Gideon McGee's Dream: Chapter Two

Chapter Two

The ice storm served to mark the end of Christmas break and the beginning of the second semester. For some, who saw the beauty the storm left behind, it was a good omen. Others, focusing on its destruction, saw it as a bad sign. Some saw crap, others, fertilizer. A few, a very few, saw the storm as both good and bad, much like a forest fire that on the surface appears to ravage nature, but upon deeper reflection merely prunes it, making way for new growth.

“I don’t think there’s anything more boring than washing dishes,” Gideon said to his mother, who was clearing the table of the dinner dishes. “Why can’t we have a dishwasher like normal people?”

Clara McGee had heard this complaint many times before. “I swear, Gideon McGee,” she huffed. “If you had a dollar for every time you complained you’d be a rich boy. You could buy yourself a dishwasher for each day of the week.”

Clara McGee was an attractive woman, who had fully lived her thirty-six years and could still fit into her high school prom gown if an occasion ever arose for her to do so. Her straight blonde hair was cut just short enough to be worn in the ponytail that her daughter so loved. It required half the upkeep of the longer hair she preferred, and seemed a good compromise to getting a Bob cut, which she hated. At thirty-six, Clara McGee was more concerned with the practical aspects of life than in pleasing herself before a mirror. She wouldn’t admit it to anyone but herself, but she was a beautiful woman, and comfortable with her reflection in the mirror.

She placed her collection of dishes and utensils on the counter next to the sink and gave her son a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Mom!”Gideon complained, wiping the kiss with a dish rag. “I’m not five-years-old anymore” He loved her kisses, and would have been saddened had she not stuck to her usual routine of stealing one. It was a game they played. Each knew the rules, but never admitted to them. It was permissible for Clara to steal a kiss from her fourteen-year-old son, but open displays of affection were not allowed. Gideon learned early the gender taboos of his culture.

“Mom?” Gideon asked, his voice hesitant and unsure, like a skydiver the moment before his first jump.
“Yes, Gideon,” she replied, recognizing his change in tone.
“Do you ever think the world is out to get you? You know . . . like nothing ever goes your way. Even my birthday sucks.”
“Gideon!” Clara McGee grabbed the dishrag from her son and swatted him with it. “December 26th is a perfect day for a birthday.”
“Yeah, if you’re born in some third world country where the average yearly income is two hundred dollars, and where no one ever heard of Christmas.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It seems my whole life has been like having a birthday the day after Christmas. Shortchanged, you know.”
“No!” his mother exclaimed. “I don’t know, and I think you’re dead wrong. There are six billion worlds out there, one for each of us and no two people see it the same way. If you’re not happy with the world you have, how about seeing it in a different way?”

Gideon noticed the edge to his mother’s voice, and decided to tone down his own. “Well . . . maybe my life isn’t that bad, but sometimes it sure seems like it is. So, how do I go about seeing the world differently?”

Clara McGee thought for a moment before answering. “The world I see is quite different from the world you see,” she said. “Take Elvis Presley for example.”
“You take him,” Gideon replied, his face looking like he had just swallowed a fly maggot. “I can’t stand him.”

“That’s my point exactly, Gideon. You and I look at the same man, and we see two completely different people. I see the king of rock and roll, who might show up some day at a gas station, or a Walmart, and you see some dead guy who used to sing a bunch of corny hick-songs. There’s no ‘I’m right and you’re wrong.’ We’re both right.

“Or take football,” she continued. “Norwich High played New London High for the championship last year, and New London won. For the New London fans it was a great day. They were happy, exuberant, and did a lot of celebrating that night. For the Norwich fans the day was a bust. You have your brother to attest to that. Same day, but seen differently by two groups of people.”

“Yeah,” Gideon said, refusing to understand, and forgetting his brother’s comments about manure being both good and bad. “But it was still the same day. I’m going to take a walk down by the pond. Where’s the flashlight?”
“It’s on the shelf over the washing machine, but be careful. I don’t know how thick the ice is, so keep off the pond. Be back in an hour.”

Gideon often took walks to the pond whenever there was something troubling him. He had named the small body of water Round Pond after its perfectly circular shape. The pond was a quarter mile from his home, and sat like a teardrop on five acres of city property that abutted his land. From its grassy banks he could see the volunteer fire station only a hundred yards away. His parents played Bingo there every Tuesday night. Gideon thought taking a nap would be more exciting than Bingo, but kept his opinion to himself.

He had been feeling unsettled since the ice storm three days earlier. He couldn’t describe the feeling exactly, but sensed something was going to happen. His stomach felt as though he were dropping in an elevator, and the narrow path that he could usually walk blindfolded, now required his attention and the beam of his flashlight. His mother’s explanation only served to heighten the feeling of being disconnected. “If there were six billion worlds for six billion people, why was his so pitiful?” he wondered.

