Beth Cato

“Be careful out there, Tiger,” Doctor said, as she did every day when she let Tiger Boy out through the narrow basement window.

“Tiger Boy,” he corrected, as he did daily.

“Yes, Tiger Boy.” Her smile was more wobbly than usual.

He knew she didn't like letting him out by his lonesome, but he couldn't stay pent up for days and days on end. He started to get restless and toy around with things, and that was really, really bad in a laboratory. She used to joke that she wasn't sure if his mischief came from his Tiger or Boy nature, but she hadn't said that in a long time.

She didn't say too much at all, these days.

Tiger Boy pulled himself through the window and then hunkered there in the bushes, watching Doctor in the basement. She pushed herself around in her wheelchair as she went from machine to machine. She worked awful hard. There might be more people alive out there, she would say. People who survived the virus, like her. People who could become immune if she added cat DNA, like with Tiger Boy.

Doctor wasn't sick-sick now, but she didn't look so good. Her brown skin had gone pale like newspaper left out in the sun and she coughed a lot.

He was on a mission today. He was going to get her some medicine.

The shaggy grass was warm through the gloves that Doctor made him wear as he bounded, on all fours, from the bushes. At the top of the rise, he stopped to roll around. His shirt lifted up and the sunlight on his belly felt so good that on any other day he could have stayed there for hours. But not today.

Doctor had him fetch things so he knew the neighborhood pretty well. After he woke up months ago he brought a lot of food and water back to the basement. He could read well enough to find food that Doctor liked, but trying to understand more than a few words in a row made them all twirl in his mind. It made Doctor sad sometimes. She had wondered if he had always had difficulties or if making him into Tiger Boy had hurt his brain. That didn't make sense. His body might hurt after running around, but not his brain.

He stayed on the grass or dirt as much as he could as he padded down the street. The road was still packed with cars that hadn't stayed in straight lines like they should. Lots of skeletons still sat or lounged around, too. There were even some small ones at the playground.

Tiger Boy always stopped there. That was one of the few things he remembered from when he was just a Boy—coming home from school, the store or anywhere else, you had to stop at the playground. It was tradition.

He went to the swings first and flopped his belly atop the black band. He swayed a few times then pushed himself over and ran to the slide.

The ladder up the slide was hard because he really was better on all fours now. Doctor didn't want him to do anything dangerous like climb or eat things he found outside or play in cars. “You're all I have! You can't take risks.”

The slide was extra special, though. He did it before everyone got awful sick. He could still do it now, just on his belly.

He made sure he was extra careful for Doctor as he made his slow, steady way to the top. He tipped forward onto his chest, and wiggling his hips, pushed off. The metal slide was sleek heat through his shirt then his hands met the soft sand at the base, and he galloped on.

His old apartment wasn't that far away. Doctor said brains were interesting like that—that he remembered places all around, even if he couldn't remember his Boy name.

“Sorry, Mama!” He always apologized when he entered the apartment. She always hated when the door was left open or unlocked, but door knobs were hard on his hands. Besides, she didn't gripe at him now.

Mama sat at the couch. Well, she leaned these days. Most of her skin had sucked in close to the bone and she wore her favorite shirt, the one with a beer logo on the front.

Here, he thought of himself as more Boy. Mama didn't like cats, after all. He made himself stand on his back legs. His body looked mostly the same from when he was a full Boy, but he was a lot different inside. Doctor said that he acted more like a Tiger than he really should, but if he was happy and it helped him cope after everyone died, that was okay.

Doctor helped him feel better. He really needed her to feel better, too.

The bathroom cabinet had medicine in all those funny bottles that he couldn't open. That was okay. Doctor could do it. She could do anything except climb the stairs. Tiger swung his backpack off and parted the magnet tabs that Doctor had rigged. The bottles dropped in like the shakey-shakey instruments they used to play during music in school. He let the flaps pull shut again and shimmied the pack on. Leaning on the wall, he waddled back to the living room.

“Mama, Mama, Doctor is sick. What else can make her better?” he asked.

Mama just looked at him in her lop-sided way. The table in front of her had her little mirror tray and rows of white powder that he could never, ever touch.

“That's it!” he said, and added meow of triumph.

He went to her bedroom. There were baggies of white powder still in her dresser. Those he could touch, because he'd bring them when she asked. Mama said they made her feel good. Maybe they'd help Doctor, too.

His backpack loaded up, he said bye-bye to Mama. He dropped to all fours once he was in the hall and headed outside. A brisk wind chased him to the playground. He hopped up on the bench. Another body his size sat there.

Tiger Boy remembered that he used to sit up like that all the time. At his school desk. On the bus. On Mama's lap. How long had it been since he'd tried to sit like that outside of the old apartment? He frowned. Time was weird. He missed Christmas. The whole year used to be divided by before Christmas and after Christmas. Doctor said they couldn't do Christmas in the basement; there was no way to get a tree down there. That made them both cry.

Tiger Boy looked at the other body on the bench. The medicine rattled in his pack as he twisted around to sit like that. “I'm still a Boy here, too,” he said to his playmate.

If he was still a Boy at the playground, maybe he could go down the slide the old way, too.

Doctor's words echoed in his mind. “You're all I have! You can't take risks.”

“I can be a careful Boy,” he said out loud.

He climbed up the ladder oh so slowly. At the summit it got all confusing. How was he supposed to get his legs up on top? Where did his hands go? Was he supposed to grab hold of something up high, or down low? He fumbled and knotted himself and leaned back and suddenly knew the utter strangeness of grasping nothing at all. He was falling.

He twisted around, the pills pinging in their bottles, and landed in the sand on all fours like a Tiger. Pain stabbed up his hands and knees and he yowled, but after a few seconds the shock was gone. He shook out his arms and legs. He was okay. Good. Doctor wouldn't be mad. He lowered himself to the still-warm sand and breathed heavily for a few minutes, then eased himself up again.

“I'm still a Boy,” he whispered. “I am. I just have Tiger, too. The Tiger in me knew how to land.”

The Tiger in him saved the Boy. That's what Doctor said happened in the basement, too. That he was stronger, better, because of the change in his DNA.

He padded around to the landing area of the slide and sat up on his haunches. The slide looked huge from down here—a big sleek, silver mountain.

Going down on his belly was lots of fun. Had sitting up really been the better way to go down the slide, back before everyone got sick? Some part of him thought so. There had been more air in his face as he slid down. More of a view of the whole playground and all the people. The kids had laughed and talked and ran every which way. He remembered that, the joy of it.

The wind caused the swings' chains to twist and creak.

Tiger Boy fell back onto all fours. Maybe he shouldn't do the slide anymore. Maybe Doctor was right, and things like that were too dangerous now.

That made him feel strange and sad inside. He shivered, despite the sunshine, and the pills rattled in his backpack. Oh! The medicine!

At that, he trotted toward the basement and Doctor. The medicine in his backpack was music to every stride. He'd help her feel all better. That was the right thing to do. It was a Boy thing to do.

 

S is for Slide