End of the Tiger Read online

  Yet he worked on, his arms trembling each time he pulled. I looked at my watch. An hour and fifteen minutes of heartbreaking, muscle-ripping, back-bending labor.

  “Come on, Jimmy. Hand it over,” Wolta said. I wanted to tell him to shut his face. But it was the kid’s problem, not mine.

  Jimmy began to rest for little intervals when he could have been regaining line. But the big marlin wasn’t as eager as he had been. He was fighting doggedly, but without that first, wild, reckless speed.

  Wolta said, “Tell you what. I’ll slip into your chair and you slip out. Take the rod butt out of the gimmick just long enough to slip your leg under.”

  Jimmy made no objection. I moved back. Wolta came over and began to fumble with the buckle on one of the straps. Jimmy sat without trying to regain line.

  The fish was about a hundred and seventy yards out. Suddenly his first fury seemed to come back to him and the fish shot out of the water at an angle, covering what seemed to be twenty yards in a straight line, leaning up out of the water at an angle, dancing on his tail, lashing the sea to foam with his enormous tail.

  I saw Jimmy’s hands tight on the rod, saw the dried blood on his wrist. “Lay off, Wolta,” he said thickly, hardly speaking above a whisper.

  Wolta laughed his great gusty laugh and continued to work on the buckle. Jimmy told him to lay off again. Wolta paid no attention, and only said, “I can bring that big baby in.”

  The fish was taking out line slowly. Jimmy took his right hand off the rod butt, swung it in a short hard arc. His fist hit Wolta in the mouth. Wolta took two stumbling steps back and sat down hard. Jimmy didn’t even look around. He began to fight back a few feet of line at a time. Wolta got up with a roar deep in his throat. For once that mechanical smile was gone from his bruised lips. He started toward Jimmy, big fists clenched.

  The sailor, a hundred-and-twenty-pound Mexican with dark soft eyes, suddenly appeared between Jimmy and Wolta. He looked mildly at Wolta, and his hand was on the haft of his belt knife. Wolta stopped as though he had run into a wall.

  He gave me a mechanical smile and said, “Okay, okay. Let the kid lose the fish.”

  Jimmy labored on. He looked as though he would keel over from exhaustion, sag unconscious in the harness. But somewhere he found the strength to match the wild courage of the fish.

  One hundred and fifty yards. One hundred and twenty. One hundred. And he had been on the fish for over two hours. When the fish was within seventy feet of the boat, it spun and went on out again, but not more than a hundred yards. I heard Jimmy’s harsh sob as he began once more to bring it in. The marlin sounded, going down two hundred feet, lying there like a stone. Jimmy brought it up, foot by foot. The blue came up the last thirty feet at enormous speed and shot high into the air, seeming to hang over the boat for an instant, living beauty against the deep blue of the sky. When it hit the water, the spray shot up against us.

  It came in slowly from twenty yards, lolling in the water, rolling to show its belly, all fight suddenly gone.

  Two hours and forty-three minutes. Pedro gaffed it and it was killed and the sailor with a line around him went down into the sea and got a line on the fish, got a firm loop around the waist of the tail.

  Wolta had to be asked to get on the line with us. Jimmy sagged limply in the harness, his eyes half closed, his hands hanging limp. A heavy drop of blood fell from the palm of his hand to the deck. We got the monster over the side. It was the biggest blue I had ever seen. Not record of course. Record is 737 pounds, Bimini, 1919.

  Wolta made no sound of praise. Phlegmatic Pedro forgot himself so far as to pound Jimmy on his tired back with a brown fist, saying, “Muy hombre! Muy hombre!”

  Literally translated it means, “Very man.” But the sense is, “You are one hell of a man!”

  We unstrapped Jimmy, and I actually had to help him in to the bunk. He gave me a weak, tired grin. We headed in.

  Wolta said, “How about letting me fish on the way in.”

  Pedro said, “Too late, meester.”

  Wolta said, “Lot of fishing I got today. Just about one damn hour.”

  “You got yourself a big sail,” I said.

  The blue dwarfed our two sail. Wolta snorted and went and got a beer out of the ice locker.

