Tiger, Tiger

by Philip Caveney

“I’m sure it bloody would, but I couldn’t do that!”

  “Why not?”

  He stared at her.

  “Well … because … because it wouldn’t be the truth. And anyway, I always shoot to win.”

  Melissa sighed.

  “I had a feeling you’d say something like that,” she said.

  The contest got under way and the two Gurkha officers who had drawn first shot got out their rifles and took their place on the shooting line. They tossed a coin to see who would go first. The crowd drew back and went quiet. The first man scored three bulls and three outers; the second four bulls and two outers. Amidst applause, he went to await the next round, while his opponent consoled himself with a can of beer. Another two men shot next. Then it was Harry and Bob’s turn.

  Harry took out his rifle from its case and approached the shooting line. Bob let out a low whistle of admiration when he saw the weapon.

  “Here, that’s a beaut. It’s an old Martini-Henry isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. A 450/400.”

  “Like to sell it?”

  “No thank you.”

  “Well, it’s a nice old gun, but not the sort I’d choose for a competition like this. Bit old-fashioned, if you ask me.” He hefted his own rifle. “Now you take my gun here. Had it custom-made in Oz. It’s got a…”

  “Mr. Beresford, this is the only rifle I possess and furthermore, the only weapon I’d ever feel truly happy with.” Harry reached into his pocket and took out a coin, which he flipped in the air. “Heads or tails?” he demanded.

  “Heads!”

  Harry unclenched his fist.

  “It’s tails. After you Mr. Beresford.”

  “Suit y’self.” Bob took his position on the line in the designated kneeling position and sighted on the fresh target, some thirty feet away. He began to fire, rapidly, methodically, loading a fresh cartridge into the chamber after each shot. After the sixth, he stood up confidently with a smile on his face, as the shouter raced over to check the score. The man waved his arms excitedly.

  “Six bulls!” he cried joyfully. The crowd broke into spontaneous applause. Bob leaned towards Harry with a triumphant smile on his face.

  “Good luck,” he said, and he made no attempt to hide the sarcasm in his voice.

  With a frown, Harry approached the firing line, knowing that the very best he could hope for was a draw. He waved to the shouter and called out. “Announce them one at a time! I don’t want to waste any bullets!” This brought some laughter from the crowd, who were obviously rooting for him.

  “Go on, Tiger!” yelled a couple of voices, though what they expected him to do in the face of such competition was anybody’s guess. He kneeled down on the line and slid the wooden stock of the rifle against his right shoulder. It had been a long time since he felt it there and it was oddly reassuring. He loaded a cartridge into the chamber and took a long careful aim. His eyes were not as good as they once were and he had to stare very hard at the small white target before it came into focus. He steadied himself, squeezed the trigger, felt the abrupt jolting kick of the old rifle as it fired. The crowd held its breath as the shouter hurried over to the target.

  “One bull!” he yelled and scuttled back to safety.

  Harry took his time with the reloading, knowing that hurrying made a man clumsy. Again he took a long aim, wanting to be absolutely sure before firing. He squeezed the trigger.

  “Two bulls!” A murmur of anticipation ran through the crowd. The old man still knew how to do it. Maybe the first shot had been a fluke, but two in a row, that wasn’t bad at all. Over in the crowd, Melissa glanced at Bob. “You could have missed just one shot,” she whispered.

  “I told you,” he hissed. “I never miss.”

  Harry squared up for his third shot and got another bull. Likewise, with his fourth. The crowd was growing tense with excitement. In the silence, the slightest movement was unbearably loud. Taking aim for his fifth shot, Harry paused for a moment to mop at his brow. Sweat was running down into his eyes and he muttered to himself for a moment, before resighting. A nervous cough in the crowd made him hesitate and he let the barrel of the gun drop again before realigning his aim. He took a deep breath, squeezed the trigger.

  “Five bulls!” The crowd broke into spontaneous applause then corrected themselves, remembering that there was one more shot to go.

