He visited the residence nearest the center of Chum and found another tiger laying on a couch. The more things change the more they stay the same, he contemplated, also looking across the deck at a dancing bear.
If I said he wasn’t perturbed at this new development I would be Lion.
Yes, there I am below, a Batta-lion to be specific. Ready for battal. But it was all a dream about the war again and the loss of Chet. They poured into the sea looking for the real me. I wake up.
—–
Later, much later, I revisited the scene and found 3 girls, probably sisters, all peering round the corner of a neighboring houseboat down the pier at… me again I assume. Wondering what went wrong. Their lives had unfolded perfectly: 3 beautiful children spaced about 2 1/2 to 3 years apart. The golden family. “Golly gee,” the pigtailed middle one said to the others. “Do you think he’ll *ever* make anything of his life?” “Yes,” agreed the younger also coming around like the others before her, also watching me flounder around the end like a lost seal puppy. She was my junior by close to 15 years but was already enrolled in special classes for the gifted and damned, although I just added the second word in jest. This must have been before I enlisted and made something of myself. Finally. My family would beam down smiles instead of rain frowns. The war was the best thing that could have happened. The girls grew up to be successful women in their fields of archeology, anthropology, and astronology from top to bottom, although the youngest had a tough time choosing between astronomy and astrology in her junior year of college and decided to combine them into one to create something new. Since she was special, perhaps special special, the instructors granted this wish. She became the most interesting one to me later, after the war, after all the death and destruction was over. Because she had the most insight into herself, being a kind of split being like myself, although obviously not as fractured. I sat down with her one day and talked away, although this was not part of the dream. This was reality. I told her about TILE. I told her about the renegade treatises by two other children, without a third this time. I was looking for them. I wanted to find out… what they knew. How they channeled such important documents at such a young age. And why that milk for that bread, that (peanut) butter? Was it really needed to make the whole thing palatable to others at least in part?
—–
She still wasn’t allowed to eat with him, despite the changes. “Dear, why don’t you take off your mask. *I* have.”
That is just a wig you put on to give the appearance of a beauty and not a beast, he thinks. You’re still a white faced cow. He stared over, looked at her black vacant eyes. Yes, cow. Nothing to be desired at all. He imagines the heat again, the flies again. He remembers the military.
“I wear this, *cow*,” he answered aloud, “because I don’t want to forget who I am, how I got here. If it wasn’t for Chet–”
“Oh Chet Chet Chet,” she cut in, tired of the name. “Watermelons and cantaloupes, right. You have to get *over* it dear.”
“Stop saying that,” he protested. “Stop calling me that.”
“*Dear*,” she insisted. “Just take off the helmet — not the cape. Let me take a peek. It’s only fair.”
If he took off the helmet he would no longer be one with Chet. He refused, adding another “cow” or two to rub it in. We are different still, you over there and me over here, he thinks. He will not succumb.
(to be continued)
