Something is amiss at the Rolson Meth Lab.
Though, to be fair, something is always amiss over there. That’s why we call it the Meth Lab, as opposed to the Rolson estate or the Rolson’s place or the That Lovely Home Where the Delightful Mr. Rolson Lives.
My wife and I can’t agree on what’s making the sound, or even what type of sound it is. I say it’s mechanical—the cold rumble of an ancient tractor engine starting then dying, starting then dying, over and over. This would make sense. Chet Rolson, the Meth Lab’s proprietor, is a collector of well-used farm equipment. Ditto for junked cars. I see him tinkering with them in his front yard from time to time.
But Jenny insists the sound is the cry of something living. It’s a distressed mammal. It’s hungry. It’s angry. She holds to this belief and the sounds have become very upsetting to her.
“They’re torturing that poor thing,” she says.
“What poor thing?”
“That poor thing. Whatever it is, they’re torturing it.”
“Maybe that’s the sound it’s supposed to make. Maybe it’s a perfectly healthy and happy thing. Whatever it is,” I say.
She shakes her head. “Nothing that makes a sound like that could be happy. Just listen to it. I’m an animal. You’re an animal. Animals know when other animals are in trouble. It’s instinct.”
“But it’s not an animal,” I tell her. “It’s a threshing machine. Granted, they may very well be torturing that threshing machine.”
Jenny does not appreciate my attempt at levity.
“I’m not kidding, Mark,” she says. Her facial expression confirms this.
Jenny is one of those women whose sympathy for living things is unconditional. Any time a dog or cat is discovered lost in the neighborhood, she champions the effort for its safe return, printing fliers and insisting we house it until the owners can be contacted. We’ve acquired two cats this way, Boomer and Travis. Once, Jenny found an injured fox pup in the front yard. She built it a nest in a cardboard box and nursed it back to health.
“You’re such a caring soul,” I tell her.
“It’s my maternal instinct,” she says, looking everywhere except at me.
“Would you like me to go over to Rolson’s and ask what’s going on? Because I will, if it will make you feel better,” I tell her.
She says no, and I am relieved.
The Rolson Meth Lab is a dilapidated white farmhouse. The paint is peeling and the front porch is bowed. It is, even for a passerby, a place of unsettling noises and smells, some human, some not. Chet Rolson is the only full-time resident. Sometimes there’s a woman around: Chet’s girlfriend. Shortly after we moved in, the couple had a series of loud and upsetting fights that once ended with police intervention, but no charges pressed. Things have been quiet between them lately though. There’s a pair of shifty looking dudes who hang around on the front steps most days, others who come and go, and, from time to time, a middle school-aged boy with a BMX bike. We believe this is Chet’s son. That Chet Rolson could have partial custody of a kid is horrifying to me. Doubly so to Jenny, who has suggested we call Child Protective Services, but worries we won’t be able to provide sufficiently damning evidence to warrant investigation. All we have is speculation and conjecture. What actually goes on at Chet Rolson’s house is a mystery to us.
Needless to say, we’re pretty sure he’s making meth in there.
I don’t want to give the impression we live in a dodgy part of town. I’ve been in Indiana for seven years and it seems to me our rural suburb is pretty much the same as every other suburb in this predominantly rural state. I imagine an aerial view must look like someone puked up Monopoly pieces in a field. There’s no real sense of planning or consistency. Clapboard houses sit at varying distances from Derring Street, our main thoroughfare. Behind the homes on our side of the street runs a sprawling corporate soybean farm. Our immediate neighbors to the right, the Wengers, keep chickens. In our own backyard, Jenny has cultivated a truly excellent garden. Jenny and I moved here from Bloomington shortly after we got married. We bought the biggest house we could afford with the intention of “growing into it.” Three years later, it’s still just the two of us, plus the cats.
The Rolson Meth Lab aside, our neighbors are a quiet and drama-free crowd. They’re almost all large families, with the exception of the Wengers who are, like Jenny and me, a childless couple. But being well into their sixties, people have probably stopped asking them all the fucking time when they plan to reproduce.
Tom and Darcy Wenger invite Jenny and me over for Sunday lunch every week after church even though we don’t go to church. “Come by after church and we’ll put together a little spread,” Darcy says each Sunday morning, appearing on our porch, presumably on her way to the local house of the Lord. “Okay,” we say, “will do.” Lunch is always lovely and our absence at church is never discussed. It has recently occurred to me that maybe the Wengers don’t go either.
