Pride (31 page)

Then, who knows by what combination of memory, learning, instinct, experience, desperation, Tuffy begins running faster, at a gallop, in a circle at the bottom of the pit, gaining acceleration, using this acceleration and the centrifugal force it generates to mount higher and higher on the sides of the wall until he's high enough to lunge, grapple, and scramble himself up onto the catwalk.

Jimmy stands transfixed. He holds on to the goad, tries to pull it up from over the edge of the pit to defend himself, but Tuffy is too quick.

He bounds the few yards to where Jimmy is standing, shocked, defenseless. He swings his mighty left paw at Jimmy's haunch, knocking him against the Wall of Death and probably breaking his spine with that first blow.

Then Tuffy is on top of Jimmy. The lion takes his victim's head into his mouth and bites down, virtually decapitating him but smothering him at the same time, stilling whatever life is left in Jimmy's now inert body.

Then, carefully, without hesitating, and also without haste, operating on latent instincts, Tuffy rips off Jimmy's clothes and disembowels him. He begins feeding cautiously, nuzzling gently at first, then more and more furiously. Tuffy eats between hurry and leisure, hunched over his victim, preying on his unnatural prey.

He empties the greater part of the thoracic cavity, and nudging, turning the body over in his ferocity, gnawing, worrying, rips large hunks from the haunches.

After the first ten minutes Tuffy subsides and almost gently strips off the large femoral triceps, revealing the glistening bone of the great trochanter of femur. Then, using his side teeth, he scissor-cuts one of Jimmy's muscular arms off at the shoulder. He holds this dripping in his mouth. When he does stand up, he's so bloated with food he can scarcely move. As with any lion, after gorging, he's interested in only one thing, sleep.

He slowly, awkwardly, walks across the common rafters of the Wall of Death and a curio shop beside it, on the opposite side from Sammy's platform. He slinks off into the darkness, into the attic of the shop, and settles his weight onto the floor, surrounded by cardboard boxes filled with trinkets and souvenirs sold in the shop below.

Sometime later, Sally and Cap arrive. Cap managed to intercept her before she got to the police. Sally is riding on the back of the motorcycle. Cap is anxious about Tuffy, concerned that the whole escapade might have changed their relationship. He stops to let Sally off, then goes over to park his motorcycle beside Jimmy's. Sammy leans down from his platform.

Sally looks up.

“How are you, Sammy? Did Tuffy hurt you?”

“Nothing but my feelings. I think I lost about two years' growth, too. But no hard feelings. He was probably only playing, but I couldn't tell the difference. After all, a cat does like to fish.”

He laughs, slides himself closer to the edge.

“Where's Tuffy now? I heard some growling and rustling around over there just after you left but it's been quiet ever since.”

Cap comes up beside Sally.

“Tuffy's in the pit. Jimmy was supposed to feed him, that's probably what you heard. You haven't seen Jimmy, have you?”

Sally looks around.

“He wouldn't be in the pit with Tuffy. He most likely took a walk or something. I imagine he wants some time to pull himself together after what's happened. I can't blame him.”

Cap looks at Sally. He's wondering how she'll take it when she knows Jimmy's leaving, might even be gone already. He thinks again how it will be when Sally leaves. Maybe she's only been sticking around the last few years because of Jimmy. Cap hates to think of life without her. Love for him, late to come, is not easily given up.

“I'll look in the pit to see if Tuffy's O.K.”

Cap opens the door to the pit carefully. He's not afraid, but he doesn't want Tuffy escaping again. He also wants to see if Jimmy has really fed him. It's fairly dark in the pit and Cap switches on the overhead lights.

When he discovers Tuffy is gone, he stands there a few seconds in bewilderment. He checks to see if Jimmy's things are there; they are. Now Cap's scared. He dashes out, leaving the lights on. He runs over and peers into the cage, an illogical last hope. It's then he sees the lock on the floor back in the cage. He reaches in, picks it up.