  Boating the blue should have been the high point of the day. Or even that punch in the mouth. But it wasn’t.

  The high point came after we were on the pier. We were the last boat in. Dusk was coming. A man waits near the pier by the big scaffolding where they hang up the fish. He takes pictures, good pictures, for a moderate fee.

  The crowd was beginning to drift away. They came back in a hurry when the big blue was hauled up onto the pier. They came back and gasped and gabbled and asked questions.

  Wolta answered the questions. Wolta stuck out his chest. Though he didn’t have the nerve to say so, he answered the questions in such a way that the crowd was led to believe that it was his fish.

  The line was thrown over the scaffolding and it took four men to haul the blue clear of the ground. Pedro brought the rods up, leaned them against the side of the scaffolding. The blue was in the middle with the two sails on either side.

  The man had his camera set up. I wasn’t interested in being in a picture with Wolta. The crowd got back out of the line of the picture. Wolta put his heavy arm on Jimmy’s shoulder and said to the crowd at large, “Tomorrow the kid and I are going out and get another one.” And he laughed.

  Somehow he had edged over so that he was closer to the blue than Jimmy was. I smiled wryly as I thought of Wolta showing copies of the picture to his friends.

  Jimmy said tightly, “Hold it!” He held up his hand. The photographer ducked out from under his black cloth looking puzzled.

  Jimmy shrugged Wolta’s arm off his shoulder. He said, “Wolta, we aren’t going out tomorrow or any other day. Together. And suppose you have your own picture taken with your own fish and get the hell away from mine!”

  The crowd was hushed and expectant. A woman giggled. Wolta looked pale and dangerous. He said, “Kid, you shouldn’t talk that way to me. I’m warning you!”

  Jimmy doubled one of his torn hands and said, “Move off!”

  Wolta slowly relaxed. “Okay, okay. If that’s the way you want it.” He went off into the crowd.

  Jimmy looked directly at me and said, “Mr. Thompson, I’d like you in this picture and Pedro and the other two men.”

  I spoke to Pedro. We stepped into the picture.

  Just before the camera clicked, I glanced at Jimmy beside me. Tears of anger still stood in his eyes, but his chin was up and he was smiling.

  I still have the picture. It’s before me right now. And when I look at the expression on Jimmy’s face, I’m reminded of the expressions I saw on many faces several years ago.…

  The faces of the men when we dropped out of the sky into that prison camp in the Philippines and liberated them.

  End of the Tiger

  I saw Tiger Shaw the other day. He didn’t recognize me. There’s no reason why he should. When he was going with my big sister Christine, I was just one of the swarm of little brothers and sisters who knew enough not to get too close to him or you’d get a Dutch rub with those big knuckles.

  I saw him in a narrow street in town, unloading a truck into a warehouse, tattoos on his big meaty arms, his belly grown big as a sack of cement, all of him looking sour and surly and dispirited. It seemed too bad, because he was a beautiful young man back when he was one of the best athletes they ever had in the high school. He lasted a year in college before he got into a scandal about throwing games, and they let him go into the army.

  Christine and Tiger were a pair of beautiful people that summer.

  There were seven of us children in all. Now there are six, and when we all get together with all our wives and husbands and kids, we think of Bunny and are saddened, because he was the littlest one of all and dear to us. The times of getting together are rare because we
’re scattered now. Christine’s husband teaches at the University of Toronto. Her eldest is twelve. All the marriages are pretty good. Mine is fine.

  And when we get together, one of the things we always do is to tell grandfather stories. There are a lot of them. He raised us—he and our mother. He was a big wild random old man, very partial to dramatic scenes. At least half the things he did made absolutely no sense to us as children. He never explained. He just lived according to his unpredictable instincts. But it is strange how, as time goes by, we begin to see how some of the nonsense things made sense.

  Until the day he died, I don’t think we all ever really forgave him about the goose. Yesterday, when I saw Tiger Shaw, I wished that my grandfather had at least tried to explain about Gretchen. That was the name of the goose.