The Rolson Meth Lab is a hot topic with the Wengers. Chet Rolson’s property borders theirs on the other side and they are privy to all sorts of oddity that stays under the radar for the rest of Derring Street.
“I’m sure you’ve been hearing all that howling going on,” Darcy says almost as soon as we sit down to eat. “It must be keeping the whole block up half the night.”
Her use of the word “howling” signals to me that she, too, has pegged the sound as animal. This conversation will follow Jenny and me home, I’m certain. I want to change the subject, but I know it won’t do any good. Darcy always finds a path back to talking about whatever she wants to talk about.
“That man, I swear, it’s always something,” Darcy says.
Jenny stops eating her egg salad sandwich and leans forward. “Do you know what it is? What’s making the sound?” she asks.
“No,” says Darcy, “but there’s a cage.”
Jenny puts her hand to her mouth.
“I’m positive he’s got a creature locked up back there,” Darcy continues, though I wish she wouldn’t. “Me personally, I think it sounds like a lion.”
“It’s not a lion,” Tom says.
“Tom’s been on safari and he says that’s not what a lion sounds like,” Darcy says, “but I got a glimpse of it over the fence the other day. I think a lion probably has different cries in captivity than it does out in the wild. Don’t you think, Tom?”
“It’s not a lion,” Tom replies with his usual curtness. The man is the picture-perfect Middle American husband. Hard working, silent, long-faced, he may well have been the model for “American Gothic,” if the picture featured a curly-haired gossip for the farmer’s bride.
“Can we have a look at the cage?” Jenny asks.
“Of course, hon,” Darcy says, as sweet as if Jenny had just requested seconds on pie.
Single-file, the four of us walk out the Wengers’ back door to the tall picket fence that divides the two properties. We line up, faces pressed to the fence’s slats. I imagine Darcy doing this every afternoon, making tsking sounds and taking mental notes on the Rolson crew’s comings and goings to share with the rest of the neighborhood.
There’s a shed and some patchy grass dotted with a few pieces of rusted farming tools.
“Look, Jenny,” I say. “I think that thing on the far left is a threshing machine.”
She hisses at me to be quiet even though there’s no one around except the Wengers to hear me.
“See back by the trees?” Darcy says. “That’s where the cage is.”
Sure enough, tucked between a cluster of maple trees and half covered with a blue tarp is a big damn cage, all metal with wrist-thick bars. It looks like the kind circus animals get carted around in, like the cartoons on Animal Crackers boxes. From our vantage point at the fence, the interior of the cage is dark and still. It could hold a large, violent, angry animal. It also could be empty.
“How long has the cage been there?” I ask. “Has it maybe just always been there?”
“Oh Lord, I have absolutely no idea,” Darcy admits.
At home, Jenny is distressed.
“What if it escapes?” she wants to know.
“What if what escapes from where?”
“Mark, we’re not playing this game anymore,” she says.
I remind her we don’t know for certain that there’s anything in the cage.
“Who keeps a cage without an animal inside?”
“Who keeps cars without wheels and tractors that don’t run? Same guy.”
“It’s not safe,” she says. “It’s not safe and it’s not humane and it’s not right.”
I have no answer to this.
“We should call animal control,” she says.
“And tell them what? The weirdo down the road has a circus cage in his yard and something that may or may not be inside the cage is making strange sounds? We don’t call CPS about the boy, but we’re going to call Animal Control about an unidentified noise?”
“You don’t have to get snippy,” Jenny says.
“I’m not getting snippy,” I say, fully aware of how snippy this sounds. “I’m just trying to make a point.”
“And what point is that? Doing nothing is better than something?”
“In some cases, yeah,” I say. “Sometimes it’s safer just to wait and see.”
“I’m not entirely sure what we’re waiting for,” she says. But she doesn’t move to get the phone or look up a number. So, conversation over.
On Monday, Jenny leaves for work at seven in the morning, like always. I sleep another four hours before I get up to start my own “work.” I use the term loosely here. In our home office, I am supposedly occupied with finishing my book. I quit my job as the assistant editor of our local weekly newspaper six months ago, with Jenny’s blessing, expressly for this purpose. We have a little savings and Jenny’s salary is enough to support us for now. The time off and the completion of a long project would do me good, Jenny insisted. Initially, I agreed. Mostly though, I spend my days drinking coffee, petting the cats, reading the New York Times online, and watching YouTube videos. There’s a lot of guilt. I’m not sure what good this is doing anyone.