Sally's still talking with Sammy. She turns around and looks at Cap. “What's the matter?”

“Tuffy's gone!!”

“What do you mean he's gone? Where's Jimmy?”

“Tuffy's not in there where I left him. There's no meat on the floor and the sack isn't there either. He's just gone.”

“Mother of God!”

Cap looks up at the catwalk. It doesn't make sense but it's the last possible place. It's where Jimmy was supposed to go. He starts in a dash up the steps with Sally behind him, her concern for Jimmy overwhelming her fear of Tuffy.

Cap starts running around the catwalk clockwise. A quarter of the way around he comes on the remains of Jimmy, the filled burlap sack beside him.

Jimmy is such a torn mess, the blood so all-encompassing, and Cap is so confused, frightened, he doesn't realize at first what's happened. If you don't believe something will happen, it's hard to see it, even when it's before your eyes.

Sally runs past Cap. She falls to her knees in front of Cap beside Jimmy. She sees one of his arms ripped from the carcass, twisted backward across his torso, so the tattoo of the eagle riding a motorcycle, smeared with blood, is just visible.

“Mother of God! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Oh, please don't let this be. Oh, Jimmy! Jimmy! Jimmy!”

She's not expecting an answer, only trying to call him back, asserting her right to him.

Cap drops to his knees beside her. He stares, the blood drains from his face, and he vomits. He vomits on Sally's feet. He stands up and starts vomiting over the edge of the railing into the pit. He vomits until he's retched dry and is crying.

Sally stands up, her back to Cap. She's hunched over sobbing, sobbing so hard now she can't talk. She turns, looks down at her shoes. She looks up at Cap, who is standing there, vomit on his chin, across his shirt. Sally swings back her arm and slaps Cap hard across the face. He stands without moving. She swings with the other arm, full swing, and slaps him again. She's hurt her hand and tucks it against her breast, holding it with her other hand. Cap takes a step forward, his arms out to hold her, to comfort her; he staggers. When he gets close, Sally begins pounding on his chest, his face, with her fists. Cap tries to hold her in his arms; she kicks at his legs.

“You wanted it to happen. Jimmy
knew
it; he told me so. He knew he was going to get killed by Tuffy and it'd be your fault. Oh, God! I hate a coward.”

“You're talking crazy, Sally. Come on, let's go; we've got to
do
something.”

Cap starts running, pulling Sally with him. She follows unwillingly, looking back at Jimmy. Cap pulls her behind him down the stairs. When they round the side of the Wall of Death he yells.

“Sammy!! Sammy!! Tuffy's escaped again and he's killed Jimmy up there. I'll report to the police, then look for Tuffy. I'm taking Sally with me.”

Sammy's face appears over the edge of his platform.

“He's killed Jimmy? Are you sure?”

Cap is trying to kickstart his motorcycle. Sally awkwardly, reluctantly climbs on the back. It takes four kicks to turn the motor over. Cap shouts up to Sammy as he keeps kicking, adjusting the magneto:

“I'm sure. Jimmy's dead. Tuffy could be around somewhere, so stay close to your pool. Warn everybody away with your megaphone. If you see him just jump in the tank.”

Cap gets his bike started. He pulls out, around the Wall of Death and off to the police. Sammy watches them go, then looks carefully all around him. He slides over to where he can keep an eye on the boardwalk. He settles down there, turning his head over his shoulder now and again, half expecting to see Tuffy stalking him, maybe only trying to be friendly, or maybe wanting to kill again.

“C
ome on, Dickie. No lion's going to catch us way out here; lions are afraid of water.”

Dad has the fishing poles we rented and he's ahead of me. We're walking out on a rickety old pier with boards missing so we can look right down into the water.

Two days have passed since the lion escaped and killed that man in the motorcycle act. It's been in all the newspapers, even the Philadelphia papers, the
Inquirer
, the
Bulletin
, and the
Ledger
. The lady at our place where we're living says the radio told everybody to stay at home if they could, except for emergencies, until the lion was either caught or killed.

