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What do you do when Fate shows up in your rose bed with three-inch canines and retractable claws? Robert--not Bob--Stevenson wakes up one morning in his Vermont home to find a Bengal tiger sitting in his rose garden. Is the tiger real? Or has the illness that has invaded every other part of Robert's body finally and quite literally gone to his head? Remember, once you get on a tiger's back, there is no dismounting!
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David Elliott
David Elliott is a New York Times bestselling author of books for young people including In the Wild, On the Farm, and Finn Throws a Fit!. His middle grade novels include The Transmogrification of Roscoe Wizzle, The Evangeline Mudd books, and most recently, Jeremy Cabbage and the Living Museum of Human Oddballs and Quadruped Delights. David teaches writing at Colby-Sawyer College and Lesley University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. He is currently working on a collection of ghost stories.
First published by GemmaMedia in 2011.
GemmaMedia230 Commercial StreetBoston, MA 02109 USA
www.gemmamedia.com
© 2011 by David Elliott
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may bereproduced in any manner whatsoever without writtenpermission from the publisher, except in the case of briefquotations embodied in critical articles of reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5
978-1-936846-05-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cover by Night & Day Design
Inspired by the Irish series of books designed for adult literacy, Gemma Open Door Foundation provides fresh stories, new ideas, and essential resources for young people and adults as they embrace the power of reading and the written word.
Brian Bouldrey
North American Series Editor
For a man, a monkey, and a banana
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
When Robert closed his eyes, he could see them. Each rolling along after the next. Like the cars on a toy train. Seven words. So simple a child could understand.
But the words weren’t the problem. It was the sentence they formed. He couldn’t make sense of it.
Keep it together, old boy, he told himself. You’re having a senior moment. That’s all.
He was standing in his own kitchen. Fingers gripping the broad lip of the farmer’s sink Claire had chosen when they bought the house. The porcelain, cool and familiar under his hand, was still unblemished after all these years.
How many times had he admired it? And how many hours had Claire stood there, just where he stood now? Humming, her eyes lifted to the window as she rinsed a cup or dried a plate. Thousands, he’d bet, if you added them up. Maybe even more.
He spoke the sentence aloud.
There . . . is . . . a . . . tiger . . . in . . . the . . . roses.
There is a tiger in the roses.
He opened his eyes. The water was still running. The glass was still in his hand. And the tiger was still standing in the roses. Exactly as it had been when he had risen from his morning nap, awakening with a terrible thirst.
Terrific! he said aloud. I’m seeing things. What next?
The tiger, all ember and ash, must have weighed five hundred pounds. It shifted this weight to its haunches and sat down almost as if it had asked the same question. What next?
It had to be some trick of the light. The way the sun was shining through the hemlocks. Or maybe he was still half asleep. Maybe that was it. Maybe he was still dreaming.
He set the glass in the sink, looked down at the pine floorboards and counted. Taking his time. Forcing himself as he had when a boy playing Ghost-inthe-Graveyard with the Kennedy kids next door.
One Mississippi.
Two Mississippi.
He looked up.
It was impossible! The tiger was under the arbor now! Smashing his prized William Baffins. Or were the roses Henry Hudsons? He wasn’t sure. They were named after a northern explorer, though. He was certain of that. He might be losing his mind, but he knew that much.
He blinked. The creature blinked back and it occurred to him that the tiger was having as much trouble understanding him as he was the tiger. But that was ridiculous! This was his house. His garden. Those were his roses, whatever their name. He had planted them. Watered them when they needed it. Weeded them when the burdock took over.
Or had every year until this one. This summer Miles had done all that. But still. That wasn’t the point.
The point was that he belonged here. The tiger did not! This was Vermont! The Green Mountain State. Birthplace of not one but two presidents. So what if one of them was Chester Alan Arthur? That only proved it! It was the opposite of places where tigers roamed around snatching rice farmers out of their huts. India or Sumatra or Bangladesh. (He was sure there were tigers in Bangladesh. He remembered seeing a special about it on public television.)
Anyway, hadn’t the Chinese eaten all the tigers? Or used them in their medicine? Hadn’t he read that somewhere?
Medicine.
Yes! That had to be it.
His medicine.
Or as everyone else called it, his medication.
He lowered his eyes to the windowsill. Some of the bottles were white, the color of spoiled milk. Others were a harsh, translucent green. Lined up against the maple sash, they formed a miniature skyline. A science fiction notion of a future metropolis. How ironic, then, that the bottle-city on his windowsill did represent a future. His. Or what was left of it anyway.
And, unfortunately for Robert, it was not a city whose residents always got along. What had the doctors warned him about? Counter-indications? Wasn’t that it? But had any of them actually mentioned hallucinations? That’s what he wanted to know now. Had any of them said anything about seeing jungle cats in your William Baffins?
He tried to remember, but the doctors talked so much. And for all he understood, they might as well have been speaking Martian. Anyway, it didn’t matter. The details weren’t important. He’d decided that early on. When he first heard the diagnosis. Something bad was happening. That was all he needed to know. Something very, very bad.
He turned his gaze back to the arbor. The tiger yawned.
Maybe if he stepped away from the window. Maybe if he did something else, thought about something else. Maybe if he did that, when he came back to the window, the tiger would be gone. And he could forget about it.
Okay.
Not forget about it.
But accept it at least.
The last couple of years had taught him that. The last couple of years had taught him that he could accept anything. No matter how absurd, how impossible.
Claire’s fading away like that.
The devastating news of his own illness.
Was a tiger on the lawn any more shocking?