Percival Everett - Damned If I Do

1 September

The cave was located south of town. Errol, Frannie, and I were there at about dusk. We waited, watching the opening from about fifty yards away. A bat flew out and into the pink sky. Then another and then a swarm. A cloud of bats, their wings grabbing the air and pushing it behind them, sounding together to make a huge scream in the night. Buzzing. My mouth was open at the sight and when I realized it, I shut it. I glanced over at Frannie. Her eyes were so beautiful and full of wonder and I wondered if I could ever look that beautiful to someone. Errol was standing slightly in front of us. He couldn’t keep still. He bounced on the balls of his feet. He was so excited by the sight. He said, “Look at that! Would you look at that?!” Then he turned to look at us. Frannie had reached over and taken my hand. Errol saw our fingers tangled together. He gave my eyes a quick brush with his and then turned back to the bats.

“Bats can’t see,” Errol said. “They’re blind and they have sonar, just like navy ships. Some people are afraid of them, but they won’t hurt you.”

“They give me the creeps,” Frannie said, and she held my hand a little tighter.

“That’s because you’re a girl,” Errol snapped.

“They give me the creeps, too,” I said.

“Like I said.” Errol sighed out a breath. “Come on, let’s go back to town.”

1 September

The circus came. It came into our little town as a parade, music blaring from a marching band, and elephants stomping the streets, leaving them wet with dung and the smell of the circus. We watched the clowns tumble by. We watched the ladies in the skimpy clothes ride by on horseback and we nudged each other with our elbows. We watched the man in the top hat point to us and beckon us to come. Trucks carrying the large cages with the lions and tigers rolled by us. We watched them all the way through town and out to the western edge where they set up camp. Their big tents were beautiful with the sun sinking down behind them. The sounds of the animals rode the wind into the town that night and I went to sleep listening through my open window.

Errol and I sat forward in the bleachers, away from our parents, at the show. Frannie sat with her mother, father, and little brother. We ate popcorn while we waited for the show to start.

“What is it with you and Frannie?” Errol asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I saw you holding her hand.”

I was embarrassed. “So?”

Errol looked back at the empty center ring. “I just saw you, that’s all.”

Then the lights went down and a spotlight came down on the ringmaster. We edged forward on our seats. He lifted his hat to us and introduced the acts and we laughed when the clowns fell and slapped each other and we gasped when the acrobats rolled through the air to be caught in the nick of time by another. And then the lion tamer came out. He was a great big man and he cracked his whip loudly. But it was the cats that captured me and I saw the same thing on Errol’s face when I glanced over at him. There were two African lions and a tiger. The tiger was gigantic, much larger than I would have imagined. If the lions had been without manes, then the tiger would have dwarfed them.

The tamer walked confidently around the inside of the big cage. He was wearing a rhinestone-studded vest and so the huge muscles of his arms were plain for all of us to see. He cracked his whip once, twice, three times, and the cats, after a brief complaint, all climbed up on their stools. The tamer shouted unintelligible commands at them with his booming voice. The low growls of the lions clawed into the crowd and I could feel the power, but the tiger was silent. When the audience was oohing and aahing over the tamer placing his head into a lion’s mouth, I looked over at the tiger and found the animal staring at me. Amber eyes fixed on me. Unmoving.

1 September

The tiger’s eyes burned there. A glance at Errol let me know that he was not seeing what I was seeing. Looking at the tiger caused everything else to disappear. The tamer seemed to do all of his tricks with the lions and left the tiger to stare at me. Then the big man approached the tiger and popped his whip. The report made me jump, but the tiger didn’t move a muscle. The tamer snapped the leather cord again and still there was no acknowledgment from the striped cat. The tamer looked to where the cat was looking and he saw me. He looked angry and he said something to the tiger. I couldn’t hear his words, only the quality of his sounds, but whatever it was he said, he got the tiger’s attention. The tiger looked at him and before anyone knew what had happened, the tamer was on the ground in a pool of blood. The big iron gate swung open by itself and the big tiger stepped out of the cage. People screamed and ran, some down to the aisles and out, pushing and trampling, and others scurried up to the top of the bleachers, packing in together with nowhere to go. I don’t know which way Errol ran, but I stayed put, right there in the front row. No one was near me. I watched the tiger rip open the arm of a circus roadie who was trying to toss a net over him. Another roadie was reluctantly trying to draw a bead on the cat with a rifle. The screaming and shouting fused into a kind of meaningless roar. Then the cat was standing in front of me. I heard my mother’s voice pierce the deadened hush. The tiger turned his enormous head and took my body into his mouth, closed his jaws about my waist. But he didn’t bite down, though I could feel the coolness of several of his teeth against the skin of my back and sides.

1 September

The tiger carried me in his mouth down the aisle toward the exit. I looked up and saw my mother in the crowd on the bleachers, her face frozen in a scream, but I couldn’t hear any sound coming out of her. I could hear only the raspy breathing of the big cat. I saw my father trying to push and weave through the pulsing tangle of bodies. People scurried for cover on tops of trucks and cars and behind refuse barrels and small boulders as we passed. I could feel the pad of each footfall against the stiff ground. Errol was standing in the bed of a pickup with his father and I could see that he wanted to run to my rescue, but was being held back. Then, in his face, I could see that Errol did not want to save my life, but that he wanted to sever my connection to the cat. He was not concerned about my welfare. He was jealous. I stared at his eyes as the tiger carried me past him. I smiled.

But where was the animal taking me? I began to grow fearful. I found it remarkable that this was my first pang of concern for myself. I was just coming to realize that the cat had captured me, that it was not the other way around. The tiger carried me off into the night, toward the big wash.

1 September

As I was being carried between the teeth, I tried to remember everything I knew about tigers. I didn’t know much. I knew that tigers had poor vision. I knew that they had a weak sense of smell. I knew that they hunted by sound. I knew that they were aggressive hunters. I knew they were sometimes man-eaters. The cat put me down near some large rocks and walked away a few steps, then dropped to the ground, seemingly exhausted. I was too afraid to stand or even sit up. I moved my foot barely an inch, my toes moving a pebble on the ground not quite enough to push it from its spot in the sand, and the tiger let out a warning rasp of breath, a sound that was not quite a roar, but substantially more than a purr. So, I lay as still as possible, trying to slow my breathing and calm my heart. I wondered how long it would be before my father came for me. I wondered if some man from the circus was at that moment drawing a bead on the cat with a scoped rifle loaded with a dart. I kept seeing Errol’s face.