T.C. Boyle Stories II: The Collected Stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle, Volume II

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

  “Hey,” Jason said, his smile narrowing till it was gone, “you want to see something?”

  “What?”

  He shot his eyes at the adults bent over their canapés and drinks, then came back to her. He lifted his chin to point behind her, down the steps of the pavilion where the walk wound its way into the depths of the zoo. “Out there, I mean?”

  She didn’t know what to say. The zoo was closed, yellow crime-scene tape—Do Not Cross—stretched across the path, and her mother had strictly forbidden her even to think for a single second about leaving the pavilion. And her mother meant it. The whole last week she’d been in a fury, constantly on the phone with her lawyer and the zoo people and the mayor’s office and anybody else she could harangue because they were threatening to cancel the permit for the wedding. Because of what had happened on Christmas. The accident. The attack. It was on the news, on Facebook, Twitter, everywhere—the police were investigating and the zoo was closed until further notice. But her mother had prevailed. Her mother had connections. Her mother always got what she wanted—and they’d reserved the pavilion a whole year in advance, because Megan and Dylan had met here at the zoo as interns on summer vacation from college and it was the only place in the world they would even consider exchanging vows. They’d hired the caterers, the DJ, sent out invitations. There was only one answer her mother would accept. Megan and Dylan got their pavilion, but the rest of the zoo was off-limits. To everybody. Period.

  She just looked at him. He knew the situation as well as she did.

  “I found something,” he said. “On the walk there? It’s like two hundred feet away.”

  “What?” she said.

  “Blood.”

  Tara

  Typically, there had been one or two tiger attacks in the reserve each year, usually during the monsoon season when people went into the park to collect grasses for their animals. Over the years, going all the way back to the last century, long before the park existed—and long before that too, as long as people and wild animals had been thrust together in the same dwindling patchwork of bush and farmer’s fields—the region had had its share of man-eaters, but these had been hunted down and eliminated. Now, after the second and third victims were found lying in a tangle of disarticulated limbs along a path that lay just a mile from the site of the first attack, Billy Arjan Singh began to have second thoughts. Publicly he continued to maintain that the attacks could have come from any of the park’s tigers, especially those that had been injured or were too old and feeble to hunt their customary prey—and Tara, demonstrably, was as young and vigorous as any animal out there—but privately he began to admit the possibility that his experiment had gone terribly wrong.

  There came a respite. Several months went by without report of any new victims, though one man—a woodcutter—went missing and was never heard from again. Billy dismissed the rumor. People went missing all the time—they ran off, changed their names, hitchhiked to Delhi, flew to America, died of a pain up under the ribcage and lay face-down in some secret place till the jackals, carrion birds and worms had done with them. All was quiet. He began the process of obtaining permits to bring another animal into the country, this one from the zoo at Frankfurt.

  Then it all went to hell. A woman—a grandmother barely five feet tall—was snatched while hanging laundry out to dry and half the village witnessed it—and before the week was out, a bicyclist was taken. In rapid succession, all along the perimeter of the park, six more people were killed, always in daylight and always by a tiger that seemed to come out of nowhere. Outrage mounted. The newspapers were savage. Finally, Billy gave in to the pressure and mounted a hunt to put an end to the killings—and, he hoped, prove that it was some other animal and not Tara that was responsible.

  In all, before the tiger—a tiger—was shot, twenty-four people lost their lives. Billy was there for the kill, along with two of the park’s rangers, though when the tiger came to the bait—a goat bleating out its discomfort where it had wound itself around the stake to which it was tethered—his hand fluttered on the trigger. They followed the blood spoor to a copse and stood at a safe distance as the tiger’s anguished breathing subsided, then Billy moved in alone to deliver the coup de grace. The animal proved to be young—and female—but it had no distinguishing marks and to the last Billy insisted it wasn’t Tara. Whether it was or not, no one will ever know, because he chose to bury the carcass there deep in the jungle, where the mad growth of vegetation would obliterate the evidence in a week’s time. In any case, the attacks ceased and life in the villages went back to normal.

