The Child by Tiger Summary & Analysis

“Twenty-five years ago,” the narrator is kicking around a football with his friends, Randy Shepperton, Nebraska Crane, and Augustus Potterham in Randy’s yard after school. It is late October, and the narrator can smell leaves and a burning in the air. Nebraska kicks the ball and the narrator tries to catch it, but it bounces into the street. The narrator runs after it but before he can get it, Dick Prosser, “Shepperton’s new Negro man,” appears and scoops up the ball, tossing it back to them. He comes up and addresses all the boys as “Mister” and “Cap’n,” which makes them feel proud and important.

Dick Prosser had served in the United States Army and “the stamp of the military man was evident in everything he did.” It was a joy to watch him cut kindling because he was so powerful, cutting each piece exactly the same length and stacking it neatly against the shed. His room in the Sheppertons’ basement is spotless, with only a woodstove, bed, table and chair. On his table is a Bible because he is a very religious man. The Sheppertons are very happy with him, and it seems “there was very little that Dick Prosser could not do.”

Once, Dick Prosser demonstrated to the boys what a good shot he was. He took Randy’s .22 gun in his “powerful black hands” and sent twelve shots into the center of the bullseye without even seeming to aim. He also taught the boys how to box. He never boxed with them, but he would coach them while they sparred each other, and he always made sure they didn’t hurt each other.

When Dick comes up to them, Randy asks if he’s holding the ball right. Dick watches him and nods approvingly. Then he takes the ball in his own big hand “as easily as if it were an apple,” and adds that, when the boys are older and their hands are bigger, they will have a better grip. Then he draws back the ball, aims it as if he is aiming a gun, and throws it in a beautiful spiral back to Augustus. Dick has taught the boys many things—how to light a fire, how to lift a heavy weight over one’s shoulder—and they are in awe of his power and gentleness.

And yet, there is something sneaky and swift about Dick Prosser. Sometimes he would sneak suddenly upon the boys like a cat, and sometimes they had the impression of a shadow coming down on them when he was there. They woke sometimes thinking something moved in the night or that they heard a creak or a door opening.

Sometimes Dick would come from the basement with his eyes red from weeping and the boys would know he’d been reading his Bible. His voice would sometimes end in a soft moan, calling them “young white gent’mun” and telling them “you gotta love each othah like a brothah.” It was like a “hymnal chant” that came from some deep, strange place in him, and it troubles and confuses the boys. They sense something dark and strange in these moments that they don’t understand.

Sometimes Dick mixed together biblical phrases in perplexing speeches. He’d say “Armageddon day’s a-coming,” and “He’ll put de sheep upon de right hand and de goats upon de left.” They always heard him singing while he worked, his voice “full of Africa,” but also familiar to them. Perhaps he learned the songs from his Army days. He would drive the Sheppertons to church and wait in the car in his suit during the sermon. Then, when the hymns were sung, he would stand and sometimes join in quietly.

Once, Dick was driving Mr. Shepperton into town when a local drunkard, Lon Everett, came skidding around the corner and knocked the fender off their car. Dick made sure Mr. Shepperton wasn’t hurt. Lon stumbled over to Dick and struck him in the face, making his nose and lips bleed. Dick didn’t move, but his eyes got suddenly red, and he bared his teeth. Lon punched him again, but again Dick didn’t move, only his hands twitched. Nothing more happened, but many people remember how his eyes turned red.

The Sheppertons have “a comely Negro wench,” Pansy Harris, as their cook. Although no one knows why, she became silent and sullen when Dick started working for them. An air of gloom follows her. One Saturday, shortly before Christmas, she announces she’s quitting, offering an excuse about her husband needing her at home. The Sheppertons offer to pay her more to persuade her to stay, but she refuses and leaves that night. No one understands why.

Earlier that day, the boys are playing around in the Sheppertons’ basement. They notice that Dick Prosser’s door is slightly open, and they peek inside. They gasp—beside Dick’s Bible on the table lies a rifle and a box of a hundred rounds of ammunition. Suddenly, Dick appears behind them “like a cat” and a “shadow.” His eyes are red, and he bares his teeth. The boys are terrified, and Randy almost begins to cry.

Dick closes his mouth, and his eyes turn white again. He asks the boys if they’ve been looking at his rifle, and they nod, shocked and awed. Dick chuckles and explains that he can’t do without his rifle because he’s an army man and taking his rifle away would be like “takin’ candy from a little baby.” He picks up the gun “affectionately,” then explains that he’d saved up to buy the rifle to surprise the boys on Christmas and teach them to shoot. The boys start to calm down. Dicks says they spoiled his surprise by peeking in his room, but asks them, in a tone of confidence and sheepish regret, to keep it secret from “the other white fokes” because he was really looking forward to surprising them on Christmas Day. The boys solemnly swear to keep his secret.