I’m playing Get-the-String with Boomer and Travis when the doorbell rings Friday afternoon. It’s Tom Wenger. I open the door, smiling my most neighborly smile, expecting him to say the wife sent him over to see if we’d like some lemon cake as she’d made too much. Or something of that nature.
“It’s a tiger,” Tom says.
I want to be surprised by this announcement. I want to act like I don’t know what he means, appearing on my doorstep and talking about tigers here in the middle of Indiana on such a lovely spring day.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go have a look.”
In the Wengers’ yard, Tom and I join Darcy at the fence and peer into Rolson’s property.
“Do you see it?” Darcy asks, her voice wobbly with excitement.
“No,” I say. The cage is dim and still, just as it was at Sunday lunch.
“Come stand where I am,” Darcy says.
We switch places, but I can’t see any further into the enclosure. I’m about to call both Wengers out as agitators and liars when I catch a glimpse of something in the murky darkness. I can’t see all of it at once, just a wisp of orange-brown fur, maybe an eye, maybe a paw. Maybe a jagged black stripe. Then it’s gone, back into the recesses of its horrible home.
“Holy fucking fuck,” I say.
I ask the Wengers what they plan to do, what action will be taken. Neither moves their face from the fence to answer.
Back at the house, I am restless. Writing is out of the question. I feed the cats, water the plants, and take out the trash. I watch the clock and think about what it will be like when Jenny comes home and I have to tell her what I saw. Contrary to my wishes, this thing isn’t going away. It’s only getting larger, taking shape—a tiger shape. It occurs to me that a different sort of man might simply keep this new information to himself and spare his sensitive wife the agony of knowing exactly what it is that haunts her. Unfortunately, I am not that man. Jenny and I tell each other almost everything.
But I figure I can at least put the conversation off for a while.
I call Derek, a friend from journalism school who works in Bloomington, to see if he wants to meet up somewhere for drinks after he gets off work. I tell him I’m more than happy to come in to the city. He reminds me that another former classmate, Ethan, recently moved nearby—less than ten miles from me and Jenny, in fact. I feel guilty for having forgotten, for not having sought him out sooner.
The three of us make plans to meet. I send Jenny a text message: “Going out with the guys, be home late.” Though this must come as a surprise to her, she replies, “Okay! Have fun!”
And in spite of myself, I do. We talk about movies we’ve seen and IU’s basketball prospects. We reminisce just enough about the people we went to school with, the late nights we spent in the university’s dreary basement news lab, and the Cinco de Mayo party where Jenny and I first met. Derek tells the story of a colleague of his who got caught with a cache of porn on his office computer and Ethan gives me a list of albums he thinks I might enjoy. No one mentions big cats, or any other kind of wild animal for that matter.
At one point, Derek does say, “I was sorry to hear about the baby and everything.” I thank him for his concern and realize just how long it’s been since I’ve seen these guys. At least a year.
When I come in, Jenny is already asleep, curled on her side with my pillow clutched between her arms. She is by nature a cuddler, a seeker of warm spaces. I take off my clothes and slide under the blankets beside her, gently wresting the pillow from her grasp. She reaches an arm around my chest to take its place.
“I’m glad you’re home,” she murmurs, kissing my neck.
This is the way it would be with our children, too, were we to have any. Jenny would hold them close. A safe corner of the world for her family, a brood of loved ones to draw near—these are Jenny’s highest aspirations. And I keep her from them.
Jenny wants a kid. Jenny wants multiple kids. Jenny wants a minivan full of kids. And I thought I did, too, until Jenny got pregnant. Or rather, until Jenny stopped being pregnant. We say miscarriage, but by seven months along that’s not really what it is. At seven months, it’s a death. It’s the loss of someone we’d given a name and begun assigning attributes to. We’d say things like, “I hope she gets my eyes and your pleasant disposition,” or whathaveyou.
This was hard for both of us. But Jenny is an optimistic person. A stick-with-it person. A when-the-going-gets-tough-the-tough-get-going person. I admire this about my wife. I am certain these are the qualities that would make her a good parent. These are not qualities I see in myself. This knowledge has made me reconsider our plans.
Jenny thinks I, like her, am still grieving, and when I’m done grieving, we’ll pick up with the baby-making where we left off. She’s right about the grief part.