  Vijay

  He always had specific things he wanted to see—the African savanna, where zebra, kudu, ostrich and giraffe wandered back and forth as if there were no walls or fences and you could watch them grazing, watch them pissing and shitting and sometimes frisking around, and the koalas, he loved the koalas, and the bears and the chimps, the little things that were different about them each time he visited—but Vik and Manny didn’t care about any of that. For them the zoo was just a place where they could watch girls, get stoned and kick back without anybody coming down on them. He didn’t mind. He felt that way himself sometimes—today, for instance. Today especially. It was Christmas. They were out of school. He’d worked hard all term and now it was time to let loose.

  They barely glanced at the savanna but went on into the primate center as if they’d agreed on it beforehand. There was hardly anybody around. The chimps looked raggedy, the gorillas were asleep. Vik wrinkled up his nose. “Man, it stinks in here. Don’t these things ever take a bath?”

  “Or use underarm deodorant,” Manny put in. “They could at least use deodorant, couldn’t they? I mean, for our sake?” And then he was lifting his voice till he was shouting: “Hey, all you monkeys—yeah, I’m talking to you! You got no consideration, you know that?”

  And this was funny, flat-out hilarious, because they were all feeling the effects of the weed and weed made everything hilarious. He laughed till he began to feel oxygen deprivation, Vik’s face red and Manny’s too.

  “Remember the time,” he was saying, trying to catch his breath, “like maybe two years ago or something, when we were here and those dudes were painting the cage?”

  “Oh, yeah, yeah,” Manny gasped, and they were all laughing again at the thought of it, the day they’d come into the ape house and there were two workers inside one of the empty cages, painting the back wall, and they’d all crowded up to the bars making jokes about the new species of ape on exhibit and how clever it was—Look, it’s Bigfoot, and look, look, it can dip a paintbrush, cooooool—until one of the workers turned around and told them to go fuck themselves.

  Was it really all that funny? Yes. Yes it was. Because it was a routine now and they could call it up anytime they wanted, the three of them united and the rest of the world excluded.

  So they laughed, drifting from one exhibit to another, not really paying attention, and if there were any girls to look at they were few and far between. Because it was a holiday. Because it was Christmas. At some point they were out front of the snack bar—the Leaping Lemur Café, another joke—and Manny said he wanted a fresh orange drink to make the vodka go down and maybe some nachos. “Anybody want nachos?”

  Vijay got himself a Coke because his throat was dry and watched the kid behind the counter pour a glob of neon-orange cheese over Manny’s nachos while the only other people there—a mother with a baby in a stroller and an older couple gobbling hot dogs—looked on as if the whole world had come to a stop. The kid behind the counter had the name of some pathetic metal band tattooed across his knuckles—Slayer—but since there were six letters and only five knuckles, the er had been squeezed in on the last knuckle, which was the smallest one, and what did that say about planning and foresight? Not to mention basic IQ? After that, they drifted over to the big cats, hoping to see them up and about, if only for the sake of breaking
the tedium, but the lions—a male and two females—were lying there unconscious. “Shit, look at them,” Vik said. “They might as well be rugs.”

  “Zoned out,” Manny said. And then he got up on the metal rail where you’re not supposed to be and started waving his arms and shouting—“Hey, lions, hey! Hey, I’m talkin’ to you!”

  Vik joined in and this was funny too, the two of them goofing, the lions stretched out as if they were dead, the sky closing in and everything as dim and gray and depressing as only a winter’s afternoon in San Francisco could be. They began to roar then, roar like lions, and he joined in just for the sheer crazy throat-rattling rush of it, but still the lions never moved, not even to twitch their tails. They all three roared till they were almost out of breath and then they broke down and laughed till they were.

  Finally Vik straightened up and said, “I don’t know—this is boring. I’m ready to bag it, how about you?”