  Harry took a cartridge from his belt, fumbled it, picked it up again. His eyes were watering from the effort of peering with such intense concentration. He wished he’d thought to bring a hat. He considered asking if anybody had one he could borrow, but thought better of it. One more shot and he was home. Then of course, there would be another shoot-off, because a draw was no use to anybody in this contest. He wilted at the thought of it. He wasn’t sure if his eyes, or for that matter, his nerves, could take another round of this kind of punishment. He shook his head, wiped the sweat from his forehead. Then he realized that everybody else was waiting patiently for him to shoot and he lifted the rifle, aimed it. His hands were clammy, they seemed to stick to the wood of the gun. In front of him, the target seemed to fade to a white fuzzy blob, then redefine itself, dissolve, sharpen, dissolve.…

  The trick was to fire when it came into focus.

  He stroked the trigger with his finger. The gun recoiled, the shot felt good but he had doubts about it. He waited in the silence while the shouter raced eagerly to the target. The man came to a halt, gazing at the holes in the rings as though they foretold his own destiny. Then his shoulders sagged, he gazed up at the crowd.

  “One outer,” he said flatly.

  A great collective groan spilled from the crowd. Harry’s loss was now their loss. They had so much wanted the old man to win. He took it with all the good grace he could muster, turning away with a shrug and a smile and they loved him for it. He strolled back to much applause and a consoling hug from Melissa. Ironically, for the moment at least, he was the winner.

  “Oh, Uncle Harry, you were magnificent. That was so close.…”

  “Yeah, great shootin’ Mr. Sullivan. You’re a tough man to beat.” Bob cranked Harry’s hand enthusiastically but his eyes suggested that he resented losing the adoration of the crowd, even if it was only for a short time. “But look here, now that you’ve proved what a good shot you are, surely you’ll help me tackle this tiger?”

  Harry raised his eyebrows ever so slightly.

  “You mean to say you haven’t bagged him yet?”

  Bob was quite unaware of the sarcasm in Harry’s voice.

  “Sat up all last night over his kill. Didn’t see hide nor hair of the bugger. But when I fell asleep, he managed to make off with the carcass without waking me.… I mean, strewth, Mr. Sullivan, the calf was roped to the ground! Have you ever heard tell of such a thing?”

  “Oh yes, indeed. Nothing a tiger does is straightforward, especially when he gets old and wily.… Is your tiger old and wily, Mr. Beresford?”

  “Well, how would I know that?”

  “By looking at the signs, man!”

  Bob frowned.

  “This is exactly what I’ve been telling you. What I know about tracking, you could print on the back of a matchbox. Oh, Mr. Sullivan, if you’d only come out to the place I was last night … have a look at the tracks, see if you could give me a bit of advice. What do you say?”

  Harry glanced not at Bob, but at Melissa. She was gazing at him hopefully, the same expression she used to use when she was younger and the pair of them were walking past the ice-cream parlour in Kuala Trengganu. He had never been able to resist the look then and time had in no way hardened him.

  “Well…” he murmured, “I appear to be fifty dollars down today … and as a professional tracker, I suppose I should ask a fee. After all, it’ll be nothing to you if you’re so certain of winning the contest here … so if you’re prepared to pay me fifty dollars for my work, I suppose it’s alright.”

  “Done! We could drive out there tomorrow afternoon, afte
r my lessons. I’ll pick you up in my Land Rover around three o’clock, alright?”

  “Just as you wish.”

  At this moment, Bob was called away for the next round of the shoot-off, so Harry and Melissa found a couple of cane chairs and settled down to watch the remainder of the contest. People kept wandering over to Harry to slap him on the back and say what a close thing it had been. Harry bore this with quiet humility and Melissa had to stifle a laugh when she saw the look of silent desperation on his face.

  “They are right, you know,” she observed. “It’s marvellous considering it must be years since you’ve even fired a gun. Doesn’t it make you want to take it up again?”

  “It depends what you mean by it,” he replied. “Shooting at paper targets is fine. I’ve nothing against that.”

  “Oh yes … but this tiger is making a nuisance of itself, after all.”

  Harry gazed at her calmly.

  “So everybody keeps telling me,” he said.