That night, snow falls. It obscures the air and covers the ground, muffling all sounds. All life retreats into the houses in which fires crackle. The narrator falls asleep sensing the mystery of the storm and feeling a dark excitement in himself. He awakens to the sound of the fire bell clanging fast and loud. Running to the window, he looks for the glow of fire but sees nothing. Then he realizes that it isn’t a fire alarm but something new, signaling a menace “greater than fire or flood could ever be.”

The whole town comes to life. The houses light up and people run into the street, shouting and asking questions. Nebraska Crane comes down the street, whistling through his fingers to signal to the narrator and Randy. When the narrator meets him at the door, he notices Nebraska’s eyes have a dark intensity he’s never seen before. Nebraska says “it’s that nigger. He’s gone crazy and is running wild.” Mr. Crane (the policeman) comes out and talks to Mr. Shepperton in a low voice, then Mr. Shepperton goes back inside to answer the ringing phone. His wife asks, “is it Dick?” and Mr. Shepperton nods.

Nebraska whistles again and Randy runs out and joins him and the narrator in the street. Randy whispers “its’s Dick […] they say he’s killed four people.” The narrator begins to ask “with—” but stops. Randy nods and they stare blankly, feeling guilty and afraid.

A window opens and Old Man Suggs appears, shouting that Dick is coming this way. Mr. Crane yells back that no, he went down South Dean Street, heading for the river. All around, everyone is starting their cars. When Mr. Shepperton starts his car, the boys get in, too, even though he tells them not to. They pick up Mr. Crane and head for town at top speed. Someone shouts, “he’s killed six men!”

Soon, they reach the town square. Mr. Crane gets out and heads across the square without saying a word. As people rush to the square from all sides, their dark silhouettes stand out against the snow. The crowd gathered at the intersection between South Dean Street and the square looks like a dog fight. People swarm in like they do when two kids fight on the playground at recess.

But the narrator hears something different. He hears a low, growing growl from the crowd. He knows exactly what it means, for “there’s no mistaking the blood note in that foggy growl.” The boys look at one another questioningly, except that Nebraska’s eyes shine with a savagery the other two have never seen. He urges them towards the crowd, saying “they mean business this time.” Then the boys hear the growls of the hounds getting closer, seeming to bay on their heels. In the dogs’ sorrowful howls, the narrator hears “the savagery of man’s guilty doom.”

The crowd gathers around Cash Eager’s hardware store, even though Cash hasn’t arrived yet. A few people stretch their arms across the store-front window, trying to protect the property from the crowd. Hugh McNair shouts passionately at the crowd to wait, saying this is “no case for lynch law,” but the mob tries to silence him with their roar; someone says they’ve waited long enough. The mob writhes “like a tormented snake.” Then someone throws a rock and smashes the storefront window.

The crowd lets out a bloody roar and surges through the broken window into the store. They grab rifles and break open boxes of cartridges, filling their pockets with them. In minutes, every rifle and all ammunition has been taken from the store. The crowd surges back onto the street and gathers around the dogs.

The hounds are pulling at their leashes and moaning. Though they’ve detected Dick’s scent, it’s hardly necessary, because Dick’s footprints in the snow show exactly where he went, downhill into the dark. Soon, however, the footprints are covered up by the snow blowing in the wind. Then the dogs are signaled, and they start down the hill, the crowd following them. The boys stand and watch, listening to the murmur of the crowd waft back to them. Others stand back, looking at the wreck the mob left behind. Someone points out two bullet holes in a telephone post. Between the groups of people, the pieces of the story are put together.

As people reconstruct the details, earlier that night, Dick Prosser goes to the Black neighborhood in town to see Pansy Harris. (Some people say he was drunk.) Around ten o’clock, Pansy’s husband comes home and finds Dick there. In ugly moods, the men drink and talk for a while before beginning to fight. Pansy’s husband slashes Dick with a razor, and Pansy runs out of the house screaming for help. After informing the police, Pansy returns to her shack just as her husband staggers out, bleeding. Dick appears in the doorway and shoots Pansy’s husband in the back of the head. He drops to the ground and lies dead in the snow. Then Dick grabs Pansy, pulls her inside, locks the door, and waits in the dark.

Two policemen, Willis and John Grady, arrive. They see Pansy’s husband lying dead in the snow and approach the shack quietly, guns drawn. When Grady shines his flashlight through the window and calls for Dick to come out, Dick shoots him through the wrist, then turns and shoots Willis above the eyes just as Willis is kicking down the door. Just as Grady is calling for backup, Dick comes out of the shack, aims across the street, and shoots Grady through the temple.

