A Tiger in the Sun – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

This week, I have a short story for you, in the style of an Irish aisling, a dream narrative, about a tiger basking in the warm February sun. — Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, I have a short story for you, in the style of an Irish aisling, a dream narrative, about a tiger basking in the warm February sun.

On a sunny, warm, and blustery day in February I left my desk in the afternoon for a walk at the city zoo. You could never really know how many warm days you’d have in February on the prairies, a time of snow, cold, and gray skies. I showed my member’s pass at the gate to the clerk and strolled between the polar bear’s wide enclosure and the lorikeets’ walk in cage towards the penguin house where I often liked to stand quietly and watch the birds waddle and swim about. There was something wistful about these penguins today, their black and white feathers glowing with a renewed exuberance from the lengthening days outside. I’d seen these penguins in all seasons, confined to their Antarctic chamber with many good places to swim, enclosures, and crevices that even I hadn’t seen. Worlds still unfamiliar to my eyes yet already known to my imagination which saw places where these birds could play and rest away from human eyes.

I left the penguins and began to walk further into the zoo towards the Asian and Australian animals who I hadn’t seen in my last few afternoon visits. I’d read that a new pair of Sumatran tigers had been brought to the zoo from another facility on the West Coast where they’d been born into captivity. These animals it seemed had a comfortable life, if confined as they were from the wilds their ancestors had once known. My walk took me past the alligators still hidden indoors and the camels who wandered about the edges of their sandy glade looking for new grass and leaves to eat. 

After passing the pelicans I came to a grand sign displaying a portrait of a tiger, in all its majestic ferocity. The entry to this Asian walkway was marked by a fleeting glimpse of another red, black, and white animal whose furry legs and tail darted behind a wall to my left. I walked onward and rounding the wall met a red panda on a stroll within the confines of its fenced enclosure. I stopped to look at the red panda who climbed a gangway that’d been set up for its enrichment and admired its ease of movement, the jolly grace of its demeanor. Yet still, the hairs on the back of my neck stood tall, alert. I knew the tigers dwelt behind me, yet they could’ve been anywhere in their terraced enclosure. I turned and caught the yellow eyes of a cat staring back at me, its orange nose wreathed in a beard striped black, orange, and white. This new tiger was smaller than I imagined, perhaps little older than a cub. It lay there on its side like my own cat often does, finding a nice place at the highest point in its home with the sun’s rays glittering down upon its neck and back between the barren branches of the cottonwood grove which towered above both feline and me.

I stood stock still, my nature sensing some intrinsic danger in my situation despite the double layers of fencing between us. This was a tiger after all, a hunter who if in the mood would gladly seek prey from either myself or its red panda neighbors across the path. Who was I to say I was any finer a creature than this one, who was lounging the afternoon away in the warm winter sun. It had no need of work or time; no economy or politics furrowed its brow. Here was a creature free of all our worldly concerns in its terraced enclosure. I would soon have to leave this tiger and continue on my way. My walk in the zoo was merely a distraction from my labors, an escape from the small walled enclosure of my desk where Sisyphean work awaited my attention. What time did I have to lay out in the sun and cherish the day? I walked on, my body moving back towards my work, yet my imagination remained. I dreamed as I walked of adventures I might have, greater escapes from my work, and of absconding for more than an afternoon from worry.

As I rounded the corner past the lower terrace of the tiger’s enclosure my phone began to ring. I pulled it from my pocket and caught myself seeing the number, “213, who’s calling me from Los Angeles?” I answered, looking up towards where the tiger lounged high above me. “Hello?”

            “Thank you again!” I said as I heard the phone on the other end hang up. “Friday, Friday morning in Pasadena. I need to start packing,” I turned from the kangaroos and was about to walk past the building ahead when I remembered that path was closed for winter renovations. I turned back again towards the gate and strolled through; my head held higher than before with a newfound exuberance. Soon I wouldn’t be scraping by just as a freelancer, my four part-time jobs would have to go. Now, I could really earn enough to begin living my life.

I passed the Australian birds in their walk-through enclosure and was amused to see they were all standing stock still on various fenceposts. One squawked at the world, in what seemed to me a jubilant chord of praise for the wonderous afternoon sun.

If I was going to be in California on Friday morning, I would need to leave at dawn tomorrow. I could drive to Denver on Tuesday and stay at my cousin’s house there, if he’ll have me, and then cross the Rockies and the high deserts on Wednesday. I’d driven most of that route before one summer vacation several years ago, but the Rockies in winter would surely be an entirely different challenge than they are to cross in summer. The last time I drove through the Eisenhower Tunnel that bored its way beneath the Continental Divide I waited to use my breaks for just a few seconds too long on the western side and nearly ignited them in their furious efforts to slow my car down as it pulled into a parking spot along a creek in the village of Silverthorne. Should I get my snow tires out then, and have those on in case the interstate was slick up in the mountains? But I wouldn’t need them once I reached Utah where the high deserts would surely be dry, and possibly still hot despite it being February.

