By shortly after 2 p.m. the assembled Slipsunder family was waving to the plane as it taxied from the dock out to the open lagoon.  Sylvia wanted to try and get as many of the tasks done this evening so that they could take a break for the next few days.  So the girls finished up with the cleaning while Sylvia started up the laundry.  Rale and Lucas gave her a hand with this while Rock did a quick inspection of the cabins for any damages, missing items, or repairs that were needed.

He came across Janet in one of the cabins, as he was finishing up his task.  “Janet, I think we should go and talk to VanAnkat right now while we have a few minutes.”

“One step ahead of you on that”, she responded, “and he’s not in there.  I already checked when I came out here.”

“Shit!  I really think we need to talk with him about last night’s events.”

“Oh, I totally agree.  Good luck catching him in though.”

“Yes, and I promised your mother that I would help Lucas with the major repairs on number eight sometime this week, so I am going to be busy.  Hey, speaking of him, did Lucas seem to be acting kind of strange at lunch to you?”

“No more so than usual, just seemed a little quiet.  He has been awfully moody lately though.  Must be having a hard time dealing with puberty.”  They both got a good chuckle from that comment.  “I will keep my eye peeled for VanAnkat, and let you know if I see him, but I am telling you, I really think he doesn’t want to be found.”

“After all these years of dodging the press, I imagine he’s become pretty good at keeping a low profile.”

“Not an easy thing to do around here though”, Janet concluded as Rock left to go to the next cabin on his list.

James peered up to the skies at the sound of the plane taking off.  “There goes the good captain,” he thought.   He had spent the afternoon swimming in the pond and lounging under the waterfall.  He was now sunning himself on a rock.  He was so comfortable that he fell asleep shortly.  He wakened much later; feeling somewhat baked by the sun.  His pink nose was very tender having been burned a bit by the intense rays.

Responding to this he dove off the rock ledge back into the pond.  “Much better!” he thought as his large body began to rapidly cool down.  He gingerly ran his long tongue over his tender nose.  “No more falling asleep in the sun!”  Before he knew it the sun was setting, and it was time to be getting back to the cabin.  Darkness was stealing upon the land when he finally arrived there.

Since he didn’t feel like waiting for a tray of food from the kitchen, he just “scarfed” down the sandwiches that he had in the refrigerator.  He poured himself a large glass of wine as well, and went over to his computer and started to “surf” his usual sites. When he looked up at the clock on the wall and saw that it was after midnight he was quite surprised.  He thought it had only been a short while.  Powering down his systems he finished off the wine and fell into bed.

James awoke to yet another glorious tropical morning.  “What to do today?” he thought as he looked around the bedroom.  “I think I’ll go for a nice morning run, that’s something I haven’t done yet.”  He pulled the map of trails from his pouch and found the closest one to him that ran through the forested area behind his cabin.  According to the map, it went on for some three or four miles at least, so it would suit his purposes nicely.

He padded over to the dresser, and opening a drawer, removed a pair of black nylon running shorts.  He shut the drawer a little too hard, and the frames set on the dresser shook, threatening to fall over.  James quickly reached over and steadied them, breathing a sigh of relief.  He was sure that they would break if they had fallen off the dresser from this height.

James pulled the shorts over his large body.  After spending so much time running about naked, he actually felt slightly restricted by them, even though they were loose fitting.  He threw his waist pouch on, and put the cabin key and a container of water into it.  Reaching for the phone, he dialed the main desk.  “This is Mr. VanAnkat.  I will be out for a bit, so have the maid come at once.”  He hung up the phone before Sylvia could even say good-bye.  As he opened the back door to the cabin he sensed that there was no one around, so he started off in a slow run for the trail.

About 150 yards away from the back of the cabin was the start of the trail.  As soon as he was on it, James started to run a bit faster, getting up to his “usual” pace.  Back in the Old Country he belonged to an exclusive health club.  It had a large indoors multi-level track.  He would usually reserve one level just for himself for a specific time two to three times a week, and would spend an hour or two just running.  This tended to clear his mind, as he would just focus on the run itself, letting all other thoughts just drift away.  After this he would enjoy a soak in the hot tub or a few laps in the pool.  It was one of the few little pleasures James allowed himself.

His mind wandered as he ran, back to his life in the city, before he had retired.  He thought to himself that he was doing a lot of that lately, and began to wonder why.  He was thinking a lot about his parents also, something that he had not done in years.  Perhaps it was all this “free” time that he had to himself all of a sudden.  It gave him time for self-reflection that he had never had before.  He was so used to working non-stop for so many hours of the day.  It only left time to sleep and eat, with the occasional trip to the gym.  Work was his life, and now that work was gone.

The trail was not that well kept up and had become overgrown in spots.  “All the better”, James thought.  It lent it a “wilder” look and feel to it.  The scenery was quite nice as the trail wound it’s way through the lush green forest.  The trail went through some rolling hills, so it became somewhat challenging for the tiger as he ran along it.  After a couple of miles James began to feel a bit winded and slowed his pace down quite a bit.  “Time to start heading back”, he thought, and with that, turned around to retrace his steps.