Dick strides unhurriedly up the middle of the street, shooting left and right as he moves toward town. When someone sticks his head out his window, Dick shoots the top off the man’s head. The streets are silent because everyone knows now that he’s coming. He turns onto South Dean Street and heads towards the square, shooting at a man through the window of a restaurant.

The police headquarters sends John Chapman to the square to intercept Dick. Mr. Chapman is a favorite on the police force, regarded as possibly too kind to be a policeman. Mr. Chapman stations himself behind the telephone posts, takes aim, and fires at Dick. Dick kneels and fires, and the bullet grazes Chapman and strikes a monument on the other side of the square. Chapman fires again and misses. Dick fires once more, calmly aiming from his knee, and shoots Chapman through the heart. Then he turns and marches straight out of town like a soldier.

After they all hear the story, the town gets quiet again. They can hear the hounds howling faintly by the river. Since there is nothing more to see, everyone goes back home, but no one can sleep. The snow continues to fall and muffle everything, and people wait eagerly for news of Dick’s capture.

The police and the mob of townspeople trail Dick across the river and through a field into the woods. The dogs lose his scent for a while because he’d travelled upriver in the water, and they pick it up again several miles upstream on the other side. The mob circles around him where he is hiding hungry and cold in the woods. The next morning, he tries to run, but they see him and start after him. As they approach, he kneels and shoots, killing a deputy and two others. Then he retreats towards the creek, continuing to fire as he goes.

At the creek’s edge, Dick takes his last shot, shooting deputy Wayne Foraker in the forehead. Then he aims again, but this time, he doesn’t fire. He throws the gun aside, at which point the mob cheers and charges forward. Instead of trying to escape across the creek, as the crowd expects, Dick sits down in the snow and unlaces his boots, placing them neatly beside him. Then he stands upright, poised like a soldier, and faces the oncoming mob. No one fully understands why he does this.

The men on horseback enclose him and fire their guns. Dick falls to the snow, shot through with bullets. The other men come up, encircle his dead body, and riddle it with their own bullets. They tie a rope around the neck of the dead body and hang it from a tree, then empty their guns by firing at the hanging body.

The mob returns, bringing Dick’s mutilated body on one of the horses. When they reach the town square, they hang the body in a window so that everyone can see. The boys say they won’t go and look, but eventually they do, as people always go and look even at what horrifies them. When they see the body, they try to believe it is the same person who’d been gentle to them, taught them things, and told them secrets, but they can’t. They feel sick and afraid about something they don’t understand.

The boys stand in front of Dick’s body, looking away and looking back at it. The sky is dreary and grey. Everyone from town gathers around them to look, too, familiar to the boys in their everyday lives but also looking different, like “mongrel conquerors.” A dark and confusing evil has come into the boys’ lives, and they will always remember it, even when spring comes and warms the world with sunlight again. They know now that there is “something hateful and unspeakable in the souls of men.”

Beside the narrator, Ben Pounders, a ferret-faced man, is bragging about his triumph. He says he’d put the first bullet in Dick and points to the bullet hole in the corpse. Then he says that, in total, they’d put three hundred bullets in him. The crowd listens hungrily and gapes at the body. Nebraska Crane boldly congratulates the mob on killing “a big one.” He walks away without any fear or doubt in his eyes while Randy and the narrator follow him, sick and scared.

A few days later, the narrator and Randy go into Dick’s room with Mr. Shepperton. It is just as neat as before, but it feels alive with the memory of Dick. Mr. Shepperton goes over to the Bible on the table and opens it to where Dick had been reading last. He reads aloud “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want […] I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.” Then he closes the book, and they leave the room, locking the door behind them. No one will ever go in there again.

Time passes, and the town forgets the incident as people go their various ways. But the memory often comes back to the narrator. He remembers kicking the ball with his friends, the shouts of their young voices, and the stealthy shadow of Dick moving in the night. He remembers the clanging alarm bell, the murmuring mob, the growling hounds, and the shadow he would never forget.

The narrator remembers Dick’s tidy room and the holiness of the Psalm that Mr. Shepperton had read aloud. The psalm perplexes him because it seems so unlike Dick. Recently, he heard another song that reminded him of Dick: “What the hammer? What the chain? / In what furnace was thy brain? […] Did he who made the lamb make thee?”

The narrator tries to answer the song’s questions: “What the hammer? What the chain?” Many rumors circulate about where Dick came from and what he had done. Some people say he’d killed a man while in the Army and went to prison, while others say he went crazy and went to an asylum. No one knew where Dick really came from, but the narrator thinks he came from darkness. He thinks Dick is a symbol of “man’s evil innocence,” and that he was “a brother and a mortal enemy (…) two worlds together—a tiger and a child.”