in a friendly yet assertive voice. Who kicks three times at the base of the door to be certain he’s heard.
When still there is no answer, it is someone else entirely who twists the knob and pushes the door open.
Inside the Rolson Meth Lab, the front door opens to a shallow entryway and then the living room where Rolson’s got reddish shag carpet and three couches that don’t match. There’s a TV, a flimsy coffee table and a bookshelf filled with a variety of items that aren’t books. Plastic bags, matchbox cars, a socket wrench, an empty pastry box.
There are people in the room, too. A man and a woman I’ve never seen before lie head to toe on one of the couches, their arms wrapped around one another’s legs, their eyes closed. Chet sits in the middle of the floor, cross-legged, his head down, chin to his chest.
Whatever they’re on, it isn’t meth. Or, if it is meth, then they’re clearly on the come-down. Or the come-up. I actually don’t know much about meth.
I stand in the doorway, just staring like an idiot until Chet notices me.
“What do you want?” he asks.
“I want to know what happened to the tiger,” I say.
“What tiger?”
“The tiger you were keeping in a cage in your backyard for which you insisted you had a permit. The tiger which is now gone.” I’m aware that there’s a danger in getting snippy with drug users. I’m also aware that I sound like a dick. But I can’t help myself. As it turns out, the version of me who has entered Rolson’s house has just as little control over himself and the things he says as every other version of me.
“Well, sounds like you just answered your own question,” Chet says.
“What?”
Chet picks at a scab on his lower lip and doesn’t say anything else. Gone. He means the tiger is gone.
“But where did it go, Chet?” I ask.
Chet holds my gaze, but it’s clear he’s not actually looking at me. He’s looking through me, or maybe just at the middle distance between us. It feels like an enormously long time before he speaks again.
“Tigers are beautiful creatures. So beautiful,” he says. “There’s even a poem about them. Listen. Tiger, Tiger, burning bright. Wish upon the first...tiger I see tonight.”
“That’s from two different poems,” I tell him. “Or, a poem and a nursery rhyme, actually.”
Chet shakes his head slowly, but doesn’t say anything. He closes his eyes. He’s still shaking his head when I turn to leave.
Outside, I feel disoriented. I start down the gravel driveway back to the street, but then turn around. I pick my way through the overgrown brush on the side of the house. I’m sure Chet or anyone else could see me if they looked out the window, but I don’t care. I want to see the cage. Empty or not, I want to look into it and know what it was like for the thing inside.
Right away I can tell there’s more to Rolson’s mess of a backyard than can be seen by peeking through the Wengers’ fence. In addition to the larger debris (threshers, cars, circus cage, etc.), there’s a whole world of smaller artifacts hiding in the tall grass. There are rusted pop cans, some scattered haphazardly, others standing in a row like a miniature fence in front of a neglected lawn mower. There’s a deflated kiddie pool. There’s a half-length of garden hose. There’s a man’s boot with a bottle of hand lotion emerging from its top.
In one small section of the yard, not far from the house, the grass has been dug out. A menagerie of plastic toys sticks up from this raw patch of dirt. There are action figures—G.I. Joes and Ninja Turtles and some other characters I don’t recognize, muscle-y cyborg-like things—buried to their waists, or, in some cases, to their necks. And there are animals. They’re made of hard plastic and shaped like they are about to attack. These, too, are buried part way, but arranged in a semi-circle around the action figures as if standing guard, or poised to strike.
I puzzle over this display for some time. Is it the work of a child, angry and bored, burying his own possessions in the yard of his negligent, unpredictable parent? Or is it some art project undertaken by the father himself who, in a drug-addled state, and with no regard for the feelings of his son, wedged these toys into their current arrangement? I scan the animals for tigers, thinking their presence might prove something, one way or the other, but I see none. The closest I can find is a wolf. I bend down and pull it out of the dirt for closer inspection. It’s a blue-gray color. Its jaws are open, and one paw, complete with tiny claws, is up, waiting to slash at whatever there is to slash. I realize right away this action is a mistake. Removing the wolf from the ground has broken the spell that’s been over me since I first opened Rolson’s door. I am suddenly acutely aware of where I am, of what I’m doing. I decide I do not actually need to see the cage at all. What I do need to do is get the hell off Rolson’s property.
I set the wolf back into its original position in the dirt, but it looks all wrong there—skewed and obviously tampered with. Better that it be missing entirely than so clearly out of place. So I pick it up again, dust the soil off, and put it in my back pocket. Then I go.
I am trembling a little as I jog away from Rolson’s and back down the street toward home. I keep my eyes on the ground, but after a moment, I am overtaken by the feeling of being watched. The sensation is so immediate, so visceral it stops me cold. I feel the tiny hairs along the ridge of my neck stand up—a most basic warning signal from the depths of my mammalian mind. Jenny is right; animals know when other animals are in trouble. There are, without a doubt, animal eyes upon me.
I lift my head, fearing the worst, the neighborhood nightmare come true.
But there’s no tiger blocking my way. No creature of any sort stands in the middle of Derring Street.
The animal watching me has hidden itself beneath a cluster of patchy bushes that ring the Wengers’ mailbox. These are feline eyes, yes, but small, surrounded by thin black fur and grown lazy from daily brushings and feedings. They belong to my own pet. Relief spills over me. I reach down and pull Boomer out from his hiding place. He doesn’t resist. I carry him back home cradled in my arms. Jenny kisses me on the cheek and tells me I’m her hero.
Again, I think about apologizing to her, or saying “Okay, I’m ready to do what you want to do,” or, at the very least, offering to call the police about Rolson. I think about showing her the wolf and telling her what I’ve seen—about the weirdness and sadness of the lives being lived just down the street from us. But I don’t do any of these things and Jenny doesn’t ask.
We’re half way through summer now and whatever was making the sound is long gone, I’m convinced. It died or left or just folded up into itself and gave up on its sound-making. Sometimes I still catch Jenny listening for it, standing at the living room window, petting one or the other of the cats and looking pensive. I like to tease her about this by startling her from behind, or saying something inane like, “What’s the matter, Jen? Tiger got your tongue?” She takes my kidding well.
Though I’d never admit it to Jenny, I am still listening for the sound, too. The cries may be gone, but the presence of the alleged tiger has never really left me. It stalks me from a safe distance, biding its time. I feel it most acutely in the thin hours of the morning and at dusk, when I’m walking down Derring Street into town, or out in the fields. Everywhere I go, something is amiss.