Beth was on maid duty this day.  She didn’t expect to be too busy as there was only Mr. VanAnkat as a guest at this point, and his cabin only needed to be done when he called for it.  Because of this she thought that it would be an easy day, and had slept in this morning.  Her mother woke her from her peaceful respite.

“Beth!” Sylvia bellowed.  “Aren’t you out of bed yet?”

Upset to be awoken so early, she responded with a very sarcastic tone through grit teeth “What is IT, mother?!”

“Mr. VanAnkat called and wants maid service, NOW!  And it’s your turn, sweetie!”

“Oh, all right!” she responded tersely.  “There go my plans for sleeping in!” she mumbled aloud.

By the time she ran a comb through her hair, threw on some clothes, grabbed some toast and juice, and made her way with the cart over to the tiger’s cabin, it was over an hour from the time James had placed the original call.

Janet started her job with the bathroom, her least favorite part of the job.  She was surprised that it wasn’t too bad.  “At least he doesn’t make too big of a mess”, she thought to herself.  Some guests left the cabins a shambles, but with the exception of the tiger’s strong “aroma” and the unexplained large amount of fur all over the place, the cabin was not too dirty.

Going out to the kitchen/dining/living area she quickly vacuumed and dusted.  She emptied the wastebaskets and washed the table and counters down.  It surprised her at how “spartan” the man kept the living area, almost as if it was not used at all, except for the desk area, which resembled an office, what with all the papers, computer equipment, and other accessories arranged about it.

She repeated her efforts in the bedroom, vacuuming and changing the linen.  As she was finishing up her job, something caught her eye.  Over on the dresser.  The last time that she had been in here there was only the one photo of the two tigers.  Now there were more.  Prominently displayed in the middle of the dresser was a large frame with a male tiger in the center of it in an airplane surrounded by a vast assortment of military badges, insignias, and medals, just as had been discussed at lunch the previous day.

Her curiosity getting the better of her, Beth walked to the dresser and lifted the heavy frame closer to study it, ignoring the other framed pictures on the dresser.  “It must be Mr. VanAnkat’s father, the Baron”, she thought.  She was truly amazed and awed at the number and variety of medals in the frame, and stared at them almost hypnotically.

James had gotten quite tired on his run.  It had been a while since he had last ran such a distance, and the terrain was much harder than the gym that he was used to.  About a mile out from returning he changed pace to a slow walk.  The walk back to the cabin let him “cool down” from the long run, and just as the cabin came into view, he began to feel normal again.  He could hardly wait to get into the shower and get some breakfast.  He picked up his pace and jogged back to the cabin.

He removed his key from the pouch and put it in the door, but the door was unlocked.  “It must have been the maid”, he thought.  “I will have to have a word with Mrs. Slipsunder about that!”  He opened the door and quickly entered, slamming the door shut noisily behind him.

 Beth was still deeply entranced by all the medals she was looking at in the frame in her hands when she heard the door slam shut.  She was startled and quickly, instinctively, turned around to see who it was.  As she did this, the large frame in her hand bumped into and knocked over another from the edge of the dresser.  She watched, as if in slow motion, as the frame fell to the floor and broke with a loud crash, the glass shards flying about the room.

James turned from the door as he heard the loud crash from the bedroom.  He ran into it only to see Beth holding the frame bearing his father’s medals, and one of the other photos smashed on the floor.  At this sight something deep in his mind snapped.

“You God-forsaken dirty little animal, what the hell do you think you’re doing!?!”  He screamed with all his might at the distraught young teen.

“I’m sorry!” was all that Beth could squeeze out as the much larger man approached her.

“Give me that, you little shit, before you break it also!!” he howled at her as he grabbed the frame from her with his large left hand.  “I ought to teach you a lesson you won’t soon forget!” he yelled as he raised his right hand over his head, large sharp claws fully extended, as if to strike her with it.  His lips drew back as he snarled loudly at her, purposefully exposing his gigantic white teeth and fangs to her.

Confronted with this Beth just cowered down between the bed and the dresser, raising her arms and hands to her head in a vain attempt to defend her small form from the coming onslaught.  “Please!” she cried, here eyes filled with true terror for the first time in her short life, “I’m SO sorry!!  Don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me!!”

As James was about to bring his massive paw down to strike the shaking youngster, his eyes fell upon the photo on the floor amidst the glass shards.  It was of his mother and himself when he was a young cub.  He froze in place as he gazed down at it.

Ignoring for the moment the cowering young woman in front of him, he placed the frame with the medals onto the dresser and slowly dropped to his knees.  James reached down and picked up the broken photo and frame, cradling it in his hands as if it were a newborn baby.  He stared at it for a moment and then just uttered a single word - “Mother...!”

Beth nervously peeked through her tear-filled eyes at the gargantuan form of the white tiger in front of her.  She wondered why he had stopped his assault.  Looking up she saw the man only two feet from her staring at the broken photo.  “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to br....”