  That May, the summer Christine and Tiger were in love, Nan, the youngest sister, bought the baby goose from a farm up the road for ninety cents saved out of her allowance. For about three days it belonged to her, and then it belonged to all of us and owned the pond out in the side yard. We kids were all her fellow geese, and she plodded along behind us, making small nervous sounds about all the dangers the world holds for an unwary goose. She was blazing white and took excellent care of herself with that clever serrated bill. Anybody who rowed the skiff around the pond had Gretchen aboard before they could even launch it, standing in the bow, honking her pleasure.

  By July Gretchen was of pretty good size, and she was enchanted with Christine’s long golden hair. Christine would sit, and Gretchen would preen that hair, never tugging or hurting, making little chortling sounds in her throat. We all learned Gretchen’s likes and dislikes. She could be patted a little but not very much. She was nervous about the night, ignored cats, despised dogs, and would bow very low in ceremonious oriental greeting when anyone approached.

  Tiger was at our place a lot that summer. He was a hero, of course, huge and golden. But we quickly learned wariness. He was quick and he knew the places that hurt. And he would roar with laughter, and we, out of pride, would laugh with him, though eyes might be stinging.

  I remember those long summer dusks after the evening meal before the littlest ones had to be shooed off to bed. We’d all be out in the side yard, and on the side porch, and Gretchen would come padding up across the yard from the pond giving oriental greetings.

  One of the grandfather stories we don’t tell is about Tiger and the goose.

  Gretchen was wary of Tiger Shaw, and it seemed to be a plausible instinct. As I remember that evening, Tiger was going to take Christine to some sort of barn dance just over the county line. Christine had on a blue dress with little white flowers. Her hair was brushed to a soft gleam. In the country fashion, Tiger had to stay around for a little time before taking her away into the gathering dusk, going down the road with her in that car of his that made a snarling sound that faded into the distance, sounding as it died away like a bee buzzing nearby.

  We kids were fooling around in the yard. Sheila was acting wistful. She was near to her dating time, when the young men would be coming for her. Our grandfather was on the porch in the rocker, and off in the east, by the far hills, there was darkness and a pink inaudible pulse of lightning.

  Tiger and Christine were sitting a few feet apart, and Gretchen plodded up behind them, behind the low bench, and with a big whack of her white wings made an awkward hop up onto the bench, leaned the adoring curve of her neck toward Christine, and began, with little chucklings, to preen the fine strands of the golden hair.

  We were all watching it, thinking uneasily that Gretchen was uncommonly close to Tiger Shaw. He was very quick for such a big muscly person, quick without looking quick. And he was seldom without a cud of gum in his jaws. That is one of the memories of him, the knots working at the jaw corners and the smell of spearmint.

  He reached and took Gretchen high on the neck with one hand, slipped the gum out of his mouth with the other, and when she opened her bill to yawp her protest, he thumbed the wad of gum up into the hollow of the top of her beak. He released her at once and began to roar with laughter.

  We all laughed. It was so ridiculous. Gretchen closed her bill and it stuck. She looked astonished. She began to shake her head the way you shake your hand to shake moisture from your fingertips. She shook herself dizzy and fell sprawling off the bench. Then she began to run in circles in the yard, wings laboring, trying somehow to run away from this terrible impasse. Our nervous laughter turned shrill, climbing toward the edge of hysteria.

  Above it all, above Tiger’s laughter and our shrillness, I heard the grandfather laugh, the drumdeepbellowing of him as he came down off the porch. Soon, in terror, Gretchen began driving that precious bill against things, against posts and stones, against places where the ground was hard. Then we were all howling in a shared panic, in heartbreak and concern. Because we all knew what that bill was to her—knife and fork, comb and brush, weapon, tool, sieve, bug-catcher.

  So we tried to run to catch her, but my grandfather swept us back with his huge arms, laughing, bellowing at us that it was funny. I hated him then. I hated the three of them—my grandfather, Tiger, and Christine.

  Because, you see, Christine was laughing, too. She stood up, hunched over, laughing. Grandfather and Tiger beat each other on the back and roared with delight at the deranged scrabbling terrorized creature, telling each other how funny it was. Christine moved slowly toward the steps, shrieking laughter, and as she hobbled up the steps it changed to a keening, wailing sound, the tears running down her face.

