Gideon McGee's Dream

I write to have what I've written read and enjoyed. In 1998 I published Gideon McGee's Dream and I have decided to make it available on my blog. It's a lovely fantasy for the young and old alike. I'll begin with Chapter One and continue once a week until you have all of it.
Bill


Chapter One


Its home was twenty-four trillion miles distant in the spiral galaxy the inhabitants of the planet Earth called the Milky Way. The odds of it happening would have been ridiculously large had there been anyone on the planet to make the calculation. At twenty-five thousand miles per hour the collision destroyed both the asteroid and the moon that circled the smallest and outermost planet of the far away sun called Alpha Centauri A. It was the largest of a triple sun system.

Most of the debris remained in orbit around the undiscovered planet, but a Mexico-sized chunk broke free of the gravitational pull of the miniature orb. The rogue slab of celestial junk began its trek into the far reaches of space following the unconscious call of its neighboring star’s third planet.

Gideon McGee awoke in a panic, his dream jarring the peace that usually accompanies sleep. His brother Simon, three years his senior at seventeen, remained blissfully asleep in the bunk overhead. It had been three weeks since Gideon McGee last slept through the night. Fourteen years of dreamless sleep, or so he thought, and now this. Night after night of sleep-demolishing dreams curdled Gideon McGee’s already-sour personality. The few friends he had were bailing out, avoiding him like a fish avoids air.

Not all of Gideon McGee’s dreams were sleep stealers. Some compensated him, as life always compensates for mishaps, for the nightmares that drew dark circles under his chestnut brown eyes. One such dream was of four desert wanderers who had been in search of a fabled city of gold for many years, as their brown and leatherlike skin bore witness. Their pilgrimage had been long and arduous, filled with many trials of body and spirit, as any adventure should be. One day, one of the group, while despairing of ever finding the city of gold, spied a magnificent walled castle on the horizon. Curious and excited they made their way to the towering outer wall.

The first wanderer scaled the summit, screamed out in ecstasy and jumped over. Two more wanderers followed the first. When the last wanderer reached the top of the wall and realized he had found the city of gold, he turned and looked back upon the desert. There he saw other wanderers, lost and in despair, unable to see the city of gold although it should have been plainly visible. In this dream Gideon McGee realized he was the fourth wanderer. He woke up, not knowing if he jumped into the city of gold alone, or climbed back down to show others the way. It was the memory of the city of gold that always escorted Gideon back to sleep after one of his nightmares.

Until he had his big dream, Gideon McGee, in manner and attitude, resembled a teenage Ebenezer Scrooge, always complaining, forever cynical. His smile, which occurred only on the rarest of occasions, revealed a mouth whose corners were unaccustomed to turning heavenwards, and if listened to carefully one could almost hear them creak at the effort when they did. His smiles seemed like accidents, no sooner released than reeled back in like a hooked fish.

Life to Gideon McGee was something to protect himself against, something he had no part in creating or controlling. Slights and insults, back stabbings done to him and by him; heartbreak, for which he was never responsible; luck, that always went against him, comprised the downside of life that Gideon seemed to live in. The upside was reserved for Simon, who was bigger, stronger, smarter and better looking than his younger brother. All of Simon’s advantages, to Gideon’s way of thinking, were the result of luck, a haphazard combination of DNA.

Although Simon’s skills were difficult for Gideon to attain, it was not until his sister Prudence arrived when he was four, that the struggle to turn the corners of his mouth up or down, was decided in favor of a frown. By the time he was fourteen his attitude about life was etched on his face. His brown eyes, that seemed wider apart and brighter at four were now closer to the bridge of his nose, and only sparkled when life played one of its tricks on someone else. To Gideon’s mind he had no more control over the way things were than a feather bobbing in a turbulent sea had of controlling the tides.

* * *

The McGee family lived on the outskirts of a middle-sized New England town that in its heyday, a hundred years earlier, was the center of a booming textile industry. Today, however, it was like any other city struggling to meet the needs of its citizens. The McGee house, a brown three bedroom Cape, sat on three wooded acres and could be approached only by a poorly repaired, snakelike dirt road that shortened by half the life of the shock absorbers of the McGee car. In the summer months the McGee’s Taurus kicked up so much dust on their road it resembled a winter fog, and the sweat on Gideon’s face ran like rivulets of mud.

It was a colder time now, the first day of the New Year, and Gideon awoke to a clatter outside his window that sounded like an army marching over broken glass. Because of his fitful sleeping of late, Gideon McGee was usually difficult to awaken, for he only found peace as the sun was about to make its appearance above the horizon. This particular morning, however, it took nothing more substantial than his curiosity.

Despite his night of unsettling dreams, he nevertheless threw off his covers, yawned a sleep-starved yawn, rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his bony knuckles, then surveyed the dusky room.

He looked at his older brother on the upper bunk. “Hey, Simon. Are you asleep?” Gideon asked, his voice soft enough not to wake his brother if he was still asleep.
Receiving no answer, which was the answer he expected, Gideon McGee slid out of bed and walked to the window. The night had enlarged his pupils to the size of an ink blot, making them exquisitely sensitive to sunlight. Neither his mind, nor his eyes were prepared for the sight that was about to register on his senses as he raised his window shade. Gideon’s bedroom window faced west, so that the coat of ice from the storm the night before reflected the eastern rising sun’s rays back into his eyes. When his vision recovered from what he at first thought was a bursting brain aneurism, Gideon beheld a light show that only nature could provide, and no rock concert could match.

