Tiger Tales

1

Footnotes
1  This is a tale told by Sadji, a telepathic tiger who has been wintering with Jane at a biker bar in remote Washington State. The bikers, who rarely ride any more, call themselves the Balls of Steel.



        Thanksgiving had come and gone when finally, Dylan kept his promise to leave. He too seemed to have changed since Jane took over the roadhouse. For one thing, he began to bathe regularly, combed his hair, and wore clean clothes. This had the effect of making him look younger; and I realized one day when I studied him, that he was probably only in his middle years.
         He dallied about leaving. “I thought you couldn’t wait to get out of here,” Jane said to him; to which he responded by looking hurt and asking her if she wanted to get rid of him. When she reassured him that was not the case, he brightened at once and told her that if she wanted, he would continue to help her in the kitchen for a little while – he was a wonderful cook – and Jane told him he could stay as long as he liked.
         Twice he packed up his miserable little jeep and drove off, and twice he came back the next day. It seemed hard for him to leave.
         “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” he said to Jane. “One day this place is sucking the life out of me, and the next I can’t leave.”
         “Habits are hard to break,” Jane said kindly.
         “You think that’s it?”
         “And new lives are hard to start.”
         “Oh. Yeah.”
         So after a fairly outrageous Christmas party in which two females nearly killed one another when both received gifts from a male each one of them claimed as their own, Dylan finally decided he had to leave. He packed up the jeep and then came in and sat down at the bar.
         We had just come back from our breakfast by the stream; it was still early. Jane and Pussy went into the kitchen, paying him little attention; but I sensed immediately that he was upset and so came over and nuzzled his leg.
         “Oh Sadji, buddy. Nice kitty,” he said, and stroked behind my ears. He had strong hands and I always enjoyed the way he stroked behind my ears.
         I thought to him, “It’s hard to leave. But you must.” Of course, he didn’t hear me.
         Perhaps he felt something, though, because he said, “It’s like my foot’s nailed to the floor. You know what I mean, kitty?”
         I nodded.
         At first he stared, then he grew wide-eyed. Then he said, “Did you just nod?”
         I nodded again.
         “Holy shit. Holy, holy shit.” Then he called for the women to come out of the kitchen. “Something’s weird with the cat,” he said.
         Jane looked over to make sure I wasn’t physically hurt or out of sorts. But it was Pussy who said, “You mean, weird like he understands every fuckin’ word you say?”
         Dylan was dumbfounded. “He does?” he said in the tone of a child.
         Pussy nodded. “Yup. The goddamn tiger can talk. Or, I should say, he can understand you and respond. Jane says he thinks to her but I can’t hear him. Not yet anyway.”
         Dylan looked at me, looked back at Pussy. He kept this up for a little while, then said to me, “Well, smart guy, do you think I’m stuck?”
         I nodded vigorously. Dylan jumped. He asked Jane, “What’s he saying?”
         I thought to Jane, “Tell Dylan he’s found a little happiness here since we came, and he’s afraid he won’t find any where he’s going.”
         She told him and he jumped again. “Holy shit,” he repeated over and over. Finally, he turned to the women and said, “Do you think he’s right?”
         They both nodded. Pussy said, “Where ya going, Dylan?”
         He shook his head sadly. “I was going to go visit my brother, but I haven’t talked to him in ten years.”
         “Go and find out,” I thought. Jane told him.
         “Find out what?” he asked me.
         “Find out if he’s still your brother,” I thought. Again, Jane translated.
         Dylan’s eyes became moist and he said, “What if he’s not?”
         I thought, “What if he is? Either option would be huge to you. And you will handle whichever one it is.”
         “What if I can’t?”
         “You can.”
         I have learned that for some reason, humans tend to believe a talking tiger. Pussy says it is because he is a magical creature. I don’t quite understand the sacredness of magic to humans, because to tigers it is merely ordinary, but I accept this. In any case, Dylan seemed to accept my conviction that he would, whatever the outcome of his journey, be all right.
         “What the hell,” he said, hugging me, and then the two women. Then he got into his jeep and drove away.
         When he did not return the next day or the next, people at the roadhouse came to believe he had finally left. At the end of a week, they held a wake for him, complete with a coffin made of old shipping crates carried in a slow and somber biker cortege up and down the forgotten road, followed by a wild party that lasted two and a half days.
         Just after Dylan’s departure, we had an arrival. A taxi pulled up to the roadhouse and screeched to a desperate halt. A grizzled older woman with amazing long white hair and an expression that could scare the peace out of Jesus stepped out, paid the driver, cursed his driving, and marched into the bar.
         “Anyone seen Marcy?” she yelled to the few daytime customers. Marcy was a relatively new member to the Balls of Steel. She had appeared one day on an antique Harley that she claimed to have stolen from her mother, and begged sanctuary from this very person. Because of her plight and the size of her breasts, the Balls of Steel were quick to agree, and she had remained in their company for the past six months.
         But her mother, whom she described as having psychic powers mixed with a bloodhound’s tracking skills, had found her.
         It was an ugly few days as the two women celebrated their reunion with screams that could be heard across oceans and bouts of fisticuffs that reduced the furniture in Marcy’s motel room to sticks of kindling. Marcy was disappointed that her mate, a male named Tiny, who was six feet four inches tall and smelled inexplicably of spring breezes, refused to intervene.
