The Moonlight Tiger

‘Are you sure this is it?’ he whispered as they crawled through the gap under the fence, dragging his shirt in the dirt and tearing the stitches at the edge of the patch clumsily sewn on to the pocket. It had been easy to spot the circus site with its sign picked out in lights in the corner of the old showgrounds, but harder to find an entry point between the rusty strands of barbed wire amongst the scrub in the dark. They’d been walking for almost 30 minutes now after leaving the car parked several blocks away in the suburban badlands of Townsville, itself wedged between the newly swollen river and the highway – which was their one route out of here and back to civilization.

‘Of course it bloody is Morgan! Look, the cage is right there’ came the reply from a few feet ahead of him. Clouds crowded the moon and left the two men feeling ahead with their feet for the level of the ground, searching for the next fence between them and their target.
‘Don’t call me that,’ he hissed back, ‘I told you, my code name is Lucky’.
He’d chosen the name because it felt right to imagine how the tigers would feel once they succeeded in releasing them from their cages.
“It’s lucky for them that people like us care” he’d thought to himself, “like really care”.

‘Justin’ he whispered, ‘can you see the cage?’
‘I think so – it looks like this is the back of the tent here’
A hand rippled through the darkness, stirring the night air like a heavy pot of liquid on the boil.
‘So those must be the caravans, which means that the tigers should be over there.’ Justin (who’d chosen his code name because it meant fair and righteous in Latin, according to the quick Google search he’d done in the car on the way up) stopped, turned to Lucky and awkwardly crouched down on his hindquarters before shifting in discomfort and ending up in a strange kneeling position in the dirt.
‘Do you have the poison? And the steaks?’ he asked.

Lucky could feel the steaks weighing down the Army Disposal satchel at his side. They were wrapped in a thin parcel of greaseproof paper. There was an element of pride in his mind as he considered that no step of this plan had been left unconsidered – right down to the vegan materials of the satchel and the plastic free purchase of the steaks (in cash of course!) from the local butcher.
‘Yes they’re here.’ His voice felt strange and thin, clouded by adrenaline. ‘Justin - do you have the bolt cutters?’
‘Yes dammit! They’re breaking my bloody arm. Ok lets go over it quickly before we have to go silent’.

The plan had been formulated in the small lounge room of his appropriately derelict weatherboard share house in Brisbane. Lucky’s mum paid half the rent and tried to encourage him to keep it clean, but he was pleased when the few important guests commented on the appropriately run down vibe of the place.
‘This seems like a good room for insurrection’ Emma had said, and Lucky felt a rush of blood to his groin as he imagined how effortlessly cool he must look on his couch that he’d pulled out of hard rubbish, sitting there next to the milk crate shelves full of dumpstered vegetables and bread.

Emma had drawn a very specific diagram mapping out the site plan of the circus, including the location of the dogs’ enclosure (to be avoided at all costs) and the best path through the fence to the tigers’ cage.
‘You’ll have to be extremely quiet during this last bit,’ she’d insisted, ‘the St Leon’s sleep right next to the tigers, in this van here’.
Emma’s stint of selling tickets at the circus over summer had paid off handsomely in covert information and she had returned to their University ethics class with a fresh spark of righteousness in her eye and a determination to persuade her friends that they could end the animals’ exploitation once and for all. There had been some robust debate at happy hour in the University student union bar, as they argued about the questionable merit of death as a release from imprisonment, but finally Emma (with Lucky faithfully backing her up) had eventually convinced the others with her point that even though there was no wild for the circus tigers to return to, it would be better for everyone if the Animal Rights Society were to flex its muscles and demonstrate just how passionate they were about de-platforming examples of animal exploitation. ‘At the end of the day,’ Lucky had followed up, ‘it’s not just about the tigers. Think of them, but also of the generation of children who will not have to be insulted and brainwashed by these people with their feline slaves’. He’d thought that was quite a good line, but by then Emma was busy talking to the journalist major with the good hair, which he’d felt slightly annoyed by.

The 4 other members of the Animal Rights Society had agreed that they would put together the resources needed to organise the covert hit squad. The peroxide; the steak with broken glass through it; borrowing Sharon’s car – it was all fairly simple. It was while drawing straws that some awkward moments had occurred as Emma demurely stepped aside with the deft reasoning that; ‘I might be recognised’. But it had been worth drawing out that short straw just to see the approval in her eyes, and Lucky’s heart jumped as he thought about returning to Brisbane victorious, righteous, valiant. Surely she would let him take her home afterwards. This was his chance!

‘Lucky! Lucky dammit, pay attention’ came Justin’s harsh whisper. ‘I lead us across this field, and then I’ll cut the padlock off the cage door. You follow behind me, open it and throw in the poisoned steak. We make sure they’ve taken the bait, and then we run for it before they have a chance to get near the door ok?’
‘Yep, totally. Got it’ he replied.
‘Ok. Lets fucking do this. These slave owners are about to learn a thing or two about animal rights’.

As they crept low across the sun burnt grass and rocky earth of the Townsville show ground Lucky found himself thinking for the first time about the lives of the circus people tucked away in their air conditioned caravans. Did they not even spare a thought for these animals sweltering in the heat of the Queensland night? Ripped from the tropical wilds where they belonged, and forced into servitude without shame. Who were these monsters? With his face to the ground as he scurried by a caravan window Lucky pictured hardened carnies with leather skin like bronzed testicles, short and wide shouldered with small white teeth spread too far apart in a fearsome careless smile. He imagined their broad stubby hands holding whips and chains as they loomed over these once majestic creatures, forcing them through hoops and onto pedestals. He’d never seen an animal circus, because he wasn’t sure he could bear the white-hot rage that surged through him even now as he imagined humans using animals so callously. In fact Lucky was so involved in his justification of the deed to come that he didn’t even see Justin’s Doc Martens looming up ahead before he collided with his leg and knocked the bolt cutters out his hand. They dropped onto Lucky’s head with a gentle thud and a white streak flashed across his eyes.