Once in Utah, even if my tank was nearly full, I would still stop in Green River, the last town before nearly 125 miles of open desert to ensure I wouldn’t run out of fuel on that other most dangerous part of the trip. I’d avoided that part of the interstate last time, taking a smaller high mountain pass through Central Utah. This time though there was no avoiding the desert. Once I made it to the junction with Interstate 15, I could turn south and make my way to my second overnight stop in Las Vegas. I figured I might not be the only traveler passing through Sin City who wasn’t there to gamble or for the spectacle. Then at last, on Thursday, I would finish with the last leg of the drive southwest across the California border and to Pasadena where my future awaited me. Work, to be sure, was something that drove me forward, the aspiration that I might make something of myself, that I might better my stars and spend my days doing something that both kept the lights on and fulfilled my dreams.

Like the tiger, I would perhaps have time to rest in the sun, to enjoy the afternoons on a park bench near the science center. Surely in California, I would never have to shovel snow again, or scrape the ice off my car in the cold January mornings. Wasn’t California where that tiger was born? I thought about that for a moment as I walked along the path. To my left the local kangaroo mob lounged and grazed on the grasses of their meadow. A kangaroo stood and stared at me. I warily watched it, silently snapping a photo of it with my phone, and continued on my way, keeping ever a respectful distance from those remarkable creatures.

But what of my cat? How would she fare the long voyage west? Would she appreciate so much time in the car? She’d never been one for car rides even to her vet just a few blocks away. Perhaps she’d rather stay with my parents, they always enjoyed her company and she theirs. She was surely napping now too, finding a sunbeam somewhere near a south-facing window where she could enjoy this lovely day like her far larger yet far distant cousin. It would be a great change for my cat, as much as it was for me. We’d have to travel light, perhaps I could send for the rest of my belongings, especially my books, after we settled into our new abode. 

I paused at the southern gate leaving the kangaroo enclosure. Before me one of the camels stopped its grazing to stare back at me as I stood there, deep in thought. I could see my life in California well. I’d probably get a space in the basement of the science center, somewhere with no natural light where they kept their records. My domain would exist in the deep darkness there, somewhere I could make my own. Maybe I’d be far enough away from the rest of the staff or the general public to bring a radio in and listen to baseball games during the season like my grandmother used to do in her kitchen. There’d always be a part of me that would yearn for home of course, for the prairies and woodlands of the Midwest. Who would I be without this place that I came from? What would my life be like so far from everyone I know and love? Could I really separate myself off, devote my working hours to a place where few would understand what it meant to be from here, where few would understand me?

My mind returned to that tiger lying there in the sun, content with its lot in life. There was a creature that could try to hunt and prowl, perhaps it did so in its dreams. What are dreams but the longings of the subconscious? I’d always been a dreamer, an imaginer of wonders near and far from the truth. Do dreams then tell the truth, or is there such a thing as truth in the surreal realm which we imagine? I remembered a story I read as a child, from P.L. Travers’s original Mary Poppins novel, of a scene in which the roles were reversed and all the animals of London Zoo were gawking at the humans in the cages. Was fantasy so different from reality that it could not be informed by the real but instead kept unreal? 

I felt I had to return to that being whose yellow eyes had so deeply captured my thoughts that even now as I planned the monumental voyage of these coming days, a week spent crossing half a continent in winter, I couldn’t shake the image of those deep yellow eyes. I followed the path back towards the tiger sign that greeted visitors to the Asian footpath and ignored the red pandas in all their charm and found my captor laying there still. Those eyes caught mine again, and they seemed to recognize me from only a few minutes before. In those eyes I saw a truth that life was meant to be enjoyed, to be lived, yet in my eyes I was sure the creature could only see fear and wonder. Without these fences we both knew those yellow eyes would be a death sentence for me and that my power was devised in only the most artificial of means. The tiger was the real power, the true monarch of our shared domain. And yet it blinked at me, slowly, a signal that my own cat offers when it feels comfortable around me. Could this tiger feel at ease in its enclosure or is its ease perhaps from its inherited knowledge that nature gave it the upper hand over feeble, clawless, scaleless, featherless, furless me.

I didn’t feel the need to speak, this tiger could understand my expressions. I gazed into those eyes deeper, feeling my thoughts free fall into that yellow sea of potent grace. Did these eyes envision things like mine did? Could this tiger see things unknown to it in its dreams? Could it imagine a Creator? Would I still feel such a connection when I retired from my native place to that basement archive where surely, I would spend my waking hours? I wasn’t sure that the adventure of it all would be worth the query, yet I felt my nature pull me towards exploring further and deeper. I heard a noise from before me, a deep hiss emanating from a striped sea of orange, black, and white. The tiger had enough of my gaze, and with a hiss told me enough, “move along, leave me be.”

I backed out from the tiger’s view and turned away, looking to the red panda who seemed unfazed by the hissing hunter across the way. Move along indeed. In this adventure I’ll learn more about myself, and what I am capable of. When I reach the end of the line on this drive, when I arrive in California, there will surely be many new possibilities and wonders to behold. How often had I experienced a warm, sunny day in February here on the prairies? Wonderous things remained for me to find beyond my desk. I walked back to the front gate of the zoo and felt something new inside of me glow with confident glee at the thought of all that was to come.