Knockout Read Free Page B

bad situation.”
    I tried to get a better look inside the house, to see if it looked like there was anyone at home. There were no lights on, but I knew that didn’t mean a damn thing. Most tiger owners I knew liked to sit at their kitchen tables and clean their guns and knives by the light of the moon, and I could only assume this tiger owner was exactly the same, sitting in the dark and waiting for that time when he could use those super-clean guns and knives on anyone who tried to steal his pet.
    â€œAfter we knock it out we’re going to throw it in the back of the truck,” Tommy told me. “And then we’ll drive over to Randy’s. He’s going to keep the tiger in his basement to scare the shit out of people.”
    Tommy grabbed the bolt cutter and I followed. I was scared, but mostly what I was thinking about was how we’d get paid some good cash for this and how it would be great to slap a stack of bills down in front of my father and how that stack of bills might prompt my father to finally say he was proud of me.
    We walked over to the cage and Tommy was right, the tiger didn’t look good. The fur on its chest was rubbed raw and one of its eyes was glassed over with a cataract. His breath kept catching in its throat. The tiger brought its head up to the bars of the cage and I scratched him behind his ears.
    â€œQuit dicking around,” Tommy said. “Do it already.”
    I reached in the cage and pinched the back of the tiger’s neck and he slumped over. Tommy opened the lock and we hauled the tiger to the truck.
    â€œW hen we meet Randy, you need to be cool, okay?” Tommy told me as we drove. “Don’t be your normal dumbass self.”
    I hadn’t planned to say a word when we got to Randy’s house, because who hadn’t heard a story about a stolen tiger deal goingsour and someone getting shot up? In my neighborhood you heard these kinds of stories all the time. I knew to keep my mouth shut.
    We pulled into the driveway and Randy came running out of his house. It was pretty cold outside to be shirtless and barefoot, but it didn’t look like it was bothering Randy all that much.
    â€œWhere’s my guy?” he yelled to Tommy. “Where’s my guy?’
    The tiger was still out cold, his tongue lolling around. I could see where muscles had formerly filled his body, where his fur lay slack.
    Randy ran his hand over the bare spots on the tiger’s fur, then he slid his fingers up the tiger’s neck. He shifted his fingers around a couple of times. Then he did it again. He shook his head.
    â€œThis tiger you brought me doesn’t have a goddamn pulse,” he said.
    Tommy put his fingers on the tiger’s neck, shifted them around.
    â€œIt was alive when we stole it,” he said. “It must have died on the way here.”
    â€œYou brought me a dead tiger,” Randy said as he walked back toward his house. “When you bring me a live tiger, you get your meth.”
    Tommy hadn’t said anything to me about us stealing the tiger in trade for drugs. I wondered if maybe Randy was mistaken, that maybe Randy had misunderstood Tommy when they’d struck their deal.
    â€œDon’t worry,” Tommy told me. “I’ll get this straightened out.”
    Tommy followed Randy inside. While I waited, I looked at the tiger. I felt bad about what we’d put it through, what everyone had put it through, that its last moments of life were bumping around in the back of a pickup instead of chasing down a water buffalo on the savannah. A minute or two later, Tommy walked out of the house, smiling.
    â€œI don’t know about you,” he said, holding up a dime bag, “but I’m sick of everything being stupid and boring.”
    Tommy shook some of the meth onto his knuckle and snorted. He held out the baggie to me. I also hated how boring and stupid our lives were now. More than that though, I