  Manny shrugged.

  And then, surprising himself because it really didn’t matter one way or the other and they were going to have to go home eventually, everybody knew that, he said, “What about the tiger?”

  Siobhan

  Her mother wasn’t watching, her mother was busy air-kissing everybody and waving her wine glass, and once the music got going people started dancing, which provided a natural screen. She ducked away under the cover of swaying gowns and tuxedoed shoulders and met Jason in the bushes just off the path, where nobody could see them. “Come on,” he whispered, taking her by the hand, “it’s this way.”

  She could feel her heart going. Her mother would kill her if she found out. Absolutely kill her. Plus this was Jason, a boy two years older, and he was holding her hand. He led her through a fringe of low palms and then back onto the walk where it looped away out of sight of the pavilion. It was dusk now and the bushes seemed denser, dangerous suddenly, as if anything could have gotten loose and hidden itself there in the shadows, waiting to spring out at them. The birds were chattering, the ones in the trees and the ones in the cages somewhere up ahead. Suddenly Jason let go of her hand and darted up the path, his dress shoes slapping at the pavement. She hurried on, nearly frantic with excitement, the smells coming to her now, the sounds of furtive movement, the low coughs and snorts and muffled roars. But there he was, just ahead, down on his knees and gesturing to her, the soles of his shoes palely glowing and his suit jacket bunched at the shoulders. “Over here,” he said, trying to keep his voice down. “Hurry!”

  When she came up to him she saw that he was bent over a dark uneven stain on the concrete, a spot no bigger around than one of the desktops in school. “See it?” he whispered.

  She looked down, leaned closer, then straightened up, hands on hips. “That’s just a wet spot.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “And why do you think it’s wet? And it’s not just water, believe me”—and here he pressed his palm to the stain and then spread open his hand for her. “See that? See it? That’s blood.”

  She saw nothing. Just his five fingers, the ones he’d wrapped around hers a minute ago, and his palm, which might have been slightly darker—or damper. “That’s not blood,” she said.

  “Is so.” He gave her a strained look, his features melting into shadow. The sound of the music from the pavilion suddenly came clear, drowning out the birds and whatever else was out there. He held her eyes and wiped his hands on his pants. “Diluted blood anyway.”

  Vijay

  If the lions were comatose at this point, the tiger gave them what they wanted. The minute they appeared there at the edge of its enclosure—an open pit with a dry moat at the bottom of the wall and some fake rocks and a raked-over tree stump in the background—it looked up at them and started pacing. Or more than pacing—it was slinking, flowing like water from one place to another, its feet almost a blur and the muscles flexing hard in its shoulders. They all just stood there for a moment, watching it. He could feel the weed blurring things and the vodka trying to counteract it, burning through him. He felt rocked, dizzy almost, as if everything were floating a couple of inches off the ground. Vik said, “Now that’s what they’re supposed to do—give us some action. I mean, we’re paying customers, right? Or at least moms is.”

  And then, without warning, Vik jumped atop the restraining bar and began roaring down at the tiger. The effect was immediate: the tiger froze, staring up at him in confusion. Vik roared, flapped his arms. The tiger seemed to cringe, then its hackles rose and all of a sudden it was flowing faster, around and around, down into the moat below them and then back up and around again. Next thing Manny climbed up and they were both roaring and Manny started sailing nachos out into the void, one after the other, the tiger shrinking away from them as if they were on fire. “Ka-boom!” Manny shouted. “Ka-boom!”

  They laughed. They were excited. And though Vijay knew it was wrong, knew they could get in trouble, knew the animals shouldn’t be disturbed, let alone harassed, and that every sign warned against it, he found himself scrabbling around for something to throw—a pine cone, here was a pine cone in the dirt and he was snatching it up and rushing back to take aim. Why? He couldn’t have said, then or afterward. It was something primal, that was all. They had this thing on the run, this big jungle cat that was as scared as the fluffed-up little Pomeranian in the apartment next door, and when the first pine cone went skittering across the concrete floor of the enclosure he took off running for another one, for a stick, for anything.