As he stood on the frozen banks of Round Pond his mind was assaulted with questions that seemed to come from somewhere other than from his own brain.
Why isn’t life fair? Why did Simon get his mother’s looks and he got stuck with his father’s? What did his mother mean when she said we all see the world differently? It’s all one world, isn’t it? Why can’t we all be the same? Questions darted in and out of his mind like mice scurrying for cover at the flick of a light switch. These kinds of thoughts and his dreams were foreign to him, and seemed as though they were injected into his mind by an invisible hypodermic needle. He wondered whose hand was on the syringe.



The siren at the fire station sounded, calling the volunteers to action, and jerking Gideon out of his thoughts. He looked at his Timex Ironman watch he just received for his birthday, and pressed the indiglo button to illuminate the time. It was 9:03 p.m., and he had been gone for an hour and fifteen minutes, and yet it seemed like only a moment. “Time,” Gideon thought. “What a chameleon.”

With a brisk stride, Gideon McGee managed to get home by 9:30 p.m. He was in bed by ten, and wondered what dream would assail him tonight as he drifted further and further from consciousness. Recently he had become aware while dreaming that he was dreaming. It was like watching himself in a feature length movie. He knew he was in the audience, and what was happening on screen, although looking real, was merely a simulation.

The images began to come into focus. It was long ago in a far off land, an exotic land of wide plains and shallow seasonal lakes, where the balance of nature remained undisturbed. A tiger came into view, long and lean, looking hungry and exhausted. It had been a harsh summer, with little rain and even less food, and the female tiger hadn’t eaten in weeks. She had little strength left, and her unborn cub was about to arrive.

In the distance she spied a small band of goats nibbling on the roots of some long-gone prairie grass. She summoned the last of her ebbing strength and made a wild charge at the herd. A small kid standing near its mother seemed the most likely target, and the tiger focused her energy in a last ditch effort to save herself and her unborn cub. She leaped at the kid, but the effort was too much and her heart gave out in mid-flight.

The force of her body hitting the ground was enough to launch the unborn cub into the light of day. It was born as though shot from a canon, and landed in the midst of the band of goats. Surprised at first, they were timid in approaching the startled cub, but soon overcame their fear and eventually welcomed the cub into their band as one of their own.

As time marched inexorably along its path, the tiger grew to think of itself as a goat. It grazed on grass like a goat. It ran from predators like a goat. It even bleated like a goat. The goats, for their part, forgot the tiger was a tiger, although they often wondered why he looked so different from the rest of them. Gideon knew that in this dream he was the tiger-goat, but as yet was unable to make the connection between the metaphors of his dream and the reality of his life.
One day, while the herd of goats was grazing lazily near a small pond, a full-grown male tiger surprised them. Just as his long sabered teeth were about to break the neck of an old crippled goat, he saw, and then heard, the bleating of the tiger-goat. He dropped his prey as if it were a hot ember, and looked in amazement at the freak of nature.

What he saw was a distorted reflection of himself. The tiger-goat looked like a tiger, although a little smaller and not as well muscled, but didn’t act like a tiger. The old male, a veteran of many hunts and fights for dominance, let loose a kingly roar. The tiger-goat bleated his reply. “Ba-a-a-a.”

“What are you?” the old tiger asked in a fury.
“Ba-a-a-a,” the tiger-goat replied. “I am a goat.”
“You are not a goat!” roared the tiger. “You are a tiger like me. Well... maybe not just like me, but you are a tiger nevertheless.”
“Ba-a-a-a.”
The tiger was so infuriated by this reply he grabbed the tiger-goat by the scruff of the neck with his mouth, and dragged him to the nearby pond. “Look,”he ordered. “Look at your reflection. Is that the face of a goat?” He forced the tiger-goat’s face toward the water.

“Ba-a-a-a,” the tiger-goat said. “I look like you.”
“You not only look like me, but the same blood that courses through my veins, also runs through yours.” The kingly tiger dropped the tiger-goat into the pond, then went to finish-off the wounded goat he had dropped from his mouth only a few moments ago. As easily as a man carries a briefcase, he carried the carcass over to the stunned tiger-goat.

“Have you ever eaten meat?” the tiger asked in disdain. Blood dripped from his jowls as he dropped the dead goat and tore at its flesh with his massive teeth.
“Why would I eat meat,” the tiger-goat replied, “when there’s plenty of grass?”
A roar went out over the plains the likes of which the animals had never heard before. An eerie silence fell over the land. The tiger grabbed the tiger-goat by the back of its neck and forced his face into the fresh kill.
“Eat! Taste!” the tiger roared. “This is what you are meant to eat. A tiger is what you are meant to be.”

As the blood of the goat entered the tiger-goat’s mouth he felt a surge of power that began at the tip of its tail and moved with ever-increasing speed through his body. He felt it enter his mouth, and with a joy he had not known before, he proclaimed with a roar to all who would hear. "I am a tiger. I have remembered!”