  My grandfather’s roaring laughter stopped abruptly as the screen door banged behind her, and he turned quickly away from the still hilarious Tiger.

  Following grandfather’s orders, we caught Gretchen, wrapped her firmly in burlap, and took her to the porch. Grandfather gently pried the bruised bill open and, holding Gretchen’s head against his thigh, skillfully worked the sticky mass out of the concavity. Tiger stood watching, chuckling reminiscently, while we hiccuped in the aftermath of tears. When she was as clean as he could get her, my grandfather put her down and took the sacking off her. She scrambled to her feet and went headlong for the safety of her beloved pond, half running, half flying.

  Tiger said it was time to go and sent Sheila in to get Christine. Sheila came out in a few moments and said Christine had a headache and couldn’t go. Tiger hung around for a little while, acting sort of ugly. And then he went off, and the snarling drone of his car faded quickly. We went down to the pond. Gretchen was soiled and she had some broken feathers, but she looked unapproachably white there in the blue dusk, floating out in the middle, making no sound for us.

  There were no more boat rides, no more preening the golden hair of the big sister, no more chuckling sound behind us when we walked across the yard, no more visits in the dusk. We told each other that if grandfather had let us help her before she became too terrified, it might have been all right, and we might have kept her trust.

  We never quite forgave our grandfather for that. Maybe he wasn’t interested in our kind of forgiveness. He was a wild and random old man, and sometimes he made no sense at all. But when I saw Tiger the other day, I suddenly realized that if we’d helped Gretchen quickly, then it might have been just one of Tiger’s little jokes, and Christine would have gone off with him that night and other nights, and the world might be quite different for her now. By delaying us, grandfather showed her Tiger’s kind of laughter, of which there is often too much in the world.

  But he never explained.

  The Trouble with Erica

  Erica, leaning forward from the back seat, told Mack where to turn. He was aware of the fragrance of her and thought he could feel the touch of her breath against the side of his throat. “Now just two more blocks, Mack, and it will be on the right with the porch lights on.” She hesitated over calling him Mack. When the evening had started, it had been Mr. Landers and Miss Holmes, Marie, beside Mack, leaned forward and punched the lighter in. Mack felt a mild amu
sement. Marie had gone a little sour on the evening.

  It was a narrow street, down at the heels. The house was small, and Mack guessed it probably looked less defeated at night with the lights on than during the day.

  He stopped, and Marie hitched toward him and pulled the back of her seat forward so that Quent and Erica could get out. Erica turned gravely once she was out of the car and said in her husky voice, “It was nice, people. Nice to meet you, Marie, and you, Mack. I hope I’ll see you soon again.”

  “No doubt of that,” Quent said with that effervescence that had been his all evening. “Be right back,” he said.

  They sat with the motor running. Quent walked Erica up to her door. Mack heard Marie sniff. He tapped a cigarette on the horn ring and lit it. “Pretty girl,” he said casually.

  “Oh, sure,” Marie said.

  “Don’t you like her, baby?”

  “She’s just fine, Mack. Just absolutely fine. I haven’t had such a gay little evening since I was a Girl Reserve.” She imitated Erica’s voice, saying, “Just a little dry sherry, please. The music is quite loud here, isn’t it?”

  Mack glanced at the porch. Erica and Quent were standing under the porch light. He saw them shake hands and nearly choked. “Like going back to when I was seventeen,” he said wonderingly. “No. Sixteen. By seventeen I wouldn’t let them get away with that.”

  “You were a dog, of course,” Marie said.

  Quent came striding back out to the car, got in beside Marie, and pulled the door shut. Mack started up fast, the powerful motor roaring in the quiet of the darkened street.

  “How do you like her?” Quent asked eagerly.

  “She seems like a very nice girl,” Marie said evenly.

  “Nice kid,” Mack agreed.

  “She’s really got me going,” Quent said. “I’m glad we all got along so good together. I was kind of afraid.”