

“What happened to him?” Rob asked.

Willie May bent and took a pillowcase out of the dryer.

“Let him go,” she said.

“You let him go?” Rob repeated, his heart sinking inside him like a stone.

“Couldn’t stand seeing him locked up, so I let him go.” She folded the pillowcase carefully.

“And then what happened?”

“I got beat by my daddy. He said I didn’t do that bird no favor. Said all I did was give some snake its supper.”

“So you never saw him again?” Rob asked.

“Nuh-uh,” said Willie May. “But sometimes, he comes flying through my dreams, flitting about and singing.” She shook her head and reached for the sheet on her shoulder. “Here,” she said. “Go on and grab ahold of the other end. Help me fold this up.”

Rob took hold of the sheet, and as it billowed out between them, a memory rose up before him: his father standing out in the yard, holding his gun up to the sky, taking aim at a bird.

“You think I can hit it?” his father said. “You think I can hit that itty-bitty bird?”

“Robert,” his mother said, “what do you want to shoot that bird for?”

“To prove I can,” said his father.

There was a single crack and the bird was suspended in midair, pinned for a moment to the sky with his father’s bullet. Then it fell.

“Oh, Robert,” his mother said.

It hurt the back of Rob’s throat to think about that now, to think about the gun and his mother and the small thud the bird made when it hit the ground.

“I know something that’s in a cage,” said Rob, pushing the words past the tightness in his throat.

Willie May nodded her head, but she wasn’t listening. She was looking past Rob, past the white sheet, past the laundry room, past the Kentucky Star.

“Who don’t?” she said finally. “Who don’t know something in a cage?”

After that, they folded the sheets in silence. Rob thought about the bird and how when he had finally found its small still-warm body, he had started to cry.

His father told him not to.

“It ain’t nothing to cry over,” he’d said. “It’s just a bird.”

Rob was sweeping the cement walkway in front of the Kentucky Star rooms when Beauchamp pulled up in his red jeep and honked the horn.

“Hey there,” he hollered. Beauchamp was a large man with orange hair and an orange beard and a permanent toothpick in the side of his mouth. The toothpick waggled as he talked, as if it was trying to make a point of its own. “We got you on the payroll now, too?” Beauchamp shouted.

“No, sir,” said Rob.

“All right,” hooted Beauchamp. He hopped out of the jeep. “Got you working for free. That’s what I like to hear.”

“Yes, sir,” said Rob.

“Ain’t you supposed to be in school? Or you done graduated already?” The gold chains buried deep in Beauchamp’s orange chest-hair winked at Rob.

“I’m sick,” said Rob.

“Sick and tired of school, right?” He slapped Rob on the back. “Don’t got a mama putting down the rules for you, do you? Get to make your own rules. Not me,” said Beauchamp. He jerked his head in the direction of the motel office, where his mother, Ida Belle, worked the front desk.

He winked at Rob and then looked to the left, then right. “Look here,” he said in a quieter voice. “I’ve got me a number of deals going on right now, a few more than I can properly handle. I wonder if a smart boy like yourself wouldn’t be looking for a way to pick up some extra spending money.”

He didn’t wait for Rob to answer.

“Let me tell you what I got cooking. You like animals?”

Rob nodded.

“Course you do,” said Beauchamp, nodding with him. “What boy don’t? You like wild animals?”

Rob’s heart skipped. He suddenly knew where Beauchamp was headed.

“I got me a wild animal,” said Beauchamp. “I got me a wild animal like you would not believe. Right here on my own property. And I got some plans for him. Big plans. But in the meantime, he needs some taking care of, some daily maintenance. You following me, son?”