For breakfast, Jenny makes buttermilk pancakes and asks how things are with Derek and Ethan. I give her the updates plus the latest gossip on others from the old group. Callen is teaching English in South Korea, Sophie is trying to sell a screenplay, Jack is engaged to a woman no one likes, and that thing in the cage is a tiger.
“A tiger?”
“It looks that way,” I say. I tell her about the day before with Tom and Darcy.
“So you saw it, then?” she asks. “You actually saw a living, breathing tiger?”
“I saw something,” I say. Suddenly though, I am not sure just what exactly it is that I saw. In my mind’s eye, the tiger-like form shifts. It’s a mangy dog. It’s a pile of gunnysacks. It’s an inflatable pool toy. I find it impossible to speak with clarity on the subject. This comes as a relief. I am an unreliable witness, unfit for further questioning.
“I can’t be certain though,” I say.
“You said a tiger.”
“Tom said a tiger. I think I was influenced by his power of suggestion. You know, like, the idea of a tiger was in my head so I saw one.”
“And now you’re not so sure.”
“Exactly.”
“But you did see something?”
“Yes,” I agree. I did see something.
“Mark, this is ridiculous,” she says. “Tiger or no tiger, we have a right to feel safe in our own neighborhood, in our own home.”
Again, I offer to just go over and ask Chet about his alleged tiger if it will make her feel better. This time she doesn’t say no. This time she says, “Yes, it would make me feel better.”
We are slow to finish breakfast. Once the dishes are done, we drive into town together to return library books and browse at the nursery. Back home, I help Jenny in the garden. I change a dead light bulb in the basement and mow the front lawn.
After every activity, I ask myself, “Is this the appropriate moment to go confront our likely drugged-out and potentially hostile neighbor about the creature he may or may not be harboring in his backyard?”
Each time the answer comes back “no.” So I don’t. I lie on the couch with Jenny and the cats, reading and doing crossword puzzles. We cook another meal and eat on the porch so we can watch the sunset. As I clear the dishes, a howl snakes through the neighborhood, feral and mean. I expect Jenny to say something, but she doesn’t.
All the next day, I don’t go talk to Chet. Nor do I talk to him the day after that. But then on Tuesday, fate, or just stupid coincidence, puts Chet and me in the same place at the same time and I’ve got no excuse not to say something.
With Jenny at work during the weekdays, I am the default runner of errands, doer of chores. I don’t mind. It gives me something to occupy the time I should spend writing. It’s at the grocery store that I find Chet.
As soon as I get out of my car, I see him skulking across the parking lot, two bulging plastic bags in each hand and the boy five paces behind him, his double in miniature. For a second, I consider getting back in the car and driving away before he sees me. But then I remember that Chet isn’t looking for me, couldn’t give a fuck if I’m in the parking lot or not. It’s me who’s looking for him.
I wait until they’ve reached their truck before I approach. He’s loading his groceries into the cab, his son already installed in the passenger seat.
“Hey, Chet,” I say, nice and casual, like maybe I’m just passing by on my way into the store, which I am.
He turns and gives me a neighborly head nod. We are neighbors after all, even if we never speak and my wife and I sometimes spy on him through the slats of his fence after Sunday lunch.
“Hey, Chet,” I say again, but with a different inflection. More purposeful.
He stops. He turns his whole body around and looks a lot less neighborly.
“Yeah?” he says.
“Quick question, Chet.”
“Yeah?”
I don’t know how to proceed. The boy, perhaps sensing something in his father’s tone he wants no part of, slips out the passenger side door and walks past us.
“Jake,” Chet calls to him. “Don’t go far. We’re leaving.”
The boy nods.
Chet turns to me again. “Yeah?” he asks once more.
“Are you keeping a wild animal on your property?”
Chet looks at me for a long time, his eyes squinty under the brim of his ball cap. “Come again?” he asks. Then he spits. He literally spits. The loogie lands not on my feet, but very near to them as if we were characters in an old Western movie, squaring off for a showdown.
“Look man, someone’s going to call the cops. I’m surprised they haven’t already,” I say, although this is actually a lie. I am not surprised at all.
“I’ve got a permit for it,” Chet says.
“You can’t get a permit for something like that. It’s not like a grain elevator. It’s a living creature.”
“Man, you don’t even know what you don’t know,” Chet says. “You can get a permit for a fucking Burmese python in this state if you want. Orangutans, crocodiles, whatever.”
“Is it a tiger?” I ask.