‘Fuck! What the fuck Morgan!’
‘It’s Lucky, dickhead! Ouch. Damn it, am I bleeding?’ he whispered.
‘Well you’re not acting very fucking lucky!’ Justin replied angrily. ‘It’s just a scratch, shut up and get the steak ready. Fuck, fuck, fuck, this bolt is bigger than I thought.’
Justin kept swearing under his breath as he fumbled with the lock on the gate and Lucky scrambled through his bag, finding the steak already loaded with broken glass and unscrewing the cap from the bottle of peroxide. His forehead felt wet but as he went to touch it, the bottle cap slipped from his fingers, tumbling into the dirt beneath the tall metal fence. Behind the fence was a large green enclosure, with grass that looked softer than the dusty field through which they had crawled. A sprinkler was moving back and forth across the cage and sending a light spray of droplets into the sky. Some 20m back from the cage door an expensive looking trailer with red and yellow stripes rested on shiny rubber tyres, with one side wall lowered to make a ramp that reached the ground. As Justin and Lucky fumbled with their tasks at the gate, something in the far corner of the cage stirred slowly and Lucky’s heart started to beat quicker in time with the mantra he was whispering to himself; ‘Animals are not slaves. Freedom now. Animals are not slaves. Freedom now.’

He thought he felt a drip of sweat on his arm as Justin finally broke through the lock with a terrifyingly brittle crack and the door sunk slightly on its hinges. He had the bottle of peroxide pressed against the steak when inside the trailer part of the darkness slowly swirled, shifted and separated from the rest. The shape moved like molten glass to the edge of the ramp and then dropped down to the grass, and at just that moment the clouds decided to part behind Lucky and the moon shone through and onto the letters painted across the red and yellow stripes.
“100 YEARS OF FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT” was what he made out, but it was hard to concentrate with the scent of peroxide swimming up from his hands and Justin jabbing him in the ribs as he swore again and wrenched the door open. ‘Do I have to fucking do everything? Throw the fucking thing in there, and do it fast!’

The meat felt hot against his palm, and suddenly in the darkness he blushed with fear and pride and a quick rush of astonishment at his own pride, at how supremely powerful it felt to be standing up for his beliefs - for the beliefs of the righteous few who would change the world. And as the second tiger prowled down from the trailer there was a whisper of wind that went through the cage, stirring the grass and blowing the clouds further across the sky. Apparently Justin hadn’t seen the raw, velvet, muscular forms now stalking across the ground towards them because he roughly shoved Lucky at the gate and as he stumbled through he managed to raise his arm and throw the steak in the direction of the trailer. A piece of glass protruding from the meat caught in his hand and again there was a prick of fear as his skin tore, but it was quickly replaced by an awful wonderment as the moon finally shone fully down on the enclosure and Lucky saw for the first time, unimpeded by glass walls or steel barriers or television screens - the form of the circus tiger that stood barely 5 metres ahead of him, its front shoulders making two pronounced arcs that echoed the poles of the circus tent behind it as it sniffed the steak which lay between them.

It was an incredible creature. Its richly combed fur was thick and healthy and the white stripes along its flank glowed fiercely through the night in a way that made it seem almost unreal, like they were the idea of a tiger’s stripes hovering above a body of darkness, punctuated only by two round eyes gleaming in the moonlight. But at the same time it was the most real thing Lucky had ever seen, more intense and honest and promising than any speech he had ever made or any book about wild animals and lost habitats he’d ever pored over. As the tiger lifted its head away from the steak and locked eyes with Lucky he felt himself soaring off the ground as he gazed across a narrow abyss of incomprehension – him studying the tiger’s eyes just as the tiger’s eyes studied him.
“We’re both apex predators,” he thought, “except they’ve taken your cruelty out of nature to use as a spectacle. Damn them. If only they could see you as I do” and he inched closer to the tiger, raising his hand.

‘Lucky! What the fuck are you doing’ came Justin’s desperate call from behind him, ‘get the fuck back here!’
‘No! No I think I’ve got it now - We have to let them go! They’ll take their own revenge’ he replied, slowly crossing the space between himself and the tiger.
In the moonlight tiger’s eyes he thought he could see a new emotion – wonder. The curious appraisal had given way now to appreciation, and the tiger dipped its head as Lucky came towards it, its forelegs tightly bent underneath its shoulders, elbows tucked in against its sides.
“It sees me, just like I see my surroundings. I am a part of its world,” he thought “and it sees the world just like we do - we’re about to give it its first real choice!”

It wasn’t until the majestic face hanging low against the ground looked to one side that Lucky remembered the other tiger. And by then it was too late to move back to the gate. As the second tiger came in close behind him, nosing against the fresh blood drying in his hair, the first tiger emitted a low rumbling growl that shook through every bone in his body. Like the rush of air leaving a collapsing building, terror flooded through Lucky and he spun towards the gate as Justin screamed his name. Beneath him there was squelch as his foot slipped on the glassy, peroxide steak, forcing his legs to disobey his fear, tangling them and throwing him face first against the second tiger’s flank. A roar pierced through the night, as the moonlight was sliced into stripes by a flash of dark shapes, and the stars turned into streaks of rain running down a windscreen.  The last thing he remembered seeing from a weirdly tilted angle was the lights flicker anxiously to life inside the nearest caravan and the door fly open to reveal a kindly older woman in a nightgown on the steps.

“She looks like my aunt” thought Lucky, as everything faded to red.