         “Are you crazy?” he said to her. “I know certain death when I see it.”
         Marcy and her mother, who was named Gert, fought to a draw over six days' time when finally it was agreed that Gert would settle down if she could get what she wanted; which was not, as everyone supposed, the antique Harley. With a sage’s understanding mixed with desperation for peace, Jane pointed out that what Gert really wanted was to stay. She cleaned out another room in the abandoned motel – at a considerable distance from Marcy – and said to Gert, “Why don’t you stay a while?”
         The screams ended at once. For over two weeks people saw little of Gert, but I observed her beating the softening ground behind the motel with a madman’s fervor, using a pickaxe and an old hoe she found in the shed. After ten days she had cleared a respectable garden plot, and had planted herbs in blatant defiance of the lingering winter.
         Marcy shook her head and said, “The only thing she likes better than fighting and fucking is gardening.”
         To the end of making the peace long lasting, several male members of the Balls of Steel offered their services to Gert, who was hardy and shapely and whose face, when she was not set on murder, was rather pleasant. Most of them she drove off with the pickaxe, but one, who was possessed of a shy smile when he wanted to be, got her to pause. His name was Sandy, referring to the thick straight hair that he could cause to fall over his eyes when wooing females.
         Sandy made a special effort and went to see her in her garden. “Let’s face it,” he said, making a lewd gesture. “You’re a bitch. Take the edge off.”
         He flashed his smile and she flashed her breasts, which were surprisingly firm and shapely for her age. Then began a love affair that was to become legendary in the area, partly for the outlandish howls that emerged from the motel at all hours of the day or night and partly from its influence on the fortunes of the Balls of Steel.
         Because it was Sandy who helped Gert with her gardening, and it was their need for supplies that caused the Balls of Steel members to realize they were, contrary to appearances, among the most unique and special of humans.
         Winter was barely passing when Gert planted her herb garden, and despite skepticism from the Balls of Steel in general and her daughter in particular, she tortured the reluctant earth with a she-bear’s rage, as if the ground could be beaten into production. Only Sandy had faith in her. When she called for tools, he stole them; when she called for labor, he worked with her; and when she called for fertilizer, he made an amazing discovery.
         Not having money and not wanting to disappoint her, Sandy raided the roadhouse septic tank for Gert’s fertilizer, fearing her wrath more than potential contagion from the fertilizer in question. To everyone’s astonishment, two days after the first application, the little garden was full of lush, green herbs. Gert, delighted, ordered Sandy to sample some of the produce, which he declined.
         “Maybe they’ll taste funny,” he said with a guilty look.
         “Aw bullshit,” Gert replied “They’ll taste as good as they look, which is great. Here, try the parsley, it makes your breath smell good.”
         “Not this parsley,” he said, but resistance was futile and Gert shoved a handful of the stuff into his mouth.
         It was delicious. It tasted like parsley, mint, meat, and chocolate cake.
         When the Balls of Steel discovered the amazing herbs that often tasted like whatever you wanted them to and complimented the poorest of cuisines, Jane suggested they could make money selling them to restaurants. Gert protested that it was just a little garden and it would take forever to grow enough for resale, but Sandy said he had an idea. That night the strongest males cleared a large section of field and planted seeds in a soft, malodorous mixture of dark soil and septic tank murk. In the morning the herbs were sturdy sprouts, and by nightfall, they were solid young plants. By the next evening, they were ready for harvest.
         “What the hell kind of fertilizer did you buy?” Gert demanded of Sandy.
         When she discovered the truth, she flew into a rage. She had buried the tip of the pickaxe in his backside and was trying to draw it out in order to bury it in his head, when Jane intervened.
         As she applied her best medical science to the nasty puncture wound in Sandy’s right buttock, Jane said, “Well all right, this fertilizer’s illegal, but what isn’t? And it works great, and if no one gets sick by next week, what the hell. It’s for sure the price is right and there’s plenty more where it came from.” The decision was made to wait and see if anyone who had eaten the herbs became ill.
         No one did. In fact, most of them claimed to feel increased energy and others swore they looked better. One of the females who was famous for her matted hair, awoke one morning to find that her tresses had combed themselves and lay fetchingly about her shoulders. Meanwhile, Jane discovered a frightfully pretentious restaurant in Los Angeles that wanted the herbs and would pay absurd prices for them. It was agreed that a few of the men would pack them in coolers and drive to Los Angeles on their motorcycles.
         It was a life changing event. When the men came back, they were reborn. “Man, it was good to ride,” they said as one.
         Gert shook her head in wonder as she patted Sandy gently on his bruised and stitched behind. “Go figure,” she said. “God’s most perfect garden, and it grows from shit.”
         The club members swore an oath to keep the source of the herbs secret and made plans to cultivate the field, whose rightful owners had abandoned the property before memory. In an effort to contribute to the well being of their cash crop, Balls of Steel members insisted Pussy and Jane cook abundant, healthy food, which they ate heartily and in good time, deposited into the septic.
         Zip observed with great solemnity, “Our shit is magic.”
         Pussy said to Jane, “You see, Sadji means that magic is real. All the magic I waited for in those early mornings when I was a child, that never came to me, has come to me now.”