“Hey, Doug,” I say. “I really appreciate that you do this.”
“Oh, it’s no problem.” He scoots the portable bin behind my counter, his feet scuffling along.
“No, really, I do. It’s awful creepy out in the back by the trash at night, dark and everything. I don’t like going out there alone.”
“Well, no sense in sending you ladies out behind the building so late at night.”
Some of the younger barristas I work with call him “Dougie”. He is a kind, older janitor of about sixty. He is quite obviously the introvert, no doubt often mistaken by most for slow to understand -- I did. He doesn’t talk much, if ever; you should be surprised if he so much as returns a hello when passing you in the hall. And yet when you manage to get him to look you in the eye, especially if you’ve caught him smiling, you get a small glimpse of an inner genius. Not just the sort of wisdom that comes with age, but the kind of “smart” one doesn’t have to flaunt. He just… Connotes. The kind of inkling that sends my imaginative mind into fancy, picturing our sweet custodian dancing circles around mathematicians and philosophers of old…
Snap back to it, Christy.
I am quite the opposite, hoping desperately to engage in some sort of even minimal conversation with the man who so obviously steps outside his job description and takes out my piles of garbage, clearly something that is my responsibility, to keep me safe from Le Crazy, who sleeps behind the building.
“So where are you from, Doug?”
“Pennsylvania.”
“Originally?” Feeling nosy.
“Florida, originally.”
“How old were you when you moved from Florida?”
“Oh, about three.”
“To Pennsylvania?”
“That’s right.” He’s piling the trash into his push bin.
“Well I’ve heard about the fainting goats you guys have out there, those must have been fun.” Someone in college told me about these. If you manage sneak up behind them and make a loud noise to startle, they fall right over in front of you.
“Well, I don’t know anything about any fainting goats, but we sure had some tigers.” He says, with a smile. It shows crooked teeth that only add to the character of my Quiet Custodian.
“Fainting tigers?” I tease.
“Oh no. That would be a sight.” Doug giggles. I didn’t know he did that.
“Well, I’d sure like to go to Pennsylvania now, considering all the strange native wildlife you folks have out there. Should take my camera…”
“Oh, no, the tigers aren’t native.” He owns a straight face now.
“You’re serious, aren’t you? There really are tigers in Pennsylvania?” I know my face tends to be animated, and in my defense I have tried to calm my reactions down a bit for the sake of those who aren’t used to conversations with me. But Doug seems pleased with my inability to do so at the moment.
“Oh, sure there are,” He says ‘oh’ a lot, I’ve noticed. And it’s always thoughtful sounding. “Back in oh, say, the twenties, a couple bought and moved onto a whole lot of undeveloped land…”
I’ve never heard him talk this much. I am wholly intrigued.
“…out near Williamsport. Do you know where Williamsport is?”
“No.” I admit, embarrassed. I pride myself on my endless knowledge of useless facts, such as location of places called ‘Hell’ and ‘Williamsport’ and the current rate of sales tax in California.
“Oh, well it’s right in the middle of Pennsylvania. Almost in the middle, anyway.” He long ago finished clearing my trash bucket and crushing my boxes to fit in his portable bin. He probably should be working, but probably so should I.
“This couple, who used to be tied to the zoos somehow, bought the land out near Williamsport…”
It’s cute that he repeats himself.
“…and opened a place for older animals that zoos wouldn’t afford any longer. Kind of like a retirement home, but for animals, you see?”
“Sounds like a great idea.” I admit.
“Oh, it was. Until they had some massive flooding in 1948, and had to open all the cages so the animals could swim to safety. Otherwise they would have drowned. And it just so happens that about two years before the flood, this” -- he makes the quotation marks with his fingers here –“‘retirement home’ received a couple of old tigers.”
“They let tigers free?!”
“Oh, sure. But you have to figure these are old animals. They’re not out to hurt anyone. They have no claws, and they probably can’t see very far… They came to Pennsylvania to die.”
“Oh,” The sadness of the old-zoo-animal-death-land hits me.
“Do you know anything about Pennsylvanian winters?”
“Just that it gets ridiculously cold and snows a bit.”
“Yep, that’s right. Well it gets cold and snows for weeks straight right after the flood. After the snow melts, they only recover a few of the animals, who died after a few months anyway because they’d been in captivity their whole lives and didn’t know to hunt while out on their own.”
“Did they ever rebuild?”
“No, the couple sold their land.” He doesn’t say anything for a moment. I wonder if he’s going to tell me that the tigers -- and lions and bears, oh my! -- roamed into town during the winter and killed someone’s dog. Or worse, a child, preceding the town forming a mutiny against the two old cats much like the one I saw in ‘The Beauty and the Beast’, Disney version…
“You know how they say people adapt to their surroundings?” Doug has a far off look on his face. He doesn’t much make eye contact anyhow. I wonder if he’s made this whole thing up thus far.
“Yeah? Like evolution?” I say. I do not believe in evolution, well not as basic pop-science would present it anyhow, but I am more interested in seeing what his point is than discussing my religious views on the creation of the world.
“Yes, like evolution. Well, more like ‘survival of the fittest’. You figure, what if they adapted? The tigers, I mean. They were old, sure, but they have thick enough skin to protect them against harsh brush in the outback. Wouldn’t it keep them warm enough to live in the snow a few short weeks?”
“You’ve got a good point.” I don’t know if I agree, I’m sure tigers don’t generally roll around in things that hurt them, thus negating a need for thick skin… But this is turning out to be a pretty wild story anyhow. I consider telling him to write it down and sell it to someone in Hollywood. Or at least the Public Broadcasting Network, so they can make a made-for-television movie out of it.
“Anyway. So in the late fifties, when I’m an older boy of about eighteen, we hear on the radio that a couple of men spot a couple of tigers. You have to figure, though, that it’s been about ten years by the time this happens. There’s no way that two tigers, a couple years max away from death when they arrive, survive a flood, a snowstorm, and ten years of age. Eventually, the local authorities just chalk it up to a bunch of hunters just wanting their name in the paper.”
“Wait, were they out there or not?”
“Oh, no one knows for sure. But the town of Williamsport sure as hell carries riffles wherever they go now, for safety’s sake. The best the locals can figure, the cats that people report seeing every few years or so are, if the rumors are true, the offspring of the two original retired tigers.”
We stand for a moment in silence, together. Who knows what my Gentle Janitor is pondering, but as usual I’m momentarily in another world, picturing wildcats who’ve evolved into an intelligent species in a manner of fifty years, and because they’ve run out of food in the wildered, undeveloped area of the mid-west, the new animals come down into the nearest town in multitudes, looking to take over all human intelligence as means of survival. The FBI eventually has to come in and deport them, because they’re stealing jobs from all the hard working, natural-born Pennsylvanians…
I belong in screenwriting.
“Well, I’d better get back to work. There’s other garbage to see to.” With his famous scuffle, he wanders off, head down, relapsing back to the introvert I’m so used to. I wonder how many more stories my old, Pennsylvanian Janitor has to tell, and if anyone will hear them.
After a few feet, he stops, and without turning he yells to me over his shoulder:
“Maybe my tigers ate your goats.” And keeps on walking.
(c) Christy Pendergrass