  The contest progressed through the morning. It was now approaching midday and the heat was rising steadily. Harry had to grudgingly admit that there was something awesome about the Australian’s abilities on the firing range. He acted like he had never heard of the word “lose” and round after round he came up with a perfect score of six bulls. But, thought Harry, there was also something very disagreeable in the way he swaggered out to take his turn, a certain assured arrogance that suggested that he knew only too well that he was unbeatable in this particular game. There was a marked insincerity whenever he shook the hand of the man he had just vanquished. Melissa, however, seemed blind to these traits. Whenever he was on the firing line, he had every little bit of her attention, and as each successive round went by, she would applaud wildly and say, “That’s another one to Bob!”

  Harry said nothing. He just sat quietly and observed. The final round came. Bob was matched against one of the Gurkha officers, the only man who had ever seemed to pose a threat. In the first round, they both scored a maximum of six points. Likewise with a second and third round. The heat now was becoming unbearable and a sudden death play-off was suggested. The men would fire alternately at two separate targets. The first to score anything less than a bull was out of the match. The round progressed in this fashion for a considerable time, but it was noticed that while the officer took longer and longer over his shots, Bob cracked away quickly, almost carelessly, yet his aim never faltered.

  “The day that young man misses an important shot,” thought Harry to himself, “there will be hell to pay. Somebody that sure of themselves could never live with failure.”

  At last, on his ninth successive shot, the Gurkha’s luck failed. A shot went wide, well into the outer rings and Bob Beresford was the winner. He strode back, basking in the applause, to receive his crate of beer and more importantly, the money.

  “Well, it looks like you should have put your five dollars on our friend there,” observed Harry drily.

  Melissa squeezed his hand. “That’s alright, Uncle Harry! You were marvellous anyway. Besides, five dollars isn’t exactly a fortune, is it?” She sighed, looked suddenly wistful. “I wish you liked Bob more than you do,” she said unexpectedly.

  He looked at her for a moment, unsure of what to say.

  “Well, I hardly … know him … anyway, what difference does it make?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just … it would be nice, that’s all.”

  “Well really, Melissa, I hardly see that it matters what I think. After all, if you— Hello, what’s going on now?” Harry was frankly grateful to have something to change the subject over. Bob was now the centre of a large crowd of people, mostly officers, and more money was changing hands. A Malay youth had suddenly appeared amongst the crowd and people were talking excitedly to him. He was grimfaced but after a while he nodded. There was some laughter and Harry saw that several notes were passed to the boy. He turned away from the crowd and began to walk towards the targets, carrying a beer bottle in his hand.

  “This must be the trick-shooting,” announced Melissa gleefully.

  “Trick-shooting?” Harry stared at her quizzically.

  “Bob said something about it before…”

  The boy came to a halt by the targets. The crowd had backed away and now Bob went down on one knee. Abruptly, the boy reached up and put the bottle on his head. Then he waited, a look of silent dread on his face.

  “Good God,” whispered Harry. “He’s going to…”

  He stood up, horrified, and began to walk towards the firing line. But he had taken only two steps when he heard the report of the rifle and saw the bottle shatter above the boy’s head. The crowd applauded enthusiastically, the boy ran forward, much relieved; but Harry felt a sudden surge of anger erupt within him. He strode purposefully forward, an expression of pure rage on his face. He reached Bob just as the Australian was getting to his feet.

  “You jumped-up bloody idiot!” exploded Harry. “What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at?”

  Bob gazed at him, open-mouthed in astonishment.

  “What’s the matter, Mr. Sullivan?” he cried.

  “What’s the matter? Of all the irresponsible, downright bloody dangerous tricks I’ve ever seen— Supposing you’d missed? Supposing the cartridge had misfired? That boy could have been killed and you stand there asking me what’s wrong!”

  Bob reddened a little.

  “Hey now, steady on. The boy was in no danger. I do that trick all the time!”

  “Do you now?”

  “Sure … and besides, he was well paid for that, twenty dollars. That’s more than he’d earn in a month!”