  That was when he heard the sound Manny made—it wasn’t a scream but something hoarser, deeper, worse—and he turned round to see the tiger’s head burst up right there at the lip of the enclosure and the tiger’s claws digging in, the big paws and clenched forearms clinging impossibly to the molded concrete for the smallest fraction of an instant before the striped flanks came surging into the picture and it was there like some CGI demon, grabbing hold of Manny and taking him down on the pavement in a quick thrash of limbs and a noise that was like a generator cranking up again and again. Vik’s face. Manny down. The noise. And then the cat was on Vik and Vik was screaming and before he could think the thing was on him, tearing at the back of his neck and dropping him to the pavement as if he’d been sledge-hammered. He was trying to ball up and protect his head, the smell of blood and rot and the froth of saliva hot in his face, thinking nothing, thinking death, his shoulders and forearms raked and bitten and his feet a thousand miles away, when the tiger suddenly let go of him.

  Tatiana

  In the wild, a Siberian of Tatiana’s age might have a range as extensive as sixty square miles, but she’d never been in the wild, had never known anyplace but this and the zoo in Denver, and her territory was measured in square feet, not miles. Industry standards vary on the minimum size of big cat exhibits, but restraining walls are mandated at sixteen and a half feet, a height no tiger, no matter the provocation or duress, could ever hope to surmount. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the incident at the San Francisco Zoo, the wall was found to be substandard, measuring just twelve and a half feet from the floor of the moat to its highest point.

  Siobhan

  She managed to make it back without her mother catching her—and what her mother didn’t know would never hurt her, would it? That’s what Jason said anyway, and, giggling, she agreed with him as he led her to the bar through the dense swaying forest of adults, who were dancing now, their arms in motion and heads bobbing to the beat. The DJ was playing Beyoncé, Fergie, Adele, Megan’s favorites. Megan was dancing with Dylan and the bridesmaids all had their boyfriends out on the dance floor now too. The bass was so strong it was like an earthquake and she could feel it thrumming through the soles of her shoes. People made way for them at the bar as if they were celebrities—and they were, or she was anyway, flower girl, sister of the bride—and she asked for a Diet Coke, no ice, and Jason got a club soda and cranberry with two cherries and a shot of grenadine, then they lined up at the food table
for dim sum and ribs and still her mother never came looking for her.

  Jason piled up his plate and then set it back down again on the table. “Oh, shit,” he said, “I better go wash my hands. Watch my plate?”

  “Jason, it wasn’t blood.”

  He gave her a look of disbelief. He was tall for his age and his head seemed to bob up over his neck like E.T.’s, and she wondered about that, if she could give him a secret moniker—just two initials—when she texted Tiffany and Margaret to tell them she was hanging out with a boy at the wedding. She liked the way his hair was clipped in two perfect arches around his ears. She liked the way he was grinning at her now. “I wouldn’t want to catch AIDS,” he said, holding out his palms as if to deny it.

  And then he was gone and she started eating by herself at a table in the far corner of the pavilion, but when he came back, conspicuously wiping his hands on the legs of his suit pants, he picked up his plate and came right to her. They didn’t say anything for a long while, eating in silence and staring out at the adults as if they were going to have to take a quiz on the party. She heard her mother’s high whinnying laugh and the next minute her father was leading her mother out onto the dance floor and she watched them settle into some weird gyrating sort of dance they must have learned in college back in the seventies. “You know what?” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen my parents dance before.”

  “My parents would never dance,” Jason said. She followed his eyes to where they sat stiffly in two chairs pushed up against the rail, Jason’s grandmother just to the right of them and just as stiff. “Even if somebody picked up an AK and said ‘Dance or die!’”

  “What about you?” she asked and she felt her cheeks color. “I mean, do you dance?”