Chet shakes his head like he can’t even believe I’m wasting his time with this line of questioning.
“It’s been a pleasure talking to you, neighbor,” Chet says. Then he calls to his son who has wandered back toward the store entrance to fiddle with the vending machines.
Standing next to Chet in the parking lot, I am struck by how similar we must appear to anyone passing by. We are around the same age, gaunt and lanky. Three days stubble, Carharts and boots. Unemployed and roaming the streets of town mid-afternoon on a Tuesday. Chet, with his son in tow, at least has the marker of adulthood: of having sired and raised a child. The boy is proof of some minimal success on the man’s part.
At night, in bed, I raise the question with Jenny.
“Do you think Chet Rolson is more of a man than me?” I ask.
“Why? Because he owns a tiger?”
“An alleged tiger,” I say.
“Regardless. I don’t consider animal cruelty a sign of masculinity, no.”
“But what if you just saw him walking on the street and you didn’t even know about the tiger or whatever? What would you think of him?”
“What’s this about?” she asks, always able to see right to the very center of me.
“Chet’s boy looks an awful lot like him,” I say.
“Mark, I told you I’m ready to try again whenever you are. Is this you saying you’re ready?”
I lie back and look up at the ceiling. Down the road the alleged tiger screams and everything seems so fragile I expect the sound to shatter our windows, crack our wine glasses, and break our wedding china.
“No,” I say. “I guess not.”
Under the blankets, Jenny wraps herself around me.
“Okay,” she says. “That’s okay, Mark.”
We fall asleep curled together like kittens.
Three days later, the cries stop entirely. A nervous quiet enshrouds the neighborhood. Or maybe it’s just the same old quiet as before and I’m the one who’s nervous.
Jenny is nervous, too. Have they killed it? Have they injured it so badly it is incapable of making noise? Have they allowed it to escape? Each of these prospects seems equally horrifying.
I tell her I read about a big cat sanctuary outside of Terre Haute. They have all sorts of lions, tigers, cougars, and jaguars that were once pets, but were turned over when their original owners realized they were in over their heads. Maybe Rolson took the tiger there and now it’s living happily and well fed in the company of its brethren. Jenny says she’d like very much to believe that. But when we share this theory with the Wengers, Darcy insists that in her near-constant vigilance of the Rolson Meth Lab, no one has come to the house with a large van or truck or anything that might be used to transport a tiger. The cage is still in its original place, half covered by the tarp, its door shut and latched.
We check the paper each morning—the crime blotter, the local news, and a section called “Weird and Wild”—for reports of a tiger sighting, or better yet, capture by local authorities. Nothing.
“It’s almost like it was never even there to begin with,” I say to Jenny.
“No, it’s not,” she corrects me. “It’s not like that at all. I can’t shake it so easily.”
“Me neither,” I confess. “I guess I just wish that’s how I felt.”
“Are we still talking about the tiger here?” she asks.
I shrug. Jenny reaches across the breakfast table and puts her hand on mine. We have been so gentle with each other for so long—light touches, soft words. Even when we argue, it’s in whispers. So it’s a relief when, instead of letting go of my hand, Jenny squeezes hard. She pulls me out of my chair and into the bedroom, onto the bed. We push and tug at each other in the slatted morning light behind our half-drawn shades. This doesn’t last long. Jenny comes with an almost primal growl I want to mimic, but I get distracted by my own orgasm and double over, my face to her chest, in silence.
That morning, for the first time in a long time, I write. My book, as I envision it, will be collection of essays about the six months I spent in Belize and southern Mexico between college and grad school. This was before I met Jenny. My girlfriend at the time had a little money and we lived in a hut on a beach, and then in a different hut on a different beach. It was her idea and then, just like now, I was supposed to be writing. The whole trip, a once-in-a-lifetime chance for me to write. It wasn’t as romantic as it sounds (petty arguments, Montezuma’s revenge, my passport stolen) and the desire to be honest pitted against the desire not to look like a tool who squandered six months in paradise has made my progress choppy at best.
Today, I am honest. And it’s good. I write about the day my girlfriend begged me to go cliff jumping. She knew a place where the locals did it. By sunset, we’d jump off a waterfall, together, and it would reinvigorate us, she said. I was hesitant, which is a nice way of saying I was afraid. On the way, we drank American beer in the back of a pick-up truck, me feeling queasy the whole time. In the end, my girlfriend jumped off the waterfall by herself while I stood at the bottom, holding our empty bottles, worrying about what I’d say to her parents if she drowned. It’s not my proudest moment, but it feels like progress to write it down. Maybe the most progress I’ve made in the last year.