“OUT!!  Get the hell OUT of here!!”  James screamed at her, only inches from her face.
 Beth stared for a moment into that face and every detail of it was burned into her memory.  The large pink nose, the long twitching whiskers, the teeth, the fetid breath, the almost hypnotic black stripes radiating from the muzzle outward, the black-tipped semicircular ears bent back in anger, and of course those eyes.  Those bright blue eyes that stared at her, almost into her very being!  The pain those eyes radiated was lost upon Beth in her present state, but what wasn’t was the tears starting to flow from those eyes.

 She slowly rose and vainly tried to make her way through the broken glass as she left the room.  When she reached the door of the bedroom she stopped and turned back to look at the man, still on his knees.  She wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse and saw that the tears had began to flow like a river from the eyes of the tiger kneeling in front of her.  As she heard him begin to whimper she asked somewhat choking back her own sobs, “Are you all right?”

“Out, please just leave me alone!” he cried at her through his own sobs.

She did not have to be asked again.  She ran from the cabin, tears flowing down her face.  Her sobbing was so strong that she did not even notice the pain in her foot caused from the embedded glass shards.

Sylvia was going over the list of repairs that had to be done to the cabins with Rock and Rale in the main lodge when Beth came running in, still crying uncontrollably.

“Beth, what’s wrong, what happened?!” Sylvia asked intently, very concerned about her daughter.  Beth was always strong and levelheaded, and she could not imagine what could have  caused her to be in this kind of state.

Beth just collapsed into her mother’s arms, still crying.  It was then that Rale said “Ma, she’s bleeding!”

Sylvia looked down at the floor.  Sure enough, there was a trail of fresh red blood on it.  Looking over she also saw that Rock had shifted from his normal wolf self to his puma form.  He knew something bad must have happened and his body almost automatically did this almost as a defense mechanism.  Sylvia barely noticed this though, as she was much more concerned at this moment with her daughter.  She carefully sat Beth down in a chair and began to look her over for the injury that was causing the bleeding.

Noticing that it was coming from her foot, she lifted it and saw something sticking out of one of Beth’s foot pads.  “Rale, quick run and get me the first-aid kit, Beth must have stepped on something sharp.”  She wasn’t really bleeding that badly, but smeared all over the floor it certainly looked that way.  Sylvia still wondered how this had happened though.  And Beth had been cut before and never been this emotional.  There had to be more to this than appeared.  “So sweetie, just calm down and tell me what happened.”

Between sobs Beth let out the word “VanAnkat”.  Rock started to growl menacingly as soon as he heard this.

“Rock!  Get a hold of yourself!” snapped Sylvia at him.  He immediately quieted down, but remained in puma form.  By now Rale had arrived with the first-aid kit.  Sylvia found the tweezers and used them to carefully extract the pieces of glass.  After doing this she cleaned up the bleeding wound and applied a bandage.  By now Beth had calmed down much more, but tears still matted down the fur of her cheeks.  “Now what happened, honey?”

“Well”, Beth said, sniffling as she explained, “I was cleaning VanAnkat’s cabin, and I was looking at the frame with all the medals you told us about.  He came in and startled me, and I broke one of the other picture frames.  That’s where the glass came from.  But when he saw what I did, I thought that he was going to kill me.  He yelled at me and called me some terrible names, and then I thought that he was going to beat me, when he just stopped and picked up the broken picture.  He started to cry and yelled at me to get out.  I must have stepped on the glass on the way out.”  By now Beth had nearly regained her composure.

“You mean that when you left he was standing there crying?” Sylvia asked her.

“Yes.  I don’t know if I was more upset about him being so mean to me or about breaking the picture and upsetting him so much.”

“Well, if he was so mean to you, he deserves what he gets!” Rock joined in.

“Rock!” Sylvia exclaimed.

“Well, he does!” the young man growled.

“Hardrock!  You better start behaving more appropriately in this matter!  I am sure that you don’t know the whole picture!”

“Either do you!” he immediately retorted back to her before even thinking.  After he had said it though he knew it was the wrong thing to say.

“Well, since you have such an almighty grasp of the situation, kindly fill the rest of us in!”

“How can I say this”, thought Rock.  “This guy is trouble with a capital ‘T’.  I think you ought to send him packing on the next plane out of here,” he said.

“Sure”, exclaimed Sylvia, “and explain to me how I am going to refund in full his money, half of which has already been spent on these repairs we have been making on the place.  I signed a contract, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, right.  I forgot about that.  Isn’t there anyway out of that?” asked Rock sheepishly.

“No!” replied Sylvia, getting rather upset.  “So just act your age and think with your head and not your hormones!”

“Sorry!”

“Well you should be.  Are you going to be O.K. Beth?”

“Yes, Momma.  It doesn’t hurt too bad.”

“Well, you should take it easy till it heals up.  Rock, please help her get back to her room.  Rale, would you please get a mop and clean the blood up off the floor.  I am going to go check up on Mr. VanAnkat and make sure that he is all right.”