Every tree, every branch, every blade of grass and every rock had grown a crystal skin that sparkled with its own internal light. Like an electric spark, the sun danced from surface to surface leaving an afterimage on Gideon’s eyes, and bringing the hibernating woods back to life. Nature had connected the world outside his window with a dancing cosmic web of light. The wind blew lightly from the north causing the tree branches to tap out their song against each other much like small children playing patty cakes. Gideon stood transfixed as the light danced and skipped from surface to surface. His eyes and ears had never been so pleasantly bombarded; yet he could not identify the feeling it had created.

"Spectacular, isn’t it, Gideon?” Simon asked, placing his hand lightly on his brother’s shoulder so as not to startle him.

Gideon didn’t hear Simon get out of bed, for despite his large size he was as graceful as the wind that blew through the crystallized trees. Gideon jumped at the touch, as though respond¬ing to a horn blast he wasn't expecting. Simon removed his hand.

“Why did you sneak up on me like that?” Gideon barked, more embarrassed that he was caught enjoying the view than being startled by his brother.
“Sorry. I thought you heard me get up,” Simon said absently. He too was captured by the view that had so recently entranced his younger brother.
“Well, I didn’t,” Gideon shot back, glaring into the hazel eyes of his brother that hovered six inches above his own.

Simon turned away from the window and looked at his brother. “Why have you been so hostile lately? You’re normally a royal pain, but for the past few weeks you’ve kicked it up to a new level.”

Gideon began to fidget with his fingers. He made cricket sounds with his fingernails whenever he was nervous, but didn’t know it. “Do you ever dream?” he asked, almost apologetically.

“Sometimes. Why do you ask?” Simon said, as he placed his hand back on his brother’s shoulder. He redirected his attention to the newly created winter scene, and forgot his younger brother’s question. “Last night I almost got killed in this ice storm while driving home from Maureen’s.”
“Yeah, so what?” Gideon said, almost wishing Simon had, and then feeling guilty at the thought.

Simon looked at Gideon with narrowed eyes, his hand tightening its grip on his shoulder as his mood darkened. It was difficult to keep his fingers from digging deep enough to give his brother a small taste of pain. Simon wondered if Gideon’s sole purpose in life was to torment him.

“The point is,” Simon said, “last night I was cursing the storm and all the problems and accidents it was causing, and this morning I look out the window and I’m blown away by the beauty it created. You always see the dark side of things. You always see manure as crap, and never as fertilizer.”

Gideon squirmed under the pressure of his brother’s steely grip and pointed remarks. “How was your date last night?” he asked, changing the subject to avoid the same old lecture. He had heard it a hundred times before.
“It was fine, but why the interest in my love life all of a sudden?” Simon asked, his mood and grip lightening.
“Well...” Gideon stammered. “I’m not getting anywhere with Jenny Bloom, and I thought Maureen might have a friend.”
“I thought you were making some progress with Jenny,” Simon replied.
“Progress?” Gideon asked. “I can barely summon the courage to say hello to her. She’s caught me looking at her several times, and I think she knows I like her, but let’s face it. What would a girl like Jenny want with someone like me?”

A wave of empathy for his brother washed over Simon McGee, and for a brief moment he saw himself four years earlier. He wasn’t much different than Gideon then. “You’re too hard on yourself, Gideon. You see yourself as worthless so you act the part. How can you expect Jenny to like you when you don’t like yourself?”
Gideon turned from the window and walked across the small room to his bed and sat down, his eyes seeing nothing but his size seven feet. “That’s easy for you to say, Simon. Have you looked in a mirror lately? When I look, I want to shut off the lights.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your body or your looks. You see what you want to see,” Simon said. “What you need is an attitude adjustment. Change your attiude, and the reflection in the mirror will change.”
“That’s your standard line. It’s like saying, ‘don’t worry’.” Gideon looked away and scratched his name onto the flannel of his pajama leg. “Are you going to ask Maureen or not?”

The two boys heard footsteps in the hall, and turned as their ten-year-old sister entered their room.
“Good morning Simon. Good morning Gideon,” Prudence said, standing in their doorway in her flannel nightgown. Prudence was the youngest McGee, a pretty girl whose sandy blonde hair was worn in a ponytail tied with a yellow ribbon, just like her mother’s. If Gideon held his arm out straight, she would just clear it without ducking. Her almond-brown eyes sparkled whenever she saw Gideon, for despite his surly attitude, he was her favorite brother. “Can I come in?”
“No,” Gideon said.

“Of course you can, Prudence,” Simon said, over-ruling his younger brother. “Have you looked outside yet?”
“Yes, but it’s much prettier on your side of the house.”
Prudence’s room was across the hall, and her window faced east so that her view was into the sun. From her brother’s side the ice-covered trees reflected the sun making it easier to see, much like the full moon is easier to look at than the sun itself. It was always easier looking at the sun’s reflection than it was gazing directly into it.

“What were you guys talking about?” Prudence asked, noticing the frown on Gideon’s face.
“Girls,” Simon said, his eyes drawn to the light red fingernail polish that was beginning to chip from his sister’s delicate fingers. It somehow made her look older, but more fragile.

“I’m a girl. What do you want to know?”
“You’re too young to be of any help, Prudence,” Gideon said, delighting in the look his words created on his sister’s face.

Prudence stomped her feet and placed her hands on her hips, which at her age were no wider than her waist. “I’m ten years old, Gideon McGee, and I probably know a lot more about girls than you do. You’re such a pain.”
Prudence turned and left the room in a huff, a move she learned from watching her mother. It often made her father repent for some unseen wrongdoing that neither she nor her father knew he had committed.

“Why don’t you lighten up on Prudence?” Simon asked in a voice more controlled than he felt. “Whether you know it or not, she loves you very much, although I’ll never understand why.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well. That’s all. Leave me alone.”

Simon stalked out of the room. Gideon, still seated on the edge of his bed, cupped his oval face in his hands and wondered, as usual, why life always dealt him deuces.