I am thinking about my next essay when Jenny comes into the office, tears forming at the corners of her eyes.
“Mark, I can’t find Boomer,” she says. “I think he must have gotten out.”
“Okay,” I say, rising slowly from my chair like I don’t think there’s any cause in the world for concern about a missing cat. “Let’s go have a look.”
Together, we visit each of Boomer’s favorite spots in the house, even though I’m certain Jenny has done this at least twice by herself already. He’s not in his cat bed. He’s not in the bedroom closet. He’s not pressed up against the sliding glass door where the sunlight gathers this time of the day. Behind the couch, there is a visible cluster of fur, but no Boomer.
“We never vacuum back here,” I say.
“When do we ever look behind the couch except when we’re looking for a cat?” Jenny asks.
Travis follows us from room to room, meowing. He’d do this no matter what we were searching for, but in the absence of one cat, the presence of the other seems somehow significant. Like he knows something about it.
“I think you’re right,” I say to Jenny. “I think he got out.”
In the yard, we call Boomer’s name and rustle the low bushes that fringe our property. Jenny is crying a little again.
“Don’t think like that,” I say. “Hey, Jenny, he’s around somewhere, okay?”
Jenny shakes her head. “He doesn’t even have his claws anymore to protect himself.”
There are many things that might happen to a cat in this neighborhood. Animal control could have picked him up. He could have wandered out to the highway and been hit by a car. The Rolson boy could be torturing him in the basement of his father’s house while daddy cooks up a batch of drugs in the bathtub. Fuck, we really should have called someone a long time ago.
“He probably just got himself stuck under the Johnsons’ porch,” I say.
I point to the long driveway directly across the street from ours. It belongs to another set of neighbors we nod politely to in passing and make small talk with only if absolutely unavoidable. We walk in the direction I’ve just pointed.
“I don’t think I’ll ever feel like it’s safe for the cats to be outside again,” Jenny says.
“It’s a good thing we don’t have little kids running around to worry about,” I say, and then immediately wish I could take it back. I look into my wife’s eyes. I can see her anxiety turn to anger, her anger to pity, her pity to resignation, and her resignation to regret, all right in front of me in the middle of Derring Street while I call for our stupid cat.
“Shit,” I say. “That’s not what I mean.”
“No, Mark. That is what you mean. That is exactly what you god-damn mean.”
She is one hundred percent correct and I’m at a loss for how to respond.
“I’m going to check the house one more time,” Jenny says, coolly, turning her back to me and walking across the street. I watch her skinny shoulders, the sun-kissed pink of her neck peeking out from behind her ponytail. I should go after her, hug her from behind and apologize not just for being insensitive, but for not being able to give her what she wants, for not being as strong as she is.
Instead I walk up to the Johnson family’s house and knock on the door. No one is home so I duck down and look under their front porch, calling Boomer’s name and whistling even though neither of the cats respond when I do this at home.
There is nothing beneath the porch except a coiled garden hose. I stand and cross the Johnsons’ yard. At their property line, I whistle for the cat again. The family next door to the Johnsons are Jehovah’s Witnesses. They keep their three children from school, educating them at home instead. I don’t know if these two facts are related. When I knock on the door, it’s one of the kids who answers. I feel like a child myself, explaining to an adolescent girl that I’ve lost my cat.
“He’s gray except he’s got white markings on his face and his tummy,” I say. “Have you seen him at all?”
The girl shakes her head and offers a small, “I’m sorry.” I wonder what she thinks of the things that happen outside her window as she’s trying to study each day. The comings and goings of secular life, the Rolson boy, just about her age, tearing around on his bike.
Back on our own side of the street, Darcy Wenger says she hasn’t seen Boomer either.
“You don’t think maybe...”
“I’m sure he just wandered away,” I say, cutting her off.
After that, I don’t even consider whether to go to the next house down or not. I just do. I am not really myself in this moment. Or, rather, I am some approximation of myself. I am the diligent husband helping his wife find her beloved cat. I am knocking on my neighbors’ doors, none of whom I seek to avoid, because I am a grown man and why should I be afraid of the people with whom I share a street? This is the man who walks to Chet Rolson’s door and rings the bell and waits.
This is the man who, when there is no answer, knocks hard. Who calls, “Anyone home?” 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.