  “I’m quite prepared to believe that Mr. Beresford, but it would be of little consolation to him if your bullet had gone through his forehead, would it?”

  Some laughter went up from the onlookers nearest at hand and Bob realized just how public this little scene was.

  “Now look,” he said quietly. “You’re making too much of this. If I’ve pulled that stunt once, I’ve done it a thousand times. It’s perfectly safe … here!” Melissa had just hurried over to referee the bout and now Bob grabbed hold of her arm. “Just to show you how simple it is, I’ll shoot a bottle off Melissa’s head too!”

  “You damn well will not!” exclaimed Harry.

  “Oh, why not?” retorted Melissa brightly. “It sounds like fun!”

  “Fun?” roared Harry. “For heaven’s sake, girl, you’re as mad as he is.” He took hold of her other arm. “Come along now, it’s time you went home,” he said.

  “Uncle Harry! Don’t be ridiculous, let go of me!” For a moment Melissa was the object of a furious tug-of-war between the two men, but it was Bob who relinquished his hold first, embarrassed by the looks of pure delight on the faces of onlookers. Harry began to drag Melissa forcibly through the crowd. “Let go of me! How dare you!” Her face was crimson. She had never felt so humiliated in her life. The laughter of the people she passed rang in her ears. “Uncle Harry, I don’t want to go yet! For God’s sake, I’m eighteen years old!”

  “Not old enough to have learned any sense though,” growled Harry. “I’m sorry, Melissa, but I refuse to leave you here with that … that maniac. I’m merely doing what your father would do if he were here.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. My father hasn’t pulled a stunt like that since I was twelve!” They were moving away from the crowd now and Melissa’s voice rose in volume. “The plain fact is that you’re jealous!”

  He rounded on her in amazement.

  “I’m not jealous, Melissa, I’m concerned. Concerned for your welfare, that’s all. That oaf, Beresford…”

  “Oh, he’s an oaf is he?” Melissa had tears in her eyes now and she wanted to hurt the old man for humiliating her so thoughtlessly. “An oaf who can shoot better than you. An oaf who’s young and handsome, not a dried-up old stick who lives on memories!”

  Harry shrank from her, as if she had physically struck him. He closed his
eyes for a moment and Melissa saw, quite clearly, mirrored in the hard lines of his face, the misery, the loneliness of long years of solitude. She regretted her words the instant they had left her lips. Harry stood still for a moment, his head slightly bowed. He looked weary, suddenly rather ill. Abruptly, he opened his eyes, turned away, began to walk in the direction of the gates. She followed, a few faltering steps.

  “Oh, Uncle Harry … I didn’t mean that … I didn’t mean it.…”

  He stopped for a moment, not looking back at her.

  “Of course, you did, my dear. And you’re quite right. I am a silly old man. I don’t understand, that’s all. You go back to the others now. As you said, you’re eighteen years old. You can do whatever you like.” And he walked on again.

  Melissa stood where she was a moment, shocked by the cruelty of her own words. How could she have said such a thing? How could she? Through a blur of tears, she glanced back at the crowd she had just left. They were applauding some new stunt now and she could see Bob on the firing line, the object of their attention. Ahead of her, the lonely figure of an old man trudged slowly away, his head hanging in dejection. She hesitated for only a moment longer.

  “Uncle Harry, wait for me!” She ran after him, until she was walking alongside.

  “You were quite right, it was a dangerous thing to do. I wasn’t thinking very carefully, that’s all.…” She bit her lip. “We could … share a taxi home if you like … Uncle Harry? I’m so sorry, I was just angry. You aren’t angry with me, are you?” She walked along for several moments, gazing at him intently.

  He said nothing, but after they had walked a short distance, his lean gnarled hand reached out and took her own hand into its grasp. And they walked together towards the barracks gates in silence. Harry seemed to have retreated into a world of his own making. He kept hold of Melissa’s hand, but he did not speak once all through the taxi journey home. Melissa was obliged to tell the driver where to stop. Once there, Harry got out of the car and trudged slowly towards his garden gate. Melissa leaned from the window in concern.

  “Will I see you soon, Uncle Harry?” she called.