But after two days in our room, while I'm having an awful time keeping from crying or sometimes from just coming right out and telling Mom and Dad how I let the lion escape, Dad says he isn't going to waste his vacation mooning around and anybody who wants to go fishing with him can come.

I want to do anything, just to think about something else, so I say I'll come. Mom and Laurel decide to stay inside but say they'll go out with us in the afternoon to the beach, especially if the lion gets caught. I leave Cannibal with Laurel.

So we're walking out on this old pier with thick pilings, thicker than telephone poles, holding it up all crooked and coated with black shells and green seaweed. The whole thing sags and tilts back and forth. Boards are missing everywhere, and it all shakes when the waves break against it. We walk past a sign saying
FISHING PROHIBITED ON PIER
. It took me a long time to learn that prohibited meant you couldn't do it.
Prohibited
sounds an awful lot like
permitted
to me. It looks like
permitted
, too.

But Dad walks right past that sign. He says it's only put up there so if anything happens to us it's our own fault and we can't sue anybody; he's fished lots of times from this pier and he's always caught good fish.

I follow along behind him. I try not looking between the boards when there are two or three in a row missing; some of the boards look as if they might break if you step on them, too.

I know Dad's taking me out here partly because he feels something's wrong. Both Mom and Dad have some mysterious way of knowing if I've done something bad and I don't know how to hide it from them.

But I can
never
confess about letting that lion out; they'd probably have to tell the police. Then everybody'd
know
I have some kind of devil in me for sure. Who else but a devil would let a lion loose so he could kill somebody? The way it happened, I didn't even know I was doing it; but now, in my mind, I can almost believe I did it on purpose with some help from Cannibal and the lion. That lion
is
called Satan, the Dare-Devil Lion. That must mean something.

I'm wishing I had Cannibal with me here but she'd have to stay in her box all day. Laurel's getting really good at playing with Cannibal, and I think Cannibal likes her. Cannibal acts more like a kitten and less like a cat every day. I'm not so sure I like her as much this way.

Dad's stopped and has our fishing poles leaning in a crotch where two huge posts stick up higher than the pier. He's down on his knees opening up the waxed paper full of cut-up squid we bought for bait on our way.

It was still dark when we bought the bait and rented the poles. I was looking out our car window into the salt marshes and under all those little wooden bridges, hunting for the lion. If I could only help find him it might make things not so bad.

Now Dad's tying the hooks and sinkers onto the leader. Dad took me fishing before once, when I was real little, little as Laurel, but I've never caught anything. Dad puts some bait on each of the hooks. He's tied two hooks on the line, three feet apart.

“We're going to catch some fish today, Dickie. I feel it in my bones. Once, in this very spot, I caught eleven kingfish and two flounder, all of them at least two pounds each. Boy, were they ever good. I don't even mind cleaning fish like that. We'll clean anything we catch out here so we can bring the fish home all cleaned and ready to eat. That's the way Mom likes it.”

He's still watching me. As he untangles his line and swings his pole over his shoulder to cast, he takes another look at me, and just before he whips off his cast he gives me a wink.

My father
never
winks. He can't
know
, can he? If he did know, he wouldn't wink, would he? Winking that way he looks like Brian Donlevy or some other actor in a suit.

His cast is perfect, arching up high and dropping a long way out there just at the right time. My dad can really fish. He puts on the ratchet and reels back in slowly until his line is straight. I take the other pole and swing my line with the bait on it back and forth, getting it clear of things. I take off the ratchet but keep my thumb lightly on the reel so the line can go out but it won't backlash. Backlash is usually what happens when I cast.

But this time it goes out pretty far, for me; at least it doesn't get all snarled. I don't think I jerked the bait off either. Dad sits down on the edge with his feet hanging over the side of the pier. I'm a little bit afraid but I sit beside him. He wouldn't let me fall in, and if a really big fish bites on my line I can pull back hard and hold on to the post beside me so I won't get pulled into the water.