Tigers on the Beach by Doug MacLeod Read Free Book Online Page A

her. And she doesn’t have anyone else in Samsara. And she
doesn’t
come here all the time. Be nice to her.’
    Mum leaves us.
    â€˜Grandpa walked to the shop,
’ Xander whispers.
    â€˜Don’t say that,’ I tell him.
    â€˜
Grandpa walked to the shop.’
    Xander knows he is not allowed to utter this phrase. It’s forbidden within our family, liable to cause eruptions of temper and sadness.
    Here is why . . .

Grandpa’s funeral wasn’t a good one. I shudder at the memory. First thing in the morning, we drove Grandma to the crematorium, which was more than a hundred kilometres away. We had to stop twice for Xander to get out of the car and pee. By the time Xander had yet another toilet emergency, we were running late.
    â€˜Could you stop the car, Dad?’
    â€˜Hold it in for a few more minutes,’ Mum said. ‘We’re nearly there.’
    â€˜But my bladder’s going to explode.’
    â€˜Think of something else,’ Dad said.
    â€˜I
can’t
. If we don’t stop soon I’ll have to go in Grandma’s purse.’
    But I knew how to distract him. When I discovered that Xander could do incredible sums in his head, I used to show him off, as if he were some kind of human computer. Kids at school were amazed. They used calculators to check the results. Xander was right every time.
    Mum and Dad didn’t like it when I made Xander do the sums in front of other people. They said that Xander was not a performing monkey, he was a human being and deserved to be treated as one. I was not to treat him like a sideshow attraction. There were exceptions to this rule, however. If it was important to take Xander’s mind off something, I was allowed to ask him difficult sums.
    â€˜What do you get if you multiply 137 by 38?’ I asked.
    â€˜5206,’ Xander replied.
    â€˜And what if you multiply 892 by 63?’
    â€˜56,196,’ said Xander.
    I kept asking him difficult questions, which he answered effortlessly.
    â€˜His grandfather could do that too,’ said Grandma. ‘It was as if Reginald had a computer in his head.’
    â€˜Why did he want to be created?’ Xander asked.
    â€˜
Cremated
,’ Dad corrected.
    â€˜We often talked about it,’ Grandma said. ‘Reginald didn’t want to be buried in a coffin in the ground. He wanted his ashes to be spread somewhere special.’
    Grandma dabbed at her eyes but didn’t cry. She was hiding her feelings.
    At the funeral home, sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles and aunts flocked to Mum and Grandma to embrace them and tell them how sorry they were. Xander joined in, overdoing the hugging. He doesn’t know when you’re supposed to let go. He even hugged one of the funeral directors. There were public toilets, but Xander wandered off and peed in the garden, before anyone could stop him. To make matters worse, Xander peed on a special area called ‘the memorial garden’, which probably meant he’d urinated on someone’s grave.
    People glared at Mum and Dad as though they were terrible parents. They gave apologetic looks and Dad fetched Xander. Mum didn’t realise, but she had sat on one of Xander’s wacky balls. A bright green ball stuck to her like a bunny tail. I hastily removed it from her backside before people saw. You shouldn’t attend a funeral with McDonald’s balls stuck to you. People might think of hamburgers and you really don’t want that happening at a cremation.
    Mum, Dad, Xander, Grandma and I sat in the front row of the overcrowded chapel. Mum was getting ready to make a speech about her dad. I could see she was nervous. A fountain tinkled in a little rock garden directly outside the chapel.
    Sad music played. The minister said some gentle words about Grandpa, even though he never knew him. He said a bit from the bible that involved Hittites, an ancient tribe famous for hitting people, and everyone