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.